There Is No Depression: Protect and Survive New Zealand

[Tsar of New Zealand]

snipsnipsnip

Looks like round one eighth (WA) of total refining capacity is certainly gone, and a quarter damaged or disrupted by damage to ports (NSW). I'd expect the remaining refining capacity should (given an adequate supply of oil) be able to keep up a reasonable supply of lubricants and fuel for essential industry.
It'd certainly be difficult for awhile, and you're right going back to animal power would be impractical. But, there are other options... Wood gasifiers aren't too much of a jump for a semi-decent engineering workshop (and given quite a few cities survived in Aus and NZ, there's going to be more than a few engineering workshops around), and from use during WW2 are a proven technology. With a bit of messing round you can get most internal combustion engines to run on the resulting gas. If fuel rationing can buy three to six months to get gasifiers built and installed on enough vehicles, then fuel can be redirected to where wood gas cannot substitute (typically the high power roles)... and hopefully, agricultural collapse can be avoided. Longer term coal gas (a year or two?) and eventually coal to oil conversion via the Fischer-Tropsch process (three to five years?) can fill in until access to major oil supplies can be reestablished

Edit: Can't be bothered finding the actual post, but someone asked about phosphate fertilizer production. Well, Nauru and Christmas Island were apparently not hit (and one would assume various other Pacific islands weren't whacked), so, assuming shipping is available shouldn't be a problem in the medium term (6 month-5 years?).

Thank you kindly for the trove: first off yes, I am using the same targeting list as in The Lucky Country (albeit practically nothing else). Second, here's where Rule of Cool over actual research has not paid off...sorta. New Zealand After Nuclear War has been my primary source, and it was there I got the ballpark figure of a year's worth of lubricants at hand. Seeing as it was a 1987 source, I had thought it pretty reliable - apparently I was wrong. That said, it was only a throwaway comment, so I can retcon it out - alternatively, I'll save time and just call it a rough estimate of Lange's

the yamuna river runs through delhi, not the ganges. If the bombs glassed everything from the delhi intl airport to the ganges it was one HELL of a smackdown.

Ah. Now that one I can't excuse. I'll go fix that, shall I?

 

[Julius Vogel]

Is there still a chance to bring Motunui online? Because it's methanol production would go a long way to helping with the pending fuel crisis.

I am sure it would still come online, but looks like it took till 86 to do so IOTL so I would imagine that would slow down a little, even if the government put priority to it.

I assume this because it is a novel, complex plant and merely throwing more men and resources at it may not help with bottlenecks like design and materials. IOTL they had to spend a bit of time and money importing expertise and the like (see SASOL in South Africa) and I'm sure some of the fancy bits would be very dependent on overseas material.

http://www.techhistory.co.nz/ThinkBig/Petrochemical Decisions.htm

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

I am sure it would still come online, but looks like it took till 86 to do so IOTL so I would imagine that would slow down a little, even if the government put priority to it.

I assume this because it is a novel, complex plant and merely throwing more men and resources at it may not help with bottlenecks like design and materials. IOTL they had to spend a bit of time and money importing expertise and the like (see SASOL in South Africa) and I'm sure some of the fancy bits would be very dependent on overseas material.

I was originally to hint at this in a throwaway line in Chapter 14, but I believe I removed it due to wanting to avoid a superfluous infodump (well, another one, at least ) There's certainly a strong focus on doing all that's possible to get Motunui up and running, but between wanting to go carefully to avoid screwing up irreplacable components, lacking other vital ones in the first place, and Christchurch shouting double-time, it's going to be 1987 at the very least ITTL, if it can ever be finished. Honestly, with American, British, and South African firms now all but confirmed to have been liquidated with extreme prejudice, it's probably more productive to dust the cobwebs off the old Moturoa refinery - sure, it's 1920s vintage, but it worked well enough for diesel. And at the moment, with a lot of thirsty ships to fuel up, Peak Petrol looks mighty good from where Roger Douglas, Minister of Supply/Rationing and Associate Minister of Rationing, is sitting.

EDIT: A thought occurs in response to cockroach's comment on coal gas: at this time IOTL (until 1987 in fact), Dunedin had one of the country's last fully functional gasworks, having provided coal gas to 18,000 homes at the peak of its production only a decade before. It might only be a drop in an ocean of energy demands, but it's pretty damn neat, either way - it would appear that my home city's refusal to modernise actually pays off, for once. First a post-apocalyptic monopoly on dentists, doctors, lawyers, and draught beer [1], and now this? Dear God, Dunedin's ego will become unstoppable!

[1] It will take more than a nuclear holocaust and the potential breakdown of society for me to accept Waikato Draught into my life. Or my oesophagus, as the case may be.

 

[Julius Vogel]

As I think we've said before, the architects of Think Big will be counted amongst the Saints by future generations!

Saint Bill of Birch will be a popular member of the house-hold shrines in future years no doubt

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

As I think we've said before, the architects of Think Big will be counted amongst the Saints by future generations!

I've written a couple of pieces for future updates which take precisely that view

...of course, only the most ardent of right wing-cranks or left wing maniacs will dare claim that Think Big was anything other than a masterstroke on Muldoon's part, one of the saving legacies of a Prime Minister at best remembered as controversial, at worst...

Saint Bill of Birch will be a popular member of the house-hold shrines in future years no doubt

More than you'd think

The next update should be up later today; I've found that the New Zealand ships mentioned by Macragge in his TL were actually already decommissioned by this point IOTL, so I've done some artistic interpretation of the facts. After all, what else is truth?

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

Interlude II – Where Beer Does Flow and Men Chunder​

Spirit of a sailor
Circumnavigates the globe…

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From Wynd, M. A Century on the High Seas: The Royal New Zealand Navy 1910 to 2010 (Manukau: Auckland University Press, 2010).

Chapter 8: World War Three Activities in the Pacific and Beyond

…addition to the decision to postpone the decommissioning of the Otago, the re-commissioning of the Taranaki was thus a major priority of the Muldoon Government in the run-up to the outbreak of war in Europe, and this paid off handsomely when the boiler which had been ceremonially extinguished almost two years earlier burned once more with a new and – as it would soon prove – vital flame…

…The Otago and Taranaki made port at Melbourne on April 21st, holds packed with many tonnes of supplies both for the seamen and soldiers aboard and as a part of the aid shipment intended for Britain. They escorted three freighters from New Zealand (the Dunedin, the Marlborough, and the Southern Cross; all owned, incidentally, by a shipping line run by the Mayor of Dunedin's family) loaded with beef and mutton carcasses as well as a quantity of coal from Southland and the West Coast and even a token amount of aluminium from Tiwai Point. However, the Emergency Cabinet had made the collective decision to withhold pharmaceutical supplies, and medical aid of any kind was in short stock amongst the supplies sent on the Convoy. Aside from the obvious lack of supply within New Zealand (already supplies of vital drugs were running low: it was becoming hard for the man on the street to access several drugs which could no longer be imported from Europe or supplemented by Australian supplies), there was a very small hope that perhaps the British might have something to spare…

…of the USS Roanoke in Suva came too late for it to be of assistance in TRANSIT OF VENUS, but the additional range afforded by the inclusion of a fleet oiler into the Tasman navies did allow for extended expeditions to be undertaken in the Central Pacific as winter approached. Also of interest was the information the sailors aboard this vessel and the Merrill brought with them: of the destruction of Pearl Harbour (at least three bombs), San Diego (same), Los Angeles (uncountable), Okinawa (four bombs), Guam (same), Subic Bay (destroyed with Manila) and all of the other American military bases they had attempted to make contact with. This would factor heavily into the reasonably sedate efforts at making contact in the North-West Pacific, though the decision to send an expedition to the West Coast regardless would prove…

…has been little official indication as to what the actual policy discussions in Melbourne and Christchurch were, we can infer that the Australian and New Zealand Governments decided to bolster the naval taskforce assigned to the Convoy – although this was explained away as defending the merchant shipping against Soviet submarines, the British experience at Whitby had shown that most, if not the entirety, of the Soviet Union’s submarines were out of commission – in a move which appears to have been designed to tacitly inform the British of the shift in the balance of power east of Aden. The decision to set sail on Anzac Day was also significant in another sense, as it affirmed national identity and acted as a crucial moment in the trans-Tasman relationship and a further step away from New Zealand’s former dependence upon Britain…

…the Indians, for their part, were mainly involved to alert the British and by extension the rest of the NATO states that reports of their demise had been very exaggerated (losses in Delhi, Old Bombay, Calcutta, and others notwithstanding), as well as delivering a message that they were now powerful enough to spare significant stocks of food and fuel to send as aid despite their losses in the Exchange, and a not-so-tacit declaration of their aspirations towards great power status in the new order. While the latent significance of the Indian effort was not appreciated initially, Rajiv Gandhi’s 1986 declaration…

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The lust of a pioneer
Will acknowledge no frontier…

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Flagstaff Gardens
Melbourne, Victoria
April 24, 1984

It was an obscenely nice afternoon in Melbourne. No humidity, high teens even at the end of April, and bright, bright sunshine. You could understand why there were literally hundreds of thousands of refugees crowding the place.

They’d had a good squiz at the refugee camps sprawling outwards from the city when they were flown in, with the acres of canvas and corrugated iron and caravans speckling every surface east of the Bay. A million was the best guess anyone had made, almost all of whom had come from Sydney or Canberra, descending upon Australia’s once and future capital like a horde since the wee small hours of February 22. The Lance Corporal had never seen so many people in one place; he was certainly prepared to believe the rumour going around that Melbourne’s three-or-four million made up the largest known city in the world.

In such an immense urban sprawl there were little islands of calm, places where, like back home, you could tilt your head and squint and convince yourself that there hadn’t been a war. Like this park, for instance.

Cricket was the game of the day; it had been dry enough recently for the ground to be good enough for it, and (more to the point) it had helped prevent a fight from breaking out over which rules they should play rugby by – “Aussie Fucking Rules,” Jonesy had sneered good-humouredly, “or league. League, mate!”

However, he wasn’t one of the company’s good cricket men, so he got to sit and watch as a few of the New Zealanders began hammering some stumps scrounged up by the Aussies into the ground, and the Lance Corporal got to let his mind wander and wonder what England would be like. Probably less cricket, for a start, he thought as the umpire produced a coin for the toss. Less of everything, I imagine. Pity. Not any sort of OE without a trip to London and a pub or two. A pause in thought as he sat up to watch the batting. Not likely to be going to Big Ben, either. Pity. Coulda sent a postcard. A crack, a flash of maroon as a ball scudded into the trees, and the two Aussies on bat started running as the Kiwis scurried about in the outfield. The Lance Corporal watched with detached interest as the process repeated itself a few times over before the Aussies were finally bowled out, shouting erupted from the crowd of soldiers and sailors who were spectating, and the teams changed over and they went on bowling and batting and fielding in the golden autumn sun. Suppose it’ll be summer in Britain by the time we get there, he thought, fingers idly tugging at grass which (understandably) hadn’t seen mowing for some months. Wonder if it’s anything like as nice as this?

As the Australians and New Zealanders played cricket under a sunset of violent reds and golds and purples, he couldn’t help but feel a tiny swell of Antipodean pride – even as the niggling voice of doubt piped up to say that the answer to his question was likely to be unpleasant.

Ah, well. Least she’s a decent sunset.

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Tyranny of distance
Didn’t stop the cavalier…

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Government House
Melbourne, Victoria
April 24, 1984

The bigwigs had descended upon Government House like a Biblical plague, and the poncy kai hadn’t been far behind. Not that David Lange was complaining; being both bigwig and fond of a decent meal.

The PM had been similarly inclined, making his way over from Christchurch soon after Lange and Hawke returned from Port Hedland (these jaunts back and forth across the ditch, he thought, are gonna have Roger and the Ministry of Supply shitting bricks, I bet) and was now hobnobbing with his counterpart not too far across the room. David would have done the same, but seeing as how Hawke was wearing the Foreign Minister hat alongside his Prime Ministerial one, it would also have meant hovering around Palmer like a fly around shit. And while he was prepared to believe that he hadn’t wanted to steal the Prime Minister’s seat from under his nose, he was also fresh out of patience for his erstwhile deputy. No, kowtowing to him was simply too much to bear.

There, at least, he thought as he sipped on a decent glass of bubbly, was a small mercy. A lesser man might have bashed him over the head with the unexpected reversal. A more arrogant – no, scratch that, Geoff’s intellectually arrogant, at least – a pettier one certainly would have. Whatever else Lange might have held against him, the PM was content to lead by mediation. Probably it was what the country needed.

But outside the warrens of the Beehive – well, of Cathedral Square – they were all bit players in a far larger drama. The impressment of half the Australian crew of the Perth had not impressed Melbourne and Christchurch, with nobody quite trusting the British sailors sent in their place. Not that they were at all mistreated, of course. Indeed, the sailors who made up half the Perth’s return crew were welcomed as heroes, feted as survivors from the Mother Country and living proof that Britain was down but not out. At least, this was the official line trotted out in propaganda. Besides the obvious secrecy which could be woven around the sailors aboard Perth, it was useful to have official confirmation of the situation in Britain – to say nothing of whatever nightmarish rumours of Germany the Poms brought with them – as a club to beat whingers at home with.

Back in the here and now, Hawke’s grizzled face hove back into view, grinning at Lange. The Australian had apparently necked his glass of beer (him versus Rob, now that would be a match for the ages!) if the empty hands were anything to go by, and the enthusiasm with which he pumped David’s hand as he greeted him reinforced the impression. Unless, of course, it was just that he wasn’t accustomed to seeing genuine happiness in people these days – Hawke was certainly looking pleased.

“Ah! The man of the hour, eh? Looks like we’ve managed to get enough together to send topside as a nice little Queen’s Birthday present, then, dunnit?”

“It ought to keep Wee Willie Whitelaw satisfied for a bit, at least,” he responded with forced levity, before another thought interrupted it. “King’s Birthday now, too, I suppose. Speaking of, I wonder how Charlie’ll respond to getting his elbow ever so gently jogged once our boys get there in force regarding the, ah, fulfilment of the other half of that verbal contract.”
Hawke’s grin all of a sudden just showed a lot of teeth.

“They’ll react positively, we’d hope. It’d be a little bit…ungracious of ‘em not to, wouldn’t it? Hardly in keeping with all that Scout’s Honour and Land of Hope and Glory bull, anyway.”

Lange made an affirmative noise as he sipped his South Australian wine, before changing tack with “The Indians certainly seem to be playing a similar game, at least so far as strong-arming the Poms is concerned”, to which Hawke nodded along.

“Their Foreign Minister’s clearly been at this longer than either of us, eh?” Another mirthless grin. “If they’re sending him over with their lot he’ll run rings around the flaming Foreign Office, wunn’e?” Another sip of beer (where the hell did that come from?). “Mind, I reckon our intelligence fellahs’ll find out themselves, won’t they?”

“Ye-es,” he responded at length. “It’ll certainly be…educational. We’ll see if any of our High Commission staff made it, too – and wouldn’t it be a shame, just, if they were to misplace a sheet of A4 here or there in a diplomatic bag which had already been sealed and was intended for home?”

Hawke’s smile was suddenly frighteningly sober.

“You and I are gonna get along just fine, Minister.”

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So why should it stop me?
I’ll conquer and stay free…

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Port Phillip Bay, Australia
April 25, 1984

Upon receiving the order from land, Captain (until yesterday Commander) Bailey returned the salute given by the Royal Navy officer who had taken the place of his second mate (it was probably a poor attitude towards the Western Alliance that made him think of the man as a Pommie bastard, though if the ’82-’83 season was to have been the last Ashes ever Australia had at least won and set that part of the universe in order) and turned to his (Australian) second-in-command.

“Let’s get this show on the road, then,” he said, taking his place on the bridge and surveying the sea in front of them. As the Perth set out along the navigation channel, followed closely by the Brisbane, Taranaki, and Otago, all with the ritual amount of horn-blowing (of course – nothing to boost the local morale like saying “we’re so well off we can ship food halfway across the globe and expense be damned”), the comms officer radioed the Indian flotilla (by way of several transmissions bounced across the continent) to confirm the rendezvous and route. All going well it would be seventeen days to the Cape of Good Hope, with the plan being to meet the Indian contingent somewhere southeast of Madagascar. From there, it’d be a further eighteen days to Portsmouth, assuming they ran into the usual stormy weather of the Cape and whatever spring in the North Atlantic had to throw at them. Though, from what the Poms had said and he had seen in Portsmouth, there were almost certainly worse things awaiting them on land.

He found himself smiling as he looked out across the Bay towards Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean.

Bloody brilliant.

Not too far away, aboard HMNZS Otago, the Skipper (a captain, if not a Captain) was somewhat more sanguine, though it was easier to be happy-go-lucky without half of his crew being held hostage (through of course if you counted the on-base bar, there’d been a hostage situation of sorts as soldiers and sailors kept the barman on his feet all night on the 23rd). The Otago was well-stocked with supplies, and despite insistence that rations were to remain determined by the same strict guidelines as back in port, everybody recognised that even two months after the War had begun and ended the danger of enemy submarines made a little caloric hazard pay more than fair. After all, it wasn’t like paying the seamen in money would do them any more good, what with the wage and price freeze replaced with the grim arithmetic of rationing and the very concept of currency reduced to a strange limbo.

Below decks, the Lance Corporal was having trouble appreciating these pressing economic issues, as he was currently being sick out a window. Fuck me, I hope nobody’s taking photos, he thought, before breaking out in chuckles in between heaves at how stupid it all was. Here he was: the boy from New Plymouth sicking his guts up on a boat to Britain after surviving a nuclear war.

Well, at least the sunsets were nice.

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Aotearoa!
Rugged individual!
Glisten like a pearl
At the bottom of the world…

 

[Blue Vein CHEESE]

Great update!

 

[Can'tRememberUsername]

Wolframalpha.com wouldn't translate the third Morse code message, it's translated them all before, perhaps you made a mistake in it somewhere?

 

[Blue Vein CHEESE]

I use this one to translate the morse code:
http://morsecode.scphillips.com/translator.html


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OH, LET THE SUN BEAT DOWN UPON MY FACE

The first line from my favourite Led Zeppelin song

It looks like no spaces around the first slash is what's breaking wolfram's translation. (yes noticing that sort of stuff is part of what I do for a living!)

 

[Salamander]

[1] It will take more than a nuclear holocaust and the potential breakdown of society for me to accept Waikato Draught into my life. Or my oesophagus, as the case may be.

Waikato Draught* has one well known quality that will ensure it's continued production. As a last resort, it can be used medicinally.

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

Wolframalpha.com wouldn't translate the third Morse code message, it's translated them all before, perhaps you made a mistake in it somewhere?

I use this one to translate the morse code:
http://morsecode.scphillips.com/translator.html


--- .... --..--/.-.. . - / - .... . / ... ..- -. / -... . .- - / -.. --- .-- -. / ..- .--. --- -. / -- -.-- / ..-. .- -.-. .
OH, LET THE SUN BEAT DOWN UPON MY FACE

The first line from my favourite Led Zeppelin song

It looks like no spaces around the first slash is what's breaking wolfram's translation. (yes noticing that sort of stuff is part of what I do for a living!)

Ah, nuts. I mean, if that's the biggest cock-up I made in this update, then I'm happy - I just had to add that comma, didn't I?

We use the same translator, it appears. And share taste in Led Zep. Ka pai, that man

Waikato Draught* has one well known quality that will ensure it's continued production. As a last resort, it can be used medicinally.

Say what you will of Muldoon, but in this as in so many other things, he leads by example If there's a single untouched bottle of spirits left in the country at this point ITTL, the SIS will have men out looking for them. The Minister of State has had a rough couple months.

 

[Cockroach]

Another good chapter, but I think I may have a mild nitpick...

Aside from the obvious lack of supply within New Zealand (already supplies of vital drugs were running low: it was becoming hard to find insulin for Cabinet ministers, let alone for the man on the street), there was a very small hope that perhaps the British might have something to spare…

While there certainly will be major shortages of medicines, I don't see things getting so desperate that senior Australian and Kiwi ministers and senior officials would be running out of insulin. Why? Per established canon, Melbourne survived... The Commonwealth Serum Laboratories main site therefore survived. CSL historically did produce insulin (with it's privatization in the mid-1990s that capability may have been offshored). Also, assuming Palmerston North wasn't hit New Zealand Pharmaceuticals Ltd, not sure if they produced insulin during the 1980s but they should be able to produce insulin from animal pancreases in at least limited quantities.

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

While there certainly will be major shortages, I don't see things getting so desperate that senior Australian and Kiwi ministers and senior officials would be running out of insulin. Why? Per established canon, Melbourne survived... The Commonwealth Serum Laboratories most major site therefore survived. CSL historically did produce insulin (with it's privatization in the mid-1990s that capability may have been offshored). Also, assuming Palmerston North wasn't hit New Zealand Pharmaceuticals Ltd, not sure if they produced insulin during the 1980s but they should be able to produce insulin from animal pancreases in at least limited quantities.

You make a good point - again, most of my research has spun off from one work which assumed a need for total self-sufficiency. Odd that it never mentioned NZPL's capabilities, but even if that's not a goer then Melbourne should, as you say, leave a lot of wiggle room. I'll correct the offending article accordingly.

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

Some thoughts on where we're headed:

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I'm rather pleasantly surprised with how the TL has panned out; if my research remains as slapdash as ever it's still, I feel, a rather good work I'm grinding out slowly.

Slowly being the operative word: I reckon the next update will be another slow one - New Zealand experiencing a number of slow news days even with a nuclear war to deal with - and slow in coming. This is not helped by the fact that I've been diverting myself with more interesting chapters further in the future Nor will Real Life help, what with Master's study beginning in March and my total uncertainty over just how demanding that'll be probably due to take up a goodly chunk of my time - but let's try and stick to an update a month at the least, shall we?

The structure is good, though, so I think the current format (low POV, high POV, low POV, paratextual piece tying it all together from a point close to the present day) will stay. I'm probably going to start leaning on the paratextuals a bit more as the pace of life remains reasonably sedate for folks stuck in the low POV, if only to show whether their standard of living will change in 30 years/serve any reasonable purpose. This will continue for the next three or four chapters, with the Interludes detailing the Convoy to Britain in between. Past then - around June ITTL - the pace will pick up as the updates begin detailing points further apart (i.e., a month or two at a time rather than a week) and the TL approaches the end point of the original in September 1984.

Beyond that seems like a reasonable place to call a day on this project: I've already encountered difficulties in predicting what happens where (as many of the keener-eyed amongst you have noted), and considering how much better off New Zealand is in the optimistically crapsack world of P&S it seems more than a little masturbatory to write screeds on how New Zealand becomes a half-pint quarter-acre pavlova paradise.

Still, though it might be Rule of Cool or misplaced nationalism (which down here usually translates to swearing at Australians come a big test match), I have got a few ideas on the shape of New Zealand society in the thirty or so years post-Exchange, so I intend to write a few updates giving ideas of how our insular little islands deal with reconstruction.

So there's the bulletin, almost-as-long-as-an-update as it is.

Cheers,
TNZ

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[Mumbles]

Beyond that seems like a reasonable place to call a day on this project: I've already encountered difficulties in predicting what happens where (as many of the keener-eyed amongst you have noted), and considering how much better off New Zealand is in the optimistically crapsack world of P&S it seems more than a little masturbatory to write screeds on how New Zealand becomes a half-pint quarter-acre pavlova paradise.

Given that NZwank is pretty much the default position for every WWIII timeline I've ever seen you're doing pretty well I think.

 

[Mumbles]

Another good chapter, but I think I may have a mild nitpick...While there certainly will be major shortages of medicines, I don't see things getting so desperate that senior Australian and Kiwi ministers and senior officials would be running out of insulin. Why? Per established canon, Melbourne survived... The Commonwealth Serum Laboratories main site therefore survived. CSL historically did produce insulin (with it's privatization in the mid-1990s that capability may have been offshored). Also, assuming Palmerston North wasn't hit New Zealand Pharmaceuticals Ltd, not sure if they produced insulin during the 1980s but they should be able to produce insulin from animal pancreases in at least limited quantities.

If either of those places are dependent on offshore procured reagents or products for their processes (and NZP at least almost certainly will be) then mere survival does not ensure continued capability - they will struggle to get anything done until they develop robust alternatives. Setting up a production process for something (especially for the quality required for human use or GMP) isn't a quick process either if it's not something you are already doing.

 

[Blue Vein CHEESE]

so I intend to write a few updates giving ideas of how our insular little islands deal with reconstruction.

I wonder what state EQC would be in post-attack. Would they still be able to do anything after Wellington and Auckland were hit?

IIRC they still covered war damage in 1984, would this cover damage resulting from a nuclear attack? Not that I'd expect them to be able to pay up mind you.

 

[Julius Vogel]

It's hardly a wank when you are only comparatively ahead due to not being hit hard.

Besides of which even an untouched NZ in a post global nuclear war isn't really able to project or do much really.

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

If either of those places are dependent on offshore procured reagents or products for their processes (and NZP at least almost certainly will be) then mere survival does not ensure continued capability - they will struggle to get anything done until they develop robust alternatives. Setting up a production process for something (especially for the quality required for human use or GMP) isn't a quick process either if it's not something you are already doing.

I thank you for your defence of my handwaving

I wonder what state EQC would be in post-attack. Would they still be able to do anything after Wellington and Auckland were hit?

IIRC they still covered war damage in 1984, would this cover damage resulting from a nuclear attack? Not that I'd expect them to be able to pay up mind you.

Muldoon declared the existence of a state of war with the USSR (unless that's just in my rewrites; I've got a few irons in the editorial fire), and even if he hadn't, I'd say nuclear attacks count as acts of war.

So yes to both your points; the EQC is theoretically liable to help cover claims for damage, but it's also a moot point considering their ability to pony up was mostly immolated along with their offices on February 22.
Mind you, as many of the business owners who might consider laying claims are taking Soviet-funded tours of the upper atmosphere, there's some substantial financial pressure taken off.

It's an interesting issue for the future, when the government starts funneling money into reconstruction rather than mere survival.

Given that NZwank is pretty much the default position for every WWIII timeline I've ever seen you're doing pretty well I think.

It's hardly a wank when you are only comparatively ahead due to not being hit hard.

Besides of which even an untouched NZ in a post global nuclear war isn't really able to project or do much really.

I thank you both. I do tire of the classic Kiwiwank, so it's nice to know I'm treading that line well.

Self-congratulation aside, to brass tacks: good news, there's an update ready; bad news, it's not the one I had chronologically planned to come up next, so I'm still grinding through that. I had hoped to have an update for Waitangi Day, but some hope that was. I'll try and get something up in a fortnight.

 

[Kiwigun]

I do tire of the classic Kiwiwank, so it's nice to know I'm treading that line well.

What Kiwiwank? I have not seen any.