When the Wind Blew: a P&S Open Thread
- Thread starter Gen_Patton
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Since I posted that song, for the fun of it, does it give anyone ideas on a timeline? Does it evoke a story? Not to say you'd write it, but does it spark an idea?
And now for something really depressing, since I think music more than anything makes you feel a group of people are people and not just background actors in a documentary (the difference of knowing real and feeling real), all these folks died in this timeline.
One book I would like to see in a crossover with Protect and Survive is Alas, Babylon (if anyone hasn't read it, read it; it's one of the better nuclear apocalypse books, and ahead of its time to some extent), especially since it's set in Florida, the same setting as End of Watch (though in central Florida, rather than southern)...
Sweden has updated its version of Protect and Survive and is distributing it to all homes. Interestingly, it is being printed in both Swedish and English. It is entitled Om krisen eller kriget kommer (If Crisis or War Comes).
https://www.dinsakerhet.se/siteasse.../om-krisen-eller-kriget-kommer---engelska.pdf
https://www.dinsakerhet.se/siteasse.../om-krisen-eller-kriget-kommer---engelska.pdf
Just in case anyone wants to go digging for good secondary source material, this book just came out and has great reviews from the New York Times and NPR. It's called, "1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink":
https://www.amazon.com/1983-Reagan-...rd_wg=0xqWc&psc=1&refRID=8B1BE0SBYKANZJND5MYS
https://www.amazon.com/1983-Reagan-...rd_wg=0xqWc&psc=1&refRID=8B1BE0SBYKANZJND5MYS
"I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer."
One idea possibly worth exploring in a short P&S spinoff: Tristan da Cunha in the weeks, months and years after The Exchange.
How would the locals cope with the loss of a global economy, and without a UK and South Africa to fall back on for regular resupply ?
How long would they have to endure this second great period of isolation from the outside world ? (The first one in the late 19th and early 20th century.)
How would the locals cope with the loss of a global economy, and without a UK and South Africa to fall back on for regular resupply ?
How long would they have to endure this second great period of isolation from the outside world ? (The first one in the late 19th and early 20th century.)
Decent chance they'd never know of the Exchange until the boats stopped coming, and even then they wouldn't be sure of the cause.
Takes a real tough person to live in a literal dead end.
I think someone would stopover at Tristan, sooner or later. The British ships scouting the South African coast are a likely candidate, even if the island remains isolated for 2 or 3 years or even more. It is perfectly possible some civilian or military ship with no place to go could rest in waters near Tristan, the crew relaxing among the natives and trading stuff for fresh supplies (fresh water, vegetables, potatoes and sea food, at least).
Tristan would know something bad had happened. They knew about the Cold War tensions, even had some orders and info from the British government about civil defence and what to do in case the Cold War went hot. IIRC, back in the 60s, some Tristanians even filed a complaint about some South Atlantic nuclear test they weren't told about in advance. Even in the pre-Internet days, Tristan has had long-distance radio and so on. A sudden silence from the usual broadcasters of signals would convince the islanders that the worst had happened. Depending on how the rest of the world recovers, it might take decades for Tristan to move beyond early 1980s levels of technology. If there is a longer-term fuel shortage on the island due to isolation from the Exchange, they might go back to the days of cattle-drawn carts. (I don't remember whether they kept horses on the island in the 20th century.)
I feel they would be in a unique position, indeed. They're used to roughing it, stoically and cheerfully, similarly to how their ancestors endured. Even in the worst possible case, they can wait out a few years in isolation, before someone finally visits them again.
Possibly the worst issue might be a lack of modern medicine, once the existing med supplies run out at Camogli Hospital (the now recently decomissioned and superceded hospital opened in the early 1970s, so it wouldn't be that old or outdated by the time of The Exchange). The doctors stranded on the island would have to work with the knowledge they might not get new med supplies anytime soon, while tending to the occassional patients. Tristanians have a historical issue with asthma, disproportionately widespread in their community. Though they perservered with it on their own for a long time, if people were receiving asthma treatment in the 80s, they might be rather disappointed they'll have to do without it once again.
There might be more of a problem with the vermin eradication programmes on the other islands. After the Exchange such efforts might get postponed and the native bird colonies might suffer for longer than they did in OTL. Though I bet the Tristanians could still attempt such an effort on their own, eventually. They do traditionally harvest some of the surplus eggs from the bird colonies (in an amount that doesn't endanger the birds procreating each year), so I think they'd consider it a strategic goal of sorts to ensure the native wild birds can multiply without fear of invasive rodents.
One thing I'm sure of: They won't starve. They've got most of what they need on the archipelago. The seas around it are generally untouched, and have fed the locals for two hundred years, alongside the farms and the occassional foraging at the bird colonies. Agriculture has also been historically advanced enough to provide them with enough wool and fiber for making new clothes, or existing clothes repairs. (In OTL, they even sell woolen socks, sweaters, etc., as part of their income.)
There's mention of SMS as a new marketed thing in TTL's mid 2010's, IRRC in "the land of sad songs".
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Non-relatedly, looking at https://futureoflife.org/background/us-nuclear-targets/?cn-reloaded=1#nukemap
in the former USSR, places like Tyumen, Bratsk, Kyzyl, Saransk, Orsk, Petropavlovsk, Astana, look like prospective nucleous of survivor states.