I'm curious to know where exactly that is wrtten as I certainly can't find it in the 2.2 book....

As I think can be seen in the translations John has been kindly posting, it seems clear that the Finnish book is written to reflect local needs and perceptions rather than following canon to the letter. It is therefore fair to say it's more of an alternate reality than extension - very useful and interesting, however my personal believe is the GDW material should have priority where there is disagreement. Naturally everyone is free to do what they like as always.

With that in mind, I think we can understand why the same writer has contradicted themselves - The Finnish book wasn't intended for sale and use out of one small area (or it would have been officially tranlated and published) and was written with that market in mind. A completely understandable position and something I'd probably do myself if it meant me being paid or not for my work.

Regarding who got nuked how hard, we have an indication in "What's Polish for G'day" that Australia and France were not "irradiated", however this could be explained by the Australian tendancy to exaggerate unimportant details. In the context of the adventure, it doesn't matter what state these two countries are in - everything happens in Poland.

I believe we also have other information from a number of sources including the 2.2 timeline that France was nuked.France of course was at the time at least neutral, if not quietly hostile to Nato. This raises the question "can Finland and Sweden be classed as part of Europe?" My thoughts are definately yes.

Have we looked at the effect a major nuclear attack would have on the world besides normal fallout? Massive firestorms laying waste to valuable farmland, contaminated water sources, chemical spills from ruptured and destroyed plants...

I think the effects of the bombs are being understated...


http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nukergv.html

I was supposed to mention that it's in the finnish 2.2 rulebook, apparently forgot to mention that :)

See my previous comments on the Finnish sourcebook...

As your quoted statement is included in an obscure book intended for a small and select section of the T2K population, it's hard to say it's really "core material".

This is an issue that has been brought up here and on the previous RPGHost forum numerous times over the years, and, not surprisingly, we as a group always end up agreeing to disagree. Ultimately, I feel its up to each GM to decide what level of devastation his T2k universe has. With that said, I agree completely with the above. While we can all come up with a great many potential nuclear targets (I have a list of over 1450 Pact ones, some of which could conceivably take over 350 warheads), the breakdown portrayed in T2k (of whatever version) doesn't require all of them, or even 25% of them, to actually be hit. A modern economy, particularly a war economy, is a large and delicate instrument, a very complicated system of systems, that is relatively easy to upset. (In WWII in Europe, the USAAF had a campaign to strike the ball bearings plants as a way to cripple the German economy, as was the successful effort to starve the Wehrmacht of fuel.) A massive strike of thousands of warheads or hitting every conceivable target is simply unnecessary to create the breakdown portrayed in T2k (of any version). (And some assets will be shut down without a strike - we have discussed the possibility of refinery workers not reporting to work once other refineries have been hit, and Howling Wilderness, I believe, mentions that the nuclear power plants were taken offline to avoid damage.)

With that said, I could see the nuclear powers sparing a few warheads for targets that could be used by their opponent for eventual reconstruction (such as the Finnish refineries, no matter what their distance from oilfields would be), but it wouldn't be too widespread. Why? Given the immense destructive power of a even a limited strike, a large-scale nuclear exchange would result in us playing Gamma World rather than T2k.

I agree. While it is fairly easy to come up with a list of potential targets, hitting more than a small proportion of them is obviously not what's happened in T2K.

The difficulty we all face as GMs and writers is coming up with a list of strategic targets that barely achieves the chaos and destruction necessary, then throw in a few more for flavour.

With regard to smaller tactical nukes, I say it's a free for all. Throw 'em around like confetti! But the big stuff that requires a bit more than a 203mm howitzer, that needs to be tightly controlled.

I'd say that for chaos and destruction, the minimum amount is actually quite small: most people don't die of nuclear warfare, but the side effects. International trade stops, which causes food shortages. Health care and hospitals are overloaded and with lack of electricity and communications, it kills lots of people. Unburied bodies cause epidemics, which increase the breakdown of society, since people in government either die or leave their posts, or are faced with inadequate resources for dealing with the crisis. The only analogue of a post-nuclear war situation we have is the Black Death, and it shows some interesting phenomena: total breakdown even during that crisis was fairly rare. The rule of law was never completely abandoned anywhere, though public order slipped badly. John Kelly's "The Great Mortality" is an interesting book to read regarding the subject.

The European theater is a spectrum of how bad things are. Austria has ceased to exist, Poland and Germany are warzones, Belgium and France are mostly keeping it together. Most of the UK is in chaos, but has a stable government and is going to recover. Switzerland is untouched by the conflict, but feels the side effects.

Am I the only one wondering what has become of all those nuclear weapons, on all sides, that went unused during the Twilight War?

If, indeed, the line was inched across in dribs and drabs and no one went for the throat on a true counterforce strike, then somewhere there must be some Minuteman IIIs and SS-24s and SS-25s out there waiting in the wings for proper authority.

Or has that been covered in one of the rulebooks?

It hasn't been covered in the rulebooks.

The interpretation I take to the various Broken Arrow (loose nuke) scenarios is that the various authorities - Milgov, Civgov and the remnants of the Soviet government - want to maintain control of the remaining nuclear weapons. I believe there is a reference in Airlords of the Ozarks to Milgov sending a team into the remnants of Eaker Air Force Base shortly after it had been nuked to retrieve the warheads.

The warheads are probably sitting in a secure tunnel somewhere. Cheyenne Mountain (and its Russian equivalents)? The USAF also maintained a stockpile of inactive nuclear weapons at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, NM in underground/hardened facilities.

In addition to Minuteman IIIs, there are probably also bombers at various diversion fields - military and civilian airports with runways over 10,000 feet or so. I've got some ideas about these too...

I think an excellent place to store "decommissioned" nuclear weapons would be the Yucca Mountain Site in Nevada, which was designed to store nuclear waste...what better place, as the gamma flux from the waste would help mask the prescence of weapons thought to be already disposed of.

I can't remember, is the Pantex facility in Amarillo on the strike list? Zlatoust, in the Ural Mountains, is probably the mountain storage facility you're thinking of; a gigantic sprawling site akin to the Manzano Mountain facility at Kirtland.

And, previous treaties aside, once open war broke out in Europe, I would imagine that both sides would again arm surface warships, dig out the air-launched nukes, etc. Just in case.

Chico -
Not to open sore wounds, but I think you covered such a case of several B-52's that had landed at Columbus AFB. During the DC Group's Recovery Plan. Which was one hell'va document if I say so myself.

There is very simple explanation for all inconsistencies. I found an article that explained how the finnish Twilight 2000 material was created. GDW gave instructions that the finnish authors must respect canon materials like official timeline and history. Nordic sourcebook follows closely the information provided by Boomer and basic rules. Nordic sourcebook is V1 material.

Later GDW decided that there were no nuclear strikes in Scandinavia. You all know that there are minor differences if you have enough time to study V1, V2 and V2.2 editions. This is one of those.:rolleyes:

V 1

Norway

Oslo 1 Mt Political and industrial center.
Tromso 100 kt Naval base. Town destroyed.
Drammen 100 kt ground burst Petroleum industry. Town destroyed
Harstad 100 kt naval base. Town destroyd.
Bergen 100 kt naval base and harbour.
Stavanger 100 kt petroleum industry.
Horten 100 kt naval base.

Northern Norway badly damaged from tactical nukes and conventional warfare.

Sweden

Karlskoga 2 X 50 kt Defense industry. Town destroyed.
Nynäshamn 20 kt Petroleum industry
Malmà 20 kt Petroleum industry and harbour.
LingkÃping 50 kt Aircraft industry. Town destroyed.
GÃteborg 50 kt. Missile didnt hit targeted oil refinery. Minimal civilian casualties.

Stockholm City Badly damaged by Great fire of Stockholm in 1997. Reconstruction have been difficult because area is near frontline. (Swedish civil war.)

Finland

Helsinki 10 kt. Santahamina military base and petroleum industry area. Second cruise missile heading to downtown was shot down by airforce. In 2001 Helsinki area (including Vantaa and Espoo) is not under government control.
Upinniemi naval base 10 kt.
Naantali 50 kt Oil refinery and Pansio naval base. Firestorm destroyed large parts of Turku and Naantali.
Porvoo 10 kt Oil refinery. Town badly damaged in firestorm.

Iceland

Keflavik 100 kt airbase.

Denmark

Copenhagen destroyed by conventional bombing.


V2 & 2.2

Scandinavia: While nothing in the Scandinavian countries was subjected to nuclear attacks, the peninsula saw considerable fighting during 1997-98 between NATO and Soviet forces. Cut off from world trade, life is becoming increasingly difficult for most Scandinavians. Most of the cities of Scandinavia are independent or insular, althought broad regions in the south are organized. Areas int the north subjected to fighting during the war are either cantonments, devastated, or in anarchy.

When it comes to Cheyenne Mountain I tend to think the designers dropped the ball. When I was stationed at Fort Carson we joked that in case of nuclear attack there would be no point in finding shelters. In V2.2 it says NORAD got a 3mt ground burst: It, Carson, and the Springs (including the academy) would be one crater. At rush hour you could be in the centre of the springs and be at the front gate of Norad in about 15 minutes. Hence, Milgov in my mind would be in Denver if in Colorado at all (maybe in rural Wyoming: heard from numerous sources there is a decent smallish command centre out there for british use in case the actual owners of some of the land is out that way when nukes start to fly).

Was this Nordic Sourcebook published in the US or no? I'd never heard of it until reading this thread tonight.

As far as Scandinavian targets, the 1st edition timeline does mention that at first, only "enemy" targets were hit with nukes, but eventually, neutral targets were hit as well, to prevent the enemy from seizing control of them.

Norway, being with NATO, would naturally have been attacked by the Pact. Sweden could have take a few hits when the combatants got around to neutral targets. Finland could be in the same boat as Sweden, but I think they also have some conflict with the Russians in their history; that may have the effect of exacerbating any Soviet strikes against them if anything.

The timeline says that, but in the nation summaries further on it specifically says no nuclear targets in Scandinavia.

That would require a general alteration of the long-range timeline -- Scandinavia could rival France for world power.

I'm certain that the Boomer module states that Norway was attacked with nuclear weapons. That may be the source of Trooper's list and / or anything published in the Finnish sourcebook - Oslo for sure was mentioned as a target.

Yes.

"By November, the tactical exchanges had gone strategic and Norway did not escape. Along with attacks on industrial canters, a nuclear bomb was directed at Oslo, the capital. King Harald, who refused to abandon the seat of goverment in the face of enemy attack, died in the blast along with the Statsrad (state council) and most of the Storting. Over half million Norwegians died, in attacks on the capitol, the major industrial centers, and the nations petroleum facilities. The nations naval bases at Horten, Haakonsvern, Ramsund and Olavsvern were destroyed or severely damageded."

Boomer p. 12.

For those who are wondering new inconsistencies. Boomer uses base names or municipality names and Nordic uses nearest town.

For example- Haakonsvern is naval base just outside Bergen.

Nordic source book uses material from Boomer (history of Norway and Finland in Twilight war). Danish and Norwegian OOB:s are from NATO Vehicle Guide. Cold weather rules are from Challenge 29.

If we speculate the situation in 1997 and 1998. Would the soviets use nuclear weapons against Finland and Sweden - the answer is certainly yes. Sweden was perhaps neutral but it was a pro-Western nation. During cold war Sweden had a very large air force and it also had very large military industrial capacity. Finland had already repelled soviet troops that tried to use its territory to chase fleeing NATO forces.

Yes. Because Boomer is V1.

I was actually talking about V2.

I tend to disagree with the 2.x statement about the lack of strikes in the north. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me what with all the resources and facilities in the area, not to mention military presence.
Perhaps it should be seen as no strategic strikes which would allow tactical nuke use.