I'm having tech issues while out of town. I'll resume posting next week. That gives me some more time to think about the Franco-Belgian invasion and double check the canon nuclear target list as well.

Why was SHAPE missed in the targeting?

I always wondered how most of military infrastructure and support base managed to evaporate in a little under three years of broken backed warfare. Parts of Western Europe and Korea circa late 80s early 90s were almost carpeted with US combat support, combat service support, and headquarters units and installations. There’d be personnel losses due to the conflict, stripping of units for replacements, and physical destruction of facilities but you’d have to have something left to support the fight. One of the best parts about Chico’s work is the attention he’s paying to the supporting and sustaining elements of each side.

What is SHAPE?

It sits in Soignes, Belgium. Used to be Cateau. Mons is right down the way. Mind the slag heaps.

SHAPE is the military headquarters of NATO.

My take-

In both real life and the world of Twilight:2000 the US military's grasp of logistics is incredibly good. Even the cavernous warehouses and igloos in the kasernes would be emptied relatively quickly once the "balloon went up" with the Warsaw Pact.
In real life (and I suspect in T2K) ordnance and fuel needs would quickly exhaust those pre-war stockpiles. There would be a ramp up of production at home (industries were already producing for China in their fight against the USSR) but even with increased output you would have:

1. Steady drain on supplies.
2. WP interdiction of logistics on their way to the front
3. Some pilferage and waste/spoilage.

Put another way, no matter what margin for "extra" is built in, armor, artillery and Infantry would probably expend it quickly. The old Quartermaster adage of "keep the best, issue the rest" would go out the window by, say, the second year of the war.

In purely game terms, once the first use of nuclear weapons takes place, you begin to see further supply disruptions (workers afraid of going to work, remaining with families). In addition the game doesn't work as well if PC's can always find FASCAM rounds and plenty of laser guided ordnance.

Just some thoughts.

Yeah, the war in Ukraine is showing just how fast things would get destroyed in a high intensity war. Russia has lost over 3000 tanks and 100,000 men (dead, not including injured) in a year. Sounds like a lot, but doesn't sound like a lot when the USSR had around 60k tanks in 1989. But then again, the USSR was fighting China for a year and half then most of NATO for a year before things went nuclear. China would be a lot harder nut to crack than Ukraine, and Leopard 2s, Challengers, Abrams, + airpower would chew up a lot of vehicles really fast.

One of the stats that has came out of the Ukraine war (and about NATO being prepared for war) is that the UK had stocks on hand for about 2 days of warfare at the usage rate the Russians were using every day. Even assuming a post-Cold War draw down, the US was and is the only country in NATO with the logistical capacity to wage a high intensity conflict for any significant duration.

No doubt that the warstocks would go quickly and the exchange would handicap or prevent new production and distribution. This would make the sustainment effort all the more critical. USAREUR had a three star theater sustainment command (21st TAACOM) providing both materials management and DS/GS/Depot level maintenance and refurbishment. 19th TAACOM performed many of the same functions in Korea. One of the functions of both commands was battle damage repair and return to service of material.

Once the material flow from CONUS dries up, as Chico has shown, it looks like the maintenance organizations will be in greater demand to fix, fab, or cannibalize recovered systems and get them back in the fight. Likewise with material management and POL. Ammunition and other consumables have become a limited commodity, much more so than in the days of relative abundance pre-exchange; some structure would have to be established to manage material and ensure logistics prep for offensives. Husbanding high-end munitions like FASCAM, copperhead, TOW, etc would likely be one of their roles. If you want to play with organized forces (CENTCOM, Korea, etc) you can put a controlled supply rate on the high tech munitions.

By 98, the logistics effort may have expanded to include farming and ration production (salted, smoked, stc), reloading small arms ammo, distilling, clothing and personal equipment repair and reissue, salvage, etc. Centralizing production under a headquarters allows USAREUR to prioritize the logistics effort, even if it is carried out locally by every unit. Part of the preparations for an offensive might be the issue of preserved rations, refurbished material, distilled fuel, and what remains of prewar ammunition to high priority units. Likewise, units manning static defenses may be issued with few or no such munitions.

This doesn’t mean a game would have to have the characters well resourced. 5th ID and the other US forces involved in Ancient Mariner may have been issued with the most complete available scales of equipment and supplies before jumping off, but by the time the end comes at Kalisz they’re likely to have shot or consumed most of that stockpile in the offensive and the fighting detailed in “Death of a Division”. The remnants left constitute the players’ starting equipment. They may have a full load for their Bradley or Abrams, but there is nothing coming behind that. A few good fights and they may be looking for a less capable but easier to maintain ride and more sustainable weapons.

And then, remember that the Ukraine war isn't particularly "high intensity" when measured to a potential NATO vs. USSR (or Pact, depending on background) war as envisioned during the 1980s. It's probably hard to fathom for today's readers of news, but the ongoing war almost completely lacks two dimensions of warfare - naval and aerial - as envisioned for WW3 and it certainly lacks several orders of magnitude in land warfare.

WW3 would have seen not 150,000-200,000 Soviets invade a country of 40 million with a GDP less than Sweden or Belgium (in 2021). Instead, the two biggest power blocs in history, plus China (and a good deal of other countries) would go toe to toe with each other and grind their forces against each other. There's good reasons, why warplanners were looking at 10-30 days scenarios: not a lot would have been standing after that, yet only the second mobilization wave would have been concluded for NATO (the next would have been after 90 days and then after 6 months).

Thanks for this Homer! A question for the hive mind: how effective are breweries for producing alcohol for fuel, etither methanol or ethanol? I'm aware of the vast numbers of breweries all throughout Germany, certainly many times more common than distilleries. While units would likely carry smaller stills (like the small and medium stills in the v1 equipment list), it seems likely that units in static positions would want to take advantage of industrial-scale alcohol production capability to build up those stocks.

I spent A LOT of time on this in the past. Still weight seemed too high by nearly an order of magnitude for the production volumes. The exception to this is when the fermentation process is ongoing due to liquid weight (I suppose the large volume could be a factor in the "weight"). Therefore I see units needing to be static for the actual production (other reasons as well such as needing fires, having to preprocess the biomass, etc). I suppose reducing still weight by 90% reflects having perfect equipment and maybe 66% to 75% reduction due to ad hoc construction would fit the game better. With these numbers I can see more stills being in the field. The biggest issue in the field would be the refining of the alcohol to 100% as simple distillation only takes you to 95%.

When looking for realism related to alcohol production in game bumps up against a lot of real world problems (like not being able to make it from wood without genetically modified yeast or bacteria we are just now refining). Agricultural waste and things like sawgrass and switchgrass have tremendous potential to be used, but they require more preprocessing which makes the industrial production easier to explain. In the field you would probably need to use something you would much rather save for eating.

Destructive distillation is the low-tech way to go with methanol production from wood. It's not horribly efficient, but it works, it's fast, and doesn't require yeast and fermentation for a couple of weeks, which is one of the fatal flaws with ethanol production. Likely doable for a character party on the move.

Another way apparently is to heat dry wood to generate wood gas, and use a catalytic process to generate methanol from the wood gas. Not very low tech, and probably not appropriate for a character party on the run.

On a the complex industrialization side of the fence, methanol to gasoline is a thing, and as I posted before, would be easier to get up and running than converting a bunch of 1996 manufactured cars to running on ethanol or methanol. Production wouldn't be enough to get us back to an urban commuter society, but might be enough for the military to keep some aircraft up in the area, generators running for critical activities, and some vehicles running, and given a large cantonment or organized area, accumulate reserves sufficient for things like the Summer 2000 offensive, except using gas instead of alcohol.

We have discussed some of this before in my methanol thread
https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread....3932#post93932

Maybe we move discussion there to keep this thread on track.

December 28, 1997

Vancouver and Chiliwack, British Columbia are struck by Soviet nuclear weapons.

The Bronx has suffered over 800,000 fatalities in December and afterwards. Queens suffers half again as many casualties in the food and race riots as Manhattan (over 1.2 million fatalities in Queens, as opposed to over 800,000 in Manhattan).

Unofficially,

RainbowSix notes that Edinburgh, Scotland’s pre-war capital, is not directly targeted by the Soviets, but sufferes some loss of life and damage from the strikes on nearby Grangemouth and Rosyth, with fall out drifting over the western suburbs. Large numbers of people have fled the city in the last few months, with many heading for the perceived safety of the largely rural Border regions. Those who remain suffer from starvation, disease, and civil disorder.

Glasgow has been devastated by the Soviet nuclear attacks, with the death toll exceeding half a million people. Some refugees try to enter the area around Dumfries and Lockerbie in the aftermath of the nuclear strike on Glasgow, but most are turned back in a series of often deadly clashes with the locals.

French and Belgian military leaders work through the night on plans to halt the refugee flow using their nation's still largely intact military forces. They reach the conclusion that the only reasonable solution is to occupy German and Dutch territory, securing the Rhine as a hard barrier.

In northwestern Poland, the Polish 7th Marine Division is the last unit to evacuate the near-pocket between II MEF, V US Corps and the Baltic. The Polish marines take heavy losses from their advancing American, Dutch and German counterparts, leaving the Polish division a nearly empty shell.

In Bavaria, American GLCM cruise missiles are fired at Rome, Milan and Naples, Italy to eliminate Italy's ability to prosecute the war; the Italian III and IV Corps in southern Germany are already severly hampered by the closure of the mountain passes by weather and American nuclear strikes, forcing their supplies to be routed around the Alps through eastern Austria.

The carriers Roosevelt and Eisenhower, operating off the central Norwegian coast, launch one of their remaining few airstrikes before running out of aviation fuel and spare parts for the aircraft (nearly a quarter of their combined air groups have already been relegated to "hangar queen" status, serving as parts donors as maintenance crews are forced to cannibalize to keep airplanes operational). The strikes, using conventional munitions, knock out the transformer yard and ancillary facilities at the Kola nuclear power plant near Murmansk, disconnecting it from the power grid and allowing the operators to shut it down safely rather than induce a nuclear disaster that would contaminate the Arctic for centuries.

The American light frigate USS Marchand, on patrol in the North Atlantic, nearly capsizes after being struck by a wave coming from the aft quarter. The ship, built as a war emergency measure despite the Bear/Famous-class Coast Guard cutters it shares a design with's reputation as poor sea boats, loses its CIWS mount and its HU-65 helicopter, shaken about in its hangar, is a total loss. The captain orders a return to the nearest port for emergency repairs. Its sister the USS Petit is dispatched from the North Sea at 16 knots to Portsmouth, England to escort two ships on a special mission.

In central Dezful, the remaining Soviet troops (with a few Tudeh diehards fighting alongside) continue to put up fierce resistance to surrounding Iranian and American troops despite dwindling reserves of food, water and ammunition.

USANVCENT/Fifth Fleet dispatches the former Coast Guard Cutter USCG Thetis (newly arrived with the last supply convoy from home) to Diego Garcia, where it is to land a team (by one of the ship's small boats or its helicopter) to identify what facilities remain intact, what the repair effort required may be and what resources can be salvaged. The ship's complement includes a team of engineer planners from the 416th Engineer Command to assist with the effort.

An American B-2 bomber loitering over the Urals (an increasingly uncommon occurrence as fuel shortages cut back the number of sorties) catches a rare prize - a rail-mobile SS-24 missile train emerging from a tunnel, where it has been hiding between launches. It is quickly dispatched by a lone B61 nuclear bomb; it has never been determined what targets were spared by the attack, or, indeed, whether it was emerging to attack or simply to reposition.

Well this is where I die in the T2K universe

December 29, 1997

Nothing official for today!

The last known commmunication is transmitted by Secretary General Sauronski from the safety of his bunker complex under Zhiguli, which was severely damaged when by an American 9-megaton bomb struck the fortress on November 30. His ultimate fate has never been determined, despite decades of speculation, rumors and inquiries.

An alliance of two Canadian biker gangs, the Stone Machine and the Bandits, cross the border into North Dakota and raid the Cobray firearms plant six miles south of the border. They overwhelm the security force and make away with hundreds of MAC-10 SMGs and Street Sweeper shotguns.

A tragedy occurs on the Ohio River, when the dinner cruise boat Belle of the Ohio catches fire and burns to the waterline. The boat, only certified by he Coast Guard to carry passengers for a maximum of four hours, had been pressed into service to evacuate residents of Cincinnati, Ohio to rural communities in northwestern Kentucky. Fue was in short supply, and survivors indicate that the crew was unable to run the heating system on the boat and that some evacuees on the top deck (the ship was carrying over 1500 passengers, despite being rated for 400) lit fires to try to keep warm. A precise death toll was never compiled as no passenger manifest had been prepared and many bodies washed downstream in the icy river.

RainbowSix notes that the nuclear strikes see waves of refugees flee the cities of Yorkshire, leading to often deadly clashes with communities who have not been directly targeted. In some cases refugees take over a community, then start fighting amongst themselves, and a number of towns and villages are now little more than burned out shells occupied (and fought over) by several different groups, whilst others have become fortified enclaves, where strangers are unwelcome and will be turned away, by force if necessary. Tyneside and Wearside both escape nuclear attack (quite how this happened remained a mystery to most people in the region). Northampton is ravaged by riots that started off over food but ended up in wanton destruction and looting. Twenty miles to the north of Northampton, the town of Corby, home to a plant that manufactured steel tubes and a nuclear power station before the war, suceeds in shutting down both facilities.

The 221st Military Police Brigade (US Army Reserve) arrives at the military port facility at Port Hueneme, California (secured by Navy Seebees) (officially) to assume internal security duties in Southern Califonia. (Unofficially, it is tasked with bringing the near-renegade 5th California Brigade to heel).

Shortly before midnight, several small teams from the French 1st Marine Infantry Paratroopers Regiment and 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment slip over the border into the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany west of the Rhine. They are tasked to determine the conditions on the ground, including surviving military units and facilities, concentrations of refugees and the condition of transportaion routes and chokepoints.

The Armee d'laire (French Air Force) issues a desperate call for all flightworthy transports overseas (throughout Africa and the Middle East, plus a lone C-130H in Frencch Guyana) to immediately return to Metropolitan France.

The Bundeswehr command begins preparations for an attack in Czechoslovakia in hopes of forcing the Czechs to withdraw their forces from southern Germany, clearing the way for the reconquest of the occupied areas. Supplies and reinforcements are brought forward; many of both have been stripped from terriorial units, especially those west of the Rhine, which are unlikely to see combat in the medium term and which are nearly entirely devoted to managing refugees and deserters.

King Haakon of Norway makes his first official public appearance when the "Arctic Fox" visits with refugees in the countryside outside Oslo.

The light frigate USS Petit meets up with its charges, a freighter and a large, aged troop transport, off Portsmouth and proceeds southwest, making sure to stay clear of French territorial waters, where a squadron of surface combatants has sortied from the French naval base of Lorient.

The US Navy's Sixth Fleet, facing the collapse of its logistic and repair infrastructuer and extensive damage to Gibraltar and Norfolk, makes the difficult decision to abandon the damaged USS America, which has been anchored in Sigonella, Sicily since it was damaged by mines and torpedoes in early October. The remaining crew (many have been transferred to other units or reassigned to shoreside security duties) work on transferring valuable materiel to the other American carrier in the Mediterranean, the USS John F. Kennedy. Three civilian cargo ships (the Berlin Freedom, the Cape Archway and the Panamanian Amer Asha) are also in port, ready to take on additional supplies and to transfer excess crewmembers to other locations, as Sixth Fleet has made the decision to abandon Sigonella as well.

December 30, 1997

Dutch units on internal security duties suffer from desertions and poor morale as the nation suffers in the chaotic aftermath of Soviet nuclear strikes.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship El Paso Freedom is delivered in Portland, Oregon. The shipyard will struggle to complete another ship, but it is never delivered.

The Soviets launch what will turn out to be their last strategic nuclear attack on the US, with SS-N-18 missiles from the Delta III-class SSBN K-424 striking targets in the southeast. Dobbins Air Force Base, home of the US Air Force Reserve Command and the C-130 production line northwest of Atlanta, is hit with a 450-kiloton warhead (from a single-warhead SS-N-18), while Warner Robbins Air Force Base to the southeast is plastered by three 100-kiloton warheads from a SS-N-18, neutralizing the PAVE PAWS SLBM-detection radar. Fort Gillem and Fort Gordon are each hit by two 100-kiloton warheads from the same missile, ccausing heavy losses to the troops there.

RainbowSix reports that large numbers of people flee the cities of the West Midlands. This leads to a number of violent clashes between locals and refugees. Birmingham, the largest city in the UK outside London, suffers a complete collapse of law and order when the authorities, hopelessly outnumbered and having already lost large swathes of the city to the mobs, decide to withdraw all troops and police to prevent them from being overrun. (Whilst most Army units obey and pull out, a number of police officers, most of whom live in the same communities that are being abandoned, disobey the order and stay put).

Though not targeted by the Soviets, rioting and looting takes its toll on Birmingham, and much of the city is reduced to burned out ruins. Much of the southern part of Staffordshire descends into chaos as waves of refugees enter the area following the destruction of Wolverhampton and Coventry. Warwickshire also suffers due to its proximity to the West Midlands conurbation, with large numbers of refugees entering the northern part of the county from Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Coventry. Several towns are effectively taken over by refugees, who force out the former occupants, and violent clashes between different groups are commonplace, particularly in the area bordering what remains of Coventry.

French and Belgian military authorities implement a nationwide civilian communications blackout - the telephone system is turned off for civilians, as are telegraph and postal services. The high-speed TGV rail network is shut down as well (the airlines and civil aviation having been grounded following the nuclear strikes on French refineries earlier in the month), and a curfew imposed within 100 km of the border. This lockdown succeeds in cleariing the transportation routes and preventing word from slipping out of the massive troop movements towards the nations broders.

American missile squadrons in Europe launch another round of strikes on Warsaw Pact capitals as SACEUR, largely out of communication with President Munson and other NATO heads of state, is determined to eliminate Warsaw Pact allies' ability to continue waging the war. Prague, Budapest and Sofia are all struck by cruise missiles. killing additional hundreds of thousands of people. SACEUR is forced to use cruise missiles for the strikes by the dire state of his tactical air fleet, which has been ravaged by over a year of action, nuclear and conventional attacks on air bases and a near-collapse of the supply situation as desperate refugees look to the military to provide relief in the harsh winter conditions.

A French squadron sallies from the Channel Fleet's base in Cherbourg, preceded by minesweepers and operating under the cover of Atlantique patrol aircraft and Mirage interceptors to ward off any observers.

The Soviet 7th Army begins to crumble as it comes under fierce Allied attack from both north and south. Air operations over the front have largely halted as shortages of fuel, spare parts and muniions, not to mention replacement aircraft and pilots, all mount.

NSA is taking a beating. The HQs at Fort Meade is gone, as is the regional center (RSOC) at Gordon. The regional site at Kunia is probably compromised by the situation on Oahu, and the site at Augsburg probably destroyed in conventional fighting. That leaves the regional site at Medina Annex in San Antonio and the complex at Buckley.

There’s still collectors out there as long as satellites stay up, ships are still at sea, and aircraft fly, but the ability to process and correlate the data has been greatly reduced.

Who does NSA side with
 

I don't remember if there's a canon ruling on who the NSA sides with (MILGOV or CIVGOV)? I assume that by the end of '98-'99, there's so little left of their equipment, networks, and resources that it hardly matters.

I’d go with the three DoD Combat Support Agencies (DIA, NIMA/NGA, NSA) all following DIA’s lead and siding with MILGOV. NRO as well since they’re also under DoD.

DIA would have been hit by the loss of their HQs at Bolling AFB, National Maritime intelligence center (NMIC) in Suitland, and Armed Forces Medical Intel Center (AFMIC) at Detrick. but they’ve still got analytic capacity through the service intel centers at NGIC and NASIC plus any dispersed personnel. What’s going to be hard for them is the Directorate of Ops at DIA is tiny. OTL Pre 2001 there were very few case officers.

NSA took a huge analytical and collection hit. In addition to the facilities losses, ground based collection sites (elephant cages) have been lost or destroyed, which will magnify the effects of declining air, maritime, and degrading overhead collection. The bright spot is Buckley has the mission ground stations for overhead collection, which is probably the most reliable remaining collection method.

NIMAs in a pretty good position. The facilities around in DC are probably compromised, but the main production facilities in Missouri are probably intact. They’re going to suffer from the loss of collection, but they maintain the mapping data as well, which will be valuable post exchange.

NRO is likely compromised due to its location. With the loss of the launch sites in Florida and California and satellite manufacturing capacity, they’re likely focused on using their remaining assets to keep the surviving overhead platforms viable.

Just my thoughts.

I'm with Homer - they go MILGOV.

Tara Romaneasca has a short section on the impact of the NSA's loss and MILGOV alignment on page 93, which is informative. Because when the NSA has a problem generating COMSEC KEYMAT, it's a whole of government problem that point. It's not like most Agencies are using any other COMSEC material - certainly not for national security information.

So reconstituting that capability by the NSA for MILGOV will be a priority, as will CIVGOV seeking alternative encryption systems that don't rely on NSA KEYMAT, which they can't get. Again, the new Romania sourcebook has an entry on this issue, with DOE taking up the mantel on one-time pad production, "and hand-building a limited number of radio encryption modules not based on existing DOD or NSA software architecture."

Yeah, there isn't a split until 1999 anyway, since through May 1998 there is technically a POTUS in charge of everything.

I'd say, that goes out the window much, much quicker. It's a all hands on deck war very much from the beginning. That means big politics will want to micromanage quickly. So they start issuing orders for single divisions or brigades even. Sometimes certain elements in the militaries' apparatuses might be able to stop stupidities like this early on, but sometimes they won't.

Look at the current conflict in Ukraine: The good stuff went out the warehouses starting in June. That was 5 months into the war. The German Bundeswehr had exactly no SPGs to spare and no IFVs either. The industry didn't either. The Panzerhaubitze 2000 went out anyway and now, after the German defense minister has kept her hand on our 50 year old Marder IFVs for 10 1/2 months, the Bundeskanzler announced, we're giving them away nonetheless.

Yes, the numbers are minuscule compared to what was available in the mid-90s, but that doesn't change the general idea. I think, if in T2K a US ally would have asked for F-16s to switch from F-5s or F-104s in the face of a Soviet invasion, the US would easily have donated/sold/lend-and-leased a full wing. And why not? The F-16C/D was in full production, why not give away Block 10 frames from an ANG wing and reequip the ANG anew down the line with brand new F-16Cs? If that keeps the Soviets out of "nameless ally 6,000 miles to the East", it's better for them to fight on their soil (or not) than for the Soviets to creep closer and closer and eventually attack US forces directly.

I'd say, by year two of the Twilight War, we'd see ramping up of production for M40 recoilless rifles and M3 Carl Gustaf and their munitions. The former was in use by National Guard units during the last decade of the Cold War and the latter had just been introduced to the Rangers. With the ramping up of productions of ATGMs and other guided munitions since the war loomed or started, certain parts will become rather scarce. A recoilless rifle is a good support weapon for many applications, and with tandem shape charges becoming available to the M3, it can replace shoulder launched single purpose weapons like the Panzerfaust 3 (which, ironically, was bought to replace the Carl Gustaf M2). Certainly, neither the M40 nor the M3 can fully replace TOW, Javelin, Milan & Co., but better to have than have not. And once prime tier MBTs become sparse and their shiny sensor's start going dark, anti-tank warfare tools from the 60s and 70s will face their contemporary tanks (with minor upgrades). And then, a Carl Gustaf with tandem charge warheads will be king and thousands will go into all the light infantry divisions the US can still muster after 1997 and by early 1998.

December 31, 1997

The Soviet 236th Rear Area Protection Division in Alma-Ata in the Central Asian Military district deserts and declares the city a "free city."

Unofficially,

Year end finds the world in dire shape. The nuclear exchange, which has expended less than 1200 of the world's nearly 50,000 nuclear weapons, has killed over 10 million people directly while halting the world's transportation and communications systems and set the stage for mass suffering on a scale not seen since medieval times. Conventional fighting has raged across Iran, Poland, Romania, North Korea and southern Germany, leaving the land and its hapless occupants in shambles. Millions of civilians have become refugees fleeing fighting, cold and darkness, seeking comfort in imagined safety somewhere other than their homes. The world's militaries have been torn apart, the shiny weapons and proud ranks of soldiers of 1995 reduced to desperate ragged forces struggling to obey the orders of political masters who cannot fully grasp the scale of losses sustained.

The final American strategic nuclear attack on the USSR occurs, with strikes on military production sites (a Su-27 aircraft plant, submarine-building yard and steel mill) and military targets (the headquarters of the PVO 8th Corps, bomber base, nuclear weapons storage site) in and near Kosmolosk-na-Amure in the Far East delivered by 12 TLAM cruise missiles fired from the attack submarine USS Columbus. Munson also authorizes attacks on two other Soviet strategic targets - the transportation hub and production center of Omsk in western Siberia (where the headquarters of the Strategic Rocket Forces' 33rd Guards Missile Army, the tank plant, a refinery and an Antonov aircraft plant were all hit) and Chita in far eastern Siberia, location of headquarers of the Transbaikal Military Distrct, 53rd Guards Missile Division and 50th PVO Corps as well as several bomber bases and the city's railroad station, further hampering operations on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Those cities are each hit by lone B-1Bs from the 28th Bomb Wing, operating from the remote western Chinese air base; the bombers recovere to the base, where KC-10 tankers are waiting with additional fuel and a reload of B-61 bombs and SRAM II missiles.

In central Alaska much of fighting has come to a halt for the winter. The flow of supplies to both American and Soviet forces has come to a crashing halt, victims of the vast distances and nuclear attacks on the homelands. Both sides find shelter, hoping that the fuel and food supplies on hand will be sufficient to last the winter. The commander of the 25th Corps in Anchorage, however, has other ideas. While the passes into British Columbia from the Alaskan ports seized in the fall have been closed by massive snow falls, the weather along the Alaskan coast east of Anchorage is more mild and Alaska's largest city offers reserves of supplies and wealth unheard of to most Soviet commanders. More importantly, the city's occupation force is composed of battle-hardened Arctic troops and Siberian natives, well adapted to fighting in the harsh winter conditions against an enemy that has likely grown complacent about the threat they are facing. Accordingly, he orders an offensive to drive the remannts of the 47th Infantry Division out of Alaska and launch a successful invasion of Yukon.

At RAF Alconbury, the 95th Reconnaissance Squadron, which operates TR-1 reconnaissance aircraft, assumes control of Detachment 1, 1st Reconnaissance Squadron at RAF Mildenhall as well as the detachment's two SR-71s.

RainbowSix reports a number of MP’s who had not been in London on Black Thursday are under military protection at various bases throughout the country (amongst this group is the Progressive Party’s George Graham). Parliament consists of just over forty MP’s and nearly thirty members of the House of Lords who survived the nuclear attacks and the chaos that followed (many by taking shelter at military bases). A number of MP’s and Peers who survived the nuclear exchanges remain elsewhere in the UK, either unable or unwilling to undertake the potentially hazardous journey to the south of England.

The destroyer USS Morton and container-barge carrier Harbin Carrier arrive off Manila, capital of the Philippines. Due to the unrest ashore following Soviet nuclear strikes the ships remain offshore. A long-range radio message directs the Morton to proceed to the AFRICOM area once it is able to secure additional fuel.

French and Belgian military units from their respective nations reach positions within 5 km of the frontier as darkness falls. The French III Corps has travelled through Belgium to line up along the Dutch border, augmented by French-speaking Belgian territorial troops. Units are issued live ammunition as deeper in France the troops of the 4th Airmobile and 11th Parachute Division are trucked to airfields in preparation for combat drops.

The Soviet 254th Motor-Rifle Division, a high quality unit exhausted by a year of hard combat in Romania, Austria and southern Germany, is withdrawn to Steyr, Austria for rest and to absorb what few replacement men and vehicles arrive in the region.

The light frigate USS Petit and its two charges make a safe passage through the minefields off the ruins of Gibraltar and proceed across the Mediterranean at 16 knots.

I would imagine that the Army and Marines would have moved a lot of their linguists ahead to Europe for the voice intercept mission there, so it would mostly be staffed by Air Force and Navy Linguists as well as civilian employees.

Seems...low.

January 1, 1998

France seizes the Rhineland west of the Rhine River from Germany and sends its III Corps alongside Belgian units into the Netherlands. The Dutch 302nd Infantry Brigade, a territorial unit holding the Breda-Tilburg area, is attacked by the French 8th Marine Parachute Regiment. The Dutch successfully defend their positions, while the Bundeswehr, with its efforts split between internal security/disaster relief duties and preparing for a counteroffensive in the south, offers less vigorous reistance. Unofficially, French progress is slow. While airborne and heliborne troops are successful in securing key chokepoints near the border, the roads are clogged with abandoned civilian vehicles and the advancing columns are mobbed by swarms of desperate refugees, who assail the advancing troops with requests for food. Armored units are able to deploy their tanks' dozer blades to clear roads, while other formations are forced to shuffle their engineer units to the front; units reliant on trucks or wheeled APCs make minimal forward progress through the morass of humanity.

NATO operations in the Mediterranean (competing with the French) are dependent on the last sizeable operating refinery in North Africa, at Bizerte, Tunisia.

The new year starts off with good news for the Americans in the Persian Gulf. 2/325th Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division makes contact with the forward outposts of the 48th Mechanized Infantry Brigade (Georgia National Guard). The American paratroopers are an incredible sight. Many of them are wearing a mixture of Kurdish clothing and US camouflage fatigues. The 82nd's commander, Major General Jack Joyner, rides out on horseback looking for all the world like a Kurdish hill chief.

The beginning of the year also sees the French FAR in action against pro-Soviet rebels in Senegal, Mauritania and the Horn of Africa.

Unofficially,

In a briefing about plans for 1998, the acting head of FEMA reveals the existence of the 37 strategic reserve stockpiles to President Munson. Given the quantities of food on hand, remaining electrical and petroleum production and security situation, Munson concurs with the recommendation not to reveal their existence to state authorities and local FEMA officials and to reevaluate the decision in the fall, when the food and other supplies in the caches might be more strategically directed. The stockpiles established and maintained separately by the state of Texas are broken open by their guard forces (dispersed platoons of the Texas State Guard and guards at state penitentaries) and used to sustain their ongoing operations.

In northern California, leaders of the Hells Angels and affiliated outlaw motorcycle clubs/gangs gather following the activation of the agreed-upon Plan Alpha worked out a year ago. Over 1500 members of the clubs, all heavily armed, have come together at a ranch owned by a club member just south of the Oregon border. A similar gathering is occurring in southeastern Ohio, despite the damage done by nuclear strikes on Ohio and Kentucky.

RainbowSix reports that Headquarters, US Naval Forces Europe (USNAVEUR) is reformed at the Royal Navy base in Portsmouth.

The Belgian Army's I Corps' two divisions make little progress on the first day of the invasion as they struggle in difficult terrain around Maastrcicht and Aachen, the corps' initial objective. While the Dutch resistance in the region is disorganized (Dutch forces largely consist of lightly equipped territorial security companies and platoons, which are highly motivated and able to take advantage of prepared defensive structures due to the former presence of NATO high command posts in the area). To their south, the French I Corps overruns Luxembourg, easily overwhelming the nub of the Luxembourgois Army that survived the previous year's action in Norway. The French II Corps' offensive moves north along the level terrain along the west bank of the Rhine, which has become crowded with makeshift refugee camps.

RainbowSix comments that while the British Ambassador in Paris protests the “act of unprovoked aggression”, the UK is in no position to offer more tangible support to either the Netherlands or Germany.

The remaining Red Army command staff at "Moscow Center" (actually a bunker outside the city) decide to call up the remaining mobilization-only divisions to combat the growing internal unrest and prepare for a final offensive that will wipe NATO forces from Western Europe. Making this happen, however, will prove challenging, to say the least.

It probably is!!!

January 2, 1998

Rationing around the world becomes severe; many civilians perish in the winter.

Relations between the U.S. and France deteriorate. The U.S. government views the invasion of the Rhineland as self-aggrandizement at the expense of Germany. There is not much they can do about it, however, as all their available forces are tied down elsewhere.

Survivors of the 8th Marine Regiment are reformed in northern Germany and reunited with the 2nd Marine Division.

The 54th (my 108th) Motor-Rifle Division, a hardened, veteran division that has been at the core of the Group of Soviet Forces in Afghanistan (the remnant Soviet occupation force that remained behind when 40th Army entered Iran in early 1997), is ordered into Iran to shore up the crumbling Soviet position.

Unofficcially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Lubbock Freedom is delivered in Galveston, Texas. The shipyard will struggle to complete another ship, but it is never delivered.

Elsewhere in the US, military production is slowly grinding to a halt as stocks of raw materials and parts run out, electricity fails as the grid remains down and backup generators fail or run dry and workers are evacuated or lost to civil unrest. Even when final production sites remain operational (such as the F-15 plant in St. Louis, Missouri), the breakdown of the transportation system and damage from the attacks on the US and subsequent disorder brings production to a halt, with the last F100-PW-229 engine delivered today.

In Anchorage, Alaska the troops of the Soviet 1st Arctic Mechanized Brigade and 13th Guards Air Assault Division move east, with the former unit's hovercraft escorting convoys of seized school and city transit busses carrying the paratroopers east of Valdez towards the Canadian border. The remnants of the 130th Air Assault Brigade establish a blocking position to prevent the American 2nd Infantry Brigade (Arctic Recon) at Fort Greely from cutting off the attacking force, while the 130th Motor-Rifle Division remains on occupation duty in Anchorage and along the road to the east.

The Dutch government informs SACEUR that it is wthdrawing all its forces in Germany, except for the 9th Marine Combat Group along the Baltic Coast, from NATO command and devoting them to home defense. SACEUR concurs and orders the release of sufficient fuel to fill the Dutch combat vehicles tanks for the trip home.

The Dutch I Leger Corps is ordered to return home to stop the French invasion; the 1st Mechanized Division is the first to move, having been held in a reserve position behind the lines as 4th US Army desperately casts about for replacement troops to hold the line.

In the Rhineland and Netherlands, the French and Belgian force is still bogged down. The airborne and air assault units that were dropped in the predawn hours of the 1st have not been relieved yet and find themselves beseiged by Dutch and German territorials and police determined to defend their homelands. The Belgian Army suffers considerable unrest within its own ranks as Dutch-speaking Flemish troops balk at fighting against their kinsmen. Poor weather overhead prevents the French Air Force from intervening, while the Dutch 302nd Territorial Brigade, facing the French 2nd Armored Division, actually increases in strength as scattered iindependent territorial and constabulary platoons arrive in the sector. The effort to seize the mouth of the Scheldt River fails spectacularly, as Dutch marines of the 2nd and 8th battalions repulse the French third-line 108th Infantry Divsion's ill-executed amphibious assault on the port of Vlissingen.

Chico,

Errata note: "Even when final prodction sites remain operational (such as the F-16 plant in Fort Worth, Texas)"

The General Dynamics plant (now Lockmart) is immediately adjacent to the west of the Carswell AFB runways. I actually took a couple of sloppy pictures of it on my way to West Texas just before Christmas. VERY unlikely to still remain operational after the 500 kt strike there in canon (on mobile so can't see if you logged Carswell in your version of the hitlist). Bell Helicopter over in Hurst would be far enough away not to have any damage though.

Well, there's quite a lot they and the UK could have done about it. Not that the world needed any more mushroom clouds sprouting at that point, but I do wonder when and how seriously discussions of nuclear retaliation might have gone on among what was left of the US and UK governments.

FWIW, using the GDW Hit List, I have 8 million dead*, 14 million injured for 123 targets in the United States for just blast and thermal effects (not fallout - still working on generating a model for that; DTRA.mil hasn't given me access to HPAC yet so I'm working on reverse engineering the fallout generation from HotSpot and incorporating that with historical meteorology data to generate something that looks a little more realistic than the WSEG-10 smear fallout model).

So, that's my reasoning for 10 million global deaths from 1200 nuclear weapons seeming low by an order of magnitude (especially with China getting plastered).

Attaching the fatality curve I used to calculate deaths. It's a curve fit model generated from Hiroshima fatalities that in effect combines blast, thermal, and firestorm casualties. The net effect is that the curve shifts to the left more strongly than some other casualty models due to the basic assumption that most people seriously injured in the 4+ PSI zone would not be able to self-evacuate and would perish in the firestorm.

Note also, that this casualty model is less severe than some other models that have the hypothesis that even uninjured people would be unable to evacuate 5+ PSI areas before perishing in a firestorm.

And yes, this is probably way too nerdy.

* Edited to add - I didn't include the Windsor, ON attack in the initial calculations. Assuming a DGZ between the Chrysler and Ford plants for a 1 MT airburst, that adds another half million casualties (almost equally split between dead and injured) to the US tally in Detroit. Downtown and midtown Detroit would have been seriously damaged, but the Detroit Arsenal would have been about 6 km north of the end of the 1 PSI blast ring so would be completely undamaged and intact barring civil unrest and damage.

Thanks for the catch! I edited the post to switch the last engine delivery to the F-15 line in St. Louis. That plant was outside the damage radius from the Wood River, IL strike.

January 3, 1998

The winter of 1997-98 is particularly cold. Civilian war casualties in the industrialized nations have reached almost 15%, although the worst is yet to come.

The California coast from Santa Barbara south has been devastated by the nuclear strikes, and the city of Los Angeles suffers most severely. Blast, radiation, and fire, combined with panic and disease, cause millions of casualties. The city has less than 20 percent of its prewar population remaining. The Bay area has also been devastated by nuclear strikes, but the presence of military forces in the region provide a modest level of organization.

In Maryland, the capital of Annapolis has been largely abandoned following is contamination with fallout from the Fort Meade attack and the relocation of the state government (such as it is) to Columbia (located between Baltimore and Washington).

The Dutch 101st Mechanized Brigade moves south from the Leeuwarden area to reinforce territorial troops. The Dutch 302nd Infantry Brigade repulses another attack by French paratroops of the 8th Marine Parachite Regiment in the Breda-Tilburg area as they try to break out and join the (very slowly-advancing) French armored force. Frogmen from the Dutch 2nd Amphibious Combat Group sink the French frigate Balny as it anchors off Vlissingen in the pre-dawn hours blocking Dutch naval intervention and standing by to offer fire support to French troops.

With the the linkup between the 82nd Airborne Division and the rest of XVIII Airborne Corps completed, both the 82nd and 24th ID and their Kurdish auxiliaries begin an orderly withdrawal back to the Bandar-e-Khomeyni area.

Unofficially,

The last planeload of replacements departs Fort Jackson, South Carolina for service in Europe. The base's training brigades are devoting increasing amounts of efforts to assisting the state government in maintaining order, distributing food and organizing relief following the Soviet nuclear strikes on Charleston and the base commander judges that he cannot afford to lose trained and ready troops when his situation is so severe. Reinforcing this bias, his higher authorities (Training and Doctrine Command and 2nd US Army) had both been struck in Soviet nuclear strikes, as had Transportation Command and Military Airlift Command, the authorities responsible for arranging for reinforcement flights. Finally, Shaw Air Force Base, from which the flight departs, has limited amounts of fuel remaining in its tank farm and the base commander has been ordered to conseserve it for that base's tanker fleet, which is tasked to support nuclear strike operations. The move strands several requisitioned airlines at the base.

In Alaska, the Soviet 130th Air Assault Brigade (reduced to a single battalion of hardened troops) occupies a blocking position north of the hamlet (and road junction) of Gakona, Alaska, preventing the American force at Fort Greely from cutting the supply line of the 13th Guards Air Assault Division and 1st Arctic Mechanized Brigade, which are continuing to advance northeast along Highway 1.

HM Government authorizes a roundup of known Soviet agents and sympathizers, determined to limit internal dissent that could hamper the already extremely diffcult relief effort in the nation.

7th Fleet is able to direct the oiler USNS Neosho to the South China Sea, where it rendevous with the destroyer USS Morton and the cruiser USS Sterett and refuels both ships before turning north, accompanied by the cruiser while the Morton makes her way to the Indian Ocean.

The Dutch royal family accepts the British government's offer to evacuate their home as rumors fly of French military intelligence and special forces teams roaming the country seeking them out. A Royal Navy Sea King helicopter extracts them, flying at low level over the dark North Sea.

French and Belgian troops encounter an obstacle that their commanders had not adequately considered - British, Canadian and American rear area facilities, air bases and storage sites. Many of the air bases have been struck (some multiple times) by Soviet nuclear weapons and are nearly abandoned, while others (such as Ramstein) are fully operational, guarded by German territorials and USAF security troops and harbor American tactical nuclear weapons. In there areas an informal truce prevails, with the Franco-Belgian units giving these sites wide berth and avoiding any engagemnet with their defenders. The commander of the French 1st Army, General Francois Bescond, reaches out to SACEUR, a well-respected colleague from prewar days. After a "heated and frank" discussion between the two commanders, an agreement is reached. After the French forces have reached the Rhine River, they will offer all assistance to all bypassed NATO personnel, regardless of nationality, to evacuate the zone. The generals agree upon a 1-km exclusion zone around all American, British and Canadian facilities and, in exchange for non-belligerence from the troops at these facilities, the immediate provision of adequate food and fuel to sustain them until they have been evacuated. The two generals also agree that they will support NATO proposals for the provision of covert French and Belgian logistic support to the war effort, including food, fuel, electricity and munitions, in quantities to be agreed upon by the diplomats and intelligence agencies. While the French general was later criticized for accepting such terms, Bescond responded that the British and Americans still retained tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and that what was later perceived as a bad deal was vastly preferable to the elimination of the French nation by its ertswhile allies.

The stripping of the USS America is completed and Sixth Fleet transfers the remaining shoreside spares and supplies to the newly arrived freighter Wolman Expert, while the remaining American and Allied personnel begin to collapse the area of Sicily under NATO control. The troop transport Barrett arrives with the Expert (both escorted by the light frigate USS Petit) to take aboard passengers.

The crew of the full-rigged ship Iron Duke (formerly the property of the late eccentrick rock star Ted Hendrix) arrive in St. John, US Virgin Islands and seek shelter from the war there.

Thanks for that pointer, an angle I hadnt really considered. (The language about the US having little option is straight out of RDF Sourcebook.) Hopefully today's post adds a little clarity, although I welcome discussion on its reasonableness!

The 1km exclusion zone is going to frustrate some French leaders. Places like Buchel and Norvenich have USAF Munitions Squadrons supporting dual key special weapons on Luftwaffe bases while Woensdrecht hosts a GLCM wing on a Dutch airbase.

January 4, 1998

As relocation and disorder continue in the US, city dwellers flee to the country and the country folk are not prepared to deal with what rapidly comes to seem to them as an invasion. Initial efforts of humanity and goodwill toward the victims of a nuclear attack rapidly turn into a grim battle of survival between seemingly endless mobs of refugees and the embattled farmers trying to save their food crops, then their seed crops, and finally themselves and their families from the ravaging deprivations of hungry, cold and desperate city folk. Northern Ohio has been severely depopulated by the nuclear strikes on the cities of Lima and Toledo and the fallout from the Michigan and Canadian nuclear strikes. Most of the population of the large urban centers of Ohio flee to the rural areas without encouragement by the relocation orders.

Even with all the goodwill and humanitarian intentions in the world, nothing could have prevented much of the suffering of the winter of 1997-1998. In Florida, there were just too many people and not enough of anything else. Left to freeze in the dark, New England's urban populace began a blind search for warmth and food. More than ten million people began descending on the farms and picturesque towns in the countryside. Hundreds of thousands died each month of illness, hunger or winter exposure. Thousands more died each day in the fighting that erupted as the farmers and citizens of the towns tried to stop the locust-like approach of the urban refugees. Even when there were surplus foodstuffs, the resources could not be delivered to where they were needed most; no communications network existed to identify stocks, and no effective central authority remained to coordinate the relief effort.

Unfortunately, there was more than enough evil, malicious and deliberately criminal misconduct, misinformation, and out-and-out disinformation circulating to compound the horror beyond any hope of retrieval by men of goodwill.

The fires and destruction in the US caused by the bombs are gradually brought under control, and governmental control of most urban areas is slowly regained (although some cities, like Boston, are never really brought back to order after the strikes). Civil unrest in New England has settled down as it becomes clear that New England is not to be a target. Only extreme measures bring back a semblance of order to New York City. Millions have died in New York City during and after the nuclear attacks and millions more have fled. Because of the damaged transportation network and the lack of fuel, there are minor distribution inequalities and some civil discontent, but little out-and-out rioting.

The American harvest of 1997 was larger than average, but it is not evenly distributed through the country. Most of it is still in silos and elevators in the Midwest. The large harvest had driven commodities prices down, and many farmers have withheld part of their harvest in hopes of getting higher prices later in the year. Theoretically, this grain is also subject to rationing, but there is a great deal of concealment in on-farm storage bins by individual farmers. Fuel is also hoarded, although both of these actions are illegal.

The mayor of Aldergrove, BC, Walter Rousseau, with support from local RCMP members, assumes dictatorial powers over the town.

One of the Atlantic fleet's last operable nuclear attack submarines, the USS Newport News, surrenders her berth and heads back to sea, leaving New London for the last time.

Unofficially,

The container-barge carrier Kirin Carrier is delivered in Mobile, Alabama. It, like its sister delivered a week and a half prior, is taken over by the US government. This marks the end of new ship construction in Quincy.

Paratroops of the 13th Guards Air Assault Division fall upon the lightly held outpost line of the 1st Brigade, 47th Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry (Iowa National Guard) in a driving snowstorm, driving the startled guardsmen from their positions into the snow.

In northern California, members of the Hells Angels biker gang knock out the power to the Pelican Bay State Penitentiary with well-aimed rifle fire, then descend on the prison. The prison's guard force, understrength due to the draft and desertion in the weeks since the nuclear attacks, is oriented against threats from inside the prison, and within 15 minutes the bikers have captured the prison's command center (assisted by liberal application of demolitions against barriers and heavy steel doors). The bikers release the inmates within; their members and other prisoners that have a biker vouch for them remain at the heavily protected facility. The Hells Angels have gained a hardened facility and over 300 additional recruits.

More French and Belgian units arrive in southern Holland, linking up with the previously isolated French 8th Marine Parachute Regiment. The Dutch territorials of the 302nd Infantry Brigade have expended their remaining artillery ammunition and anti-tank weapons (mostly 1950-vintage M20 3.5-inch Super Bazooka rounds, everything more modern long ago sent to fight the Soviets). They begin retreating to the northwest as engineer parties complete the opening of dykes and irrigation systems, turning the low-lying polder into freezing swampland.

To the east, the 101st Mechanized Brigade arrives in Eindhoven from the Leeuwarden area minutes before the lead Scimitar and Scorpion light tanks of the Belgian 4th Regiment of Chasseurs à Cheval, the lead reconnaissance element of the Belgian I Corps. (The Belgian Corps has split, with the main body heading up the Meuse valley and a secondary effort headed for Dusseldorf on the Rhine). The French II Corps has overrun the final organized elements of the German territorial 45th Grenadier Regiment and reached the Rhine opposite Wiesbaden, leaving several large American garrisons isolated. In the center of the Franco-Belgian effort, I French Corps has brushed aside the remnants of the territorial 42nd and 46th Grenadier Regiments and advanced, despite the efforts of the various German obstacle detachments, past the exclusion zones surrounding Spangdahlem and Bitburg Air Bases where they are held up by a scratch force of Luftwaffe trainees at Ulmen.

January 5, 1998

The unusually harsh winter which followed the nuclear exchange compound the real problems Florida faces a hundred-fold, and finally this constant and effective hate campaign smashes the floodgates of insanity. The attempts by what remains of the civil and military authorities to keep a lid on things fail dismally. A war of extermination begins to be waged across what could have been a semitropical garden of Eden. The resulting hysteria makes it an absolute risk to one's life to admit even knowing someone from Tampa or any of the other stricken communities within the state. People are pulled out of cars on the highway and lynched by fear-crazed mobs because they have automobile tags that had been originally issued in Hillsborough County. Others are summarily shot for the crime of having been born in one of the stricken zones. Wild rumors fly about stating that this or that innocent and unsuspecting community is a radiation "hot spot" and that those coming from such places bring the unseen and undetectable "germs" of radiation poisoning with them to contaminate places not yet stricken. Within a week the population of Tampa has plummeted to less than 10 percent of its prewar total. Within a month the city is a virtual ghost town, and the survivors are being hunted and harried over the countryside.

The main actors in this communal bloodbath include not only the displaced criminal elements of the big city, but also ordinary urban dwellers - mothers and fathers with children to feed and somehow protect from the freezing rains and unchecked diseases. Millions of these people battle a relative handful of farmers trying to save their own livelihoods and the lives of their own wives and children. Even without the artificially stirred-up hatreds, the twin scourges of disease and famine are hard at work winnowing the dead chaff from the few survivors. The harsh winter brings other dislocated and hungry people down into the zone of darkness and blood. Armed marauder bands spread chaos and destruction and waste more than they took.

Soviet troops cross the border from Alaska into Yukon Territory, able to mass sufficient firepower to overrun the scattered outposts of the 47th Infantry Division. Supplies begin to run low, however, as the distances increase and the winter weather takes a toll on the requisitioned civilian vehicles the Soviet troops are relying on for mobility.

The nuclear attacks force an abandonment of the effort reactivate the 106th Infantry Division. Only the 422nd Infantry Regiment, formed in early 1997 from reservists and draftees, constituting three battalions of the 422nd and two batteries of the 591st Field Artillery, has been fully trained and equipped.

As the nuclear exchange peters out and the home situation deteriorates, a number of British battalions are sent from Germany to England to help enforce martial law.

KGB Colonel Borisov, living off the British countryside during the winter, is one of the few agents not rounded up during the army's purge of known Soviet agents.

Unofficially,

A patrol of the 78th Training Division in Trenton, New Jersey, is unexpectantly engaged in a firefight when they stumble across an organized group of looters who have just finished sacking a neighborhood which the division's troops had just finished evacuating two days before. The poorly trained troops (most have completed basic training but not their advanced skill training, led by their training company's admin clerk) lose three men and are unsuccesful in preventing the looters from escaping.

The Belgian 16th Mechanized Division's 10th Mechanized Brigade engages the Dutch 101st Mechanized Brigade on the southern outskirts of Eindhoven. The Dutch fall back and the Belgian division's 17th Armored Brigade comes swooping in from the east, the guns of their Leopard Is inflicting havoc on the hapless Dutch reservists. The command falls apart, with bands of men drifting away to the north. The lead units of the Dutch I Corps cross the Waal and Meuse between 's-Hertogenbosch and Nijmegen. The French III Corps' 2nd and 10th Armored Divisions (each with about half the troops and firepower of an equivalent prewar NATO division) clear the towns of Breda and Tilburg, respectively, and clear the continued resistance of territorials, reservists and constabulary troops that offer scattered resistance south of the Rhine. The Luftwaffe recruit detachment at Ulmen sustains a day of furious French artillery fire and several dismounted infantry attacks, turning each back in turn. In the far west, the Dutch defense of Vlissingen comes to an end as the defending marines and territorials come under attack from land and sea; after darkness falls the remains of the Dutch 2nd Marine Amphibious Combat Group slip out of the burning city aboard a fleet of small craft, intent on waging a continuing guerrilla campaign against the occupying Belgian and French troops.

Massive fires light the night sky over Sigonella, Sicily as the final American and Allied personnel evacuate the naval base and adjacent airfield. The departing troops burn the repair facilities, headquarters, barracks, warehouses, create craters in the airfield's runway and taxiways, collapse aircraft shelters and, the action that hurts the American sailors the most, set the damaged carrier USS America ablaze.

The Coast Guard medium-endurance cutter Thetis arrives at Diego Garcia, which was struck by a pair of Soviet nuclear missiles 30 days prior. The ship launches its helicopter for an aerial survey of the damage, conducting a radiological survey (what little residual radiation from the 200-kiloton airbursts has largely dispersed by trade winds and tides in the month since the attack) and identifying sunken obstacles to navigation in the atoll's lagoon.

That's dike. "Dyke" is an offensive term for certain segments of the population that I won't go into here. Don't want us to get into any inadvertent trouble.