KANSAS
1) NUCLEAR TARGETS
Date Type Target Note
10/28/62 Atlas-F Near Salina Missfire
2) ORGANIZED MILITARY FORCES
"School Brigade"--Hays (550 men, 12 AFVs)
89th Infantry Division--Wichita (4000 men, 24 AFVs)
3) EASTERN KANSAS (Kansas City covered under Missouri listing)
The small urban centers west of Kansas City are now the home of a large, semi-organized society led by a man who calls himself "King Louie". His power center is at the former state capital of Topeka and he controls an area stretching roughly from Manhattan in the west to Lawrence in the east and to Batesville and Chanute to the south, with tendrils stretching to both the Nebraska and Oklahoma borders. Total population within this area is about 70,000. The militia is large and effective, organized into three "battalions"--two made up of basic cannon fodder and one composed of well-trained mercenaries led by Colonel West, a long-time professional soldier. King Louie himself is crazy but smart--he has a degree in Economics from KU, spent time in the Marines and was a Wall Street broker for several years. He is also a sadistic tyrant who enjoys torturing and killing on a whim. He is, however, also a coward at heart and behind the scenes is ruled by his Security Advisor, a man named Ashley. A coup by Ashley is most likely just over the horizon. Despite all this, the average person in his domain is relatively well-fed and strangely content. King Louie has reopened some schools and hospitals, restored limited electricity and been aggressive in keeping farming up. He has, however, enslaved the surviving Fox, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, and Sac Indians from the local reservations due to his own racist views. Rebellion amongst these Indian slaves is fomenting daily. There have been frequent clashes with MilGov patrols from Wichita and militia units from Kansas City, but so far no real open fighting as everyone needs the area's crops and rightly fears Colonel West's battalion. There are some pockets of resistance within his area of control, such as Iola, which is an organized town of around 1,000 people which have managed to stay independent.
4) CENTRAL KANSAS
This area was thickly sown with empty and abandoned Atlas E and F ICBM silos of the Forbes and Schilling Air Force Base complexes. The Atlas F silos were located in the towns of Bennington, Abilene, Chapman, Carlton, McPherson, Mitchell, Kannapolis, Wilson, Beverly, Tescott, Glasco, and Minneapolis. The Atlas E Forbes complex silos were located in the towns of Valley Falls, Dover, Waverly, Osage City, Delia, Wamego, Overbrook, Holton, and Bushong. All of these missiles were launched and the silos now are nearly forgotten as the Air Force personnel manning them have been long ago evacuated.
Nuke in the corn: During the night of October 28, 1962, as the missiles left their silos bound for Russia, one Atlas F emerging from a cornfield outside Kannapolis malfunctioned. Due to faulty programming, instead of detonating 1,000 feet over some Russian city, the 4 megaton warhead detonated when reaching 1,000 feet out of it's own silo, roughly over I-70 east of Salina. The resulting nuclear fireball created a tornado of fire and heat that set ablaze a large acreage of farmland and mostly destroying the town of Salina with it. There were few casualties, since the land was sparsely inhabited, but this crater is very hot still. While exploding away from large population centers, this misfire caused much disruption in the flow of refugees by effectively cutting I-70. With a whole lot of people in shape to get their cars stuck in immense traffic jams trying to escape the fallout on either end of the state, I-70 became a continent-spanning traffic jam bottlenecked by the radioactive crater outside Salina. Seeking alternate routes around the mess, refugees turned to the normally little-used country roads to the north and south, soon packing them with derelict cars as well.
Salina: Blast effects and fallout from the misfired ICBM to the west made Salina a ghost town overnight. The town was badly damaged by fires, and when people slowly started to return, they found that no buildings over one story were left standing. The present population is struggling to survive. A militia is being formed, based around an old police station, and a low wall of rubble is being built around the station. This so-called "Militia" is commanded by Jacob Von Puttkamer, a former landlord and reservist. He and his "officers", many dressed in their uniforms from Korea and WWII, have their own personal firearms. Their men, mostly farmers and shop-keepers, are mostly unarmed, just armbands designating them as militamen.
Hutchinson: This city and the immediate area are currently the home of numerous warring gangs. The "Razorbacks" cycle gang is camping in the ruins of Medora and staging ferocious battles with a gang calling themselves "Hell's Cavalry". The Cavalry seems to be repairing and building armored cars and vans in the remains of Hutchinson. From somewhere in the burned buildings of Willowbrook, the third gang involved is the aptly named "Ghost Marauders", who have seemed to have perfected the art of surprise attacks
5) SOUTHEASTERN KANSAS
The fallout rooster tail from the Salina nuke spread a thick blanket of radioactive ash over southeastern Kansas. Death and distress were soon to follow and now many communities are empty ghost towns. In recent months, some have been returning to some small towns in the area now that the radiation has died down. The largest survivor community is now Coffeyville, a town with a very effective militia that has kept the town free of marauders. Population is several hundred people. There is some influence here from the King Louie domain further north but it is minimal.
Wichita: Wichita has slowly recovered and is now home to around 24,000 people. Internal security is provided by the "Wichita Guard", a militia-type organization with semi-professional training which is about 400 strong with 30 police cars. The lure of the numerous oil wells in the Wichita area have also brought a military garrison force, comprising the MilGov 89th Infantry Division (4,000 men). Formerly the 89th Division (Training), the unit was re-designated as an infantry group in 1962 to fill the gap in state security caused by the departure of the military units at Fort Riley. This unit is responsible for the occupation and operation of the remaining oil fields and refinery facilities, and the transport of the fuel to other MilGov units on the Great Plains. The division has collected every armored vehicle it could find and now has hundreds of all types with them. These include an M60 tank, an M48A2 tank, ten M46 tanks, twelve M40 155mm SP howitzers, numerous APC's, 81mm mortar carriers, M548 cargo carriers, jeeps, deuce-and-a-halves, and many requisitioned civilian vehicles. They posses a number of towed 8inch artillery pieces and have nuclear shells for them, one of the rare field units to still have tactical warheads. They also have a unique air component based at McConnell Air Force Base, made up of old WWII-era planes scavenged from across the state. They have two B-17s, two B-26s, and some P-51s and P-47s along with many transport planes, both military and converted civilian. The only real modern combat aircraft are three AC-130 PUFF planes. Easy to maintain and fly, and armed with Gatling guns, these planes provide the enclave with considerable striking power. Across the way from McConnell field is the huge Boeing airframe plant where the B-47 and B-52 bombers were built. While the plant has been idle for two years, the invaluable machinery and dies have been kept secure and covered by the former plant managers in hopes that one day they can be put back into service. The division's efforts to restore oil refinery capacity has met with only limited success because of a lack of trained personnel, but a trickle of refined fuel began to be available this past spring. Like his counterpart in Cairo, Illinois, the division's commander resents the petroleum he is required to send away to support MilGov activities elsewhere. Groundbreaking for McConnell AFB's Minuteman I ICBM complex was in late 1961 and site excavation on the silos and LCC bases was completed but work stopped after the exchanges in October. No missiles were ever here, but a lot of valuable support equipment is still at the scattered sites.
6) WESTERN KANSAS
The great western deserts of Kansas from Highway 81 west are just as boring as ever--an endless white world of bone-like towns and grain silos. The drought has been severe in the western part of the state and there are often no living people for many hundreds of miles. Most of the smaller towns, like Dodge City and Great Bend, have been long ago deserted and looted. The plains are the domain of small biker gangs, who roam the highways looking for loot and fun. Anyone who resists usually ends up dead. Case in point is the small northern Kansas town of Belleville, where all the residents were recently killed and buried in a mass grave by a biker gang called "Nolan's Raiders". The various MilGov units in the area run infrequent patrols along the interstates and state highways, but usually only when a convoy is coming through. Otherwise, they leave the roads to the bikers.
Hays: This town is now home to the MilGov 550-man "School Brigade". The School Brigade was originally a mixed bag of training instructors and recruits organized after the nuclear strikes at Fort Bliss, Texas but was forced north by the Mexican invasion this past summer. This brigade is now assigned the area from Hays north to the Republican River on the Nebraska border, here to watch for marauders and help guard the transport routes from the oil fields around Wichita to Colorado Springs. Outer patrols sometimes encounter patrols from the CivGov forces in Omaha and firefights have been reported. The area, due to its sheer size, has been increasingly difficult for the brigade to administer. Marauder raids have been increasing and the unit is beginning to experience difficulties providing security for the oil convoys. Although the brigade has no tanks, it still has a dozen assorted antiaircraft artillery vehicles and numerous civilian and military trucks and small cars. The ADA vehicles are a legacy of Fort Bliss' pre-war role as a training base for anti-aircraft gunners. Shipments of fuel from Oklahoma and Wichita have been reduced and the brigade will probably be forced to cut back its perimeter patrols in favor of a reactive defense. What this means is that they will only chase marauders when the core food-production areas in its area are threatened, instead of conducting punitive sweeps beyond its borders.
Wrong side: On October 28, 1962, one of the Atlas E ICBMs from the Forbes complex suffered a guidance failure when launched and pitched over to skid along to a stop in Crooked Creek east of the small town of Plains in the southwest corner of the state. The errant missile was tracked by radar but was lost just before impact. A number of reports have filtered into the Colorado Springs area of an intact 4 megaton warhead in a creek in Kansas and a small unit was sent out to look for it. The small town of Plains is now home base to this Nuclear Recovery Team with 10 men with a jeep, a deuce-and-a-half, and an five-ton truck with a one-ton cargo trailer with a section of a pontoon bridge with an outboard motor. So far they have not found the warhead, which is indeed buried in the shallow creek.
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