Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
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.
|
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.