Twilight 2000: Countdown to Armageddon
by Richard A. Spake ©
2006: The Year in Review
The winter of 2005-06 was particularly cold. Civilian war casualties in the industrialized nations had reached almost 15% by the turn of the year, but the worst was yet to come. Communication and transportation systems were non-existent, and food distribution was impossible. In the wake of nuclear war came famine on a scale previously undreamed of. Only the exceptionally cold winter delayed simultaneous epidemics. In the nations of the Third World, destruction of their major industries together with cessation of western food aid caused severe dislocations, with famine and starvation in many areas. With the spring thaw, the unburied dead finally brought on the epidemics the few remaining medical professionals had dreaded but were powerless to prevent. Plague, typhoid, cholera, typhus, and many other diseases swept the world's population. By the time they had run their courses, the global casualty rate would be 50%.
In Europe, France and Belgium had been hit the lightest and stood virtually alone in maintaining a semblance of internal order throughout the cataclysm. As refugees began flooding across their borders, the French and Belgian governments closed their frontiers, and military units began turning back refugees with gunfire. The French government authorized the army to move west to the Rhine to secure a solid geographical barrier. As the refugees piled up on the French and Belgian frontiers, a large lawless zone sprang into existence. Open fighting for food was followed by mass starvation and disease, until the lawless zone had become barren and empty.
The average strength of NATO combat divisions at the front had fallen to about 8,000, with U.S. divisions running at about half of that. Warsaw Pact divisions now varied widely in strength, running from 500 to 10,000 effectives, but mostly in the 2-4,000 range. Lack of fuel, spare parts, and ammunition temporarily paralyzed the armies. Peace might have come, but there were no surviving governments to negotiate it. Only the military command structures remained intact, and they remained faithful to the final orders of their governments. In a time of almost universal famine, only the military had the means of securing and distributing rations. Military casualties had been much lower than casualties among civilians.
In the Balkans, the partisan bands in the mountains of Romania and Jugoslavia had escaped almost untouched, while many Pact regular units had been destroyed in the exchange or had just melted away after it. The Romanians and Jugoslavians began forming regular combat units again, although still structured to live off the land and subsist from captured enemy equipment. At first, there was a great deal of enemy equipment just lying around waiting to be picked up.
There were border changes as well. The Italian Army formed the satellite states of Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia while the Greek Army directly annexed Macedonia. The Albanian Army, always a reluctant ally, first protested, then withdrew from the temporary alliance, and finally began sporadic attacks on Greek military units. At the same time, many Italian and Hungarian units were withdrawn from the Balkans and shifted to Czechoslovakia and southern Germany.
In North America, a flood of hungry refugees began crossing the Rio Grande, and most of the remaining military forces of the United States were deployed into the southwest to deal with the mounting crisis. They moved at the orders of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now the de-facto government of the United States. Widespread food riots and violence in refugee areas were met with military force. The Mexican government protested, and within months Mexican Army units crossed the Rio Grande to protect Mexican lives. More U.S. units were shifted south. Scattered fighting grew into open warfare, and Mexican armored columns were soon driving northeast toward Arkansas and northwest into southern California. The front quickly stabilized in northeast Texas and central California. Elsewhere in the U.S. civil disorder and anarchy increased with the withdrawal of Army units.
In late June, the Pact forces in southern Germany renewed their offensive in an attempt to seize the scattered surviving industrial sites in central Germany. Actually, the most intact parts of Germany were those areas in the south which had been under Warsaw Pact occupation, as neither side was willing to strike the area heavily. Galvanized into renewed action, NATO forces made a maximum effort to reform a coherent front, and the Pact offensive finally stalled along a line from Frankfurt to Fulda. In late August, NATO launched its own offensive from the area of Karl Marx Stadt, driving south to penetrate the Pact rear areas in Czechoslovakia. The thinly-spread Czech border guard units were quickly overwhelmed and Pact forces in central Germany began a precipitous withdrawal to Czechoslovakia, laying waste to southern Germany as they retreated.
A simultaneous offensive by the Jugoslavian Army drove north in an attempt to link up with NATO. The Jugoslavians were halted near Lake Balaton, however, and then thrown back. As more Pact units arrived in Czechoslovakia, the NATO drive ran out of steam and lost its sense of direction. Troops were shifted west to garrison the recaptured but devastated south of Germany, and many lives were wasted in a futile attempt to force the Alpine passes into Italy. As the autumnal rains began, NATO and the Pact initiated a short and weak second nuclear exchange, directed primarily at surviving industrial centers in the United Kingdom and Italy.
Fighting gradually ran down to the level of local skirmishing as both sides prepared for another winter.
January 2006
January 2006. D
February 2006
February 2006. D
March 2006
March 2006. D
April 2006
April 2006. D
May 2006
May 2006. D
June 2006
June 2006. D
July 2006
July 2006. D
August 2006
August 2006. D
September 2006
September 2006. D
October 2006
October 2006. D
November 2006
November 2006. D
December 2006
December 2006. D