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Old 01-18-2023, 10:17 AM
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chico20854 chico20854 is offline
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January 6, 1998

The first pitched battle between local landowners and refugees is fought at a large refugee camp outside Butler, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh).

Since certain zoo animals - the large carnivores particularly - represented a danger to humans, zoo officials were ordered by local governments and by military authorities to destroy them in the event of a nuclear attack. Not all of the dangerous animals are killed, however. In the chaos following the nuclear attack, many zookeepers die or flee before they could carry out their duties. Others release favorite animals rather than kill them. Some people release animals en masse, believing that all living creatures deserve a fair chance. Some animals become desperate for food and water and break out when their keepers no longer come. The animals which are released or escape meet various fates. Most die, temperamentally unsuited to life on their own. Many are killed for food or because they are obviously dangerous. Others die in the harsh winter weather after the attacks, and a few manage to escape the cities completely.

By this point, many people who are in an American undamaged city are reluctant to simply pick up and leave. Conditions are still not too bad over most of the nation, and nobody wants to desert the security of their homes and possessions (relocatees are only allowed 50 kilograms of baggage) to go to some unspecified place in the country. The relocation buses, trains, and boats become increasingly difficult to fill. Rumors of what happens to relocatees when they arrive do not help matters. Rural communities are unwilling to have large numbers of outsiders forced upon them. There are shortages of just about everything, and the "relokies," as they are called, are subject to almost constant hostility from the local populace.

Conditions continue to deteriorate across the United States. Rural Americans are not happy to have untold thousands of homeless hungry urbanites thrust upon them, and violence flares against the refugees in many places. More often, a rural community accepts its quota of refugees, then turns them out when the troops had left. It is not surprising that a sizable number of "relokies" chose to leave at the first opportunity.

A number of British ports remain functional, most notably Margate in northern Kent and Portsmouth in Hampshire. Anglesey becomes a haven for surviving British forces in Wales as it is physically untouched by the war and is naturally easy to defend.

The Dutch 5th Mechanized Division is hit hard by French airstrikes in the vicinity of Nijmegen as it closes on the town of Eindhoven in an attempt to halt the advancing Belgians.

Unofficially,

Turmoil roils the high level of NATO command as the alliance struggles to respond to the French invasion of Germany and the Netherlands. The Dutch and German military commands (which are effectively their national governments in the wake of the nuclear devestation of their homelands) are livid with SACEUR for his deal with the French that essentially yields their territory without bringing the full military might of the alliance to bear to stop the invasion. SACEUR replies that the deal is the least bad option and that it at least will yield some compensation from the French while simultaneously relieving the respective governments of the responsibility for sustaining the refugees in the territory (he had demanded that there be no expulsions of population by the French and Belgian authorities). Pointing to the dire condition of NATO combat forces at the front, SACEUR has no non-nuclear means available to halt the French agression, as pulling troops from the line or allocating additional scarce resources will leave the front against the Soviets dangerously vulnerable. The German command grudgingly accepts this statement, noting that it has been unable to divert significant resources to defending the territory, other than cancelling the planned offensive against the Czechs and Soviets in the Hof-Nuremburg-Regensburg area.

The Belgian air force's F-16 fleet is grounded as the clear skies over the front allow the remaining Dutch F-16s to make an appearance overhead; the Franco-Belgian command fears fratricide as well as wanting to preserve the limited supply of spare parts and munitions for the fighters. The Dutch 1st Mechanized Division, hardened veterans after a year of action and the Czechs, Soviets and Italians, tear into the French 5e Régiment d'Infanterie, part of the 2nd Armored Division, southwest of 's-Hertogenbosch. The French combined-arms battalion is strung out along the highway through flooded fields, where the guns of the remaining Dutch Leopard II's are able to wreak the French column. Dutch MLRS rockets of the 101st Artillery Group sow submunitions among the column and the road behind it, preventing reinforcements from hurrying to the rescue.

In Germany, the Luftwaffe training unit is finally blasted out of its positions outside Ulmen as the French commit the 4th Airmobile Division to leapfrog the blocking position and direct precision fires against the German positions.

RainbowSix reports that HM Government is preparing an assessment of surviving facilities. One is the Hamworthy refinery located close to the Port of Poole. The refinery had suffered particularly heavy damage during a series of concentrated raids in August 1997 that forced it to shut down whilst the damage was repaired. The British Government managed to successfully fool the Soviets into thinking that their airstrikes had destroyed the facility when MI5 arranged for false documents to be passed to a known Soviet agent. The ruse worked and the refinery was spared a Soviet nuclear warhead.

The Freedom-class cargo ship Buffalo Freedom is delivered in San Diego, California.

The Aegis cruiser USS Vincennes is sunk by four 65-76 torpedoes fired by the Victor III-class submarine 60 Let Shefstva VLKSM 325nm NNW of Ascension Island while on an voyage to secure supplies of food from Argentina.

The USCG cutter Thetis lands its assessment team on Diego Garcia. While the overpressure and heat from the blasts stripped the occupied area of the island of vegetation and destroyed all unhardened structures in the central part of the base area, it left the airbase's twin 12,000-foot runways intact and several secondary underground faciltiies (overflow fuel tanks and such) intact, as well as the extensive magazine complex, space observation station and communications facility several kilometers away on the remote southern end of the island.
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I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...
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