[chico20854]

December 3, 1997

Officially, Soviet missiles strike oil refineries in Ohio. The city of Toledo was not directly struck by the missiles aimed at the refineries and oil fields to the west of the city, but was nonetheless severely damaged by the strikes and subsequent fallout. (While the strike was an air burst, the subsequent fires dropped massive quantities of hazardous chemicals from the smoke cloud). Lima, Ohio was half destroyed by the blast that hit just to the southwest of the city. The strike on the refinery left most of the city in rubble and much of it uninhabitable due to radiation. Unofficially, the Lima Tank Plant, across the street from the refineries that were the target of a Soviet SS-11 ICBM, was damaged by the strikes, halting production (as if the EMP and massive disorder and dislocation that followed the strikes were not enough), although the tools and dies survived under the collapsed roof and walls burst by overpressure. Officially, the Ohio town of Irontown was devastated by missile strike on the refinery across the Ohio River in Catlettsburg, Kentucky.

Unofficially, the USSR targets additional American bases in the Pacific Rim. A Tu-95 Bear-H bomber of the 79th Heavy Bomber Aviation Division at Dolon, Kazakhstan launches and proceeds over undefended skies over western China, dropping to lower altitude over the ruins of Wuhan, where it launches a spread of AS-15 cruise missiles. Eight missiles travel at low level to the Philippines, where the American bases at Subic Bay, Cubi Point and Clark Air Force Base are plastered by Soviet nuclear fire. (F-16s of the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing succeed in shooting down two of the missiles, saving Clark from more severe damage). Nearly simultaneously, the 551st Missile Regiment fires a spread of eight SS-20 IRBMs at American bases in Okinawa (a ninth explodes on launch, destroying its launcher). The island's defending Patriot missile batteries succeed in only striking one of the incoming missiles, and 21 150 -kiloton warheads blanket the island's military bases with nuclear hellfire.

The Empty Quiver team returns to Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas with the warheads and nuclear components of the bombs that they recovered from Blytheville Air Force Base. Two of the team members display the initial signs of radiation sickness. Empty Quiver response teams are dispatched from Ellsworth Air Force Base to recover the weapons from Minot and Grand Forks Air Force Bases. (The warheads of those bases’ ICBMs, of course, remain fully operable, intact and in place in their silos, their launch control centers manned by nervous controllers.)

Officially, the resources of the local governments in New Jersey and New York City were immediately overwhelmed by the conditions which followed the nuclear strikes. Fuel was in short supply, and all stocks were confiscated so that heat, electricity, and transportation could continue. Medical facilities were hopelessly inadequate to handle the burn, blast, and radiation casualties from New Jersey and Staten Island, let alone from other areas. Food and water were rationed. That, coupled with the sudden desire of millions of people to go elsewhere, resulted in rapidly escalating civil disorder. Each one of the city's hundreds of diverse ethnic or cultural groups thought it was being cheated so that some other group could get more than its fair share. There were riots, lynchings, mass looting, and arson. Thousands of people of Russian and Eastern European backgrounds - as well as French, Greeks, and Italians (who were perceived as having betrayed NATO in Europe), plus Chinese and other Orientals because they were different - were slaughtered in city-wide massacres, which only provoked reprisals.

Most of New York City's casualties occurred in the weeks and months following the nuclear attacks on New Jersey’s refineries, from starvation, disease, and the carnage as several million city-dwellers fought to escape or to survive. In Manhattan wreckage incurred when the island's population rioted was infinitely worse than the blast damage. Successive food and race riots along with fires (some of them arson) swept the city, leaving few, if any, buildings untouched. The nuclear blasts shattered many lower floor windows, and the rioting mobs got most of the rest, but above the 20th floor or so, windows were intact.

Philadelphia Congressman Charles Franklin, who was visiting relatives in Maryland, arrived in Annapolis, Maryland, joining the growing number of federal government officials that were gathering at the state capital. Elsewhere in the state, to the southwest of Frederick, the population of Sandy Hook, Maryland, fled the area.

In Florida, it was plain to anyone who cared to give it any thought that the tourist season would not be arriving in the winter of 1997. A lot of sensible people who had both somewhere else to go and a means to do so fled not just to Maderia Beach but to almost all of the dozen beach communities. Elsewhere in the state, a sympathetic guard cleared his prison in the face of a fire storm, releasing dozens of hardened criminals into the chaos outside. The fires at Tampa International Airport died down, nearly a week after the nuclear attack on MacDill Air Force Base. Dozens of other large fires still burned within the city.

Although there was no food shortage on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, there was fear of one, and rioting and civil unrest killed more people than the bomb. By the time troops had been brought in to restore order, almost a million people had become casualties, more than half the population. State government collapsed during this period, and the military (in the form of 221st MP and 29th Infantry Brigades) took over the civil administration.

Unofficially, the captain of the attack submarine USS Baton Rouge demands that his boat be released from the shipyard in Bremerton, where it has been since August undergoing repair from its duel with a Soviet Akula-class attack submarine. The boat is operable (some minor repairs remain unfinished), but the naval command has ordered it to be held pending an electronics upgrade, and several crew members have not returned to the boat after Thanksgiving leave.

The first dual search-and-strike mission is launched by Det. G, 1st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron with two R-5D Aurora hypersonic spy planes. The lead aircraft overflies the Dombarovskiy ICBM field, identifying which silos are intact and unfired, relaying that information to a second R-5D traveling a few minutes behind. The second aircraft strike those silos with B-61-11 bunker-buster nuclear bombs.

RainbowSix reports in the aftermath of the nuclear strikes on London large numbers of refugees poured into Norfolk and Suffolk from the capital. As with elsewhere in the UK, the reactions from locals to these refugees varied - some tried to help them, although they were a minority, with the majority concerned about their own survival. An already precarious situation was made even worse by the destruction of Ipswich, which added many more displaced souls. Norfolk and southern Suffolk managed to remain relatively stable, thanks partly to strong leadership provided by the staff of the RGHQ in Norwich but mainly to the significant British and American military presence (in addition to the Air Force personnel a battalion of Territorial Army Infantry were also stationed in the region), with the airmen maintaining order and taking charge of food distribution, and substantial organised enclaves in the areas around Norwich, King’s Lynn, and Bury St Edmunds, close to air bases.

Coventry met its demise when the warhead from a Soviet SS-17 ICBM detonated at 3,500 metres altitude at 1030GMT. Many inhabitants of Coventry and Wolverhampton had already fled into the surrounding counties, however the death toll from the strikes themselves and the subsequent fallout, disease, and civil disorder would reach well over a million.