[Littlearmies]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I see hoarding being a problem at first- bottled water, batteries, canned food, etc. And as certain products become more scarce, a black market would develop. A certain level of criminal behavior usually coallesces around black markets. With increasing shortages, food riots could ensue.

Originally Posted by Raellus

I see people with the means to do so moving to out of the way country estates, mountain cabins, etc. At first, this would take place in areas threatened by the conventional fighting. I see some folks taking advantage and trying to loot vacated properties. In response, perhaps a certain level of vigilantiism would develop where much of the citizenry is armed (I'm thinking of the U.S.). Others I see just sitting tight and hoping for the best. A great and relatively modern example is the "evacuation" of Eastern Prussia as the Red Army steamrolled into Greater Germany.

Here in the UK there are an awful lot of cottages in West Scotland that have been abandoned (to the extent that some local schools are no longer seen as viable - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/...ds/6964894.stm - )there is a healthy little industry refurbishing these buildings for holiday homes and I would see holiday lets being taken on year round and the refurbishment process accelerating rapidly. I think it would be wives and children evacuated at first while the husband remained to work and keep an eye on the family home. I think there would be a lot of children packed off to stay with cousins and family friends who lived in isolated communities. I think these little island communities would have a short lived economic boom - although this might be crimped by the fact that CalMac ferries would probably be requisitioned for service resupplying allied forces in Europe.

I also think there would be a lot of tension between the natives and the "white settlers" who had recently moved in. I also think there would be a growth in self sufficiency on an individual level - "digging for victory" would come back as people planted vegetables wherever they could and began to think about keeping chickens and so on.

Originally Posted by Raellus

With the onset of tactical nuclear strikes, I see some cities vacated in a panic, highways clogged with cars and busses and such. At this point, you'd either see strangers banding together to help one another OR people looking out only for themselves and taking advantage of others. It would probably be a bit of both. I guess this question boils down to whether you are optimistic or pessimistic about human nature.

Keeping the Scottish islands in mind I think the husbands back in Glasgow, London etc would find they had issues getting to their families because so many of the ferries had been taken up by the government - they'd have to barter with local fishermen or pleasure boat owners to get them to their new home. Of course there would be a few inshore vessels still running including the last Clyde Puffers:

http://www.tradboat2.co.uk/sourcepag...rce%20page.htm

I can't help thinking that these old girls would come into their own in T2K and that you could devise an interesting campaign running one of these as a tramp steamer helping the island communities survive.

Originally Posted by Raellus

I think you raise a really interesting point about the Twilight War being really unpopular with the general public. Maybe you'd see draft riots.

Well, not wanting to get political but the war in Iraq was very unpopular in Britain, and Afghanistan seems to be turning into another Vietnam, our PM was at the economic helm during the events that led up to our credit crunch and seems incapable of admitting he's wrong about anything: Frankly I begrudge handing over my taxes to the fools in power right now like I never have before - if they were to lead this country into a nuclear war I'm pretty sure I would just cease to co-operate whenever possible (which presumably be whenever someone "official" was nowhere in sight) unless I could see a direct and immediate advantage in it for me and mine. I wouldn't riot but I'd be quite happy to break any rules that conflicted with what I wanted to do.

Originally Posted by Raellus

In the U.S. at least (I don't know enough about other countries' reserves/mobilization systems), a lot of law enforcement personel are military reservists or National Guard members. With the war picking up speed, a lot of them would be recalled to active duty. This would leave law enforcement agencies with fewer bodies to deal with the increasing load of problems briefly touched on above. It would not be pretty. Once again, in the U.S. at least, I see crime rates going up and vigilantiism popping up to deal with it.

I would think that with the American tradition a first step of the hard pressed US Police Chief would be to deputise suitable members of the public, give them a short basic training in patrol work and then partner them experienced officers (and watch for a rapid rise in officer involved shootings as the new deputies opened fire when a more experienced officer would seek to calm things down). But your specialist squads would I think be decimated - you can't just pull a detective straight off the street.