1) I really don’t know anything about nuke operation, so I can buy off on any explanation that minimizes suspension of disbelief. I do like the hard-nosed mentality regarding risk. This seems very Twilight: 2000.
2) I think the idea of using former university instructors for recovery is a natural fit. Just how many qualified instructors will be left to be found by early 2001 is, I think, subject to some debate. Still, any level of instruction is a good start and a good idea. The smaller the school, the easier it is to imagine them being fed on the local economy.
3) This one is a bit too optimistic, I believe. Heavy construction gear might be durable, but by the time Milgov gets its Europe veterans operating along the Atlantic seaboard, it will have been more than three years since the nuclear exchange. Engine seals dry out. Other problems associated with exposure will occur. The real problem, though, is that the kind of heavy gear that a construction engineer battalion is going to use (dozers, graders, backhoes, etc.) is going to be highly valuable to everyone else. Surviving equipment will have been claimed by someone or other, then driven into the ground as long as fuel supplies last. Inoperable vehicles will have been moved to secure locations either in the hopes of refurbishing them or cannibalizing them for spare parts. Milgov may find the occasional bulldozer that only needs fuel and a few parts, but these will be few and far between. CINCLANT isn’t going to share his—the narrative makes that plain. Communities outside the Virginia and southern New Jersey enclaves might be coerced into giving up their vehicles, operable or otherwise, but acquiring them will be a time-consuming process. Hulks that can be reclaimed generally are going to need a lot of work. I don’t just mean a tune-up. Parts are going to have to be fabricated. If this were easy and practical with the infrastructure that the Europe veterans find upon returning to CONUS, it would have been done already. I’m not saying all of this can’t be done. I am saying that the idea of scrounging enough equipment to equip several heavy junk battalions (and Seabees, too?) in 2001 and doing it all within a couple of months of the arrival of the Omega convoys is at best a very tall order. If the Omega people had been able to bring all of their machine shops, machine tools, and other gear from Germany, we’d still be talking about reassembling the shops, collecting abandoned gear, trouble-shooting, triaging, and maybe getting some of the more operable gear back on-line. After that, parts have to be fabricated for the middle group of the triage process. Complicate the situation with the fact that the Europe vets have returned with little more than their rifles and rucksacks, and we have a major bottleneck in the process of recovering heavy equipment of any kind. What machine shops are available in eastern Virginia are being used. It’s conceivable that agricultural output is so low that the all-important machine operators aren’t being replaced as they die, desert, or whatever. In this case, it might be possible for some of the returning veterans who are properly trained to fall in on operable but untended machines. Otherwise, they are going to have to locate operable or repairable machines and machine tools outside the Virginia area of control, recover those items, and then start using them. This can be done, but the process won’t happen overnight. In short, while Navy technicians can be employed to run nuke plants and riflemen can round up former college professors, mechanics can do little without the tools of their trade. Recoverable heavy equipment of the type a heavy engineer battalion is going to use will have been worked over by the natives by 2001. Using the same infrastructure as the natives, the Europe vets are unlikely to be able to revolutionize the availability of dozers, graders, and backhoes. They have a long road ahead of them.
Webstral
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