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Old 11-28-2022, 04:50 PM
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November 28, 1997

Unofficially, Shortly after American missiles ravaged Moscow the U.K. released its retaliatory strikes on the USSR. British nuclear targeting policy had for many years been closely coordinated with the Americans - during the days of the V-bombers the RAF was assigned to blast holes in the Soviet air defense net in the Baltics, and in the 1970s the UK developed the Chevaline system for its Polaris? SLBMs to defeat the A-135 system. Both nations were also deeply involved with NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group and British Trident SLBMs had already launched strikes in support of NATO’s war effort, most famously in the attack that leveled Warsaw. With the American strike on the Soviet capital any British retaliation on Moscow would be “bouncing the rubble”, and with the American supreme command in flux (see below) Prime Minister Blore ordered an independent attack.

Accordingly, HMS Vigilant launched two Trident II SLBMs at Leningrad, the largest surviving Soviet city. The missiles’ 12 100-kiloton warheads (each missile carried six) were targeted at the Baltic Fleet headquarters in Khronstadt, the Leningrad Military District headquarters in the city center (and a second MIRV at the command bunker on the northern outskirts off the city), the Kirov tank plant, the Admiralty and Baltic shipyards and the headquarters of the 6th Air Defense Army. The results of the attack were as devastating as the Soviet attack on London had been - overwhelming blast damage, firestorms of historic proportions, immense radiation that added misery to the remaining lives of hundreds of thousands unfortunate enough to survive the blast and firestorm. While the intended targets were all hit and destroyed, there were many other locations that were also destroyed - military academies, research institutes, Communist Party and KGB offices, four major railroad stations, a helicopter repair plant, electrical power plants and much more. While nothing would ever compensate for the attack on London, Britain had its vengeance.

Rainbow Six reports that the Royal Family is evacuated from its estate at Sandringham in Norfolk under heavy military escort by Army units. Other Army units attempt to locate surviving members of the Cabinet and escort them to their emergency command post, a top secret underground bunker located a few miles outside High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire which had been completed in the early 1990’s.

Those in British cities that had not been struck began to flee, heading for the perceived safety of rural communities. Their headlong flight blocked main road arteries, (unofficially) paralyzing government disaster response. Many Britons were shocked with the Government’s response to the strikes on London. No attempt was made for the fire services to extinguish the firestorm, and emergency personnel were ordered to remain on the perimeter of the disaster area, sheltering indoors whenever possible to protect themselves from radiation. The wounded that escaped the conflagration were diverted into triage centers, where those that were likely not to survive their wounds, or over 60 years of age, were denied further medical care, the overwhelmed medical staff concentrating on those that had the highest chance of surviving and contributing to the nation’s recovery. While widely criticized, a policy was implemented limiting transfer to hospitals in other areas of the UK to only a select few, a policy judged necessary to make the best use of a very limited resource.

The British nuclear industry began shutting down nearly immediately, following long-standing Home Office instructions. While the plants had not been targeted, the consequences of an attack on them while operating were dire. RainbowSix reports that the Sizewell nuclear power plants were taken safely offline. Likewise, the nuclear plant at Dungeness in southeastern Kent was shut down as a safety precaution, as was the Calder Hall nuclear power plant.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1997 nuclear strikes a detachment of troops in full NBC gear removed the plates used to manufacture bank notes from the printing plant at Loughton in Essex, following which Royal Engineers rendered inoperable several items of heavy machinery to ensure they could not be misused. Unknowingly they missed several sets of plates used to make twenty and fifty pound sterling notes and various Middle Eastern and African currencies

Unofficially, A flight of Tu-95H Bear missile carrier bombers unleashed six AS-15 missiles at petroleum targets in the UK. Rainbow states that Aberdeen in Scotland, known as the oil capital of Europe before the war, was one of the first cities after London to be hit. (Officially) The other missiles struck Milford Haven, Wales and Grangemouth, Scotland, sites of large refineries.

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For a time, the United States had no official "National Command Authority." More than 22 hours passed before he could be located by FEMA Central Locator System (CLS) operatives and transported to the nearest PEF (Presidential Emergency Facility). After being sworn in by the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, President Pro Tem Munson's first official act was to proclaim that the full provisions of Federal Emergency Plan D (FEP-D) were in effect. These included, among other things, a declaration of martial law. (The military government's claim to sovereignty was based on the FEP-D documents and Pemberton's proclamation of a state of war.)

In the immediate aftermath of the strikes on Washington, John Carlucci, a prominent Boston lawyer and elected head of the United Brotherhood of Fishermen, believed to be backed by the Boston mob, no longer saw a need for restraint and decided to silence his opposition and secure his power. As the newly elected leaders of the Congress of North Banks Fishermen were gathered in Gloucester for their first meeting, a terrible explosion ripped through the building where the delegates and their families were gathered. Over 100 people were killed outright, and 250 were wounded.

(Unofficially) Meanwhile, the Soviets were not done attacking the United States. Due to the communications blackout that followed the EMP strikes, neither the KGB nor the GRU could determine if they had succeeded in decapitating the American political leadership. Satellite intelligence confirmed that the White House and Pentagon had been hit and the famed “Hotline” to the Kremlin was offline, but no one in the Soviet Union knew if President Tanner was dead or alive. (And if he was not, who was in charge and where they were located). Therefore, another round of attacks against command and control facilities was ordered.

The Typhoon-class submarine Barrikada (formerly the TK-217) received launch orders at its patrol station under the Arctic ice cap. Six of the vessel's 20 SS-N-20 nuclear-tipped missiles were to be fired in a strategic strike intended to damage the command and control facilities of the NATO allies. Two of the missiles were aimed at Canadian targets, the remaining four at targets in the United States. (Unofficially) Barrikada’s sister TK-210, the third of four Soviet SSBNs with hard-target capability, launched five missiles at the state of Florida.

Barrikada’s missiles were aimed at targets in the Mid-Atlantic region. (Officially) Fort Detrick, Maryland, home of the US Army Research Laboratories (well known as an important cancer research center) and reputedly the Army's center for biological warfare research, was hit. The blast which destroyed the center was several kilometers from the town of Frederick. Nonetheless, much of the town was reduced to rubble and several kilometers of the highway north of town were rendered impassable due to debris from fallen buildings, the hulks of autos and trucks, and fallen trees. Further north of Frederick was the location of Camp David, a target for a Soviet SSBN; the road in the valley below the road was made impassable by debris. The attacks, both ground bursts (because of their relatively small size), did comparatively little blast and fire damage outside of their immediate ground zeroes, but threw tremendous amounts of radioactive fallout into the air. The 228th Infantry Brigade was not badly damaged when Fort Meade was the target of a Soviet SLBM the day before because the target was the Presidential Emergency Facility and NSA headquarters rather than the fort's headquarters. In any case, much of the brigade was dispersed throughout the area rather than present on post.

Barrikada’s other missiles hit other Presidential Emergency Facilities as well. The Quantico PEF was struck with five 100-kiloton MIRVs, all set for ground bursts. The SLBM strike on the Presidential Emergency Facilities at Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia (unofficially, the other five MIRVs from the missile that hit Quantico) (officially) caused casualties, but the 30th Engineer Brigade (Combat) survived largely intact (unofficially) because, like the 228th, the unit was largely dispersed throughout the region and the MIRVs landed in a different area of the base.

The population of the Washington area that wasn't killed by the strike and its immediate aftereffects either fled the city or died in the subsequent civil disorder. The horrible destruction of Washington, DC and its suburbs produced a wave of refugees flooding to the west, (and unofficially) east and south. (The strikes on Fort Meade, north of the city, blocked many from fleeing to the north).

Five missiles were targeted at the state of Florida. Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville suffered a near miss that landed in the sea just offshore. The resulting nuclear-induced tidal wave and wide-spread radioactive seawater contamination were dreadful and deadly. Millions died, both in the wave surge and in the subsequent legacy of nuclear poisoning, disease, starvation, and chaos that followed. Almost simultaneously three more sites were struck: MacDill AFB in Tampa, Eglin AFB near Pensacola in the Florida Panhandle, and the Satellite Recon Launch Facility at Cape Kennedy. Both the MIRV'd warheads at Eglin and the single one-megaton that were burst over MacDill were airbursts, designed to do the most damage to the widest possible area. Cape Kennedy received the attentions of a ten-warhead MIRV'd (one-megaton total) device. Unlike the other strikes, this was a series of pinpoint attacks upon the launch sites themselves. The resulting blasts vaporized nine of the 11 launchpads and the vehicle assembly building. A fifth attack, this one aimed at Homestead AFB, south of Miami, apparently never materialized. The failure might have been due to the intense EMP, which had the effect of deactivating the onboard electronics of the Homestead weapon, which is presumed to have landed in the sea well south of Miami without detonating. Four hits or near hits, however, turned out to be quite devastating enough - at least no one complained about the missing fifth bomb. In less than a minute the majority of the people in the second most populated state in the nation were plunged into a new Dark Age (literally and figuratively). Since Florida had no major oil refining or distribution targets, it was not as badly damaged as some other states, but the carnage was bad enough, nevertheless.

The Cape Kennedy strike was intended to destroy the launch facilities and, with some help from EMP, they achieved that end. No more recon satellites would be lofted from Cape Kennedy for some time to come. The two remaining launch pads were so extensively damaged by blast, heat, and radioactive residue that they were effectively inoperable, as was the shuttle landing strip and most of the surrounding support facilities. At Eglin AFB the main facilities at Hurlbert Field were scoured off the map. One of the MIRVs was sub-targeted for the nearby Naval Air Station, and seven more were aimed at Eglin's widely spaced AUX, or auxiliary airfields. One warhead was targeted against the Army Airborne Ranger Camp also located (deep in the swamps) on Eglin AFB. Ground zeroes for these .1 Mt MIRVs were much smaller than that of the 1 Mt device that hit Mac-Dill, but because the smaller warheads were "on target" with regard to the altitudes of their detonations, the recipients had no complaints about their relative destructiveness. The single biggest effect of the cumulative air bursts over a wide area of the Florida Panhandle was the vast and uncontrolled forest and grass fires ignited by the blasts. Because each of these devices was an airburst weapon, little initial or residual fallout occurred.

MacDill Air Force Base, headquarters of the US Readiness Command, Special Operations Command and the rear headquarters of Central Command, was hit. The blast there was ten times the size of any one of the single warheads detonating to the north. The only thing that saved Tampa Bay from mass extinction was the mischance of a premature detonation, some 2000 feet too high for the full effects of such a blast to be felt. Directly below the airburst the Earth's surface was first subjected to a blowtorch several miles across, then to a blast with an overpressure of 250 to 500 psi, which was more than sufficient to ensure complete destruction of any aircraft or personnel unfortunate enough to be on the base. The water table in Florida is generally very near the surface, and here on MacDill it was less than three inches down. Water cannot be compressed, and the force of the overpressure from the MacDill blast had the effect of squeezing a huge subterranean sponge; the water table (and the surface of the earth) literally rippled like a pond after a stone has been thrown in. Those spreading concentric circles acted like an earthquake, shaking down buildings and cracking concrete with successive waves of underground water displaced from the center of the water table under ground zero. Those structures above ground level that were not specially built to withstand both the blast and the surging earth beneath it lunged, bucked, and were swept away by the fiery nuclear winds of overpressure, shock wave, and the returning wave (as the surrounding air rushed back to fill the void made by the blast). All told, every major building on the peninsula was scoured off the face of the earth. Having been blasted down, the rubble was then bounced by each succeeding "ripple" of the water table. The central portion of MacDill's runway was never touched by the fireball from the bomb (which had detonated too high for maximum damage). Underground pipelines ruptured during the blast, pouring millions of tons of jet fuel, bunker oil, diesel fuel, and gasoline into the subsurface layer. When the bomb fell on MacDill, its immediate casualties were the families servicemen and women had left behind in the base's government quarters.

The five psi ring extended to the base's north perimeter fence, guaranteeing the destruction of all but the most heavily bunkered and revetted structures on the air base. The two psi ring extended to Gandy Boulevard two miles farther north. At that range almost all of the wood frame residences were first ignited by the thermal pulse, then blasted to splinters by the overpressure wave of the detonation. The fires were added to by the ignition of residential propane and fuel oil tanks. Over half of the brick or cinder block buildings lost a roof or were heavily damaged. All of the lush tropical and subtropical foliage was set afire. Flash burns and overpressure (blast) damage, especially to the very old or very young, contributed additional casualties. The one psi ring extended to the north boundary fence of Tampa International Airport, over ten miles from ground zero. At that range the shock wave tumbled cars and aircraft, and the thermal pulse ignited the highly flammable fuels within their tanks. The inferno resulting from the ignition of all the ruptured fuel tanks can scarcely be imagined. Among the things within the bomb's flash ignition zone were the bulging fuel tank farms of Port Tampa, various munitions on the docks of Hooker's Point, and the environmentally infamous 400-foot-high mounds of phosphorous and phosphate products located at Port Sutton and East Tampa. Initial casualties from the high air burst were in excess of 250,000. Most of this total was from blast and secondary debris from the detonation. Because the burst was too high, the city of Tampa suffered less than it might have from immediate radioactive fallout. The burst spread out from its epicenter in concentric rings of destructive overpressure, blinding dazzle, and secondary missile and fire destruction. Because ground zero was located over the peninsula of MacDill, much of the worst destructive overpressure (that of five pounds per square inch or higher) was confined to the Air Force Base. The ring of total destruction just barely exceeded the northern limits of the base itself, and the lesser but still devastating two-psi ring never ran closer to the heart of the city than the portion of Gandy Boulevard directly north of the point of detonation. The one-psi ring reached its maximum extension at the north barrier fence of Tampa International Airport. Vast amounts of glass windows were blown out, especially in the shimmering towers of the downtown business district (sparsely occupied due to the (unofficially) prior day’s attacks). (Officially) The lovely old homes along Hillsborough Bay's picturesque northern shore suffered blast, thermal radiation, and wave surge damage, while those south of Gandy Boulevard received much heavier damage. Those older, mostly wood-frame, homes disintegrated under the overpressure, ignited under the combination of thermal radiation and bursting gas and fuel oil tanks, and generally suffered total destruction. More modern concrete cinder block construction weathered the fire storm with lost roofs and some small amount of shattered foundations. The green, semitropical foliage burst into fire and burned. The outermost circle of destruction didn't encompass the newer or wealthier neighborhoods. The heart of the new construction and new industrial zone was still intact. The great center of knowledge and instruction, the University of South Florida, was essentially undamaged. The heart and soul of the city itself died although most of its citizens survived. Over one million people within the city limits of Tampa survived the initial blast and the collateral damage due to fire and fragmentation. Radiation from the MacDill attack was negligible except under the ground zero of the airburst. Most of the deaths had occurred in the immediate zone of the blast in the first seconds of the fire and flying debris thrown out from the blast.

MacDill AFB was effectively seared from the face of the earth. The airburst over MacDill pushed outward, creating a moving wave of sea water 10 feet high across lower Tampa Bay. This man-made tidal wave destroyed a large portion of the Gandy Bridge (southernmost of the three links between St. Petersburg and Tampa), damaged portions of the Howard Franklin Bridge, and smashed into the boat basins, jetties, docks, piers (including the local landmark known as the million dollar pier), graceful beach hotels, condos and private residences along Tampa Bay's western shore. The rush of returning water did similar, if less destructive, damage to the Tampa side shoreline. Overpressure tides from the MacDill blast devastated the inner bay area, particularly much of upper Tampa Bay. A wall of water 15 feet high surged over much of the eastern shoreline. It would have been worse, but for the mangrove flats the environmentalists had fought so hard to save from encroaching land developers. The flats significantly reduced the incoming power of the surging waters.

Flooding was widespread in the lower areas and had immediate permanent effects upon the operation of the Tampa International, St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Albert Whitting, and Michael O. Knight Airports. When the water receded, the only functioning air strips were the Clearwater Executive Air Park located near the highest point in Pinellas County and a sprinkling of other grass strips in northern and eastern Hillsborough County. None could accommodate large commercial airliners which might have brought in disaster relief materials.

The survivors could be grateful for only one thing - the wave damage, bad as it was, was not radioactive. The high airburst did fairly extensive blast and thermal damage, but, owing to its targeting pattern, the fireball never touched the ground. No widespread physical debris was sucked into the radiant center of the blast to become secondary radioactive fallout, and what little fallout that was created (by the residue from the bomb casing and the air, dust, and water vapors immediately around the 8000-foot-high core of the detonation) fell promptly back to earth in a fairly tight, localized pattern squarely upon the unlucky communities of Gibsonton and Apollo Beach. This fallout pattern of just over 20 miles or so settled over the three major south-bound escape routes out of Tampa. The city of Gulfport was not swept bare by the tidal wave from MacDill, nor was it blasted by the tremendous overpressure, or ignited by the thermal pulse. There were 7300 heart attacks in this community in the 24 hours immediately following the destruction of Tampa. That figure might have seemed abnormally high unless it is coupled with the average age of the typical Gulfport resident: 87 for men, 92 for women. The sick and dying from Tampa immediately overwhelmed the medical and sanitation facilities of nearby Sarasota.

Gibsonton and Apollo Beach, Florida were unlucky enough to share the fallout pattern from the MacDill AFB strike. The ill wind from the glowing fireball above MacDill carried the mass of the fallout the brief distance across Cockroach Bay before a heavy seasonal downpour washed the bulk of it from the skies above Apollo Beach and Gibsonton. The result was a three-by-15 mile wide swath of radioactive ash that blanketed the main southeasterly evacuation routes from Tampa. The initial rad count was not quite a killing dose, but everyone who drove through it was sick by the time they reached Brandenton or Sarasota. Thanks to a heroic effort by the local civil defense personnel, almost 99 percent of the vehicles that suffered contamination (unofficially, those that were lucky enough to start after the EMP attack of the prior day) were successfully quarantined at the Manatee-Sarasota County line. Some few, however, never made it out of the fallout zone due to lack of gas (no electrical gas pump was working following the EMP) or mechanical breakdown. A statistically insignificant number of other vehicles successfully evaded the sheriffs' roadblocks to spread their slow poison to other parts of the state.

The communities of Palmetto and Bradenton missed the worst of the overpressure tidal wave from the MacDill blast, but they received, instead, the full weight of the dead and dying from the fallout that blanketed those three southeastern routes. The civil defense effort in Gibsonton and Apollo Beach tagged contaminated cars as they passed through. The Manatee and Sarasota County Sheriff's Departments got the "hot" cars into a quarantine site and assisted the medical evacuation of survivors. Efforts to halt the exodus of contaminated people and vehicles south from Tampa led to the establishment of a temporary twenty-acre automobile park on the Manatee-Sarasota County line off of Interstate 75 that gave a whole new meaning to the term "hot car parts."

In the immediate aftermath of the strikes millions of cars and trucks jammed the nation's highways, fleeing cities which, it was imagined, were due to be struck at any moment. A number of people had been stranded in the highway junction (and self-proclaimed “town of hotels) of Breezewood, Pennsylvania during the fateful Thanksgiving weekend. Unofficially, millions more would have been on the roads if they had been able to be started after the EMP strikes. Unfortunately, most cars built after 1978 had computer chips on board and electronic ignition, features which rendered them all but scrap metal.

SAC spent the day recovering from the prior day’s attacks and counter-attacks. The airborne bombers and tankers landed, mostly at their recovery and dispersal bases to minimize the number that could be taken out by further Soviet attacks on their primary bases. These several dozen bases were generally of two categories: former B-52 bases from the heyday of SAC’s bomber force in the 1950s (these bases’ runways were well able to handle the weight of the big bombers) and airports (that had sufficient runway strength) that had hosted US Air Force, Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard or other military air units in prewar days, most of which still retained at least a residual military presence and therefore a semi-secure facility and manpower that could be drafted into assisting in guarding the nuclear bombers.

The airborne command and control aircraft maintained their constant vigil, supported by a ferry operation of tankers. Those airborne during the attacks landed at their backup bases (Grissom Air Force Base for the Looking Glass, East Auxiliary Command Post and radio relay aircraft, Minot Air Force Base for the Airborne Launch Control Aircraft #2, Ellsworth Air Force Base for the West Auxiliary Command Post and ALCS #3, Rickenbacker, Ohio for the radio relay aircraft and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base for LANTCOM’s Scope Light command post) after their relief aircraft were on station. (The Navy’s TACAMO aircraft landed at Patuxent River, Maryland and Barbers Point, Hawaii). In Nebraska, the SAC backup ground command post emerged from its hide site in former munitions bunkers at the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant and within a few hours had established communications links and a skeleton staff while the acting commander of SAC travelled to the site after the conclusion of his Looking Glass tour.

In the post-strike United States only the military had an operating communications network. Military electronics had been designed to survive in an EMP environment and were heavily shielded. NORAD headquarters was back online shortly after midnight, and SAC’s missile and bomber bases retained multiple redundant communications links (airborne relay aircraft, hardened land lines, the GWEN radio network, satellite communications as well as various other secure radio nets). Some state emergency and civil defense networks began to stand up, as did FEMA’s more rudimentary but adequate network of systems. A final communications network was composed of amateur radio operators, who had a long history of supporting in the aftermath of disasters. Finally, for a select few civilians, another reliable source of information was available - foreign short-wave radio broadcasts. These broadcasters were in the dark as to conditions in the many nations that had been struck, but were at least able to relay news that entire nations were “offline”.

Overseas, US military commanders received word of the strikes on the U.S. through the military signals network. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Jonathan Cummings, secure at the Alternative National Military Command Post at Raven Rock, Pennsylvania (the warhead aimed at Site R malfunctioned), relayed that in the absence of further orders otherwise that American forces in the field were to continue their operations, continuing to take care to minimize the chance of becoming a target of Soviet nuclear attacks, to monitor and be proactive about the morale of troops whose families may have been effected by the strikes, and to render all available assistance to SAC aircraft that may enter their area of operations following attacks on the USSR.

The crew of the Freedom-class ship Kansas Freedom completes unloading over 1000 containers of supplies in Diego Garcia in the remote Indian Ocean and begins preparations for departure.

The Soviet 234th Rear Area Protection Division arrives in Jugoslavia after a fraught transit from Romania, in which it lost several dozen troops to partisan ambushes as it travelled through small towns and villages in the Danube Valley.
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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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