On this day 25 years ago

[chico20854]

December 1, 1997

Officially, President Munson flew back east (unofficially aboard a E-4B of the 1st Airborne Command and Control Squadron) to the Special Facility at Mount Weather where a skeleton staff of the various category A agencies and FEMA personnel were on duty. Almost no members of Congress were present, and no legislative business could be conducted, but FEP-D permitted a number of emergency procedures to be undertaken. Communication was next to impossible since the effects of nuclear EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) proved much greater than predicted, and most of the supposedly shielded electronic circuitry was fried during the initial attacks.

A radio report was received at the SAC backup command post (which was preparing to displace to Naval Ammunition Depot Hastings, lest a Soviet snooper satellite detect its radio transmissions) from North Dakota that the air police garrisons at Minot and Grand Forks Air Force Bases remained intact and in control of the bases’ stock of warheads, with a number of the missiles operable. (The Soviet attacks struck the main base area, not the dozens of missile silos dispersed over many miles of prairie.)

In Maryland, Roger Caldwell, an assistant undersecretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, arrived in the state capital. He had avoided the riots in Baltimore and was able to travel to Annapolis where he rejoined a number of former government officials who had survived the Washington holocaust. The civilian population of Frederick dispersed following the strikes on Fort Dietrich and Camp David, virtually abandoning the city to its craters and radiation.

Not far from Mount Weather, and contrary to the situation there, radio waves cleared enough for radio contact with Carl Hughes to be reestablished; New America leader Carl Hughes found himself dealing with the only female head of a New America cell in the country in St. Petersburg, Florida.

With plenty of national defense industry plants that made the city of Clearwater, Florida seem like a target for further bombing, the inhabitants panicked and fled to the countryside. The exodus was joined by an estimated 4500 residents of the nearby town of Gulfport.

Unofficially, streams of survivors streamed out of Las Vegas as food, water, fuel and electricity grew scarce.

Officially, when news of the nuclear strikes against Washington, DC and the other areas broke in New England, fear of nuclear holocaust resurfaced. Widespread rioting in the metropolitan areas of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts taxed both the civilian and military police. Much of the factory facilities which supported the sub base in Groton and New London were destroyed in the riots and civil disorder. Much of Providence was ravaged by the disorder -fires gutted many of the large buildings in the downtown area.

Unofficially, across the nation, defense industry workers reported back to work. In many cases many of their co-workers had fled, and managers (and the military’s on-site contracting representatives) tried to figure out how to resume production after the damage wreaked by EMP and the loss of electrical power. Many sites had been fitted with emergency backup generators, but even in these cases the backups were inadequate to resume full production. An exception, however, were the many shipyards what ringed the nation’s coasts. The ships under construction, in many cases, had on-board generators and landside connections, originally intended to power the ships in port. Shipyard managers were, in several cases, quickly able to start the generators aboard the vessels under construction (which had largely escaped damage from EMP, being disconnected from power mains and installed in a large steel box of an engine room) and resume work on board and ashore.

Officially, a low-power AM radio station located somewhere in the heart of Central Florida came on the air. Calling itself the "Voice of the Lord," this apparently authoritative, allegedly fundamentalist Christian radio station began churning out the wildest and most criminally irresponsible propaganda imaginable. The criminally and deliberately misinforming Voice of the Lord did more to create and spread the senseless pain and suffering than the combined death count attributed to the entire bombardment of Florida. With no authoritative counter-voice to challenge the genocidal recommendation and advice from this allegedly Christian fundamentalist radio station, it deliberately and maliciously spread the notions that radiation sickness and the once-dreaded AIDS were one and the same and that the persons exposed to radiation in the attacks (particularly the one in Tampa) were now somehow "carriers" of lethal radiation that could be indiscriminately spread from one person to another in a manner identical to that of AIDS. The broadcaster went on to suggest that the radioactive sign of the city-dwelling, godless, immoral fathers would be visited upon their sons and daughters (and all who sheltered them or even breathed the same air) for the next seven generations. It was heavy stuff, laid on with all the skill, subtlety, and salesmanship of a true genius in the science of propaganda. The immediate effects of the attack, even in the countryside, had been traumatic enough

Nuclear mushrooms sprouted over Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and at Marcus Hook, a few kilometers down the Delaware River. The cities of Chester, Marcus Hook, Philadelphia, and many others were devastated by nuclear attacks on the refineries that dotted the southern reaches of the Delaware River. The strike on the Delaware City refinery in adjacent Delaware only wiped out one percent of the total US refining capacity, but it was just one of many strikes in the region of the lower Delaware River. Its contribution to the devastation was enough, however, to cause the northern half of Delaware to become almost completely deserted within days.

Unofficially, also struck in the attacks was the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where the carrier USS Saratoga was in drydock being repaired after being struck by a Soviet cruise missile. Also lost in the strike were the destroyer USS Dahlgren, the stores ship USS Sylvania and the amphibious assault ship USS Portland. The blast and subsequent firestorm raged across the city of Philadelphia; wide boulevards and green areas, designed in the 19th Century to prevent the spread of fires, were no match for the 100-plus mile per hour winds that fed the massive fires. Officially, radiation, fire, blast, and the resulting civil unrest killed or severely injured millions. The eccentric rockstar Ted Hendrix was killed in the attacks.

The Soviets launched a series of attacks on Southern California, firing five missiles from the Delta I-class K-477, which was sheltering under ice in the Sea of Oshkosh. The relatively inaccurate missiles made up for it with 800-kiloton warheads, which tore the city of Los Angeles apart. Three missiles were directed at the refineries in Los Angeles, igniting massive fires at the El Segundo, Long Beach, Wilmington, Torrance and Carson refineries and taking out over 1.25 million barrels of daily refining capacity. March Air Force Base, California was struck by two missiles, knocking out the headquarters of SAC’s 15th Air Force and a number of KC-10 tankers of the 22nd Air Refueling Wing.

Officially, the Norwegian naval bases at Horten, Haakonsvern, Ramsund, and Olavsvern came under attack, being destroyed or severely damaged. The inhabitants of the city of Kristiansund had largely dispersed into the surrounding coastal villages, and more left after that, fearing they would become a target. Even more of the populace left in the chaos and economic dislocation that followed.

Unofficially, Strategic Air Command started the month by exploiting the large gap in the Soviet air defense network it had created over the weekend. For the first time a B-52 flew its second nuclear sortie, when a BUFF from the 26th Bombardment Squadron fired a salvo of ALCMs at the Teykovo ICBM field; other aircraft from the 5th Bomb Wing fired a series of cruise missiles at the nearby Kostroma ICBM complex. Like the prior day’s strikes at the Dombarovskiy ICBM sites, the missiles targeted regimental launch control centers with ground bursts; the highly accurate cruise missiles were very effective in taking out the buried facilities.

Officially, in Africa an all-out attack by US and Kenyan forces, heavily supported by a small force of bombers attacking out of Diego Garcia, defeated the Tanzanian forces near Mombasa, driving what was left of them back into Tanzania. The bombers landed at Kenyan air bases near Nairobi instead of returning to Diego Garcia as the US began to disperse it forces to avoid having them be destroyed in a single attack. In the north the Somalis, under constant attack by US Rangers and Special Forces aided by US and Kenyan attack helicopters, began to withdraw towards Somalia, devastating the area as they leave. The Dar es Salaam refinery in Tanzania was destroyed by cruise missiles from USS Louisville, cutting off local oil production and leaving Tanzania dependent on oil from the Ndola refinery in Zambia to keep its tanks and armored vehicles running. Much of their remaining anti-aircraft weaponry was assigned to protect their fuel supplies and the pipeline from Zambia.

Unofficially,

The war in Europe dragged on as well. Logistically, NATO forces in Germany were somewhat adequately supplied thanks to the dozens of fully loaded ships waiting n he North Sea for berths in the few operable Dutch, German and Danish ports. Morale among soldiers dropped precipitously, however, as each man and woman wondered and worried about their friends and family back home. Soldiers (and most commanders with less than two stars on their shoulders) were unaware of the specifics of the attacks back home, just that America had been struck, with all details of where and when still highly classified (as was the fact that President Tanner and Vice President Pemberton were dead and that Speaker Munson had been sworn in as President of the United States).

On the other side of the lines, however, things were falling apart rather quickly. The destruction of the Red Army’s higher command levels paralyzed operations, while the attacks on Moscow caused the central coordination of production and transportation of supplies and replacements to the front to come to a screeching halt. Absent orders from Moscow, even Front commanders were reluctant to order the movement of even a single battalion. What supplies were en route to the front trickled in gradually as dedicated individuals doggedly pushed their way westward.

Nonetheless, SACEUR ordered a withdrawal of most of the remaining NATO bridgeheads in Poland, leaving only the US Marine garrison opposite Szczecin at the mouth of the Oder in place. The withdrawal

In Belize the final members of the Guatemalan marine force in southern Belize were rounded up by Belizian soldiers as they tried to make their way back home on foot. To the northwest, the British-Belizian combined force launched an assault on the Guatemalan force that had been stalled some ten miles inside the border for weeks. A platoon of British troops, led by cadre from the British Army’s jungle warfare training school, set up a blocking position in the remnants of the prewar border crossing station, completely cutting off the Guatemalan force from what few supplies that had been receiving (while simultaneously ensuring that they had more than enough food, fuel and ammunition!)