On this day 25 years ago

[chico20854]

April 30, 1998

The American counteroffensive in Alaska has severed the Soviet's main supply route across the Bering Strait. The Soviet units are forced to live off the land and many have to break up to survive.

The first major outbreak of bubonic plague occurs in San Francisco.

In Cameroon, the Limbe oil refinery is forced to shut down when the facility's reboiler fails due to fatigue. It is the nation's sole source of refined petroleum following the collapse of seaborne imports.

Unofficially,

At a "Cabinet" meeting (nearly all of the pre-war Cabinet is dead, and nearly every department is represented by some junior official acting far above their pay grade and expertise) President Munson is presented with a report on the status of the American economy at the end of the first quarter of the year. It is impossible to even semi-accurately enumerate the state of the economy, with entire sectors (finance and insurance, most manufacturing, energy and mining) almost entirely shut down and millions not only unemployed but dead from Soviet nuclear strikes, famine, disease or civil unrest. The sliver of good news is that there are islands of stability and order from which modest reconstruction efforts are starting, and, the (Acting) CIA Director gleefully reports, conditions in the USSR are, by all reports, much worse, indicating that it is appearing increasingly as if the US has prevailed in the nuclear war. Munson, reeling from news of the horror he has just received, flies into a rage and has to be physically restrained from attacking the CIA man.

In an unusual occurrence, a F-15 of the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing is intercepted by a Soviet fighter, a MiG-23 of the 841st Guards Fighter Regiment, over the front lines south of Dezful. The American aircraft has only three missiles aboard and the Soviet one has two, and a short engagement results in the loss of the Soviet bird.

CIA agent David Hudson has covered nearly 50 km on foot since escaping the collective farm northeast of Moscow three nights ago, but has come to the realization that there is no way he will escape the USSR at such a pace. On the other hand, an exfiltration by the CIA clearly isn't going to occur, so he needs to find another way to escape the massive enemy nation.