An Alternative Survivor's Guide to the United Kingdom

[RN7]

Good work Rainbow Six

[RN7]

Hi Rainbow Six, had a good read through your articles. Good as always. Some ideas.

Timeline / Regional Guide
Nuclear Power Stations
Bradwell (East of England)
Chappelcross (Scotland)
Dungeness (South East England)
Hartlepool (North East England)
Heysham (North West England)
Sizewell (North West England)
Oil Refineries & Oil Storage Facilities
Hertfordshire (East of England)
Sullom Voe (Scotland)
Teeside (North East England)
Nuclear Facilities
Burghfield (South East England)
Capenhurst (North West England)
Chilton (South East England)
Culham (South East England)
Harwell (South East England)
Sellafield (North West England)
Winfrith (South West England)

All of these are likely to have survived intact as they were not targeted in the nuclear strikes on Britain. Nuclear power stations even partially operating would provide a lot of electricity by post-war standards.

Teeside Oil Refinery in the North East is fairly close to the North Sea oil rigs of which some are likely to be still operating. Its also just across the sea from the German North Sea ports and the BAOR. Fuel for shipping could bring a lot of British troops and heavy equipment back to Britain and consolidate HMG control of the North East and Scottish borderland fairly quickly.

Also in your version Birmingham survived, so some of the British car factories in the area might still be usefull. MG Rover at Longbridge, Land Rover and Jaguar at Solihull and Castle Bromwich, also Oxford, Goodwood and Sunderland are surviving automobile centres.

His Majesty's Forces

I'm assuming that in your version none of the BAOR divisions or component unit have been transferred back to England yet. Some RAF aircraft and maybe some other NATO aircraft could be held in storage on the isolated and relatively safe Orkney and Shetland Islands. Also I'd be certain that more than one RN nuclear attack submarine survived the war, although the others may not be based in British waters. Also its possible that at least one of the Vanguard SSBN's survived, maybe with a few missiles a well, as their area of operations in the North Atlantic south west of the GIUK gap would have been extremely hazardous for any sustained Soviet ASW effort. I also like the idea of one of the carriers surviving the war, HMS Ark Royal at Portsmouth. Others have also suggested the USS Theodore Roosevelt is also at Portsmouth with the British trying to find some nuclear fuel for her reactors.

The Security Services

MOD Police and Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary.

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by RN7

Hi Rainbow Six, had a good read through your articles. Good as always. Some ideas.

Cheers, RN7 - appreciate the feedback.

Originally Posted by RN7

Timeline / Regional Guide
Nuclear Power Stations
Bradwell (East of England)
Chappelcross (Scotland)
Dungeness (South East England)
Hartlepool (North East England)
Heysham (North West England)
Sizewell (North West England)
Oil Refineries & Oil Storage Facilities
Hertfordshire (East of England)
Sullom Voe (Scotland)
Teeside (North East England)
Nuclear Facilities
Burghfield (South East England)
Capenhurst (North West England)
Chilton (South East England)
Culham (South East England)
Harwell (South East England)
Sellafield (North West England)
Winfrith (South West England)

All of these are likely to have survived intact as they were not targeted in the nuclear strikes on Britain. Nuclear power stations even partially operating would provide a lot of electricity by post-war standards.

Teeside Oil Refinery in the North East is fairly close to the North Sea oil rigs of which some are likely to be still operating. Its also just across the sea from the German North Sea ports and the BAOR. Fuel for shipping could bring a lot of British troops and heavy equipment back to Britain and consolidate HMG control of the North East and Scottish borderland fairly quickly.

Also in your version Birmingham survived, so some of the British car factories in the area might still be usefull. MG Rover at Longbridge, Land Rover and Jaguar at Solihull and Castle Bromwich, also Oxford, Goodwood and Sunderland are surviving automobile centres.

Good points - in my opinion the North East escaped the nuclear attacks relatively unscathed (although we don't know whether the area may have suffered heavily from conventional attack), and I have tried to reference that in the narrative where it mentions that under certain circumstances the North East could have the capability to rival HMG - what is lacking is a leader that can bring the region together (my vision for the area has several different leaders competing against each other, with each focused on his own fiefdom). Potentially they even have a highly effective army if they manage to win over the garrison at Catterick, whilst several of the facilities in the north west would be no doubt be attractive to North Preston Front even if, as you say, only partially operational.

As a bit of background here, when I started writing the Regional Guide (indeed when I first started this project a good number of years ago) my original intention was to go into a substantial level of detail on each region, that would have resulted in a Regional Guide that by itself would probably have stretched to a hundred pages. Unfortunately, I now have to be realistic and accept that I'm not a full time writer, and work and other commitments mean that I would never, ever have been able to see such a thing through to completion., so I've had to compromise...hence the "edited" version, which tries to condense each region into one - two pages...(oddly enough, though I live in Scotland, that section turned out to be one of the shorter ones!). I will take your suggestions on board, particularly the nuclear facilities, and will attempt to work the status of each into the text (even those away from nuclear targets may be non operational for various reasons), probably by way of adding them into the introduction to each region...

That's a good point about the car factories, although my vision of Birmingham is of somewhere that became very lawless very quickly after the nuclear exchanges, so a great many facilities that weren't attacked by Soviet missiles may have been burnt out or otherwise rendered useless by looters...Birmingham is not a good place to be in my T2K World...(BTW the sparing of Birmingham was intended to provide a non nuked urban location that could provide Armies of the Night type adventures, whereas London or Manchester both provide nuked urban locations). Again, the presence of the factory in Sunderland goes towards the North East's emergence as a regional power.

Originally Posted by RN7

His Majesty's Forces

I'm assuming that in your version none of the BAOR divisions or component unit have been transferred back to England yet. Some RAF aircraft and maybe some other NATO aircraft could be held in storage on the isolated and relatively safe Orkney and Shetland Islands. Also I'd be certain that more than one RN nuclear attack submarine survived the war, although the others may not be based in British waters. Also its possible that at least one of the Vanguard SSBN's survived, maybe with a few missiles a well, as their area of operations in the North Atlantic south west of the GIUK gap would have been extremely hazardous for any sustained Soviet ASW effort. I also like the idea of one of the carriers surviving the war, HMS Ark Royal at Portsmouth. Others have also suggested the USS Theodore Roosevelt is also at Portsmouth with the British trying to find some nuclear fuel for her reactors.

Yes, with the notable exception of 2 PARA, I've deliberately avoided having the BAOR brought back from Germany. The reason for that quite simply is that I personally think that the moment the BAOR gets back to the UK the game is effectively up for all of the various marauder and separatist groups - it may take some time, probably years, but ultimately the Army will be able to bring the country back under control (one has to consider here the relatively small size of the UK and the overwhelming firepower advantage the troops will have, particularly as unlike the Americans all references to the BAOR coming home suggest they will bring their AFV's and other heavy equipment with them).

Personally I didn't find the prospect of a UK under effective military control to be such an appealing option to write material for...I prefer the idea of the Government's control being relatively tenuous as I think that creates more interesting campaign opportunities (that was also the reason I "backdated" events to the 01st of June 2000).

I completely agree with you about the submarines, and in the text section on the Royal Navy have attempted to write it in such a way that anyone using the material has the option to include more subs (HMG claiming that it has an SSBN, etc)...to be honest part of the challenge lay in the fact that whilst the work is absolutely non canonical in regards to events in the UK, I didn't want to introduce anything that might be a major game changer in regards to the canon history of the War itself (if that makes sense - changing the name of the British PM from Underhill (iirc) to Montgomery has no direct affect on the Battle of Kalisz (for example); I think in the end the biggest deviation from canon is probably my interpretation of events on the island of Ireland). Whilst I do like the idea of having Ark Royal tied up alongside at Portsmouth in a really bad way I think the existence of a Carrier also falls under that general category.

Certainly I envisage the Hong Kong Squadron still having an operational sub, and I've also said in the past that I'm keen on the idea of a sub prowling the South Atlantic to deter any aggressive moves against the Falklands (although both of those would lie outside the scope of this piece).

With regards to aircraft, again I wanted to try and keep a balance of sorts, but would think it's certainly reasonable to assume that there are other operational aircraft at various locations...I've intentionally only listed those that are still under HMG's command, even if those in Yorkshire and Scotland are effectively grounded...I'll cover Honnington and Coltishall in more detail in a separate piece on the East Anglian enclave, but I think Conningsby (for example) would still have a very limited number of operational interceptors (albeit again grounded through lack of fuel).

Originally Posted by RN7

The Security Services

MOD Police and Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary.

Very good point - whilst I envisage that the majority of civilian police (I'm including these two forces in that category) will have been taken under military command in southern England, I will look into it further for other areas where they would make an interesting lawful or unlawful group.


Again, appreciate the feedback - any questions / comments, just fire away!

Cheers

[RN7]

Fair enough.

[Matt W]

And let's not forget Dorset!

You could get a pretty good campaign just fromm the following

the oil in Dorset

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wytch_Farm

or the Steam Engines in Dorset

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swanage_Railway

or RM Poole
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Marines_Poole

or the Defence Petroleum Centre (just outside West Moors, Dorset)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Moors

I would suspect that some of the units which used to support His Majesty's Royal Marines, (and the SBS) may have been moved from nearby RM Poole to garrison Wytch Farm. Alternatively, the Marines at the training base at Lympstone Commando (South of Exeter) could have simply relocated

Or these people ((Last one, I promise)
http://preservedtanks.com/Locations....ategoryId=3035

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by Matt W

And let's not forget Dorset!

You could get a pretty good campaign just fromm the following

the oil in Dorset

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wytch_Farm

or the Steam Engines in Dorset

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swanage_Railway

or RM Poole
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Marines_Poole

or the Defence Petroleum Centre (just outside West Moors, Dorset)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Moors

I would suspect that some of the units which used to support His Majesty's Royal Marines, (and the SBS) may have been moved from nearby RM Poole to garrison Wytch Farm. Alternatively, the Marines at the training base at Lympstone Commando (South of Exeter) could have simply relocated

Or these people ((Last one, I promise)
http://preservedtanks.com/Locations....ategoryId=3035

Yep, I used Wytch Farm as HMG's primary source of oil on the basis that I think it would be a hecukva lot easier using onshore fields than offshore, with securty coming from a detachment of Royal Marines from the Commachio Group, who have been reinforced by personnel from Lympstone. Given the vital national importance of Wytch farm I also threw in an RAF Regiment Air Defence Squadron to protect against any (admittedly unlikely) air attack. I figure that plus garrisons at Bovington and Blandford Forum ensure Wytch Farm is secure.

I didn't know about the Petroleum Centre. Cheers for that - that's good to know...it would make a good HQ for 9 Supply Regt, RLC and also fits in nicely with the idea of the oil coming from Wytch Farm...if my understanding of the process is correct in the absence of a refinery, dirty but usable fuel can be produced by boiling crude, which would then go to West Moors for distribution...

[Matt W]

There's a good summary of Wytch Farm (and other fields) on this site
http://www.bpnsi.com/index.asp?id=73...2669643D313531

I didn't know about the Wareham oilfield. Presumably that is also going to be garrisoned.

Also. the fact that Wytch farm produces a lot of methane (natural gas) could be useful. I'd suggest that HMG would be looking to use this asset

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

I didn't know about the Petroleum Centre. Cheers for that - that's good to know...it would make a good HQ for 9 Supply Regt, RLC and also fits in nicely with the idea of the oil coming from Wytch Farm...if my understanding of the process is correct in the absence of a refinery, dirty but usable fuel can be produced by boiling crude, which would then go to West Moors for distribution...

Here's a video about "homemade" diesel in Nigeria. It does show the technique to be a pretty simple distillation process. I'm sure the scientists/engineers at Winfrith could develop something better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXeTw11fVpU