The Big One

[technomage]

Collecting all of these essays would be good. I'm learning a lot of intersting things, though hopefully I'll never have any need for it.

[Sea Skimmer]

Situations maps have been posted for High Frontier Parts Eleven through Fourteen. They don't really reveal the finnal outcome though, for those whom might be afraid of spoilers.

link

[Col. Crackpot]

Situations maps have been posted for High Frontier Parts Eleven through Fourteen. They don't really reveal the finnal outcome though, for those whom might be afraid of spoilers.

link

Jesus.... the Korea Division is screwed.

[MKSheppard]

Are there any plans to return to Germany at a point in the TBOverse?

And I finally realized why the Ruhr is still uninhabitable; because it was such
a wide dense sprawl of industry, that dozens upon dozens of devices
were required to interlock in a pattern that would destroy most of the
Ruhr cities; they all blend into one another, and these interlocking initations
would create a lot of fallout; BTW, how did we discover that devices next
to each other would create lots of fallout where they touched?

EDIT:

I just played a "Call of Duty United Offensive" map set in the Ruhr, and it
was very hilly and moutainous. Which means that when the first rainfall after
post initation came, all of the fission byproducts would be washed down
into the valley floors of the Ruhr making them intensely hot.

[Stuart]

Are there any plans to return to Germany at a point in the TBOverse?

One story coming shortly "The Patron of the Arts". This will be a companion piece to "Blocking Action" and also set in 1949. It deals with Goering's managment of the German Surrender in 1947, the problems that resulted and the foundation of a European art center at Karinhall.

And I finally realized why the Ruhr is still uninhabitable; because it was such a wide dense sprawl of industry, that dozens upon dozens of devices were required to interlock in a pattern that would destroy most of the Ruhr cities; they all blend into one another, and these interlocking initations would create a lot of fallout; BTW, how did we discover that devices next to each other would create lots of fallout where they touched?

It's not so much that lots of fallout is created when nuclear initiations interlock (in fact the amount of fallout is, in quantitative terms, directly proportional to the number of devices initiated). For some reason not completely understood, where effect patterns intersect, there appears to be a tendancy to form particularly nasty and dangerous hot-spots along the intersection lines. These initiations need not be close together in time terms, a few months seperation will still show the effect although it declines steeply with time. The effect has been seen in Nevada and at Bikini Atoll. This was a significant reason why tests went underground. Its also why the Nevada test site isn't open to the public (yet). It is posisble for civilians to get onto it but it takes some organization.

I just played a "Call of Duty United Offensive" map set in the Ruhr, and it was very hilly and moutainous. Which means that when the first rainfall after post initation came, all of the fission byproducts would be washed down into the valley floors of the Ruhr making them intensely hot.

Then they get into the river, that contaminates the North Sea. Bye-bye herring fisheries for many years - and adds to the problem of The Great Famine.

[buzz_knox]

For some reason not completely understood, where effect patterns intersect, there appears to be a tendancy to form particularly nasty and dangerous hot-spots along the intersection lines. These initiations need not be close together in time terms, a few months seperation will still show the effect although it declines steeply with time. The effect has been seen in Nevada and at Bikini Atoll. This was a significant reason why tests went underground.

Even if it's not completely understood, are there any theories as to the reason?

[Stuart]

Even if it's not completely understood, are there any theories as to the reason?

There's quite a number of theories that offer some insight. Mostly they have to do with the way a second and subsequent initiation affects the radioactive decay chains from the fission products of earlier ones - resulting in the product profile being different. The problem is that there are factors in reality that aren't accommodated in any of the "explanations" that I've heard of and we don't really have a large enough database to work from. A caveat though, I suspect there are classified PhDs on the subject that I know not of. It may well be that somebody in that world has solved the problem in the years since I ceased to be a part of it. From the point of view of somebody handling a nuclear laydown, however we get there, its an unpredictable outcome which makes it peculiarly dangerous.

[MKSheppard]

One story coming shortly "The Patron of the Arts". This will be a companion piece to "Blocking Action" and also set in 1949. It deals with Goering's managment of the German Surrender in 1947, the problems that resulted and the foundation of a European art center at Karinhall.

Hmm, will Exchange 500 be in the story? I was re-reading THE LAST BATTLE
by Cornelius Ryan and it goes:

The largest of these subterranean installations
was "Exchange 500" --the biggest telephone, teletype and military radio
communications exchange in Germany. It was completely self-contained,
with its own air conditioning (including a special filtration system
against enemy gas attacks), water supply, kitchens and living quarters.
It was almost seventy feet beneath the surface--the equivalent of a
seven-story building below ground.

Exchange 500 was the only facility shared by OKH and OKW. Besides
connecting all the distant senior military, naval and Luftwaffe commands
with the two headquarters and Berlin, it was the main exchange for the
Reich government and its various administrative bodies.

Completed in 1939 in @, and it sounds like a place that could ride out
a nuclear attack, unless of course, it was a target for a groundburst.

It was part of the Maybach I and II complex in Zossen, just south of Berlin.

[Mopeyennuui]

Where is the irriated cities?

You mean "Where are the irradiated cities?" That state describes the fate of the majority of German cities. Some of them received groundbursts and will not be inhabitable for a very long time.

Where are the fallout mutants? Marvelverse mutants?

Fallout mutants are the result of FEV. Ghouls are those who were mutated by background radiation into their present form. Marvelverse mutants are unexplainable. However, as speaker-to-trolls noted, such effects as those in the Fallout and Marvel universes do not occur because of high background radiation.

Damn.. would be fun. What of the rivers hit? Futurerama-style mutants at least? pleasse?

(See, this is why I inpart lothe historical fiction. Nothign fun and nothing too extreme. Damn. That and the history channel's blathering about WWII. . . . and too many WWII games. . .)

[Stuart]

Hmm, will Exchange 500 be in the story? I was re-reading THE LAST BATTLE by Cornelius Ryan and it goes:

The largest of these subterranean installations
was "Exchange 500" --the biggest telephone, teletype and military radio
communications exchange in Germany. It was completely self-contained,
with its own air conditioning (including a special filtration system
against enemy gas attacks), water supply, kitchens and living quarters.
It was almost seventy feet beneath the surface--the equivalent of a
seven-story building below ground.

Exchange 500 was the only facility shared by OKH and OKW. Besides
connecting all the distant senior military, naval and Luftwaffe commands
with the two headquarters and Berlin, it was the main exchange for the
Reich government and its various administrative bodies.

Completed in 1939 in @, and it sounds like a place that could ride out
a nuclear attack, unless of course, it was a target for a groundburst.

It was part of the Maybach I and II complex in Zossen, just south of Berlin.

In TBO its become the central communications point of NAIADS in addition to its other roles. It survives and Sunni Brucke uses it to get through to President Dewey. By the way, I've actually found some photographs of Karinhall, the place was GROTESQUE

[Col. Crackpot]

Damn.. would be fun. What of the rivers hit? Futurerama-style mutants at least? pleasse?

(See, this is why I inpart lothe historical fiction. Nothign fun and nothing too extreme. Damn. That and the history channel's blathering about WWII. . . . and too many WWII games. . .)

Goddess, this isn't a fantasy/superhero story. If the elements you suggest were to be worked into the story, the storyline Stuart has so painstakingly created would be changed for the worst. If you think this is so goddamn boring, don't read it!

[Stuart]

Damn.. would be fun.

I hate to be humorless on this but I can assure you, nothing that happens when one drops a nuclear device on a community is remotely fun. I work with the effects of those things professionally and they are about as close to hell on earth as its possible to get. That's why its worth spending huge sums of money to ensure as few of them as possible get through. My line of business has something in common with psychiatry - befroe a psychiatrist can practice, they have to be pshrunk themselves. In my business, the "graduation exercise" for targeteering is the candidate is required to targeteer a strike on his own home town. It puts things into context.

What of the rivers hit?

All very heavily polluted by radioactive and toxic products from the initiations. The Rhine is little more than a radioactive sewer that is pretty much devoid of life. What's worse, it will stay that way for a very long time. The problem is that the rivers act as a collection point for the pollution generated by the initiation of some many nuclear devices and it seeps into the mud under the river and sticks there. The North Sea is also very heavily polluted as a result. Also, the ground water has been heavily contaminated and is also suspect. As a result, fresh, safe water is hard to come by in what's left of Germany - its literally worth its weight in gold. That's another reason for The Great Famine of 1948-1950, contaminated water wrecks crops.

Futurerama-style mutants at least? please?

I never watched Futurama - I don't like cartoons in general (even Tom and Jerry leaves me cold and I think The Simpsons is ridiculous). However, mutations aren't really a problem. Most "mutations" will simply result on the victims being spontaneously aborted , others will just be cancerous masses of tissue. The "mutations" that survive tend to be fairly minor and occur anyway (extra fingers and toes is the most common). Again, most (overwhelming majority) of mutations are seriously negative in that they make the victim non-viable. In an environment where medical treatment has gone (most hospitals are close to city centers and, in the German laydowns, were directly underneath Ground Zero), victims that require anthing more than elementary treatment simply don't survive. In short, the mutation problem is really just a contributor to the death toll. It isn't of any real significance.

See, this is why I in part loathe historical fiction. Nothing fun and nothing too extreme.

I would hardly call erasing 80 percent of the population of a modern industrial country "not to extreme". The point of TBO and its sequels was to take a realistic look at what a nuclear strike on Germany would have been like and what its consequences woul have been. There were several reasons why I wrote it.

One was a reaction against the "Erwin Rommel and Nazi Uberweapons Rule" school of alternate history. This posits that a articular superweapon or group of superweapons in German hands leads the Nazis to victory. TBO looks at what German weapons were likely to be around by 1947, compares them to what the US was likely to have and then illustrates the result. A nuclear sledgehammer obliterates Germany. People go on for ever about wonderful German aircraft etc but the truth is that nothing they had on the drawing board that could be in service within a realistic timeframe could stop a B-36. It took ten years of intensive effort by the US and Russia (both of whom knew what a B-36 could and could not do) to devise such a defense.

Another was a reaction against the "glorious dawn" alt-hist. You know the thing. If only X had done Y, then paradise would result. Life doesn't work that way. The conclusions to the TBO stories are all messy and ambiguous. Some problems get solved, usually the solutions create worse ones.

However, the major reason why I wrote TBO was a very strong desire to show people what the results of a nuclear attack were likely to be. In recent years, certain terminally bewildered people have been calling for the return of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) as US policy rather than investing in missile defense. Now, that's absurd on its face because MAD was NEVER US government policy (the term was devised to explain the result of certain policies). US policy was to maintain a secure and effective deterrent against nuclear attack. What the Deterrence policy lacked was a fall-back. As my mentor in these things used to ask "What Happens When Deterrence Fails" (Herman could speak in capitals).

However, its very clear that people, especially those who oppose building defenses against nuclear attack, do not understand is what a nuclear attack will probably be like , what it will do and how appalling the consequences are likely to become. (On another board, I had to deal with a 16 year old who believed nuclear attacks were nothing to worry about since people could get power by putting their cars up on blocks and running the engines. Its got worse in recent years because people think they can do a google on a subject, find a few quotes or out-of-context documents and think they constitute an argument. Unfortunately, in addition to finding and reproducing documents, its necessary to understand what they are saying and why. That takes expertise. For example, a lot of material comes from budget debates and doesn't represent a technical argument to the informed but a pitch by one set of advocates to get money from legislators with no specific expertise ina subject at the expense of other advocates. Others represent Aunt Sally arguments. Posit a possible (perhaps not even plausible) technical problem, see what the results are when the experts get to work on it and what we can learn from the replies. I actually worked on one like that - somebody "suggested" spinning the missiles. That was actually from Martin Corp - who had actually designed an ICBM. They knew it coudln't be done - but we looked at what it would involve and how it would work and we learned a lot about how futile even trying would be).

TBO was written to show what "Assured Destruction" actually involves. That is why TBO is so terribly relentless - the destruction of Germany is assured from the moment the first B-36 lifts off. That is also why the description of the destruction of Germany is so graphic. That's why the barmaid Hilda was burned alive - I deliberately created a warm, sympathetic and likable character and then gave her a horrible agonizing death - one that almost 60 million Germans would share. There's a escalating sequence - one person dies dreadfully, then a whole town, then a whole country - and nothing anybody can do can stop it happening.

That's what "Assured Destruction" means.

[Mopeyennuui]

Damn.. would be fun. What of the rivers hit? Futurerama-style mutants at least? pleasse?

(See, this is why I inpart lothe historical fiction. Nothign fun and nothing too extreme. Damn. That and the history channel's blathering about WWII. . . . and too many WWII games. . .)

Goddess, this isn't a fantasy/superhero story. If the elements you suggest were to be worked into the story, the storyline Stuart has so painstakingly created would be changed for the worst. If you think this is so goddamn boring, don't read it!

I was bored. Can't you tell scarcasm for anything? It's slapping you in the face! *slaps Crackpot* Pay attention boy! Don't inturruot me when I'm talking! [/Foghorn]

Yeesh.

[Mopeyennuui]

[quote="Stuart"][/quote]

Again, I was using smilies. Read between the lines please

I'm tempted to do a spinoff fic of this and the cultureverse. Nah... *Wathes as TBO bombers find themselves inside a 1.1 Klick long shuttle bay.*

[phongn]

ZG, using emoticons and smiles is a poor way of expressing if you're trying to be sarcastic.

[Stuart]

Again, I was using smilies. Read between the lines please

Smilies aren't a get-out-of-jail free card. They don't excuse everything that one writes. And one of the things I do is spend weeks reading US Government documentation - so reading between the lines is something I do all the time. Be that as it may.

Regardless of the smilies and the intent behind your comments, they did, none the less, raise some quite serious issues so I did you the courtesy of treating them as serious comments on serious issues. Its almost sixty years now since the nuclear devices were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - those who can actually remember what was involved and what happened are getting old; in a couple of decades very few indeed will be left. That means, apart from the handful of us who did the serious studies on what nuclear weapons do to targets, there will be nobody who really understands what nuclear weapons are and what they do. I believe it is the responsibility of everybody who does work in The Business to try and help those outside to gain insights into the world we work in. That's why I post on websites.

In many ways people have reverted to a 1945 mindset. Back then, nobody understood that nuclear weapons are a fundamentally different type and class of weapon from conventional ones; a nuclear device is NOT a big bomb. In fact it's not a bomb at all which is why we call them devices. Also, they don't explode, they initiate. This is a point people forget when they discuss the decisions to use devices against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Back then, the fact that they were discussing the use of an entirely different class of weapon wasn't really understood. A single B-29 dropping a single nuclear device was just a more efficient version of a thousand B-29s dropping incendiaries. Most of the agonizing about the decision was post-fact, when it became apparent that we really had gone and done something unanticipated.

(A symptom of people not understanding the basic nature of nuclear weapons. One of the 1945 problems was that there was inadequate supplies of fissile for more than a handful of devices. One common question was "why don't we use half as much fissile and build twice as many". The idea of critical mass was known but not understood.)

People are getting back to that mindset now. Over the last couple of years, as the possibility of terrorists acquiring and using a nuclear device has gained a higher profile, people outside The Business discussing the implications of such an event have a tendancy to assume that a terrorist nuclear initiation will be just a larger version of the Oklahoma City bombing or the 9/11 attacks. It won't be, its an entirely different world. So, knowingly or not, when people make flippant remarks about "fall out mutants" et al, we tend to take them seriously and explore just what it is they are referring to and try to show what the real situation is likely to be.

The other alarming factor is that because people have lost sight of what nuclear weapons are and what they do to their targets, they tend not to understand theimportance of stopping them hitting their targets. To put this into context; you've probably been watching the coverage of the tsunami disaster in SE Asia and India. Now, imagine a single event where the death toll of that tsunami disaster is an order of magnitude higher and the victims are burned alive instead of drowned and the picture of what a nuclear intiation over a major population center would be like should be a little clearer.

So I hope you'll excuse me if I take apparently joking comments seriously. Please, try and think on what a nuclear war really means - and then, welcome to my world.

[Pastor Andy]

Amazing replies, Seer Stuart. They tend to make one think about things that were once said flippantly; perhaps now they shouldn't be said at all.

After reading your posts, I understand why the Seer and the Targeteers are described in such a, how can I say, "unique" fashion. Working in such a close proximity to death each day would affect any human being...

[MKSheppard]

In my business, the "graduation exercise" for targeteering is the candidate is required to targeteer a strike on his own home town. It puts things into context.

I can think of one easy target in my town. The former Vitro building
a few miles from me. Back during the 80s, Vitro made the guidance
system IIRC for the Trident missile, and now BAE occupies the building...

However, its very clear that people, especially those who oppose building defenses against nuclear attack, do not understand is what a nuclear attack will probably be like , what it will do and how appalling the consequences are likely to become. (On another board, I had to deal with a 16 year old who believed nuclear attacks were nothing to worry about since people could get power by putting their cars up on blocks and running the engines.

I remember that thread. Kid seemed eager to learn once you explained
the facts to him.

Its got worse in recent years because people think they can do a google on a subject, find a few quotes or out-of-context documents and think they constitute an argument.

*sniggers*

Please, try and think on what a nuclear war really means - and then, welcome to my world.

I'm of the opinion that you can reduce the effects of a nuclear war to
be a lot less lethal for the society under attack - the Soviets believed this,
and they hardened their industrial machinery, as well as built scores
of little tiny white bomb shelters all over the USSR and never
abandoned Civil Defense Training in the schools.

Of course, my outlook is that all of these defensive measures to reduce
damage from a nuclear war actually increase your deterrent potential,
it makes the other guy believe, that yes, if he invades West Germany
or Taiwan, you will not be deterred from your duties towards your allies
by the sword of nuclear war.

The French developed their own nuclear arsenal because they mirror
imaged their own worldview onto America, and came to believe that
America would never risk near-total destruction to save Europe from
the Red Army.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Again, I was using smilies. Read between the lines please

I'm tempted to do a spinoff fic of this and the cultureverse. Nah... *Wathes as TBO bombers find themselves inside a 1.1 Klick long shuttle bay.*

Does this behavior qualify as trolling yet?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Your line of work sounds interesting, Stuart. I had to do some similar work for my graduate advisor about targeting orbital kinetic impactors in geologically unstable areas to initiate large-scale geologic events.

Its pretty damn sobering.

[Stravo]

Zerg Goddess cut the shit out. This forum is for constructive criticism and positive interactions with authors and their readers. If you can't abide by those simple rules then don't post.

[Stuart]

I can think of one easy target in my town. The former Vitro building a few miles from me. Back during the 80s, Vitro made the guidance system IIRC for the Trident missile, and now BAE occupies the building.

Its always interesting to see the number of people who think "Gee, I'm OK, there's nothing in my town anybody would want to nuke" while standing on the edge of an airport with an unusually long, wide runway. Or has a hydroelectric plant - or a coal mine, or a gas distribution system nexus. It all depends on what the attack plan and chosen strategy is. The most unlikely places can find themselves on the target list, perhaps not because of what they do themselves but because of the facilities they provide to others. Your local police station may be a target if it happens to be a communications node as well.

"Its got worse in recent years because people think they can do a google on a subject, find a few quotes or out-of-context documents and think they constitute an argument." *sniggers*

Its no joke; its getting to be a serious problem. A friend of mine left the teaching profession recently and she's seriously worried by the extent to which kids in school believe they can make an argument by googling the web, collecting a few documents that contain some key words and then reprinting them. Her complaint is that she was giving out homework assignment and getting back dozens of identical reports because the kids had googled the same key words, found the same material and reproduced it without thinking. The idea of analysing information, trying to work out what is actually going on and putting it into context appears to have been lost. My personal belief is that when you see somebody reproducing long documents with a "There. That'll show them attitude" without trying to evaluate what the documents are really sayinga nd how they fit into the larger scheme of things, you're probably dealing with a very young kid, certainly one who has never been taught to think.

I'm of the opinion that you can reduce the effects of a nuclear war to be a lot less lethal for the society under attack - the Soviets believed this, and they hardened their industrial machinery, as well as built scores
of little tiny white bomb shelters all over the USSR and never abandoned Civil Defense Training in the schools. Of course, my outlook is that all of these defensive measures to reduce damage from a nuclear war actually increase your deterrent potential, it makes the other guy believe, that yes, if he invades West Germany or Taiwan, you will not be deterred from your duties towards your allies by the sword of nuclear war.

There's that; a sword isn't much use without a shield to back it up. However, I'm a firm believer that civil defense is a worthwhile art form in its own right. If one is in the immediate vicinity of a nuclear initiation, it requires enormous (and probably impractical) measures to gain a chance of survival. However, if a device lands directly on your head, there are going to be a lot of people it doesn't land on and the further one is away from the Ground Zero, the more relatively simple measures can benefit such potential victims. For example; on the outskirts of a nuclear initiation effect zone, the heat flash arrives before the blast effects. If the heat flash can be prevented from entering the building, it won't set fire to the contents. Now, the building will be blown apart by the blast wave a few seconds later but there is a big difference between digging one's way out of rubble and digging one's way out of burning rubble. The simplest way of preventing the heat flash from entering a building is to paint the windows white (on the inside) and close the shutters if you have them - yet no civil defense precaution is so widely derided by the uninformed as painting glass. We can almost use it as a touchstone - if people don't appreciate why painting windows is useful, then they don't know enough about the subject to be discussing it.

- Your line of work sounds interesting, Stuart. I had to do some similar work for my graduate advisor about targeting orbital kinetic impactors in geologically unstable areas to initiate large-scale geologic events.

I'm one of the lucky people I guess. I was recruited by a very wise man who died far too young and met with a bunch of really good people (both in the technical and moral sense) who not only were the absolute cream of their industry but saw it as their duty to pass knowledge on and had the ability to do it well. The primary lesson we all got hammered into us was "never stop at first solutions. Look at the consequences of your solutions and the consequences of the consequences." We were taught to look at events as a river; the problems that arose in a single instance are just part of a long sequence of causes and effects. That's one of the philosophies behind TBO; although the success of the Halifax-Butler Coup that caused the divergence from our timeline was a single discrete event, its causes went back decades and its results echoed for an equally long period of time. It's interesting to contemplate what a TBO author, writing an "alternative history" in which the Halifax-Butler Coup failed would make of the reaosns why it failed. In fact, that's an interesting project I must do one day. An "alternative history" of our timeline as written by an author in the TBOverse.

I understand why the Seer and the Targeteers are described in such a, how can I say, "unique" fashion. Working in such a close proximity to death each day would affect any human being.

We are regarded as being a weird bunch. We do have some of the best graveyard humor around though. The "unique" nature of the Targeteers/Contractors was a plot device; I wanted to look at how the lines of thought and strategic principles would effect the situation over an extended period of time. In a deeper sense, I wanted to look at how the sort of strategic principles I grew up with would work when used over a long period. One method is to assume suceeding generations of people but that struck me as being cheesy. "Son of X saves the world" isn't really a good way to go about things. Also, its not practical; our culture doesn't really work that way. The idea that there might be a small group of people with extremely long lives came to me quite early. The obvious temptation is to have them shaping the world in some sort of long-term plan but I rejected it as corny. Their real motivations (which are much more human) are explained at the end of High Frontier. As an amusement, I worked out how such people could be the "real" basis of things that myth and legend describe, albeit it in grossly distorted and exagerrated terms. I was surprised how well it worked. Not only does it make sense, it "explains" some mythology quite nicely.

This played extremely well into one of the themes of the TBOverse which is how reality gets turned into myth. For example, in TGG, how Phong Nguyen's defense of his village gets exagerrated and supernatural aspects are added; how a tank commander under severe stress hitting the wrong button and sending a private prayer out on his command radio net becomes the basis of a "miracle" . "Ten Plagues" was an extreme example of a reverse effect; there Naamah's story turns a biblical miracle account into a relatively simple and plausible event.

But your original point is well-taken. We are very odd people.

[CaptainChewbacca]

That's one of the philosophies behind TBO; although the success of the Halifax-Butler Coup that caused the divergence from our timeline was a single discrete event, its causes went back decades and its results echoed for an equally long period of time. It's interesting to contemplate what a TBO author, writing an "alternative history" in which the Halifax-Butler Coup failed would make of the reaosns why it failed. In fact, that's an interesting project I must do one day. An "alternative history" of our timeline as written by an author in the TBOverse.

I believe you already made reference to that, with someone saying "No way could we storm Normandy in '44!" Should be interesting, though.

[aerius]

Its always interesting to see the number of people who think "Gee, I'm OK, there's nothing in my town anybody would want to nuke" while standing on the edge of an airport with an unusually long, wide runway. Or has a hydroelectric plant - or a coal mine, or a gas distribution system nexus. It all depends on what the attack plan and chosen strategy is. The most unlikely places can find themselves on the target list, perhaps not because of what they do themselves but because of the facilities they provide to others. Your local police station may be a target if it happens to be a communications node as well.

I am completely screwed. Not too far from me is a major international airport with large runways & hanger facilities, a former military airbase, a coal-fired powerplant, several large electrical distribution stations, several large water pumping stations, a major phone switching station, a railyard, and that's just the ones I know of. On the bright side I'm pretty much assured of an instant death.

[Col. Crackpot]

I am completely screwed. Not too far from me is a major international airport with large runways & hanger facilities, a former military airbase, a coal-fired powerplant, several large electrical distribution stations, several large water pumping stations, a major phone switching station, a railyard, and that's just the ones I know of. On the bright side I'm pretty much assured of an instant death.

funny, i remember thining to myself, "what could possibly be of enough value in Rhode Island to warrant the attention of soviet nukes?". Then i saw a map of where the Russkies had their missiles targeted, and it blew my mind. Two nukes for the NUWC in Newport, Two for the sub yards at Quonsett Point, Two for the State Capitol port gas and oil tanks in Providence and two that were apparantly targeted at parks and neighborhoods in Bristol County And one for the airport that i lived a mile from as a kid.