Nuclear Winter

by Td Barnes

  Bradley stood up. “Get everyone inside and lock down the mountain,” he ordered. “Call in the mounted patrol. Include the mounts — get them inside the mountain also.”

  He felt overwhelmed with the burden of having knowledge about what this meant for their future and the enormity of his responsibilities. He could not absorb this sitting down. The others followed suit and stood up one by one to watch the monitor with him in silence.

  Stunned, they listened to the flash message in the Command Center while continuing to watch the missile contrails and listen to the radios in numbed silence during the vaporizing of cities along the West Coast.

  Sergeants outside the mountain screamed orders to their soldiers for them to withdraw from the bunkers around the perimeter and rush inside.

  A faint red glow rose over the horizon behind the last soldier rushing in. The mounted patrol galloped inside the south portal followed by the two operational Humvees immediately before the large metal doors to the underground city clanged shut behind them.

  Word of an emergency flashed through the mountain, prompting any sleeping inhabitants to get dressed and rush towards the entrance command post.

  ****

  Chapter 4 - Armageddon

  T plus 6 days 9 hours 42 minutes.

  World War III did not start with the usual prewar threats and accusations among national leaders. No one assassinated any high-level government officials, nor did anyone mass unusual concentrations of troops along any borders, probably preventing many a strategist and media political talking heads having nightmares predicting the war. The arriving bombs merely put the inhabitants in many of the larger populations of the world, both people and animals alike, out of their misery from the effects of the previous EMP attack.

  No one made a coordinated ground and air attack or a decapitation strike at first. With the EMP already putting the world media out of business, they did not have an opportunity to set up one single space link to cover the war.

  Like the ancient Greek mythical beast, Hydra in the tale of the twelve labors of Hercules, the Chinese merely started lobbing missiles in an opportunist and preemptive nuclear strike wherever the programming of their missiles dictated, following the same protocol of the submarine captain after losing their command structure with the loss of Beijing.

  The submarine apparently possessed orders standard throughout the Chinese missile program, but unlike the earlier missile launch off Taiwan, most of the Chinese missiles continued to the target programmed by the Chinese because of the EMP having taken out the go-home script transmission capability of the US missile defense system. Russia detected the launches first.

  China severely overestimated the number of nuclear weapons that Russia destroyed after the START agreement. Russia simply could not economically destroy its nuclear warheads as agreed. Thus, the Russians possessed much more weapons than allowed, and unknown to China, had recently retargeted these missiles on China to appease the United States who knew about the other missiles waiting for dismantling.

  Russian retaliation started with it launching a much higher than an anticipated number of multiple warhead missiles on targets within China. Russia launched its missiles even before the first Chinese missile arrived and detonated over Russia. The Russian weapons arrived too late to stop the launch of China’s missiles and prevent their warheads raining their heavy punishment.

  Beijing already leveled, and a hurricane of fire by their own doing continued to feel the carnage of the war that they started. The first Russian nuclear warhead exploded over the city thirty-seven minutes after the launching of the first missile towards Russia, destroying everything within 65 square miles. Within the first fifty-two minutes of the war, Russian warheads killed approximately one hundred forty million Chinese while Russia suffered ninety-three million casualties at the hand of China.

  China quickly exhausted its supply of 3,730 medium, 1,000-mile range ballistic missiles, most of them upon Russia. China could not resist the temptation to launch a few of these missiles upon their natural enemies: South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Okinawa, and Taiwan.

  China, still had flyable aircraft since it did not experience the effects of the EMP attack, followed the missile launches with some nuclear-carrying Badgers and their Soviet-designed medium-range bombers.

  Mainland China fielded thousands of fighter aircraft against Taiwan’s 300 combat-ready fighters of which several suffered from significant maintenance issues. The island of Taiwan did not stand a chance.

  The warring country of North Korea, with its six nuclear warheads, exited the nuclear weapons business without ever launching a missile when a Russian thermonuclear bomb exploded twenty-seven miles off the coast of the Chongjin seaport, destroying seventeen North Korean ships. A forty-megaton hydrogen fusion bomb created yet another massive fireball over the North Korean capital a moment later, adding another insignificant and momentary glow on the nuclear-embroiled earth before disappearing while the explosion absorbed itself into the lethal and blackened, already radioactive, atmosphere.

  The annihilation of Pyongyang, the capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, created a tidal wave in the Sea of Japan that peaked at seventy-two feet, destroying all shipping within seven hundred miles of ground zero.

  A massive wall of dirty water washed across much of Korea, both North and South, and across Japan. The water cleansed the city streets, and the countryside of the already decaying bodies of millions of humans and animals killed at the hands of starving refugees of the EMP attack. It mercifully put those waiting for death out of their suffering.

  China fared much worse than any country. When the war started, only twenty-five of China’s missiles could carry a 4,000-pound payload for 6,000 nautical miles. China did not use these weapons during the first strike, reserving them for India and the United States. Russia's nuclear retaliatory strike destroyed twenty-one of these missiles on the ground.

  The previous EMP attack over Russia had rendered useless its long-range-nuclear-ALCM heavy bombers, the Tupolev Tu-95, Tupolev Tu-160, and Myasishchev M-4 bombers, and with its nuclear arsenal depleted, Russia took its only recourse by engaging in a massive retaliation of systematic genocide against the Oriental race along the Russian-China border.

  Pakistan confirmed its having nuclear weapons with the flattening of Bhutan, Nagaland, and Sikkim in India. Multiple atomic detonations from devices launched by Pakistani religious radicals when Pakistan invaded Kashmir finally settled the 1947 Kashmir conflict. India managed to retaliate with the launch of three of its ANGI-V missiles, each capable of delivering a 1.5 metric ton warhead up to 3100 miles’ distance.

  The war would not have gone any further in a rational world, so it made no sense that nations friendly to one another would suddenly attack one another. However, this is what they did when leaders of many countries, having experienced the drastic consequences of an EMP attack and fearing them being a victim of a nuclear attack, acted in a state of frenzy.

  Future historians may never know why they launched their retaliatory weapons in preemptive attacks. Perhaps they thought that showing their willingness to use nuclear power would intimidate others into not attacking them.

  In the case of the ugly old bear called "Russia,” most likely its leaders recognized the opportunity to achieve its lifelong dream, world domination. In any case, the militant bear revived its Cold War mentality by turning its beady eyes towards the seaports, oil reserves and other spoils of war that it thought it could easily obtain.

  The American and Russian presidents called for an alliance early in the war. Thus, the Russian leadership at first concentrated only on Western Europe and did not challenge the United States when Russian mobilized its former Soviet Union nations and most of the former members of the Warsaw Pact. Their combined forces attacked Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and ships in the Indian Ocean despite much of the Middle East already reduced to a nuclear no man’s land. An u
nidentified submarine suspected to be from Russia, sunk some ships that closed the Suez Canal.

  Russia, realizing that they too had suffered the effects of the EMP attacks, respected the desires of Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands to remain neutral, non-coordinate noncombatant nations. This left Germany standing alone in Europe when it independently mobilized its forces to protect its own borders against Russian ground and air forces invading Germany, not hesitating to use the nuclear and chemical warheads in its ground force arsenal.

  A rain of nuclear bombs annihilated London early in the assault. When the German army tried to stop seven Soviet tanks from entering onto German soil outside of Berlin, Russian artillery fired nuclear-tipped weapons upon the city, killing four million people.

  Fortunately, for the United States, some of the Baltic nations of the former Soviet Union maintained other ideas for Mother Russia. Better yet, they possessed the means of carrying out these plans.

  Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine quickly solidified their long-planned union to eliminate Russia's stranglehold on them. Their combined nuclear capability far exceeded that of Russia, and on the second day of the war, they simultaneously released their powerful atomic arsenals upon Russia, quickly reducing the warring bear to a nation with capabilities and technology of the 1500s.

  Ukraine alone launched upon the major cities of Russia fifty-three of the lumbering, liquid-fueled Soviet SS-18 giants, each having ten nuclear warheads. During the exchange, Russia used the same type missile upon Ukraine, launching a total of one hundred and three ICBMs upon the former Soviet Bloc countries — launching them high into the atmosphere after firing them for about 300 seconds and then, allowing them to make a vertical attack upon the populace.

  Australia, Canada, the Continental United States, and Mexico had escaped the war unscathed thus far, except for the initial attacks on the West Coast of the US. Hawaii and Alaska however, suffered attacks, Hawaii by China, and Alaska by Russia.

  The first missiles from China to enter the United States came across the North Pole and hit Washington State and California, followed by a rain of missiles across the Midwest shortly after that.

  Russia just could not resist targeting MIRV’s and nuclear bombs ranging up to 50 MT upon Washington, DC, and almost every major city from Alaska along the eastern seaboard of the United States all the way to Miami.

  Knocking out and isolating Op-centers from their missile launchers stopped the Chinese and Soviet bloc missile attacks upon Mother Russia when pushing the fire button no longer fired the missile. Though Russia still retained a massive inventory of ICBMs when the missile launches stopped, those surviving the onslaught of bombs could have cared less.

  The United States military really had no choice but sit out the war with it being a modern-day fighting force downsized because of having conducted several wars and military actions over the years. These were against enemies having no or few fighter planes with the fighting occurring on the ground in urban environments.

  Consequently, a devastated America entered WW III with the smallest ground forces since 1940, a reduced US naval fleet to fewer than 230 ships, the lowest level since 1915, and the weakest tactical fighter force in the history of the Air Force.

  The United States bomber fleets stood down for lack of targets to bomb, forcing the United States to do everything possible to stay out of the madness.

  The once strongest nation on earth really did not have a choice after its losing much of its already diminished war-fighting capability to the EMP attack. The United States for unknown reasons did not launch a single ICBM or SLBM.

  The nuclear winter began with three days of waterspouts, squalls, and tornadoes spawned from the boiling, violent atomic atmosphere above the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean.

  Huge fires caused by nuclear explosions upon urban areas lifted massive amounts of dense smoke from the fires into the upper troposphere where the absorption of sunlight, further heated the smoke, raising it higher and into the stratosphere where the smoke would persist for years with no rain to wash it out.

  An aerosol of particles blocked out much of the sun's light from reaching the surface on the sunny side of the planet, causing surface temperatures to drop drastically over each of the significant populated centers like an advancing cold front.

  Five million tons of released soot added to the catastrophic event by absorbing the solar radiation to heat surrounding gasses, setting in motion a series of chemical reactions that broke down the stratospheric ozone layer protecting Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Combined this provided the genesis of a global nuclear winter that few would survive.

  ****

  Yucca Mountain Base, Jackass Flats.

  Bradley and his military leaders remained glued to the monitors and radios in the Command Center during the entire nuclear exchange, intently listening to reports coming in from the radios and over the data link with the only conversation among them being an occasional comment announcing the loss of yet another city.

  Early on, residents gathering outside the Command Center alcove made him realize that the rest of those taking refuge at the mountain also needed to know.

  DOE had installed an industrial grade intercom system throughout the repository during the construction of the Yucca Mountain tunnel complex to which the National Guard signal personnel of the mountain added internal communications and computer network servers to support computers, iPads, and intercoms in alcoves throughout the tunnel complex. Also, volunteers staffed a 24-hour paging service for general communication needs to which the residents adapted in an amazingly short time, ignoring the constant pages except for their names or keywords for which they stayed attuned.

  “Sergeant Hatfield, please report to the mess officer.” The announcers paused briefly to separate each message. “The movie Lost in Space will start in 15 minutes,” “square dance lessons are postponed until 2030 hours,” “this is a reminder that blasting will occur in 30 minutes, everyone, please wear your Kevlar for the next two hours.”

  The messages continued like this 24-7 nonstop within the mountain that never slept. With the residents distributed throughout five miles of tunnel, this means of communications played a critical part in the operation of the complex today.

  At first, the radio operator maintained the net at a low volume in the Command Center, keeping the war communications in the background during this global emergency while the residents went about their business. Bradley felt the need to inform the inhabitants of the occurring global events and ordered the paging and announcements ceased, instead of patching the most active radio network to the base intercom system.

  One by one over the course of the next 37 hours the radios went silent when bombs took out those on the other end. Some shut down for the operator to take refuge; others went silent because of annihilation.

  Throughout the United States, government officials and those deemed essential took leave to retreat to safe sanctuaries not much different from that at the mountain.

  The data system remained active to the end when NORAD finally advised anyone still listening of NORAD locking the door and entering a never expected countdown to bomb arrival in two minutes. Bradley and the others sat passively after that watching the silenced radios in numbed shock — praying to hear one more voice from the outside. This did not happen.

  Few of the residents of the mountain slept much during the war. What they heard on the intercom indelibly seared their minds forever.

  The civilians clung to the military personnel seeking information and assurances that the military personnel did not must offer.

  Bradley assumed command of a contingent of military and civilians under these conditions for life, most of them yet to meet.

  Lacking any precedent on how to proceed, he elected to go the route that he knew best, the military way. He knew going in that this would be difficult and challenging with some of the civilians, but not to the extent of the effort, diplomacy, and military
discipline that this transition required.

  ****

  The Agents of Apocalypse

  T plus 22 days.

  The sudden blast of sound from the flight of a spooked covey of quail overrode the gentle tinkling sound of the water flowing down the Las Vegas Wash where the stench of the smoke from the firestorms on the West Coast dominated human senses.

  Smoke from these fires had reduced visibility in the Las Vegas Valley to the worst California smog day imaginable, even with the nuclear fallout carried by the jet stream yet to arrive.

  A roadrunner drinking from the stream heard the quail taking flight and alertly looked around for the cause of the alarm. A jackrabbit likewise went on the alert and sought refuge in the wetland vegetation and several chipmunks urgently salvaging food from a previous campsite to store for their winter stopped to listen while a coyote likewise alarmed by the exodus of the quail sleeked back into the brush to return to her two young pups.

  The sudden change in weather justified the urgency of the chipmunks. Temperatures exceeding 118 degrees two weeks ago, contrasted today to a much colder, overcast, and smoky sky. Weather-wise, in two weeks time, the Las Vegas Valley had evolved from early spring to the fall the year, causing migratory birds — ducks, herons, shorebirds, and even the lizards — to show concern about the sudden change in the weather.

  Causing the annoying violation to the tranquility of the quiet Las Vegas Wash, a scruffy-looking man stealthily walked along a well-worn trail through the growth of scrub brush attracted to the wash by the wetlands and flowing water. He paused and scanned the brush where he had previously alarmed the quail.

  He wore an olive-drab colored sweatband around his head that he removed while his eyes scanned for signs of detection of his presence. Seeing no cause for alarm, he placed the sweatband into his backpack and removed a beret from beneath the web belt around his waist.