Will's Good Idea for 10-30-16

Nuclear Armageddon, anyone?

Yes, its a thing with me, ok. Probably because I'm a child of the 80's and I have been intrigued by the tele-movie The Day After.

Go ahead and watch it on Youtube if you like.

Now, what's really fascinating about the movie is the aftermath, which is dealt with in the third act. Roughly speaking we get two weeks, maybe three into the aftermath. What I find interesting is what we see here. A National Guard truck distributing food, another truck picking up bodies, troops executing looters, etc. Near the end we have a brief speech by the president. He assures us there has been 'no surrender' and the Soviets have suffered similar damage. The president makes reference to local governments and emergency recovery agency and even a rebuilding program.

So just what damage has the US suffered?

During the nuclear attack sequence we see stock footage of the SAC airborne command post, Looking Glass. This is actually taken from the documentary First Strike, also available on Youtube. We see a captain tell 'Major Rheinhardt' that 300 ICBMs are inbound. The question is what do they hit. First, obviously all our missile bases from Minot in North Dakota to Whiteman in Missouri. We can presume they hit SAC in Omaha, NORAD in Colorado, the big bomber bases scattered throughout the country, etc. There's no reason to suppose they did not also hit army bases like Hood in Texas, Drum in NY etc.

Now, we know they nuked Kansas City, so they undoubtedly nailed the other big cities, NYC, DC, LA, etc etc. And that's where they stopped. By which I mean they didn't nuke say, Sacramento, Trenton, Evansville, Pittsfield.  We see clearly that the vestiges of the state have survived.

I think back now to another early 80s nuclear thriller, War Games. There is a scene where the super computer controlling everything tells Mathew Broderick that the U.S. will suffer 80 million casualties. That's out of a nation of 230 million.

I think that's about right. Remember, The crisis has been building, some people have left the big cities so casualties there are not as heavy as they could have been.

Over all I'd say the United States has suffered massive damage but not fatal.

Ironically there should be no food shortage in the winter. First, an American's pantry is always full. Right now I must have half a dozen boxes of pasta in the kitchen. Second, the American farmer is so productive the Feds buy grain, feed, etc and store it. Those storage points are well outside urban areas. Third, there's a lot less people around.

Now, in the post Day After world, what else has been hit? The movie tells us that NATO was exploding low yield nukes in Europe. Undoubtedly they finished the job and annihilated the Soviet Army. The Soviets most likely did the same to the American Army. Europe is probably in worse straights then America.

But what else has been hit? Probably nothing. Why take out Toronto or Montreal? South America, Asia, Australia (don't even say it) has survived. So has Japan, India. Of course its possible to envision a scenario where the Soviets go ahead and nuke China as a defensive measure, but then the Chinese would just finish the job we started, wouldn't they? The point here is that help would be coming from overseas.

A novel about such a world would be interesting, no?