by Gene Skellig
He thought that this was safe for short exposure, but was worried about the radiation headed their way from Comox.
Just before he left the bedroom, however, he remembered to go to the safe hidden in the closet and took out the smaller package that Casey had given them and which he had locked-up and nearly forgotten about. It had to be locked-up and not kept in the basement with the half-dozen Roughneck boxes of survival food and equipment Casey had given them, because it contained some serious items. He had decided the gun, gold coins, and map should be locked in the safe. Manfred had not worried that the boys would do any damage if they got into the survival food, or played with the yellow CF V-715 Civil Defense High-Range Survey meter that he was holding, or the Pen-type dosimeters that were still in the “Special” Roughneck box, so he had stored these boxes in the Utility Room. But he had been very uncomfortable about the gun.
Of course, in the frantic four hours of putting together their shelter, Manfred and Jillian had torn into the “Squirrel’s Den” boxes and stacked them on the shelves in their shelter.
They had also broken open the Special Roughneck also marked “Faraday Cage”, containing the survey meter and other electronic items. These had been protected from the effects of an EMP by being placed inside a series of cardboard boxes that were lined with simple tin-foil and some other type of wire mesh. With the electrical system having failed when Vancouver was hit, the items in the Faraday Cage might be the only functioning electronics in the neighborhood.
When Manfred rounded the corner on the main floor, on his way to the basement with the package from the safe, he looked to the kitchen to make sure that nobody else was still upstairs. He looked out towards Bob’s house across the lane, and saw that Bob had lowered the rugged wind-down awnings, closed broad shutters over his windows and nailed a sheet of plywood over his exterior French Door. As Manfred headed down the stairs, he once again had that strange feeling that something about Bob’s house was trying to get through to his mind.
After finding everybody else on a couch next to the shelter, and telling them that he had detected radiation outside, Manfred had everybody take the Iodine pills that Casey had provided. Then he complimented the boys for the clever way that they pushed the washing machine and dryer against one of the side walls and piled heavy books on top of the steel machines, adding three feet of mass to the side wall. The other side wall was now blocked by the billiards table, on top of which the boys had piled boxes of paint cans and books, all the way to the plywood decking above. The extra space under the heavy table would really help.
Jillian left a gap near the top of the pile, to let air escape from the small enclosed space that they would soon be confined to. The entrance between the washing machine and dryer was just wide enough to crawl through, like an Eskimo’s igloo, and had Manfred’s heavy metal tool box parked just in front. It could be rolled in to block the opening once they were inside.
While they watched the survey meter, Jillian explained the difference between hourly rate of exposure and total cumulative exposure. The boys understood, and were interested in reading the plasticized table that the Squirrel’s Den had provided.
The chart listed various total exposure levels and listed how fast symptoms would begin to appear, what they would be, and what the ultimate disposition would be. They read that that as long as they kept total exposure below about 70 Roentgens, “R”, the worst they would experience would be headaches and nausea, but they could expect a full recovery. If they had up to 150 R, they would have trouble healing from any wounds or infections, but should still make a full recovery.
If total exposure got close to 300 R, they would experience fatigue and weakness along with the nausea and vomiting. They would need medical care and there would be up to 10% mortality. If exposure reached 530 R, they would experience diarrhea, fluid loss, infections and hair loss within 14 days and, even with medical care, there would be up to 50% mortality. Approaching 830 R, even with medical care, mortality would be up over 50% within 6 weeks, and ultimately up to 99%. With infections, severe bleeding, fever, gastro-intestinal ulcerations, bloody diarrhea and other terrible symptoms, death would be painful. Beyond 830 R, death would be certain and, mercifully, within a few days.
On the opposite side of the card, there was a depiction of fallout patterns for 200 kiloton, 500 kiloton and 1 megaton blasts. These showed that if Comox was hit by a 1 megaton blast, and the fallout took 4 hours to arrive in West Point Grey, then the exposure rate this far from the blast would be between 0.5 R/hr and 250 R/hr, depending on the winds.
One of the boys took out a calculator from the Faraday Cage and worked out that their shelter would cut even the highest rate of 250 R/hr down to 0.24 R/hr. This would drop quickly to less than 5 R/hr within 48 hours, which meant only 0.0049 R/hr in their shelter. This meant that by cutting the radiation by ten halving thicknesses, their shelter would cut their total accumulated exposure to less than ten Roentgens by the end of the tenth day. But if they were exposed outside, or even upstairs in their house, they would have been exposed to well over 2,000 Roentgens and would be “completely toast”.
That put it into perspective for the Vogel family. They spent the next ten days speculating about what had caused the war and what to do once it was safe to go outside. After a few days of this, they became more familiar with what Casey had provided them. They played cards a lot, read books, and talked about family trips and other good memories. Then suddenly, on the fifth day, Manfred remembered out of no-where that something about Bob’s house had seemed important. He remembered that the folded map that was in the special package along with the gun and gold coins had labels indicating amateur radio operators. The funny letters and numbers pasted on his map, right next to their house, turned out to be Bob’s call-sign. Then it hit him: when he had gone to retrieve Bob’s wheel-barrow to move the bricks into the living room, he had noticed the tall antenna mounted to the side of Bob’s house. That’s what had been gnawing on his mind.
If Bob had been at all prepared to survive the radiation, or if Manfred could get his radio working, they now had a plan.
While the Vogels were busy setting up their shelter, Casey was even busier putting his Contingency Plans into effect. Within fifteen minutes of the first blast in Winnipeg, Casey had broken out his five “Actions On Nuclear War” ConPlans and sent Tanya to collect the children from school. By the time the first blast happened in Vancouver some 35 minutes later, Casey had given everybody their tasks.
The first was to send his seventeen year old daughter, Hope, with Danny and Yuri to the Highway Four exit to offer the ‘Shelter Deal’ to any truck-drivers who responded to the invitation Casey made on the Citizen’s Band radio. This first ConPlan was aimed at quickly gaining manpower to defend the HOTH. He had Tara and Liam on stand-by to direct the rigs to park on the large gravel pad behind the Guard House.
The second was for Casey to call his contact at the local radio station on his private line and remind him about the ten-minute “Civil Defense Briefing” that he and Marty Penner had gone over with him during the disaster film festival. It was soon being pumped-out on the Sunshine Coast Radio Network. It informed people how to calculate the time for the fallout to reach them from any upwind targets hit by a nuclear weapon, how to evacuate across the island towards Port Alberni or other out-of-wind locations, and the essential features of an improvised fallout shelter like the Vogels were assembling in Vancouver. The broadcast also listed which public facilities in Oceanside were amenable to quick conversion to fallout shelters, and used authoritative language which got people moving in the right direction. Marty knew the details and set about organizing the community effort centered on the Oceanside Community Center while Katy managed her own children and those of others in the soon-to-be crowded HOTH.
The next ConPlan was to contact Moonstruck Farms and a few others to offer space in Casey’s barn for some of their animals, for a price. Many of them knew about Casey’s well stocked but unde
r-used barn. Over sixty large animals and more than a few children were delivered to Casey’s care for the expected two weeks of danger from radioactive fallout.
The fourth ConPlan was to invite families from the 4-H club and the Ring Families to drop their children off at the HOTH for shelter while the adults roughed it out at home. It was a small burden for Casey, who figured that even crammed full with over 60 people for two weeks, the HOTH would be the best place for his neighbors’ children.
The final ConPlan was to implement security measures by activating the cameras and monitoring them in the HOTH. Once Danny was back from the Highway, he had him kit-up with a security uniform for the Guard House as a visible deterrence, and to orient the Truck Drivers as they arrived. JJ, the first truck driver to sign on, immediately began to contribute. Meanwhile, Yuri and Liam went around hanging signs around the property, reading: “DEFENDED PROPERTY. Approach Guard House along main road unarmed (follow arrows). Use main access road only. Leave weapons at marked Amnesty Box.”
26
INDIA
10 June: 21 Days After NEW
Group Captain Patel had been expecting four IL78Ms at the improvised Air Station he was setting up in the small central Indian city of Itarsi, but only three arrived. One had crashed due to engine failure during takeoff from its dispersal airport at Gungapur. Six of the Indian Air Force’s original sixteen IL78M air tankers had been destroyed at their home station in Agra during the nuclear attacks which destroyed most of India’s air bases. Of the remaining IL78Ms, two were in Alaska on a joint exercise, two were operating in support of Su-30MK2 fighters patrolling the India-China border, and two were in Pakistan with the Occupation Force.
India had ordered the dispersal of all aircraft, ships and ground personnel immediately after learning of the nuclear attacks in Alaska and Canada. It was a cautious move, but they couldn’t afford to take anything for granted. After being hit hard by Pakistan, the Indian armed forces had been on wartime alert status. They had prudently dusted off their contingency plans in case of a wider nuclear conflict and acted promptly.
With nearly a quarter of their four million personnel engaged in the occupation of Pakistan, the Indian military had been under considerable strain. But the non-deployed forces still left India as the fourth largest military in the world.
Now, just three weeks after the devastating attacks, the Indian armed forces numbered less than a million. Dispersal had proven difficult because the roads had become clogged by the military convoys. Even with 30 minutes warning, many of the evacuating soldiers hadn’t reached safety in time and had perished.
The dispersal of aircraft had gone better, with 585 of India’s 1320 combat-effective aircraft being dispersed to their pre-assigned regional airports. Now, with aircraft and soldiers scattered about the country, the leadership of the Indian forces designated two hundred sites for improvised bases, including the base being thrown together in the sprawling Itarsi lumberyard.
The Indian Army’s main effort was to restore combat readiness, to begin large scale mobilization and, ultimately, to bring the fight to the enemy. After the country had been devastated by their second nuclear war in less than six months, India was enraged. Combat operations against China were being planned even as the casualties were being tallied.
There had been confusion at first, with most of the missiles striking India coming from Russia. But it didn’t take long to realize who was really behind the nuclear war. India had considered China to be its true adversary ever since defeat by China in the first Sino-Indian war in 1962. India had a comprehensive set of War Plans for the inevitable Second Sino-Indian war, ready to put into action. It would take time, however, to reconstitute India’s military capabilities.
India had been busy in the weeks since the NEW had broken out. Vast areas of India were now devastated wastelands, uninhabitable for decades due to the intensity and permanence of the radioactive fallout from some of the salted Russian warheads. With the 64 largest Indian cities having been destroyed, the Indian forces were grappling with the complexity of reorganizing onto new bases which had, weeks before, been armories or other small military facilities located in the smaller, more remote, cities which had not been attacked.
Having lost over three hundred million people so far, and with hundreds of millions more to die from radiation and starvation, India was facing a war of national survival. They had known that the Chinese were a threat, but had not been prepared for such a decisive opening move.
India knew what China’s next move would be, however, and had the means to counter it. The Americans in Alaska had shared a report with Group Captain Singh, leading a group of Indian Su-30’s and air tankers on exercise in Alaska. Singh had the Americans transmit the report through to an Indian satellite in geosynchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean, and on to India.
The report had originated from a Canadian patrol aircraft that had been investigating a reported Chinese threat to commercial shipping.
The report gave India a clear picture of China’s goals, confirming Russian and American assessments that China’s ambition was to become the dominant power in the post-war world.
The strategic center of gravity of the Chinese plan was the securing of food. With global food production and distribution essentially wiped out, the only food supplies were those already stockpiled and warehoused. China had been stockpiling these commodities with a vengeance in the months prior to the war. They had control of vast quantities of agricultural products at sea in bulk cargo and container ships which would remain out of reach on the high seas during the opening weeks of the war.
Meanwhile the Americans and Russians had expended much of their remaining warheads in a retributive strike against China. While the counter-strike destroyed as many as 240 Chinese cities and a great many military bases, it most likely had come too late. China had already deployed a sizeable number of her forces before the war and had pre-positioned vast stockpiles of armament to depots safely out of harms way.
With the bulk of China's most sophisticated weapons platforms having been destroyed in the pawn-for-pawn battles with American and Russian forces in the first weeks of the war, a new form of warfare was emerging. China was in the process of deploying upwards of a million personnel to seize control of food producing regions. The strategic move was not that much of a surprise; however, the methods used were. Chinese forces had used piracy to build up a massive number of commercial aircraft and ships of all kinds. With these they had already begun moving forces into Australia, South Africa, Asia and South America.
These invasions had come as a complete surprise as the commercial aircraft arrived unannounced, disgorging hundreds of Special Forces. These well-prepared soldiers immediately seized airports and key transportation nodes at numerous smaller cities which had been left intact after the nuclear strikes. Medium-sized port cities were seized by commandoes swarming the docks as they disembarked unexpectedly from commercial ships at wharf-sides, container terminals and other facilities.
By the time the rest of the world realized the scale of the Chinese ambition, China had already seized key footholds in Australia, Chile, Argentina, and Zimbabwe. Operating in the radioactive wastelands of Taiwan and Korea, specially equipped Chinese units seized strategic locations even before the radiation fell to safe operating levels.
The Chinese attempt to seize airfields in British Columbia, however, had been thwarted by CF135 Joint Strike Fighters operating from their improvised base at Port Hardy. The Canadians splashed three commercial aircraft about to land in Abbotsford, and one in descent for Prince Rupert. The 1150 Chinese Special Forces on the four aircraft were eliminated within sight of their objectives.
Intelligence reports from the Americans and Canadians indicated that China had deployed spies to these locations in the weeks before the attacks to gather intelligence on their targets and to seize some of them in advance of Special Forces.
The Canadians had captured some of these Little Dragon agents a
nd their newly recruited Dragon Fly militia forces. They interrogated one prisoner successfully, having removed his suicide tooth. That particular Dragon Fly was supposed to seize a “roll-on roll-off”, RoRo, ship loaded with American SUVs and take it to a pre-determined location in the North Pacific. Once there, they would hold their position for a few weeks until given a final destination for the vehicles. This fit the overall picture of China planning to use commercial ships and in many cases the contents of these ships as the logistical armada for their follow-on forces.
India immediately agreed to do its part to counter the Chinese plan. They would do what the tiny Canadian Naval Task Force had done just five days after the nuclear strikes, and begin to take the ships back from the Chinese. Three bulk cargo vessels and two other ships had been brought back to the Canadian west coast, providing food supplies to the coastal communities.
Knowing the Chinese strategy, the Americans and other allies now had all the information they needed to search for the convoys of Chinese controlled commercial shipping, and dispatch warships to seize them. The only problem was that so many allied warships had been destroyed in the initial nuclear strikes, that there simply weren’t enough of them to seize the thousands of commercial ships at sea.
What India could contribute to the fight against China was to seize as much of the sea-born food supply as they could and deploy expeditionary forces to halt the enemy advance.
First, they would send an Air Expeditionary Force of Su-30Mk2 air superiority fighters to Western Australia. Group Captain Patel’s assignment was to deploy two Squadrons to help the Australians regain air superiority by defeating the swarm of Chinese SU-27s. The first nine-pack of IAF’s Su-30s would launch from Itarsi tomorrow. Three more waves of fighters would follow, supported by the IL78M air-to-air refueling tankers.