Nuclear Winter

by Td Barnes

  Neither the nuclear attacks in the Middle East nor the detonation in China imposed an immediate threat to the United States, so the media and the American public concerning such alerts lacked notification otherwise and assumed it a military exercise. Consequently, no one activated the nation’s emergency warning system protocol, while the United States placed its military forces around the globe at full wartime alert.

  Hell shook again when the monstrous B-52H Stratofortress bombers lifted off at the 5th Bomb Wing in Minot, North Dakota carrying massive loads of conventional and nuclear bombs in response to the United States military status rising to DEFCON II. Many hardly became airborne before the world clock hit T minus zero minutes, the moment the bomb exploded over China and their electronic systems shut down, bringing planes crashing indiscriminately into cities and countryside alike around much of the world.

  ****

  Chapter 2 – First Strike

  Beijing, China

  T minus 0 hours

  The sunset marked the end of the workday, also signaling most of the working Chinese populous arriving home to their families. Huge cranes sat empty on the skyscrapers while the industrial city transitioned into the evening. While the citizens emerged to enjoy their nightlife, the war room in Beijing could only watch in shock when the missile changed course and headed inland. At the same time, reports arrived about Iran becoming a nuclear wasteland, the incoming missile merely compounding the dreadful news of the loss of their source of oil to run their military and supply their country.

  China had spent the last quarter of a century preparing for an attack by another superpower. It had secretly placed high-altitude, high-yield electromagnetic devices for a deterrent over the countries of its potential enemies, namely the United States, Russia, England, France, Australia, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, portions of Africa, and Panama. At the time, the Chinese intended for a command sent to these devices to destroy the technology and the people, but not damage the infrastructure and resources needed by the overpopulated mainland to expand around the world.

  Only one of these satellites carrying a few pounds of enriched plutonium instead of a camera could touch off instant coast-to-coast pandemonium. It would knock out power grids, any electrical appliances not having a separate power supply (televisions, radios, computers, traffic lights) shutting down, commercial telephone lines going dead, special military channels barely working or quickly going silent. The planners neglected to anticipate an EMP attack causing petroleum refineries, storage facilities, pipelines, and flowing wells to lose electrical control, causing massive explosions and fires to create environmental damage beyond comprehension.

  A high-ranking government official in Beijing panicked in the seconds before China’s own warhead vaporized him, transmitting an order to all weapons officers on duty to initiate the doomsday command to their orbiting EMP devices, jumping the hands of the 1947 world’s doomsday clock five minutes to 12:00 o‘clock midnight.

  ****

  Same time.

  The streets of Mountain View, Oklahoma appeared dead while this small farming community slept. The town’s main street, bustling earlier with farm boys and their dates, seemed deserted when the town bedded down after a fun-filled evening where the combine crews from North Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, and Kansas met up with old friends from Mountain View and those arriving from Texas. This annual event occurred where they joined to share a wheat-harvesting journey starting a few weeks earlier in Texas and now in the second week of wheat harvest in southwest Oklahoma. Most traveled south with their combines, trucks, and crews to the ripened wheat and intended to work their way north while following the harvest back to their own wheat fields only now coming up in Nebraska and North Dakota.

  Mountain View narrowly escaped the nightly string of thunderstorms continually cropping up farther east, experiencing only enough light rain the previous evening to make the wheat in the fields too damp to harvest today.

  While waiting for the fields to dry, harvest crews performed the usual servicing routines — fueling, taking a truck in to get the air conditioner repaired, picking up delivery receipts at the grain elevator, and patching the flat front tire on a combine.

  The harvesters spent the evening feeding their crews, sharing a beer or two while discussing what looked like a bumper crop this year. The families told jokes, talked politics, and spoke of family matters since they last met, settling in a little after 10:00 p.m. to bed down for the night. By midnight, Mountain View became merely another small farming community peacefully sleeping under a full moon and twinkling stars.

  The Chinese satellite orbiting 480 miles above Mountain View received that long-awaited command at 0120 hours CST and unfolded the aerials of its secret payload. Finally, after years of waiting, the satellite’s payload received the firing command two minutes later to detonate the 140-kiloton nuclear device, a thin vessel encasing the bomb to allow maximum discharge of its flux of gamma rays from internal nuclear reactions.

  The unleashing of a deadly electromagnetic pulse (EMP) instantly knocked out most of the electrical grid in a radius of 2,600 miles with a spike measuring thousands of volts, covering the entire United States, southern Canada, and northern Mexico at speeds too fast to record. Gamma rays downward directed to collide with electrons in air molecules of the thin upper atmosphere, transferring their energy to the electrons to fry unprotected electronics with thousands of volts of electricity.

  The astronauts in the ISS, International Space Station, became the first casualties of the attack, though only by a split second when the EMP instantly wiped out the solar panels and shut down many vital systems while the ISS orbited over Canada.

  Across the nation, electronic control systems in water, oil, and gas distribution systems, and other infrastructure, including telecommunications and transport stopped instantly at the speed of light. There would be no further wheat harvest in the United States this year.

  Those observing the sky saw the bomb detonate into a sudden bright light followed by a billowing red ball — growing larger and larger with a brilliant white flash burning through the darkness before rapidly changing to an expanding green ball irradiance.

  Great white fingers resembling cirrostratus clouds extruded from the bomb’s surface to rise above the horizon in sweeping arcs that turned downward toward the poles. The scene had lasted only seconds before spectacular concentric cirrus-like rings streaked out from the blast at tremendous initial velocity, finally stopping to form an outermost ring overhead in a state of frozen stillness.

  This all occurred within 45 seconds, followed by a shock wave a few seconds later that woke up most of those sleeping in Mountain View. Those rushing outdoors to see what happened saw a greenish light turn to purple and then fade away to be replaced by a bright red glow that expanded inward and upward until the sky became a dull burning red semicircle with the zenith obliterating some of the lesser stars. This condition persisted interspersed with huge white rainbows for another seven minutes.

  The orbiting satellite detonating over Oklahoma turned out to be only one of many around the globe posing to be communications satellites while awaiting the execute command to release a high-powered radio pulse of billions of watts lasting just a few nanoseconds. Critical satellites around the world, depending on solar energy ceased to function.

  Elsewhere, cities in the periphery of the blast radius experienced enough kilovolts per meter of electrical field strength to cause substantial damage to unprotected electronics, civilian and military equipment alike. Over 2,000 large electrical transformers in the power grid of the United States became victim to the magnetic, electrical spike, causing failure of the complex and interwoven national power grid system in a cascading effect on the rest of the structure with only the nuclear powered with radiation-hardened electronics surviving. Most of the planet stepped back hundreds of years in technology in less than a second.

  In the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the United Kingdom, a
team of doctors and nurses at the 270-year old, 675-bed Royal London Hospital stood in a light drizzle on a specially built roof area on the south side of White Chapel Road. They watched the approaching HEMS helicopter ambulance pass over the St Bartholomew’s Hospital two miles away with the EMTs monitoring the life-support system in the aircraft screaming at the flight crew to rush it up to prevent losing their patient. Their screams turned to cries of fear when the helicopter lost power and instrumentation, none noticing during the fall to the streets below that the patient’s life-support system shutdown at the same time as the electronics of the helicopter. Nor did they smell the ozone while they fell to their deaths. In that instance, 13,080 patients on life support in Europe died when the system shuts down. The loss of life due to life support failure around the globe exceeded 870,000.

  Qantas Airways Airbus A380-800, flight number 215 had lifted off an hour earlier at the Auckland Airport, taking formation behind a Fairchild SA227-AC Metro III headed to Blenheim. The young, newly married couple could hardly wait for their arrival at the Melbourne airport in Australia, where her parents and two younger sisters awaited. The smooth flight generated a moment of excitement when an Emirates A380 crisscrossed their path with slightly over a two-mile separation.

  She watched out the window for a sign of land while he listened to music on his headphones. Both looked up when the music stopped on his headphones at the same instance the sound of air circulating through the cabin ceased. Others in the cabin looked around in puzzlement at the silence, not realizing for a moment the loss of the sound of the jet engines also. Oxygen masks suddenly dropped down from overhead while the left wing of the plane dipped a moment later with the plane silently spiraling to the sea below. None of the terrified crew or passengers survived the crash. Around the globe, 7,912 commercial planes fell out of the sky in that instance, killing 672,534 crew and passengers. Forty-one thousand, six hundred seventy-three private planes also spiraled to the surface of the planet, killing an additional 98,705 pilots and passengers.

  The Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado 460th Space Wing was monitoring its DSP satellites in geostationary orbits when it detected the missile launches in the Middle East. While communicating the missile launch warnings to NORAD and USSTRATCOM early warning centers within Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, they also detected the missile launch off the coast of Taiwan and noted it heading inland into China.

  Anxious leaders monitored their well-trained operators while they calmly and professionally forwarded the incoming early warning data to various agencies and areas of operations around the world. The United States placed its crews into the cockpits of operational planes at bases, posts, and air carriers.

  Now, however, like everywhere else, no one could confirm the identity of the source of the EMP attack. Military pilots, flight controllers, warfare centers, and commanders around the world could only wait for identification of the enemy and the extent of the assault. The attack isolated the world communications, so few knew the extent of damage or the vast number killed in the seconds following the release of the EMP. Many would not know of the attack until they awoke and found the loss of utilities — electricity, water, and gas.

  ****

  T plus two hours.

  The PLA Navy, the second-largest naval service in the world, headquartered in Beijing. Its three fleet commands maintained an inventory of about 2,000 ships — the North Sea Fleet, based in Qingdao, Shandong; the East Sea Fleet, headquartered in Ningbo; and the South Sea Fleet, based in Zhanjiang, Guangdong.

  The bomb that detonated over Beijing two hours earlier occurred with six of the PLA Navy’s eight new Kilo-class submarines at sea and the other two moored in port at the Xiaopingdao Submarine Base. The four at sea remained on station near the Persian Gulf along with three of the Chinese navy’s four nuclear ballistic missile submarines staying in the area to protect China’s soon to be acquired oil empire of Iran after escorting the freighters carrying the weapons to the Middle East. All they remained submerged and far enough away that they survived the elimination of Iran. Another of China’s boats patrolled off the tip of South Korea while the other tailed an American carrier in the Indian Ocean. They escaped the warhead over Beijing, going about their missions, maintaining radio silence and unaware of anything happening in their home country.

  The fourth type 94 Jin-class ballistic missile submarine in the Chinese fleet, still carrying an additional eleven of the second-generation intercontinental-range SLBMs with seven of them carrying multiple nuclear warheads, continued its race home after launching the JL-2 missile off the coast of Taiwan. The radio operator in the radio room transmitted another “all is well” burst to its homeport, but like what happened an hour ago, he received no confirmation of receipt of the message. This second failure to raise their home port and receive a response alarmed the operator enough that he contacted the duty officer who informed the boat’s captain in turn.

  Operators in most of the more advanced countries around the world had immediately detected the previous missile launches on their television, the Internet, and military communication monitoring resources, and watched with awe while Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and much of the Middle East along the Persian Gulf became a nuclear wasteland.

  Russia and a few of the more advanced countries in Asia also detected the launch of the Chinese missile near Taiwan, but soon assumed it to be a rogue missile test by China when the rocket headed inland towards China’s missile test range.

  The detonation of the device over Beijing caught them entirely by surprise with some believing their seismic readings to be those of a significant earthquake. None expected the EMP attack in their region when China triggered and activated their doomsday weapons orbiting disguised for communication satellites for the past number of years.

  Most raised their military alert status along with the United States when the missiles started launching in the Middle East but remained on a passive alert status after seeing no threat to them. Because they did nothing, most lost any retaliatory capabilities when their planes, vehicles, and communications ceased for lack of EMP protection. This advanced enough to have a retaliatory capability after the EMP hit could not do so because they did not know yet whom to blame for the attack. They could only conserve the now limited supply of fuel for their surviving military assets needed to retaliate when they learned the source.

  ****

  Beatty, Nevada.

  Everything, the launch of the Chinese missile, the Iranian missile attack, and the EMP attack occurred while the Bradleys slept. Feeling him shift, Stacey hissed angrily in a whisper, “I thought you said it would be quieter here.”

  “What?” Bradley said in a sleepy murmur.

  “Something exploding woke me up. Cop car lights have been flashed outside our window for an hour now, and I heard some loud talking, probably drunks. Both the fluorescent light in the bathroom and the television are crap. I checked the off switch, and it did not do a thing. We should have stayed at the other place.”

  Tom squinted open an eye and saw the colorful rainbow of lights seeping through the window blinds and the television glowing eerily bright. “What time is it?”

  “Can’t tell. The light bulb must have burned out on the radio clock. Nothing works in this place,” Stacey grumbled. Tom drifted back to sleep without answering her whining. She joined him moments later, so neither saw where the clock had stopped at 2322 hours, 38 minutes before midnight PST.

  Bradley woke up with a start. What is wrong? He sensed an anomaly; finally pinning it to the town being deathly quiet. The colored lights still flashed through the blinds, except now included a flicker of flame, and he smelled the faint odor of smoke. He failed, however, to recognize the aroma of ozone mixing with the smell of smoldering plastic seeping from the outlet covers from the melted electric wires and telephone lines in their room.

  Having no illumination from the clock’s light, he held his watch up to see the time. He still could not read the time. He reached for
the night light and found that It did not work either. “Electricity must be off,” he thought. “That’s strange. The television screen is glowing.”

  He rolled out of bed and held his wrist up to the wavering light seeping through the window. He lifted the blind a bit to let in more light so he could see his watch, a windup Rolex issued him while serving in the Special Forces. “Damn,” he muttered. “Only ten minutes past midnight?” He thought.

  He lifted the blind again and peeked out.

  "What the hell,” he exclaimed while rushing to the door.

  Stacey swiftly sat up in bed. “What is it, Hon?” She asked when he yanked open the door.

  What he saw earlier through the window blinds and assumed to be the emergency lights of a police car became a rainbow of lights racing through the atmosphere like God’s laundry flapping in the heavens. The lights rapidly whipped across the sky over Nevada in all directions resembling the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high-altitude atmosphere during the long winter months over Canada and Alaska.

  In the distance, people drift confused in the darkness, the town of Beatty wholly blacked out in a dead, eerie silence for the lack of activity, no sounds other than a pack of coyotes howling in the desert immediately north of town. Burning electrical transformers on electric power poles explained the thick smoke is obscuring much of the town. This also explained the explosion sounds that Stacey heard. Several of the older buildings from the mining days burned like infernos with rattlesnakes, pack rats, kangaroo rats, and lizards scrambling from beneath. Bradley grabbed his iPhone only to discover that it did not illuminate. He watched an older automobile slowly working its way through town with no lights.