On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[Homer]

I wonder what else goes out under the table from the Belgians. FN Herstal, MECAR, and FdZ all make a range of NATO standard munitions and material. The Belgians also license built the F-16.

If nothing else hopefully the US Liaison Team got a few days of good food, hot showers, and laundry!

[chico20854]

I wonder what else goes out under the table from the Belgians. FN Herstal, MECAR, and FdZ all make a range of NATO standard munitions and material. The Belgians also license built the F-16.

If nothing else hopefully the US Liaison Team got a few days of good food, hot showers, and laundry!

I tried to structure it so that the compensation items are things that Belgium produces and was possibly in widespread use in 1997 throughout the alliance, so that FN-marked brass, for example, wouldn't immediately raise red flags if the GRU recovered some. That the burden falls disproportionately on Belgium also is another example of who the senior partner in the endeavor is! The license-building of the F-16 was in cooperation with the Danes; absent their cooperation (and possibly components from the US) the Belgians are unable to build more. (And the Belgian F-16As are Block 5 or 10 standard, unable to fire AMRAAM or use guided munitions; IRL the Belgians started upgrading their F-16 fleet in 1997 but in this environment, with Belgium sitting out the war, they get nothing and their F-16s remain essentially unchanged from late-70s standard. To the USF of early 1998 a dozen of these planes are better than no aircraft at all, but a far cry from what had been coming off the lines at Ft Worth in November.

The head of the US delegation's little brother is a certain DIA colonel we all know...

[chico20854]

January 23, 1998

Nothing official for today!

Graebarde reports that farms in the US feel the fall as much as anyone. The modernized American farm depends on electricity to run all the modern conveniences. Animal enterprises especially suffer as it is rapidly discovered the normal crew cannot handle 1,000 hogs in confinement when the power fails, nor can the egg and broiler factories or the giant dairies. Even the smaller operations have trouble with the smaller herd and flocks they manage. It takes perhaps two to three times as long to milk out a cow by hand compared to a milking machine. (Longer for hand-milkers not used to the task, as their forearms tighten up from the squeezing). The four persons on a 50-cow dairy spend most of the day just getting the 40 or so cows milking at the time milked out, leaving no time for the myriad other tasks needed on the farm. Then arises the question of what to do with all the milk, or in the case of egg factories all the eggs, that accumulate in the first couple of days. Many of the large operations soon have no workers showing for work for a number of reasons which compound all the problems. Herds soon die off. Chickens and hogs start to starve unless someone turns them loose, and winter is not a good time for the housed animals to be set free to fend for themselves, something that was bred out of them long ago. Crop farmers fair somewhat better with their crops either in bins or silos on the farm or at the community grain companys granary. As the transportation system fails, however, there is no way for the raw food to reach those that needed it.

Those farmers in the colder areas, predominately north of the Ohio and Missouri Rivers suffer as well as heat sources disappear. Very few have alternative means of heating their homes that are adequate for prolonged periods of time. The generator to run the electric heater or fans on gas stoves need fuel, which soon becomes scarce due to distribution and supply problems, which government policy seems to direct what aid arrives in rural areas to the refugees from the cities. Many farm homes are destroyed by fires caused by improvised alternative heat sources.

While food for the most part on farms is available, it is unprocessed. Most of the smaller holdings still maintain at least a token garden, but almost all modern farms rely on the same source of food as the city folks, the local markets. The specialization of the modern farmer works against them - dairymen have milk, most have some beef or a pig in the freezer as well as eggs and so forth, but most are not stocked up as their pioneer ancestors had been. The elderly, remembering the depression and war years of WW II are somewhat better prepared, having been ingrained with stocking up, but never all.

The winter takes its toll on the weak and sick, both two- and four-legged. Starvation conditions, while not as severe on most farms, exist. Local government support, in the form of USDA representatives, county agricultural extension agents and state agricultural university faculty, are not forthcoming in first winter after the attacks. Most farmers do not leave their farms other than perhaps cluster several families onto one farm for security. Neighbors help neighbors. Those with heat take in those without. Those with food share with those without. Refugees are ~placed on farms. Some had been there before during prior evacuations at the outbreak of the war or in the flurry of panicked evacuations that followed the outbreak of nuclear warfare in Europe and Asia in July. Some are welcomed back as good helpers; others are sent packing as soon as the farmer is able to do so. The government procures food from the farmers, primarily raw food stocks. Cereal grains are coarse ground in on-farm mills intended to grind feed for livestock on many farms. The coarseness does not matter since it goes into gruel. Excess animals are butchered on a regular basis, or procured by the government for relief efforts. The farmers are given chits for the produce and livestock taken, but there is not much faith it will ever be worth anything.

Elsewhere, unofficially

The destroyer USS Morton arrives at the Kenyan port of Mombasa after a month and a half-long voyage from San Diego. The aged destroyer requires several weeks of repairs to restore the ship to adequate condition.

On the Warsaw Pact side of the front line in Europe the situation is desperate. Soviet and Polish troops are exhausted, their units depleted by months of battering NATO forces and nuclear attacks, at the end of supply lines across a nation devastated in two campaigns from one end of the country to the other, sustained by a USSR that has been at war for over two years, its economy in shambles as it supported war on five fronts. NATO troops have been expelled from nearly all Polish territory (a slice of northwest Poland, including the battered city of Szczecin, remains under control of US Marines), and Soviet, Czech, Hungarian and Italian troops occupy Austria and southern Germany along a line from Lake Constance through Augsburg and Regensburg through to the Czech border south of the Hof Gap.

The communications and transportation networks of the western USSR, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia have been shredded by NATO conventional and nuclear strikes over the preceding year, the economy of Poland totally destroyed, the Polish harvest a complete failure, and Czech industry severely damaged by the war. The surviving Polish population faces death by starvation and exposure. Faced with these challenges and with Soviet units averaging 2-4000 men (from one seventh to one third of authorized strength), the Soviet Western TVD is in no position to continue offensive operations (or even to mount a coherent defense, if by some magical means, NATO could muster the force to counterattack).

The most immediate challenge is to sustain the fighting forces and the Polish population, followed by reorganization and reconstruction of the Pact armies. To lessen the burden on the transportation network (and to assist in maintaining martial law in the USSR) 1st Byelorussian Front and the reinforcements released by RGVK (most crucially the 1st Shock Army) are recalled to the USSR, ordered to leave a portion of their heavy weapons and vehicles behind for transfer to units remaining in Poland. (Compliance with those orders is more theoretical than real, but they do result in some replacement equipment reaching units still in contact).

Warsaw Pact units on the front line currently consist of: Baltic Front (with 11th Guards Army replacing 22nd Army) on the northernmost section of the Oder River from the Baltic Coast to Kostrzyn, where the 1st Western Front sector begins. That formation (with 8th Guards Army and 2nd Polish Army on the front line, with the remnants of 1st Guards Tank Army in reserve) faces the US XI Corps, and is responsible for the front south to Forst, where 2nd Western Front (2nd Guards Tank Army and 20th Army at the front, with 3rd Shock Army in reserve) assumes responsibility for the front line through to Zittau, at the common border of East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia. From there, 1st Southwestern Front with 4th Czech, 21st and 1st Czech Armies guards the East German border and occupies south Germany through the city of Regensburg. Second Southwestern Front (with two Italian and one Hungarian corps under command, as well as its own 16th and 41st Armies) occupies Austria (with 2nd Czech Army, assisted by 8th Tank Army) and southern Germany from Regensburg to Lake Constance. Reserve Front, with 22nd Army, 4th Guards Tank Army and the 3rd Polish Army, remains in central and eastern Poland, assisting the remnants of the Polish Internal Front in rebuilding devastated Poland and restoring communist rule while serving as a reserve for the Western TVD.

In the air over western Germany, another flight of F-16s takes off from the French occupied zone, this time from the 86th Tactical Fighter Wing at Ramstein, heading for Hohn Air Base north of Hamburg.

Another mobilization-only division, the 67th Tank, is called up in the Siberian Military District. Formed in Novosibirsk from stockpiles and a small cadre of the 85th Motor-Rifle Division. The divisions stockpiles of equipment were depleted long ago to support other units, and the 67th only manages to receive a handful of T-55s and a smattering of Second World War-era artillery pieces. The rest of the division (which never receives a full complement of troops) is formed into a cavalry force.

[chico20854]

January 24, 1998

Nothing official for the day.

Congress, surviving members of which have been gathered at the Greenbriar Resort in western Virginia, has still failed to reach a quorum. The Speaker, watching the supplies at the luxury complex rapidly depleting and members drift away to attend to their districts, declares the House of Representatives adjourned. The Senate follows a few hours later, and America's elected representatives begin to disperse into the chaos outside the gates. A lucky few members are able to convince Capitol Police officers to accompany them, their firepower being traded for the priority access to food that the member presumably exercises.

17th Air Force headquarters in Germany is rapidly coming to the conclusion that there are few remaining air bases available to use. Several bases were overrun by Soviet and Italian troops in Bavaria, Bitburg, Sembach and several others (as well as all of RAF Germany's) were struck by Soviet nuclear weapons and most of the remaining USAF bases in Germany were west of the Rhine and are now lost to the French. The remaining Ground-Launch Cruise Missile fleet (from the squadrons based in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands) have been assembled in the woods and hills north of Frankfurt being rapidly occupied by US Army support units, and the day sees the first of several C-130 flights, escorted by armed USAF F-16s, carrying remaining B61 nuclear bombs out of American and Luftwaffe bases in the occupied zone.

The 254th Motor-Rifle Division, a veteran prewar Category A division that started the war stationed in Hungary before participating in the Romanian and Austrian-Bavarian campaigns, is brought forward from a reserve position in Austria, assigned to reinforce 21st Army in northwestern Austria.

The California City Freedom, on its maiden voyage using a scratch crew (the ship was delivered in early December), arrives in Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island to load cargo from surviving military production in New England. Three new UH-60 helicopters are flown aboard from the Sikorski plant in Connecticut, three containers containing nearly 800 Stinger missiles are loaded along with several dozen containers with complete engines and spares for F/A-18s and A-10s from a plant outside Boston. Other ammunition loaded aboard includes several containers of small arms ammunition in Pact-standard calibers (7.62x39, 7.62x54, 12.7x108 and 14.5x114mm) manufactured in Connecticut under contract to the Chinese Army. The largest prize is loaded aboard the vehicle deck, eight LAV-25s (also originally ordered by the Chinese and produced at the reactivated GM plant at Framingham) as well as an inoperable M-47 tank salvaged from a VFW post in Rhode Island. A cargo that will help the tanks already in Europe remain operating, two dozen complete M-1 tank engines and several containers of parts, has also been assembled from the plant in Connecticut, which continued producing the engines faster than the remaining tank plant (in Detroit) could install them in new tanks. Finally, a wide array of small arms from New England's arms makers are loaded aboard.

[chico20854]

Just as an aside, Texas got 20% of the raw megatonnage...and that's without counting the Robison and Lemont "TX" strikes.

Simulated blast/thermal casualties using 1997 population numbers:

Row Labels    Sum of DEAD    Sum of INJURED
  AK              56,458         63,775
  AR              17,068          4,804
  CA           2,351,092      3,959,548
  CO              80,312        212,910
  D.C.           154,505        209,690
  DE              29,978         72,862
  FL              78,144        155,504
  GA              96,106        113,808
  HA             142,806        173,417
  IL             161,965        382,009
  IN             292,938        687,750
  KS              74,068        128,815
  KY              18,108         31,010
  LA             317,448        434,875
  MD              73,376        196,922
  MI               3,084          2,312
  MO              70,093        124,063
  MS              33,175         29,282
  MT              22,008         22,743
  ND              13,808          1,490
  NE             128,254        157,453
  NJ           1,190,951      2,482,863
  OH             239,258        395,548
  OK              85,812        102,746
  ON             227,526        248,054
  PA             394,571      1,337,164
  SC               6,553         34,633
  TX           1,423,363      2,088,855
  VA             438,193        646,737
  WA              16,691         25,812
  WY              26,419         23,055
Grand Total     8,264,131    14,550,509

Sometime this annum I hope to have fallout casualties modeled with a decent fallout model (decent means better than the quick and dirty elliptical WSEG-10 algo used by NukeMapTools) capable of producing a nice fallout map as well.

The ON casualties are ONLY the Windsor Ontario attack, and all of those are actually Michigan, US casualties (I don't have gridded population data for Canada added to the population database), so obviously MI is grossly undercounted in the above pivot table.

Howling Wilderness states the population of the United States was reduced to 68% of it's prewar level by Jan 1 of 1999, or about 87 million dead after 13 months. If we use a rule of thumb and say half of the injured in the above table died from their injuries, and throw in another 5 million deaths from fallout, that gets you to ~20 million dead, so you need to fill in another ~67 million dead due to famine, disease, and civil unrest through 1999.

And then another 50 million dead through June of 2000. That's a lot of narrative writing to fill in the handwaving details that GDW left to the referee (or Chico in this case).

Thanks!!!!!!

Once things slow down (and I think in general the number of daily occurrences will decrease markedly from here on out) I'm going to try to pull together a google map of the exchange, with ground zeros and yield/weapon/firing unit/date data noted. I'll send you a pm as that develops so you can work your magic!

While I am discovering/mining more sources about the growth and rampages of various marauder groups and disease outbreaks around the world, I don't anticipate getting too granular about the casualties worldwide. It just gets depressing! I am hoping to provide some more detail about the significant campaigning of the year - the Alaska counterattack, Mexican invasion, Iranian internal security, African wars as well as the summer campaign in Europe, much as I was able to flesh out the French invasion of the Rhineland.

Enjoy!!!

[chico20854]

I'll be out for the next week and a half. I'll resume when I'm back.

[Ursus Maior]

Just as an aside, Texas got 20% of the raw megatonnage...and that's without counting the Robison and Lemont "TX" strikes.

[...]

Howling Wilderness states the population of the United States was reduced to 68% of it's prewar level by Jan 1 of 1999, or about 87 million dead after 13 months. If we use a rule of thumb and say half of the injured in the above table died from their injuries, and throw in another 5 million deaths from fallout, that gets you to ~20 million dead, so you need to fill in another ~67 million dead due to famine, disease, and civil unrest through 1999.

And then another 50 million dead through June of 2000. That's a lot of narrative writing to fill in the handwaving details that GDW left to the referee (or Chico in this case).

And if you go with the Howling Wilderness bleakness, another 100 million dead once the drought induced famine winds it's course, landing you at ~34 million survivors by 2002-2003 timeframe.

[...]

That goes in the direction of my thinking as well. Texas will probably take decades to clear and clean up, but it would be an important project for the generation of T2K-millenials in the US, due to resources and LOCs across the Americas and the Gulf.

The drought seems extremely over-written. By that time, most survivors would likely have been relocated to arable lands or found themselves a plot to farm. The US would de-industrialize heavily, but small workshop industries would soon spring up in the newly found farming communities and nearby larger cities. The knowledge is still there and some of the tech-base and critical infrastructure as well. Rule of thumb might put the US at 150 million survivors in the early years of the 21st century. They would boom incredibly fast, probably generating the largest generation since the baby-boomers, due to available space, food and lack of social security. Infant mortality would be much higher, of course, but with local antibiotics and vaccine production (it's not that hard technically, if you know what you're doing), that'll be manageable as well.

It would be interesting to narrate, how the survivors incorporate the inevitable rise in misformed infants due to radiation damage to parental genomes. That could go very different, depending on the local community.

[Ursus Maior]

If nothing else hopefully the US Liaison Team got a few days of good food, hot showers, and laundry!

If the Belgians welcomed their US guests, then these will return well fed and slightly drunk. I never left Belgium hungry and once attended a conference in Liege, where we got served wine for every occasion and meal, except breakfast. France supposedly has similar customs.

[castlebravo92]

That goes in the direction of my thinking as well. Texas will probably take decades to clear and clean up, but it would be an important project for the generation of T2K-millenials in the US, due to resources and LOCs across the Americas and the Gulf.

The drought seems extremely over-written. By that time, most survivors would likely have been relocated to arable lands or found themselves a plot to farm. The US would de-industrialize heavily, but small workshop industries would soon spring up in the newly found farming communities and nearby larger cities. The knowledge is still there and some of the tech-base and critical infrastructure as well. Rule of thumb might put the US at 150 million survivors in the early years of the 21st century. They would boom incredibly fast, probably generating the largest generation since the baby-boomers, due to available space, food and lack of social security. Infant mortality would be much higher, of course, but with local antibiotics and vaccine production (it's not that hard technically, if you know what you're doing), that'll be manageable as well.

It would be interesting to narrate, how the survivors incorporate the inevitable rise in misformed infants due to radiation damage to parental genomes. That could go very different, depending on the local community.

IIRC, even as far back as ~1979 when the Office of Technology Assessment published "The Effects of Nuclear War", the Northeast US imported about 90% of their calories, so there would be a precipitous die off and/or population migration there. But not 90%. The Northeast actually has some decently productive agriculture potential, it just isn't economically competitive with 10,000+ acre agricorps in the Midwest at pumping out corn and wheat. And with the lights going out, the offices and factories closing, and no more welfare or social security payments and no more grocery stores, probably in the short run, pretty much everyone becomes a gardener, a farmer, a soldier/militia person, or a predator. Or dead.

A big determinant of any given locality's ability to arrest the slide into anarchy, starvation, and apocalypse would be the ability to procure enough food to sustain the population through to get the local harvest in...and the ability to get enough seeds to get a local harvest in. There would be lots of surplus labor available to hand till and weed fields.

I actually think for the US, the period between Dec 1997 and Nov 1998 is one of the most potentially narratively rich and under developed areas. There's a short lived period where things appear to be recovering a bit, but then the transportation system collapses and national government ceases and areas are left to their own devices.

This is where you see groups like the Texian Legion rise in East Texas (in my Head Canon, I have them being an amalgamation of the Texas State Guard, military "deserters" from the Red River Army Depot, biker gangs, and lead by a corrupt Sheriff - whose brother is a leader of a biker gang, forming up to "deal" with refugees streaming north from the Houston/Beaumont areas in the south, and Shreveport in the East). In the absence of Federal and state authority, other entities will spontaneously organize to defend what they have, or take what they need, or they will be victimized by groups that beat them to the punch. In most cases, this "spontaneous" organization will be on the skeleton or the structure of prior, pre-war organizations.

I'm also an "optimist" in the sense that I think most obviously predatory outfits would have a short life expectancy unless they were very well armed (i.e., the military could get away with it, for a while). If you look like a bandit, there will be a lot of frontier justice and shooting first and asking questions later, and there won't be any point taking prisoners if food supplies are already an issue. Of course, in some areas you might have a failure cascade that forces communities to become marauder to survive, but traditionally this type of unrest has been fairly uncommon historically even during widespread famine.

Also, the US has, on average, over a year's worth of grain already harvested. A famine in 1998 would be largely due to distribution not production issues, and would be a regional issue, not a national one - a lot of areas are self-sufficient from a calorie perspective.

All that being said, game would likely be hunted largely to extinction in the fist 3 months of a collapse scenario. Hunting should be much harder than it is in the rules.

[ToughOmbres]

January 16, 1998

The Mid-Atlantic states are, in some ways, the hardest hit by the war. The famine and dislocation resulting from the nuclear attacks causes these states to experience a reduction in population levels unprecedented in human history. Linden, Perth Amboy, Paulsboro, and Westville New Jersey have all been subjected to nuclear attacks. Almost a million people became casualties in these strikes, and more die in the civil strife that followed. The northern areas of Manhattan are almost completely abandoned. Inhabitants this far north had always lived with some minor fear of the motives of their neighbors to the south and are among the first to flee to northern New Jersey and upstate New York. The remaining major urban centers in Pennsylvania - Harrisburg and Pittsburgh - remain intact except for the inevitable episodes of looting and food riots that winter. Electricity and fuel are sharply rationed everywhere, of course, and the general breakdown of transportation and food distribution leads to severe food shortages and widespread starvation just as they did in most other parts of the country. Most rural areas, however, possessed of long-standing traditions of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, continue very much as they always had, their inhabitants enduring lean, hard times with patience, determination, and outright stubbornness. The region's principal problems stem directly from the controversial refugee relocation program first proposed as a civil defense option twenty years before the war began. Most of the refugges from the Washington, DC area are absorbed into the more rural areas of Virginia and Maryland.

Unofficially,

The Freedom-class cargo ship Providence Freedom is delivered in San Diego, California, the last of 150 of the class delivered.

In Paris, General George Stark, DIA station chief in Amsterdam (and the senior DIA station chief alive in Europe) has agreed to "assistance" terms with the French government. In addition to providing for French and Belgian government sustainment of NATO troops that are not (or were) belligerents in the recent invasion until those same governments can provide for the evacuation of them and their equipment and supplies, the French and Belgians are to provide 10 million of the following: rounds of small arms ammunition, pre-packaged combat meals and gallons of diesel fuel. The fuel will be transferred along with 1 million gallons of aviation fuel using NATO's Central European Pipeline System, which despite multiple Spetsnaz attacks, remains partially functional. The French and Belgians will also provide 100,000 rounds of 20-40mm autocannon ammunition, 100,000 mortar rounds, 100,000 artillery rounds, 25,000 105mm tank gun rounds, 25,000 120mm tank gun rounds and 100,000 tons of bulk food. The Belgian Air Force will transfer 12 F-16As, 500 Sidewinder Air-to-Air missiles, 2,5000 dumb bombs and a package of spare parts, as well as providing parts and assistance in returning the 50th and 86th TFWs' grounded F-16s at Hahn and Ramstein Air Bases in the occupied zone to service. (The fuel required for the evacuation flights of USAF and RAF aircraft from the zone is to be provided by the French and is in addition to the aviation fuel transferred under the agreement). The French Air Force will also provide assistance in returning six grounded C-130s and two E-3 AWACS to service. Finally, the transmission lines across the Rhine are to be reactivated, with 500 MW of electrical power to be continuously provided at no cost for the remainder of the year. (These amounts are much reduced from Starks initial demands, but both sides realiized that the former pre-war allies were in a complicated situation, that France and Belgium are both officially neutral in the NATO-Pact conflict, and in some ways having to adjust their thinking as both sides retain sufficient nuclear weapons to inflict enormous damage on the other).

The sail training ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl is released from the shipyard in its homeport of Bergen, Norway, where it was completing a retrofit that modernized the ship's systems and restored much that had deteriorated over the ship's 84 years of service. The work is nearly complete and the owners (a school ship consortium) want the ship available rather than completely updated.

The 289th Motor-Rifle Division is activated in the outskirts of Baku, Azerbaijan from surviving students and faculty of the Baku Higher Combined Arms Command School, a motor-rifle officer training academy. Conditions in the area are terrible and it will be some time before the division is ready to support Transcaucasian Front.

The (relatively) peaceful resolution to securing the repatriation of bypassed US assets and bases is especially well thought out and well done. Really enjoyed the winding down of Franco-Belgian invasion/occupation of the Rhine.

[ToughOmbres]

Dutch and German resistance

January 1, 1998

France seizes the Rhineland west of the Rhine River from Germany and sends its III Corps alongside Belgian units into the Netherlands. The Dutch 302nd Infantry Brigade, a territorial unit holding the Breda-Tilburg area, is attacked by the French 8th Marine Parachute Regiment. The Dutch successfully defend their positions, while the Bundeswehr, with its efforts split between internal security/disaster relief duties and preparing for a counteroffensive in the south, offers less vigorous reistance. Unofficially, French progress is slow. While airborne and heliborne troops are successful in securing key chokepoints near the border, the roads are clogged with abandoned civilian vehicles and the advancing columns are mobbed by swarms of desperate refugees, who assail the advancing troops with requests for food. Armored units are able to deploy their tanks' dozer blades to clear roads, while other formations are forced to shuffle their engineer units to the front; units reliant on trucks or wheeled APCs make minimal forward progress through the morass of humanity.

NATO operations in the Mediterranean (competing with the French) are dependent on the last sizeable operating refinery in North Africa, at Bizerte, Tunisia.

The new year starts off with good news for the Americans in the Persian Gulf. 2/325th Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division makes contact with the forward outposts of the 48th Mechanized Infantry Brigade (Georgia National Guard). The American paratroopers are an incredible sight. Many of them are wearing a mixture of Kurdish clothing and US camouflage fatigues. The 82nd's commander, Major General Jack Joyner, rides out on horseback looking for all the world like a Kurdish hill chief.

The beginning of the year also sees the French FAR in action against pro-Soviet rebels in Senegal, Mauritania and the Horn of Africa.

Unofficially,

In a briefing about plans for 1998, the acting head of FEMA reveals the existence of the 37 strategic reserve stockpiles to President Munson. Given the quantities of food on hand, remaining electrical and petroleum production and security situation, Munson concurs with the recommendation not to reveal their existence to state authorities and local FEMA officials and to reevaluate the decision in the fall, when the food and other supplies in the caches might be more strategically directed. The stockpiles established and maintained separately by the state of Texas are broken open by their guard forces (dispersed platoons of the Texas State Guard and guards at state penitentaries) and used to sustain their ongoing operations.

In northern California, leaders of the Hells Angels and affiliated outlaw motorcycle clubs/gangs gather following the activation of the agreed-upon Plan Alpha worked out a year ago. Over 1500 members of the clubs, all heavily armed, have come together at a ranch owned by a club member just south of the Oregon border. A similar gathering is occurring in southeastern Ohio, despite the damage done by nuclear strikes on Ohio and Kentucky.

RainbowSix reports that Headquarters, US Naval Forces Europe (USNAVEUR) is reformed at the Royal Navy base in Portsmouth.

The Belgian Army's I Corps' two divisions make little progress on the first day of the invasion as they struggle in difficult terrain around Maastrcicht and Aachen, the corps' initial objective. While the Dutch resistance in the region is disorganized (Dutch forces largely consist of lightly equipped territorial security companies and platoons, which are highly motivated and able to take advantage of prepared defensive structures due to the former presence of NATO high command posts in the area). To their south, the French I Corps overruns Luxembourg, easily overwhelming the nub of the Luxembourgois Army that survived the previous year's action in Norway. The French II Corps' offensive moves north along the level terrain along the west bank of the Rhine, which has become crowded with makeshift refugee camps.

RainbowSix comments that while the British Ambassador in Paris protests the oeact of unprovoked aggression, the UK is in no position to offer more tangible support to either the Netherlands or Germany.

The remaining Red Army command staff at "Moscow Center" (actually a bunker outside the city) decide to call up the remaining mobilization-only divisions to combat the growing internal unrest and prepare for a final offensive that will wipe NATO forces from Western Europe. Making this happen, however, will prove challenging, to say the least.

Despite the damage done by combat against WP forces, heartening to see the Dutch and German militaries give the Franco-Belgian invasion a bloody nose and not simply get run over roughshod.

[chico20854]

January 25, 1998

Surviving stocks of oil and petrochemicals in Aranas Pass, Texas which survived the fire are removed by the U.S. Army to secret storage areas in the north.

Elsewhere in the U.S. arrests for hoarding are commonplace (unofficially) as food and fuel in the "retail" distribution network have been almost entirely exhausted and military control of the wholesale distribution system is shakily established and enforced.

Following the virtual destruction of the 54th (my 108th) Motor-Rifle Division in a tactical nuclear strike, Transcaucasian Front orders the deployment of the 201st Motor-Rifle Divison from Afghanistan to Iran to perform anti-marauder duties.

Unofficially,

Officials in Bergen, Norway stock the sailing ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl with a cargo of preserved fish, ship parts and, in a hidden compartment, gold and other valuables from the city's banks and dispatch it to Latin America to trade for grain to feed the city's surviving population.

While the total load aboard the Colorado City Freedom is less than 20 percent of the ship's rated cargo capacity, it sets sail shortly before midnight after the stevedores and ship's crew complete loading the ship.

[chico20854]

I'll be out for the next week and a half. I'll resume when I'm back.

Back in the saddle, more coming this week! Trying to build some story...

[chico20854]

January 26, 1998

The German High Command decides to consolidate its elite forces into a single command, uniting the 24th, 25th and 27th Fallschirmjaeger Brigades, the former East German 40th Parachute Brigade and several mountain battalions under a single division headquarters, the 1st Fallschirmjager.

The winter of 1997-98 is a harsh one in northern and central Iran. The Soviet transportation system into the Transcaucasus Military District has been almost completely destroyed. Desertion is rampant as many troops became marauder bands. Tens of thousands of civilian refugees die from starvation or exposure. General Suryakin directs his staff to draw up an emergency food distribution plan that will distribute food and emergency supplies in as fair a manner as possible. South of the Zagros Mountains, things are better. The winter there is much milder, and the local farmers are able to produce enough food to keep people reasonably well-fed.

Unofficially,

Seeing the need for additional forces for domestic security and food distribution duties, the "Pentagon" (in reality, the powers-that-be at the ANMCC at Raven Rock) orders various units that have completed their training (most notably, the brigades of the 17th Airborne and 4th Armored Divisions and 8th Armored Cavalry Regiment at the National Training Centers and Joint Readiness Training Centers) from those garrisons to internal duties and the conversion of those bases' OPFORs (Opposing Forces), referees and support staff into troop units. The units that have completed their training are to use equipment stocks maintained at the base for rotating units to draw upon, while the cadre are to "unconvert" their VISMOD vehicles back to original configuaration and make use, as needed, of government-owned civilian-type logistic and support vehicles.

The 199th Infantry Brigade is ordered, ready or not, to deploy from Hawaii to Korea to reinforce Eighth Army, reeling after months of tactical nuclear strikes and a year of North Korean human wave attacks.

The crew of the Norwegian sail training ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl, recently departed from its home port of Bergen, Norway, conduct test firing of the ship's defensive weapons, a single 40mm and six 20mm anti-aircraft guns provided by the city's Home Guard detachment.

[chico20854]

January 27, 1998

In Pennsylvania, state officials have tried to control the refugee situation but it has grown beyond the resources available. State government relocation authorities, working under the direction of federal relocation boards and officials, abandon the plans laid out by Washington bureaucrats months or years before. In the far northwestern corner of the state, Erie finds itself as a last stop for refugees from points west and south trying to enter New York. The population swells beyond anything the local authorities can cope with.

Unofficially,

In Canada, the remaining authorities implement a similar effort to activate military forces to support internal security and recovery efforts. The Canadian Army Reserve, which has been forming, training and providing replacement troops, sections and platoons to the Active force throughout the war, is now called upon to form troop units on its own. (This process had already commenced in July in British Columbia and Yukon in July, following the Soviet invasion of Alaska). Flush with draftees in the midst of their training, and with transport links to the fighting forces in Europe down, reserve units around the federation are able to, in general, stand up an at least nominal battalion of troops. In some areas older Cadets, retirees, veterans and RCMP officers are pressed into service. A more pressing problem is equipment, for while small arms (either current issue C7s or older C1 (FALs)) and individual equipment are plentiful enough, the Reserve's stocks of armored vehicles, mortars and artillery have been largely depleted by 13 months of war, sent overseas as replacements for combat losses on the Centraal Front or in Norway, or sent west to equip the forces facing the Soviets in northwestern British Columbia. Units in Ontaria and the Maritimes are allocated to augment the meagre Active forces in the region in suppression of the Quebec uprising, those in the west to facing the Soviets and those on the prairie to securing food and fuel as well as preserving a modicum of order in their local areas.

Dutch troops infiltrated into the French occupation zone ambush a lone Peugot P4 light vehicle racing to make it back to its fortified garrison before nightfall. The ambush is successful, and the bullet-ridden wreakage holds the body of the commander of the 158e Compagnie du Gnie (158th Engineer Company).

Pro-NATO guerrillas in Esfahan machinegun a truck carrying Soviet soldiers on their way back to the front after a period of rest in the city.

The 279th Motor-Rifle Division, a mobilization-only "shadow" division formed from excess staff and obsolete equipment maintained by the elite 4th Guards Tank Division, is called up in Naro-Fominsk to help with relief and security efforts in the remains of the capital 70 km to the northeast. The division is fully manned from the masses of refugees that have fled the city and generously staffed with officers displaced from their jobs at ministries, institutes and schools. Like most late mobilizing divisions, equipment is scarce (four battalions of tanks, three of APCs) and obsolescent (T-55s, BTR-60s, BM-14s and 37mm AA guns). The unit is commonly considered the last Red Army division mobilized in the war (although local military district commanders ordered the 281st Motor-Rifle Divison into service nearly a year later, that action was not approved by the Red Army high command).