The Bomb, how bad?

[Kalinda]

Another thread got me thinking. How many nuclear weapons would actually be used in the war described in AtB?

Obviously the answer is 'all of them,' but how many is that?

Consider that in the last decade the US has stopped building nukes, and dismantled many bombs, including IIRC all of our warheads for Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The former USSR has many, many ICBMs with nuclear weapons, most of which have been sitting for years without proper maintenance due to lack of money.

Other nations like china don't have large numbers of ICBMs. (they have enough, but nowhere near the number that the US and USSR deployed at the hight of the cold war.)

I'm going to do some research, but off the top of my head I think that at least 3-5 large cities in the US would survive the war un-nuked just because the weapons aimed at them failed to fire or failed to work properly once it launched.

Thoughts?

[gordyzx9r]

This would take some effort to research, and even that would only give you enough to speculate. There are a couple of websites that speculate which states would succumb to the devestation more than others. Some people claim the midwest wouldn't be hit hard because the enemy would want our "bread basket", while others say they'd turn that basket into toast to keep us from having it. The movies always seem to make it sound like the Northwest is a great place to be to survive a nuclear onslaught...but that's where a good portion of our airforce bases are and a substantial number of our silos are...all targets IMO.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some cities survive unscathed in my campaigns, aside from the population which suffered some horrible fate as the result of a chemical or biological attack. But, IMO...every kingdom or nation, should be based on the power level of the EoH; which is supposed to be numero uno in the world.

[Sentinel]

In any nuclear war scenario I have ever run, there are always places that don't get hit simply because the would-be winners and conquerors want something to show for their victory.

[Rali]

In any nuclear war scenario I have ever run, there are always places that don't get hit simply because the would-be winners and conquerors want something to show for their victory.

Problem with that is that those who launched the bombs in this setting probably knoew that they wouldn't be surviving the Crash, which is why they launched in the first place.

[Sentinel]

In any nuclear war scenario I have ever run, there are always places that don't get hit simply because the would-be winners and conquerors want something to show for their victory.

Problem with that is that those who launched the bombs in this setting probably knoew that they wouldn't be surviving the Crash, which is why they launched in the first place.

Never underestimate human stupidity and human greed.

[gordyzx9r]

And even if a city does survive the initial onslaught...how long will it last in a post apocalypse setting? Food? Water? Power? Social Services? These are urbanized folk who probably aren't too well versed in rural skills like farming and such. I'd give it a week before it starts getting overwhelmed with refugees flooding into the city and draining it of whatever resources it still had, then the inevitable riots and looting would begin, social order would break down...a city is the last place I'd want to go in this situation.

[BookWyrm]

I would say factor in such things as aborted launches, equipment & human operator failure, even duds (picture the missle launching, making it way all the way to it's target....then driving itself into the ground like a giant peg). This could explain a lot of how civilization was able to (at least) crawl back to the current ATB2-level portrayed in the new book. It's still post-apocalypse, but now, instead of rampant radiation sickness, dwindling & used up resources & barbarism (although that is still prevailent), you have a semblance of civility, government & such.

That's just IMHO.

[gordyzx9r]

It's still post-apocalypse, but now, instead of rampant radiation sickness, dwindling & used up resources & barbarism (although that is still prevailent), you have a semblance of civility, government & such.

With the original TMNT/AtB that notion of dwindling resources and barbarism was spot on for Europe...but with AtB2, that scenario gets put squarely on the shoulders of SAECSN and France now that we have new, overly, powerful kingdoms in northern Europe.

[Rali]

Let's not forget about Mother Nature. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, grass/forest fires, etc. would cause as much, if not more, carnage in the years following the Crash. Cities laid to ruin would be laid to waste by these natural disasters.

Some cities might even be wiped off the face of the earth. Imagine Las Vegas swallowed up the desert sands, or the big one finally dumping San Francisco into the Pacific. Heck, think of how many cities along the Gulf Coast could disappear due to the number of Hurricanes that hit the coast each year and so few people to rebuild.

[acreRake]

I, for one, always enjoyed the fact that Perth, Melborn, Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart all become bays. That's some powerful weponry.

Of course some major cities "survive": Philly being the prime example. In America though, i'd imagine that in the Midwest human relics might actually be destroyed by some of the Free Cattle.

[Rali]

I, for one, always enjoyed the fact that Perth, Melborn, Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart all become bays. That's some powerful weponry.

Of course some major cities "survive": Philly being the prime example. In America though, i'd imagine that in the Midwest human relics might actually be destroyed by some of the Free Cattle.

There are several subsurface storage locations that would make great adventure points:
- http://www.meritexenterprises.com/html/subsurface_space.html

For a good example of one, watch "Day of the Dead."

[mr.phillup]

In the Ashes series of books by William W. Johnstone the last great war ended with more biological than nuclear weapons. The first town the main character comes to he finds bodies laying everywhere but no damage other then those done by looting. Later in the series you find out that some cities people said took nukes were in fact intacted . Things were said on radios so no would come looking around and those people could rebuild how they wanted.

The maps given indicate some interesting geographical changes. Los Angeles seems to have been swallowed by the ocean, resulting in Bakersfield-By-the-Sea.

Looking at maps today that means that about 60 to 70 miles along the west coast dropped into the ocean and that had to play hell with any thing along the western end of the north American continent.

Also if you look at the number of people living in some of the AtB cities it show a huge lost of life after the war. Example today's number of people living in Las Vegas are far greater then those living in the EoH which is supposed this great city.

I like to play the world with a kind of a mix of some cities in heavy ruin while others are just setting empty. The new towns were just once small towns that survivors moved into.