I think that you should feel free to revise and edit as you receive constructive criticism, and when finished post a "story only" thread. Part of the fun at AH is tossing in our .02 and maybe helping the OP along in crafting an authentic timeline.
There Is No Depression: Protect and Survive New Zealand
- Thread starter Tsar of New Zealand
- Start date
Coming as that does from the writer of one of the most engrossing TL's I've read on this site, that's quite gratifying
It's alright; my first TL's as good a time as any to receive constructive criticism and a lesson in doing my homework beforehand (it's here that being the type of person to yawn and scroll past the technical stuff in threads like Blunting the Sickle is...somewhat undesirable
On a different note, if the only real complaints are to do with technical details around cruise/ballistic missiles (I'm little better-educated than the people ITTL on that subject; consider it to add a touch of realism to POV segments
Yeah nah, you're doing a great job, redact at will!
Responding positively to constructive comment (something not all TL authors do) = thumbs up from me.
If you want to have some more fun have a play with the CEP of your warheads - just because it's targeted on the intersection of Bowen St and Lambton Quay that doesn't mean that's where it's going to land, especially for an SLBM
This will come into play. I shall not say how.
This next update will probably be the end of Part One, and quite likely the last update for two or three weeks. I've got a lot of homework to do on the effects of nuclear weapons and the logistical situation of 1984 NZ, so sometime in early December is the most likely ETA for chapter VI. Sorry about that, all.
I personally not been all that interested in the P&S spinoffs; however I very much enjoy yours. Good luck with the planning and writing of this TL.
The worst disaster in New Zealand up to this point was, IIRC, the crash of Air New Zealand Flight 901 into Mount Erebus in November of 1979, which killed all 257 passengers and crew aboard. (1)
This will easily top that; as a matter of fact, there won't be a single household in New Zealand that won't have lost relatives or friends in the nuclear attack.
So, with that said, I'd like to see the attack update, if possible...
(1) Here's a link to the Wikipedia page regarding that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_New_Zealand_Flight_901.
This will easily top that; as a matter of fact, there won't be a single household in New Zealand that won't have lost relatives or friends in the nuclear attack.
So, with that said, I'd like to see the attack update, if possible...
(1) Here's a link to the Wikipedia page regarding that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_New_Zealand_Flight_901.
Last edited:
Out of curiosity, how many Protect and Survive spinoffs are there? I've seen a few, and they all look pretty great.
257 passengers and crew.
Erebus is still the worst peacetime disaster in NZ history in 2014.
Regarding the household reference, it was popularly said at the time of Erebus that every household either knew someone on the flight or knew someone who did. Possibly apocryphal, but it was certainly true for my household - one of the flightcrew was personally known to my parents.
For various reasons it's still a topic to be treated carefully in NZ, with the 35th anniversary next week.
I corrected my earlier post to reflect the crew (apparently, Sir Edmund Hillary was supposed to be on board as the onboard tour guide, but couldn't make it. His longtime climbing partner, Peter Mulgrew, went instead and died).
Didn't know that your parents knew one of the flight crew members.
The events of TTL will, obviously, be much worse than the Erebus crash. A significant fraction of New Zealand's population will be killed, injured, or made homeless by the nuclear attack.
Just waiting for it...
Didn't know that your parents knew one of the flight crew members.
The events of TTL will, obviously, be much worse than the Erebus crash. A significant fraction of New Zealand's population will be killed, injured, or made homeless by the nuclear attack.
Just waiting for it...
The events of TTL will, obviously, be much worse than the Erebus crash. A significant fraction of New Zealand's population will be killed, injured, or made homeless by the nuclear attack.
Just waiting for it...
You have no idea.
Y'know, originally I hadn't planned to write anything today, but it's a grey day here today and we had a wee earthquake earlier this morning. So I've prepared something for you all now; hopefully it satisfies you all.
The sunglasses aren't for the cool factor...they're to avoid the flash.
V. Perfectly Calm…Perfectly Calm…Perfectly Calm…Perfectly Calm…
V. Perfectly Calm…Perfectly Calm…Perfectly Calm…Perfectly Calm…
“And Monday is a Monday
Tuesday’s a thunder day
With a wind that chills you to the bone.
Wednesday, don’t mention Wednesday!
Not a good one at all…”
The last broadcast from TVNZ took place at 9:38 am, and the few remaining viewers of TV1 could, if they looked carefully, see the dark circles underneath Dougal Stevenson’s eyes and the shake in his hands as they lay clasped on the desk in front of him. He smiled faintly at the camera as if trying to reassure a dying man, nodded, looked offscreen and focused back on the camera after a few seconds.
“We’ve had word recently that contact with Darwin, Sydney, and Canberra has been lost. I…don’t know about Melbourne, though I’m informed by my staff that –” another expectant look offscreen, a nod “- we have recently had some contact with sources based near that city. For those of you with family or friends in the cities hit I can only offer my deepest sympathies in this…extraordinarily difficult time. Ah…I must also inform you that a general evacuation order has been posted to the staff here at Avalon so we will be going off the air in the next few minutes. I’d just like to thank those who have stayed here with me to help keep all of you informed, and I certainly hope that their determination in the face of an uncertain future has helped.”
He swallowed and breathed deeply, nodding as an indistinct voice from offscreen floated through the ether.
“I’m told that I need to end my broadcast now, so if I may I’d just like to take a moment here to say that it has been a privilege to bring you all the news over the last two decades, and ah…I hope that, in the face of a future where none of us can safely say for sure what will happen, you are all out there with your family and loved ones. Keep each other safe and… we’ll all come through this safe. I promise.”
With that, the camera lingered for a few moments as the presented stood, unclipped his microphone, and walked offscreen before the local TV networks went off the air completely. A piece of news had just reached the heads of those stations, and they were fleeing.
... - --- .-. -- / .. ... / - .... .-. . .- - . -. .. -. --. / -- -.-- / ...- . .-. -.-- / .-.. .. ..-. . / - --- -.. .- -.--
Over Wellington Harbour
9:37 am
The helicopter thundered towards the Hutt Valley, as the four elder statesmen aboard avoided each other’s gaze while scarcely daring to look out the window. For those who did dare, they saw the motorway north packed with cars, the last wave of those who had either brushed away the signs of nuclear attack or believed the government’s assurances that all would be well.
And you let them down, didn’t you, Rob? was all Muldoon could think as the chopper passed over Petone, where a fire had broken out in one of the houses across from the beach, going unattended by absent owners, neighbours, and a fire service with much too much else on its mind. The Prime Minister breathed heavily as the weight on his chest grew a little more painful, while MacIntyre watched the last train bound for Upper Hutt hurry through commuter stations where a few people gathered hopefully, ignoring the Council’s adamant statement that the evacuation of Wellington would take priority and being disappointed as they were passed by. George Gair tried his best not to look.
The helicopter had made it to Lower Hutt proper now, and as Muldoon looked to the west a frantic voice crackled through the radio, barely audible over the thrumming of the rotors. As the co-pilot looked back at the assembled ministers and instructed them to look down and keep their eyes closed if and when instructed, he knew all hope was lost. Now, the tears began to flow openly.
.. ..-. / .. / -.. --- -. .----. - / --. . - / ... --- -- . / ... .... . .-.. - . .-. / .. .----. -- / --. --- -. -. .- / ..-. .- -.. . / .- .-- .- -.--
By the morning of the 22nd, it is estimated that the actual population of the Auckland metropolitan area had decreased from 880,000 to a little over half a million, as the population dispersed throughout Auckland’s satellite towns and cities, or further afield to rural areas where many still had relatives who owned farming properties where they believed they could find food and shelter, or otherwise lived in small provincial towns unlikely to be hit by any kind of assault. The streets of central Auckland City were practically deserted as people feared the inevitable attack on the country’ largest city, although places like North Shore City were almost as empty given the presence of an urban population and Defence Force infrastructure which would provide a tempting target – those in poorer areas such as Manukau or the lower-income parts of Auckland City, however, largely had nowhere else to go, particularly the immigrant Pacific Islander and Asian populations of those areas. Arterial routes also remained busy, with traffic intensifying after TVNZ went off the air.
The first detonation of a nuclear weapon on New Zealand soil during World War Three therefore killed less people than it could have, with the warhead detonating at 9:53 am, about 100 metres off-centre and a little less than two kilometres above a point just off the shore at Devonport Naval Base, with a force of roughly 410 to 420 kilotons. The blast straddled Auckland Harbour, sweeping Devonport and Takapuna clean of life as well as much of central Auckland. Around the harbour the shipping facilities of the city were demolished as ships were flung into the shore as buildings crumbled for a mile and a half in every direction of the stricken base. Takapuna Grammar School, a designated Civil Defence post, lay three kilometres from Ground Zero, and was essentially blasted into the sea, while the few cars left abandoned on the Harbour Bridge were tossed into the sea as the bridge itself was warped and blackened. In Auckland City proper, the high-rises of Queen Street toppled over one another, with those strong enough to remain standing left blackened and unrecognisable.
In the immediate aftermath of the nuclear strike, 143,200 people were killed outright and approximately 204,000 were injured by causes ranging from radiation (a 500rem dose saturating Devonport and Mechanics Bay) to severe burns as intense thermal radiation blasted a vast area from Epsom to the Wairau Valley.
Even as the mushroom cloud began to rise into the sky and fires ignited within a vast circle from Glenfield to Mount Eden to St Heliers and even as far as the southeast face of Rangitoto, another warhead tumbled from the sky to the south.
***
Whereas the warhead designated for Auckland functioned almost perfectly, the one aimed for Wellington experienced a few minor errors. First, polkovnik Ozerov had miscommunicated the importance of Wellington as a command centre, with the capital ‘only’ receiving a 340-kiloton strike as a result. Furthermore, the hasty loading of warheads onto K-431 may have caused some disturbance to the internal mechanisms, with this or the questionable quality of Soviet electronics leading to it detonating not two kilometres above Lambton Quay as planned, but landing up the Tinakori Valley at three minutes before ten, detonating a bare twenty or so metres above the ground.
Due to the fact that the bomb detonated in a valley a kilometre or so from central Wellington the destruction was perhaps a fraction less severe than it might have been, but it was still immense given the compact nature of the city. Within an instant the inner suburbs of Kelburn, and Northland were erased, and with them went the main campus of Kelburn University and the Botanic Gardens. Although the valley distorted the blast somewhat, the central city was a total loss. An air burst of a little under 400 miles per hour swept down Tinakori Valley, erasing the city’s oldest continually-inhabited district before vaporising Parliament Buildings and the suburbs of Thorndon and Pipitea. Wellington Railway Station crumbled as if it was made of gingerbread, with the casualties amongst those who had clamoured to get on the last trains out of town impossible to ever calculate. Trains were not the only transport affected; the motorway north was scorched and hundreds died as a result of the raised sections collapsing, and the port facilities were set alight or destroyed outright.
Further downtown the effects were somewhat ameliorated by the barrier effect of Kelburn, but nonetheless devastation reigned. As far as Cuba Street nothing was left standing, with the overpressure of the air blast only dying down below 3psi at the foot of Mount Victoria (which itself saw fires breaking out on its west face as it caught the force of the blast which would have otherwise immolated Evans Bay and Hataitai. In the most densely populated area of the city in Newtown the effects were somewhat less as the shielding effect of Kelburn hill became more pronounced, but the effects of thermal radiation were still significant. Those heading north to try and escape at the last minute were subjected to heavy burns, with third-degree burns afflicting those as far away as Island Bay to the south and Khandallah much further north. As it was, Wellington Hospital was severely damaged and the tunnels through Mount Victoria rendered unusable, while in the western parts of Wellington City the suburb of Karori was virtually erased from the map as fires ignited all over the western and southern hills.
As the mushroom cloud rose, a roiling, boiling tower of promethean fire and the ashen souls of those it had claimed, 53,600 lay dead and approximately 56,000 injured. And one bomb remained.
***
If one had been standing on the peak of Mount Ruapehu on that fateful day, they would have seen not only the flashes to the north and south, but also a third, less blinding flash much further to the west sometime between the other two, possibly New Plymouth. Likely as that seemed it would feel slightly off – if it had been New Plymouth, why was there no visible mushroom cloud this near, only a minute later and about 200 kilometres away? Our confused hypothetical mountaineer* would, in fact, have been watching the third nuclear strike aimed at New Zealand – though we may never know what exactly happened, it seems likely that this was a guidance error of the sort which saved many towns on the day of the Exchange. Detonating about 150 kilometres off the Taranaki coast, the bomb incurred no casualties and had few effects, besides salting the seas off the west coast of the North Island with a little more radiation (from readings taken on Lord Howe Island, it can be determined that most of the fallout coming from New Zealand was high-altitude windborne particles, so presumably this impact, colloquially known as the Splash, was actually a standard airburst).
This news came as cold comfort, though. Two of New Zealand’s largest cities had been, to all intents and purposes, destroyed, and at least two hundred thousand – about 6% of the country’s population – would be dead by sundown.
*Although there were a few people on the mountain that morning, most were in lodges further down the mountain, or with a small group celebrating the end of the world with morbid abandon at the crater lake itself. It is from this group that we got the infamous “Three Mushrooms” picture, as well as the famous painting of the same name, now visible in Dunedin Art Gallery…
“Otherwise fine
Otherwise it’s dandy.
Otherwise fine
Otherwise it’s over the top!”
In the air, between Upper Hutt and Featherston
9:56 am
The helicopter had made a course change and was now somewhere over the Rimutakas. Below, out of sight under clouds which had begun sweeping in from the northeast and clearly visible from the height to which the helicopter had dropped, a line of cars, trucks, or whatever transport those fleeing Upper Hutt could muster was weaving its way slowly towards the Wairarapa and, hopefully, safety. Muldoon’s few tears which he had allowed to flow (even at the end of the world, he would show the senior members of his cabinet who was boss here) had fallen and dried, lost in the whitening stubble on his unshaven jowls or the collar of his rumpled suit. As he looked to the east, and the Wairarapa, the co-pilot turned back once more as a louder, more crackly radio transmission came through, the helicopter leading forward as the pilot coaxed every ounce of horsepower out of the engine. Muldoon felt he knew what would be said even before it came.
“We’ve got incoming; duck your heads and do not look at the flash! Do not look back at the flash!”
Then, behind them, the world disappeared.
“And the outlook for Thursday
Your guess is good as mine!
We’ll be together, yeah, together by design
Sunshine!
Sunshine!
Sunshine!
Sunshi-shi-shi-shi-shi-shi…”
Errolwi
Monthly Donor
You have no idea.
Y'know, originally I hadn't planned to write anything today, but it's a grey day here today and we had a wee earthquake earlier this morning. So I've prepared something for you all now; hopefully it satisfies you all.
That's a cherry thought - slight misses could cause some 'interesting' tsunamis.
The things that Geonet notifications on your phone make you think about...
http://www.geonet.org.nz/quakes/region/newzealand/2014p864702
That was my first thought too.
Oh, and Muldoon - I wonder how much more of this he can take.. and if this kills him, who leads NZ out of the chaos. Where are the senior opposition figures in all this?
Early days, but it'd be nice to think some rudimentary parliament can be cobbled together, using the best available people from both sides of the political divide.
There should be a bit of excess housing in the lower South Island too, if it helps. Certainly there were a lot of farmhouses spare as farmers were consolidating in this era. The Hydro Lakes in the Upper Waitaki Valley would still largely be there too. Dunedin and Invercargill had suffered population decline too
I now have this horrible idea that Roger Douglas will use *nuclear war* as his excuse for economic reform.
The Washington consensus *slap*
No Roger, there is no consensus,just ashes, now try again!
Errolwi
Monthly Donor
Huntly is just about as shiny as a coal-fired plant gets too! Electricity distribution likely to be more of an issue than capacity. The 'Cook Strait Cable' terminates in Lower Hutt
Nice update.
Minor point, North Shore City didn't exist as a local body until later. The Shore was East Coast Bays, Takapuna, Devonport, Birkinhead,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkenhead,_New_Zealand others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_territorial_authorities_in_New_Zealand