A NUCLEAR PROPHESY
WARNING:
This article is not for the faint hearted, or those with a nervous disposition. The author, Radical Rooney, disclaims any mental or physical disruption to anyone who chooses to read any of the contents.
Article 1
The Brink of the Abyss
Lord Mountbatten, who once held the country’s highest military post declared “The world now stands at the Brink of the Final Abyss”. He gave a speech detailing the inevitability of Nuclear War, and declared it was for this speech he most wanted to be remembered.
Military resources and technology have now escalated to where many other methods, like viruses or nerve agents or chemicals are available for the total annihilation of Mankind. Having studied the exotic options available, I also am in no doubt we are heading in the direction of the Lemmings.
One of the reasons I suspect this is because I was tasked, as a Radio Amateur, to partake in various War Games inside nuclear bunkers beneath local town halls, like Brighton and Lewes, in Sussex. As a member of Raynet (Radio Amateur Emergency Network) and being very proficient at Morse Code, I was ‘privileged’ to partake in a series of practice scenarios called ‘Warmon’, (war-monitoring) designed to predict, evaluate and prepare for nuclear war.
We were a dozen select few who were secretly seconded in basement bunkers, and the various experts and representatives would all play a part. There was somebody from the GPO who operated air-raid sirens around the country. Not everybody is aware that two very secure lines circle the whole of the U.K. They are there to activate all the countrywide sirens over the British Isles in the event of war.
One line runs clockwise around the whole country, and the other counter-clockwise. In case one line is taken out, the other should remain active, the idea being that every soul up and down the land must be able to hear at least one siren in a crisis.
There was also someone with Telex links to various outlets and representatives from the Forces and the territorial army, who were supposed to patrol outside to keep the hoi-polloi away and supposedly enable access for the rest of us, although I had severe doubts this would ever work, as most of the locations were common knowledge.
There was a person in charge of food distribution and a chap from the National Grid and one from Airspace control, and a very nice man from the N.H.S. After activating our measuring instruments and Geiger counters on the roof we were shown the facilities of blast doors, shower scrubs, huge battery packs and air-filtering machinery.
There would normally be a large translucent Perspex board mounted in the middle of the facility. When the games began we had access to a box of magnetic bomb badges, numbered and coloured as to yields, in tonnage, and whether they were ground or airburst attacks. There was always a sort of boy-scout atmosphere as we unpacked our sandwiches and flasks, as the large kitchens would only operate in a real crisis. However as we liaised with other bunkers, up and down the country and had to place our plastic bombs on the board, with its map of the UK superimposed, a certain reality came into play.
In one enactment apparently somebody, somewhere, knew that a large 2MT bomb had taken out the runways at Heathrow, and a ‘little’ 500Kt had demolished all the buildings and surrounding facilities. We then placed a special sticker on the Tyneside where a dirty bomb had detonated and its fallout was drifting upwind to simply poison the people but preserve the infrastructure. These scenarios were not without brief moments of levity as panic stricken big wigs were informed that a bomb had gone ‘missing’. Heaven only knows where that one ended up. The true irony of this only became apparent when the cold war ended and visiting dignitaries to the ‘Iron Curtain’ were shown SS20 missiles with names and slogans painted on the nose cones, similar to the big old bombers of WW2. These Russian missiles even had the names of their target towns painted on them.
The Super Powers may think twice before committing to full scale hostilities which would destroy all their resources, but would a third world country, with nothing to lose except a burden of over population. In fact, third world countries have substantial grounds for contention. Even ISIL as an ever emerging threat demands more power and more control, and as our own domestic demands escalate, everybody finds the demand can only keep up with the supply, so commodity prices rise in line - Catch 22.
In sheer tonnage there is more explosive power on earth than there is food, but every third person in the world is wretchedly poor, and starving most of the time. This poverty stems directly from widespread lack of clean water supplies. Dirty water carries typhoid, dysentery, cholera, malaria, elephantiasis, snail fever, yellow fever, etc. Most of these are killer diseases and they kill countless millions every year, mostly children under five !
The World Health Organization claims this sad state of affairs could be totally alleviated if the funding of military budgets for just one month was devoted to the problem. Unfortunately, that will never happen. The ‘Powers that be’ have a vested interest in reducing, not sustaining, the world’s population. We live in a conspiracy of silence fostered by an establishment intent on a ‘status quo’, which keeps the populace in blissful ignorance until the point of no return.
The average person can be easily misled. Witness the current demeaning cartoon content of television ads. The power of TV is just phenomenal. When some make believe ‘character’ in a popular soap series commits suicide, the suicide rate rockets up and down the country. A similar incidence occur when some ‘character’ gets pregnant, or married, or has an abortion; or takes drugs, or turns to drink, etc. In the West a majority of people tend to live in TV land, forgetting an excess of fantasy leads to reality.
For the price of a modern jet fighter, fifty thousand village pharmacies could be established in crucial areas of the third world. The Brandt Report claimed many years ago that one half of one per cent of one years expenditure on armaments could end the problem of starvation for the whole world.
Unfortunately mankind, I believe, has an inherent instinct for self-destruction. Call it karma, or bad genes, but I think we’d better do something soon to rectify this weakness. Of course no country in their right mind would start a nuclear war. Trouble is there are one or two out there who are not in their right mind, but the more immediate danger is a simple nuclear accident. In late May 2008 only the workers at Dungeness Power Station in England were aware of a ‘Brown Out’, where a massive generator went off-line, due to human error with a reactor. It automatically shut down, but London was momentarily blacked out (30 mins) and the whole country’s power decreased from 50 to 48 cycles, resulting in the ‘brownout’, where all the street lighting, etc., shone at less than full power.
There was also an earlier incident where the only tool available to eject a ‘hot rod’ from a reactor was a long scaffolding pole, so some ludicrous limits even apply to our own standards.
Every area of technology from armaments to reactors will have recurring human errors; witness Three-Mile-Island, Chernobyl or Fukashima We must realise the hardware does not always compensate for the mistakes of its creators. President Kennedy once said, “The future of civilization hangs by the slenderest of threads, that could be cut at any moment, by accident, madness or miscalculation”.
What are the realities of a nuclear war? Einstein, when asked what the Third World War would be fought with, declared, “On the assumption it must escalate to nuclear weapons, I can only tell you that the Fourth World War would be fought with bow and arrows”. President Nixon once boasted, “I can go into the next room, press a button, and a hundred million people would die”. Chairman Mao also claimed that in a nuclear war with the West, China could easily afford to lose the equivalent total population of America, because many hundreds of millions would survive in his own country.
The death of a million people is called a Megadeath. Imagine a Megadeath in your own town, where you lived and worked. Start with your children; then your family, then all your relatives and loved ones; all your friends and acquaintances, and everyone you ever passed in the street, and all the people you worked with – all dead, all of them, and that’s just one Megadeath. In a nuclear world war there would be thousands of Megadeaths.
The Hiroshima bomb was just a baby in modern terms. A ‘mere’ sixteen thousand tons (16 KT of TNT power) and bombs now exist of 100MT, or one hundred million tons.
There is, at least I hope not, any reason to build a larger weapon, because just encasing such a monster in a Cobalt Shell makes it a Doomsday Weapon. We may safely assume Doomsday Weapons do currently exist. A Cobalt bomb has this potential because, when detonated, it would disperse vast amounts of radioactive cobalt which has such a long half-life that it would poison the Earth for thousands of years, thus destroying every living thing on the planet, for ever.
There are over 200 types of radioactive substances, which can be produced by a nuclear device. All give off one or more of the three principal strains of radiation; alpha and beta particles: and gamma rays, which can penetrate six inches of steel. You can neither see nor feel radiation enter your body, but it destroys the cells and living tissue, collects in the bones and prevents new blood forming.
Some weapons are dirty bombs, emitting massive fallout designed not to destroy, by blast waves, but to merely drift like wind, falling on, and poisoning everything in their path. Others are clean bombs; one such weapon is the Neutron Bomb, which works by enhanced radiation. Designed to be detonate many miles high, over a city, there is little or no blast., but the EMP (electro-magnetic-pulse) from such a weapon would disable all solid-state devices from satellites to wristwatches, so microwave ovens, fridges, phones, central heating, radio and television would all be permanently damaged.
Only cars without computers or electronics and valve radios would function and odd items stored perhaps in a ‘Faraday Cage’ like a solid metal box. Eventually all sewage and water supplies would cease as the pumps stopped. Total anarchy would reign as electric and water supplies dried up, and transport facilities ceased, leaving people without food or heat or light or water. In the event of a huge EMP all the people below would notice would be a tingle down their spine as their nervous systems were bombarded with lethal doses of neutrons. They would continue to function for some hours, unaware their bodies are now mobile microwaves, cooking them from the inside out. This is currently considered a very viable option as a first strike weapon by the super-powers, because no cities need be destroyed, leaving industry intact and room for eventual political manoeuvres.
In the next war, hundreds of millions will die from radiation alone. It is a singularly unpleasant death. You would not realise immediately that you had contracted a fatal dose, as there is no immediate pain. It may take weeks to kill you. Firstly you would feel nauseous; then you lose control of your bodily functions. Then your gums and insides would haemorrhage and you would grow pale and weak, with little or no appetite, but a raging thirst. After a short while your hair would start falling out; then you would lose your teeth and your fingernails would drop off. You would start to swell up and suffer constant bruising. Your eyeballs may swell up so much they may pop out, bursting as they hit the ground. Finally with blinding headaches you would experience fits, convulsions and death.
Even if you just suffered a minimal dose you would recover slowly, and probably lose all your hair. Many survivors never get really well, and die decades afterwards.
Satellites currently surround the Earth and a number of these contain exotic lethal hardware. Possibly nuclear powered and with weapons like lasers, or giant parabolic mirrors designed to burn up whole cities. Weapons designed as Doomsday weapons do already exist, against which there is no defence.
The MAD doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, is currently invalid. Basically the accuracy of modern missiles gives them a very high ‘K’ factor. This is how potential lethality is measured. An effective accuracy of just a few metres means an enemy can obliterate any silos housing underground ICBMs. A missile can travel over ten thousand miles at a speed of 20.000 miles per hour to deliver its warhead straight through your front door, so some will get through, regardless of any elaborate defence system.
Britain’s current Trident ‘defence’ system utilises four subs, two of which must be operational, at any one time. They have sixteen silos each, housing their MARK 11 (D5) UGM-133 MIRVs, or Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles, which possess six warheads each, half of which are decoys. They do not rely on GPS but rather inertial and stellar guidance, and are accurate to 11,300 kilometres. After delivering one ‘payload’ the missile simply orients automatically to a secondary target. Etc.
This article is not for the faint hearted, or those with a nervous disposition. The author, Radical Rooney, disclaims any mental or physical disruption to anyone who chooses to read any of the contents.
Article 1
The Brink of the Abyss
Lord Mountbatten, who once held the country’s highest military post declared “The world now stands at the Brink of the Final Abyss”. He gave a speech detailing the inevitability of Nuclear War, and declared it was for this speech he most wanted to be remembered.
Military resources and technology have now escalated to where many other methods, like viruses or nerve agents or chemicals are available for the total annihilation of Mankind. Having studied the exotic options available, I also am in no doubt we are heading in the direction of the Lemmings.
One of the reasons I suspect this is because I was tasked, as a Radio Amateur, to partake in various War Games inside nuclear bunkers beneath local town halls, like Brighton and Lewes, in Sussex. As a member of Raynet (Radio Amateur Emergency Network) and being very proficient at Morse Code, I was ‘privileged’ to partake in a series of practice scenarios called ‘Warmon’, (war-monitoring) designed to predict, evaluate and prepare for nuclear war.
We were a dozen select few who were secretly seconded in basement bunkers, and the various experts and representatives would all play a part. There was somebody from the GPO who operated air-raid sirens around the country. Not everybody is aware that two very secure lines circle the whole of the U.K. They are there to activate all the countrywide sirens over the British Isles in the event of war.
One line runs clockwise around the whole country, and the other counter-clockwise. In case one line is taken out, the other should remain active, the idea being that every soul up and down the land must be able to hear at least one siren in a crisis.
There was also someone with Telex links to various outlets and representatives from the Forces and the territorial army, who were supposed to patrol outside to keep the hoi-polloi away and supposedly enable access for the rest of us, although I had severe doubts this would ever work, as most of the locations were common knowledge.
There was a person in charge of food distribution and a chap from the National Grid and one from Airspace control, and a very nice man from the N.H.S. After activating our measuring instruments and Geiger counters on the roof we were shown the facilities of blast doors, shower scrubs, huge battery packs and air-filtering machinery.
There would normally be a large translucent Perspex board mounted in the middle of the facility. When the games began we had access to a box of magnetic bomb badges, numbered and coloured as to yields, in tonnage, and whether they were ground or airburst attacks. There was always a sort of boy-scout atmosphere as we unpacked our sandwiches and flasks, as the large kitchens would only operate in a real crisis. However as we liaised with other bunkers, up and down the country and had to place our plastic bombs on the board, with its map of the UK superimposed, a certain reality came into play.
In one enactment apparently somebody, somewhere, knew that a large 2MT bomb had taken out the runways at Heathrow, and a ‘little’ 500Kt had demolished all the buildings and surrounding facilities. We then placed a special sticker on the Tyneside where a dirty bomb had detonated and its fallout was drifting upwind to simply poison the people but preserve the infrastructure. These scenarios were not without brief moments of levity as panic stricken big wigs were informed that a bomb had gone ‘missing’. Heaven only knows where that one ended up. The true irony of this only became apparent when the cold war ended and visiting dignitaries to the ‘Iron Curtain’ were shown SS20 missiles with names and slogans painted on the nose cones, similar to the big old bombers of WW2. These Russian missiles even had the names of their target towns painted on them.
The Super Powers may think twice before committing to full scale hostilities which would destroy all their resources, but would a third world country, with nothing to lose except a burden of over population. In fact, third world countries have substantial grounds for contention. Even ISIL as an ever emerging threat demands more power and more control, and as our own domestic demands escalate, everybody finds the demand can only keep up with the supply, so commodity prices rise in line - Catch 22.
In sheer tonnage there is more explosive power on earth than there is food, but every third person in the world is wretchedly poor, and starving most of the time. This poverty stems directly from widespread lack of clean water supplies. Dirty water carries typhoid, dysentery, cholera, malaria, elephantiasis, snail fever, yellow fever, etc. Most of these are killer diseases and they kill countless millions every year, mostly children under five !
The World Health Organization claims this sad state of affairs could be totally alleviated if the funding of military budgets for just one month was devoted to the problem. Unfortunately, that will never happen. The ‘Powers that be’ have a vested interest in reducing, not sustaining, the world’s population. We live in a conspiracy of silence fostered by an establishment intent on a ‘status quo’, which keeps the populace in blissful ignorance until the point of no return.
The average person can be easily misled. Witness the current demeaning cartoon content of television ads. The power of TV is just phenomenal. When some make believe ‘character’ in a popular soap series commits suicide, the suicide rate rockets up and down the country. A similar incidence occur when some ‘character’ gets pregnant, or married, or has an abortion; or takes drugs, or turns to drink, etc. In the West a majority of people tend to live in TV land, forgetting an excess of fantasy leads to reality.
For the price of a modern jet fighter, fifty thousand village pharmacies could be established in crucial areas of the third world. The Brandt Report claimed many years ago that one half of one per cent of one years expenditure on armaments could end the problem of starvation for the whole world.
Unfortunately mankind, I believe, has an inherent instinct for self-destruction. Call it karma, or bad genes, but I think we’d better do something soon to rectify this weakness. Of course no country in their right mind would start a nuclear war. Trouble is there are one or two out there who are not in their right mind, but the more immediate danger is a simple nuclear accident. In late May 2008 only the workers at Dungeness Power Station in England were aware of a ‘Brown Out’, where a massive generator went off-line, due to human error with a reactor. It automatically shut down, but London was momentarily blacked out (30 mins) and the whole country’s power decreased from 50 to 48 cycles, resulting in the ‘brownout’, where all the street lighting, etc., shone at less than full power.
There was also an earlier incident where the only tool available to eject a ‘hot rod’ from a reactor was a long scaffolding pole, so some ludicrous limits even apply to our own standards.
Every area of technology from armaments to reactors will have recurring human errors; witness Three-Mile-Island, Chernobyl or Fukashima We must realise the hardware does not always compensate for the mistakes of its creators. President Kennedy once said, “The future of civilization hangs by the slenderest of threads, that could be cut at any moment, by accident, madness or miscalculation”.
What are the realities of a nuclear war? Einstein, when asked what the Third World War would be fought with, declared, “On the assumption it must escalate to nuclear weapons, I can only tell you that the Fourth World War would be fought with bow and arrows”. President Nixon once boasted, “I can go into the next room, press a button, and a hundred million people would die”. Chairman Mao also claimed that in a nuclear war with the West, China could easily afford to lose the equivalent total population of America, because many hundreds of millions would survive in his own country.
The death of a million people is called a Megadeath. Imagine a Megadeath in your own town, where you lived and worked. Start with your children; then your family, then all your relatives and loved ones; all your friends and acquaintances, and everyone you ever passed in the street, and all the people you worked with – all dead, all of them, and that’s just one Megadeath. In a nuclear world war there would be thousands of Megadeaths.
The Hiroshima bomb was just a baby in modern terms. A ‘mere’ sixteen thousand tons (16 KT of TNT power) and bombs now exist of 100MT, or one hundred million tons.
There is, at least I hope not, any reason to build a larger weapon, because just encasing such a monster in a Cobalt Shell makes it a Doomsday Weapon. We may safely assume Doomsday Weapons do currently exist. A Cobalt bomb has this potential because, when detonated, it would disperse vast amounts of radioactive cobalt which has such a long half-life that it would poison the Earth for thousands of years, thus destroying every living thing on the planet, for ever.
There are over 200 types of radioactive substances, which can be produced by a nuclear device. All give off one or more of the three principal strains of radiation; alpha and beta particles: and gamma rays, which can penetrate six inches of steel. You can neither see nor feel radiation enter your body, but it destroys the cells and living tissue, collects in the bones and prevents new blood forming.
Some weapons are dirty bombs, emitting massive fallout designed not to destroy, by blast waves, but to merely drift like wind, falling on, and poisoning everything in their path. Others are clean bombs; one such weapon is the Neutron Bomb, which works by enhanced radiation. Designed to be detonate many miles high, over a city, there is little or no blast., but the EMP (electro-magnetic-pulse) from such a weapon would disable all solid-state devices from satellites to wristwatches, so microwave ovens, fridges, phones, central heating, radio and television would all be permanently damaged.
Only cars without computers or electronics and valve radios would function and odd items stored perhaps in a ‘Faraday Cage’ like a solid metal box. Eventually all sewage and water supplies would cease as the pumps stopped. Total anarchy would reign as electric and water supplies dried up, and transport facilities ceased, leaving people without food or heat or light or water. In the event of a huge EMP all the people below would notice would be a tingle down their spine as their nervous systems were bombarded with lethal doses of neutrons. They would continue to function for some hours, unaware their bodies are now mobile microwaves, cooking them from the inside out. This is currently considered a very viable option as a first strike weapon by the super-powers, because no cities need be destroyed, leaving industry intact and room for eventual political manoeuvres.
In the next war, hundreds of millions will die from radiation alone. It is a singularly unpleasant death. You would not realise immediately that you had contracted a fatal dose, as there is no immediate pain. It may take weeks to kill you. Firstly you would feel nauseous; then you lose control of your bodily functions. Then your gums and insides would haemorrhage and you would grow pale and weak, with little or no appetite, but a raging thirst. After a short while your hair would start falling out; then you would lose your teeth and your fingernails would drop off. You would start to swell up and suffer constant bruising. Your eyeballs may swell up so much they may pop out, bursting as they hit the ground. Finally with blinding headaches you would experience fits, convulsions and death.
Even if you just suffered a minimal dose you would recover slowly, and probably lose all your hair. Many survivors never get really well, and die decades afterwards.
Satellites currently surround the Earth and a number of these contain exotic lethal hardware. Possibly nuclear powered and with weapons like lasers, or giant parabolic mirrors designed to burn up whole cities. Weapons designed as Doomsday weapons do already exist, against which there is no defence.
The MAD doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, is currently invalid. Basically the accuracy of modern missiles gives them a very high ‘K’ factor. This is how potential lethality is measured. An effective accuracy of just a few metres means an enemy can obliterate any silos housing underground ICBMs. A missile can travel over ten thousand miles at a speed of 20.000 miles per hour to deliver its warhead straight through your front door, so some will get through, regardless of any elaborate defence system.
Britain’s current Trident ‘defence’ system utilises four subs, two of which must be operational, at any one time. They have sixteen silos each, housing their MARK 11 (D5) UGM-133 MIRVs, or Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles, which possess six warheads each, half of which are decoys. They do not rely on GPS but rather inertial and stellar guidance, and are accurate to 11,300 kilometres. After delivering one ‘payload’ the missile simply orients automatically to a secondary target. Etc.
Each missile weighs sixty tons and is as big as a bus, but a lot more accurate. Their warheads are from eighty to one hundred kilotons each, whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a mere sixteen kilotons, so each missile has the capacity of over 200 Kilotons, giving us a total potential of 16,800 Hiroshima bombs.
There are also tactical nuclear weapons, which can be fired like a bazooka over a battlefield some miles away, yielding less than a kiloton and the Russians claimed thirty years ago they could take out the corridors of power along Whitehall, without even damaging the windows in Buckingham Palace.
A tactical weapon is one intended for use against the opposing army, and not for civilian deployment. Not only do these things move around the country at random, like the Russian SS20s, to avoid targeting by satellites, but occasionally blow up on trains or trucks, by accident. The Russians compacted one nuclear device into the size of a small suitcase. They constructed 100 but years later, at a nuclear summit, admitted they had ‘displaced’ over half of them.
A future war may not entail a massive pre-emptive strike, but more likely an accident, or a renegade missile would destroy a small city. The other side would then be forced to take out an opposing city of similar size and value. This would be necessary to demonstrate a vestige of control, and to prove to the enemy that they are no longer a soft target. Well, from this point on it may cease, whether the first strike was deliberate or accidental. Or - it may not.
It may escalate in a slow-motion ‘City for City’ war as each side struck back in retaliation, or one side decided the time was ripe to retaliate, as the enemy was weakened and vulnerable and launch everything it had, perhaps relying on some nuclear umbrella to protect them from the inevitable counter-strike.
A tactical weapon is one intended for use against the opposing army, and not for civilian deployment. Not only do these things move around the country at random, like the Russian SS20s, to avoid targeting by satellites, but occasionally blow up on trains or trucks, by accident. The Russians compacted one nuclear device into the size of a small suitcase. They constructed 100 but years later, at a nuclear summit, admitted they had ‘displaced’ over half of them.
A future war may not entail a massive pre-emptive strike, but more likely an accident, or a renegade missile would destroy a small city. The other side would then be forced to take out an opposing city of similar size and value. This would be necessary to demonstrate a vestige of control, and to prove to the enemy that they are no longer a soft target. Well, from this point on it may cease, whether the first strike was deliberate or accidental. Or - it may not.
It may escalate in a slow-motion ‘City for City’ war as each side struck back in retaliation, or one side decided the time was ripe to retaliate, as the enemy was weakened and vulnerable and launch everything it had, perhaps relying on some nuclear umbrella to protect them from the inevitable counter-strike.
Ronald Reagans’ Star Wars Defence initiated in 1983 planned to intercept incoming missiles, by using space and ground-based nuclear Lasers, sub-atomic particle beams and computer-guided projectiles fired by electromagnetic rail guns.
Very ambitious, until it was realised that numerous new nuclear plants would then have to be created to supply the energy for these systems, (all under the central control of a super-computer) which would then become targets themselves. Thirty billion was invested in the project, without much fruition.
Envisage the scenario of a single nuclear strike, where an enemy used its largest warhead in a pre-emptive strike. An instant before the missile explodes, miles high over ground zero, which could be a metropolis like London. To avoid panic the authorities, who would be scuttling poste-haste to the relative safety of their nuclear bunkers, issue no warning.
Very ambitious, until it was realised that numerous new nuclear plants would then have to be created to supply the energy for these systems, (all under the central control of a super-computer) which would then become targets themselves. Thirty billion was invested in the project, without much fruition.
Envisage the scenario of a single nuclear strike, where an enemy used its largest warhead in a pre-emptive strike. An instant before the missile explodes, miles high over ground zero, which could be a metropolis like London. To avoid panic the authorities, who would be scuttling poste-haste to the relative safety of their nuclear bunkers, issue no warning.
Travelling faster than sound no-one sees or hears it arrive. The streets echo to the sound of traffic and the everyday noises of a busy city. Flocks of pigeons hover over the white stone buildings of Trafalgar Square, and in the surrounding streets people go about their business thinking about everyday worries and problems. A young girl pushes a pram, while the voices of children mix with that of the street traders. Then the single warhead of 100MT ignites, miles above the city, on a sunny Saturday morning.
The pavement artists are happy with the weather and the crowds, which are more generous than usual. An old man scratches his face; he tugs at his beard and lights a cigarette. Before his match goes out a million people will die.
One hundred thousand feet above him, in a sudden flash of light brighter than the sun, the missile ignites in a blast of whitish-pinkish fire. It melts the eyes of millions before they have time to blink. It grows in seconds to a howling shrieking fireball, a mile across, hotter and brighter than the inside of the sun. It signals the most traumatic event in the history of mankind. Nelsons Column is instantly vaporised.
People facing it on the South Coast are blinded, while those closer in East Grinstead have their eyes melted in their sockets. Everyone caught in the open as far away as Croydon and Watford is instantly consumed in the furnace of the flash. There are no ashes; even on the pavements: only black shadows left on whitened streets. They are the lucky ones; for them there is no pain, no memory. As the fireball slowly sinks to earth the incredible heat burns the flesh off those facing it so that half their skin is stripped from their bodies.
Those sheltered from the flash by walls and buildings hurl themselves off bridges into the Thames, maddened by the intolerable heat and a raging thirst they cannot control. For twenty miles across millions caught in the open stagger blindly around with a macabre cloak of skin dragging at their heels, but some moments later, at the speed of sound, the blast touches off.
Its unearthly rumble is like a giant door closing in hell. It rips out the entire underground system, as far as the suburbs, and leaves a crater miles wide and a thousand feet deep.
It completely and utterly flattens everything for twenty miles around and totally destroys all brick buildings in a thirty mile radius. Twenty miles away lorries, buses, cars, people, prams and babies are fired through the air like bullets, at a speed of five hundred miles an hour, to pile into heaps of rubble hundreds of feet high, at the ends of streets and crossroads. Up to fifty miles away, millions are left buried in their homes, which are in danger of collapsing around them.
As the heat wave hits Brighton and Oxford it blinds people facing it and burns all exposed skin; it sets fire to wood and paper and ignites furnishings and curtains inside houses.
This is the start of a fire, fifty miles across, which will spawn the ultimate horror of a firestorm. A gigantic uncontrollable monster which eats up oxygen and sucks in air at hurricane force to fan and feed its flames until everything within is consumed. In the last war a firestorm in Dresden killed twice as many people in a few hours as did the bomb over Hiroshima. The winds reach a shrieking one hundred miles an hour and the flames soar five miles into the sky.
In the centre there is no fire but there is no air either. As the furnace hot temperatures of fourteen hundred degrees F. consume all the oxygen, children are torn from their parents’ grasp by the force of the hurricane and whirled up into the flames. Even those who escape the initial radiation and the blast wither like leaves and die in an instant. Some with huge swollen heads feel their eyeballs pop out to burst on the pavement.
The panic-stricken survivors run blindly in the streets, the fluid from their melted eyes crusting on red-raw faces; the screams from open wounds that once were mouths echoing the deathly stillness of the aftermath. Their shrivelled blackened skins tearing off in huge glove-like flaps as they stumble around hysterically screaming for release. There is no transport, no water, no doctors, no help, and no relief. There is only the sewage and the blood running with them in the streets; they shriek for their children, they roar from the pain and howl like animals in their anguish and their agony.
The howling living rage of the firestorm slowly burns itself out, and now the gun-shots of the police and army ring out, as they quickly ease the pain of those for whom there is no help. The only other sound is the hiss of the burial teams as their flame-throwers ensure that remains are safely disposed of.
Faces of marble gaze slowly upwards, as a fine grey snow begins to fall; one wants to feel its cold touch cleanse and refresh, but this is the real killer; it rains down for many hours and covers over ten thousand square miles; those caught in it for more than a few minutes are already condemned to death. This is the fall-out and there is no real defence against it. Lord Gardner told the World Disarmament Convention that fall-out shelters in such a situation were absolutely useless.
What if such a missile were dropped with a multiple warhead or if a hundred smaller weapons arrived all at once, if the enemy felt they had nothing to lose and decided to annihilate everything in an act of vengeance. Just one warhead would cause the total collapse of the National Health Service in England, and saturate hospitals to overflowing. All the dead would have to be put in body-bags, and buried in massive pits.
There are those who say that systematic elimination, or dispersal of that small elite who would carry out the policies concerned should, sooner or later, create a deadly political vacuum which few would relish filling. But let us not foster revolt; it is better the blood of our children should run in the streets with the sewage than that our noble politicians should worry for our welfare, rather than their own.
There are those who say this is God’s world and He wouldn't destroy it. Well, the greatest gift He has given us is freedom; freedom to live, to create and to destroy; but evil is the result of ignorance, and for evil to triumph it is only necessary that good men do nothing.
Radical Rooney ©
The pavement artists are happy with the weather and the crowds, which are more generous than usual. An old man scratches his face; he tugs at his beard and lights a cigarette. Before his match goes out a million people will die.
One hundred thousand feet above him, in a sudden flash of light brighter than the sun, the missile ignites in a blast of whitish-pinkish fire. It melts the eyes of millions before they have time to blink. It grows in seconds to a howling shrieking fireball, a mile across, hotter and brighter than the inside of the sun. It signals the most traumatic event in the history of mankind. Nelsons Column is instantly vaporised.
People facing it on the South Coast are blinded, while those closer in East Grinstead have their eyes melted in their sockets. Everyone caught in the open as far away as Croydon and Watford is instantly consumed in the furnace of the flash. There are no ashes; even on the pavements: only black shadows left on whitened streets. They are the lucky ones; for them there is no pain, no memory. As the fireball slowly sinks to earth the incredible heat burns the flesh off those facing it so that half their skin is stripped from their bodies.
Those sheltered from the flash by walls and buildings hurl themselves off bridges into the Thames, maddened by the intolerable heat and a raging thirst they cannot control. For twenty miles across millions caught in the open stagger blindly around with a macabre cloak of skin dragging at their heels, but some moments later, at the speed of sound, the blast touches off.
Its unearthly rumble is like a giant door closing in hell. It rips out the entire underground system, as far as the suburbs, and leaves a crater miles wide and a thousand feet deep.
It completely and utterly flattens everything for twenty miles around and totally destroys all brick buildings in a thirty mile radius. Twenty miles away lorries, buses, cars, people, prams and babies are fired through the air like bullets, at a speed of five hundred miles an hour, to pile into heaps of rubble hundreds of feet high, at the ends of streets and crossroads. Up to fifty miles away, millions are left buried in their homes, which are in danger of collapsing around them.
As the heat wave hits Brighton and Oxford it blinds people facing it and burns all exposed skin; it sets fire to wood and paper and ignites furnishings and curtains inside houses.
This is the start of a fire, fifty miles across, which will spawn the ultimate horror of a firestorm. A gigantic uncontrollable monster which eats up oxygen and sucks in air at hurricane force to fan and feed its flames until everything within is consumed. In the last war a firestorm in Dresden killed twice as many people in a few hours as did the bomb over Hiroshima. The winds reach a shrieking one hundred miles an hour and the flames soar five miles into the sky.
In the centre there is no fire but there is no air either. As the furnace hot temperatures of fourteen hundred degrees F. consume all the oxygen, children are torn from their parents’ grasp by the force of the hurricane and whirled up into the flames. Even those who escape the initial radiation and the blast wither like leaves and die in an instant. Some with huge swollen heads feel their eyeballs pop out to burst on the pavement.
The panic-stricken survivors run blindly in the streets, the fluid from their melted eyes crusting on red-raw faces; the screams from open wounds that once were mouths echoing the deathly stillness of the aftermath. Their shrivelled blackened skins tearing off in huge glove-like flaps as they stumble around hysterically screaming for release. There is no transport, no water, no doctors, no help, and no relief. There is only the sewage and the blood running with them in the streets; they shriek for their children, they roar from the pain and howl like animals in their anguish and their agony.
The howling living rage of the firestorm slowly burns itself out, and now the gun-shots of the police and army ring out, as they quickly ease the pain of those for whom there is no help. The only other sound is the hiss of the burial teams as their flame-throwers ensure that remains are safely disposed of.
Faces of marble gaze slowly upwards, as a fine grey snow begins to fall; one wants to feel its cold touch cleanse and refresh, but this is the real killer; it rains down for many hours and covers over ten thousand square miles; those caught in it for more than a few minutes are already condemned to death. This is the fall-out and there is no real defence against it. Lord Gardner told the World Disarmament Convention that fall-out shelters in such a situation were absolutely useless.
What if such a missile were dropped with a multiple warhead or if a hundred smaller weapons arrived all at once, if the enemy felt they had nothing to lose and decided to annihilate everything in an act of vengeance. Just one warhead would cause the total collapse of the National Health Service in England, and saturate hospitals to overflowing. All the dead would have to be put in body-bags, and buried in massive pits.
There are those who say that systematic elimination, or dispersal of that small elite who would carry out the policies concerned should, sooner or later, create a deadly political vacuum which few would relish filling. But let us not foster revolt; it is better the blood of our children should run in the streets with the sewage than that our noble politicians should worry for our welfare, rather than their own.
There are those who say this is God’s world and He wouldn't destroy it. Well, the greatest gift He has given us is freedom; freedom to live, to create and to destroy; but evil is the result of ignorance, and for evil to triumph it is only necessary that good men do nothing.
Radical Rooney ©