GWOT VII - Unthinkable Tuesday
Jul. 5th, 2020 02:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VII - Unthinkable Tuesday
We could never quite forget that we were on a military base.
Wearing civilian clothing, to get used to it. Check.
Discreetly ignored by uniformed personnel, as long as our security badges were visibly displayed. Check.
Going in and out of old buildings that stank of pre-War history. Check.
But everywhere you went, there were blue lines and red lines.
The blue line led to the nearest bunker, with directional arrows and a diamond symbol in the middle that meant you were between two of them, so pick a direction and start running.
Red lines meant don't cross me, you will be shot. And it was meant.
Tuesdays at noon, they tested the base alert systems. One hoot meant check in with your sponsor. (If you were a sailor, it meant return to your unit.) Two hoots meant base emergency, hold your positions. Three hoots meant general emergency, return to your unit and activate your unit emergency plan. Four or more hoots meant take cover, enemy attack.
At 1100 on a Tuesday we were sipping coffee and going over how to do brush passes when we started hearing hoots, and counting... I already knew the nearest bunker was in the basement of the coffee shop. So by the start of the fourth hoot, I was already moving.
Monterey was an absolutely prime target for any enemy which had gotten sick and tired of the California Republic and decided to express its dislike in an atom-smashing fashion.
Imagine if you will, a dingy basement bar. Now subtract bottles and add cans in their place. Canned water, canned food. That was the bunker we spent the next two hours in. We tried to carry on with the class, but no one's heart was in it.
Occasionally we heard bits of news over the base PA system. "Security force staffed with twelve armored units." "Scramble, scramble, scramble, launch all aircraft." "Qualified sailors report to South Dock." "Water pressure 200psi at 6th and Main."
Finally. "All clear. All clear. All clear. Report to your units and sponsors for further instructions."
When we reported to the Gold Building, we were signed in on a roster and handed cue cards and vests.
My vest read, "Public Works Director" and my cue card read "Two of your three service yards have been destroyed. Less than one-third your personnel have reported to the third service yard. You have six trucks, one bulldozer and one towable generator available." Each asset was represented with a printed card, to play on a map.
We were in an exercise. A mid sized city in central California, population 300,000 as of ten minutes ago, had just been hit with a nuclear weapon, and we were the responders.
Since that first fateful day that started the Firecracker War, California had not suffered another strike from a nuclear weapon.
The rest of America, not so lucky. It had taken over a year, but China had finally figured out how to retaliate, and it had been the American Midwest's turn to face the fury of split atoms.
Nuclear war had a stench of reality to us. China was far away. The bones of San Francisco were right here. In between - the California Naval Militia and the semi-floating death traps we called lithium-electric submarines.
It wouldn't be one weapon on one city if it happened again. It would be a full court press, a megadeath strike, a decap strike, hoping to throttle California's own Strategic Defense Force before we could get in some licks of our own.
I knew all too well.
Scattered throughout California's officer corps, like mold in bread, were those with the knowledge and the codes, the authority and the responsibility, to deploy California's most ferocious weapons.
That posed a problem for me, I realized.
After the exercise concluded, I made a discreet inquiry through the proper channel. Arrangements were made for me to meet someone in the SCIF.
"What do I do with my token when I am overseas as a military attache?" I asked, when I had privacy to do so.
"You retain it," was the laconic reply. "And if you need to, you use it."
"Even in China?"
"Anywhere in the world."
I had retained it in Iowa. But I had arranged to have powerful explosives near me at all times as well. It had been drilled into me - I could be killed, but I could no longer be captured, nor could my token be captured with or without me.
I could not guarantee this in China. In theory, the Vienna Convention of 1815 made the persons of diplomatic personnel inviolate. In theory, the use of nuclear arms was itself a war crime. So much for theory.
"We had another related matter to discuss with you."
It is the most outrageous possible violation of diplomatic immunity to harbor weapons of mass destruction under that immunity.
I was briefed:
On the morning of the Firecracker War, about twenty minutes before the first detonation in San Francisco, an extremely heavily armed task force of American commandos had breached the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC. In the course of killing all the security and diplomatic personnel in the building, they had also discovered something that demanded the immediate attention of the capitol's Nuclear Emergency Search Team.
That something had been taken swiftly, and with inadequate secrecy, to the nearest wide open space - Andrews Air Force Base - and then flown elsewhere for access, defusing, disarming and analysis.
In some eyes, the mere fact - that a nuclear weapon had been concealed inside the Chinese Embassy - completely justified the thermonuclear incineration of over one hundred Chinese cities that followed within the week.
In other eyes, that America had not only started the Firecracker War but had nuked San Francisco, quote unquote 'ourselves', to justify it...
If one wishes to redress the wrongs of history, where do you start? And where does it end?
Do incinerated thousands in the City That Never Sleeps justify millions in the Middle Kingdom?
I didn't know. But the question did not arise, because the same hands and fingers did both.
California had now committed the same sin.
Each of our embassies around the world concealed 'packages.'
Nuclear arms? Likely.
More deadly items? Of an absolute certainty.
And briefly, I was now being trained on how to deploy them and set them off, not by remote, not by token-and-authentication, but manually.
In other words, by hand.
With a provision for a delay that could be set no longer than a classified number of minutes. Not hours. Minutes.
I had been trained in demolitions. And I was a quick study.
We didn't discuss the question that would arise for most civilians, and some soldiers.
Would I do it?
Of course I would. I had done it in Mexico, except that the Mexican officer had flinched. I had come within minutes of doing it, in Iowa.
No, it would not get easier each time. But for whatever reason, it would not get harder either.
California had taken great care with our own Embassy Row. Unlike the Russian and Chinese embassies in DC, our alienated buildings were not on the sides of hills and did not overlook our capital city.
Instead, they were concentrated together in the same neighborhood, at the bottom of a bowl, a terrain feature that would channel any blast upward instead of outward.
We radiation-screened all diplomatic pouches, as other nations did.
Neither chemicals nor biologicals are detected in such a way.
And that is all I can say about that.
For some nations, this discussion is unthinkable.
For the California Republic, it's Tuesday.
We could never quite forget that we were on a military base.
Wearing civilian clothing, to get used to it. Check.
Discreetly ignored by uniformed personnel, as long as our security badges were visibly displayed. Check.
Going in and out of old buildings that stank of pre-War history. Check.
But everywhere you went, there were blue lines and red lines.
The blue line led to the nearest bunker, with directional arrows and a diamond symbol in the middle that meant you were between two of them, so pick a direction and start running.
Red lines meant don't cross me, you will be shot. And it was meant.
Tuesdays at noon, they tested the base alert systems. One hoot meant check in with your sponsor. (If you were a sailor, it meant return to your unit.) Two hoots meant base emergency, hold your positions. Three hoots meant general emergency, return to your unit and activate your unit emergency plan. Four or more hoots meant take cover, enemy attack.
At 1100 on a Tuesday we were sipping coffee and going over how to do brush passes when we started hearing hoots, and counting... I already knew the nearest bunker was in the basement of the coffee shop. So by the start of the fourth hoot, I was already moving.
Monterey was an absolutely prime target for any enemy which had gotten sick and tired of the California Republic and decided to express its dislike in an atom-smashing fashion.
Imagine if you will, a dingy basement bar. Now subtract bottles and add cans in their place. Canned water, canned food. That was the bunker we spent the next two hours in. We tried to carry on with the class, but no one's heart was in it.
Occasionally we heard bits of news over the base PA system. "Security force staffed with twelve armored units." "Scramble, scramble, scramble, launch all aircraft." "Qualified sailors report to South Dock." "Water pressure 200psi at 6th and Main."
Finally. "All clear. All clear. All clear. Report to your units and sponsors for further instructions."
When we reported to the Gold Building, we were signed in on a roster and handed cue cards and vests.
My vest read, "Public Works Director" and my cue card read "Two of your three service yards have been destroyed. Less than one-third your personnel have reported to the third service yard. You have six trucks, one bulldozer and one towable generator available." Each asset was represented with a printed card, to play on a map.
We were in an exercise. A mid sized city in central California, population 300,000 as of ten minutes ago, had just been hit with a nuclear weapon, and we were the responders.
Since that first fateful day that started the Firecracker War, California had not suffered another strike from a nuclear weapon.
The rest of America, not so lucky. It had taken over a year, but China had finally figured out how to retaliate, and it had been the American Midwest's turn to face the fury of split atoms.
Nuclear war had a stench of reality to us. China was far away. The bones of San Francisco were right here. In between - the California Naval Militia and the semi-floating death traps we called lithium-electric submarines.
It wouldn't be one weapon on one city if it happened again. It would be a full court press, a megadeath strike, a decap strike, hoping to throttle California's own Strategic Defense Force before we could get in some licks of our own.
I knew all too well.
Scattered throughout California's officer corps, like mold in bread, were those with the knowledge and the codes, the authority and the responsibility, to deploy California's most ferocious weapons.
That posed a problem for me, I realized.
After the exercise concluded, I made a discreet inquiry through the proper channel. Arrangements were made for me to meet someone in the SCIF.
"What do I do with my token when I am overseas as a military attache?" I asked, when I had privacy to do so.
"You retain it," was the laconic reply. "And if you need to, you use it."
"Even in China?"
"Anywhere in the world."
I had retained it in Iowa. But I had arranged to have powerful explosives near me at all times as well. It had been drilled into me - I could be killed, but I could no longer be captured, nor could my token be captured with or without me.
I could not guarantee this in China. In theory, the Vienna Convention of 1815 made the persons of diplomatic personnel inviolate. In theory, the use of nuclear arms was itself a war crime. So much for theory.
"We had another related matter to discuss with you."
It is the most outrageous possible violation of diplomatic immunity to harbor weapons of mass destruction under that immunity.
I was briefed:
On the morning of the Firecracker War, about twenty minutes before the first detonation in San Francisco, an extremely heavily armed task force of American commandos had breached the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC. In the course of killing all the security and diplomatic personnel in the building, they had also discovered something that demanded the immediate attention of the capitol's Nuclear Emergency Search Team.
That something had been taken swiftly, and with inadequate secrecy, to the nearest wide open space - Andrews Air Force Base - and then flown elsewhere for access, defusing, disarming and analysis.
In some eyes, the mere fact - that a nuclear weapon had been concealed inside the Chinese Embassy - completely justified the thermonuclear incineration of over one hundred Chinese cities that followed within the week.
In other eyes, that America had not only started the Firecracker War but had nuked San Francisco, quote unquote 'ourselves', to justify it...
If one wishes to redress the wrongs of history, where do you start? And where does it end?
Do incinerated thousands in the City That Never Sleeps justify millions in the Middle Kingdom?
I didn't know. But the question did not arise, because the same hands and fingers did both.
California had now committed the same sin.
Each of our embassies around the world concealed 'packages.'
Nuclear arms? Likely.
More deadly items? Of an absolute certainty.
And briefly, I was now being trained on how to deploy them and set them off, not by remote, not by token-and-authentication, but manually.
In other words, by hand.
With a provision for a delay that could be set no longer than a classified number of minutes. Not hours. Minutes.
I had been trained in demolitions. And I was a quick study.
We didn't discuss the question that would arise for most civilians, and some soldiers.
Would I do it?
Of course I would. I had done it in Mexico, except that the Mexican officer had flinched. I had come within minutes of doing it, in Iowa.
No, it would not get easier each time. But for whatever reason, it would not get harder either.
California had taken great care with our own Embassy Row. Unlike the Russian and Chinese embassies in DC, our alienated buildings were not on the sides of hills and did not overlook our capital city.
Instead, they were concentrated together in the same neighborhood, at the bottom of a bowl, a terrain feature that would channel any blast upward instead of outward.
We radiation-screened all diplomatic pouches, as other nations did.
Neither chemicals nor biologicals are detected in such a way.
And that is all I can say about that.
For some nations, this discussion is unthinkable.
For the California Republic, it's Tuesday.
