Nuclear Winter Desolation: Post Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (Nuclear Winter Series Book 5) Read online

  A note on the impact on humanity, we can look to society’s reaction to recent political events. Imagine what U.S. cities would look like if the triggering event for protests and riots was based on lack of food. The social unrest would quickly spread into suburban areas, as the have-nots would search for sustenance from those who might have it.

  When analyzing the risk of nuclear winter, one question is of paramount importance: Would there be long term or even permanent harm to human civilization? Research shows nuclear winter would last ten years or more. Would the world ever be able to come back from the devastating loss of billions of lives?

  Carl Sagan was one of the first people to recognize this point in a commentary he wrote on nuclear winter for Foreign Affairs magazine. Sagan believed nuclear winter could cause human extinction, in which case all members of future generations would be lost. He argued that this made nuclear winter vastly more important than the direct effects of nuclear war, which could, in his words, kill only hundreds of millions of people.

  Sagan was, however, right that human extinction would cause permanent harm to human civilization. It is debatable whether nuclear winter could cause human extinction. Rutgers professor Alan Robock, a respected nuclear winter researcher, believes it is unlikely. He commented, “Especially in Australia and New Zealand, humans would have a better chance to survive.”

  Why Australia and New Zealand? A nuclear war would presumably occur mainly or entirely in the northern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere would still experience environmental disruption, but it would not be as severe. Australia and New Zealand further benefit from being surrounded by water, which further softens the effect.

  This is hardly a cheerful thought, as it leaves open the chance of human extinction, at least for those of us north of the equator. Given all the uncertainty and the limited available research, it is impossible to rule out the possibility of human extinction. In any event, the possibility should not be dismissed.

  Even if people survive, there could still be permanent harm to humanity. Small patches of survivors would be extremely vulnerable to subsequent disasters. They certainly could not keep up the massively complex civilization we enjoy today. In addition to the medical impact, the destruction of the power grid, the heartbeat of most nations, would likely occur due to the electromagnetic pulse generated by the nuclear detonations. It would take many years to rebuild the critical infrastructure ruined by the blasts.

  It would be a long and uncertain rebuilding process, and survivors might never get civilization back to where it is now. More importantly, they might never get civilization to where we now stand poised to take it in the future. Our potentially bright future could be forever dimmed, permanently.

  Nuclear winter is a very large and serious risk. In some ways, it doesn’t change nuclear weapons policy all that much. Everyone already knew that nuclear war would be highly catastrophic. The prospect of a prolonged nuclear winter means that nuclear war is even more catastrophic. That only reinforces policies that have long been in place, from deterrence to disarmament. Indeed, military officials have sometimes reacted to nuclear winter by saying that it just makes their nuclear deterrence policies that much more effective. Disarmament advocates similarly cite nuclear winter as justifying their policy goals. But the basic structure of the policy debate is unchanged.

  In other ways, nuclear winter changes nuclear weapons policy quite dramatically. Because of nuclear winter, noncombatant states may be severely harmed by nuclear war. Nuclear winter gives every country great incentive to reduce tensions and de-escalate conflicts between nuclear-capable states.

  Nation-states that are stockpiling nuclear weapons should also take notice. Indeed, the biggest policy implication of nuclear winter could be that it puts the interests of nuclear-capable nations in greater alignment. Because of nuclear winter, a nuclear war between any two major nuclear weapon states could severely harm each of the others. According to intelligence sources, there are nine total nuclear-armed states with Iran prepared to breakthrough as the tenth. This multiplies the risk of being harmed by nuclear attacks while only marginally increasing the benefits of nuclear deterrence. By shifting the balance of harms versus benefits, nuclear winter can promote nuclear disarmament.

  Additional policy implications come from the risk of permanent harm to human civilization. If society takes this risk seriously, then it should go to great lengths to reduce the risk. It could stockpile food to avoid nuclear famine or develop new agricultural paradigms that can function during nuclear winter.

  And it could certainly ratchet up its efforts to improve relations between nuclear weapon states. These are things that we can do right now even while we await more detailed research on nuclear winter risk.

  Against that backdrop, I hope you’ll be entertained and informed by this fictional account of the world thrust into nuclear winter. God help us if it ever comes to pass.

  Real-World News Excerpts

  CHINA THREATENS NUCLEAR WAR, EXPANDING ARSENAL IN CASE OF “INTENSE SHOWDOWN” WITH UNITED STATES

  ~ New York Post, June 2, 2021

  The Chinese Communist government touted the country’s “urgent” goal to expand its arsenal of long-range nuclear missiles in anticipation of an “intense showdown” with the US.

  “As the US strategic containment of China has increasingly intensified, I would like to remind again that we have plenty of urgent tasks, but among the most important ones is to rapidly increase the number of commissioned nuclear warheads, and the DF-41s, the strategic missiles that are capable to strike long-range and have high-survivability, in the Chinese arsenal.”

  RUTGERS STUDY: NUCLEAR WINTER WOULD THREATEN NEARLY EVERYONE ON EARTH

  ~ The Journal of Geophysical Research, August 2019

  If two warring nations waged an all-out nuclear war, much of the land in the Northern Hemisphere would be below freezing in the summertime, with the growing season slashed by nearly 90 percent in some areas, according to a Rutgers-led study.

  Such a war could send 150 million tons of black smoke from fires in cities and industrial areas into the lower and upper atmosphere, where it could linger for months to years and block sunlight.

  A nuclear winter occurs as soot (black carbon) in the upper atmosphere blocks sunlight and causes global average surface temperatures to plummet by more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Because a major nuclear war could erupt by accident or as a result of hacking, computer failure or an unstable world leader, the only safe action that the world can take is to eliminate nuclear weapons.

  THE RISK OF NUCLEAR WAR WITH CHINA IN 1958 SAID TO BE GREATER THAN PUBLICLY KNOWN

  ~ New York Times, May 26, 2021

  Newly leaked documents show that US officials in 1958 cavalierly planned a nuclear strike on China over Taiwan.

  When Communist Chinese forces began shelling islands controlled by Taiwan in 1958, the United States rushed to back up its ally with military force — including drawing up plans to carry out nuclear strikes on mainland China, according to an apparently still-classified document that sheds new light on how dangerous that crisis was.

  American military leaders pushed for a first-use nuclear strike on China, accepting the risk that the Soviet Union would retaliate in kind on behalf of its ally and millions of people would die, dozens of pages from a classified 1966 study of the confrontation show.

  Drawing parallels to today’s tensions — when China’s own conventional military power has grown far beyond its 1958 ability, and when it has its own nuclear weapons — analysts warn of the dangers of the current escalating confrontation over Taiwan.

  SCARED STRAIGHT: HOW PROPHETS OF DOOM MIGHT SAVE THE WORLD

  ~ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 27, 2021

  A team of Australian researchers asked people in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia about how probable a global catastrophe in the near term might be. They found that a majority (54 percent) rated the risk of our w
ay of life ending within the next 100 years at 50 percent or greater, and a quarter rated the risk of humans being wiped out at 50 percent or greater.

  The fact is that many scholars who study existential threats agree that the probability of doom is higher today than ever before in humanity’s three-hundred-thousand-year history.

  From nuclear weapons to killer drones to designer pathogens, humanity is acquiring much more efficient methods of bringing down civilization or causing our extinction than in the past.

  Lord Martin Rees, a world-renowned cosmologist at the University of Cambridge, estimates that human civilization has a 50/50 chance of making it through this century intact.

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part II

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part III

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part IV

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Part V

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part VI

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  THANK YOU FOR READING NUCLEAR WINTER: DESOLATION!

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  What’s coming next from Bobby Akart?

  Other Works by Amazon Charts Top 25 Author Bobby Akart

  Epigraph

  Morn came and went and came and brought no day.

  And men forgot their passions in the dread of this, their desolation.

  ~ Lord Byron, English poet, in Darkness

  Hawkeye: War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.

  Father Mulcahy: How do you figure, Hawkeye?

  Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me. Who goes to Hell?

  Father Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.

  Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them—little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody is an innocent bystander.

  ~ Conversation between Hawkeye Pierce and Father Mulcahy on television series M*A*S*H

  The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.

  ~ Nostradamus, French seer and philosopher

  Out of suffering have emerged the strongest of souls.

  The most massive characters are seared with scars.

  ~ Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese – American writer

  Americans learn only from catastrophe and not from experience.

  ~ President Theodore Roosevelt

  Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.

  Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

  ~ Lao Tzu, Chinese Philosopher, founder of Taoism

  The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

  ~ Albert Einstein

  Great leaders don’t set out to be a leader. They set out to make a difference.

  It’s never about the role. It’s always about the goal.

  ~ Anonymous

  Prologue

  One Week Prior

  Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center

  Northern Virginia

  Once upon a time, when you got fired from your job, the boss would simply say, “You’re fired!” The words stung, but there was no doubt about their meaning.

  When Secretary of Agriculture Erin Bergmann was awakened at six o’clock that morning by Secret Service personnel announcing she’d been summoned to a meeting with the president and his chief of staff, she was certain to hear those dreaded words.

  Not that she would’ve been surprised. President Carter Helton had grown weary of her contrarian’s point of view. He was under tremendous pressure throughout the crisis to the point of being confined for a brief time to his presidential suite on advice of the White House physician.

  When Erin was called upon in cabinet meetings, she gave her learned opinion on the topics related to the mitigation of the effects of nuclear winter. Oftentimes, her suggestions and recommendations ran contrary to what the president wanted to hear. She was not a polished politician like the other members of the Helton administration. As a result, she hadn’t quite learned how to play the game.

  However, in Erin’s mind, dealing with an existential crisis like the destruction of the planet’s atmosphere from the consequences of nuclear war required straight talk. Nevertheless, she deduced as she made the long walk through the corridors of Mount Weather buried deep in the mountains of Northern Virginia, her days as part of the Helton Cabinet were coming to an end.

  Erin rolled her eyes as she imagined the upcoming conversation. To ease the mental anguish of an employee’s being fired, human resources directors created many alternatives to the dreaded words—you’re fired.

  Personnel realignment. Rationalizing the workforce. Career change opportunity. Workforce imbalance correction. Adjustments in internal efficiencies.

  “Mumbo jumbo,” Erin muttered aloud, drawing a look from one of her escorts. She noticed the stern look on the Secret Service agent’s face, but she didn’t return the glance. Instead, she managed a smirk. Okay, fine. Gobbledygook. Better now?

  Because Erin wasn’t a politician, she didn’t give a rat’s ass about a future in politics, especially in light of the fact that ninety percent of the country would be dead within a year. Therefore, she was determined to go out in a blaze of glory. Her only goal was to negotiate a departure package, more human resources gibberish for can you at least give me a ride home?

  When the escorts stopped at the double-doored entrance to the presidential sleeping quarters, reality set in for Erin. She was about to be fired and turned out into the cold, literally. Three words came to mind.

  Dead man walking.

  “The president will see you now, ma’am,” said the Secret Service agent, snapping Erin out of her thoughts filled with dread.

  “Um, thank you.”

  She entered the president’s quarters, which consisted of an outer office staffed with two armed guards and a desk for the White House secretary, who was not yet on duty. She stood in the entry alone, glancing around at the spartan furnishings. There were several doors leading out of the entry foyer, presumably offices or bedrooms. The space was not intended to be luxurious like the Oval Office in the White House, but it was elevated above the barracks-style quarters afforded others who were living within the protection of Mount Weather.

  Another set of double doors was suddenly flung open, and a casually dressed Harrison Chandler appeared in the entry foyer with a smug look on his face. He and Erin had butted heads many times, which didn’t help matters. Chandler had the president’s ear virtually twenty-four seven. It was the functional equivalent to talking trash to a wife about her husband. The husband had more time to counter your arguments, so it was always a losing proposition.

  “Come in, Erin, and take a seat,” said President Helton, pointing toward a chair in fr
ont of his desk. The Resolute Desk, the nineteenth-century partner’s desk used by the president in the Oval Office, was one of the few historic pieces of furniture that had been removed from the White House. During the bug-out process, it had made its way to the underground bunker.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” greeted Erin somewhat cheerily. She intended to kill him with kindness before body-slamming him for his feckless policies. “I imagine you’re excited for our move above ground to Carlisle.” Our being the operative word, Mr. President. Did you catch that?

  He looked up from the President’s Daily Brief, the daily summary generated by the national security team and supplemented by Homeland Security during the crisis. He removed his glasses and leaned back in his chair. His face was expressionless.