Has there been any more research on chemical or biological weapons and defenses? What is the status of nuclear power?
Edifice: A History of the National Redoubt
- Thread starter JessAH
- Start date
Yes to both (although not really a focus). Nuclear power is becoming more popular, which is discussed a bit in upcoming updates.
Chapter 13
13.
In the United States, the political situation continued to be shaky. Civil rights protests had died down somewhat. A smattering of laws appeased the protestors and a steady stream of small victories in Vietnam helped reduce anti-war protests.
Bunker fever continued unabated. A handful of science fiction authors, some satirical and some visionary, proposed their versions of the future. Robert Heinlein, a controversial but genre-defining author, wrote the famous novel Worlds Below, which discusses a future post-nuclear conflict between two underground societies, representing individualism and collectivism. Popular 70s movies focused on the possibility and themes of global thermonuclear war, including the hastily produced but critically acclaimed 1970 drama Second Sun, which depicted the results of a nuclear attack on New York City, something which would become the subject of numerous conspiracy theories.
In late 1970, many local bunker manufacturers consolidated into regional chains, serving multi-county or state areas. Bunker designs also began to converge on a few common designs.
…
The acrid scent of cigarette smoke mixed with the sharp smell of freshly poured concrete. The home’s backyard was in shambles. Where there had once been a pleasant green lawn, the ground was torn and churned. Bob watched as a crane slowly lowered the corrugated steel shelter into the foundation pit.
At the beginning of the day, the pit had been empty, and a week ago, the yard had been undisturbed. The week before that, Bob and the rest of his crew had been putting the final touches on a different bunker. Next week, they’d be putting the final touches on this one.
The homeowners watched from an upstairs window, with a mixture of interest and trepidation. The bunker business was an odd one. Like many businesses, it was based on fear.
…
One major design was called the “breadbox”, which was based on prefabricated metal (usually steel) rectangular or cylindrical boxes being lowered into a pit. Multiple boxes could be connected by welding tunnels between them. The quality of these shelters varied, with the most important variable being water protection. Some breadboxes were built from unprotected steel, and quickly corroded or even flooded. Others were given thorough protection that would last for decades to come, with a few even surviving hurricanes and floods due to their airtight design. This was the second most popular type of shelter.
The most popular was the “basement kit”, which was a set of parts that could be ordered by mail for home installation or installed by a professional, intended to turn a basement into a suitable fallout shelter. These ranged from relatively barebones kits with tent-airlocks to keep radiation out and metal racks for storage to highly elaborate systems with lead-lined ceiling tiles and light blast doors. Some department and hardware stores even stocked these “bunkers” on shelves! There were intense advertising battles between different models, with TV demonstrations of testing. The wealthy bought full bunkers, and everybody else went with what they could afford. These off-the-shelf shelters went largely untested.
Infamously, a family’s tornado shelter, “upgraded” with lead tiles to protect against radiation, seriously injured the family’s children when the tiles came unglued from the ceiling. In another case, a panic room reinforced with an airtight blast door proved to be vulnerable to a simple crowbar, and the incensed family- now the victims of a burglary- were able to successfully sue for false advertising. Overall, though, this industry was and still is very lucrative.
Another interesting design was the “igloo”, built based on the PZ and QZ shelters in Albania by enterprising immigrants. This variant was designed to be mostly buried, and to seal against nuclear fallout or chemical weapons. The igloos were usually assembled from interlocking, prefabricated concrete sections, and then coated with a chemical sealant, but some smaller versions could be shipped fully constructed on the back of a flatbed truck. Because of the later disasters in Albania, many of these were later removed or demolished on the spot, but due to the inherent durability of the dome shape, some proved to be impossible to get rid of.
Bunker firms catering to larger companies developed their own systems. The “parking garage” system acted as an analogue to the residential “basement kit” - a set of premade parts that could retrofit an underground parking garage (still somewhat unusual in 1970) into a structure that could be sealed off in case of a nuclear attack. Very few of these were equipped with blast doors, however, and most experts believed that they would not be effective shelters.
More credible were the “silo” and “tunnel” styles, which were exactly what they sounded like. Silo shelters were dug straight down, usually in a spiral pattern. Because of this, some ended up with a conical shape. Tunnel shelters were dug sideways into a rock face, producing a regular and horizontal space, and then closed off with a blast door. Occasionally, the two were combined to create star-shaped structures, in cases of very large facilities. Some shelters were essentially just a bare rock tunnel with some provisions and a blast door, but most were fully equipped for an attack. The silo-type shelters would have to be fitted with floors and then covered with a cap, generally concrete or steel. Some silo shelters were built to resemble missile silos, due to a misguided belief that missile silos provided exceptional protection against attack. This would later have international consequences; the Soviets believed that the United States was disguising missile silos by claiming them as private shelters, which contributed to the extreme nuclear arms racing of the 1970s.
In November of 1970, the Republican party would be predictably routed in the midterms, with the Republicans losing a whopping 26 house seats, 5 senators, and 13 governors to the Democrats. Richard Nixon’s perceived complicity in the Red War and betrayal of his campaign promise to end the fighting in Vietnam had dealt major blows to his popularity, as had the general atmosphere of paranoia, reduced crop yields across America, and general economic slump.
Many Americans felt that the world was becoming increasingly dangerous, and that American foreign policy was doing more harm than good, both for foreigners and Americans. The proliferation of bunkers appeared to be having unintended consequences for the mental health of Americans, although many of these effects were not noted until later, with a greater focus on mental health today. The rate of suicides increased slightly and journal entries and correspondence from that time indicate major increases in feelings of anxiety and depression.
Everybody was getting ready for the world to end, and so it felt like the world was ending, but in slow motion. In some ways, this was a self-fulfilling prophecy. While statistics are unclear, it appears that many families were driven apart or into debt while preparing for Armageddon.
Similar private bunker initiatives began to kick off across the Capitalist world, with big businesses from West Berlin to Vancouver digging their own fortified structures. At this point, a few people began to ask awkward questions about the bunker projects.
With the publication of new climate models based on the Red War, the idea of a “nuclear winter” began to grow in popularity, first in the scientific community and then with the public. In the event of a full-scale nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and United States, it seemed entirely possible that the world could be plunged into a years-long period of cold, dark weather. Not necessarily frozen summers (as depicted in many movies), but dead crops and starvation seemed like looming problems for any would-be survivors of a nuclear war.
For the wealthiest, largest shelters, this could be mitigated. One university experiment, which lent its visuals to a wide swath of comics, movies, and television shows, used a series of mirrors and windows to provide sunlight to the underground facility- at twice the brightness of the outside world. Geothermal power was another “affordable” option, which could be used to power indoor grow lamps, but the setup costs were high, a consistent problem. Nuclear power was even more expensive and required a supply of fuel. Most simply opted for generators and thousands of gallons of diesel fuel, which was cheap and easy to acquire.
Religious leaders began reacting to the atomic craze. Pope Paul issued a condemnation of the Red War when it happened, along with the expected calls for sanity and kindness. This was followed by pleas for nuclear disarmament and general détente, which were tragically ignored by the nuclear and soon-to-be-nuclear powers of the world. Millenarian beliefs profited greatly from the apocalyptic events in the temporal world. All religions saw surges in membership, with people looking for meaning or salvation, but those that preached an imminent end seemed far more credible after a few nuclear explosions.
Like the Italian example, some American apocalypse cults moved underground, sometimes in sophisticated underground metropolises but more often in retrofitted mines or basement networks. Even conventional religious leaders began to participate. The Vatican saw large quantities of concrete go in, and larger quantities of rock and dirt go out, although nothing has been officially declared. The Mormon authorities in Utah also prepared an extensive shelter system in Salt Lake City, the extent of which is a closely guarded secret. Recent controversies and legal battles seem to indicate that their facility might be multiple square miles in size, although this seems improbably large.
The bunker craze also added a new type of complaint to the Civil Rights Movement, which was one of equality in shelter. Although some public shelters were constructed in the inner cities, most ended up concentrated in relatively affluent suburbs and urban areas. Ironically, the shelters that were built to serve poorer inner-city populations tended to lead to gentrification or relocation for residents, which frustrated many non-white Americans. Apartment dwellers also did not have practical ways of constructing their own shelter at home, and could not afford space in a paid, multi-family shelter. This issue was not nearly as serious as most of the others in the Civil Rights Movement, but remained a contentious one through the 70s, and a few measures were proposed to remedy it.
Despite the actions of both well-meaning and conniving lawmakers, inequality in bunkers has not yet been solved. The wealthy and powerful, all around the world, are inevitably sheltered better. Only they can afford private geothermal plants or nuclear reactors, and only they can afford the construction and maintenance costs for the concrete edifices required to preserve humanity after a true apocalypse. This has been true around the world. In the United States, the CEO of General Electric has always been better defended than the average American. In the Soviet Union, any director of a major concern has more shelter than the average Soviet. This leads to a greater focus on large bunker projects but should not be seen as an intentional attempt to ignore the experience of the average person. The concept of the national redoubt applies to an entire nation, not a small group of people, even if this ideal is rarely realized in practice.
Some things did change for the better for the average North American or European citizen. Nuclear power would come into style, with the use of nuclear weapons drawing a clear delineation between nuclear accident and nuclear attack. The US government provided additional funding for public shelters in communities with nuclear power plants, which helped ease any fears. After all, if you can survive a nuclear attack, why should you worry about a nuclear accident? In the 70s, many new nuclear power plants were built, to replace old fossil-fuel plants. Of course, this also raised the question of where all this nuclear waste should be stored. The government was especially interested in reprocessing nuclear waste to reduce the cost of new warheads.
In addition to this, the US Government, especially the military, was uncomfortable with relying on oil supplies from Middle Eastern countries, which seemed increasingly unstable and were actively pursuing nuclear programs. Of course, the country had enough oil for critical applications, being one of the major producers of oil, but a loss of foreign oil reserves could cause economic chaos and leave the country vulnerable.
The Department of Defense investigated all kinds of projects, hoping to mitigate these problems. Some like the nuclear fleet, ended up being practical and would gradually be implemented over the 70s and 80s, and are generally regarded as excellent planning for the future. Others, like the various concepts for nuclear-powered military transport trucks, have come to be regarded as preposterous boondoggles, although some proponents describe them as advanced tech demonstrators for the still-nascent hydrogen car. In between are the somewhat plausible concepts of nuclear main battle tanks and atomic generators, which have seen prototypes and operation concepts for a few specific purposes. Nuclear planes were considered, but never went past the design stage in the 70s, at least for most projects. Still, the B-1C and B-2 programs are proof that the nuclear-powered bomber is a workable concept, even if they continue to have their controversies. The nuclear-armed artillery rounds developed in the 70s are an important fixture of modern combat as well.
Computing technology was developing in this period as well. ARPANET, the first prototype of what would eventually become the modern Internet, was first activated in 1969 and was beginning to grow into a national network in the early 70s. It attracted government attention as reports on the aftermath of the Red War began to surface. One noted problem was that communications were often disrupted in attacks, both between cities and within them, and the government began to see ARPANET’s technology as a potential solution to mitigate this. The basic protocols used, which still exist (in modified form) today, were designed to send signals around destroyed servers and make up for damage to the network.
While originally designed to mitigate problems with the reliability of the hardware involved in connecting computers across the country, the system was seen as a promising way of preventing nuclear communication blackouts caused by the destruction of cities or infrastructure. The military also saw the potential for the system to send messages to nuclear silos or defensive systems while under attack.
I think there would also be a rise in hedonism and alternative movements. maybe even back to the land or remote settlements.
Big clue with the reference to New York... More private nuclear reactors equal more risk of uranium being diverted.
With the building of various bunkers and underground facilities I could see the rise of underground shopping centers built around transit stops in Europe and East Coast cities. These would start out as convenience stores and shops geared to commuters that slowly expand. These locations would be out of the elements and climate controlled. They also could be used to hide Civil Defense supplies or other government assets.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to give details about the risks but I've heard a serious variety of responses when people who should know are asked. I've seen people claim in interviews that tunnels are actually safer than aboveground structures during earthquakes, but I doubt it. For the really serious military stuff, a lot of critical components would likely be shock isolated (this was done IOTL for Cheyenne mountain) and when possible people might try to avoid fault lines and other geologically active areas. A lot of US military infrastructure is in places that are seismically mostly inert, but this can't be depended on in California! I'm not as familiar with other parts of the world, but I'm guessing that some countries would struggle more than others.
Thanks for the compliment! Unfortunately, that's not an area that I've read too much on, but I think that financially not much has changed at this point ITTL. The war in Vietnam did change a lot, though, and cultural attitudes have shifted somewhat, which will inform art. Probably, lots of artists, writers, movie makers, etc. would be inspired by the imagery and details of ongoing conflicts. The West's exposure to the Red War in Asia would be mostly limited, but I imagine that journalists would get lots of good coverage on the conflict in Eastern Europe, and the mass movements of refugees would be significant for culture.
Chapter 14
14.
It is now time to address the world’s nuclear weapons programs once more.
Taiwan should be given the most attention, as it is a unique case. Declassified CIA documents indicate that the Republic of China had operational warheads by the end of 1970. The exact means by which this was possible are unknown, but it is likely that Taiwan either had an active nuclear program in the middle of the 1960s or was able to acquire nuclear materials (possibly including a whole warhead) from the Chinese mainland.
It is true that the regions Taiwan invaded were not equipped with nuclear weapons according to most sources, but significant amounts of information have been lost. They also took control of a handful of nuclear facilities and might have used the materials there for further refinement and use in weapons.
Taiwan arranged purchases of uranium from South Africa and other countries in the 70s, but most historians do not believe this was done in the 60s. Whatever the means, Taiwan had a handful of nuclear weapons going into 1971.
The country also lacked a reliable delivery system. Taiwan had some tactical bombers which could potentially carry a small nuclear warhead, as well as transport aircraft and helicopters with no dedicated bombing capability. There were no ballistic missiles available which could launch weapons.
A few possible doctrines may have been in use. Taiwan may have expected to establish total air superiority in an area before beginning nuclear strikes, or to use nuclear weapons only when retreating. It is also possible that Taiwan was planning on “green light” infiltration missions with special forces, or that they may have seen nuclear weapons as a tool to be used after the war to establish diplomatic legitimacy, instead of a direct weapon of conflict. It is almost certain that the Chiang government was caught off guard by the collapse of the People’s Republic, and that plans remained in flux throughout the early 70s.
In India and Pakistan, nuclear science teams raced to refine and prepare uranium. India was closer, with an older and more established nuclear program, both civilian and military, but there were other factors at play. Pakistan, often close to the US, began requesting resources and money for its nuclear project, something that the Nixon administration was unwilling to give. India, in turn, spoke with the Soviet Union, which was also reluctant to give nuclear weapons to what was now a bordering state.
The Middle Eastern powers seeking nuclear weapons had similar issues. With much looser connections to the superpower blocs, these groups also could not appeal for nuclear assistance. The announcement of Israeli weapons, however, meant that their withdrawals from the non-proliferation treaty had faded into nonissues. As nuclear weapons proliferated around the world, the initial outrage faded to ambivalence.
Brazil and Argentina had their own issues trying to develop nuclear weapons. Each country had intense political issues. In Brazil, the economy was booming under the military’s control, despite the ongoing repression. Argentina had no such luck, and was experiencing deep instability, as well as an agricultural economy under intense pressure due to the Red War. The climate impacts of the Red War afflicted nearly the entirety of Argentina, although rising food prices helped to offset the economic blow. By 1970, the Brazilian program had pulled ahead of its southern neighbor.
South Africa had no major hiccups in its program, as far as the historical record shows, and appears to have profited from the large number of countries seeking to buy uranium. South Africa had the advantage of being relatively isolated from both the East and West, of having an amoral government, and of having cheap labor to mine uranium with. The country used this funding to purchase more refining equipment, specialty electronic components, and technical know-how for its own nuclear program. By the end of 1970, the country had enough material to produce nuclear weapons, but was still developing its technical knowledge. South Africa’s Bureau of State Security appeared to have gone to great lengths to obtain a completed warhead from China in 1970, but there is no evidence that they succeeded.
South African experts were able to inspect Israeli weapons designs, a favor paid for with significant amounts of uranium. The country was on track to become nuclear-armed, much to the horror of the rebels against the Apartheid system. Ironically, some wealthier post-colonial African nations, as well as post-colonial nations in other regions, negotiated with South Africa in hopes of purchasing completed nuclear weapons. The answer seems to have been clear and consistent:
The South African government was not selling warheads. Yet.
Yugoslavia, on the other hand, found its nuclear ambitions somewhat stoppered. Joining NATO meant that the country no longer had any reason to fear invasion, and the US had mixed feelings on the ongoing nuclear program. Washington believed that nuclear weapons in Yugoslavia would be well-placed to deter a Soviet attack, with a short flight time, but also that these weapons would need to be American.
American weapons in Yugoslavia would be a bargaining chip, that could be moved and exchanged. Yugoslav weapons would be an intractable problem, should the Soviets decide that their presence was unacceptable. The Nixon administration, and the troubled Republican party, wanted to avoid a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Tito, however, was difficult to negotiate with. The dictator was stubborn and wily. Just as he had maintained his independence within the Eastern bloc, he refused to become a pawn of the Americans. For him, a separate nuclear program represented a way to ensure that Yugoslavia could stand on its own, even if it had allies.
Negotiations were complex, and Tito and Nixon had many long phone calls and heated arguments, generally behind closed doors. Gradually, they reached a compromise, that Yugoslavia could pursue a large, dual-use civilian nuclear program, along with rocketry projects, but the country could not develop its own nuclear weapons in peacetime. Yugoslavia would be de facto a nuclear power, with the ability to develop nuclear weapons in a matter of months but would officially have no independent nuclear weapons. This was seen as an acceptable compromise, especially when combined with a significant amount of aid money from the US and an ongoing nuclear weapon sharing agreement.
Albania’s nuclear program was moving along slowly but steadily. The country’s underground fissile refining infrastructure seems to have come together without incident and Albania had worked out a favorable exchange with South Africa, trading gold for uranium. Unrest and the grand bunkerization plan caused some small slowdowns and issues, but they were generally smoothed over. Albania also received the unexpected boon of Chinese experts, fleeing the chaos at home, as well as additional military resources in the form of Chinese volunteer forces that did not have the opportunity to return home. Enver Hoxha welcomed these additional forces to bolster the Albanian People’s Army. Romania participated in this project as well, providing additional resources in exchange for promises of weapon sharing.
Finland began a nuclear program in mid-1970 under conditions of great secrecy. Finland is possessed of modest uranium reserves and took the opportunity to expand its small mining operations slightly, citing the opening of new research reactors as justification. These research reactors, in turn, were used to better understand the principles of nuclear weaponry. A few former officials of the Finnish nuclear program have said that Swedish experts were loaned to Finland, but this has always been denied by both governments.
Finland was in an unusual spot. The country would need a significant supply of nuclear weapons, perhaps more than one hundred, and a delivery system to match if they wanted to gain true independence from the Soviet Union, but it seemed necessary. At the same time, the Finns pursued a rather innocuous bunker program, partly to hide nuclear weapons infrastructure, partly to prepare (like everyone else) for the possibility of nuclear war.
…
Heikki Juha held a clipboard tightly under his arm. The figures on it were most likely useless. The politicians he was speaking to wouldn’t understand, and if they did, they probably wouldn’t care.
He was used to working in a small, underground lab, in a nameless place far to the north. The lecture hall, a locked down classroom in the University of Helsinki, felt a little surreal. His years as a lecturer were so far behind him…
“What is your estimated timeline for a weapon?” A general’s question broke him out of his reverie.
“At our current rate of progress, we estimate that we will be able to produce a weapon within ten years.” It was all very much up in the air, and much of it was beyond his control.
A murmur ran through the crowd of military and political men assembled in the cramped auditorium. The same general spoke again. “Ten years? That’s unacceptable.”
Heikki scowled. If only that general knew, the strides that had been made… He responded crisply. “There are many steps in development, and funding is limited.”
“So? Israel completed their program much faster, and they did not even have a serious civilian nuclear program!”
That was an unfair criticism, but, as Heikki knew, it was important to be diplomatic with those who held the purse-strings. “I have heard that the Israelis may have had some technical support. More importantly, there is some evidence that they received nuclear materials, which are the main barrier to our program.” Heikki pointed to a figure he had marked on the board. “In order to assemble a test warhead, we need significant quantities of uranium, but a bigger problem has been refining it in secret. The Soviets cannot know.”
That last sentence was sure to see approval from his audience, and he saw an understanding nod from the general, and took that as a sign that he could continue. “Right now, we only have a handful of small enrichment facilities, and progress in building more is slow. We are barely able to meet the needs of our research reactors, let alone a bomb project on top of that. If we could expand our enrichment facilities, I estimate that we could produce a weapon within two years.”
That got their attention. The general seemed satisfied, and a politician spoke. It wasn’t somebody that Heikki recognized.
“Doctor Juha, we believe that we may be able to acquire more nuclear material from alternative sources. In the meantime, we will investigate expanding the refining capability as you suggest. Thank you for your time.”
…
It is unknown how well hidden the Finnish nuclear program was, but the Soviets never commented. The world at large only found out much later when Finland announced its nuclear status. One controversial theory, also denied, is that Finland placed early orders of South African nuclear weapons, perhaps even dozens of them. These orders, if real, must have been placed years in advance, given the massive demand that South Africa would see for its nuclear arms trade.
Japan considered a nuclear program, as it had before and would again. The country, the first of what was then three to suffer a nuclear attack, decided that it would not develop a nuclear weapon. However, several small and secret research teams were assigned to design warheads and planning a path for developing warheads quickly, if necessary.
Indonesia, under the rule of its new military dictator Suharto, began working on a modest nuclear program.
Hello,
I get the impression this story is shambling towards that unfortunate conclusion.
NotBigBrother
Monthly Donor
A Soviet joke: "An officer: "In case of war our soldiers will smuggle nuclear warheads to enemy territory in suitcases."
A soldier thinks: " I'm sure we'll have that many warheads, but where we'll get all those suitcases?" (It's about consumer goods shortages.)
Chapter 15
New
15.
The Chinese civil war began a new phase of conflict in the spring of 1971. Mao’s government opened offensives to the south and west, against Kang and Lin. The dictator hoped to seize control of productive agricultural lands near to his territory, to keep his warlord state alive.
Mao’s forces were ill-equipped to go on the offensive. He could only muster Red Guards (poorly trained and disorganized child soldiers) and the more ideological elements of the PLA, which was still organized in an ideological fashion on the concept of a rankless, egalitarian force. To contrast, Kang and Lin had taken the time to reorganize their forces on a more orderly concept, improving unit cohesion and strengthening the chain of command. Lin had also been making use of the advisors sent by the Soviets, many of whom had also helped train fighters in Vietnam. Kang had no such help, but he received advisors from the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, to train his forces in guerilla techniques.
The republican forces continued to advance cautiously to their own detriment. The Taiwanese had been strong enough to overwhelm the other combatants at the beginning of the war, but as battle lines stabilized and warlords consolidated their forces, advances became more and more impractical. On the other hand, the Taiwanese forces remained well-equipped and were able to integrate their territorial gains together into a defensible whole.
This period was, all-in-all, a bad time to live in China. Standards of living varied, with the best being in Lin’s and Chiang’s territories, where Soviet and American aid, respectively, helped stave off starvation and keep some semblance of order. The worst were most likely in Mao’s territory, where purges and government-sponsored banditry were the rule instead of the exception. The Red Guards perpetrated incredible acts of violence in this period, pillaging when they were hungry and killing when they were angry.
It is unclear if Mao was aware of how bad the situation had become. Increasingly isolated from the world, surrounded by his most fanatical supporters, and insulated from bad news by the deaths of “disloyal” messengers and administrators, he refused to acknowledge the disarray of his territories. The reported outbursts appear to have increased in frequency and severity, culminating in Mao’s assault and strangulation of an advisor. Sometime in April of 1971, he authorized the use of chemical weapons on the two breakaway territories, but not against the Taiwanese, perhaps fearing retaliation in kind.
…
Being Mao’s chief of staff was no easy task, especially as of late. Jiang was the third person to occupy the position in the last year. The others were dead.
The first one had been killed in a fit of anger, when he failed to procure exotic liquor for Mao’s refined palate. The second had solved this problem by clever relabeling and dressing-up of grain alcohol. Jiang supposed that Mao’s smoking habit, now reaching absurd heights, had killed enough of the old man’s tastebuds that he couldn’t tell the difference. The second had been killed when he failed to obtain beef for Mao, a problem which Jiang had solved by clever preparation of dead house pets. The soldiers he sent to shoot stray cats and dogs, however, were starting to find them in short supply. It would be a problem, but a problem for the future.
A shout told Jiang that he ought to check in on the dictator. The old man was in the bunker’s war room, where Jiang was permitted but not expected. He ducked through the doorway into the room, and saw Mao standing over one of his generals, who had been thrown to the ground. Everyone else stood back, uncertain of what to do, and the man on the floor seemed more confused than angry. Jiang felt that it was prudent to stay out of the matter, and so did everyone else.
“Chairma-“ the general started speaking, but Mao was suddenly on top of the man, his hands wrapped around the unlucky officer’s throat. The general didn’t even struggle, and just looked up in fear. Jiang watched as the man’s face turned purple, and, with some vestigial survival instinct, he tried to claw at Mao’s face with the last of his strength.
The general was pushed up against the ovoid shape in the corner, and he tried to push it back behind him, to gain some room to breathe. In response, Mao slammed the man’s head into the side of the warhead. The old dictator wasn’t strong enough to do any real damage, but it didn’t matter. The general was already gone.
The room was quiet except for Mao’s panting and the humming of a ventilation fan. His victim had stopped twitching, and the crowd simply waited for Mao. A few minutes, and then the dictator stood, with effort. He saw Jiang and gestured to the corpse.
“Clean this up.”
Jiang nodded. But when he called in guards to move the body, he instructed them to place it in the empty freezer. He suspected that Mao might one day enjoy being served the general more than he enjoyed being served by the general. The floor of the war room was scrubbed as best as possible. There was no bloodstain, but Jiang didn’t want to take chances.
Jiang didn’t know that Mao’s argument had been about chemical weapons. He didn’t know that the general had begged Mao not to use them, to think of the Chinese people. He did know that the general was relatively free of disease, was relatively well-nourished, and could be the starring ingredient of dozens of meals.
…
The attacks were not coordinated and tended to be unsophisticated. The details are also extremely sparse due to lack of records, but it is believed that sarin gas, as well as less sophisticated blistering agents and poisons, were used. In some cases, these were delivered by artillery shells, but there are numerous accounts of Red Guard suicide charges, carrying spray canisters of poison gas. These offensives claimed many lives, but these were just as often from Mao’s side as from those of his enemies.
Lin Biao had the longest border with Mao and had the military resources and organization for a strong push, but he first wanted to gain a temporary truce with Kang Sheng. He knew that the spymaster could not be trusted, but he felt that temporarily relieving pressure on his flanks, and presenting a combined offensive against Mao, would be advantageous in the short term. Kang Sheng accepted, and the two began advancing to the northeast.
By July, their forces were in Hebei, near the center of Mao’s power. Advances slowed as they fought greater concentrations of troops, and the deficiencies of the Red Guard seemed to disappear on the defensive. Fighting turned into entrenched forces battling in the Chinese countryside, and the fragile truce between Lin and Kang collapsed at some point in the middle of the month.
Popular culture has often depicted Lin as being taken by surprise when this happened, but this is a mischaracterization. The general was no fool, and he kept a close eye on Kang’s forces near the border. It was not Lin’s incompetence, but Kang’s cunning that allowed for his surprise attack to go over so effectively.
It appears that Kang somehow infiltrated Lin’s military. It is possible that he had arranged for several units loyal to him to “defect” to Lin’s army, or he may have turned individual officers with promises of wealth, power, or patriotism. Most likely it was a combination of the two. In any case, several key motorized units on Lin’s southern flank worked with Kang’s forces and penetrated deep into Lin’s territory, moving north. It appeared that the objective was to cut the general off from the Soviet Union, his main source of support.
Lin’s options were limited. He did not have the units in place to respond, now that some of his troops had turned against him. He also could not afford to leave such a long flank unguarded. Instead, he decided to consolidate western forces eastward, and push forward into Beijing. There, he would be able to form a new border with the Soviets in the north, crush Mao, and defend a smaller flank against Kang, who would have trouble removing entrenched, well supplied troops from the northeast of China. It would mean the loss of significant resources, but the alternative was trying to protect an enormous frontier against better equipped and more mobile troops, and Beijing would be a worthy prize. The massive city, for all it had been through, was still a center of industry and home to a large population, one that would probably turn to Lin’s side as soon as Soviet supplies arrived.
Lin’s forces moved quickly, crushing the disorganized resistance they found. Now, they were driven by a deep desperation, to reclaim their supply line and to finally defeat the insane ruler of the northeast. Despite their enthusiasm, they were horrified by what they found as they advanced.
Where the Red Guard retreated, they scorched and salted the earth. Every village was looted, then killed to the last man or forced to march, then burned to the ground and covered with a miasma of poisonous gases. No life stirred in the lands that Mao’s forces left, and Lin had to slow his advance to move around the clouds of nerve gas, but it did not stop him.
One interesting thing to note is that Mao may have not actually ordered these scorched earth tactics. The Red Guards seem to have been operating more and more independently, as a grassroots terrorist organization, and seem to have clashed with the more regular units of Mao’s PLA several times at this point. On the other hand, scorched earth was certainly in his playbook.
Whatever the case, Lin’s forces entered the outskirts of Beijing in early August of 1971. The city was in ruins, even worse than after the Soviet strike. Buildings were reduced to defensible piles of rubble, with chunks of concrete and masonry being used to block the streets from armored advance.
Irregulars took potshots from second story windows on the advancing troops, only fleeing when the buildings were about to be leveled. Urban warfare is often described as a special type of hell, and Beijing was its innermost circle.
Every evil of war was committed, and the most lurid details will be spared. All these atrocities could not stop Lin’s advance, as his forces continued to close in on Mao’s location. On August 16th, 1971, the Maobunker, and everything else in the vicinity, was vaporized, as he or one of his advisors detonated the thermonuclear warhead that had been smuggled away in the Maobunker.
Unfortunately for the Maoist forces, and for Kang, the nuclear weapon had been detonated too early. Lin’s army was almost entirely outside the range of the explosion, and the underground detonation meant that the ensuing firestorm was very small. The explosion did succeed at effectively ending Beijing’s storied, millennia-long history as one of the world’s largest cities, as nearly everyone left alive evacuated or perished in the ensuing anarchy. Swarms of flies descended on the city, and most wild animals would avoid the haunted place for decades.
Unfortunately for China, Mao’s ideological remnant would remain. But Lin Biao had secured his position in the Northeast, even if he was battered and denied the prize of Beijing. Soviet aid began to flow once more, and his army dug in for the fall and winter season.
Kang Sheng had his own issues. Like the other warlords, the spymaster had spent much of the war carefully implying that he had nuclear weapons available to use in a time of desperation, but it was nothing more than a bluff. Kang’s territory now contained several nuclear facilities, both civilian and military, but they had been totally cleaned out of useable nuclear material. The missing warheads, which he had hoped to secure during the chaos of the initial collapse, were still missing. Even his contacts in Cambodia, where a nuclear weapon had passed up in the chaos of the early civil war, could not deliver him a warhead, and the South African option would take far too long.
Besides that, Kang’s territories were still starving. By 1971, most of the unusual weather patterns caused by the Red War had faded into the background, but agriculture was still difficult. Cities were ruined, communes were scattered to the four winds, and lands had been poisoned both accidentally and intentionally. He still had no way to secure advanced, chemical fertilizers from the outside world, and the Taiwanese and Linist forces had cut off most useful seaports. Still, he had most of the China to work with, and traditional methods of agriculture were possible, even if they were inefficient. Kang settled in for the winter, planning the next year’s battles.
In Mongolia and the territories of China which had newly changed hands to the Soviet Union, things were better, but still chaotic. These border regions had been choked by overwhelming numbers of refugees, fleeing the trouble in China. Refugees also made their way to North Korea, which was now closing itself off more than ever, and to farther locations such as South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. Some refugees from there even made their way to the United States, driving a mild political controversy.
The nuclear detonation in Beijing was closely studied by intelligence groups around the world. As nuclear weapons spread to more and more countries, the prospect of nuclear terrorism seemed increasingly intimidating and plausible. The destruction of Beijing gave them a mixture of good and bad news. The good news was that the underground detonation did a lot to reduce the direct explosion, incident radiation, and fireball of the nuclear blast. This meant that a relatively small portion of the city was directly destroyed, and most of the explosion was redirected away from buildings and people, dissipating in the atmosphere. The smaller firestorm also meant that the nuclear cooling effect- now something specifically watched by researchers at NASA and other groups- was greatly reduced, but part of this might have been related to the fact that Beijing had already been burned once.
A more concerning phenomenon was also observed, however. The entire Beijing region had been deeply contaminated by nuclear fallout. It had been sent up in a huge plume in the lower atmosphere, instead of dispersed into the higher-altitude winds like a normal airburst. The underground detonation helped concentrate the fallout even more, ensuring that the city was deeply and dangerously contaminated.
This led planners to some new insights. City-destroying suitcase nukes were a potential problem, but not the worst potential problem. New research would be needed on mitigating and cleaning up nuclear fallout. Firestorms could be prevented with good planning and design. Nuclear winter might not be inevitable.
These revelations had both positive and negative impacts. The defensive preparations based on this information would save lives, but the increasing belief that nuclear wars might not be the end meant that more nuclear attacks were almost guaranteed. These attacks were also guaranteed by the sheer effectiveness of the Beijing explosion, which denied the entire city to Mao’s enemies, and anyone else.
For terrorist groups, rogue nations, and desperate dictators, this represented an opportunity. With nuclear weapons, the fall of one man could mean the end of a nation and the depopulation of its cities, forever. The world took note, and as always, began scheming.
Even after defeating Mao, Lin was in a tough spot. Kang had taken the opportunity to consolidate his hold on his territory and improve the infrastructure available to him. Food supplies remained unsteady, and starvation was epidemic in the Chinese countryside. Lin had new access to Soviet territory, via the northeastern part of China, but this was becoming something of a liability.
Propaganda, released by Kang and (the late) Mao, was doing an excellent job of painting Lin as a stooge of Soviet-Russian imperialism and an instrument to continue the humiliation of the Red War. The Republican forces released similar claims, but these tended to expand to communism as a whole. For his part, Lin Biao was not a very effective propagandist, and tended to rely on his own achievements to speak for him. This was occasionally wise, as his defeat of Mao played well with the public, but sometimes failed miserably. During the march east, his forces had lost significant amounts of morale, but with the connection to the Soviets re-established, things were once again improving. By spring, he might be ready to go back on the attack.
To Lin, it seemed unlikely that his enemies would have significant nuclear forces, or the means to use them. China was still reeling from radiation sickness and the effects of nuclear explosions. There were still rockets left from the original nuclear projects, which could potentially be used to launch an attack, but the infrastructure to transport and launch them was severely lacking by 1971. Nuclear weapons could, theoretically, be moved on the ground towards enemy forces, but this would be a suicide mission, and with dwindling manpower and an increased need to return conscript forces to farming, Lin’s enemies could hardly afford to waste resources on such an attack. Except, perhaps, for the Republicans. But the general was isolated from them by the bulk of Kang’s forces, which split China east-west through the middle.
As winter approached, it appeared that China would remain in three pieces.
Fortunately, the situation is stabilizing in China, and the amount of crazy there has decreased a bit.
Probably nobody has found the terracotta army, and if they have, the wider world is likely unaware. That might be for the best, since a future, more stable China can investigate it if it's kept safe from conflict. A big civil war is very destructive for historical preservation, and the Great Wall was likely badly damaged.
The Khmer Rouge in 1971, when aid from communist countries was very limited in Indochina, did they really have the means to operate in China?
I imagined that it wasn't a super intensive thing, just some light support in terms of expertise and instruction. On further reflection, I'm not sure how useful it would be, but I figure Kang would be about 20 years out of practice with the whole guerilla thing, and the Khmer Rouge would still be up to date.