The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

Epilogue


209 – Fallout


Against the advice of some, President Reagan agreed to a cessation of hostilities. There would be an end to nuclear attacks as well as conventional fighting with the Soviets. He exchanged messages with Gromyko and Ryzhkov – leading to some of his top-level people fearing that he should only be dealing with one of them as two was a dangerous situation – that went along with their proposal to allow for accidents to occur within the next twelve hours without immediately believing that the other side had struck a sneak blow. Doing that on purpose, making another attack to do the Soviets grave harm, was what those who thought it was a bad idea for the United States to stop fighting fought it best to do in the meantime. Weinberger and General Rogers each wanted further attacks made before there was an end to this. The secretary of defence and SACEUR argued with Bush and the Joint Chiefs over this. Those proposing that attack said that while the Soviets were on the ropes, they should be forced to wait, told there was a delay on the American side, while nuclear attacks were made against their armies currently occupying West Germany and the Low Countries. An end to the fighting would allow those to survive. The vice president and those other senior uniformed officers were aghast at such an idea. It wasn’t a matter of cheating but instead the damage that would do to the territory of friendly nations as well as leaving the possibility open for another round of nuclear exchanges should things go wrong. Reagan agreed with Bush and the majority of those in uniform on this. There had been too much damage done and too many lives lost already. This was the chance to end this and he wouldn’t be throwing it away.

The ceasefire agreed with the Soviets was just that. There was no surrender from each side nor was this to be an agreed peace. It was the end of the war though. On both sides, America’s president and the Soviet’s current co-leaders weren’t of mind to restart this. Each was aware that all that had happened and didn’t want to see any more of it. There was an agreement made to begin the process of arranging talks between them to work out how to implement this ceasefire. Everyone knew it wasn’t going to be easy, something proved true in the coming hours when there came those feared ‘accidents’. From out of the protected bastion of strategic missile submarines in the Kara Sea, another Soviet submarine opened fire. It put two ballistic missiles up and those went over the North Pole. There were no orders for this to be done, a Hotline message flashed off to the Americans said, but it was underway. Into North America the warheads from the pair of missiles came. They deposited their warheads down the Eastern Seaboard. A couple of warheads failed to achieve their mission but the others worked. The already destroyed Washington was hit – making the rubble bounce – and so too was both Arlington to the southwest and Baltimore to the northeast. Casualties from this were going to be extensive. Three B-52s inbound on Soviet targets had long gone past their fail-safe point and weren’t responding to orders. They launched missiles and dropped bombs out in Siberia and the Soviet Far East. Their targets were missile silos, some empty and some not, with cities spared here. Weinberger pointed out the comparison to Reagan: the Soviets had just hit American urban targets while they had only killed silos in the wilderness. The ceasefire between the superpowers still held.

Not among all allies it didn’t though. Last orders sent out to Israeli units before Shamir, Rabin and the others had been killed in Tel Aviv saw Damascus and Baghdad wiped out in nuclear attacks. While no one was aware at the time, there was also the usage made of ‘special’ nuclear weapons: Israel had a small stockpile of neutron bombs and one of these was used in Syria. Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons and Khomeini considered any ceasefire between the Soviets and the West to have no bearing on his Holy War. He launched a missile attack against American targets in Kuwait and the Gulf Arab Monarchies. This wasn’t much in terms of damage it could do especially since those countries – Kuwait excluded – along the southern side of the Persian Gulf had suffered terribly in the face of Soviet nuclear attacks. Afterwards, Reagan informed Gromyko and Ryzhkov that there would be continuing American attacks against Iran with nuclear weapons a possibility in that. He received no complaint from those on the other end. This Soviet almost shrug of the shoulders came because they were dealing with something that the Americans were unaware of: an attempt at mutiny that could have seen the war, nukes and all, restart. Telling Reagan about this was not done. Gromyko and Ryzhkov feared showing weakness leading to the Americans breaking their word and making a last-ditch attack. That weakness came about because Stavka – the Soviet military high command – had survived American nuclear attacks to kill them using F-117s strikes as part of Operation Rainbow. Told that there was a ceasefire and that Ligachev, Chebrikov & Sokolov were dead, there was a refusal to accept that from certain generals in the hidden bunker. Others followed orders from their political masters and thus there was gun-play. The mutiny was put down within the hour but it left the Soviet Union open and exposed to a further American strike, one which would have finished them off for good, during that period. When Western intelligence sources later discovered this, months down the line, there were many who would rue the opportunity missed…


The ceasefire held.

It faced other challenges as the hours went by yet survived them. Electronic jamming by both sides was lifted in the strategic sphere and headquarters units managed to get into contact with nuclear assets. There were some close calls averted at this point where those waiting on the word to fire considered the possibility they were being tricked by the enemy and nearly made launches. Confirmation codes came in though and many of those strike assets could detect that there was no longer a nuclear war underway that they were late to join: instead it was all over and they hadn’t had an active role to play. While no more nuclear strikes came, there was still some conventional fighting which went on into the following day. In Cuba, the Guantanamo Bay area was still the scene of major fighting between the Cubans and the Americans. The Castros refused to accept Soviet instructions to stop fighting, believing that the new Soviet leaders didn’t have full control in their homeland and certainly shouldn’t be telling them what to do in theirs! It took some time to convince them with Gromyko eventually telling Fidel that should the United States make a nuclear strike on Cuba, the Soviet Union wouldn’t lift a finger to intervene. Fidel Castro blinked. Behind the lines in occupied areas of Western Europe, guerrillas and special forces battled onwards where the ongoing war was just as intense as it had been. Nuclear blasts had been far off in the distance, almost unnoticed to those who carried on keeping the flame of resistance alive. Across the North Sea in East Anglia, there was no one senior left to accept the ceasefire order which was sent. British forces pushed on where they eliminated almost all of the last of the occupiers. During this, they captured a stockpile of Soviet tactical nuclear warheads. There were no activated codes for these weapons, the British discovered, as the KGB had kept a tight hold of them and the majority of the Chekists were dead following that earlier air attack. A last-ditch suicidal nuclear blast in Norfolk, one that could have been seen here, was averted without the ability to make use of this stockpile by a few madmen who actually wanted to do down in defeat that way.

Within a week, the Soviet Army started pulling out of occupied territory in Europe.

They, plus the armies of their Warsaw Pact allies, went back over the Iron Curtain into Eastern Europe. Those countries had taken nuclear hits via NATO attacks though out of all of them, the least involved in the conventional stage of the war was left in the worst state following the nuclear stage. Poland had been ravaged by American and British nuclear strikes aimed at Soviet missile batteries with no concern for collateral damage. East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria had been hit too but the Poles had really suffered. NATO estimates put the death toll at twenty-five per cent among that country’s population. Poland wasn’t going to survive. There were exchanges of prisoners between NATO and the Warsaw Pact during the withdrawal though there were many missing. Ceasefire negotiations on each side had had a torrid time trying to get everyone back and finding out what had happened to those not showing up among the ranks of POWs. There was political pressure from above on them to do this, yet also to help ease the way for the withdrawal back across the Iron Curtain by not causing delays. People were lost in the shuffle. West Berlin proved a difficult issue. Ligachev had promised the city to Honecker with Ryzhkov – now taking a preeminent role ahead of Gromyko – refusing to abide by that. Soviet tanks came back into the city and there were exchanges of fire with ill-equipped East German border guards & militia who had confusing orders. Honecker backed down. His country was barely holding together and this was no fight he could win. Coming by air in the following days, into a looted and smouldering West Berlin would be NATO troops… including West Germans too. Soviet forces left Norway by way of Finland. They couldn’t leave via the narrow route of the Norwegian-Soviet border due to the plentiful use of nuclear weapons there. Finland, a country drenched in radiation from nuclear strikes which hit its neighbours as well as the Soviet city of Leningrad, allowed them passage. It was no act of kindness because Helsinki would want much in exchange for this.

East German tottered on the brink of falling apart during September but down in Romania there was a revolution underway. The country hadn’t been involved in the war in any way apart from transit routes for Soviet forces fighting in Turkey via Bulgaria, but the nuclear war which affected its neighbours saw violence erupt and then spiral out of control. They would be fighting in Romania for the rest of 1987. Poland would meanwhile die a slow and painful death and not be a functioning state by the end of the year. Its people fled across borders into countries where they were not welcome. Other Warsaw Pact regimes would survive yet with utmost force used to keep them together. Honecker used everything short of chemicals to beat down the domestic opposition which rose in East Germany. Soviet troops, who’d won all those victories, returned to these countries in the manner of a defeated army. Politics had forced them home but the feeling among the soldiers was that they had been humiliated. Desertion rates were excessive and mutinies broke out. Ryzhkov wasn’t bringing them home yet and the situation got worse and worse as they sat in Eastern Europe with radiation all around them and an increasingly hostile local situation. Afghanistan had been hit by an American nuclear strike during the exchanges. Soviet forces there were hurt but still capable. Ryzhkov brought those troops home though, doing what Gorbachev had been wanting to see done before he’d been deposed earlier this year. The pull-out was fast and messy. Iran kept on fighting the Americans yet the conflict increasingly took the form of a frozen one beyond certain hot areas on the borders. There was no Soviet support for Tehran and Khomeini could only send martyrs for the revolution on the frontlines of Khuzestan, that border region so ravaged by wartime nuclear strikes.


The West had won the Third World War.

That was what was said. For many people, that victory was a hallow one. Conventional and nuclear warfare had touched their countries and killed millions. They saw no Soviet surrender either to give truth to what the politicians said. It looked like the war won was one where the West was going to suffer the most from victory.

Those American cities nukes were joined by atomised ruins elsewhere countrywide. The Great Plains had black holes in them where Soviet warheads had been aimed at missile silos. The ground bursts from these, plus those too at Cheyenne Mountain and Omaha, threw up radioactive debris into the sky. Fallout then came afterwards. It wasn’t the textbook nuclear winter but plenty of people deemed the following months ‘America’s Nuclear Winter’ regardless. The United States suffered gravely in the aftermath of the end to the fighting from these attacks made on home soil during its last hours. Civil order broke down in many parts of the nation and troops mobilised to go overseas were used at home instead. The relief efforts were massive. Evacuations of civilians in the path of fallout were undertaken. There was disease and hunger. Martial law enforced by the military was brought in through large areas of the country. Reagan didn’t need to convince Congress – who survived in their luxury Greenbrier shelter – to do this: they had enough sense to know it was necessary. Canada and even Mexico assisted the United States where possible. Taking help from foreign governments was a pill that had to be swallowed in this victory won. The months went by long past the fateful September 2nd where many millions of American died. Things were known to be bad overseas among allies. Japan and the Philippines had been hit hard by nuclear exchanges along with Middle Eastern allies including Israel. NATO countries such as Britain and those in Northern Europe needed American help. What could be done to help them was… yet it wasn’t much due to how American was suffering at home. This was their victory.

The majority of Western Europe escaped the nuclear exchanges. During the smaller first and then the excessive second series of launches by the two sides at each other, there had been what in comparison were generally pinprick attacks here. Cities elsewhere such as New York and Moscow were struck by multiple strategic nuclear warheads yet where those in Western Europe were hit, those were by smaller ones. Oslo was an exception to this – wiped out by that one megaton weapon in the first exchange – but when Trondheim, Odense, Copenhagen and Belfast were obliterated, the scale of the damage wasn’t as severe. However, that was a matter of perspective. Generals and military strategists might talk about a ‘limited, small-scale attack’ but they weren’t those who lived inside or next to the countries where those targets were. Western Europe had been ravaged by a war which brought with it conventional attacks, chemical strikes and invasion before it was finished off with those nuclear attacks on the edges. An absolute mess was left behind when the Soviet Army took an about-turn and headed back across the Iron Curtain. Martial law came in across the continent, including the neutral countries who had avoided the war but not the fallout. The industrial and agricultural base of many countries, those the western side of the Rhine, were still there but the financial hit was something that Western Europe was going to struggle to recover from. If the Americans could step across the ocean and save them, or maybe the Japanese, some wondered aloud, then everything would be okay. Others told them to cease such foolishness. Neither could do so nor would they. Europe was going to have to look after itself. The coming years were going to be hard yet things could have been far worse. London, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Rome and even Berlin were still standing. Radiation was going to kill millions… but not tens of millions.

Tens of millions would die in the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the country would survive the aftermath of war. It would face challenges to it, ones which would near bring it down on several occasions, but the country would make it. Ryzhkov’s leadership was a brutal affair. He had to rule with an iron fist to save his country from anarchy and the loss of everything if that was successful. Radiation bought about by fallout, civil conflict with ethnic dimensions (on the borders of the empire), famine on an unimaginable scale, the rampages of disease as if this was a biblical prophecy all came. Conventional warfare didn’t though. Without that occurring, the Soviet Union was able to survive the loss of cities such as Moscow and Leningrad along with all of the others and remain standing, even with an unsteady wobble to it. Ryzhkov had outside assistance. China came to his aid. China had a price, a big price, but it was one which Ryzhkov handed over to them to help save his nation. Without Chinese assistance, despite all of the blood which Ryzhkov spilt among his own people, there wouldn’t have been a Soviet Union neither one, five or ten years down the line.

Like its neighbours (Ireland included), allies and foes, Britain was ruled post-war in a harsh fashion. Hurd’s government was replaced by one led by Heseltine and was a real National Government. The country had nuclear holes in it and fallout to deal with. Scotland and Ulster were terribly affected by those directly but the knock-on effect throughout the rest of the union was felt fast. It was painful. The UK was under martial law for a long time. Civil liberties were curtailed and there was rationing on a scale never seen before. British soldiers who’d been taken prisoner in war came home to a country which looked defeated. Many of them went soon sent (in NBC suits) to the Central Belt of Scotland and over to Northern Ireland. From overseas, help came to Britain. The struggling Americans could provide little and neither could Western Europe. It was Commonwealth countries which answered the call for aid. Canada (already burdened aiding the United States) stepped up in spite of everything and so too did Australia and New Zealand. From even further afield, others joined in to help the Mother Country: India, Caribbean countries and South Africa also. Britain took all that was offered. The country would have starved otherwise. Victory was unpleasant for the UK and the knowledge that former enemies – technically current enemies until a real peace was agreed – suffered too didn’t count for much. Neither did the knowledge that it could have been far worse, say for example if London, Birmingham or Manchester had been nuked, make many feel any better at emerging for this global war as supposedly one of the winners.

It all could have been even deadlier. The cost in human lives, direct and then later indirect, from the Third World War would be estimated to be more than a hundred million all told: other parts of the globe not hit by nukes saw hunger and/or fallout. Yet, of all of the nuclear weapons at the hands of those in power of those countries who had them, only a small portion had been used. Humanity, suffering like it did, could have been wiped out had it gone on any longer. That was why those who stopped it did so.


The End

A good end James G, now take a rest and try not to invade ore blow up the United Kingdom in you next TL, the people of the United Kingdom deserve a break.

Excellent TL as always!

So what is your next TL if I may ask?

Any chance of a comprehensive target list?

An interesting expansion from the initial thought. Switching off the day of grand incineration, as Tom Lehrer put it, seemed a bit too easy, but worked within the scope of the story. Not everyone would like to write the tale of global thermonuclear war, as it is a curious game.

The initial concept does show how home defence was the red-headed stepchild of British defence for so long.

On a stylistic level, you often employ “those” and “these” as pronouns, such as “those T-72s”, which adds a greater level of specificity than I think you are aiming for. On many occasions, a simple “the” will suffice, giving the stylistic formality that suits your oeuvre and making the best fit. Your style combines engaging descriptions of events with a smooth grasp of action, allowing you to push along a grand narrative whilst being able to focus in on key lower level interactions.

Ah, I did one. I thought it would take only an hour or so.
It took several hours.
It is posted (as a word doc.) below.
Thank you for the inspiration to do it... but it was no easy feat!




Thank you.
I agree. Friends to the south will be providing or, if necessary, the US will have to take what it needs.
The at-sea detonations were not locations I plotted. Some were close to shore though. I'm not sure if I had any in the Grand Banks (the only North American east fisheries location I can think of). There were a few Pacific detonations but not many and those were close to the Soviet Union... but thus near to Japan too.




I went away from it a lot, into a very different direction while I kept on trying to tack back.
Yeah, I agree. I wanted a nuclear exchange, a big one but didn't want to go all the way. Perhaps I should have.
There is a lot of reading I did on UK home defence which I failed to add to the story: if the Soviets had kept the air-link open, and not lost London so easily (I made that too easy for the British), this Sealion element could have been better and more effective.
My creative writing degree was costly and never gave me much in return. It sees me write like that.
Thank you. I know things aren't perfect but the kind words are much appreciated.



Thank you.
I wanted it to go out with a bang.
Roll on the next one!



San Francisco and San Diego got nuked. Seattle is near boomer bases which were hit and just inland, Edwards AFB and Area 51 got hit... so the Pacific coast isn't in the best shape. LA is still there. How much short and long term damage this will do to California agriculture I am not so sure.
Canada wasn't hit but fallout from the groundbursts over the ICBM fields will go north.



I did promise it wouldn't see a happy ending!
The Soviet war plan in Europe was always to march back east. Mid war there were desires to change that and there always was going to be a holding to a few military bases - NATO ones in Soviet hands now - but the surviving USSR leadership stuck to what was decided before the war.
France, West Germany, the Low Countries and Southern Europe (apart from a few isolated blasts in the first small exchange) survived intact. The USSR missile volleys skipped over Europe to the North American level. There was that unauthorised attack on Northern Europe and the UK though.
It was Scotland and Ulster which got hit, not England or Wales. The loss of Belfast will change many things but people will still be killing each other.
You're alive: rejoice! Likely so am I (conventional/chemical attacks might have killed me) but what a childhood I would have after this.
Poland really came out bad of this but the Soviets rammed it full of nuclear platforms pointing at Western Europe which NATO went after with nukes.
China will get its prize but it could be a poison pill to swallow. Those ideas there of yours on how it will go look likely with the USSR being impossible to make a puppet out of it all... but they might try!
Iran might come through this. They might just pull through. Israel didn't have a good relationship with Iran in 1987 but they weren't mortal enemies as far as I understand it.
Israel is in a bad way. They will struggle. Yet they did some terrible things towards the end to 'ease' that for them while committing horrors on certain neighbours. Egypt had pulled through this down to luck. Either the USSR or even Israel (take down everyone) could have gone after them but didn't.