TIAFD - The Treaty of Coventry

The Treaty of Coventry


1 – Forlorn Hope

World War Three lasted a grand total of thirty-six minutes. On October 28th 1988, the two superpowers struck at each other with nuclear weapons. The outcome was devastation on an unimaginable degree.

The short but lethally strategic exchange passed Britain by. The country was untouched by the Americans and the Soviets firing upon each other’s armed forces and population centres as they did. Why did Britain avoid such a terrible fate which befell others? Because of the so-called Treaty of Coventry.


They would later call it ‘Warday’ across in the ruins of the United States. The exchange occurred in the late afternoon (on the East Coast; it was just after midday out to the West) when America was hit. It was night-time in Britain though and the killing on a biblical scale took place without the vast majority of Britons knowing anything about it. Warday wasn’t played out in view of television cameras nor did any witnesses from the UK physically see what happened. The country’s political leaders were aware of what went on though, along with the armed forces, and it was something that had long been feared would occur. To be a part of it was in no way desired and had been in fact something that the government had taken a deliberate step to escape from, consequences to that be dammed.

Eight years previously, the Americans had elected Governor John Edward Bleacher as their fortieth president. He was not a man favoured across the other side of the Atlantic. The man was regarded as a zealot, a danger to the whole world. Between him and his Soviet counterpart, Premier Zorin in Moscow, when it come to perceptions on how the two men viewed the strategic nuclear balance, there was the belief in London, Paris & other European capitals that there wasn’t much difference. Each seemed hell-bent on nuclear Armageddon. These were privately-held opinions by British & European politicians about the leader of their supposed ally across the Atlantic though. Prime Minister Terrence Hughes publicly expressed congratulations on Bleacher’s election and was full of open gratitude for the new president’s professed assurance that he only wanted to maintain good relations with trans-Atlantic allies despite what had been said on the campaign trail about breaking with NATO. However, Hughes, joined by Western European leaders, had no faith in the new leader of the free world’s ability to keep the peace. The maverick approach of Bleacher when it came to strategic arms and the worrying prospect of a new space arms race was just as feared once that man was in the White House. Then there was Zorin. He had taken power in Moscow not through an election but the (suspected violent) death of his predecessor. He was another madman, one whom it was thought would rather destroy the world rather than see it eventually end up dominated not by the Soviet system of government but by American capitalism instead.

The Space Defence Initiative was announced in early 1982. Bleacher promised that American technological advancement would provide a nuclear umbrella to protect his nation from missile attack. The long-established balance of power in strategic weapons, Mutually Assured Destruction, was imperilled by this in the view of Hughes and those of a similar mind. They lobbied hard against it before Bleacher made the announcement but he wouldn’t listen. He spoke of defending his people and questioned why his allies wouldn’t want that to be something done. Once the United States was covered by that defence, he said that the umbrella could be expanded to defend their homelands too. The Space Defence Initiative ensured peace and removed the threat of nuclear conflict killing tens of millions! Dismissed in some quarters at first as nothing but a gimmick, it certainly wasn’t. The newly-named Spiderweb system was real based on rapidly-advancing technology. Bleacher threw money at the project and there was real progress made throughout the following years. Using lasers, Spiderweb was meant to engage nuclear warheads post-firing from missile-buses and make sure that none of them, coming from any quarter, ever reached their American targets. The civilian space organisation NASA was fully involved in the project at Bleacher’s behest and with Congressional approval. The timetable for deployment slipped a bit but by ‘87, it was clear that in the following year, the defensive system was likely to begin to come on-line. Bleacher wanted it active before he left office in January ‘89 and everything was thrown at completion ahead of that deadline.

During June of ’87, Bleacher announced that once Spiderweb was active, the United States would begin to dismantle its own land-based missile force. There would be other strategic weapons platforms still active, and plenty of nukes, but Spiderweb would replace ICBMs. Defence instead of offense, Bleacher declared.


That was not how Hughes saw it. Politicians such as he, and many influential Americans who were opposed to the Space Defence Initiative, believed that Bleacher was ensuring that nuclear war would in fact occur. They understood how Mutually Assured Destruction worked and, while not liking it, respected the fact that it kept the peace. Bleacher was throwing that all away because the Spiderweb system was a threat to the Soviets. Hughes could see that. He tried to convince Bleacher of that but the man wouldn’t listen to reason. He had long talked of nuclear warfare in a manner which disturbed many but this defensive system was even more worrisome. Once it was active, it would effectively emasculate Zorin’s nuclear posture. Was such a man as he going to wait and do nothing which the United States built a missile defensive system, which, should Bleacher wish, be active while his own missiles were too? Hughes feared that Zorin didn’t believe that America was going to give up its own ICBMs… he himself didn’t think the president, nor his successor, would either.

There was a NATO summit which took place in Britain during the summer of 1987. It was held in the city of Birmingham with Hughes hosting it and Bleacher among the many important attendees. A big event, it was meant to signify NATO unity and did so in public. However, in the nearby Coventry, a secret meeting took place on the evening before the summit’s final day. Meeting in a hotel conference room, Hughes’s foreign secretary hosted his counterparts from France and West Germany as well as selected officials. Their gathering was the culmination of earlier contacts and discussions over the previous years. The subject matter was that of accidental nuclear war between the superpowers brought about by Bleacher’s Spiderweb and the perceived position of the silent Zorin on that. An agreement was struck that night, what in later years would be deemed the Treaty of Coventry. It wasn’t a treaty though, just an understanding between allies. A better comparison would be to that of the 1956-arranged Protocol of Sèvres. Away from the strongest member of the alliance which they were each a part of, these three representatives of their governments made an agreement that they would take no part in an accidental nuclear war. If a general war crisis broke out, things would be very different with each remaining committed to their NATO commitments to defend Europe from traditional aggression. Yet, should an imminent nuclear disaster be on the cusp of occurring, they would stay out of it. More than that, they would do everything that they could to avoid their countries being participants. If the Americans, other allies or the general public found out, there would be an uproar. Hughes, the French president & the West German Chancellor all believed that they were doing the right thing yet understood that trying to convince others of this wouldn’t work. They kept their agreement secret and sincerely hoped that what was agreed in Coventry would never have to come to pass.

That was a forlorn hope when men such as Bleacher and Zorin were in power.


Late 1988 came about and the election for Bleacher’s successor was in full swing by October. His vice president was pulling far out ahead of his rival and near certain to take the reins of office come next January. A man very much like Bleacher, Hughes had regardless established a better relationship with him than he had with the current occupant of the White House and there was hope that the future might be better. Spiderweb was still on the cards for operational deployment though and the vice president was committed to it fully. He told Hughes that his wish was to see the defensive system deployed to cover close allies such as Britain (it already protected Canada) in the near future. Hughes had demurred to make a commitment on that. From out of Moscow, an intelligence officer serving with Britain’s MI-6 managed to evade detection and get his hands upon a stolen document in the middle of that month. He hadn’t swiped it himself, neither had the contact who handed it to him, but getting it to MI-6 exposed the officer significantly. He was lucky to get what he did without being caught. It was an internal Politburo briefing paper drawn up by the KGB for Zorin and his leadership cabal. The subject was Spiderweb and how its deployment threatened their country’s very existence. While having previously not denounced the Space Defence Initiative apart from the expected general rhetoric, this laid out exactly that thinking feared about Spiderweb for them. They were really worried that when it was active, the Americans would use the protection it offered them to strike with nuclear weapons at will against the Soviet Union. A disarming strike was feared: one to eliminate Zorin’s nation of its nuclear capabilities and leave Moscow at Washington’s mercy.

This was passed onwards to the Americans. Through several channels – prime minister to president, foreign secretary to secretary of state, MI-6 chief to the CIA’s head – the message was made clear: the Soviets are ‘gravely concerned’ and fear they are being backed into a corner where they will have no choice but to lash out. Bleacher wouldn’t listen. He dismissed it as a bluff and his hypothesis (a random guess it seemed!) was that this was some sort of game they were playing where they allowed this document to fall into British hands. Its contents were false and designed to sew discord, Bleacher told Hughes two days before Warday came around. From Cape Canaveral that day, the shuttle Enterprise lifted off carrying components aboard as payload to allow for Spiderweb to begin initial, limited operations within weeks. In a three-way phone call, Hughes and his preeminent European counterparts discussed this afterwards. They expressed their desire to honour the handshakes made by their representatives in Coventry the year beforehand yet hoped they wouldn’t have to.

Zorin then struck on the 28th and the Treaty of Coventry was forced into effect.

   James G ,

2 – The Doomsday Plane

It began when an American reconnaissance satellite far up above the surface of the Earth spotted that the blast coverings above silos at a missile field within Soviet Siberia were open. Within the silos in question were SS-18 Satans: the NATO codename for one of the most-feared Soviet ICBM series. The shuttle Enterprise was in the middle of deploying the first components of Spiderweb and in direct response – it just couldn’t have been a coincidence – those missiles were being uncovered. It wasn’t known if the Soviets were aware that they had been spotted doing what they were, but that was a secondary consideration. At the Pentagon outside of Washington, Secretary of Defence Bob Forrest and his senior-most people reacted accordingly. They declared ‘Case Quick Angel’. The signal flashed outwards, throwing into motion many interlinked responses when the usage of that warning was made: everyone in the know dropped what they were doing and sprung into action. Forrest was joined by a select group of high-level people in departing the Pentagon by helicopter and heading for Andrews AFB. From the White House, President Bleacher was hustled out of there by the Secret Service and onto Marine One which too raced across to Andrews. Evacuations of the Vice President, the Congressional leadership and other VIPs began too. Case Quick Angel saw a lot of other things happen too when war warning alerts were sent out demanding an immediate response from recipients.

Bleacher, Forest and those with them didn’t get on Air Force One. There was one of the two presidential transports sitting on the ground at Andrews yet it was onto an E-4B NEACP aircraft that they went instead. The ‘Doomsday Plane’ soon raced down the runway and into the sky. It sped fast away from Washington, taking those aboard to the safety that those left behind wouldn’t be getting. Those remaining in Washington weren’t told what was happening either: millions carried on with their soon-to-be ended lives unaware. While climbing on a southern course, information came to the Doomsday Plane that there had been a nuclear detonation up in space near to where the Enterprise was last reported. It would be the first of many PINNACLE events reported. Briefed on this, Bleacher wanted to know what had happened. Had the Soviets used a missile from the ground to hit the shuttle? He was informed that there hadn’t be an ICBM firing, nor the reported launch of any other Soviet missiles. Something else had hit the Enterprise, something unknown. Urged on by his chief-of-staff, Bleacher put into motion an attempt to contact Premier Zorin. A Hot War looked imminent but it was one which wasn’t wanted. For all his bluster in public before he was elected and while in the White House about how he would lead the United States to confront and stare down the Soviet Union, in private Bleacher was often noted to be more cautious on the issue of war. He wanted to see if there was a way to talk Zorin down from what it looked likely he might be about to do. Contact couldn’t be made though either directly with the Kremlin from the Doomsday Plane or by the US Ambassador in Moscow (he could be reached but he was unable to contact the Kremlin).

While their director was in the middle of being evacuated from Washington, the senior watch staff at the National Security Agency’s communications centre remained at their post at Fort Meade. They passed onto Bleacher’s party more troubling news. A trio of Soviet military communications satellites were being observed making unusual high speed manoeuvres. They were meant to be harmless relay platforms – the NSA had beforehand ‘confirmed’ that – and incapable of doing what they actually were. It was recommended to the president that they be engaged as hostile. Efforts to contact Zorin were still underway and if those were successful, this matter would have to be sorted out. However, something had to be done right now and later on they could worry about apologies if, hopefully, this was all just a scare. Given authorisation, Secretary Forrest gave the go-ahead for the use of the US Air Force’s Slingshot anti-satellite system. Already alerted, the battery fired in record time. Coming up from silos near to Whiteman AFB in Missouri, a wave of intercept missiles arrived and hit each satellite. It was a stunning success for the Slingshot system and worthy of a cheer from several of those present on the Doomsday Plane. That was too late though. Those ‘satellites’ were weapons carriers instead. They dropped their payloads above the Earth with those weapons falling into orbit. A second volley of Slingshot missiles were fired despite the firm belief that they wouldn’t get those manoeuvring targets which were already down below the realistic minimal effective range for the United States’ secretive anti-satellite missiles. Such fears where proved correct. The Slingshots missed.

Targeted towards the North American continent were a total of six huge nuclear weapons. Two of them failed to detonate as planned but the other four did. The explosions were high up above California, Manitoba, Nebraska and Pennsylvania: at an altitude of one hundred thousand feet plus. No harm was caused to anyone or anything directly by these thermonuclear explosions. It was the weapon’s secondary effects which did all the damage that they did. A massive amount of energy was released in an instant. An electromagnetic pulse blanketed the United States and Canada as well as portions of neighbouring countries including Cuba and Mexico too. Everywhere below, electrical systems for power, communications, navigation and everything else went dead. This included military equipment meant to be shielded against such an attack due to the strength of the blasts being far greater than the maximum projected force of attack. Televisions went dead, phone lines went out and planes crashed from the sky. The latter was one of the most dramatic outcomes of the EMP attack. Case Quick Angel had seen an emergency flash message sent to the Federal Aviation Authority some time beforehand where they were told to enforce a ground stop of civilian aircraft movements and also instruct airborne aircraft to land at once. This was no easy feat and it couldn’t be done in such a timeframe to clear the skies. However, there were fewer jets up the time than there usually would be and there had been a warning sent to pilots. It was lacking in detail – as was the one to the FAA – yet it did save many lives. A lot of aircraft managed to survive and get on the ground in one piece. Others didn’t fare as well though. This included many military aircraft up. Fifty minutes from the alert first being broadcast had seen the skies fill as they emptied. Military aircraft followed standing procedures to get airborne less they be caught on the ground in a nuclear attack. Then they were hit with an invisible force that saw many of them come back down again… hard. The Doomsday Plane didn’t immediately crash. Like many others flying, this aircraft suffered major onboard malfunctions and was left in a perilous state while airborne. There were still some communications available too from the aircraft.

Bleacher ordered Case Dream Eagle: a counterstrike of similar magnitude. The Soviets had EMP-capable satellites and so did the United States. It hadn’t been believed that their opponents had such a system but the Americans operated their own regardless. Instructions went out for American satellites to overfly the Soviet Union and deliver a massively-destructive electromagnetic attack too. As Forrest confirmed to him that that was underway, the functioning communications that the Doomsday Plane had allowed for an updated threat assessment to be delivered. The CIA Director was still at Langley and personally forwarded a message to the effect that all available information confirmed that those Soviet missile silos were minutes away from opening fire. SS-18s were soon to be inbound. They would be carrying huge payloads, multi-megaton warheads as part of a Soviet first strike. The Defence Intelligence Agency’s chief was incommunicado – his helicopter had gone down due to the EMP blast; one of many carrying VIPs – but his watch staff sent to Bleacher an estimation of where those ICBMs were going to hit. Forrest and the US Air Force’s Chief-of-Staff (General Dawes Potter was aboard while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Stevens had gone to Raven Rock) presented the president with an attack option of his own. Still, Bleacher sought to avoid war. He tried once more to have Zorin contacted, even at a time like this when communications were all over the place. A message from the Doomsday Plane’s pilot arrived in the presidential suite alerted everyone once more to the dangerous condition the aircraft was in but he was told to keep aloft as long as possible: this was no time for being on the ground where it would be harder still to try to maintain links with everyone it was possible to do so. Moscow was silent – this was just ahead of the Case Dream Eagle attack – but from overseas the British and French were in contact. The Prime Minister and the President, each aware of the overall situation, in turn informed Bleacher about their own position on this matter. It was the first time that the so-called Treaty of Coventry became something that the president and the US Government was aware of. There was anger from those with Bleacher with Forrest and Potter having many expletives delivered. Bleacher did no such thing himself. His reaction to the British and French telling him that they had informed Zorin that they had made their own arrangements to remain neutral was to beg them to intercede. The Soviet leader wouldn’t talk to him to end this madness but they must speak to Zorin! Each man said that they would try. They kept their promise but were unable to do that. The American-delivered EMP blasts occurred above the Soviet Union (affecting a good portion of Eastern and Northern Europe too) straight afterwards to forestall that.

While there was a wait on to see if the Soviets were about to fire their ICBMs as it looked likely they would, which should they do so Bleacher was at once going to return fire, news arrived aboard the Doomsday Plane that Marine Two was missing. The Vice President’s helicopter had been on its way to Mount Weather – a bunker in the Virginia portion of the Blue Mountains – when the EMP hit. It should have reached there beforehand but hadn’t due to an unexplained delay. Conformation was sought as to other high-level VIP evacuees. Had they made it where they were supposed to be? The question couldn’t be answered. Bleacher and Forrest realised that they were the only ones it was likely that were left at the top of the US Government, at least for the time being. Maybe there were survivors from those helicopters, but none of them had any access to communications with the nation’s defences. Back with another warning was the aircraft’s pilot. He needed to put down, really soon! Time was running out and the consequences of the Doomsday Plane being on the ground – in one piece or not – would mean that the United States would lose the ability to have effective national wartime command. Forrest pressed Bleacher to avoid that nightmare situation. The president agreed that they should have command ready to be passed elsewhere on cue: Bleacher would stay in control until the last possible minute that his aircraft could fly. Transferring authority for the nation’s defence was found to be impossible though. Raven Rock where Admiral Stevens was somewhere unreachable; NORAD under Cheyenne Mountain refused the transfer authority due to security encoding issues; the commander of Strategic Air Command aboard one of the Looking Glass aircraft wouldn’t take command either. There had been one of the aircraft on the Looking Glass mission up when Case Quick Angel was declared and it had been joined by that second one out of Offutt AFB with the general commanding SAC aboard. Both of those aircraft could remotely launch ICBMs yet one was down after EMP damage and the second (carrying that general) was soon to land due to the same issue. Another try was made to contact Raven Rock but this was interrupted by an urgent message from Fort Meade.

There was another Soviet satellite releasing its payload above the United States. This was firing projectiles downwards in the manner of an ICBM warhead bus! Such a weapon system was something that the United States didn’t have itself and didn’t believe beforehand that the Soviets had. Yet, that was happening right now despite intelligence summaries saying it was impossible. It was striking at the Minuteman ICBM fields in South Dakota, not even waiting for the SS-18s to arrive. Bleacher did the only thing he could do in response, the only thing he believed he should do. He launched America’s missiles in reply. Minutemen flew away towards their targets in the Soviet Union in a massive nuclear attack. Minutes after their launch, there were PINNACLE reports. Nuclear blasts were being reported, this time on American soil. The missile silos near to Ellsworth AFB, from where many of the Minutemen had just flew, were under attack from those satellite-delivered warheads. Just in time Bleacher had fired. Away those ICBMs went towards the Soviet Union… and others came back the other way. Defying the projections of the NSA, the CIA & the DIA, it wasn’t those ones from the silos in the middle of Siberia which they had their eyes on – which started all of this – which flew. Instead, other SS-18s from a different missile field, this one on the Kamchatka Peninsula beside the Pacific, were launched against the United States. They had a shorter flight time and their own silo covers had been opened just like the others but not spotted as they were.

Warning of what was on the way came not from Cheyenne Mountain but from CFB North Bay. This was a secondary site for NORAD located inside Canada with Americans stationed there alongside their allies. Why Cheyenne Mountain went silent wasn’t known aboard the Doomsday Plane yet all attention as on what North Bay was reporting about those missiles and the target projections for the SS-18s. Washington, New York and the Texan city of San Antonio (the latter with many military sites in & around it) were in the firing line. So too were the missile fields in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. There were many more ICBMs on the ground there, ones which had yet to fly following the rather limited attack Bleacher had made. The president gave no authorisation for their use, nor the launching of any more nuclear attacks following the first strike with ICBMs accompanied by a limited one by B-52s laden with missiles under SAC control. He was unable to order this. His health had never been good, something hidden from the public extremely well. After firing nuclear missiles, understanding what they would mean for the fate of millions, he suffered a heart attack. This occurred just ahead of the pilot of the Doomsday Plane finally no longer having the ability to keep it airborne. He had to try to land or his aircraft was going to crash in an uncontrollable manner. The medical emergency aboard couldn’t stop that. A location was chosen in North Carolina, one already famous in aviation history: Kitty Hawk. Down the aircraft went and it was a crash which many passengers would walk away from. President Bleacher wouldn’t be among them though.

Command-and-control of the United States’ nuclear forces had not been passed from him elsewhere before his death upon impact. For so many of the world’s population, that was ultimately a good thing because, just like the Soviets with Zorin having his own ‘difficulties’, the Americans wouldn’t be firing any more nuclear volleys today. PINNACLE reports flashed outwards from North Bay confirming detonations on nuclear weapons on American soil but no one was able to receive them.

Meanwhile, Warday came to the United States.

3 – Warday

Those SS-18s launched towards the United States carried a mix of payloads. There were some carrying a few warheads while others had many. Those warheads were of different sizes too. The missile bodies released those warheads when up in space along with wide variety of penetration aids too: chaff, infrared flares and dummy warheads all to confuse defences which were not yet in-place. Back down towards the Earth those warheads came and they began smashing into their many scattered targets.

Five (of six fired) warheads slammed into Washington DC and the surrounding area. The District of Columbia was gone in an instant. Nothing remained where the capital city of the United States had been. Ground- & air-bursts took place with several of them occurring some distance away from the targeted city itself – above both Maryland and Virginia – yet with the same destructive force there. The White House, Congress, the Pentagon, The Mall, the homes of its residents were all obliterated… along with two million people. San Antonio in Texas got hit by three warheads, again big ones. There were military bases all around it but San Antonio was still a civilian target. A million lives were lost here. Then there was New York, New York. Targeted by six warheads, two of them missed (with both detonating still) and another two failed to explode. Manhattan and the Bronx were spared direct hits when the blasts which occurred went off low in the sky above Brooklyn and Queens as well as in New York Bay. Long Island would soon be engulfed in a firestorm, a complete conflagration which would go as far eastwards as it could until there was nothing left to burn. Those at-sea explosions – one above the water, another just under the surface – sent an awful lot of water rushing inland and this brought about the flooding of nearly the entire sub-surface sections of New York’s Subway. Aboveground, Manhattan was full of broken glass and there were all sorts of damage done due to the shockwaves from the Long Island explosions. Close to three million lives were lost on Warday in America’s largest city. While not being fully destroyed in an instant, New York was finished. The city was dead yet still thinking it was alive. This was an unsurvivable strike for what so many had long looked upon as the world’s capital. An eventual painful, slow death would come but a death it would be regardless of length.

The launch command centres (LCCs) for the missile fields of Strategic Air Command’s ICBMs came under attack from far more falling warheads than went after those three cities. The LCCs controlled groups of missiles in their silos and these were all scattered far and wide across four states. Ellsworth AFB, Grand Forks AFB, Malmstrom AFB, Minot AFB and Warren AFB all came under fire. Warren’s LCCs controlled both Minutemen and Peacekeeper ICBMs though none of the latter missiles were yet launch capable following a long series of delays during their deployment. The Soviets didn’t know that though with Zorin being told that once Spiderweb was operation, the reportedly extremely-accurate Peacekeepers would be part of a first attack against Soviet soil. Ellsworth’s LCCs had already come under attack by satellite-delivered warheads. The second wave of nuclear strikes targeted those of both airbase’s missile fields as well as the others. A few air-bursts occurred though the majority of the successful blasts (and there were many warheads which didn’t work) were on the ground. The warhead sizes were smaller than the city strikes but multiple. Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming were blanketed by explosions as the Soviet attack tried to knock out as many ICBMs as possible by indirect means.

In response, President Bleacher’s counterstrike sent Minutemen ICBMs, each with multiple warheads, towards Soviet targets in their homeland. Missile fields weren’t in the firing line: instead, it was cities. The justification was that those were political targets with centres of government in them and that was correct… yet millions of people lived around government buildings. Moscow was at the top of the target list and successfully hit by just under a dozen warheads: the city’s anti-missile defences killed several warheads but that wasn’t good enough. Leningrad was obliterated just as the Soviet capital was and there was likewise complete destruction done to Sevastopol. It could be argued that this was a three-for-three attack where a trio of Soviet cities were hit in exchange for three American ones. However, Bleacher’s attack was bigger than that. The Soviet Union was a (theoretical) federation of fifteen republics. Moscow was the capital of Russia and towards the cities which formed the capitals of the fourteen others, death from above came. Alma-Ata, Ashkhabad, Dushanbe, Frunze, Kiev, Kishinev Minsk, Riga, Tallinn, Tashkent, Vilnius and Yerevan all were successfully struck though Baku and Tbilisi survived this attack. Across the West, many had long argued that those republics were ‘captive nations’ and their peoples held against their will by Russian imperialism dressed up as Soviet-style democracy. American nuclear warheads made no discrimination in killing Russians, Ukrainians, Latvians and Kazakhs.

There were B-52s in the sky as well. They had been far enough away from their SAC bases when the EMP hit the North American continent to be able to continue onwards with their follow-up mission behind the city-killing strike. A few would fall victim to enemy air defences, including the two heading towards Baltic targets, but others managed to launch their payload of ALCM and SRAM cruise missiles. Important military sites around the periphery of the Soviet Union were wiped out after the cities were lost. Vladivostok in the Far East was one of those blown apart – the city getting it alongside the targeted naval base – and so too were the Kola Peninsula’s Murmansk and Severomorsk. Civilian casualties were immense at each of those locations though less so where key military research & development sites were hit internally within the Soviet Union. No one lost their lives directly when ALCMs from two of the B-52s exploded low above the Ukraine. Rather than nuclear blasts here, the country’s breadbasket was targeted for elimination when the toxic contents of those missile warheads were dispersed in the fashion that they were. This was an attack made in defiance of international law where biological warfare was unleashed to make sure that nothing would be growing here for generations. History would call them ‘Purple Bombs’ after the secret HAVE PURPLE military programme to develop this capability. There would be quite the famine as a result of such an innocuous-sounding weapon.


Soviet nuclear attacks on American naval targets occurred between their EMP strikes and the SS-18s launching. They eliminated a significant portion of the greatest navy which the world had ever seen with not much of a defence being mounted. The US Navy had received that war warning following the destruction of the shuttle Enterprise, but that wasn’t enough to see the survival of so much of their combat strength. Two carrier groups and a flotilla built around a battleship were hit by nuclear-tipped cruise missiles while in the Western Pacific when a Soviet surface force opened fire after racing unmolested into an optimal firing position. In the Indian Ocean, another carrier group was struck by a pair of torpedoes with nuclear warheads fired from a submarine which got in really close. A flight of Tu-22M Backfire bombers coming out of Syrian airbases blasted a fourth carrier group in the Eastern Mediterranean to ruin with air-launched nuclear missiles and also hit a major amphibious group nearby… all while no one shot at them. Hawaii wasn’t affected by the EMP blasts over North America and at Pearl Harbor there was a wave of activity ongoing to try and get vessels out to sea. They were being ‘survival-sailed’ with minimum crews to get them underway. Such a thing was taking time though and before it could bring any meaningful results, a Soviet Navy submarine fired a pair of cruise missiles towards Hawaii before getting away clean. Only one of those missiles was successful in making a hit (the other crashed mid-flight) but what damage it did. The result was far worse the what was seen on December 7th 1941. Another three carriers, along with dozens of other warships, were lost in a nuclear blast which killed close to fifty thousand sailors and civilians. Honolulu wasn’t directly hit and the casualties in that city weren’t that high, but it was still rather horrific for all those who survived the wiping out of the naval base not that far away. Hawaii would never be the same again. There was more of the US Navy, including other carriers, located at homeport stations on each mainland coast. Bangor, Bremerton, King’s Bay, Mayport, New London, Norfolk and San Diego each were full of sudden activity but the nuclear attacks on them which were feared didn’t materialise. Instead, all of those carriers, warships and submarines were lost when the EMP hit.

Targeting the US Navy like it did, these Soviet attacks eliminated not just conventional warfighting platforms but those which had a nuclear role as well. Surface and subsurface vessels all carried nuclear weapons ready to play their role in war. There were also strategic missile submarines caught in-port with their electronic systems fried as they were. The Americans had many more at sea yet these ones which hadn’t gotten to sea were knocked out of action. Where no attacks were made on other portions of the US Navy and that was just as significant as what was done. The Americans had major naval facilities spread throughout the world including those in Japan (Yokosuka), the Philippines (Subic Bay), Spain (Rota) and the United Kingdom (Holy Loch). Each of them was worthy of attack similar as to the one made against Pearl Harbor if the intention as to get rid of as much of the US Navy as possible in the fastest and most effective manner. However, each of those bases was left alone. American naval forces would surge out of them in the following hours and unmolested in doing so.

What hadn’t been revealed to Bleacher nor those with him on the Doomsday Plane before that E-4B came crashing down on the North Carolina shore was what exactly had happened with Marine Two. The Vice President had left the White House (he’d been there when Case Quick Angel was declared) bound for Mount Weather. That was a longer journey than the one which the president had taken yet not especially far. He should have reached there because the Marine aircrew were the very best and their helicopters were always kept in exemplary state. The flight time would have allowed for Marine Two to have arrived ahead of the EMP blasts as well. However, there had been no arrival of that helicopter nor any contact from it. Organising a search was impossible in the circumstances both before and then after Washington was glassed by Soviet nukes. Should an investigation have been mounted, it would have eventually been discovered what happened though. There were witnesses on the ground to the shooting down of Marine Two close to Leesburg, Virginia. A shoulder-launched missile had struck the helicopter and sent it tearing towards the ground killing all aboard. Those who saw it happen survived Warday as well. Alas, there was no one to interview them in the aftermath nor any recovery of the body of Bleacher’s supposed successor.

For the Soviets to pull off this assassination was quite something. It required them to have access to accurate, top secret intelligence on the route which Marine Two would take and the right weapon to use to overcome the helicopters active & passive defences to protect against engagement from the ground. There had to be the knowledge that the Vice President would go towards Mount Weather by air as well. That information as provided though and so too was access gained for the team of killers to get where they were, when they were. In addition, there was a second missile team staked out on a route which it was believed that Marine One would be flying on from the White House to Andrews AFB. Bleacher’s helicopter deviated from the compromised route – there was a very recent change made by the US Marines – and so they were out of position. These assassins had to be sent to the United States avoiding detection, collect weapons, be provided with intelligence and granted orders to strike. That was all immensely difficult for the Soviets to do and for them to get one target out of two, admittedly the lesser one, was all the more remarkable for it. A security breach of the highest order had occurred when it came to evacuation routes being compromised like they were. Of more significance than any of that detail was the bigger picture. While much the preparation for the two kill teams had been done long in advance as part of general war planning, they were dispatched on their mission a week ahead of Warday. A stroke of bad luck, or better yet an American intelligence-led detection of them, would have given everything away: the risk factor was huge. The sudden crisis which erupted when the beginning of the Spiderweb deployment happened like it did didn’t look as sudden as was in light of this.

Then there was the issue with the MV Minerva. This was a ship sailing in the waters around the Portuguese-owned Azores Islands on Warday. Austrian-owned, registered in Italy and flying a flag of convenience from The Bahamas, this ship wasn’t by chance where it was when the superpowers started shooting nukes at each other. The five thousand ton vessel was outside the harbour at Praia da Vitoria when from out of the Lajes Field airbase came a single aircraft climbing fast as it took off. That was an EC-135 on the Silk Purse mission – similar to that preformed by Looking Glass over North America – taking off in response to the sudden war alert. A disguised missile battery consisting of a naval SAM system was uncovered in a hurry on the ship’s foredeck ahead of the Silk Purse getting ready to fly. The Minerva was in a perfect position to shoot at it when it was in the sky nearby. It would crash into the sea three miles offshore to kill everyone aboard and rob European Command (one of the United States’ major geographical commands) of its immediate nuclear command-&-control. That ship wasn’t there by accident and those aboard didn’t have the information they did by chance. To get the Minerva in-place was likewise not something that could have been done without significant notice. The Portuguese Air Force flew G-91 attack-fighters from Lajes and they would strike that ship in the following hours in the face of it trying to shoot back at them: a target like the Silk Purse aircraft was far easier to hit than the ultimately successful G-91s turned out to be. A lot of answers went down with those who either burnt to death aboard or drowned when the wreckage sunk.

In hindsight, there would later be many suspicions raised about the destruction of so much the US Navy as easily as it was on Warday in addition to events such as how the Vice President got himself killed and that important aircraft was taken out. With the naval strikes, it was argued that they should have opened fire before the Soviets did. Yet, they had only self-defence orders though: there was no permission to attack Soviet ships & submarines which were making hostile manoeuvres but had yet to launch any weapons. The assassination of the Vice President wasn’t able to be investigated for answers to come about that and the Minerva was on the ocean floor. Should future events have gone a different war past Warday, there might not have been many fears that there was ultimately more to what happened as it did than there was. Other elements of the Soviet attack which they planned to make would have then shown for this all to make sense than when what did occur did alone. Yet, just like the Americans were unable to do, there was an inability on October 28th 1988 for Zorin to finish what he started. Those American EMP attacks upon the Soviet Union were just as destructive as the ones against North America were. His command aircraft crashed just as Bleacher’s did, sooner in fact.

This is what made World War Three as short as it was. Neither of the two superpowers, armed with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons apiece, were able to follow-up their opening attack and counterattack against one another. They lost their leadership and failed to pass on authority for others to continue the conflict of killing cities and trying to end civilisation. There were many figures who would have wished to take the reins of power and take that action, yet they were denied the immediate opportunity to do so. Before anyone could effectively position themselves to do so, they found their worlds collapsing around them. The very limited, highly-targeted exchange on Warday really did a lot of damage in a wider sense beyond blast zones. It would be up to others elsewhere, in neither of these two fatally-wounded countries, to try and pick up the pieces.

Each side got off only a tiny portion of their plans. They retain massive strength but are unable to command it or get it to work. Overseas is where the real strength now lays.
The USN had orders to only fire if fired upon first. Then kaboom, off went the nukes. The ROE were tight as the president was still trying to avoid war despite all his previous bluster of being up for it. Disaster which shouldn't have happened though all apart from the Soviets Baltic Fleet got killed too when Kola, Sevastopol & Vladivostok/Kamchatka were hit.
Purple Bombs were in the novel and I thought I could play with what that meant. Outrageous thing to do yet, in later years when the US is suffering from disease after disease, there is speculation that it bio warfare done to them as well even if that cannot be proved.
When I first read the novel years ago and the striking of the republic capitals sunk in, my reaction was the same. That was a dumb move there.
Eastern Europe is full of Soviet forces and Western Europe will have to deal with that issue. The communist dictatorships are doomed though things will not be all about democracy and freedom for everyone in the end.
You're correct on internal bits of the USSR: I hadn't considered that and neither all the EMP outcomes. It will trash anything high-end but will allow for those with a lower-grade tech base to be in a better position long-term.
What we have next is Britain's immediate response. Most of the rest of the story will now tilt this way too.