Lommerde took a long breath. Langford wondered with a hint of uncharacteristic malice if he had ever been called upon to explain anything in anything but jargon and buzzwords before, or if he had just dazzled his listeners with babble. It wouldn’t have been difficult; the government the Russians had destroyed had been long on buzzwords and short on action. The bastards had left him with a terrible mess to sort out before the Russians started to attack Britain directly again.
“Think of a city as a black hole,” Lommerde said finally, his jaw working frantically. Langford smiled to himself he was probably wondering if Langford would have him shot for failure. He was perfectly safe from that fate, but there was no need to tell him that; he might break out more buzzwords. “It sucks in supplies and so on from the countryside, power stations, water stations and so on. Each city needs thousands upon thousands of tons of supplies to work properly; the newsagent on the corner must be replenished every few days, just to ensure that they maintain their business. Understand?”
Langford ignored the hint of derision in his tone and nodded.
“Good,” Lommerde said. “Now… the Russians hit us pretty badly, destroying several power plants and transformers; I dread to imagine what would have happened if they had targeted nuclear plants specifically, but they left those alone. This caused a lot of panic and disruption; the supplies in supermarkets and shops were often removed by desperate people, or at the very least sold out rapidly. Worse, they hit Europe and devastated the supply chain there.”
He took a breath. “As you know, sir, the European Union regulations stated that we had to purchase most of our food from Europe, as they purchased items from us,” he continued. “Those supply lines have been broken more or less completely, while we cannot get replacements quickly from other sources, such as America or South America. I have taken the liberty of sending purchasing agents to several possible sources with authority to buy food supplies, but that may come with a political price tag. In any case, we are dependent upon food sources in Britain itself, and those are rather short.”
Langford reminded himself that Lommerde did actually know what he was doing. “We had stockpiles of food supplies during some parts of the Cold War, and stockpiled more after the first bout of heavy flooding in 2007,” Lommerde said. “There are also the locations in the supply chain; food doesn’t appear magically, and for every box of cereal in the stores, there are several in the supply line. Some of them have been looted, but others have been abandoned and my people have been able to recover them. Non-perishable food sources, or at least items that last longer than a week, have been recovered in great quantities. The real problem lies in the stuff that is perishable; milk, unfrozen meat and so on. Matters are not helped by the disruption of supply lines; some of the cities had problems because they had run out of water supplies, and then out of things to drink. We’ve had examples of truly awful behaviour, such as people eating pet food, but we are likely to get most of the population through the first month, providing that we maintain control.”
Langford smiled. “I remember military cooking,” he said. “There were times when pet food would have been a vast improvement.”
“Ah… yes,” Lommerde said. His face was a study in contrasts. He wanted to believe Langford’s comment at face value, and yet he didn’t quite believe it; Langford wasn’t exactly joking. Food supplies had sometimes gotten very short indeed at Basra. “The real problem lies in the long-term survivability of the country.”
“I see,” Langford said. “Because we can’t get supplies from outside?”
“Among other things,” Lommerde said. “Some items, milk for example, can be obtained; most of that still came from British farms. Other supplies are going to be harder to replace, sir; we got a lot of our meat from Europe… and the farmers weren’t happy about it. The supermarkets pretty much exploited the farmers and… well, what they grew wasn't what we actually needed, as opposed to wanted.” He paused. “With me so far?”
Langford held up a hand. “Why can’t they just produce what we need?”
“Two separate reasons,” Lommerde said. “The first problem is that they will need to sow fields that were allowed to lay fallow… and growing will take time, months even under the best of conditions. The second reason… I don’t know if you noticed, but the economy has collapsed. Much of our trade was with Europe and, at the moment, we’re getting almost nothing from the continent, and so businesses start to take losses. We didn’t see much of this in the first few days, because most people were keeping their heads down, but I expect that pretty soon the unemployment level will rise sharply. The trade wars with America did plenty of damage and the sudden loss of Europe will only make the damage worse; sir, this is uncharted territory for us, for any First World economy.”
Langford rubbed his head. “We did it in the Second World War,” he said. “Why can’t we do it again?”
Lommerde scowled. “Several reasons,” he said. “We had time to prepare for the Second World War, most of our trade was with the Empire and the Americans, and the Americans were willing to extend us credit. They basically screwed us after the war, economically speaking, but they allowed us to survive in wartime. Now… there’s no preparation, the sea-lanes are even less safe than they were in 1940, and a lot of people are thinking that money’s worthless. I’ve had reports of farmers using shotguns to try to defend their fields against mobs and farms being eaten out, all within a few days. Farmers… just don’t want money any longer.”
Langford steepled his fingers. “All right,” he said. “What do we do about it?”
“We have to ration food, and quickly,” Lommerde said. “If we can ensure a proper system of food distribution, we can at least put a lid on the panic for a few weeks and win us time. The NHS has actually been working much better in the last two days; your orders to forget the red tape has worked a small miracle, aided by the thousands of medical workers who came back to help the injured from the attacks. Given time, we can restore much of the country to normal, but…”
His voice tailed off. Langford lifted an eyebrow. “But what?”
“In the long term, General, we may be looking at a long depression at best, and depressions breed desperation,” Lommerde said. “You may expect to see real trouble on the streets before too long, much larger than you have already seen and even handled, in most places. The mass of unemployed and unemployable was a serious problem for the government even before the war began, when they were fed from the welfare teat… but now, we can’t maintain the welfare teat at all. The best we can do is give them rationed food, but…”
Langford had been wondering about that. “We might have to conscript them,” he said, seriously. Many people on the dole would have worked if they could have worked, others were lazy teenagers who had never got into the habit of actually working. The Army had been forbidden to recruit in many areas; that would have taken its own toll on the unemployed. If only they had been able to pay soldiers more… he shook his head; it was a dead issue now. “There are no arms, but muscle alone would be useful; could you help with that?”
“I don’t like it, but… I guess there’s no choice,” Lommerde said. “The Social Service and the Job Centres can help finding people; we can always tell them that their rations depend on them, at least the young males, making themselves available for service. We don’t have the resources to track them down, however, if they refuse to take service…”
“Do what you can,” Langford said. “I may have to use the soldiers somewhere else, however; the emergency services may have to use their labour if the soldiers are needed to actually fight. Hamburg has fallen, and with that, the Russians are in a position to expand their control along the North Sea coastline.”