Will the United States ever regain its status again as a military power?
| - | 1993 | 1992 |
|---|---|---|
| AGREE | 32% | 29% |
| DISAGREE | 65 | 67 |
| NO OPINION | 3 | 4 |
Documents from the Emergency
There was no doubt that it was fire. They felt it burn their skin, then their bones, then their brains.
The first test of my ability to get sensitive documents from official sources came immediately. Both Whitley and I wanted to have a selection of documents that had been produced in the months following Warday.
Most people were too busy dealing with blown out radios, televisions, and telephones, and trying to understand what had happened to us, to worry about bureaucrats and their pronouncements.
But they were there, and they were pronouncing.
Many times since Warday I have imagined the places where the postwar planning and thinking took place, the quiet offices at the edge of the fire. I have wondered who the men—or the women—were who divided the doomed from the saved, who conceived of triage, who looked upon the rest of us with cold eyes.
Much of what I did to get documents was “illegal” in the old sense of the word. I not only took things off desks, I opened files that were supposed to be sealed. But the documents in those files cannot be stolen, especially not the two collected here, which relate to the most fundamental of wartime experiences.
Like the people behind the numbers and the places in the radioactive zones, they belong to all of us.
| New York City Area | 2,961,881 |
| San Antonio, Texas | 1,081,961 |
| Washington, D.C. Area | 2,166,798 |
| The Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming | 1,121,802 |
| EMP-Related Accidents | 8,106 |
| Total Warday Deaths | 7,340,548 |
| Cincinnati Flu | 21,600,000 |
| Famine of 1988 | 26,200,000 |
| Radiation Related Illnesses | 17,000,000 |
| Other | 3,000,000 |
| Total Post-Warday Deaths | 67,800,000 |
| Total Deaths to Data | 75,140,548 |
| 1987 U.S. Population | 237,625,904 |
| 1992 U.S. Population, Estimated | 174,384,000 |
[Source: CDC, 1993]
0 14 1500 ZULU MARCH 89
TO ALL DIVISIONS OF THE UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES
FROM JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF
COLORADO HDQ/JCS. 173.A888
UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, THE FOLLOWING DESIGNATIONS WILL BE EMPLOYED IN DESCRIBING RADIOACTIVE ZONES:
BLAST CENTER. VIRTUALLY UNPASSABLE. RECON ONLY BY AIRPLANE. AVOID ALL CONTACT.
NO ATTEMPT WARRANTED TO FOLLOW ILLEGAL ENTRIES.
HIGH RADIOACTIVITY AREA. ADMITTANCE LIMITED TO 10 MINUTES WITH PROTECTIVE CLOTHING OR SUITABLE VEHICLE.
ILLEGAL ENTRIES MAY BE SHOT ON SIGHT.
VARIABLE RADIOACTIVITY. SUSTAINED ENTRY WITH SUITABLE PROTECTION.
VIOLATORS SHOULD BE GIVEN WARNING SHOT.
VARIABLE LOW RADIATION, USE CAUTION AND PROTECTIVE CLOTHING WHENEVER POSSIBLE.
PERIMETER AREAS. USE STANDARD MILITARY PROCEDURES FOR SECURITY IMPLEMENTATION.
ALL ROAD ENTRY TO ZONED AREAS SHOULD BE IDENTIFIED WITH APPROPRIATE NOMENCLATURE. SECURITY PROCEDURES APPLICABLE EXCEPT WHERE NOTED FOR CONTAMINATED AREAS.
THIS ORDER TO TAKE EFFECT 1300 ZULU 15 MARCH 1989
INTERVIEW
Wilson T. Ackorman, Undersecretary of Defense (Ret.)
[THE CONDUCT OP THE WAR. Wilson Ackerman is well known in Dallas, in the same way that somebody with an exotic contagion might be well known. People glance at him in the streets, ask him questions. Sometimes, I suppose, they do more than that.
Ackerman was aboard the Doomsday Plane on Warday. His testimony seemed essential, and he was available. The man is deeply afraid. His eyes never stop moving. Although I don’t think he is more than forty-five, like so many of us he seems much older. His hands touch and caress his face as he talks, in a dry, quick voice that seems at times too precise, and at other times curiously rich.
There is an almost lyrical terror in this man. It is an emotional state, perhaps, beyond guilt. I do not think it has a name.
As Wilson Ackerman spoke in his careful tones I thought of a lover’s murmuring, and the quarrels of children, and the voices of the night.]
I did not know that we were in a war situation until the Secretary telephoned my office and told me in a brusque tone to activate Case Quick Angel. I then set in motion the series of actions that were designed to disperse upper echelons of the Executive Branch during a nuclear war. This order was given by me at exactly 1530 on 28 October 1988.
Shortly after that I joined the Secretary, as per plan, on the helicopter pad. We left the Pentagon via helicopter at once, heading for Andrews Air Force Base. With Secretary Forrest was Air Force General Potter Dawes, who was carrying the backup codes.
We reached Andrews at 1545 hours and found that the White House contingent had already entered the E-4B aircraft. Under the Quick Angel basing protocols, the E-4B had recently been returned to Andrews from a base in Indiana. Donald Meecham informed us that the President was aboard and the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP) was ready for takeoff.
We then entered the aircraft and proceeded directly to the Presidential suite. The President greeted us and we sat down to a briefing from SAC General Joe Point. General Point indicated that there had been a Soviet response to the Space Shuttle’s deployment of the first satellite in the Spiderweb warhead-killer system.
This response was to open the doors of a group of SS-18 silos in central Siberia. Altogether they were preparing a launch of twelve missiles containing a total of fifty-four warheads in the 5- to 10-megaton range. At that time they had not launched any missiles.
As our aircraft took off, we received telemetry from NORAD indicating that there had been an explosion, probably nuclear, in near space over the western Pacific Ocean. NASA then announced that the Space Shuttle had ceased to communicate with Houston due to this detonation, and had probably been destroyed.