Categories > Books > Harry Potter > The Rise and Fall of an Empire
The first post-nuclear international conference, battles in Brazil, the Backscatter array, and the general state of the planet...
0Ambiance
A/N: I would like to thank Elensaa, Shaggy and all others who reviewed. I write because you encourage me to continue this work. For a disclaimer see the prologue. I appreciate all constructive reviews. Moreover, I will respond to each in some way. My policy is to roast all flamers with the very flames they send. If you give me a negative rating at least tell me why so I can fix my mistakes.
Splinters of a planet
Presidential Palace, Paris, France.
1730 GMT (6:30 PM Local), 30 November 2001
The leaders of fifteen countries gathered to discuss the next course of action they would take and the ramifications of the war so far. These countries were England, France, Russia, Germany, China, Japan, the United States, Italy, Greece, India, Egypt, Turkey, Spain, Australia, and Saudi Arabia. Right from the get-go, the various heads of state could tell this would be a very unpleasant meeting to say the least. The first order of business was to thrash out the financial ramifications of the nuclear attacks, and it was not at all an appealing picture. First estimates said that at the very least eighty percent of the world financial system or eight-and-a-half trillion US dollars had been lost in the initial attacks. However, with the destruction of Beijing came the true coup d'etat, as almost ninety percent of the remaining economy went through and was destroyed there. The world economy would be extremely fortunate if it recovered to its previous level in a century and not in two. Officially, all of this meant that no country on the planet could even afford to run basic services, such as heating, electricity and water with prices at their previous levels. Finally, the major nations agreed that for the time being almost all capitalist functions needed to be suspended. The settlement of debts would come after the war, and it would not be a pretty picture.
The next item on the agenda was the current logistical situation. The effects of the nuclear detonations caused more then just physical damage. The electromagnetic pulses from the warheads knocked out nearly three dozen satellites of various types, including civilian and military telecommunication, GPS, NAVSAT and photographic intelligence. This created a tremendous snarl-up in even the most basic communications on both landline and cellular phones and the internet. Most of the electronics on the French Calais coast looked like a graveyard; nearly every single unprotected electrical circuit was dead, as a direct result of the attacks. Now there were huge gaps in lines of communication all over Europe, New England and most recently China, and as such, any new intelligence would take several hours to verify and act upon said information. In the interim time period, the best way for nations to talk to each other was through the diplomatic embassies, although that method was slow and unwieldy at best.
After this, the most recent body count from the United States, Britain and China was given, and this did absolutely nothing to lift the mood. Including all battle deaths, the total came to almost 110 million dead and over 3 million wounded. The French president brought up the idea of peace talks, but following some 'spirited debate', he swiftly withdrew the proposal. Then the military portion of the meeting got underway and in a 14-1 vote, France was told to mobilize troops and move them across the Belgian border to stop the Dutch advance. Germany soon after began moving troops into Denmark in support of the government there, which was supposedly under attack from rebellious magical forces that support the Dark Lord. Britain went into a state of near draconian martial law, and focused on getting their country under control using any means necessary. Also decided at this meeting was to adopt a policy of there being no absolute neutrality, for the combined might of the world would be need to restore peace to the globe. Representatives from 60 smaller countries all got various projects and orders that the militaries of their respective countries would complete. After three hours, the meeting adjourned and within an hour of the meeting's end, the United States began loading military hardware on to C-5B Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster III transport planes that would ship their deadly payloads of personnel and weapons across the globe.
Brasilia, Brazil
2245 GMT (7:45 PM Local), 30 November 2001
The effects of the war seemed so far away from Brasilia that many thought that the fighting would not get within a hundred miles of the country of Brazil. The police forces in the tropical city were prone to look the other way at noticeable and dangerous crimes if just for a few more pesos in their pockets. For years, the Dark Lord had been paying the Brazilian port authorities to 'misplace' shipments of drugs that funded his war operations. Now that the war was open to the public as it were, he now was paying the authorities to act as hired guns in support of his raids. Tonight would mark the beginning of a true world war, the third in the history of the planet; but also one the likes of which would never be seen again. For tonight the Brazilian government would fall and replaced by a puppet state much like Vichy France.
The first signal that anything was off-kilter that night was when all the radio and television stations went into emergency broadcast modes. Then the lights went out and the city began tearing itself apart. Several quickly formed resistance groups reacted with incredible violence toward the rebellious magic users and corrupt security forces. Often times the opposing forces fought tooth and nail to gain naught but ten meters. However, slowly, ever so slowly, the dark side gained the upper hand, and meter by bloody meter, they closed in on their ultimate goal: the governmental district of the city. However, just as they main force of the enemy militia reached the gates of the district, the freedom fighters detonated hundreds of charges of high explosive compounds that had been placed all around the approaches to the district only minutes before, trapping the enemy forces with mountains of debris. After that, it was no longer a battle, but a slaughter, as almost instantaneously the resistance began firing grenades, RPGs, and bazookas into the conglomeration of enemies killing dozens at one time. As for the few wizards and witches who survived, their fates were sealed. Turned over to Coalition custody for questioning and eradication, they would live out the remainder of their lives in super-maximum security prisons, isolated from the world, with no appeals and endless hours of interrogation ahead.
Central Alaska Nuclear Power Station, 240 mi. ESE of Nome, the United States
2334 GMT (2:34 PM Local), 30 November 2001
The men of the National Guard who were charged with guarding the massive nuclear power plant against both terrorists and saboteurs knew the importance of their duty. The thirteen reactors they guarded supplied power to the whole of Alaska and most of northwestern Canada. However, not only did these men guard the reactors and the cooling towers, but they also maintained the last Backscatter radar array on the planet. The Backscatter array, or known formally as the OTH-BS system (Over the Horizon, Back Scatter), was designed and built in the mid 1960s to monitor the launch of strategic bombers from Russian airbases that were otherwise impossible to view with normal radar. The original plans called for six backscatter arrays placed around the North American continent, but prohibitive costs stopped construction on arrays Delta, Echo and Foxtrot and arrays Bravo and Charlie converted into civilian uses. Array Alpha, due to budget cuts, was removed from the Strategic Integrated Operations Plan, or SIOP, and kept in yellow, or storage condition. This meant that it would be at least two and a half months before the array was fully operational again.
As technicians scurried around the control boxes of the array, many in the guard detail felt uneasy, as if they were on the edge of an immense cliff with unstable ground beneath them. All of them were jumpy, as their company leader had informed them of the ease and speed with which he had heard the magic users could travel. When a blast sounded from the far left of the squad, the whole team opened fire, but they hit nothing but snow. While their attention had been drawn to the left, a group of Death Eaters, in the signature regalia began the attack. Within seconds, half the squad was down, and the other half fought valiantly but soon both the security force and the techs were dead, along with six robed figures. Moreover, in the wake of the enemy strike team there were smoldering pieces of what had once been the most advanced radar station on the planet. Backscatter arrays Bravo and Charlie would now have to be converted back into military readiness, if the United States was to have a workable missile defense system.
Day 3
SAC-NORAD Command, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
0004 GMT, 1 December 2001 (5:04 PM MST, 30 November 2001)
The furor of the first days of the war had died down and most of the northern hemisphere was calm, for the moment. As they had been for the past two days, the view screens covering the British Isles were blank. There seemed to be a flurry of activity in Brazil with almost a quarter of the country outlined in red, signifying territory in hostile possession. The situation around Korea was getting worse by the minute, as North Korean troops began invading the western coast of Japan. The destruction of Beijing had opened up a gigantic assortment of problems, as now any ambitious provincial military commander could and probably would proclaim himself as a king of his own sovereign nation-state. Almost half of these military commanders either sympathized with the dark lord or out-and-out supported him and his practices.
Now China had almost stopped being a separate nation, with dozens of opposing forces running around like headless chickens. The regional commanders near Hong Kong had quickly banded together and were trying to invade Taiwan. The Chinese had existed as a sovereign people for over six thousand years, but lo and behold the most populous nation on earth now, little more than a rabble-rousing collection of nation-states. The whole of Southeast Asia had shattered, and was now coming together in an unfamiliar jigsaw puzzle from hell; the cardboard was the land and the paints are the blood, sorrow, and destruction wrought from the people by the military commanders. Southeast Asia had a great fall, and all the worlds' horses and all the worlds' men could not put it back together again.
The situation in the Middle East was not much better, as anti-Western, Islamic terrorist groups had declared the actions of the dark lord to be the determination of Allah. The cities of the nations who supported the Coalition were under constant attack. Even the holy city of Mecca was not safe from the bloodshed as gunmen slaughtered Muslims on their yearly visit to the holy place. One of the factions, Hezbollah, even went so far as to execute any Islamic priests who did not espouse the righteousness of the cause, and the virtues and the methods of the dark lord. The Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, Turkey, had been converted into a makeshift hospital for the smallpox victims. 'Taking pity on the infidels and those against Allah' caused the makeshift infirmary to be destroyed by Al Qaeda. The human race was tearing itself apart at the seams and there was no way to stop it. In the months following the attacks, atrocities that had only been seen in the Holocaust would resurface and remind the human race of its capacity for evil. The foundations of humanity had first been cracked by the nuclear attacks, but soon they would shatter completely.
Splinters of a planet
Presidential Palace, Paris, France.
1730 GMT (6:30 PM Local), 30 November 2001
The leaders of fifteen countries gathered to discuss the next course of action they would take and the ramifications of the war so far. These countries were England, France, Russia, Germany, China, Japan, the United States, Italy, Greece, India, Egypt, Turkey, Spain, Australia, and Saudi Arabia. Right from the get-go, the various heads of state could tell this would be a very unpleasant meeting to say the least. The first order of business was to thrash out the financial ramifications of the nuclear attacks, and it was not at all an appealing picture. First estimates said that at the very least eighty percent of the world financial system or eight-and-a-half trillion US dollars had been lost in the initial attacks. However, with the destruction of Beijing came the true coup d'etat, as almost ninety percent of the remaining economy went through and was destroyed there. The world economy would be extremely fortunate if it recovered to its previous level in a century and not in two. Officially, all of this meant that no country on the planet could even afford to run basic services, such as heating, electricity and water with prices at their previous levels. Finally, the major nations agreed that for the time being almost all capitalist functions needed to be suspended. The settlement of debts would come after the war, and it would not be a pretty picture.
The next item on the agenda was the current logistical situation. The effects of the nuclear detonations caused more then just physical damage. The electromagnetic pulses from the warheads knocked out nearly three dozen satellites of various types, including civilian and military telecommunication, GPS, NAVSAT and photographic intelligence. This created a tremendous snarl-up in even the most basic communications on both landline and cellular phones and the internet. Most of the electronics on the French Calais coast looked like a graveyard; nearly every single unprotected electrical circuit was dead, as a direct result of the attacks. Now there were huge gaps in lines of communication all over Europe, New England and most recently China, and as such, any new intelligence would take several hours to verify and act upon said information. In the interim time period, the best way for nations to talk to each other was through the diplomatic embassies, although that method was slow and unwieldy at best.
After this, the most recent body count from the United States, Britain and China was given, and this did absolutely nothing to lift the mood. Including all battle deaths, the total came to almost 110 million dead and over 3 million wounded. The French president brought up the idea of peace talks, but following some 'spirited debate', he swiftly withdrew the proposal. Then the military portion of the meeting got underway and in a 14-1 vote, France was told to mobilize troops and move them across the Belgian border to stop the Dutch advance. Germany soon after began moving troops into Denmark in support of the government there, which was supposedly under attack from rebellious magical forces that support the Dark Lord. Britain went into a state of near draconian martial law, and focused on getting their country under control using any means necessary. Also decided at this meeting was to adopt a policy of there being no absolute neutrality, for the combined might of the world would be need to restore peace to the globe. Representatives from 60 smaller countries all got various projects and orders that the militaries of their respective countries would complete. After three hours, the meeting adjourned and within an hour of the meeting's end, the United States began loading military hardware on to C-5B Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster III transport planes that would ship their deadly payloads of personnel and weapons across the globe.
Brasilia, Brazil
2245 GMT (7:45 PM Local), 30 November 2001
The effects of the war seemed so far away from Brasilia that many thought that the fighting would not get within a hundred miles of the country of Brazil. The police forces in the tropical city were prone to look the other way at noticeable and dangerous crimes if just for a few more pesos in their pockets. For years, the Dark Lord had been paying the Brazilian port authorities to 'misplace' shipments of drugs that funded his war operations. Now that the war was open to the public as it were, he now was paying the authorities to act as hired guns in support of his raids. Tonight would mark the beginning of a true world war, the third in the history of the planet; but also one the likes of which would never be seen again. For tonight the Brazilian government would fall and replaced by a puppet state much like Vichy France.
The first signal that anything was off-kilter that night was when all the radio and television stations went into emergency broadcast modes. Then the lights went out and the city began tearing itself apart. Several quickly formed resistance groups reacted with incredible violence toward the rebellious magic users and corrupt security forces. Often times the opposing forces fought tooth and nail to gain naught but ten meters. However, slowly, ever so slowly, the dark side gained the upper hand, and meter by bloody meter, they closed in on their ultimate goal: the governmental district of the city. However, just as they main force of the enemy militia reached the gates of the district, the freedom fighters detonated hundreds of charges of high explosive compounds that had been placed all around the approaches to the district only minutes before, trapping the enemy forces with mountains of debris. After that, it was no longer a battle, but a slaughter, as almost instantaneously the resistance began firing grenades, RPGs, and bazookas into the conglomeration of enemies killing dozens at one time. As for the few wizards and witches who survived, their fates were sealed. Turned over to Coalition custody for questioning and eradication, they would live out the remainder of their lives in super-maximum security prisons, isolated from the world, with no appeals and endless hours of interrogation ahead.
Central Alaska Nuclear Power Station, 240 mi. ESE of Nome, the United States
2334 GMT (2:34 PM Local), 30 November 2001
The men of the National Guard who were charged with guarding the massive nuclear power plant against both terrorists and saboteurs knew the importance of their duty. The thirteen reactors they guarded supplied power to the whole of Alaska and most of northwestern Canada. However, not only did these men guard the reactors and the cooling towers, but they also maintained the last Backscatter radar array on the planet. The Backscatter array, or known formally as the OTH-BS system (Over the Horizon, Back Scatter), was designed and built in the mid 1960s to monitor the launch of strategic bombers from Russian airbases that were otherwise impossible to view with normal radar. The original plans called for six backscatter arrays placed around the North American continent, but prohibitive costs stopped construction on arrays Delta, Echo and Foxtrot and arrays Bravo and Charlie converted into civilian uses. Array Alpha, due to budget cuts, was removed from the Strategic Integrated Operations Plan, or SIOP, and kept in yellow, or storage condition. This meant that it would be at least two and a half months before the array was fully operational again.
As technicians scurried around the control boxes of the array, many in the guard detail felt uneasy, as if they were on the edge of an immense cliff with unstable ground beneath them. All of them were jumpy, as their company leader had informed them of the ease and speed with which he had heard the magic users could travel. When a blast sounded from the far left of the squad, the whole team opened fire, but they hit nothing but snow. While their attention had been drawn to the left, a group of Death Eaters, in the signature regalia began the attack. Within seconds, half the squad was down, and the other half fought valiantly but soon both the security force and the techs were dead, along with six robed figures. Moreover, in the wake of the enemy strike team there were smoldering pieces of what had once been the most advanced radar station on the planet. Backscatter arrays Bravo and Charlie would now have to be converted back into military readiness, if the United States was to have a workable missile defense system.
Day 3
SAC-NORAD Command, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
0004 GMT, 1 December 2001 (5:04 PM MST, 30 November 2001)
The furor of the first days of the war had died down and most of the northern hemisphere was calm, for the moment. As they had been for the past two days, the view screens covering the British Isles were blank. There seemed to be a flurry of activity in Brazil with almost a quarter of the country outlined in red, signifying territory in hostile possession. The situation around Korea was getting worse by the minute, as North Korean troops began invading the western coast of Japan. The destruction of Beijing had opened up a gigantic assortment of problems, as now any ambitious provincial military commander could and probably would proclaim himself as a king of his own sovereign nation-state. Almost half of these military commanders either sympathized with the dark lord or out-and-out supported him and his practices.
Now China had almost stopped being a separate nation, with dozens of opposing forces running around like headless chickens. The regional commanders near Hong Kong had quickly banded together and were trying to invade Taiwan. The Chinese had existed as a sovereign people for over six thousand years, but lo and behold the most populous nation on earth now, little more than a rabble-rousing collection of nation-states. The whole of Southeast Asia had shattered, and was now coming together in an unfamiliar jigsaw puzzle from hell; the cardboard was the land and the paints are the blood, sorrow, and destruction wrought from the people by the military commanders. Southeast Asia had a great fall, and all the worlds' horses and all the worlds' men could not put it back together again.
The situation in the Middle East was not much better, as anti-Western, Islamic terrorist groups had declared the actions of the dark lord to be the determination of Allah. The cities of the nations who supported the Coalition were under constant attack. Even the holy city of Mecca was not safe from the bloodshed as gunmen slaughtered Muslims on their yearly visit to the holy place. One of the factions, Hezbollah, even went so far as to execute any Islamic priests who did not espouse the righteousness of the cause, and the virtues and the methods of the dark lord. The Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, Turkey, had been converted into a makeshift hospital for the smallpox victims. 'Taking pity on the infidels and those against Allah' caused the makeshift infirmary to be destroyed by Al Qaeda. The human race was tearing itself apart at the seams and there was no way to stop it. In the months following the attacks, atrocities that had only been seen in the Holocaust would resurface and remind the human race of its capacity for evil. The foundations of humanity had first been cracked by the nuclear attacks, but soon they would shatter completely.
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