Read Online Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Louise Lawrence
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contingency plans for surviving nuclear war had been one almighty cock-up.
The Avon bunker had been constructed to house seven hundred and fifty people, with supplies for up to two years. In actual fact less than five hundred of those who had been designated places reached it in time. Due to radioactive fall-out communication with other bunkers was impossible to establish; nor, at the end of the statutory fourteen days, could anyone begin to administer law and order and emergency aid to the surviving population of the Bath-Bristol region. It was more than six weeks before the radiation level dropped below critical. By that time there was apparently no civilian population left alive. The cities were flattened and the nuclear winter had already set in.
Temperatures plummeted way below zero. England became as cold as Siberia and the dust remained in the upper atmosphere obscuring the sun. Snow lay six metres thick, covering the ruins of cities in a white freezing shroud. There could be no reconnoitring, no aerial surveys to assess the final damage. Radio communication still remained difficult, but it seemed that three major bunkers at Plymouth, Cheltenham and Cardiff had not survived. Those surviving in the minor bunkers were cut off, some buried beneath the rubble of buildings, some short of supplies. But the blizzards raged. Hurricane force winds had been recorded. And Avon could not assist.
Stocked to administer to the requirements of the whole Bristol-Bath catchment area, there was no shortage of food or clothing or medical supplies in the Avon bunker. But the pre-fabricated field hospitals, tent-shelters for the homeless and mobile soup-kitchens, were never used. The pre-war estimates for survival had been proved wrong. For those outside the chance of survival was next to nothing, and those in the bunker were there for life. Bill Harnden would never be going home.
----
The nuclear winter lasted for almost two years. Not until the sunlight returned and the long darkness ended could the government bunkers begin to collate their evidence. From Cambridge, Cumbria, Avon, Aberdeen, Hereford, Derby and Yorkshire, the helicopters made their surveys. Incredibly people had survived outside but the population of the British Isles which, before the war, had been an estimated sixty-five million, had been reduced to a handful ... tiny scattered settlements of people struggling to survive in the desolate wastes of a once productive land. And for them it was only the beginning. Sickness, starvation, mutation and radiation-linked cancers, would reduce them still further over the years to come.
Nothing grew in the cold black deserts of nuclear dust. But the slow sun warmed the land and in a few more months, the scientists predicted, it would begin to grow. Then it was discovered that the ozone layer around the earth had been damaged by the holocaust and too much ultraviolet light was passing through the atmosphere. This would cause skin-burns, skin cancer, retinal damage to the eyes, and congenital deformity. Protective clothing had to be worn by anyone venturing outside, and it seemed that human beings would never again freely inhabit the surface of the earth.
Bill Harnden continued his life in the Avon bunker, but he was not entirely happy with the situation. Military men with no one left to conquer, administrators with no population to administer, civic dignitaries, civil servants, and police chiefs, were all professionally redundant, no different from himself. Yet they continued to cling to the ranks the world had once bestowed on them, and expected him to obey. They seemed to think that they, like the children of Israel, were the chosen few . . . the military, civic and academic elite, destined to rule over a kingdom that would soon recover. A Union Jack flag fluttered, red, white, and blue, a symbol of triumph on the top of an empty hill. It did not occur to them that Britain, like the rest of the civilized world, had been
The Avon bunker had been constructed to house seven hundred and fifty people, with supplies for up to two years. In actual fact less than five hundred of those who had been designated places reached it in time. Due to radioactive fall-out communication with other bunkers was impossible to establish; nor, at the end of the statutory fourteen days, could anyone begin to administer law and order and emergency aid to the surviving population of the Bath-Bristol region. It was more than six weeks before the radiation level dropped below critical. By that time there was apparently no civilian population left alive. The cities were flattened and the nuclear winter had already set in.
Temperatures plummeted way below zero. England became as cold as Siberia and the dust remained in the upper atmosphere obscuring the sun. Snow lay six metres thick, covering the ruins of cities in a white freezing shroud. There could be no reconnoitring, no aerial surveys to assess the final damage. Radio communication still remained difficult, but it seemed that three major bunkers at Plymouth, Cheltenham and Cardiff had not survived. Those surviving in the minor bunkers were cut off, some buried beneath the rubble of buildings, some short of supplies. But the blizzards raged. Hurricane force winds had been recorded. And Avon could not assist.
Stocked to administer to the requirements of the whole Bristol-Bath catchment area, there was no shortage of food or clothing or medical supplies in the Avon bunker. But the pre-fabricated field hospitals, tent-shelters for the homeless and mobile soup-kitchens, were never used. The pre-war estimates for survival had been proved wrong. For those outside the chance of survival was next to nothing, and those in the bunker were there for life. Bill Harnden would never be going home.
----
The nuclear winter lasted for almost two years. Not until the sunlight returned and the long darkness ended could the government bunkers begin to collate their evidence. From Cambridge, Cumbria, Avon, Aberdeen, Hereford, Derby and Yorkshire, the helicopters made their surveys. Incredibly people had survived outside but the population of the British Isles which, before the war, had been an estimated sixty-five million, had been reduced to a handful ... tiny scattered settlements of people struggling to survive in the desolate wastes of a once productive land. And for them it was only the beginning. Sickness, starvation, mutation and radiation-linked cancers, would reduce them still further over the years to come.
Nothing grew in the cold black deserts of nuclear dust. But the slow sun warmed the land and in a few more months, the scientists predicted, it would begin to grow. Then it was discovered that the ozone layer around the earth had been damaged by the holocaust and too much ultraviolet light was passing through the atmosphere. This would cause skin-burns, skin cancer, retinal damage to the eyes, and congenital deformity. Protective clothing had to be worn by anyone venturing outside, and it seemed that human beings would never again freely inhabit the surface of the earth.
Bill Harnden continued his life in the Avon bunker, but he was not entirely happy with the situation. Military men with no one left to conquer, administrators with no population to administer, civic dignitaries, civil servants, and police chiefs, were all professionally redundant, no different from himself. Yet they continued to cling to the ranks the world had once bestowed on them, and expected him to obey. They seemed to think that they, like the children of Israel, were the chosen few . . . the military, civic and academic elite, destined to rule over a kingdom that would soon recover. A Union Jack flag fluttered, red, white, and blue, a symbol of triumph on the top of an empty hill. It did not occur to them that Britain, like the rest of the civilized world, had been
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