Chapter 92, Nuclear Explosion Concerto
If the First World War began with a series of mobilizations among the participating countries; the Second World War began with a series of sneak attacks among the participating countries; then the Third World War began with A series of nuclear explosions between the belligerents.
Generally speaking, each time is more cruel, more despicable, and more terrifying each time.
However, this is the only way to sublimate the art of war, and it is also the inevitable process of the development of human civilization.
——The so-called civilization demonstrates barbaric war forever, and barbaric war carries the so-called civilization forever.
Don’t forget that war is the catalyst and accelerator of human civilization, the collision and wrestling of the highest human wisdom, and the most magnificent and spectacular group activity of human beings. Heroes and epics, blood and honor, civilization and progress are all here. Eternal life in the collision of blood and fire!
Strictly speaking, the history of mankind itself is almost a history of war. From the barbaric era hundreds of thousands of years ago, when we were eating hair and drinking blood, the gene for violence has been buried in our blood. In order to survive, early primitive humans Fight with wild beasts and fight with nature. Next, for the survival of ethnic groups and civilization, humans began to fight for resources again. From primitive society to slave society, from slave society to feudal society and capitalist society, human beings have never-ending desires and plunder everything of value with infinite greed. From the ignorant chiefs attacking other tribes to seize slaves and build palaces for their own enjoyment, to the ancient kings launching large-scale wars to massacre cities and countries and plundering the population and wealth, to the imperialist powers at war with each other to carve up the earth's territory, human civilization is in the process of blood and blood. Staggering forward under the baptism of fire.
In the long history of mankind, war has been a fierce collision between different civilizations and a violent exchange between various nations. It is the end of civilization and the founder of civilization. Countless great kingdoms have risen in blood and fire, and then perished in war and fighting.
After all, we live in a world where the strong are respected, and the most intuitive way for the strong to show their strength to the weak is always war!
——The fundamental basis for Westerners to conquer and dominate the world has never been slogans such as democracy and freedom, but unrivaled violence!
Therefore, war, as a social phenomenon, has accompanied the development of human society to this day, and will continue to exist in the foreseeable future. Although war can cause damage or even destruction to civilization, war is also the most effective way to promote the progress of civilization.
No matter how much modern people hate war and love peace, war is still an inseparable part of human history and will still come to this world one after another. As long as the history of human civilization continues, the blood and fire of war will continue. It will never end.
A civilization that is too afraid of war is a cowardly civilization, and a civilization that is too bloodthirsty and warlike is a self-destructive civilization. Only those who can skillfully balance the proportion of war and peace and successfully coordinate the rhythm of construction and destruction can become the final winner in the competition among civilizations.
In short, before the smoke of World War II has been blown away by the breeze of peace, the mushroom cloud of World War III has plunged all mankind into a deeper nightmare...
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Iberian Peninsula, Fortress of Gibraltar
As a battleground for military strategists who guard the exit of the Mediterranean, since they defeated Spain and captured Gibraltar, the British have spared no effort in spending huge sums of money to build this huge reef protruding out of the sea, turning it into the strongest in Europe. The fortress.
By the time of World War II, the entire Gibraltar had been fortified. The British filled this huge coastal rock with various coastal forts, bunkers and machine gun positions. More than 150 coastal guns were installed on a mere two square kilometers of land. At the same time, the entire middle of the rock was hollowed out like an ant nest, and the top cover was reinforced with reinforced concrete, which could easily withstand a direct frontal hit from a one-ton aerial bomb. Its defensive strength was even higher than the Maginot Line.
Moreover, the terrain around Gibraltar is rugged and there are basically no gentle beaches for landing. The coastline is full of cliffs and densely covered with layers of artillery forts and mine nets. If you want to force a landing in this terrain, even on the 21st Century SEALs would have a hard time doing it. In addition, the British army also stored enough food for ten years and ammunition for three years in the tunnel fortifications in Gibraltar to prepare for long-term and protracted operations.
Relying on the Gibraltar Fortress that has been painstakingly built for more than 200 years, even after the defeats in the French and Spanish battlefields, the remaining 35,000 British Expeditionary Force still gritted their teeth and regrouped, uniting with the remnants of General Franco who withdrew from Madrid. With the Fortress of Gibraltar at its back, The Andalusia region in southern Spain has once again launched a war battle, vowing to preserve the last presence of the British Empire on the European continent. According to the optimistic plan of the British Chiefs of Staff Committee, the Gibraltar Fortress will become a meat grinder, allowing the Bolshevik forces in Europe to Drain the blood here.
However, even Europe's number one fortress like Gibraltar is still as fragile as a paper model in the face of an atomic bomb.
——The Soviet Red Army's method of attacking Gibraltar is still as simple and crude as usual: There is no fortress in the world that cannot be solved with one nuclear bomb. If one bomb is not enough, then use two... 1946 On October 10, the day the Soviet Union officially declared war on the United States and Britain, the Soviet Strategic Air Force organized a large-scale bomber group to raid Gibraltar and dropped a 60,000-ton atomic bomb over the fortress...
As a result, amidst the rising mushroom cloud, the famous white cliffs of Gibraltar were blown into a large crater, and the British destroyer formation and submarine force stationed there were wiped out in an instant. The dense honeycomb-like defenses on the rocks also turned into melted wax statues in the high temperature of the nuclear explosion.
Although relying on strong tunnels built over many years and buried deep underground, many British defenders guarding the Fortress of Gibraltar still managed to survive even if they were directly hit by an atomic bomb. But the problem is that after experiencing nuclear explosions and radioactive contamination, the entire Gibraltar area has turned into a nuclear radiation zone in a short period of time and is no longer suitable for human survival. If the British army still insists on holding on to the Gibraltar Fortress, then There is no need for the Soviet Red Army to waste much ammunition. The all-pervasive radiation sickness alone can quickly collapse the defenders...
According to public propaganda by the Soviets, another more powerful atomic bomb will be dropped over the Fortress of Gibraltar next month!
Suddenly, the morale of the British army on the Iberian Peninsula plummeted to freezing point - after all, no matter how tough the steel frame is, it cannot withstand the destructive power of the atomic bomb... And Franco, the leader of the Spanish reactionary regime, The general had just gathered some troops in the Port of Cadiz, preparing to use the opportunity of the Madrid nuclear explosion to launch a counterattack. However, as the mushroom cloud rose over Gibraltar, the counterattack came to an end.
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Zurich, Switzerland
As time goes by, the dazzling light of the nuclear mushroom cloud gradually dims, and the deadly high-temperature heat wave gradually cools down.
Looking through the billowing smoke, Zurich, the largest city in Switzerland, the famous financial city and the city of watches, one of the safest, richest and highest living standards in Europe, has been destroyed by the atomic bomb. Unrecognizable. The ancient bell tower and ornate buildings were razed to the ground in the nuclear explosion, and half-naked corpses puffing out of smoke could be seen everywhere on the remaining streets. Parts of the city were reduced to nothing, parts were reduced to rubble, while remaining neighborhoods were ablaze. The surviving Swiss cried out and fled in the flames. In order to relieve the pain of the burns, they subconsciously opened their arms, and long rolls of burned skin hung under their arms. It was really indescribably terrifying.
——Since the war between the Soviet Union and Switzerland, relying on the steep mountains, rugged terrain, solid fortifications, and the ordnance and ammunition hoarded before the war, the brave Swiss mountain people once successfully blocked the Soviet Red Army and "Red Europe" "Coalition offensive.
Although the Soviet Air Force quickly wiped out the Swiss old planes, firmly controlled the air superiority of the Swiss battlefield, and bombed major Swiss towns every day. However, relying on the high mountains all over the country, as well as forts carefully disguised as hilltops and defense tunnels deep underground, the Swiss were still able to fight tenaciously, while sending guerrillas to constantly harass the Red Army's logistics supply lines.
At first glance, the Swiss battlefield this year seems promising to become a quagmire similar to the later war in Afghanistan.
However, Stalin at this time was not the Brezhnev of later generations. He was never afraid of throwing away all the nuclear bombs in his hand, and he was not afraid of directly gaining notoriety in the world. Anyway, in the eyes of the Western liberal camp, he was already He is already a bloodthirsty tyrant as famous as Hitler!
As a result, Zurich, home to hundreds of banks, became the first sacrifice of the Soviet atomic bomb: the bright mushroom cloud that penetrated the sky did not gradually dissipate until two hours after the nuclear explosion. More than 80,000 citizens were surrounded by the nuclear explosion. Unfortunately he died at that time. When those survivors who were lucky enough not to die directly from the nuclear explosion walked out of the underground air-raid shelters with broken hearts and looked at their homes that had been razed to the ground in disbelief, another torrent of radioactive dust began to fall in the sky. The turbid "black rain" left gray traces on the surviving Zurich citizens.
——Obviously, after being exposed to this rain, thousands of Swiss people will die from radiation sickness in the next few days to months.
At the same time, the Soviet Union also publicly informed the Swiss government that this was only the first nuclear strike against Switzerland. If the Swiss government continues to be stubborn and refuses to surrender unconditionally, then more nuclear bombs will hit - forty-eight hours later, due to the delay in receiving the unconditional surrender announcement from the Swiss government, the second atomic bomb was dropped over the Swiss capital Bern. It exploded loudly and claimed the lives of about 70,000 Swiss people... This is just the statistics calculated at the scene. Due to radiation contamination, more people will definitely die next.
At this point, the Swiss have had their backbones broken—Switzerland during World War II was only a small country with a population of five million, and in just a few months of war, Switzerland had lost ten percent of its population. One of them, most of them are young and middle-aged men who are the main labor force!
If the war continues, I am afraid that the entire society will collapse, leaving the elderly with no support and the young with no one to rely on.
On October 13, the Swiss government, which had moved to Geneva, sent out a telegram announcing that the country would cease resistance and unconditionally surrender to the Soviet Red Army.
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England, Scotland, Scapa Flow
This is the most famous wartime anchorage of the British Navy in modern times. It is a semi-enclosed water area located in the northernmost part of Scotland in the United Kingdom and within the Orkney Islands. It consists of the main island of the archipelago, Hoy Island, South Lonarsay Island and a dry Surrounded by small islands, it is a good natural bay, about 24 kilometers long, 13 kilometers wide, and covering an area of 130 square kilometers. There are three waterways leading to the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. Since the era of Viking invasions in the Middle Ages, Scapa Flow has been an area frequently visited by warships. During the First and Second World Wars, the British Royal Navy also used it to guard the North Sea.
During the Great War, when the British Grand Fleet was at its peak, Scapa Flow was once home to more than 30 battleships and hundreds of other ships. It was truly a forest of masts, cannon fire, and soot that covered the sky. The appearance of an invincible hand roaming the seven seas. However, by this moment, the essence of the British Grand Fleet had gradually withered away in the flames of war. The speed of replenishing ships could not keep up with the consumption, and there were very few remaining main ships.
Last summer, in order to face the Soviet Red Navy rushing out of the Baltic Sea, the Royal Navy Fleet in Scapa Flow was dispatched for the last time. Although it successfully defeated the Soviet fleet off the coast of the Netherlands, it was subsequently hit by two Soviet atomic bombs in a row. Bombardment... In this nuclear explosion catastrophe, the total tonnage of the British Royal Navy's ships sunk in direct combat was as high as 100,000 tons. After the remaining ships struggled to retreat back to Scapa Flow, after inspection by relevant experts, it was even more desperate to find that, except for a few destroyers that were far away from the center of the blast, almost all the remaining ships had suffered very serious damage. Radioactive contamination requires at least three months of decontamination operations before it can resume active service. Some of the seriously polluting ships were simply judged to be abandoned and could not even be dismantled and recycled because the hull steel had become a source of radiation pollution...
To make matters worse, the Royal Navy not only destroyed a large number of ships, but also suffered heavy losses in personnel - the crew members of each ship participating in the war all showed symptoms of large-scale radiation sickness, and with the medical capabilities of this era, even the smallest degree of radiation disease, the actual cure rate is still pitifully low.
And the navy is a highly specialized army. It can only recruit soldiers from navigation schools and merchant sailors. It is not like the army, which can just grab some strong men and go into battle after two weeks of emergency training—— Although Britain once had the largest merchant fleet and the most skilled sailors in the world, after several consecutive world wars, all this capital has been almost consumed. As a result, after the nuclear explosion, the Royal Navy was left short of both ships and men, and it was a miserable and miserable scene.
As a result, for a long period of time, Britain almost fell into a disaster situation with no defense at all.
However, despite suffering such devastating damage in the nuclear explosion off the coast of the Netherlands, after retracting to Scapa Flow to recuperate and operating bleakly for a year, with the successive launch of several new ships into service, and the successive batches of With the addition of new recruits, the fleet has gradually regained some of its vitality. A series of capital ships such as the battleship "Howe", the battleship "Anson", and the fleet aircraft carrier "Formidable" were once paralyzed due to radiation contamination. After large-scale repairs and repeated decontamination operations, they were finally restored to normal. Can be put back into use.
With the gradual recovery of combat effectiveness, the large fleet, which had been dormant for a year, no longer continued to hide in Scapa Flow, but restarted a series of small-scale military operations. Although the war cabinet in London does not yet dare to use its limited resources to go deep into the Baltic Sea and go straight to Leningrad, nor does it have the courage to bypass the entire Scandinavia Peninsula and expedition to Murmansk, it still organizes a cruise fleet It is still easy to conduct battles on the merchant shipping routes of the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea, or occasionally make sneak attacks on the coastal ports of Norway and Denmark.
However, what no one expected was that the countdown to the second destruction of the Royal Navy Fleet had already begun...
The North Atlantic is extremely cold this autumn, as if the Gulf Stream, which brings warm weather to all of Europe, suddenly stopped. Although winter has not yet officially entered, it is already extremely cold around Scapa Flow, north of the Orkney Islands. On the Norwegian sea, light snow even fell one after another.
At this time, a British Coast Guard patrol ship with a displacement of more than 200 tons was chopping through the waves in the rough Norwegian Sea, performing patrol duties.
In fact, in the peripheral waters of the military port, conventional patrol missions like this should logically be assigned to destroyers. But now the Royal Navy has suffered repeated heavy losses and has to undertake heavy escort missions. It also has to allocate ships to the Far East to participate in colonial wars. The number of destroyers left in the mainland is really not enough and they can only serve as combat missions. As for these routine patrols and warnings, we can only try to collect some random ships to make up the number.
Overall, it was a tiresome chore. Even in good weather with clear skies, the air and sea water are still bitingly cold. If there is bad weather, snowflakes and foam will mix into ice particles, making people and the boat feel like they are in the world of ice monsters. The entire hull Except the chimneys are covered with ice shells and hung with icicles... like The living environment of this small ship of two to three hundred tons is already very poor. Although some cabins have stoves for heating, in order to prevent carbon monoxide (gas) poisoning caused by insufficient combustion of coal stoves, the portholes or doors need to be left open for ventilation. , greatly reducing the heating effect. What's even worse is that because skilled sailors have been drafted onto warships, the guys driving these patrol boats are basically rookies who are not familiar with the sea. As a result, all kinds of bizarre accidents happen every day, ranging from fires to shutdowns. , power outages, getting lost and running aground on rocks are common occurrences, making captains anxious all day long. Some captains even needed morphine to get some sleep due to nervousness, coldness and fatigue.
The captain of this coast guard patrol boat had just injected himself with a shot of morphine and was ready to have a good sleep after dealing with a lot of chaos. Unexpectedly, before his head touched the pillow, he was dragged up by the panicked first mate, "...Captain! There is a plane!"
——What can make Mr. First Officer panic like this is naturally not one or two reconnaissance planes or stray fighter jets, but a huge group of bombers covering the sky. Although from the foggy sea surface, even with a telescope in hand, it is impossible to distinguish the aircraft model and insignia above 10,000 meters in the sky - that is to say, it is impossible to confirm the identity of the other party, but just looking at their course and posture, It’s enough to make people feel that the person who came here is evil!
"...This is probably...a Soviet bomber group! Damn it, why was it not detected at all on the radar?"
The captain shook his head hard against the sea breeze, trying to dispel the drowsiness caused by the morphine injection in his brain. "...Hurry up and send a message to the police!"
However, he answered with an awkward voice: "...Captain, our radio and radar have long been damaged by wind and waves"
So, this poor old patrol boat had to turn around, burn its boiler to the limit, and rush towards Scapa Flow at a top speed of twenty knots - at this speed, by the time it reaches Scapa Flow, The Soviet planes had probably finished their bombings and returned home. The only hope of sending out an early warning message was to try their luck and see if they could meet another ship with intact radios halfway... Unfortunately, they didn't meet another ship until about half an hour later. A boat, but instead saw a mushroom cloud rising from the far end of the horizon...
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——Although the anti-aircraft artillery units and aviation forces in Scapa Flow fought extremely tenaciously in the defensive battle, and the British shore-based aviation forces in Scotland also rushed to the rescue, horizontal bombing from an altitude of 10,000 meters was simply impossible in this era. No country can prevent everything from leaking.
According to the standards of World War II, in the face of a strategic bombing of this scale, if the defending side can shoot down a quarter of the bombers, it is a great success. It is simply a dream to prevent a bomb from falling on one's head - -If it were an ordinary bomb, it would be enough to hit a few, and it would probably not be a direct hit, just a near-miss. But if it's an atomic bomb...Does a nuclear strike also have the concept of near-missile?
In short, although the Soviet Air Force paid a certain price, and dozens of aircraft turned into balls of flames and crashed into the sea, God did not favor the British after all. The Soviets still broke through the pursuit and interception of the British aircraft and successfully headed towards Scapa An atomic bomb was dropped on the Bay.
——Next, the British Royal Navy fleet anchored in Scapa Flow ushered in its own end...
It’s the same as the last battle in the Dutch waters. This time the Scapa Flow nuclear explosion also occurred at sea. At the moment when the nuclear bomb detonated, a high-speed expanding fireball appeared at the detonation point on the water surface, and produced a supersonic terrifying shock wave underwater. Like the palm of a Titan, it instantly tore the keels of nearby ships to pieces. Fragments! At the same time, the strong flash of the nuclear explosion immediately ignited the cables and flags on the mast, burned the radar antenna into a ball of molten metal garbage, and burned the eyes of a large number of naval officers and soldiers. The subsequent nuclear explosion shock wave, He directly smashed the porthole glass and took a closer look into the cabin. The crushed glass and scrap metal were like bullets, hitting the officers and soldiers on the ship hard in the face and on their bodies, pricking their bodies like sieves. The subsequent light radiation, thermal radiation and radioactive radiation , then slaughter them all.
On the other side, when the underwater shock wave created by the nuclear explosion in Scapa Flow spreads outward, the color of the sea water becomes darker, just like the spread of oil pollution at sea; and the sea level immediately following the shock wave changes instantly. It became a layer of white foam - since the sound transmission speed of water is five times faster than that of air, when the shock wave spreads at high speed underwater, the sea surface behind it quickly turns white, just like a thin layer of white surface moving outward at high speed on the sea. extend.
——Although this scenery is indeed quite strange, it is a purgatory spectacle that brings death and destruction!
At the same time, the bubbles caused by the nuclear explosion penetrated directly through the seawater and hit the seabed, exploding a shocking crater on the seabed. The high temperature caused by the nuclear explosion instantly atomized millions of tons of seawater and sprayed it into the air in a dome shape. It formed a terrifying water wall that was thousands of meters high and nearly a hundred meters thick. It was like a man-made tsunami. With the nuclear bomb detonation point as the center of the circle, it was accompanied by an explosion-like sound and swept across the entire semi-enclosed waters of Scapa Flow in an instant. !
For a moment, the entire Scapa Flow anchorage seemed to be a boiling cauldron, and the warships became rice grains and peas jumping in the boiling water... The shock wave generated by the nuclear explosion swept across the surrounding islands, like an eighteenth-level explosion. Like a typhoon passing through, cars, cargo containers and houses were blown into the sky.
Next, before reaching the shore, the wall of water caused by the nuclear explosion began to fall with gravity, forming an unprecedented giant waterfall. Millions of tons of seawater that had withstood zero nuclear contamination fell from the sky, triggering a wave of ultra-high-radiation nuclear-contaminated wastewater that flooded most of the ships and ships on the sea. Finally, it washed up on the coast, destroying piers and piers. , cranes, warehouses, bridges and lighthouses were all knocked to pieces...
Although some of the strongest warships have withstood such a roller coaster ride, and were not hit by huge waves and disintegrated in the sky, or washed up on the coast and turned into scrap metal, but even if they were soaked and washed by such high-radiation sewage, even if If the battleship doesn't sink, basically all the crew will die.
Wait until everything is settled and it's over for the time being. In twos and threes, British sailors and officers struggled to climb out of the underground bunkers, looking at the devastated military port and the fleet that no longer existed. They could not help but cry in their arms, or sit on the ground and smoke cigarettes. However, what these survivors did not know was that because they were too close to the center of the explosion and stayed in the radiation-contaminated area for too long, even if they were lucky enough to escape death that day, they would not be able to escape the torment of radiation sickness in the future. More than half After living for a while, most people will eventually die in pain on the hospital bed.
Of course, the Scapa Flow anchorage, which was hit by a nuclear bomb, was declared scrapped and would not be usable for at least a few years.
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On the day when the Soviet Union officially declared war on the United States and Britain, the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Scapa Flow anchorage suffered a nuclear explosion and were basically wiped out... This earth-shaking bad news, and the defeat of the Gibraltar Fortress, appeared in the British Empire almost at the same time. On the desks of the ruling class, these British The already shaky morale and fighting spirit of the gentlemen also suffered a devastating blow like a nuclear explosion. After nearly a year of bleak management, Prime Minister Winston Churchill's second war cabinet finally suffered a devastating blow. The fatal crisis of government overthrow...