Chapter 143, The Glitter of Hollywood (Part 2)
All in all, the U.S. wartime food rationing system was implemented so-so in major cities on the east coast close to the capital, but on the west coast where the sky is high and the emperor is far away... Refer to some plots of traditional western movies, please don't overestimate. The lower limit of moral integrity of local government officials in western states.
Therefore, in the current market in the Los Angeles area, official ration stores are empty or even closed, while the goods that should have appeared on the shelves have been sent to illegal stores in collusion with unscrupulous profiteers and corrupt officials. The strange current state of the black market.
The price of food in the illegal black market is naturally so expensive that it would shock anyone... Louisa went to the black market with more than twenty dollars, and only bought back a few loaves of rock-hard black bread and a dry piece. Hard cheese, a quarter pound of butter, and two cans of Spam luncheon meat that are about to expire - you know, the currency at this time is still on the gold standard, and more than twenty dollars is definitely not a lot for ordinary people. A small amount of money.
Even though it was such an extremely expensive item, she still risked being caught and fined and lined up to snatch it - although the Hollywood police did not dare to attack those "big tigers" who openly sold things on the black market, even He didn't even have the guts to raid the black market, but he was very cruel to citizens who went to buy things on the black market... because he could seize a lot of black market products from easily bullied citizens, which served as additional gray income in his career as a police officer.
Carefully hiding these expensive black market foods, Louisa, a third-rate Hollywood actress, covered her face with a scarf and walked out of the dark alley where the black market was located. She never found the police, gendarmes or robbers along the way, until she returned to On the spacious street, she relaxed a little.
——Ever since she came back from a black market purchase and was tricked by the police using "fishing law enforcement", Louisa suffered a psychological shadow.
In fact, the police and military police are not clean when it comes to reselling in-demand materials. Most of the in-demand materials sold on the black market, such as those rare good wines, cigarettes, and canned prosciutto, are produced by certain magical powers. Military supplies that the majority of people fished out through the "back door".
But this does not affect their ability to resell supplies while also playing the thief and catching the thief, tricking the already heavily exploited buyers into death... Moreover, even if there are no such traps and traps, with Louisa, a third-rate actor, With a meager income, it is difficult to afford one.
Of course, no matter what era we live in, there are always those who are not short of money and can continue to eat, drink and enjoy themselves lavishly. For example, when passing by a high-end restaurant, Louisa saw a fat man chewing a fried chicken with a mouth full of oil, and there were even lobsters and oysters on the table next to him. I really don’t know how this restaurant came to be. Even under wartime market controls, we could still get so much exquisite food...
But this question is obviously meaningless to Luisa, because she has no money to enter this store at all, unless she can get a rich man to be her mistress... However, with Luisa's capital, she wants to get her daddy It’s not that easy to be a mistress. Nowadays, a generation of young men have been exposed in the country. The ratio of men to women has long been out of balance. There are too many beautiful girls who cannot be married. The vision of rich men is also getting higher and higher. How can an ordinary young actor do it casually? Caught?
So, she had no choice but to sigh helplessly, while stroking her growling belly, she turned around and continued walking quickly... Unexpectedly, she heard a sharp and rapid Doppler change after walking only a few steps. The sound suddenly exploded, torturing everyone's eardrums like a whip!
God... could this... be... an air raid siren? ! !
After covering her ears with a painful expression for a while, Louisa suddenly reacted. The next moment, the streets of Hollywood suddenly became chaotic. Everyone was running around like headless flies, but they didn't know what to do. ——Hollywood is, after all, the United States where peace is long lasting. , is also the holy land of the entertainment industry that has nothing to do with war. Although the entire United States has been in a state of war for several years, the battlefields are basically far overseas. Except for a small-scale sneak attack by the Japanese fleet in the past few years, the United States The local cities have not been exposed to bombing and artillery shells.
Since the beginning of the war, the Los Angeles municipal authorities have conducted several air raid drills, but they were purely for response purposes, allowing people to hide under tables or run out of houses when the alarm sounded...even if some knowledgeable people People know they have to get into air raid shelters, but the question is, where is the nearest air raid shelter? I don’t know at all! Well, it's possible that no bomb shelters were dug here in Hollywood, right?
Just when Louisa was standing in the turbulent and noisy crowd, being squeezed here and there, but not knowing what to do, the roaring sound of the aircraft engine had already come from the air. Its frequency was low, its intensity was very high, and it made people feel sad. Brings a heavy sense of depression. Then, she couldn't help but raise her head, and immediately saw two huge silver-white airplanes, appearing through the clouds from a distant altitude. Their huge silver fuselages were flying steadily at an altitude of tens of thousands of meters. Four powerful aircraft The engine dragged out four white mist trails, which were reflected in the blue sky, forming a shocking picture. Behind their butts, there are still a few small black dots chasing angrily, but they can't catch up. On the contrary, the distance is getting wider and wider...
As the enemy planes appeared from the sky, the chaos on the ground turned into chaos. Women's screams of terror and the police's rude curses were everywhere. Louisa also unfortunately received a stick from the police and had to stand for a long time. I left the street aimlessly, trying to find a house to get into.
However, there was actually no need for her to do anything more, because the moment for everything to end had already arrived.
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——As the thick, black and hard atomic bomb was pushed down from the cabin, a brilliant flash of light was seen across the sky. In just one hundred thousandth of a second, lethal light radiation and various rays arrived. The ground felt like it was brighter than a million suns.
Directly below the detonation center of the nuclear bomb, those passers-by exposed on the streets and ground of Hollywood were naturally the first to bear the brunt. Including the third-rate actress Louisa, all the bones, teeth, muscles, nerves, skin... all of them were exposed in a very short time. It absorbed a huge amount of radiation energy in an instant, solidified, boiled, and vaporized like meat in a microwave, and finally turned into countless powders in a few milliseconds and became part of the radiation dust. The surrounding houses and trees were reduced to ashes in an instant, and the people in the houses were completely burned into charcoal and tree roots, and they no longer looked like human beings.
——Whether it was humans, animals, vegetation, or buildings, they were all reduced to fine ashes in this foehn wind that seemed to come from hell.
A few seconds after the optical radiation and various rays reached the ground, accompanied by a deafening roar, a shock wave that destroyed everything erupted from the center of the explosion, mixed with various deadly radiation particles, wrapped in the roar from the underworld, and fiercely Smashed in all directions!
Even at the San Diego Naval Base, which was more than 160 kilometers away, the officers and soldiers of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet were horrified at this moment to hear a powerful muffled sound in the distance, as well as several unlucky buildings. Unfortunately, the glass broke.
And in Hollywood, where the nuclear explosion occurred, it was as if there was a giant hammer from Thor, crazily stirring the sky and the earth! The overwhelming shock wave and the scorching heat wave that burned all things almost swallowed up everything in the world. The towering trees turned into withered wooden piles in an instant, and then were carried up by the shock wave and flew into the air. , various buildings were torn down instantly like cardboard models.
In just a few minutes, the neighborhoods with a radius of several kilometers around the center of the nuclear bomb were completely wiped out. Most of the houses were crumbling and even gradually falling apart in the fire storm comparable to a Category 12 typhoon. Only a few of the strongest reinforced concrete buildings are left, like rocks protruding from the sea, standing on top of a large area of charred and hot bricks and rubble. However, they are also covered with injuries. Most of the citizens who had no time to react were injured. Buried in the ruins. The billboard, the car, and the people inside were swept up together by the huge airflow, as if an invisible giant hand was ruthlessly tossing them around. Finally, they were twisted and crushed one by one, rising into blazing flames, and in the blink of an eye they were destroyed. Turning the entire Hollywood into a burning purgatory!
Even those citizens of Los Angeles who were far away from the explosion center had their skin burned by the flash or heat wave on the spot. Others who were unlucky enough to be directly illuminated by the flash were so burned that their whole bodies were scorched and their skin peeled off. Their death was really horrible.
Next, the raging fire caused by the high temperature of the nuclear explosion broke out all over the city at the same time, and quickly spread in all directions, burning everything that could be burned; even cement buildings rose up like a maniac. Tongues of fire. The entire Los Angeles area turned into a scorching hell with flames rising into the sky. Countless golden snakes danced in the city, creating large areas of hot scorched earth and piles of rubble, with piles of curled and charred corpses buried underneath.
Some people who were lucky enough to escape from the ruins of their houses had to endure the smoke and fire when they ran to the streets. In an instant, they were covered in hot blood blisters. In the end, it was even burned down to a handful of ashes. What's even more tragic are the survivors who were trapped in the rubble. If there hadn't been a fire, these people might have been able to be rescued, but now they can only be trapped under layers of rubble. Little by little, they were roasted to death by high temperatures and smoke.
At the same time, the power grid on half of the West Coast of the United States collapsed at this moment, and radio and radio also lost their voices one after another.
However, this round of nuclear explosion catastrophe that has befallen the United States has only just begun... Following Los Angeles, where the movie mecca Hollywood is located, San Diego, Seattle and Portland, which are also on the west coast of the United States, soon also suffered. The same fate of a nuclear explosion...
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On January 18, 1949, the "Flying Bear" four-engine jet ultra-long-range strategic bomber developed by the Soviet Union's Tupolev Aircraft Design Bureau combined with future black technology was launched on the stage of a world war for the first time. Appeared on - Twelve "Flying Bear" bombers carrying six atomic bombs and several conventional bombs took off from Japan, directly across the Pacific Ocean, and carried out nuclear strikes on major cities on the West Coast of the United States!
Because this jet-type ultra-long-range strategic bomber is too fast and flies too high, and its self-defense firepower is also quite fierce, the propeller fighter jets of the U.S. military cannot stop it at all. However, any caliber anti-aircraft gun currently equipped by the U.S. military cannot be treated when flying within a distance of the ground. The "Flying Bear" bombers at an altitude of more than 18,000 meters were helpless. In the end, except for the "Flying Bear" bomber scheduled to bomb San Francisco, which suffered a mechanical failure and the nuclear bomb it dropped failed to detonate and fell directly to the ground, the remaining five atomic bombs all successfully hit their targets - Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver, Canada, were all hit by nuclear explosions on this day, with as many as one million direct deaths. In particular, the destruction of San Diego, the second largest military port of the U.S. Navy, in the mushroom cloud almost completely broke the backbone of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, which had suffered repeated defeats.
As the shock wave of the nuclear explosion destroyed wired communications on the ground, and the radiation of the nuclear explosion seriously interfered with the transmission of radio waves, when the White House, who was busy preparing for the transfer of power between the old and new presidents, finally received bad news from the West Coast, the sky above Hollywood The atmosphere has been stirred by the power of atomic bombs It churned for nearly an hour, and raindrops began to fall in the nuclear explosion area. The water vapor brought up by the rising mushroom cloud was enough to condense into raindrops at high altitude, and then adhere to countless deadly radioactive dust. The water fell to the ground, contrasting with the mushroom clouds that turned the sky red. As a result, people who were being burned by the sea of fire and heat waves on the ground saw a thick black raindrop falling down, exuding a strange smell, with a strange touch, and mixed with a large amount of lethal nuclear radiation dust...
This extremely deadly, doomsday-like black heavy rain continued for more than ten minutes before turning into a misty yellow drizzle that continued to spread in all directions, but was still far from extinguishing the rain on the ground. Fire head. The large amount of radioactive dust trapped in the rain has sentenced tens of millions of Americans who were unfortunate enough to be exposed to it...or a reprieve of death - radiation sickness these days is an absolutely incurable disease.
This large-scale nuclear explosion on the West Coast has brought disaster to the American people, not only on land, but also in the ocean.
——The shock wave of a nuclear explosion, which is as powerful as a Category 12 typhoon, not only sweeps across the land with a large amount of radioactive dust, razing towns and villages to the ground, but also sweeps across the sea mercilessly, creating an overwhelming and huge wave, which is extremely cruel. The ground hits various harbors on the east coast of the Pacific Ocean. Under the monstrous power of the nuclear bomb, the sea suddenly lost the gentleness and romance described by writers, and turned into a ferocious evil spirit - huge waves more than ten meters high suddenly set off in the bay, as if overwhelming the sky. Come, rush towards the coast at a speed of 700 kilometers per hour, and engulf tens of thousands of people in an instant. Some people were swept to the bottom of the sea, some were thrown into the air by the big waves, and still others were hit by the huge waves and smashed to pieces on land.
In the same way, most of the various types of ships anchored in ports such as Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Diego also suffered heavy losses in the fierce shock waves and waves. They were either smashed, sunk, or collided with each other. Many port terminal facilities with fragile structures were lucky enough to survive the shock wave of the nuclear explosion, but were swept away in the subsequent waves. After the violent sea finally calmed down, the entire beach and harbor had turned into an oversized garbage dump, with broken roofs, bed boards, doors, windows, ship fragments, and bloated corpses of people and animals everywhere.
What is even more frightening is that the oil companies, refineries and oil depots in these ports were all damaged by the shock wave of the nuclear explosion. So with a series of huge explosions, thousands of tons of crude oil were dumped into the Pacific Ocean, causing raging flames on the sea, almost boiling the sea!
In this catastrophe, nearly half of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet that retreated to the west coast lost nearly half. Except for some ships stationed in San Francisco and ordered to patrol the sea, most of the capital ships were scrapped or seriously damaged in the nuclear explosion, or at least suffered It suffered severe radiation contamination and required repeated decontamination before it could be used reluctantly. The Army and National Guard also lost at least 100,000 people, which can be said to be a heavy loss. As for the subsequent large-scale outbreak of radiation sickness across the entire West Coast, there is no telling how many more Americans, especially soldiers, will die.
The current commander of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Aubrey Fitch, and his entire command team were killed in the nuclear explosion. The Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, His Excellency Ernest King, who was in Washington, fainted on the spot when he received the bad news. He only saved his life after emergency treatment at the hospital.
The entire United States, whether it was President Truman, who was about to step down, or President MacArthur, who was about to enter the White House, were deeply shocked by this catastrophe. At the same time, for the first time, there was a vague foreboding of the end of the world in their hearts... But in fact, as a "super warm gift package" to "congratulate" President MacArthur on coming to power, the Kremlin's nuclear war strategy against the United States has only been completed for a small part.
Just in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean, another dozen of the Soviet Union's latest jet ultra-long-range strategic bombers, all carrying atomic bombs, have also been prepared at secret airports in Western Europe and North Africa. They are just waiting for an order from Moscow to be ready to go... …And their nuclear explosion targets are naturally the major cities in the eastern United States on the other side of the Atlantic.