Israel, The Final Holocaust

Stoner was correct in his analysis of the missile interchange.  His fleet was decimated, but the Russian fleet was almost totally destroyed as well.  Stoner would eventually regroup his ships, count his loses and lick his wounds while waiting for the next attack, if it came.  He had read and reread the reports as they came into the ship’s communication room.  The extent of the damage done to America from the nuclear exchange was difficult to comprehend.  He felt drained as he passed the communiqués to the ship’s Captain.  Captain Matson’s face grew ashen, and tears began to run down his cheeks.  He crumbled the reports tightly in his fist and shook his head back and forth in an attempt to purge his mind of the news.  The entire west coast had been hit by an untold number of nuclear devices.  Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose were only blackened ruins with reports of secondary fires still raging out of control in the outlying communities.  Washington D.C. and Baltimore had been totally destroyed by the first group of silo-launched Russian ICBMs.  Within minutes and without warning, the city on the Potomac had been completely obliterated, erupting in one huge fiery blast as ICBMs carrying multiple reentry bodies were released and fused to explode just above ground level.  Evidently the Senate was in session, still debating.  The Vice President was quite possibly making her final argument on an unimportant bill before Congress.  Then without warning, the city and its inhabitants were suddenly vaporized, exploding in one giant fireball.  People living in the American capital had experienced hell on earth for only a microsecond before they were ushered into eternity.  Matson knew that the Vice President, some of the members of Congress and his own family lived well within the blast area in Virginia.  His eyes filled with tears as he thought of his family.  The Captain knew that most probably, they too were all dead. 

Captain Matson sat into his command chair as he slowly read of the devastation.  The reports stated that the Russian MIRV configured missiles had released their nukes toward other cities on the eastern seaboard, but most narrowly missed their designated targets.  Yet, even considering the near misses, the results were still appalling.  Philadelphia, New York and Boston had survived the initial nuclear explosions, but the subsequent airbursts ignited or melted everything flammable for miles.  The ensuing group of incoming nuclear weapons completed the destruction.  Everything within twenty square miles of the detonation area was instantly vaporized.  Skyscrapers, office buildings, the Stock Exchange, the United Nations building had all been obliterated in a brief moment of time.  Outside of the blast area, buildings collapsed when their superstructures of steel girders melted from the intense heat.  Their human occupants were instantly burned alive; their bones buried under tons of burning and melting, debris.  In the outlying areas, fires raged out of control and were fanned by hurricane-like winds that were generated by the nuclear bomb blasts.  Miles from the center of the blast, with a roar the resulting firestorm caught people running and screaming in blinding panic, then collapsing within seconds, their flesh seared, bodies charred and blackened by the heat flash, their brains coming to a boil just moments before their skulls exploded.  In the outer perimeter, many miles from ground zero, thousands died while still sitting at their desks in office buildings; their bodies mutilated as window glass and pieces of concrete smashed into them. 

From the sketchy reports, the Captain believed that Mid-America remained relatively unscathed from the attack while few cities on either coast were left untouched by the exchange.  The reports cryptically continued, “Atlanta, Charlotte and Jacksonville are in flames.  Radioactive rain from the super-heated ocean is pelting the coastal cities and countryside.  Large metro cities of the Midwest and the south, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Omaha, Huntsville and St. Louis are in flames.  The fires, however, are not from Russian missiles, but were from fires caused by large scale rioting.  Panic is driving people into the streets.  There is wide-scale looting for food, guns, ammunition and clothing.  Rioting is spreading across the nation.  In a matter of hours, America has ceased to be ‘America the beautiful.’  It is simply America, the blasted and blackened.  Fear i