The Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap/Germany

Part of the Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap Project.

Hamberg Looped Radio Broadcast

Hello world

This is Bernd again. I hope somebody's receiving this. This message will broadcast in a continuous loop. It is updated monthly. We are the survivors of Hamburg.

A few hundred thousand of us are still alive. We have cleared most of the city and it's canals of the corpses. Everything is very quiet. Two power plants are operational and provide limited energy to the central parts of town. Some diesel still remains to operate a few cranes and excavators. Water filtration is a big issue, since not enough can be purified to provide us with uncontaminated crops from our greenhouses for everybody. And people keep coming. Canned goods run the black market. The Bundeswehr has established a refugee control infrastructure, but it is failing.

Limited networking could be established to DE-CIX at Frankfurt, so we know most larger German cities, as well as the French, Dutch, Scandinavian, Polish, Czech, Austrian, and Italian networks we could reach, are in the same situation.

Infrastructure

Before the Day of the Thousand Suns (Tag der Tausend Sonnen in German) Germany had a relative good run. The economy was doing fine and there were no mayor civil unrests unlike in other parts of the EU. Despite this the government did not invest much into infrastructure or public safety measures. That came back to bite them in the back. The industrial regions around the Rhine and Ruhr were nearly annihilated. No more Thyssen and Krupp. Same goes for Munich, Frankfurt, Hannover and Berlin. Hamburg wasn't hit directly, no one knows why. Maybe it was planed to use it as supply hub by the Russians, who knows. The old German capital of Bonn was heavily damaged by the fallout from the hits on the northern Rhineland not that it would matter as most Germans wouldn't listen to a Government that couldn't protect them in the first place. Most regional capitals that weren't hit tried to set up local governments with only Hessia and the Rhineland-Palatinate seeing moderate success due to a combination of topography, geography and luck. Other than the above most of Germany seems to have been splintered into small rural communities and raiders, with the former concentrated on the ruins of larger cities and the former Highways (the legendary Autobahn) and the latter around the large rivers of Rhine, Danube,Weser, Ems and Oder.

Current Situation

As we reestablish some semblance of infrastructure, the dread becomes more and more apparent. My findings could not have been verified and I can only hope that I am mistaken. Fallout analysis suggests that the large warheads detonated above central Europe were at least in part cobalt salted. Everything is dying. The people, the plants, even most of the insects are gone. Our decontamination procedures are very thorough and strict, yet after years of necessary excursions into the outside, decaying particles are penetrating our caves. Regular Geiger counter sweeps reveal ever new spots of soil or concrete to be removed.

Any outside teams are protected with double sealed clothing and air filters. But exposure is still strong. We rotate people as much as we can, but the symptoms are showing. Infectious diseases are hard to contain with leukocyte count as a permanent issue. Respiratory and digestive/gastric impediments claim most patients before their tumors can. Infertility and sterility are spreading. Still we had a few births. Many were deformed or stillborn, but the ones who make it appear fine, isolated under ground with filtered air, water, and fresh food from clean hydroponics.

I have little data available. The fallout collected in Hamburg and Frankfurt shows 60Co (+60Ni), and 137Cs (+137Ba) up to as much as 1,000ppm. But the neutron radiation has practically ceased. 8 hours of protected outside activity average to 0.5-1Sv. Shielded suits or our Fuchs ABC vehicles will bring it down to mSv.

I expect no one here to live much longer than 30years, with most of us probably gone in 5 years. I believe if they can keep the installations in repair, a few 10,000 survivors could make it indefinitely.