The first sign that the talks were not going well were the Presidents of the US and the Russian Federation accusing each other of not abiding by the terms of the agreement. The second was the cessation of talks and outright threats of war. The START III talks were a complete failure when both sides left the bargaining table and didn't return. It was then that the world knew that they were on a slippery slope to nuclear war. And the possibility of nuclear annihilation became very real.
It was as well that The Eight as they'd monikered themselves had sealed themselves in their bunker and had made certain that they conducted themselves in a manner that assumed that the worst was about to happen and that the world as they knew it; had come to an end. They knew that when they emerged from their bunker, that the world as they knew it would be not as they once knew it.
Their only defence from contamination in the case that the bombs did fall, were the foot thick blast doors and concrete walls that lined the entrance; while the rest of the facility was located underground. And there they would stay while the radiation was still thick in the air.
Phil and Haruo chatted up the ladies; getting to know their bunker-mates as they would be getting very close in the very near future. After all, they would be stuck in the bunker until such time as the radiation dissipated enough to support life back on the surface.
As if the world was in mourning for the short amount of time that it had, the skies opened up and the heavens poured. It rained for two days straight with no cessation; as if for one final purification ritual before the gates of hell opened up to consume them all in a nightmarish cleansing of fire.
It was a solemn pronouncement by the President of the United States that the United States and their allies were going to war against the Russian Federation that The Eight knew that they needed to stay within the confines of their bunker and make no attempts to go out to further provision. What they had would have to carry them throughout the two years or more that they would remain within the bunker.
On CNN they'd also received the news that the Russian Federation would consider a nuclear pre-emptive strike from the United States as an act of war and would respond with a devastating retaliation from their nuclear forces.
Moods fluctuated depending on the person. Depression at the news that their world was about to end certainly was prevalent amongst the members of The Eight. And frankly even their survival was in question, had the military who had built this bunker dug in deep enough that they would be assured of surviving the blast? Had they provisioned enough to see them through the worst of the fallout?
Whether they would survive was a question mark and they had to seal themselves in knowing that within a few days time, their world would cease to exist; that everyone that they had known and every place they had ever been; everything that they found familiar had been immolated by nuclear hellfire. That was a heavy emotional weight to take into the bunker with them.
As it were, The Eight kept their minds off that heavy thought, by exercising and challenging each other to martial arts sparring matches. To survive they would have to be in peak physical condition and that was one of the reasons why Mickey was selected. He was an athlete thus physically fit and a formidable specimen. Arm him with an M-16A3 and gear and he'd be an intimidating sight. And it was his job to whip them into shape...and get them ready to survive the elements once the radiation died down.
Of course though, the martial arts fell to Haruo who was a green-belt and was working on his athleticism. He would be training them to fight; which would definitely be necessary when it came to surviving all sorts of marauders. One of the first of The Eight that he'd sparred with was Mickey, whom he was going to bring up to his level in order so that they could both instruct the rest of the bunker occupants.
There were many things to do in the bunker and well, recreation was one of the orders of the day. They had their choice of chess, pool, ping-pong, foosball and darts. Haruo, being musical, had a concert grand piano installed in the bunker so that he could play and there were several more musical instruments available so that anyone who was interested could take up music.
...and that was how they spent their days...
But on the afternoon of the full moon, all that came to an end.
One SS-24 (Russian Designation RT-23 Molodets) missile armed with ten Multiple Independently-Targetable Re-Entry Vehicles in a fusilade of second strike missiles after the United States launched a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Russia due to increasing tensions in the Mediterranean (clashes between Russian and US warships had escalated into an exchange of tactical nuclear weapons, devastating both fleets) targeted three of its MIRVs at CFB Gnome and one at a political target in Sunset Valley City Hall.
There wasn't time enough to blink for many of the citizens in Sunset Valley or scream. Just a blistering 100M degree celcius heat that vaporized anyone standing below the epicenter of the explosion. And the blast-wave that travelled away from the epicenter of the explosion at supersonic speed devastated anything that remained standing.
Within the city center, fires raged and anyone outside the "instant-death" zone of the blast radius was doomed to die a slow death from acute radiation sickness.
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