Several areas of Rasvidi were evacuated to the countryside this week when nuclear attack sirens sounded in every city almost simultaneously. Approximately 2.5 million people were moved over the course of several hours before the government announced that it was a false alarm. While an embarrassing moment for the government, with many outraged citizens demanding some sort of action, they have nonetheless praised the effectiveness and efficiency of the nuclear warning system. The leadership of Ezakov municipality, which was almost entirely destroyed in a nuclear attack during the North Sea war at the hands of Old Isis Rakael, has been particularly outraged and has claimed that many of it's citizens may now have to deal with the effects of PTSD as result of the false alarm. Though many people are outraged, many are asking exactly how or why the nuclear warning system was tripped.
The government has blamed it on a particularly large earthquake somewhere to the south-west of Hiborea, possibly in Noratreos where there is an active subduction zone and several faultlines under it's coastal mountains. Seismographs across the country have recorded a 6.9 or possibly 7.0 or 7.1 magnitude tremor in that area. These magnitudes are typical of a nuclear detonation, and the sensitive nature of Rasvidi's nuclear warning system (which is designed to activate when a nuke is detonated anywhere in Hiborea) apparently covers a much larger area then previously believed. In response, and to avoid future mishaps, the government will proceed in reducing the sensitivity of the system as well as limiting the magnitude range and types of seismic activity that can trigger it. They are expected to reduce the range to only include Terragon and some other regions of Hiborea.
Suspicion of the government's hasty conclusion on the issue has sparked numerous conspiracy theories on the internet, with some speculating that Rasvidi or possibly someone else is actually testing some kind of super-weapon. Still others believe that an extratiberial spacecraft crashed into Noratreos, which triggered a nuclear explosion. Adding to the suspicion, the government has ordered all private, non-governmental organizations to be forbidden from investigating the incident. The government has also begun "blacking out" the connections from certain IP addresses and IP ranges of those perpetuating the conspiracies.
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Chairman Väinö Nakashidze had a look of horror and shock plastered across his face as he looked at the files before him. They had been handed to him only moments ago by an aide. The files contained several satellite images, including one of an island in southern Caspadius. An ugly scar was carved into the land there, and dust clouds could be seen drifting eastward for miles. The other images contained shots of cities and ports located on the continent, east of the island. It was clear by the various monuments and symbols visible from the satellite what nation these cities belonged to. Isis Rakael.
"But..." The Chairman sat stunned, and continued to read the files. The seismic trigger had not been caused by an Earthquake. It had been caused by man, and it had marred the earth in a significant way. In the hours after it happened, the government had scrambled to find the source and send one of the military satellites to image it. The satellite had passed over the area for only a few minutes, but it was long enough to stream back significant amounts of data and images.
Väinö's face began to turn a deep shade of red, and there was flames in his eyes.
"How the fuck did this go by unnoticed? An entire fucking nation, of hundreds of millions of people, completely hidden from us!? How the
fuck does that happen? In this country, who the fuck screwed up this big?" He had stood up in fury as he said this, and had thrown the papers across the room. He was enraged. The aide looked about ready to wet himself. Yelena Stasova, who was in a chair near his desk, seemed perfectly calm. Her eyes betrayed her own rage, however.
"Oh, heads are going to roll..." he paused for a moment, trying to recollect himself, but felt like it wasn't working. He motioned to one of the armed guards standing on either said of his office door, and without hesitation the guard lifted his assault rifle and fired three shots into the aide's head. The aide, who couldn't have been much older then 18, was dead before he fell to the ground. Stasova briefly held a look of dismay as she watched the boy fall, but otherwise seemed relatively unperturbed. She had seen and done worse in the past several decades.
The Chairman paced nervously around, stopping to pick up a few of the papers he had thrown. He looked at them again, carefully. "Yelena, you know how unacceptable this is. This makes us look like incompetent fools. An entire nation, hundreds of millions of people, developing and growing without anyone being even slightly aware. Now they are testing... something, some kind of super-weapon? This is serious. Do we have the whereabouts of Comrade Shepilov? This is his mess."
Dmitri Shepilov was the Information Commissar, in charge of the Commissariat of Information. He was also the head of the People's Security and Intelligence Bureau. Dmitri Shepilov was commonly known to be a pseudonym, however, only discovered after had held this office for over ten years. Nobody knew his real name or identity, and he always seemed to know more then he let on. He was present at every major government meeting, smoking his cigarettes and rarely contributing unless to answer the Chancellor's questions.
Stasova looked flustered for a moment, "Actually, no... as soon as the sirens went off, he went missing. We are beginning to suspect he used the chaos to go into hiding or even flee the country. We have no idea why he would do this, though."
The Chairman let out an angry groan. "God dammit. Make his location and capture a top military priority. And when they find him, kill him. Accuse him of being a Christian or something if you must. In fact, tell the public that he was outed as a Christian and is currently on the run. Plaster his face on everything. If he's in Rasvidi, he will have trouble hiding. As for the rest of the Commissariat, have the high officials arrested. This goes for the Intelligence Bureau, as well. Nobody is escaping the axe over this."
Stasova nodded. "Definitely. An example needs to be made. This is absolutely unacceptable in a country such as Rasvidi." She frowned, trying to contain her anger. The truth was, this whole issue was a massive slap in the face. Thankfully the public would likely never find out, or else they would be even more enraged.
The Chairman looked at the files again. "Whatever this weapon they tested is, it's god damn scary. Imagine if they had decided to 'test' it over one of our cities? We'd have been totally unprepared. Do we even have anything to stop it?
"No, at least not the projectile. We could try shooting down the satellite if we absolutely had to. If it even came from a satellite; it could have been a missile for all we know. We're completely blind on this."
"Fuck. When can we get started on the warheads? We have thousands of ICBMs, we just need the nuclear warheads to arm them. Instead of this bullshit biochemical crap."
Stasova coughed, but held her gaze on the Chairman, unflinching. "Best estimates are six months before we see our first weapons. At worst..." she sighed, "...about five years."
The Chairman let off a string of swears in Onoğur, the mother tongue of Burgundia and therefore most Magyar such as himself. Until now he had been speaking in Saamic. The swears involved a number of racial slurs against the Norske, which was typical of Burgundian swearwords. "Fuck, that is unacceptable. Get the uranium into the country as soon as possible, and I want all of our enrichment facitilies operating around the clock for the next several months. Years, if we have to. I want a stockpile of warheads so big by 1500 that we could wipe Isis Rakael off the map."
Stasova nodded.
"And get our space station operational ASAP! Make sure it is armed. Maybe we can load it with biochemical weapons as a deterrent until we can get some real weapons. Isis Rakael makes the GWA and the EU look like a playground."
"Yes, Chairman." Stasova got up to leave.
"Oh, and put the military on high alert. Make a big show of it, tell the world that our military is big and well equipped and ready to deploy wherever the hell we want to deploy it."
Stasova left the room, careful not to step in the blood that was pooling around the aide. She motioned to the guards, and they began to remove the body and clean up the mess.
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