06-02-2016, 03:43 AM
Things were really looking quite favorably for Russia and China until they too got a good strong dose of what the weather had in store for them. The first winter after the year without summer was a true winter's frozen hell on earth with shallow lakes freezing solid and even the great lakes of America having an ice cover of over 35 feet thick. Hydro electric dams were out of commission all over the world (if they still had water after the prolonged droughts) due to all the ice and deeply frozen rivers and bodies of water.
Many of the lightly armed insurgents from the south were abandoned by their sponsors due to the inability to resupply anyone in the field because of the cold and ice.
Needless to say the whole world was now in survival mode and any war, no matter where, was a secondary initiative behind trying to stay warm and alive.
The Russians were even cold and were having to fight much of their own starving population !
Survivors hoped and preyed that the next summer would warm things up but it was just as bad as the summer before. The calendar said August in the northern hemisphere but the temperature gauges said 3 degrees Centigrade on a good day anyplace North of Jackson, Mississippi. Needless to say there were people all over the world praying for a god or some alien mothership to come save them. Unfortunately neither seemed to be listening to the prayers through all the cold.
The tropics were not a frozen hell like much of the rest of the world however, without the monsoons or expected yearly rain fall they were in starvation mode without their crops; whole tracks of forest and jungle went up in flames due to the newly arrived arid conditions.
By year 4 of the war and with Earth's new climate change/disruption there was an estimated 3.2 billion people who had survived thus-far, but that number would continue to decrease every day by the hundreds of thousands.
When people are hungry and stressed their immune system becomes compromised and something as simple as a small cut or even a bad cold can turn deadly. Others just gave up and died where they lay. Those who had a strong will to survive counted the dead the lucky ones more than once.
Survivors were more than fortunate in one sense because of the cold, or otherwise, all the dead bodies would have created quite a stink and many more opportunities for bacteria and airborne infections to further spread and decimate the remaining survivors. That scenario would have been another straw added to the already proverbial, overloaded, camel's back.
With the preservative nature of the cold there were stories of roving bands of people who went from city to city eating the frozen dead. That is how desperate certain latitudes of the world had become for something to eat.
Cold drains one's strength and fortitude about as fast as anything and yet I had always thought, “With cold you can just wear more clothes”, I have learned, not with this kind of cold. This cold seeps into your bones and will not leave you, even if you manage to be near a fire.
Bathing is out of the question for most people.
The very young and the old had no chance of surviving and many ended up in someone's stew pot or as fertilizer at some future date (if their bodies ever became unfrozen) call it, 'A Natural Carbon Recycle'. From the Earth they came, and to the Earth they shall return; something like that, long ago stated eloquently and quite simply.
So far, my band of merry men and women have survived by being underground in what was once a ….
“Standby; we are under attack” !
Many of the lightly armed insurgents from the south were abandoned by their sponsors due to the inability to resupply anyone in the field because of the cold and ice.
Needless to say the whole world was now in survival mode and any war, no matter where, was a secondary initiative behind trying to stay warm and alive.
The Russians were even cold and were having to fight much of their own starving population !
Survivors hoped and preyed that the next summer would warm things up but it was just as bad as the summer before. The calendar said August in the northern hemisphere but the temperature gauges said 3 degrees Centigrade on a good day anyplace North of Jackson, Mississippi. Needless to say there were people all over the world praying for a god or some alien mothership to come save them. Unfortunately neither seemed to be listening to the prayers through all the cold.
The tropics were not a frozen hell like much of the rest of the world however, without the monsoons or expected yearly rain fall they were in starvation mode without their crops; whole tracks of forest and jungle went up in flames due to the newly arrived arid conditions.
By year 4 of the war and with Earth's new climate change/disruption there was an estimated 3.2 billion people who had survived thus-far, but that number would continue to decrease every day by the hundreds of thousands.
When people are hungry and stressed their immune system becomes compromised and something as simple as a small cut or even a bad cold can turn deadly. Others just gave up and died where they lay. Those who had a strong will to survive counted the dead the lucky ones more than once.
Survivors were more than fortunate in one sense because of the cold, or otherwise, all the dead bodies would have created quite a stink and many more opportunities for bacteria and airborne infections to further spread and decimate the remaining survivors. That scenario would have been another straw added to the already proverbial, overloaded, camel's back.
With the preservative nature of the cold there were stories of roving bands of people who went from city to city eating the frozen dead. That is how desperate certain latitudes of the world had become for something to eat.
Cold drains one's strength and fortitude about as fast as anything and yet I had always thought, “With cold you can just wear more clothes”, I have learned, not with this kind of cold. This cold seeps into your bones and will not leave you, even if you manage to be near a fire.
Bathing is out of the question for most people.
The very young and the old had no chance of surviving and many ended up in someone's stew pot or as fertilizer at some future date (if their bodies ever became unfrozen) call it, 'A Natural Carbon Recycle'. From the Earth they came, and to the Earth they shall return; something like that, long ago stated eloquently and quite simply.
So far, my band of merry men and women have survived by being underground in what was once a ….
“Standby; we are under attack” !