A Very British Post-Apocalypse?

[nozza_uk]

Windscale (Sellafield) opened in 1956. you could have a 'Chernobyl' type incident taking place. Just have the subsequent attempt to fix it go badly wrong. I think Episode 2 of Chernobyl, mentioned a potential destructive steam explosion from contact between corium and water pooling in the basement underneath the reactor.

Just have steam explosion taking place and the UK and most of Western Europe becomes uninhabitable.

[Grimjack]

Go to the BBc iPlayer app, or type in The War Game 1965 on YouTube - its a tough watch, hence the reason it wasn't shown again for years, but this is a grim PA UK after a nuclear attack with a wealth of playable detail.

[Doug ex-em4]

Windscale (Sellafield) opened in 1956. you could have a 'Chernobyl' type incident taking place. Just have the subsequent attempt to fix it go badly wrong. I think Episode 2 of Chernobyl, mentioned a potential destructive steam explosion from contact between corium and water pooling in the basement underneath the reactor.

Just have steam explosion taking place and the UK and most of Western Europe becomes uninhabitable.

And there was a nuclear accident there in 1957 so all very plausible:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

I remember the maps of the likely affected area on the BBC news and the worries about milk contamination.

Doug

[Jagannath]

I love this idea - the interwar aesthetic meets fallout. I toyed with some ideas in the past but never came to anything so I’m following with interest. I too want to see SCW style armoured cars in the wasteland!

[Billchuck]

There’s another way to set this up that could get you want you want. Say, for whatever reason, D-Day failed. Germany, without the pressure of the western front, has the time and resources to progress on their own atomic program. A V2 delivers a nuclear payload to London, then the US drops the bomb on Berlin. War winds down leaving much of Europe an irradiated mess, and hello apocalypse

A lot of people head to the Americas or Africa, anywhere they can find pasture that doesn’t glow in the dark. But a lot of people can’t or won’t leave.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Have you considered CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN comes early?

It might be worth thinking about an alternative version of the Laundry multiverse, specifically the Fimbulwinter universe and the other universe from The Nightmare Stacks.

Caution - Wikipedia link contains spoilers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laundry_Files

And if you want to know why it is early, there is a Walter Jon Williams story in one of the Wild Cards(tm) collection that may answer it (or visit the secret Archive at the Rijksmuseum).

[Ultravanillasmurf]

'79 is a too late for what I am thinking, too much difference in aesthetic and I might want to use some older ww2 personages, i'm thinking Prime Minister for life Churchill?

I think sometime during the early 1960's might be best?

I was more thinking of the Why rather than the When.

Though you are now looking more at apocalypse rather than civil war.