V #5
but you can't whistle or speak, which actually requires that same function. This room is the brain of the body of the shelter, which is currently in a coma. Understand?"
Nick nodded, more or less grasping the process. But then he asked:
"And what about the doors that closed and the ventilation that intensified while the shelter was sealing itself? And why was there a power outage?"
Tomi was delighted by the questions, because he badly wanted to share his excitement about the things he'd discovered.
"Oh, those are good questions…" he added cheerfully. "And here I found answers that can take a while, and it's up to you whether you want the long version or the short one?" he looked at his friend, waiting for his answer.
"Give me the short one," the man replied. "We've got thousands of people up there who'll want explanations — you can give them the longer one. For now I don't think we have much time."
"Okay…" Tomi paused to take a breath and then began: "Sometime in the early eighties, during the Cold War, when the danger of nukes was at its peak, a shelter complex was built where the elite of Yugoslavia would hide during a war. But you know that yourself, so as not to go on…"
he spread his arms to imaginarily take in the room.
"In these computers hides a program that, all this time, through primitive sensors on the surface, monitored certain frequencies. The sensors weren't very advanced, I'm not even sure how much, but the point is that they monitored,
in a zone of the sky — like the dome of an umbrella — the frequencies of intercontinental missiles. Every missile has its own identification frequency that serves to trigger a self-destruct system on a launched missile in case of accidental firing.
Something meant to stop a war while there's still time. So, not to go on, these sensors on the shelter weren't designed to interfere with a missile's operation or to destroy it, but only to monitor their part of the sky,
or the part of the sky the missiles were assumed to travel through on the way to their targets in America or Russia."
He paused for a moment to catch his breath and, seeing that Nick was completely drawn into his story, continued:
"So, when the sensors caught those frequencies from the missiles, the program in here activated…"
he pointed to the enormous server behind their backs, "…which, by pure automation of preset commands, carried out its task. By closing the shelter doors, activating the ventilation systems, and a heap of small things like activating the elevator,
it led to our lives being saved from the cataclysm outside."
"Cataclysm? And Zagreb?" Nick looked at his friend questioningly.
"It got, as far as the other sensors showed before they stopped working, four direct hits by missiles of several hundred megatons," Tomi straightened and began cleaning his glasses.
"And the other cities?" Nick grasped at straws of hope.
"Split probably got its share, and maybe Osijek and Rijeka too. Remember, we're NATO, and Russia had about eight thousand missiles."
"But Russia didn't have enough launch pads to burn us all at once," Nick objected.
"You're right, Russia couldn't do it alone, which is why it had China's help — and China didn't skimp on building launch pads like the others. And it's known that Russia placed part of its nuclear reserves on Chinese territory in support of their anti-NATO alliance."
"And that's how they burned the world? Is there any hope for the people outside?"
Tomi thought for a moment, turning ideas over in his head.
"The only thing that's certain is that there'll be a nuclear winter."
"And that is?" Nick asked.
Tomi looked at his friend as if he couldn't believe his ears, then sighed. Not everyone had interests like his about possible apocalypses, so he didn't judge his friend.
"During a nuclear detonation, a vacuum is created that sucks in all the surrounding material. Dust, plaster, ash, and whatnot, and after the detonation it throws all that material up into the atmosphere. Something like a volcano." He looked at Nick questioningly. "You know what a volcano is?"
"Oh come on, don't mess around, of course I know," the man objected.
"Well then imagine hundreds of volcanoes at once and billions of tons of dust in the atmosphere. The clouds of dust prevent the Sun from shining on us, and the planet cools. The more dust in the atmosphere, the longer it is before we see a sunny day."
"And the ones up there let loose, you say?" Nick asked despondently.
"Well, if Zagreb, as a minor target, got four nukes, then I can only assume thousands of missiles were fired. We, my friend, will not live to see the end of the winter."
That statement brought a silence into the room, in which for minutes only the quiet hum of the electronics could be heard, while the two friends tried to digest what had been said. Finally Nick roused himself.
"So how do we survive? You're talking about years, decades!"
Tomi seemed pensive and only tossed out absently:
"We'll have to learn how to survive without resources and without a way out. Or organize orgies and shut off the ventilation. It all depends on the decision."