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AP ECONOMIC NEWS FLASH: Farmers are reporting difficulty getting fresh vegetables to market before they spoil due to shipping infrastructure damage caused by the attacks. This has caused prices of these items to surge, when they can be obtained at all. The majority of shipping problems are resulting from a lack of repair parts available to fix trucks when they break down which has become common after the destruction of parts suppliers near Detroit. No word from the automobile manufacturers on when new parts will start to become available. Japanese companies are claiming that they can start fulfilling this need very soon, even for American brand automobiles. This will likely cause a negative effect to the US economy due to increased imports while no domestic auto exports are possible for the foreseeable future. Additionally, due to the price of oil and the distance those parts much be shipped, it is expected the cost of these parts will be much higher once they are available than they have been in the past. The overall impact of this situation is still being assessed.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Oval Office

President Press sat in the Oval Office pondering a few things. He hadn’t really had time to fully understand just how complex the job of President was when the Country was running in a non-emergency situation during his short time in office before the attack. His entire Presidency seemed to have been one big mess from the start, considering the Impeachment, the assassination, and then the nuclear strike. He always prided himself in never running from a challenge. Now he wondered if there would be an un-challenging moment while he held this office, he hoped there would be. At this point he wasn’t even sure if running for re-election was something he wanted. That was a question he would answer another day, but it wasn’t that far away.

One thing he was finally getting used to was the fact that his Secret Service detail kept at least one person with him in every room, no matter where he was, at all times. He could occasionally escape them in the bedroom or bathroom, but even in those rooms he suspected that, somehow, they were watching. He wished that wasn’t true but he was sure that it was. Talk about an uncomfortable feeling for both sides, have to watch another man take care of morning absolution could not be a fun thing to witness. If his wife ever figured it out, well that was something he hoped wouldn’t happen.

These were thoughts for another time. Perhaps for a humorous chapter in his memoir, he could see the chapter heading, “The President and his morning bathroom trip.”

He had a full morning scheduled ahead of him. All of it was to be here in this room. Why in this room, which he was still not completely comfortable in, he wondered once again. He wished they could have moved his morning activities elsewhere, but this was where he really should be. His discomfort would have to remain his secret.

Lester entered the room from the private entrance leading to the Chief of Staff office, “Mister President, are you ready to get started?”

“Absolutely Les. What’s up first?” he asked. He wondered if he would ever remember which door led to which outer office, or, more importantly, led to a bathroom.

“First up this morning we have a briefing on the radiation effects of our two bombed regions. As part of that there will be some recommended actions,” said the Chief of Staff.

“Great, bring them in,” he said.

It seemed odd to be working in an office while trying to recover from a nuclear attack. Life would go on no matter what, he supposed. But when he imagined such an attack, it always included the end of humans all over the world. Every thought he ever had of nuclear attacks involved any number of large countries sending their huge arsenals of nuclear weapons all over the globe, and rendering it uninhabitable for most life forms. Exceptions were made for cockroaches and perhaps Twinkies. This attack had not been that. While it had not destroyed the world, he wanted to ensure this type of attack never happened again. He also wanted to be sure that the situation did not worsen and turn into some kind of bizarre “zombie apocalypse” level of long term problem where society turned into little enclaves of survivors huddling wherever they could find a safe spot.

The door to his secretary’s office opened and three people in business suits, one nicely pressed and two rather rumbled, entered carrying stacks of papers, “Mr. President this is Dr. Kennedy, and his colleagues from Los Alamos National Laboratory,” Les introduced the two men and one woman.

“Good to meet you Mr. President. I would like to introduce Drs. Finnegan and Brockton. I run the lab, these two are nuclear scientists, actually they are nuclear weapons specialists, at the New Mexico facility. They are here in case you have specific questions I am unable to answer.”

“Please come in, sit down. Can we get you water or coffee?” asked President Press.

They took seats on the two couches while the President sat in a chair at the head of the coffee table in the center, with Lester at the opposite end, “No thank you Mr. President. We have some data for you on the two devices and impacted areas,” he handed over a thick stack of paper to the President and another to the Chief of Staff.

“This seems like about 100 pages of what I am sure is high end Physics. I am certain my day doesn’t have time for all of that. Perhaps you can summarize all this for me?” the President asked trying to cut to the bottom line.

“Oh, of course Mister President, I never thought you would consider reading all of it. Most of the information is meant as backup, or supplemental information, in case you or your staff have any questions. We tried to anticipate what those might be and include as much detail as made sense in a number of appendices, without getting overly technical. It is also intended for your Press Secretary so that when asked he can give accurate answers to the press. They have a tendency, if you answer incorrectly, to publish articles about your lack of competence, so we are trying to help avoid that situation as well,” answered Dr. Kennedy.

“I appreciate that more than I can possibly explain,” sighed the President. He had no love of the news media.

He preferred to just work rather than be part of the “show” that Washington D.C. had become in the modern era. Some people even referred to the day-to-day operations in this town as a type of live action cartoon intended to boost network news ratings.

“Let me cut to the bottom line Mister President. Most people left the bombed areas voluntarily. That’s good. You ordered a 10-mile evacuation region, which against all odds people have paid attention to, almost completely without argument. I would like you to expand both Detroit and the Dallas Fort Worth Metropolitan areas to 15 miles,” said the scientist without hesitation.

“For how long?” asked the President.

“In all likelihood, for the remainder of our lifetime Mister President. Possibly even longer. We don’t know yet,” said Dr. Kennedy soberly. His two associates nodded silently in agreement.

“Ok, you have to give me more than that. People will not continue to be so cooperative without us telling them why. Especially with how long it has been since the attack. If we had done it right afterwards it wouldn’t be a problem, but now, well, you are opening me up to those competency arguments you mentioned earlier,” he said.

“Sir, these devices were Uranium bombs. As a result the radiation levels in those regions have been increasing ever since the detonations happened, and are now very high. It took some time to sort out at what concentration, and how far out, everything would settle back to Earth. That is just the nature of the way these devices work,” said the Lab Director.

“Now that is something I don’t understand at all. Why does radiation take a while to settle? Why does it increase for so long?” asked the President.