Line #10 Literature/WarDay


1	''Warday'' is a novel by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka. It was first published in 1984 and deals with [[AuthorAvatar slightly fictionalized versions of the authors]] traveling across the United States in 1993, five years after a limited nuclear war, to conduct a series of interviews, studies and research. Written in first person, the book is meant to give the impression of what a postwar future would be like. It is notable for its abundance of {{Author Tract}}s and containing numerous [[ScrapbookStory documents from the world it depicts]].
2
3	''Warday'' was supposed to be the start of [[{{Sequelitis}} a series]], but subsequent projects were abandoned, and Strieber instead turned to writing about his alleged personal encounters with aliens. He did later also collaborate with Kunetka on the lesser-known 1986 novel ''Nature's End'', but it is not related to ''Warday''.
4	----
5	!!This book provides examples of :
6	* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: While the book is set only nine years into the future, there are quite a few technological and societal differences between 1984 and 1993:
7	** Obviously the whole nuclear war thing. It actually starts because the Soviet Union had been backed into a corner by the Americans' new antimissile system ''Spiderweb'', which appears to be Strieber and Kunetka's interpretation of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative Strategic Defense Initiative]] program, announced in 1983 but ultimately never implemented.
8	** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromotherapy Chromotherapy]] has apparently been proven to be a viable medical treatment, as an expert of the new ''nonspecific sclerosing disease'' claims that "color therapy utilizing so-called pink light" has been used in slowing down the disease in individuals.
9	** The United Kingdom has a King by the winter of 1988, meaning Queen Elizabeth must have died or abdicated. The Labour Party has ceased to exist, having been replaced by the Social Democrats. Also, a maglev train has been built between London and other major cities in Britain. There are also television sets that one can talk to when wanting to order goods and services. Finally, there exists a ''Concorde II'' supersonic passenger jet, capable of flying from London to San Francisco in seven hours.
10	** The Japanese fly fighter planes with forward-swept wings and "drumming"-like engine noises; it's possible that Strieber and Kunetka got their inspiration from the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_X-29 Grumman X-29]], which first flew in 1984 but had only two examples built. The Japanese also employ at least one completely automated whaling ship on the Gulf of Alaska.
11	** Something called "purple bombs" have rendered Ukraine incapable of supporting vegetation.
12	* AfterTheEnd: In the United States (and the Soviet Union) people are trying to survive in the aftermath of a "limited" nuclear war.
13	* TheAllegedCar: Quite a few characters comment on the sub-par quality of the (fictional) Chevy Consensus, which has plastic windows and doors, yet costs more than a quality Toyota 4xD Timbre, which most Americans nevertheless can not get ahold of.
14	* TheApocalypseBringsOutTheBestInPeople: Lampshaded in-universe. One character remarks that before the war he felt a nuclear holocaust would be a good thing as it would fix the things he disliked about society. 5 years after his wishes came true, he mentions that he was foolish for believing so. Played straight with other characters. One character mentions that prejudice and bigotry after the nuclear holocaust is better than it was before it as everybody was in the same boat more or less, trying to survive.
15	* ApocalypseHow: {{ApocalypseHow/Class0}} Regional/Societal Disruption
16	* ApocalypseWow: Whitley Strieber's AuthorAvatar relates his first hand experience of the war in New York at the beginning of the story.
17	* ArtisticLicenseLaw: In reality, Under Secretaries of any department are not part of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_line_of_succession United States presidential line of succession]], meaning one could not have become President through legal means. A workaround would be one getting confirmed as a Secretary, which would then make them the President, but since ''Warday'' has the Congress get wiped out as well[[note]]Also, if there were a Congress, either chamber could elect a Speaker of the House of Representatives or a President Pro Tempore of the Senate. Both outrank all Secretaries in the line of succession, meaning either one would become President instead.[[/note]], one could not be confirmed, so this is also not possible.
18	* BalkanizeMe: The Soviet Union is described as having broken apart completely, with numerous successor states in its former territory. Of these successor states, at least {{UsefulNotes/Azerbaijan}} enjoys diplomatic recognition from the the United Kingdom.
19	* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece: Strieber has bought a 1975 Dodge, as it is old enough to not have electronics advanced enough to have been destroyed by the electromagnetic pulse on Warday. It cost him two years to raise the money for it.
20	* TheCaptain: Among the people that Strieber and Kunetka interview is Captain Malcolm Hargreaves of the [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships Royal Navy]]. His actions against the Soviet ''Typhoon''-class submarine ''Teplov'' saved the lives of approximately nine million people, as the submarine was minutes away from launching its arsenal against the western United States, still very much recovering from Warday.
21	* CoolTrain: A Japanese businessman by the name of H. Tanaka from the Nippon-America International Rail Corp. describes a relatively detailed plan to build an underground maglev train from Los Angeles to Bakersfield to Oakland to Seattle. He claims that the train would have a mind-numbingly fast maximum speed of ''five hundred miles'' per hour, and scoffs at the 60 m.p.h. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superliner_(railcar) Superliner]] he is riding on.
22	* CrapsackWorld: About a third of the American (and possibly more of Soviet) population was killed in the war and the aftermath, if you are not from California you are an illegal alien, one of the main characters is triaged (barred from medical treatment) due to the level of radiation he has received, etc.
23	** In addition, children with major birth defects from radiation are routinely subject to euthanasia.
24	* DeadlyDustStorm: A regular occurrence in the American Midwest by 1993, with crops and vegetation having been destroyed by Soviet warheads on Warday.
25	* DecapitationStrike: So much of the presidential order of succession was wiped out on Warday that the ''Under'' Secretary of the Treasury becomes President in the aftermath. The edition of ''The New York Times'' that Striber reads after Warday in bombed-out New York also claims there is no Congress either. The Supreme Court is also wiped out, though at least the state of Illinois still abides by its pre-Warday rulings.
26	* DeusAngstMachina: Due to the "limited" aspect of the war, only three US cities are directly nuked: Washington DC, New York, and San Antonio, TX (as James Kunetka is from San Antonio). However, the EMP detonations cause huge damage to infrastructure all over the place.
27	** Questions about the probability of San Antonio being nuked are hand-waved by implying that the Soviets nuked it because of the air force base there, and because they bet that the Americans would not expect it.
28	* DifferentWorldDifferentMovies: A couple of fictional pieces of media published after 1984 are mentioned, such as a 1986 film called ''Jury of One'' starring Creator/PaulNewman, an album named ''Dream Along'' by Music/DavidBowie, and another named ''Persistence of Vision'' by Music/BrianEno. Creator/MerylStreep has turned to theatre, and directs and stars in a play named ''Chained'', which is banned in California.
29	* EvilBrit: What Strieber and Kunetka's anonymous Destructuralist interviewee thinks of the British. According to her, the British (and other Europeans by extension) occupied {{UsefulNotes/Argentina}} after Warday, in order to steal their wheat for themselves and for the American survivors, which then caused hundreds of millions of gratuitous deaths in Latin America.
30	* FailedFutureForecast: No nuclear war actually occurred in 1988, obviously.
31	* FallenStatesOfAmerica: California and the other West Coast states have closed their borders, parts of New Mexico and southwestern Texas have become the separatist country of Aztlan, and much of the eastern seaboard is uninhabitable.
32	** Other parts of the US are implied to be slowly breaking away - Texas is planning its own currency, and Washington and Oregon have a joint legislature.
33	* GhostCity:
34	** New York City. It had about nine million inhabitants in 1988; by 1993, it has about ''seven thousand'', with another twenty thousand living there unauthorized.
35	** Litchfield County, Connecticut historically had about 150,000 inhabitants in 1980. Strieber and Kunetka hear that in 1993 it has only about a thousand, of whom a further twenty percent are barred from receiving medical care.
36	* GlobalIgnorance: Doctor Walter Tevis roasts Strieber and Kunetka on their ignorance of what terrible things have been happening elsewhere in the world after Warday. At another point, a fellow train-passenger from Canada [[ReasonYouSuckSpeech gives them a bitter jab]] about their admitted ignorance of his country's fate.
37	-->'''Tevis:''' [T]he USSR has lost close to half of its population. [...] Then there’s China. India. Bangladesh. Do you know about them? About the fate of the world, my friends? There has been a great reduction in the numbers of humanity on this planet.
38	* ItIsBeyondSaving: What the Destructuralist movement thinks of American society after Warday.
39	-->'''Anonymous Destructuralist''': We say that the whole social edifice, from the Boy Scouts right up to the Army, is essentially an addiction, that it is more than unnecessary, it is dangerous. Social structures are the breeding ground of ideology, greed, and territorialism.
40	* JapanTakesOverTheWorld: Unsurprisingly played straight, since it is a 1980's book. There is also some ''Britain'' Takes Over the World in there too for good measure. The 1993 United Kingdom is rich and high-tech; essentially what the United States could have been, had the nuclear war of 1988 not happened.
41	* JustInTime: Years after the war, the Royal Navy patrols the seas, destroying rogue submarines. When it detects a ''Typhoon''-class SSBN, it attacks it and damages it, causing it to surface and surrender. They discover that it was just moments away from launching a nuclear strike on North America, one that would've been worse than the 1988 one.
42	* MexicoCalledTheyWantTexasBack: Some of the people Strieber and Kunetka interview ''think'' this is what is happening with the breakaway state of Aztlan, as it is run by Hispanics. However, Aztlan foreign minister Hector Espinoza later says in his interview that Aztlan is absolutely independent from Mexico, with immigration laws ''stricter'' than those of Texas.
43	* {{Mockumentary}}
44	* MyCountryRightOrWrong: Strieber and Kunetka interview Dr. Walter Tevis, an economist who works at Berkeley in California. He was offered a position at the [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis London School of Economics]], with triple the salary and free medical care. His refusal is pretty much this trope encapsulated.
45	%% The point of Next Sunday AD is that there is no difference between the setting and the publication date, which is obviously not the case here.
46	* NoPartyGiven: Played straight with the 1988 President and several other characters, but averted with Governor Oliver Parker of Texas, who is explicitly stated to be a Democrat (or at least having been one in 1988).
47	* OneSteveLimit: Averted, as there are three individuals named ''White''; former Under Secretary of the Treasury and current Acting President White, Governor of California Mark Campbell's assistant Harold White, and former Governor of Texas Mark White. There are also Strieber's son Andrew and [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily Prince Andrew]], who came for a charity visit to the town of Baldwin, Pennsylvania after Warday.
48	* OrbitalBombardment: Both sides utilize spaceborne weapons on Warday, with the Soviets ''nearly'' taking out the American missile silos with their space nukes.
49	* ThePlague: The Nonspecific Sclerosing Disease, which has a fatality rate of one hundred percent. Adults who catch it are given advice on how to take their lives, while children under twelve years of age who catch it are forcibly euthanized. One of Strieber and Kunetka's interviewees speculates that it might be the result of a bioweapon, as it spreads in a manner that appears to stem from the environment and not from peer-to-peer interaction.
50	* RevolvingDoorRevolution: According to Governor of Texas Oliver Parker, {{UsefulNotes/Mexico}} has had ''eight'' revolutions in five years since Warday.
51	* RussiaCalledTheyWantAlaskaBack: A bunch of Russian military vessels docked in Anchorage, and Russian submarine crews regularly steal food and other supplies from coastal settlements in Alaska. Subverted, however, in that all that this causes is ''Canada'' taking over Alaska in 1992, citing security concerns; they do pay the United States thirty-five million gold dollars for the state.
52	* SecretPolice: The California Immigration Police may arrest any person who is in the state illegally, as Strieber and Kunetka personally find out when sneaking into San Francisco International Airport. A sham court sentences them to two years of hard labor to be deported afterwards, but they successfully escape from the prison transport bus.
53	* ShoutOut: While in California, Strieber and Kunetka come across newsstands carrying two separatist journals named ''Film/{{Westworld}}'' and ''Literature/{{Ecotopia}}''.
54	* {{Tuckerization}}: Authors [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Quinn_Yarbro Chelsea Quinn Yarbro]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Tevis Walter Tevis]][[note]]he actually died the year the book was published[[/note]] appear in ''Warday'' as minor characters; the former as a San Francisco detective, offering her assistance to Strieber and Kunetka due to their pre-Warday acquaintance, the latter as an economist at Berkeley in California.
55	* UnexpectedSuccessor: The Under Secretary of the Treasury ends up being the self-described caretaker President, as he had been holidaying in Key Largo, Florida. (Note that in real life, this office is not in the official chain of succession.)
56	* WesternTerrorists: The Destructuralist movement, which believes people should have in-groups no larger than their extended family.
57	* WingedHumanoid: An urban legend Strieber and Kunetka encounter in California describes a seven-foot-tall bat-like monster with sharp talons and huge glowing red eyes. It is reportedly often seen on the roofs in populated areas at night. This evokes TheMothman somewhat, but instead of just being a harbinger of doom, this creature attacks people and steals children off to the sky.
58	* WiseBeyondTheirYears: After Warday, there have been a couple of children suffering from something called the hyperintelligence syndrome. These children are often fully aware of their surroundings ''at birth'' and can vocalize and move their limbs in a coordinated manner at the age of just a few hours. Some of them [[EntertainmentAboveTheirAge read Shakespeare at three]]. The oldest is proficient in four languages, has a deep understanding of mathematics and physics, and is looking forward to being accepted to [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis Oxford University]] at the age of seven.
59	* WorldWarIII: The overall theme of the book, though the exact terms "World War III" or "Third World War" do not appear a single time.
60	* YouAreTooLate: The Soviets prepare to hit the U.S. with a nuke from outer space using a military satellite disguised as a communications satellite. As soon as the U.S. finds out the satellite's true purpose, they destroy it. However, it is too late, as the satellite fired its weapon just moments before it got destroyed. The Soviet nuke detonates miles above North America, causing an EMP effect that wipes out the electrical grids of much of the U.S. and Canada.

Context Literature / WarDay