“The Parliament is now deliberating the New Union Act proposed by leading figures of the UOP and the ORP. Both the Heiss Government and Queen Amelie Ludendorf have expressed support for the plan. However, a new forming movement called the ‘Restorationists’, hardline conservative noblewomen who would be losing power in local Orlish politics due to these changes, are petitioning against these changes, calling it disruptive and unreasonable, and a violation of the Orlish Federal Union Act, which is one of the defining acts of parliament that formed the basis of the Orlish State for centuries. Proponents of the New Union Act however celebrate the changes, as the previous variations of the act were blocked by the governments under Queen Alorie and Queen Areya in the last century.”
- ROCN News
+++
West Orland
Eutstadt City
July 5, 2025
Amelie watched as the air raid sirens of the city blared out.
She and her Ministers stayed at one of the tallest buildings of Eutstadt, the Trinity Tower. Many helicopters circled above the city, and below them, the emergency services of the city organized the city-wide drill. Amelie found it quite fascinating how the drill was going. It was also the first time for millions of Eutstadters.
One by one, each district was cleared, with civilians being ordered by the authorities to proceed to the underground metro stations and shelters. Amelie looked at her watch. Four minutes had already passed. The city leadership seemed nervous inside the room, as no news came from the ground.
Six minutes soon passed. Then eight minutes. Then ten minutes. No updates. Except for the continuous stream of footage of people still being evacuated. Amelie sighed, as she turned her back to the leadership of Orland and Eutstadt.
“This is disappointing," Amelie said. “It's been twelve minutes, and we probably barely sent half of Eutstadt underground. By this point, half of the city would have been long dead to a nuclear strike.”
“Your Majesty…” The new mayor of the city, Sofie Ruhl, nervously spoke up. She was a woman in her forties, another career politician who was sworn in just a month ago. Her predecessor unfortunately was an uncooperative closet conservative. Amelie and Jacqueline, alongside Countess Wittfield, thus silently replaced her. “The city has never done this before. Of course, the citizens would be confused, and…”
“I understand,” Amelie placed her hands on her back, as she turned back to look at the city. “That’s why we did this, after all. To assess the capability of the Kingdom’s temporary capital to survive a WMD strike. Clearly… it's awful, ladies and gentlemen.”
She heard a chuckle from the side. It was from Walter.
“Yeah, obviously,” the man said, as he turned on his seat. “The metro is barely even capable of taking the city’s population within. Not especially with the increase of people in the city.”
“Mayor Ruhl, what’s the latest figure of Eutstadt’s population again?”
“Your Majesty, it’s at six million, four hundred thousand.”
“And that figure is growing?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. A lot of refugees are still pouring into the county’s borders. And many of them come here to the city, where there is proper housing and jobs available. Eutstadt is well built, and we should be able to support at least two hundred thousand more by seizing more of the homes owned by major real estate corporations, but no more than that. We’re also having severe problems with the cramped communal housing we’re giving out since Districts 3 and 4 are now up to complete capacity. We don’t have many empty apartments there to repurpose into free housing.”
Countess Anne sighed.
“Unfortunately, this city can only really take so much, Your Majesty,” the old woman said. “When we developed it, we developed it as a future-facing port city. As Orland’s illustrious western gateway. Not a refugee camp for the Kingdom’s government and millions of people from the east.”
“I understand that,” Amelie said. “Is the city’s infrastructure still functional?”
“Yes,” Sofie said. “Though, our trains are becoming less on schedule, and are always at full capacity. During rush hours, our high-speed trains would be traveling at over capacity, literally jamming people inside like canned sardines, while the stations themselves would have huge queues.”
“And the influx of buses and cabs that you procured? Has it helped?”
“Barely. I’d say, compared to pre-war status, when public transport of the city was perhaps the best in Orland, it's nowhere near that anymore. It functions, yes, but it’s overburdened.”
“So that scheme also failed?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
Amelie sighed and went back down on her seat. There was still silence in the group, with her officials just silently watching their tablets and laptops for any updates. Amelie herself pondered about the state of Orlish cities as she turned her head to the glass windows.
Too inefficient. Amelie thought. Overburdened. Practically overpopulated because of war refugees. If Eutstadt, my Kingdom’s best city, is this awful…what of the rest of the country?
She tapped her pen on the table impatiently, waiting for the confirmation of the city’s complete evacuation underground. Fourteen minutes had already passed. While the screens showed that the streets were now becoming clearer, and the queues to the underground metros and shelters became shorter and shorter, there were still a lot of people outside.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Disappointing. Amelie thought. Beyond disappointing.
It didn’t matter if her air defense scheme was robust and capable in this case. Considering Eutstadt’s reputation of being the command center of the entire Mandate of Nations, she imagined that CFN ballistic missiles would be saturating the crap out of her capital just to murder it in the event of an exchange. Her generals in the OHC assured her that the air defense coverage in the County of Wittfield (and soon, the entire Duchy of Rimwurz) was close to ninety-five percent.
The problem was, what if the enemy launched one hundred ICBMs (or perhaps one hundred warheads from MIRV missiles) straight into Eutstadt? Amelie wasn’t a dumbass. She knew that’d mean that with the failure rate of five percent, there’d still be five nuclear or chemical warheads that’d detonate at Eutstadt.
And then poof! Half of six million souls will be gone!
“The evacuation has been finished,” Sofie declared, looking up from her tablet. “All of the six districts have been fully evacuated. District One was evacuated in six minutes, alongside District Two. Districts Three and Four were evacuated at the thirteenth minute. District Five was evacuated in the ninth minute. And District Six was the slowest, evacuated at eighteen minutes.”
“That’s…horrible,” Amelie said. Jacqueline nodded beside her.
“Yeah, we can’t have that,” the Prime Minister continued. “We’re going to need to lower that to at least six minutes.”
“Even six minutes isn’t enough,” Walter said, his cynical voice bleeding through again. “Realistically, any dumbass still outside by the fourth minute is going to be dead meat. While silos from Larissa and Hebei will take upwards of twenty to thirty minutes to strike us, Federalist missiles will only take five to ten minutes to reach us. Round that down considering the detection times, and reaction time from detection to emergency announcements…and ugh…yeah.”
“We also need bigger underground shelters,” Sofia said. “There are already reports of health issues in the metros with people fainting or whatever due to how cramped they are.”
“Even with the medical personnel we pre-positioned in advance?” Amelie asked.
“Well, realistically, we can’t have enough medical personnel to tend to six million people well. They’re pretty stretched thin.”
Amelie shook her head.
“Okay, what’s the summary of our findings? What do we need to improve?”
The mayor continued tapping on her tablet. She called on one of her aides to present something on the screens in front of them, and immediately, there were three bullet points present.
“Your Majesty,” the mayor started. “The three main things we’ve seen that need improvement…are those. First is the manpower of our emergency services. EMTs. Police officers. Firefighters. Specialized decontamination teams, search and rescue teams, etc are also needed. Police officers especially. We need robust emergency staffing that can quickly jump in and mobilize to direct the public.”
“I already expected that,” Amelie said. “But we can’t divert too many people from their jobs into emergency positions…hmm…perhaps a reservist system? Train people to immediately join our response units once called. Like, we don’t necessarily have to increase the number of police officers in the city, but we can train extras that we only call in the event of a massive emergency.”
“That might work. We’ll look into that. We’re already expanding the Eutstadt Civil Defense Force, with more resources, we can expedite that process,” Sofia said. “Next is citizen awareness. Too many people seemed to not know where to go or what to do. I think this is the easiest for us to tackle.”
“Spread posters everywhere, online campaigns, and monthly drills perhaps? Maybe do it district by district instead of citywide, so there’s less distraction.”
“That’s possible, Your Majesty. The next thing is the lack of underground shelters. We’d need enormous money for this. Constructing an underground shelter system that can keep and support six million people will be difficult. It’d be the equivalent of a megaproject that’d take a decade to finish.”
Minister Jan Sobiesky, however, grunted on the side.
“No worries about that,” he said. “Just mobilize enough steel, cement, and the like. Most Orlish cities have robust underground metros. While it’d take a year or two, if we can get the manpower and resources needed, we can turn those metros into relatively connected bunker systems. Quality of life down there will be abysmal, of course, but if we just renovate and expand them, we’d be able to support hundreds of thousands.”
“Not millions?” Amelie asked.
“Millions?” Jan’s eyes widened. “Well, you see, that’s delusional. Without proper distribution systems, no city can feed itself. Not especially one bombed into oblivion. Realistically, with space and stockpiles, and a few billions of investment for underground shelters, cities can only expect to support a few hundred thousand people for extended periods of time. The rest will have to be kicked out once the initial blasts are over.”
“So, we’ll only be able to shield them from the blast, but afterward, they’ll just what? Die to radiation, hunger, and thirst?”
“Well, they call it ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ for a reason, Your Majesty.”
The room fell silent again.
“In that case, we might as well let the rest of the millions just die to the blast,” Jacqueline said, her voice hollow. “I feel like it's more cruel to keep people alive from being vaporized, which is a preferable way to die to the alternative, and then throwing them out into a city turned to hell.”
“Not that you can kick those people out,” Walter said. “It’d be chaos. No human being will agree to that. The authorities in underground shelters will just face a bloodbath from millions of angry civilians who’d refuse to leave and not be fed. Order will break down within hours or days.”
“A nuclear exchange is meant to be an apocalypse after all,” Pristina added. “That’s why we have to avoid it at all costs. Better if we intercept all of their missiles if it does happen.”
“Failure rates exist, Minister Dubois,” Amelie said.
“I know, Your Majesty.”
Amelie tapped her pen on the table, taking the time to think for herself. Is this even worth it? What if all these efforts were just a waste of resources and would be something too disruptive to her war economy? But then, just distributing protective gear and calling it enough is disgusting. That’d still be the equivalent of letting people die.
She knew well that nothing was set in stone. No matter how much she would try to avoid an exchange, there was a chance of it happening. Considering she was at the helm, accepting that Orland and its people would be wiped out and doing nothing would be a crime to the Orlish nation, and humanity itself.
No…I don’t accept cynicism in my ranks.
“Everyone,” Amelie started, taking the attention of her officials. “Analyze everything. We need an action plan for what has happened today. You all know that we cannot accept having our people be wiped out in the event of the worst, no?”
All of her underlings nodded slowly to her words.
“Then, even if the measures we’ll have in place won’t be perfect, we need to have one. And we’ll implement it. In the event of nuclear war, at least a quarter of Orland must survive. Same with this city. Do something to ensure that.”