So our first message to Terra, at 0200 13 Oct 76 seven hours after they invaded, not only announced destruction of their task force, and denounced invasion for brutality, but also promised retaliation bombing, named times and places, and gave each nation a deadline by which to denounce F.N.’s action, recognize us, and thereby avoid being bombed. Each deadline was twenty-four hours before local “strike”.
Was more time than Mike needed. That long before impact a rock for a target would be in space a long way out, its guidance thrustors still unused and plenty of elbow room. With considerably less than a full day’s warning Mike could miss Terra entirely–kick that rock sideways and make it fall around Terra in a permanent orbit. But with even an hour’s warning he could usually abort into an ocean.
First target was North American Directorate.
All great Peace Force nations, seven veto powers, would be hit: N.A. Directorate, Great China, India, Sovunion, PanAfrica (Chad exempted), Mitteleuropa, Brasilian Union. Minor nations were assigned targets and times, too–but were told that not more than 20 percent of these targets would be hit–partly shortage of steel but also frightfulness: if Belgium was hit first time around, Holland might decide to protect her polders by dealing out before Luna was again high in her sky.
But every target was picked to avoid if possible killing anybody. For Mitteleuropa this was difficult; our targets had to be water or high mountains–Adriatic, North Sea, Baltic, so forth. But on most of Terra is open space despite eleven billion busy breeders.
North America had struck me as horribly crowded, but her billion people are clumped–is still wasteland, mountain and desert. We laid down a grid on North America to show how precisely we could hit–Mike felt that fifty meters would be a large error. We had examined maps and Mike had checked by radar all even intersections, say 105° W by 50° N–if no town there, might wind up on target grid . . . especially if a town was close enough to provide spectators to be shocked and frightened.
We warned that our bombs would be as destructive as H- bombs but emphasized that there would be no radioactive fallout, no killing radiation–just a terrible explosion, shock wave in air, ground wave of concussion. We warned that these might knock down buildings far outside of explosion and then left it to their judgments how far to run. If they clogged their roads, fleeing from panic rather than real danger–well, that was fine, just fine!
But we emphasized that nobody would get hurt who heeded our warnings, that every target first time around would be uninhabited–we even offered to skip any target if a nation would inform us that our data were out-of-date. (Empty offer; Mike’s radar vision was a cosmic 20/20.)
But by not saying what would happen second time around, we hinted that our patience could be exhausted.
In North America, grid was parallels 35, 40, 45, 50 degrees north crossed by meridians 110, 115, 120 west, twelve targets. For each we added a folksy message to natives, such as:
“Target 115 west by 35 north–impact will be displaced forty-five kilometers northwest to exact top of New York Peak. Citizens of Goffs, Cima, Kelso, and Nipton please note.
“Target 100 west by 40 north is north 30° west of Norton, Kansas, at twenty kilometers or thirteen English miles. Residents of Norton, Kansas, and of Beaver City and Wilsonville, Nebraska, are cautioned. Stay away from glass windows. It is best to wait indoors at least thirty minutes after impact because of possibility of long, high splashes of rock. Flash should not be looked at with bare eyes. Impact will be exactly 0300 your local zone time Friday 16 October, or 0900 Greenwich time–good luck!
“Target 110 W by 50 N–impact will be offset ten kilometers north. People of Walsh, Saskatchewan, please note.”
Besides this grid, a target was selected in Alaska (150 W x 60 N) and two in Mexico (110W x 30 N, 105 W x 25 N) so that they would not feel left out, and several targets in the crowded east, mostly water, such as Lake Michigan halfway between Chicago and Grand Rapids, and Lake Okeechobee in Florida. Where we used bodies of water Mike worked predictions of flooding waves from impacts, a time for each shoreline establishment.