The Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap/Tennessee

Part of the Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap Project.

Internal Memo: Tennessee Field Office

Tennessee was one of the lucky ones. The only city to get nuked inside the state borders was Oak Ridge, with surrounding areas receiving mild to moderate damage. Fallout from the Oak Ridge, Huntsville and Atlanta bombs has made western Tennessee into a hazard area, which wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that more than half the state's power plants are completely inaccessible without protective gear. All three of the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) nuclear plants are offline, and looters managed to swipe all but a few control rods from the Browns Ferry and Sequoya sites, meaning that getting them back up is next to impossible. The Browns Ferry site is completely bent due to its proximity to Huntsville, but it is thought that the plant may be largely untouched by looters.

It's surprising - and fortunate - that no one would nuke Nashville. Other than the electricity shortages, water shortages and famine, things seem to be going pretty swell. This is generally true across eastern Tennessee as well, though some of the smaller rural towns seem to be doing even better than their urban neighbors. With the US oil infrastructure down, most of the fossil fuel plants aren't running at all, forcing reliance on the limited number of hydroelectric dams. Additionally, most of the power lines and electrical transformers got fried by the EMP, and replacing them has been pretty slow-going.

Water, luckily, isn't an issue. The Mississippi River is almost completely uncontaminated, mostly due to the fact that its source, Lake Itasca, is in Minnesota, which is miraculously nuke-free. Although the river itself runs near several nukes, any irradiated debris from the St. Louis, Paducah, Cincinnati and Portsmouth bombs seem to have been swept out to the gulf, making the Mississippi one of the cleanest rivers in the Continental US.

Politically, Tennessee is mostly homogeneous. Although fighting and raiding occurs between isolated towns, most of the area around Nashville is united under the Governor and the General Assembly, which stepped in as the top-level ruling body after the state lost contact with Washington. Officially, Tennessee is affiliated with the CGUS, owing largely to the patriotic attitude of the state's citizens, though the state itself is mostly self-sufficient, relying on the CGUS mostly for trade.

While Tennessee allows CGUS military forces to station themselves inside its borders, the state rarely needs them, owing to a well-trained and well-armed militia acting under the authority of the Governor. This militia, known as the State Guard, occupies all abandoned military installations within Tennessee's borders, including the Milan Army Ammunition Plant. Most of the military properties in Tennessee were under the control of various rebel factions for the first two years following the bombing, but these have all been driven out. The State Guard first and foremost a peacekeeping force, operating only inside Tennessee.

Although they are not as cooperative as we might like, Tennessee is a considerable ally. Recruiting numbers, while relatively low compared to other territories, are steady, and their militia has been very useful in the past. Their proximity to Virginia means they have great strategic value, as a MGUS-controlled Tennessee would mean a great deal of trouble for us. Eastman Chemical Company (ECC)operated an extensive manufacturing plant in Kingsport, located in the upper northeast corner of the state. Historically, this site has been converted to military use for the production of high explosives, as was the case during WWII. Perhaps more importantly, BAE Systems maintained a site previously known as the Holston Army Ammunition Plant in close proximity to the ECC site. The Milan Ammunition Plant is also an important asset, since it is capable of producing a large quantity of explosive munitions; the sooner we can restore or convert these assets to full production capacity, the better.

Mr. Adrian S. Holland,

Special Agent In Charge, Tennessee Field Office, Department of the Interior