Lawrence, Kansas (1983: Doomsday)

Excerpts from a Scottsbluff Star-Herald article dated August 25, 1996:

''Lawrence, Kansas, was one of the largest cities in the former state of Kansas, 25 miles east of Topeka and 41 miles west of Kansas City, Missouri. It was the home to the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University. Lawrence took severe damage on Doomsday from the Kansas CIty and Topeka blasts; radiation, disease and starvation killed off most of the populace and refugees from outlying areas.

The hundreds of people who survived into summer of 1984 were discovered after a ham radio operator at the university contacted a ham radio operator in Scottsbluff. They were told that people had survived in western Nebraska, and instructed on how to get to the town; Scottsbluff medical personnel and law enforcement would meet them halfway, at the Kansas-Nebraska border.

The vote was unanimous to abandon Lawrence and head for Scottsbluff. Nearly 200 of the 936 people who began the trek died during it. One of the survivors was Karen Hargreaves, a nursing student at the University of Kansas during Doomsday. She was interviewed by the Star-Herald in 1986. Hargreaves passed away yesterday at the Medical Center from leukemia; she was 33 years old.''

''Karen Hargreaves (KH): ...we were watching the Emmy Awards on TV. Well, everyone else was, I was studying for a quiz. Amy (a fellow nursing student) shouted 'Oh my god' and that got my attention. The newscaster was...frightened. Said something about missiles headed for New York and Washington. Then the picture, I don't know, melted away? And the screen went dark.

Then, you heard the loudest BOOM, the loudest explosion you will ever, ever hear...the room shook, and...and we thought a plane might have hit the campus. I ran outside with Amy and the other students in my dorm, and...we saw the sky lit like at sundown, and the mushroom clouds sihouetted against the sky.....I have never seen a more frightening thing in my life....

(Hargreaves broke down and began to cry. The interviewer handed her a handkerchief, and waited as she composed herself. A few minutes later, she continued)

KH: ....I'm sorry, it's just so....if you want to know what hell looks like, I saw it in those bombs. If you want to know what living in hell is like....Lawrence was hell. I'm amazed we survived.

(Hargreaves on the masses of refugees pouring into Kansas that next week)

KH: The people poured in, and they poured in, and more and more kept showing up...everyone was recruited, including nursing students, as medical personnel. I know that the head of the school of medicine, and the chief of the medical center were coordinating with the people at Memorial Hospital. We did our best but we got overwhelmed, and there wasn't enough medicine to help everybody....

....it got to where people were dying of diseases that before you could have simply cured. Like meningitis. The radiation got a whole lot of us, that and the diseases they came down with were too much for a lot of people to handle.

Something else was the lack of food. There were fights all over town over food, and I remember one afternoon the football team and other athletes ganging up on the, I think, journalism students? Or was it science?....over food. Gunshots were fired. They were geeks, but whoever they were, they took down half the football team. We travelled here, with some of those guys. I mean, the geeks. I felt safe.

(Hargreaves on the decision to leave Lawrence):

KH: I remember it was July, and we barely had enough food left until August. People were trying to grow food but it just wasn't working. One of the guys I saw taking on the athletes that day was operating a radio, and tried every day to get someone. He never did until the day before we left...he spoke to someone here, and found out from them that Scottsbluff had survived and was in a position to take refugees. He told them about us, and the guy came back with I think it was the mayor, and the mayor told us how to get to Scottsbluff. Dr. Jung, who was sick, and Professor Williams said we were on our way. Some people wanted to take a vote. Everybody voted to leave in a show of hands. There was nothing for us in Lawrence. Nothing.

....we went up, on foot, on horse and on the few military vehicles that still had gas. We went past Manhattan, which was abandoned but somebody had left instructions on how to get to Scottsbluff....it took us 14 days to get to where we were supposed to meet them, in Superior, along the border. And we had to travel in the early morning and late evenings, and rest during the biggest part of the day because it was so damn hot that year. We lost 100 some people getting to the border....

We finally got to Superior, on the other side in Nebraska, and saw a bunch of military trucks waiting for us. I never felt so overwhelmed with joy. I broke down, weeping....(she pauses, and wipes some tears with her hankerchief)...all I felt was joy. In that godforsaken part of the world, all the bombs went off, everything we knew was gone, and I felt joy because for the first time in months I felt hope. A nurse and a soldier picked me up and gently led me into one of the trucks...she wiped my tears, asked me how I was doing, and if I needed anything. I said no, I was fine. She said to stay there and rest, we'll be going home soon...they filled everyone up in the trucks, and we took off. We saw our first people other than them, and anyone from Lawrence, in Hastings. We drove up the interstate through Kearney, North Platte, Ogallala, Sidney, then turned into Kimball, where they stopped for the night and fed us at the local high school. The next morning they drove us up into Scottsbluff, and took us to the shelter.''