History of Essex (1983: Doomsday)

The history of the nation of Essex

Pre-Doomsday
The county was the site of the New Towns of Basildon and Harlow. Following the Second World War RAF Debden and RAF Wethersfield were used as sites for the USAF; also within the county were the airports of Southend and Stansted, which grew in size and significance at the end of the 1970s. However – and importantly – the county was home to a nuclear bunker in proximity to the village Kelvedon Hatch, which by the 1980s was intended for use by the British Government in case of nuclear war.

Doomsday
The county was struck hard by the events of September 26th. Eight nuclear weapons fell on the county:
 * London Southend Airport – 20kt
 * London Stansted Airport – 20kt
 * RAF Wethersfield – 20kt
 * RAF Debden – 20kt
 * Tilbury Port – 20kt
 * Bradwell Nuclear Power Station – 20kt
 * Coryton Oil Refinery – 100kt
 * Harwich and Felixstowe Ports – 100kt

The First Months
A week after the attack, however, the real danger facing the population grew obvious. Several thousand refugees had been forced to seek asylum in towns such as Brentwood and Billericay, or establish tent cities with dire living conditions. Immediately the government recognised the need to establish order, granting itself extreme powers to maintain order. Citizens were ordered to surrender any agricultural equipment to the government, which redistributed it across the county. Following this the emergency government sought to relocate refugees across Essex to create an agricultural workforce; when their numbers ran out, the government turned to volunteers and later still conscripts. Families were forcibly separated from each other and forced to work for long hours each day.

Those that refuse to work are shot and the bodies are deposited in isolated mass graves; indeed, all crimes are met with an order for execution – it is thought over a thousand people were summarily executed before the New Year. Further deaths were caused by fallout saturation over the southeast and northwest, and triage centres reported that a further sixty thousand people had to be euthanized. The cold winter only added to casualty levels. Ultimately, by the time of New Year, at least four hundred thousand people had died from various causes.

1984: In the Balance
The arrival of a New Year was not met well. Starvation plagued nearly seventy percent of the population with an estimated thousand deaths a day until March. The numbers of healthy newborn children, particularly in the fringes of the county, were tiny. Many were dying of diseases caused by the presence of rotting corpses.

Nonetheless, there was some optimism. A tentative food dispersal network had been established across the county, ensuring that food stocks were being adequately resupplied across the county. The government was also considering inaugurating itself as a legitimate successor state to the UK – the Interim Nation of Essex. Finally, the military had managed to western secure a border across the A10, preventing rogue scavenger groups from attacking border villages. This vague stability gave much-needed morale to the workforce of the county – or country, as it became on Midsummer’s Day that year.

But the summer turned out to be bleaker than hoped. Radiation clouds from the centre of England caused small but noticeable levels of irradiation of the crops and population, which – coupled with the excessive heat of the nuclear summer – caused a wave of deaths and a subpar harvest. The total population fell to around half its pre-Doomsday level, roughly 650,000.

In an attempt to restore morale to a depressed and suffering populace, the government began a search for talented performers and entertainers. Taking to horse-drawn carts, parties of these entertainers – Entertainment Brigades – toured the villages and towns of the countryside and gave uplifting performances. But, just as much as the scheme raised the morale of the population, it horrified the performers. Many of them, drawn from the weakened but generally better-off towns, were shocked to see the variety of injury and suffering in the agricultural population.

1985-1990: Struggling for Survival
In 1985 the government concocted a scheme that it was hoped would restore the confidence of the population and begin the restoration of some semblance of pre-Doomsday life in the country: the return of electricity.

Teams of engineers were removed from their agricultural duties and in co-ordination with the military ordered to find a way to use the wind- and watermills across Essex to generate electricity. After three months of scavenging, construction, and repeated failure, power was finally restored in May 1985 in the village of Churchend. Though the generator failed just a few days later it was quickly repaired with the vast amount of spare material accumulated through scavenging – material that was later put to use in other mills. Soon, several villages and towns had intermittent electricity; throughout the year these were installed in still further locations, mostly around the major towns of Chelmsford and Colchester.

But it was far from the new dawn the government had expected. Food supplies were still on the edge of total failure, deaths still continued to occur, and the levels of water in the Hanningfield and Abberton reservoirs remained precariously low. In an attempt to pool the strengths of the agricultural population and secure the aid-dispensing process the government spent the remainder of the year marshalling the communities of the countryside into cooperatives, each sharing living space within a mansion or a cluster of houses to promote community and the sharing of resources.

The scheme worked, though at a cost. Many people began to take to the fields willingly, out of duty for their comrades, rather than being forced at gunpoint to work. However, the brutal way in which the government had handled the scheme – simply dividing families and friends and carting them off to their new homes – caused many people to view the government as trying to destroy familial bonds out of goodness for the state. Those already separated from their families were forced to accept that they had no hope of ever seeing their loved ones again.

The following half-decade was long and painful, but by its conclusion a series of successful harvests had been reaped, mostly ending starvation. Casualty rates had severely dropped and the number of successful, healthy pregnancies was slowly increasing; by 1989 the population finally began to grow again. Chelmsford and Colchester were both supplied with round-the-clock electricity thanks to the huge numbers of wind turbines constructed in and around the towns, allowing small light industrial operations to take place producing much-needed agricultural equipment.

But the government was growing zealous. Seeing its economic success at home it began to plot its expansion westward and northward, uniting the populations there under the banner of the Interim Nation of Essex. To launch an unprovoked expansion, it knew, would still be dangerous and unpopular amongst the population of Essex; it needed a catalyst, a means of justification. Fortunately for the government, such an opportunity was on its way – but its consequences would be far from beneficial for the cadre of six hundred officials stationed within the bunker of Kelvedon Hatch.

The Slave Wars and the Revolution of 1990
In November 1989 a nomadic clan strayed across the A10 border and stumbled across the village of Chishill, where a military detachment was working on installing a generator in the local mill. The clan were surprised to find the village occupied and with fairly ample food stocks after the harvest, and moved to contact the village authorities. Military units at the location misinterpreted – or claimed to have misinterpreted – the weapons the clan were carrying as intent to raid the village, and immediately opened fire. At least ten of the clan were killed, who retreated into the countryside.

Later that afternoon they returned with a white flag – but the rest of their attempt went wrong. Again returning in numbers, but this time spaced out, the group approached at dusk. The local military command assumed that the clan was about to launch a sneak attack, and reopened fire. This time the clan tried to defend itself, managing to kill seven of the local soldiers, but lost nearly all of its surviving members. Those who came out of the second attack were all tracked down by the morning and presumably tortured for information.

Using the news acquired from the survivors and adopting the attack as a pretext the government made public its plans for a ‘westward expansion’ to gain resources and ‘return those lost in the chaos of rural England to the peaceful civilization in Essex’. Over winter troops were trained and stationed along the A10, preparing to launch their campaign. Beginning on the Winter Solstice nearly a thousand soldiers were deployed into neighbouring Hertfordshire with orders to ‘arrest any and all rogues’ within the ex-county and transfer them to Harlow for processing and resettlement. Though a winter campaign was a major risk and a strain on supplies it caught most of the local communities off-guard and actually brought positive face for the campaign. The Minister for Essex called the mission ‘deliverance for the beleaguered population who have for too long been beyond the embrace of civilization’. However, his eloquent words were nothing but a disguise for the truth of the matter – the captured survivors were being used as slave labour to help fell the few remaining forests in the county to use the wood as fuel, along with a plethora of degrading and difficult jobs.

And the suffering of the slaves remained unknown for over a quarter of a year, until well into March. The population, fed a steady supply of lies from the state-controlled Essex Chronicle and via deliberately-spread rumours, could not have guessed that the several thousand ‘colonists’ were in fact slaves forced to work in the dangerous northern and southern parts of the country. Unseen by the general population hundreds of people died as they were forced at gunpoint to run dangerous scavenging and salvage missions into Southend; at least twenty four drowned in the freezing waters of the River Chelmer as they repaired the lock system.

The news might not have been revealed had one slave, Sandra Phillips, managed to escape from her holding one night and escape to Chelmsford where, by sheer luck, she managed to rendezvous with a pre-Doomsday friend, Kathy Lewis. Laying low in her friend’s house Phillips explained the story of her capture and forced labour at the hands of the military; unsurprisingly, the news quickly spread. A small group of civilians led by Lewis soon lobbied a military group over the usage of slaves. Realising the news had gotten out the soldiers were forced to kill.

But the news was beginning to spread, and the government’s brutal repression only hastened its progress. Soon all of Chelmsford had heard the news, and most of it believed it; less than a week after the incident its ramifications were being discussed in all quarters of the county. The Minister of Essex was forced to make a statement at first denying the usage of slavery, and later promoting the reasons he had made the decision – but none listened. Military units were attacked in the street in a series of progressively worsening riots. In mid-April a daring raid was maid by a defecting military unit on Harlow, destroying the slave management centre and prompting unrest that caused massive damage to the town. This was the beginning of the end for the draconian and authoritarian laws of the government.

Soon the government had lost control of the towns and had been forced to withdraw the army from Hertfordshire to try and keep control of the countryside – and this only worsened the situation. Much of the military was sick of the way they had been used as slave-drivers and revolted in favour of the slave population. In May the government’s control was reduced to a tiny triangle around Kelvedon Hatch, and after losing a decisive battle at Stondon Massey even this tiny pocket of land was denied to them. Taking whatever supplies they could find they retreated to the nuclear bunker, swiftly followed by the dissenting military. This began a six-month siege – six months that many in the bunker would never see the other side of.

Throughout Essex thoughts now returned to not just farming for the present, but governance for the future. It was clear that to avoid a further disaster from occurring in the future a far more transparent government was needed; one that was incorruptible, and one that served to aid the population rather than oppress them. Initially this took the form of councils within the communes, later expanding to regional assemblies from elected representatives. But despite being completely run by the people there was no real unity amongst the assemblies, and there were fears that rivalry for the resources left over from the ‘Old Government’ would reignite conflict within Essex.

The new Mayor of Chelmsford, seeking to avoid such a conflict, dispatched invites to the various assemblies to dispatch representatives to Chelmsford as it refurbished the old County Hall. In its first meeting, on June 21st – six years since the foundation of the Interim Nation of Essex – the new government voted unanimously to dissolve the old nation and form the Combined Communes of Essex, with its new flag the traditional Essex banner. This three-level system of governance designed around a wish for a minimum of bureaucracy managed to serve the population well, both in the passage of ideas and the handout of supplies and aid.

In September that year the siege ended early, with a number of staff within the Kelvedon Hatch bunker attempting to escape and defect. When the Old government guards saw the escapees they opened fire, killing them; the sound of gunfire drew the patrols of New Government soldiers in to investigate, resulting in a brief battle. The attackers took casualties from the Old Government traps and well-planned defence measures, but ultimately prevailed and extinguished the resistance. Deciding that the siege had gone on for long enough the troops rushed into the bunker, forcing their way down the 130-metre entrance corridor against heavy resistance until they managed to reach the main blast door. The platoon of attackers managed to stop the door from closing and rushed in, apprehending the staff inside the bunker and forcing them out.

The fall of the Old Government brought cheers across Essex, not least the ex-slave populations that had settled across the country. The ruling elite were put on trial and found guilty of ‘crimes against the people’, and offered a choice between execution and exile to the irradiated Canvey Island. Most chose the latter, and in late October were ferried out to the island and forced to dig a moat deep enough to ensure that they were isolated even at low tide (Canvey Island being a tidal island); following this, they were abandoned with scant supplies and left to their own devices. Dark though the chapter may seem, most Essex citizens still agree that the move was more than justified given the injustices the Old Government had committed.

1991-2000: The Brightening Years
Following the turmoil of 1990 the new nation looked forward to a year of peace and stability. For the first time since Doomsday their wish was answered fully; 1991 saw no major conflicts and only a few dozen skirmishes along the A10 border. Much of Essex spent a peaceful year in the fields, resulting in the most successful harvest since 1983, while the reformed military assisted in construction of large wind farms to restore almost total electricity supply across the country. Overgrown roads were cleared; Epping Forest was replanted to cover the entire area between Harlow and Waltham Abbey as a contingency plan for future fuel supplies. The winter passed quietly, with only a minor spike of casualties from malnourishment or exposure to the cold.

The situation for 1992 was blissfully similar. (In fact, this good luck served to reignite some faith in organised religion; the number of churchgoers tripled in 1992.) With food surpluses increasing, radiation levels slowly falling, and the life expectancy rising, the Combined Communities of Essex was able to consider for the first time a return to some semblance of industrialisation. The first step was to create a company of engineers and other skilled labourers to begin work on repairing and rebuilding various structures across the country, resulting in the creation of the aptly-named Construction Corps, which at formation possessed some seven hundred members. As resources were pooled plans were drawn up for a series of large scale engineering projects, including a relay of fortresses along the A10, the renovation of a number of abandoned and overgrown roads, and even more large-scale projects such as the construction of a huge lagoon at the mouth of the Blackwater and the reconstruction of Southend.

By 1993 the first of these projects began, with the construction of a system of forts linked by a railway along the A10 frontier. Railways leading into London were stripped and reused for the construction project, and a network of wind farms were used to electrify the track. Assisted as usual by the military the project ran fairly quickly, providing a wave of excitement across Essex as they saw the fruits of democracy. The brief spurt of isolationism between communities following the fall of the Old Government quickly collapsed to increasing levels of trade – something which would have far-reaching effects.

The Rejuvenation of the Towns
Trade between the cooperatives was clustered in the larger towns, especially in Colchester and Chelmsford. A barter system developed, but the homogenous goods soon cut demand. Enterprising craftsmen from the towns and communes began to pool their experiences to create tools to sell to passing traders in the towns; the moderate lack of farming equipment in the countryside drove demand for professionally-built tools through the roof. Craftsmen soon found that their produce sold for far more than they needed; their surpluses of acquired food, they realised, could be used to pay other people to work for them, further increasing profits. Workspaces were taken over and refurbished, generally abandoned houses that were hollowed out and used as small-scale factories, and then employees began work whilst their employers salvaged or purchased usable resources.

Some artisans were incapable or reluctant to work in the production of agricultural equipment, but had other talents to turn to. As trade brought wealth to a variety of individuals demand for decorative goods grew. Performers that had been passed over by the Entertainment Brigades found new demand for their talents in the wealthier cooperatives, or gave independent productions at repaired theatres. Trained educators found themselves paid to work as tutors or run boarding schools. Artists produced new works; the scarcity of paints drove the value of proper paintings (as opposed to sketchings) to the point of being some of the most valuable items in the economy.

There was an inevitable dark side for the new explosion of mercantilism. All the goods had to come from somewhere, and though Essex was well stocked (and half empty) there could always be more supplies from somewhere. The greatest source: London.

Exactly how many raids were made from Essex across the M25 frontier and into the maze of rubble heaps and derelict buildings that city had become remains unknown, but it is estimated that well over a hundred occurred from 1993 onwards. Scavenger parties would brave local tribes and the threat of radiation to steal valuable items. Missions generally lasted from single nights to weeks of scavenging. Whilst parties were there it was well known – and later testified – that they would assault, rape, and murder local survivors before making off with goods. By 1996 these raids were common knowledge, and the numbers of guards along the southern M25 frontier had increased, but bribery and luck still allowed a small number of these parties to continue. But the raiders had their comeuppance; by 1998 the London clans had had enough of the raiding and briefly set aside their differences to lay an elaborate trap for the raiding parties. In February 1998 a Basildon-based raiding party was captured and slaughtered, their bodies hung over the major avenues of raider transit. The hangings continued until, by October that year, the incursions ceased and the London communities returned to their own affairs.

First Contact
Essex’s first contact with an organised nation came indirectly in 1999. A single helicopter was spotted, passing close to Chelmsford, seemingly en route to London. A few days later the same craft was spotted on a similar course back the way it came: towards Ipswich and Suffolk. The event came late in the year, and Essex authorities – still wary of the effects of raids into the surviving outskirts of London – decided that rather than send troops into potentially hostile London, they would dispatch an expeditionary force northward in the new year; this would also give the chance for any nation to the north to make further exploration south.

During the wait, however, concerns were raised; a nation with the capability to operate helicopters, it was feared, must be reasonably well armed and could even possess the capability to launch bombing runs on Essex, against which the nation had no defence. Though it was decided the mission would still go ahead, as the winter continued the government and military began to press for a continually larger and well-armed force to be dispatched.

The mission finally began in March, with nearly two hundred soldiers and envoys and a large baggage train of supplies following the A12 from Colchester and towards Ipswich. Encountering no resistance as they passed the Alton Water Reservoir they continued on, eventually establishing a camp outside the A14. Medical concerns were raised, as weather patterns predicted fallout from the Felixstowe/Harwich bomb would have been deposited in noticeable levels in the area, but RADIAC readings suggested that the area was fairly safe. Taking refuge in the abandoned village of Copdock the troops weathered the night and prepared to enter Ipswich.

The first scouts in the city reported it empty and with heavy collateral damage, presumed to be caused by years of gang warfare. As the following parts of the military moved in, leading the baggage train, several small skirmishes broke out as raiders attempted to attack the party. However, no significant resistance was encountered – until the Essex party entered the town centre.

Unbeknownst to them a Woodbridge scout party was in the town at the same time, with strength of roughly eighty men on a routine annual examination of the state of the town. Seeing a well-armed, extremely large, and hitherto unrecognised group enter the town the scout party assumed that it was a new rogue army unit on the scene, and radioed for advice on how to proceed.

In a spectacular case of bad timing a new clan entered the scene, launching a massive attack on the stationary Essex soldiers. Woodbridge troops approaching the Essex detachment assumed that the battle was actually between their own men and the Essex troops, and rushed to attack. Only when they realised that it was in fact another clan attacking did they change the direction of the fire; but by that time the confusion had resulted in a mad three-way melee, the chaos only increased by additional members from other raiding parties arriving to investigate the slaughter.

By mid-afternoon the fighting had subsided with heavy casualties to all sides. The Essex unit, battered and shocked at the unexpected resistance that had resulted in over fifty deaths, decided to send a small group with a white flag towards the main enemy group: the Woodbridge camp.

The Woodbridge troops were unused to seeing white flags – raiding parties tended to fight to the death. Taking in the Essex troops and interrogating them, they soon learned of the misunderstanding and offered to send what was left of their aid to help the Essex casualties. Soon the leaders of both parties were meeting on terse but peaceful terms in the centre of Ipswich and apologies were swapped. Agreeing to establish radio contact and with their casualties collected the two parties then departed to their home bases on marginally friendlier terms.

However, the initial misunderstanding soon turned to warm friendship after repeated radio contact between the two nations. By September the first earnest trade parties were being dispatched, crossing the Orwell Bridge (which had survived the years without maintenance) with messages of goodwill, people searching for separated family and friends, and a few envoys who would make frequent reports via radio. Since then the two nations have cooperated in restoring the bridge and the road link between their nations, increasing levels of trade and allowing families and friends to be reunited. As their first foreign contact and with extremely close proximity the two nations have extremely close contacts, and indeed Woodbridge has been a vessel through which Essex has learned of other nations such as the Celtic Alliance, East Britain, and indeed the world at large.

New Millennium, New Dawn
The arrival of the year 2000 was met with great applause across Essex. A decade of peace and the end of extreme poverty had given the nation the strength it needed to secure its national identity and solidify its position as a regional power. The A10 railway had been completed and extended along the M25 frontier; the Osea Island Reservoir had been constructed on the mouth of the Blackwater, and reconstruction efforts were beginning on Southend. The Construction Corps was now ten times its original size, allowing it to rapidly demolish and concrete over Southend, sealing the significant irradiated material (chiefly at the airport) underground.

The reconstruction of the town was the first time the Corps had been given a truly free reign. Teams of architects had designed open, grassy plazas and wide residential zones on the fringes of the city, leading towards a vast area of untouched space for future industrial and commercial projects, before the huge port complexes gazed out across the Thames Estuary. Many of the buildings are constructed from wood or concrete, though the abundance of materials left over from the demolition of the city are also used. The consequence is that, to this day, buildings in the city possess patchworks of older masonry for when wood or concrete could not be sourced.

With Essex firmly in control of its fate, the government turned its attention to the lands outside of the frontiers. Very little was known of London thanks to the silence of the raiders, and the population of Hertfordshire had been without aid for a long time. Some yearned to explore even further, to restore pleasure yachts and fishing trawlers and investigate the shorelines of Kent and even the Low Countries. Unsurprisingly, plans like these – at least in any official capacity – were shelved by the government, who wished to focus on exploration closer to home and supply of aid. In 2001 exploration parties were dispatched in Hertfordshire and London laden with food supplies and medical equipment.

Unfortunately the Essex explorers were not particularly welcome at either destination. Communities in Hertfordshire still remembered the slaving expeditions a decade before, and in London survivors had all-too-fresh memories of raiding parties. Only protracted diplomacy was able to convince the survivors in both locations of the humanitarian intentions of Essex.

Following the establishment of cordial relations the exploration parties sought to make themselves truly welcome. Engineers were recalled from the Corps to help locals with reconstruction processes, chiefly through generator instalment to provide power, but also a variety of other means. Community centres were re-established to promote cooperation between the clans of London, and in Hertfordshire the clearance of overgrown roads won the affection of the locals by greatly easing trade between rural communities. The London clans were extremely grateful for the external aid, given that it ended nearly a generation of warfare that had destroyed much of East London, and many chose to establish their own councils and an assembly within the area. One of the most endearing memories Essex citizens have of the stabilisation of London is The Embrace, a famous photograph of a husband reuniting with his wife who had been stranded on an Essex business trip after Doomsday. Essex citizens were proud to know that they had helped to save and rebuild lives in the irradiated cesspool of London.

2005-2008: Fall of a Golden Age
The height of Essex’s fortunes came in 2005. Three years had passed since the effects of radiation contamination were noticed to have been rapidly falling and the fallout levels in the dangerous northwest and southeast were confirmed to be decreasing. The first television station reopened, broadcasting from the civilianised Kelvedon Hatch Bunker, simply named ‘The Channel’. Its first news report is interrupted by news that the population of Essex has finally surpassed one million again thanks to a combination of deformation-free childbirths and a steady flow of refugees from Hertfordshire and London. Many of these new citizens were given the chance to settle in Southend to work for opportunistic artisans keen to capitalise on the imminent rush of naval activity in the town.

However, the peace and prosperity of 2005 would mark a high point in Essex’s history. A lower harvest than expected that year caused some concern over the future of the now-heavily populated nation and the progress of rebuilding of the London and Hertfordshire protectorates. The following winter was harder than usual, with instances of starvation noticed in the Harwich area. As 2006 approached people remained optimistic, expecting that things would improve. In fact, it would see the most unexpected event in the nation’s history.

The government had finally decided to go ahead with plans to create a navy. Locating old boats and refurbishing them a small fleet of armed exploration vessels appeared in the marinas of Southend, with an entire warehouse converted to serve as the Essex Navy’s HQ. The first mission given to this navy was to land on the Isle of Sheerness in Kent and make contact with any survivors, a task which was received with great enthusiasm. A force of six vessels, with seventy men between them, was dispatched in April. They did not notice a single powerboat follow out behind them.

At 10:00 AM the taskforce radioed across that it had landed safely; three of the ships and their crews had gone ashore, whilst the remaining three were remaining out in the bay. HQ was about to respond with instructions when the radio suddenly died. Initially at a loss to the cause, the sound of an explosion prompted the commanders of the operation in Southend to rush to the shore, just catching a three hundred metre-wide plume of water crash back down into the estuary. A town-wide evacuation was ordered as a five metre-tall tidal wave smashed onto the shoreline, severely damaging the new docks and drowning dozens of engineers working on repairing the Southend Pier.

In the aftermath of the blast the government desperately tried to piece together the cause of the disaster. It was eventually realized that the source of the explosion was the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery, which had been lying since 1944 in the estuary with at least one and a half thousand tonnes of explosives onboard. Why the explosives had detonated remained unknown, until it was discovered that just prior to the blast one vessel had been reported stolen. In an effort that involved all the resources of Essex police it was discerned that somehow the Canvey Island Exiles had managed to escape, steal a boat, and deliberately ram it into the wreck. The public call for retribution was all-encompassing; military units were deployed on the island and rapidly hunted down and executed the surviving exiles. Meanwhile, the new navy turned its attention to trying to locate survivors from the attack. Another taskforce, this time of three ships, was dispatched, after the marinas had been locked down to ensure no possible further attempts at attack. The landing parties discovered the wrecks of all six ships, as well as several hundred bodies. It was realised that the attack had not only obliterated the entire taskforce, but also claimed huge numbers of civilian lives in Sheerness. Downtrodden and regretful, the taskforce returned to silence.

The attack set the mood for the rest of 2007 – quiet, conservative, cautious. No major acts were passed by the Council; no radical increases in healthcare efficiency were made; no large expeditions were made into unknown territory. The year was spent in catatonia, as the nation recovered from the shock of what could only be described as a true terrorist attack.

As the population entered 2008 people once more began to look up, but without the same optimism they had carried in the previous decade. The Construction Corps returned to its project of rebuilding the Southend Pier and also made the radical moves of proposing a pair of hydroelectric dams; one from the Osea Island reservoir to cut off the rest of the Blackwater Estuary, and the other across the River Crouch to supply Southend with a surplus of energy for a planned future industrialisation.

But the country was reaching a bottleneck; building materials were running short in supply, and there were requests to formalise Essex’s control over London and Hertfordshire to secure mining and scavenging capabilities. Calls for armed explorations were heeded, and in October 2007 an expeditionary force was dispatched to secure a base in Luton.

The Black Winter and the War of 2008
News from the force never arrived. More than five hundred men simply disappeared in the unexplored regions beyond the Hertfordshire protectorates. A radio breakdown was impossible, since the force was carrying five and a simultaneous breakdown of all of them was inconceivable, leaving only one other explanation: the force had somehow been destroyed in one swift movement.

Paranoia began to set in across the Hertfordshire protectorates. Troops were shifted to the A10 fortresses (now known simply as ‘the frontier’, given that the entire road had been mostly overgrown), and patrols within Hertfordshire increased. Radios were dispensed to the local communities, and were ordered to make at least twice-daily call-ins to announce their presence and any suspicious activity. Even if it wasn’t directly threatened, every part of Essex was afraid of the mysterious threat in Hertfordshire.

But nothing came before winter – a winter that was unusually cold. Snow fell across the country, but especially on the paranoid communities of the border, who spent every night fearing an attack. In January their fears finally came true, but on a scale beyond their imagination.

Between January 7th and January 19th communities in Hertfordshire were ravaged. Every night another community would vanish and fail to respond to radio transmissions, and in the morning patrol parties would find it deserted, ransacked and in varying states of decay. A week after the attacks began a platoon dispatched to locate the attackers was found the next morning with wounds from both gunfire and hand-to-hand weaponry – and another village had been attacked. The news was kept secret, but spread panic throughout the military, which were nervous to deliver the news to the government; with no state secrecy act there was a full chance that the news passed to the highest echelons of power would spread quickly through the government and into the general population. However, when on the final night one of the border fortresses was destroyed and the enemy managed to cross the Frontier to ravage the villages surrounding Bishop’s Stortford the army knew that the danger could not be concealed.

The news brought panic to Essex. With news that several thousand people had disappeared in wake of the mysterious attacks the population implored the army to fully mobilise and head out to Luton, where the problems had begun. More than ten thousand men and women were called into service, and a government notice was released calling for citizens to hand in any weapons and armour they possessed, from hunting shotguns to air rifles to medieval suits of armour. The army was fully aware that they were dealing with an enemy that seemed to possess both modern firearms and older hand-to-hand weaponry, and had to be prepared for every opportunity. The main taskforce, of five thousand troops, would lead a campaign towards Luton to find what they could of the original taskforce, and establish a base at the town. The remaining troops would fan out to establish a safety net around the countryside.

They arrived in the town to discover it under the tyrannical rule of the ‘True British Army’, a racist and despotic horde of ex-military and ex-police units several thousand strong that terrorised and intimidated local populations into submission and supplying resources. Reporting back to Essex the army was given express orders to take any means necessary to return the kidnapped Essex citizens ‘up to and including destroying the local regime’.

The first act of the army was to launch a dawn raid into Luton, targeting anyone carrying a weapon and fighting into the town hall, where the English Empire had established control. The local governors were snatched and brought back to the camp, where they were subjected to brutal but justified torture to extract information on the whereabouts of the Essex citizens. Learning that the prisoners had been taken to Milton Keynes, the effective capital of the ‘Empire’, the Essex troops prepared to set out the next week. However, as they waited they also learnt of the nature of their foe: teams of highly mobile and independent soldiers that patrolled several counties, stealing from the local population and demanding seemingly unachievable quotas of crops to support the military. At the same time these disparate and rogue groups could rapidly reform into organized and disciplined military divisions to resist enemies and conquer territories, inspired by their fierce devotion to a cadre of ‘general-governors’ – in other words, warlords.

Now aware of their foe, the Essex troops set out. But the Empire was prepared. As the army marched up the overgrown M1 they were ambushed by a force almost twice their size. Losing four hundred men – a third of their force – the Essex army was left with the dilemma to either continue into hostile territory or return to Luton and regain strength, whilst the Essex citizens suffered.

Eventually, it was decided to press the offensive. The battle had inflicted massive casualties on the enemy and it was decided that continuing the march would be preferable. Resting overnight in an embankment on the M1 they prepared for a dawn assault on February 29th. As the sun rose eight hundred Essex soldiers rushed the defence perimeter of Milton Keynes in silence, only making sound as they reached the outskirts of the town.

The crack of gunfire ripped across the town, rousing imperial troops who soon rushed to the streets with whatever weapons they could find. But by nine o’clock Essex troops already held the decisive advantage, holding most of the city’s outskirts, and were launching a massive assault on the city centre. As the imperial salient turned to a bulge and finally a pocket as an Essex pincer movement successfully encircled the surviving imperial troops they found themselves low on supplies and morale, as they were slowly routed from controlled streets. Despite intimate knowledge of their ‘throne city’ the imperial troops in Milton Keynes found themselves continuously retreating as hand-to-hand fighting for every house, shop and tunnel emerged. Eventually it was the Essex troops’ superior weaponry and tactics that prevailed, and as dusk set in the makeshift palace at the heart of the town was assaulted by Essex troops.

Forcing the empire into dissolution before executing the elites of the True British Army, Essex troops set about establishing control of the local area and defending against reprisals from imperial thugs. Radioing news of their success back to Essex the army then set about assisting the citizens of Milton Keynes in rebuilding their shattered city, and offered the locals the opportunity to immigrate to the borders of Essex. Several thousand agreed, and convoys of refugees prepared themselves along the M1 – soon joined by six hundred rescued Essex citizens, freed from a slave compound at Astwood. Remaining kidnapees were tracked down and by the end of the following year all those kidnapped by the True British Army had been returned, bar just under a hundred casualties.

End of a Decade
The return of the troops on March 7th brought cheers throughout the county. Triumphantly crossing the A10 Frontier and marching into Chelmsford the battered army (just over a third its original size) accepted the highest praise from local citizens and government officials. As the news rolled across Essex celebrations were held; the Essex Chronicle printed a special edition (simply entitled ‘Heroes’) to celebrate the return along with a comprehensive obituary for every casualty of the war.

The fever of patriotic pride was slow to lose its hold on Essex, and the successful harvest that year added to national fervour. The colonists from Milton Keynes added a much-needed element of dynamism into the slowly stagnating Essex professional circles, whose fresh ideas and willingness to work redoubled work on public projects and the restoration of services in Hertfordshire and London. New border stations were consolidated to repel the infrequent border raids from ex-imperial thugs, and a comprehensive road and rail grid was rolled out across the entirety of the areas claimed by Essex. The country was growing closer once more; and, as usual, it felt the need to explore.

The Navy, now freed from the guilt of its first mission, resumed exploration efforts upstream into the Thames, and out across the Thames Gateway. A few efforts were even made to scout out the coast of Europe, though little of consequence other than a few fishing communities were found. Content with their knowledge for now, Essex citizens returned to focusing on the future of their small nation.

Today, the primary causes of debate within the country are focused on the establishment of a currency other than bartering to maintain stability in bad harvests – the likes of which were suffered in 2006/7. Other proposals involve reconstructing the towns of Hertfordshire, to turn introduce industry into the ‘frontier breadbasket of the country’. Most residents are content to avoid major upheaval however, and instead focus on regenerating the severely damaged ecology of the area, working to reconstruct forests and the hedgerow food chains to reduce the need for the severely strained stocks of pesticides. It is hoped this will allow the nation to create adequate food stocks to destroy starvation once and for all, and provide a solid currency for any future trade opportunities with population centres in England with access to important minerals.

The current great project run by the Construction Corps is the establishment of running water and sewers across the new nation, rather than the mix of reservoirs, piping, and water-trucks that deliver the liquid to more isolated communities. It is hoped that by 2011 running water will be established in every property throughout Essex, a further step in removing starvation and helping agriculture. Once more the large-scale engineering projects of reservoir and hydroelectric damn construction are being seriously considered with resources from ‘trans-Luton’ trickling in. Opinion polls held in December 2009 show that the almost universal view for the next decade is optimistic.