Founders: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

8. Monroe Doctrine

Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana

Late October, the First Year

Joshua was a lapsed Baptist. Since joining the Air Force, he had only rarely attended church, mainly when he was at home with his parents on leave. He felt guilty about his backsliding. He often made excuses to himself and others, citing his duty schedule and the long driving distance from his rental house to the Baptist church near Great Falls that he liked best. But the truth was that he missed the interaction with his family and his old friends in eastern Washington. He simply hadn’t made the effort to find the right church home near Malmstrom.

The same day that Joshua moved in, Jim took him aside and declared, “Let me lay down some Monroe Doctrine for you. I know you’re a Christian. I wouldn’t have blessed your marrying my daughter if you weren’t. But if you are going to live in my house, then I expect you to attend home church meetings with us. We take turns meeting at different houses with the Webber and Boskill families. The circumstances these days necessitate that one of us will have to be here to guard the house at all times. So on the Sundays when the home church meeting is over at the Webbers’ or at the Boskills’, then either you or I will take turns staying home. Otherwise, I consider attendance mandatory. Do I make myself clear?”

Kelly had warned Joshua that whenever her father used the “Monroe Doctrine” phrase he should take him very seriously. So Joshua replied, gravely, “I wouldn’t have it any other way, sir. You have my word that I will cease any backsliding.”

Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana

Late October, the First Year

Malmstrom was better prepared for economic collapse than most other Air Force facilities. It was located in a lightly populated region, so it was well removed from the urban chaos that engulfed many of the bases in the eastern U.S. and on the west coast. The base also had deep logistics stockpiles. The logistical redundancy was due to the climate, and partly because the base was spread out over such a large area of Montana.

The runway at Malmstrom had been deactivated from regular fixed-wing use many years before the Crunch, and repainted with herringboned rings of helicopter landing donut markings. The massive hangars that once handled maintenance and repair of KC-135 tankers mostly stood empty. But one hangar had been repurposed to hold a squadron of six-seat UH-1N helicopters. These twin-engine variants of the venerable Bell Huey were reliable, but in the years following the collapse parts shortages forced them to cannibalize two of the helicopters to keep the others flying.

Three weeks into the Crunch, all of the squadrons at Malmstrom were taken off alert status, primarily due to personnel shortages. In all, nearly 40 percent of the base personnel went AWOL, because their pay was essentially worthless, because they couldn’t obtain gasoline to commute, or because of worry for the safety of their family members. Of those who remained, most were soon put on “Special Reserve status,” which was a polite way of saying, “We can’t pay you, feed you, or house you, but we still need your help.” Watanabe was in this category.

Joshua was tasked with maintaining security of the A-01 MAF and its ten surrounding silos. To accomplish this, he drove the Monroes’ diesel Unimog to patrol the more distant silos, and rode his horse to the MAF and the closer silos except in the worst weather.

While many other Air Force bases were abandoned in the wholesale societal chaos of the Crunch, all of the bases that controlled nuclear weapons maintained some integrity. Brigadier General Anthony Woolson, the base commander, still showed up at his office every day to check the status of his dwindling organizations. The entire base command took on the name “Malmstrom Operations Group,” and the command structure was radically streamlined. There were no longer separate wings or squadrons, there was just “The Operations Group,” often simply called “The Wing.”

The 341st’s slab-fronted headquarters building had stylized 1960s architecture. The center section of the building had all glass walls. Because the power was frequently off, the remaining staff moved their offices to the center section so there would be enough light available to work. But after they spent the first few months bundled up in pile caps and parkas, General Woolson moved his entire staff to the 40th Helicopter Squadron’s hangar. The building had originally been designed for maintenance of KC-135s, so it was built on a grand scale. Following Woolson’s orders, the hangar had been retrofitted with enormous coal-fired space heaters situated in three corners of the building. The southwest corner of the hangar was dominated by a coal pile. This coal was shuttled to the heaters in wheelbarrows.

Locals had started mining a surface coal seam just west of Lehigh, a few miles southwest of Windham, and the coal was delivered in a five-yard-capacity dump truck that simply drove into the hangar when the main door was opened. The new coal mining co-op was thrilled to swap coal for JP-4, since they needed the liquid fuel to operate their heavy equipment. For lighting and for power to run tools and communications equipment, a 20-KW diesel generator set up outside was run continuously.

Most of the 341st’s offices were in trailers that had been towed into the hangar and clustered around two of the heaters. Because of the trailers and the coal pile, they never lost the feeling that they were camping out inside the hangar.

General Woolson’s office was spartan. A black-and-white still photo from the 1936 British movie Things to Come decorated the wall behind his desk. The photo showed a post-apocalyptic warlord chief in a crudely made Angora wool jacket, wearing a steel helmet, and holding a revolver. It was meant as a joke, but Woolson sometimes felt like the man in the photo, especially when the talk in the office turned to cannibalizing aircraft.

When the western power grid collapsed, the widely separated MAFs reverted to backup power. Their generators were fueled by tanks that averaged 1,800-gallon capacity. It didn’t take long for Woolson’s logistics planners to do the math and conclude that an order had to be given soon to shut down the backup generators. It was better, they concluded, to keep some fuel on hand for contingent needs rather than to run the tanks completely dry.

After the backup generators had been shut down, the MAFs became essentially uninhabitable. So Woolson’s command had to rely on volunteer “eyes and ears” to make sure that the unmanned MAFs and LFs remained secure from intrusion. There were surprisingly few security breaches. In the first year after the Crunch began, only two deserted but locked MAFs had their aboveground offices ransacked by looters. There were also signs of a halfhearted attempted forced entry at one of the silos at the far end of Judith Basin County, but given the design, whoever had cut through the fence soon gave up on attacking the massive door.

Farmers and ranchers on the land surrounding the silos and MAFs were deputized by the 341st. They were given written “authorized deadly force” orders for anyone making forced entry. Coordination of security for each MAF and its associated silos was made the responsibility of one senior airman, usually E-5 or higher. Joshua Watanabe was one of just two E-4s entrusted with this job. The only other E-4 who had been given the responsibility was a security forces specialist.