Chapter 155

I had missed having an opportunity to talk with Russia President Orbatch at the G20 meeting. He was hustled away quickly before any of the others left.

I read the report on Russia first; it was on top of the pile - it read like an obituary. After the loss of the carriers, things had gone downhill for Russia. The blow to the treasury was only the beginning.

The following year the locust devastated the wheat and corn crops. As a result there was little bread. Millions of cattle starved or were slaughtered early because the locusts had stripped the hay and grass. It was a situation that would take nearly a decade to overcome under the best of conditions.

Those conditions didn’t happen the following year; the seven year drought made an appearance and kept coming back. More cattle and hogs starved and slaughtered. The cheap beef and pork prices in Moscow would be short lived then no beef, pork, lamb or chicken.

The masses left the countryside for the Russian cities where there was at least rationed food. Many fell into the trap of the Russian mafia.

The government was unable to buy food and food stocks off the international markets. The treasury was empty, looted by decades of corruption. Industrialization was grinding to a halt.

There was a rush to find where the money was. The favored Russian oligarchs - many under the thumb of Putin - had grown fabulously wealthy as had he. When Putin died many of the oligarchs started disappearing, taking their wealth with them. Others started dying as mysteriously as he had.

They knew what a political power struggle in Russia could bring when the masses were hungry and looking for someone to blame. The rich were always easy to blame and targets for both the masses and the power brokers. It was time to get out of Dodge.

The gold, diamond and silver mines fell on hard times - more was being sold on the black market than through the markets for the treasury. Oil and coal was no different. It took money for payroll, parts and fuel, but the money was gone. Workers weren’t paid. First it was one week, the next time it was two weeks, and then it was over a month.

Gas, oil and coal rationing had started eighteen months ago.

History had a way of repeating itself in Russia. With every change of power, people died.

When Lenin died and Stalin took over, millions disappeared and continued to disappear. The Great War changed the victims - Germans, Japanese captured in Manchuria in the last days of the war and thousands of European prisoners of war - were forced into slave labor to rebuild the Motherland and then starved or murdered as the jobs were finished.

History repeated itself when Stalin died and Nikita Khrushchev won the power struggle; millions again disappeared in the middle of the night for years. There was no mercy for anyone believed to be the opposition.

Repeat again when Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev; not as bad but it still happened. Mikhail Gorbachev broke the mold, ending many of the older ways of the Soviet Union. The farms modernized with help from America as food production doubled. Rationing was eased and then eliminated.

The same was true with the petroleum industry. With engineering from Shell, Mobile and Exxon, Siberia oil fields were exploited. With the right equipment and methods the brutal Siberian winters were no more a problem. Russia became an oil and gas exporter to Europe.

Early on Putin followed Gorbachev’s lead; he had no choice as the Soviet Union had collapsed under Brezhnev. Ronald Reagan and then Clinton rescued the Soviet Union. There were loans, food and credit in exchange for dismantling old nuclear weapons. The Russian weapons grade uranium was still in the bunkers in the south west.

Putin brought much of the Soviet Union back though disaster still reigned, Chernobyl and its disaster would last a thousand years. Nuclear powered submarines with nuclear weapons on them were sinking from fires every few years.

Others were sinking at the docks with the reactors still in them and with nuclear fuel rods still in the reactors, the result of no crews or maintenance. There was no money to do the right things.

Then others were sunk because of faulty torpedoes. They used pure hydrogen peroxide as part of the fuel. Pure peroxide requires special tanks, lines, handling and storage. It was suspected that cracks were happening in those lines from stress and temperature changes, allowed leaking peroxide to drip onto the cast steel shell of the torpedoes - an explosive combination that caused the warhead to explode.

The Kursk was to be the last causality of peroxide torpedoes. After her sinking the change was made to front line subs. Others in the submarine service paid the price as time went by. Submarines in the reserve fleet did not get the updated torpedoes.

The thinking was the subs would not get used unless WW3 was in progress; then no one would care how or why the sub was sunk. They would be heroes for Mother Russia either way. The British had stopped using peroxide in 1955.

Russia was on the verge of total collapse again. Every state had stockpiles of nuclear weapons guarded by the army. But the troops were deserting or were resorting to selling military equipment on the black market. Nuclear triggers, switches, and wiring - even plutonium - was being intercepted by various countries as the materials made their way through Europe to Africa and South America.

The CIA and NSA promised unfolding disaster, although this year’s winter wheat crop had survived and showed marginal yields. The spring corn crop planting was on schedule. But it was only a start to a long term problem.