Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1536266
such as fire brigades or militia formations. Complementing this were military units designated to operate on the so‑cal‑ led internal front – the Internal Defense Forces and Territo‑ rial Defense Forces. How realistic were the chances of surviving such a war? In the event of the use of nuclear weapons on Polish terri‑ tory, at least one hundred warheads of various yields would fall. The scale of direct casualties would certainly exceed one million people – both fatalities and the wounded. To that must be added those harmed by radioactive fallout (including from explosions outside Poland). In addition, the number of victims would grow by those unable to receive aid (due to illness, wo‑ unds, or other reasons). After all, peacetime healthcare would cease to exist. Help could only reach those lightly affected, whose treatment would be the easiest. There would also be indirect losses resulting from post‑nuclear‑war conditions, such as limited access to food or long‑term climate changes; infant mortality would likely rise, and cancer incidence would become far more common. Industrial, transport, and commu‑ nications infrastructure would be destroyed, so, for example, there would be no way to quickly resume drug production or rebuild hospitals. The challenge might even be burying hundreds of thousands of dead. Fortunately, that extreme scenario was never tested. It should be added that the PRL's civil‑defense system was… a system created in the Polish People's Republic – a state of perpetual shortages and other problems. One can, however, state that after a full‑scale nuclear war, the challenge would be ensuring the survival of the state in any form. That apocalyptic scenario faded into history with the end of the Cold War. The End of the Cold War and the Shift in Focus Political changes, both international (above all the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War) and domestic, me‑ ant that the given system of civil defence (CD, OC in Polish) simply became a relic of bygone times. Formally, civil defense existed, but increasingly only on paper. More important and urgent was the reform and modernization of rescue services and the creation of a crisis‑management system. The defect of the PRL's inherited CD system was that it was prepared for only one scenario – a major war. Meanwhile, the emer‑ ging crisis‑management system by definition covered a broad spectrum of peacetime threats. As a result, there are now no separate regulations concer‑ ning civil defence. Thus the question arises – what if the war were to start now? What if, for example, a salvo of Russian cruise missiles were to strike an object, say the Sejm and go‑ vernment buildings, and some of those missiles hit residential buildings in Warsaw? www.fragoutmag.com