Red Storm Rising

I can still visualize the year 2004 sitting there in the laundry room at the Crossland reading that book again and still finding it fascinating after having read it so many times before over the years.

Even now I want to purchase another copy of it and read it, as well as "The Stand."

This reality must be fabricated. This MUST BE fabricated reality.










http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2006/jun/23/4

theguardian


The Lake House


Peter Bradshaw

The Guardian, Thursday 22 June 2006


There's only one problem with all this lovelorn loveliness, and it's not the plot-holes. Philistine non-romantics, male and female, will see it right away and be obsessed with it all the way through the movie. If you were corresponding with some sweet soul two years in the future, you might well find yourself writing: "Mmm. Yeah, Jane Austen's Persuasion is your favourite book?










JOURNAL ARCHIVE: posted by H.V.O.M at 1:07 PM Tuesday, May 08, 2007


This is that book I have written about several times. I noted that I have bought many copies of it. I bought a copy just after I moved out to Spokane Valley. I can also remember reading it just after I moved to Bellevue in 1998.


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JOURNAL ARCHIVE: posted by H.V.O.M at 1:07 PM Tuesday, May 08, 2007


Released August 1986

Red Storm Rising is a 1986 techno-thriller novel by Tom Clancy and Larry Bond about a Third World War in Europe between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces, set around the mid-1980s, probably in 1986 or 1987. Though there are other novels dealing with a fictional World War III, this one is notable for the way in which numerous settings for the action—from Atlantic convoy duty to shooting down reconnaissance satellites to tank battles in Germany—all have an integral part to play on the outcome. This is one of two novels that has no association with Clancy’s others, as it does not fall in the Ryanverse.


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JOURNAL ARCHIVE: From: Kerry Burgess

Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2006 6:06 PM

To: Kerry Burgess

Subject: Re: Journal June 25, 2006


Kerry Burgess wrote:


For several weeks, I have been thinking about this PC game I enjoy playing. It is named for Tom Clancy's book Red Storm Rising. The game is primarily about operating a wartime U.S. Navy submarine. We used to play this game when I was on the Wainwright. I remember one of my peers, the guy who supervised the search radar workcenter, was describing his observations of my game play. He commented that I always gave priority to the incoming torpedoes. I would always manuever trying to set up a deflection of the incoming. I thought a lot about his observations. Later it dawned on me that I was sacrificing accuracy of my own outbounds by maneuvering against the inbounds. My torpedoes were wire-guided and manuevering my sub increased the risk of breaking the control wire. They were self-guided but they were easier to beat when not wire guided. The concept being that if you can't hit the archer, at least try to throw off his aim. The downside, to me as the sub driver, was that I could potentially expend all my offensive weapons and have nothing to show for it.


[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 25 June 2006 exceprt ends]










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/79701/Clancy_-_Red_Storm_Rising.txt


Clancy Tom, Red Storm Rising


6 – The Watchers


"You do signal intelligence at NSA, right? You're one of the satellite specialists, I heard."

Toland nodded. "Ours and theirs, mostly ours. I see photos from time to time, but mostly I do signals work. That's how we twigged to the report on the four colonels. There has also been a fair amount of operational maneuvering done, more than usual for this time of year. Ivan's been a little freer with how his tankers drive around, too, less concern about running a battalion across a plowed field, for example."

"And you're supposed to have a look at anything that's unusual, no matter how dumb it seems, right? That gives you a pretty wide brief, doesn't it? We got something interesting along those lines from DIA. Have a look at these." Lowe pulled a pair of eight-by-ten photographs from a manila envelope and handed them to Toland. They seemed to show the same parcel of land, but from slightly different angles and different times of year. In the upper left comer was a pair of isbas, the crude huts of Russian peasant life. Toland looked up.

"Red Storm Rising"

"Collective farm?"

"Yeah. Number 1196, a little one about two hundred klicks northwest of Moscow. Tell me what's different between the two."

Toland looked back at the photos. In one was a straight line of fenced gardens, perhaps an acre each. In the other he could see a new fence for four of the patches, and one patch whose fenced area had been roughly doubled.

"A colonel-army-type-I used to work with sent me these. Thought I'd find it amusing. I grew up on a corn farm in Iowa, you see."

"So Ivan's increasing the private patches for the farmers to work on their own, eh?"

"Looks that way."

"Hasn't been announced, has it? I haven't read anything about it." Toland didn't read the government's secret in-house publication, National Intelligence Digest, but the NSA cafeteria gossip usually covered harmless stuff like this. Intelligence types talked shop as much as any others.

Lowe shook his head slightly. "Nope, and that's a little odd. It's something they should announce. The papers would call that another sure sign of the 'liberalization trend' we've been seeing."

"Just this one farm, maybe?"

"As a matter of fact, they've seen the same thing at five other places. But we don't generally use our reconsats for this sort of thing. They got this on a slow news day, I suppose. The important stuff must have been covered by clouds." Toland nodded agreement. The reconnaissance satellites were used to evaluate Soviet grain crops, but that happened later in the year. The Russians knew it also, since it had been in the open press for over a decade, explaining why there was a team of agronomists in the U.S. Department of Agriculture with Special Intelligence-Compartmented security clearance.

"Kind of late in the season to do that, isn't it? I mean, will it do any good to give 'em this land this time of year?"

"I got these a week ago. I think they're a little older than that. This is about the time most of their farms start planting. It stays cold there quite a long time, remember, but the high latitudes make up for it with longer summer days. Assume that this is a nationwide move on their part. Evaluate that for me, Bob." The colonel's eyes narrowed briefly.

"Smart move on their part, obviously. It could solve a lot of their food supply problems, particularly for-truck-farm. stuff, I guess, tomatoes, onions, that sort of thing."

"Maybe. You might also note that this sort of farming is manpower intensive but not machinery-intensive. What about the demographic aspect of the move?"

Toland blinked. There was a tendency in the U.S. Navy to assume that since they made their living by charging into machine-gun fire, Marines were dumb. "Most of the kokolzniki are relatively old folks. The median age is in the late forties, early fifties. So most of the private plots are managed by the older people, while the mechanized work, like driving the combines and trucks-"

"Which pays a hell of a lot better."

"-is done by the younger workers. You're telling me that this way they can increase some food production without the younger men...of military service age."

"One way to look at it," Lowe said. "Politically it's dynamite. You can't take away things people already have. Back in the early sixties, a rumor-wasn't even true-got started to the effect that Khrushchev was going to reduce or eliminate the private plots those poor bastards get. There was hell to pay! I was in the language school at Monterey then, and I remember the Russian papers that came through the language school. They spent weeks denying the story. Those private plots are the most productive sector of their agricultural system. Less than two percent of their arable land, it produces about half of their fruit and potatoes, more than a third of their eggs, vegetables, and meat. Hell, it's the only part of the damned agricultural system that works. The bigshots over there have known for years that by doing this they could solve their food shortage problems, and still they haven't done it for political reasons. They couldn't run the risk of State sponsorship for a whole new generation of kulaks. Until now. But it appears they've done it without making a formal announcement. And it just so happens that they're increasing their military readiness at the same time. I never believe in coincidences, even when I'm a dumb line officer running across a beach."

Lowe's uniform blouse hung in the comer. Toland sipped at his coffee and surveyed its four rows of decorations. There were three repeat pips on his Vietnam service ribbon. And a Navy Cross.



- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 7:30 PM Pacific Time somewhere near Seattle Washington USA Monday 06 January 2014