Literature / War Day

Warday is a novel by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka. It was first published in 1984 and deals with slightly fictionalized versions of the authors traveling across the United States in 1993, five years after a limited nuclear war, to conduct a series of interviews, studies and research. Written in first person, the book is meant to give the impression of what a postwar future would be like. It is notable for its abundance of Author Tracts and containing numerous documents from the world it depicts.

Warday was supposed to be the start of a series, but subsequent projects were abandoned, and Strieber instead turned to writing about his alleged personal encounters with aliens. He did later also collaborate with Kunetka on the lesser-known 1986 novel Nature's End, but it is not related to Warday.

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This book provides examples of :

• 20 Minutes into the Future: While the book is set only nine years into the future, there are quite a few technological and societal differences between 1984 and 1993:
  • Obviously the whole nuclear war thing. It actually starts because the Soviet Union had been backed into a corner by the Americans' new antimissile system Spiderweb, which appears to be Strieber and Kunetka's interpretation of the Strategic Defense Initiative program, announced in 1983 but ultimately never implemented.
  • Chromotherapy has apparently been proven to be a viable medical treatment, as an expert of the new nonspecific sclerosing disease claims that "color therapy utilizing so-called pink light" has been used in slowing down the disease in individuals.
  • The United Kingdom has a King by the winter of 1988, meaning Queen Elizabeth must have died or abdicated. The Labour Party has ceased to exist, having been replaced by the Social Democrats. Also, a maglev train has been built between London and other major cities in Britain. There are also television sets that one can talk to when wanting to order goods and services. Finally, there exists a Concorde II supersonic passenger jet, capable of flying from London to San Francisco in seven hours.
  • The Japanese fly fighter planes with forward-swept wings and "drumming"-like engine noises; it's possible that Strieber and Kunetka got their inspiration from the Grumman X-29, which first flew in 1984 but had only two examples built. The Japanese also employ at least one completely automated whaling ship on the Gulf of Alaska.
  • Something called "purple bombs" have rendered Ukraine incapable of supporting vegetation.
• After the End: In the United States (and the Soviet Union) people are trying to survive in the aftermath of a "limited" nuclear war.
• The Alleged Car: Quite a few characters comment on the sub-par quality of the (fictional) Chevy Consensus, which has plastic windows and doors, yet costs more than a quality Toyota 4xD Timbre, which most Americans nevertheless can not get ahold of.
• The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: Lampshaded in-universe. One character remarks that before the war he felt a nuclear holocaust would be a good thing as it would fix the things he disliked about society. 5 years after his wishes came true, he mentions that he was foolish for believing so. Played straight with other characters. One character mentions that prejudice and bigotry after the nuclear holocaust is better than it was before it as everybody was in the same boat more or less, trying to survive.
• Apocalypse How: Class0 Regional/Societal Disruption
• Apocalypse Wow: Whitley Strieber's Author Avatar relates his first hand experience of the war in New York at the beginning of the story.
• Artistic License – Law: In reality, Under Secretaries of any department are not part of the United States presidential line of succession, meaning one could not have become President through legal means. A workaround would be one getting confirmed as a Secretary, which would then make them the President, but since Warday has the Congress get wiped out as well^note Also, if there were a Congress, either chamber could elect a Speaker of the House of Representatives or a President Pro Tempore of the Senate. Both outrank all Secretaries in the line of succession, meaning either one would become President instead., one could not be confirmed, so this is also not possible.
• Balkanize Me: The Soviet Union is described as having broken apart completely, with numerous successor states in its former territory. Of these successor states, at least Azerbaijan enjoys diplomatic recognition from the the United Kingdom.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Strieber has bought a 1975 Dodge, as it is old enough to not have electronics advanced enough to have been destroyed by the electromagnetic pulse on Warday. It cost him two years to raise the money for it.
• The Captain: Among the people that Strieber and Kunetka interview is Captain Malcolm Hargreaves of the Royal Navy. His actions against the Soviet Typhoon-class submarine Teplov saved the lives of approximately nine million people, as the submarine was minutes away from launching its arsenal against the western United States, still very much recovering from Warday.
• Cool Train: A Japanese businessman by the name of H. Tanaka from the Nippon-America International Rail Corp. describes a relatively detailed plan to build an underground maglev train from Los Angeles to Bakersfield to Oakland to Seattle. He claims that the train would have a mind-numbingly fast maximum speed of five hundred miles per hour, and scoffs at the 60 m.p.h. Superliner he is riding on.
• Crapsack World: About a third of the American (and possibly more of Soviet) population was killed in the war and the aftermath, if you are not from California you are an illegal alien, one of the main characters is triaged (barred from medical treatment) due to the level of radiation he has received, etc.
  • In addition, children with major birth defects from radiation are routinely subject to euthanasia.
• Deadly Dust Storm: A regular occurrence in the American Midwest by 1993, with crops and vegetation having been destroyed by Soviet warheads on Warday.
• Decapitation Strike: So much of the presidential order of succession was wiped out on Warday that the Under Secretary of the Treasury becomes President in the aftermath. The edition of The New York Times that Striber reads after Warday in bombed-out New York also claims there is no Congress either. The Supreme Court is also wiped out, though at least the state of Illinois still abides by its pre-Warday rulings.
• Deus Angst Machina: Due to the "limited" aspect of the war, only three US cities are directly nuked: Washington DC, New York, and San Antonio, TX (as James Kunetka is from San Antonio). However, the EMP detonations cause huge damage to infrastructure all over the place.
  • Questions about the probability of San Antonio being nuked are hand-waved by implying that the Soviets nuked it because of the air force base there, and because they bet that the Americans would not expect it.
• Different World, Different Movies: A couple of fictional pieces of media published after 1984 are mentioned, such as a 1986 film called Jury of One starring Paul Newman, an album named Dream Along by David Bowie, and another named Persistence of Vision by Brian Eno. Meryl Streep has turned to theatre, and directs and stars in a play named Chained, which is banned in California.
• Evil Brit: What Strieber and Kunetka's anonymous Destructuralist interviewee thinks of the British. According to her, the British (and other Europeans by extension) occupied Argentina after Warday, in order to steal their wheat for themselves and for the American survivors, which then caused hundreds of millions of gratuitous deaths in Latin America.
• Failed Future Forecast: No nuclear war actually occurred in 1988, obviously.
• Fallen States of America: California and the other West Coast states have closed their borders, parts of New Mexico and southwestern Texas have become the separatist country of Aztlan, and much of the eastern seaboard is uninhabitable.
  • Other parts of the US are implied to be slowly breaking away - Texas is planning its own currency, and Washington and Oregon have a joint legislature.
• Ghost City:
  • New York City. It had about nine million inhabitants in 1988; by 1993, it has about seven thousand, with another twenty thousand living there unauthorized.
  • Litchfield County, Connecticut historically had about 150,000 inhabitants in 1980. Strieber and Kunetka hear that in 1993 it has only about a thousand, of whom a further twenty percent are barred from receiving medical care.
• Global Ignorance: Doctor Walter Tevis roasts Strieber and Kunetka on their ignorance of what terrible things have been happening elsewhere in the world after Warday. At another point, a fellow train-passenger from Canada gives them a bitter jab about their admitted ignorance of his country's fate.
  Tevis: [T]he USSR has lost close to half of its population. [...] Then there’s China. India. Bangladesh. Do you know about them? About the fate of the world, my friends? There has been a great reduction in the numbers of humanity on this planet.
• It Is Beyond Saving: What the Destructuralist movement thinks of American society after Warday.
  Anonymous Destructuralist: We say that the whole social edifice, from the Boy Scouts right up to the Army, is essentially an addiction, that it is more than unnecessary, it is dangerous. Social structures are the breeding ground of ideology, greed, and territorialism.
• Japan Takes Over the World: Unsurprisingly played straight, since it is a 1980's book. There is also some Britain Takes Over the World in there too for good measure. The 1993 United Kingdom is rich and high-tech; essentially what the United States could have been, had the nuclear war of 1988 not happened.
• Just in Time: Years after the war, the Royal Navy patrols the seas, destroying rogue submarines. When it detects a Typhoon-class SSBN, it attacks it and damages it, causing it to surface and surrender. They discover that it was just moments away from launching a nuclear strike on North America, one that would've been worse than the 1988 one.
• Mexico Called; They Want Texas Back: Some of the people Strieber and Kunetka interview think this is what is happening with the breakaway state of Aztlan, as it is run by Hispanics. However, Aztlan foreign minister Hector Espinoza later says in his interview that Aztlan is absolutely independent from Mexico, with immigration laws stricter than those of Texas.
• Mockumentary
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Strieber and Kunetka interview Dr. Walter Tevis, an economist who works at Berkeley in California. He was offered a position at the London School of Economics, with triple the salary and free medical care. His refusal is pretty much this trope encapsulated.
• No Party Given: Played straight with the 1988 President and several other characters, but averted with Governor Oliver Parker of Texas, who is explicitly stated to be a Democrat (or at least having been one in 1988).
• One-Steve Limit: Averted, as there are three individuals named White; former Under Secretary of the Treasury and current Acting President White, Governor of California Mark Campbell's assistant Harold White, and former Governor of Texas Mark White. There are also Strieber's son Andrew and Prince Andrew, who came for a charity visit to the town of Baldwin, Pennsylvania after Warday.
• Orbital Bombardment: Both sides utilize spaceborne weapons on Warday, with the Soviets nearly taking out the American missile silos with their space nukes.
• The Plague: The Nonspecific Sclerosing Disease, which has a fatality rate of one hundred percent. Adults who catch it are given advice on how to take their lives, while children under twelve years of age who catch it are forcibly euthanized. One of Strieber and Kunetka's interviewees speculates that it might be the result of a bioweapon, as it spreads in a manner that appears to stem from the environment and not from peer-to-peer interaction.
• Revolving Door Revolution: According to Governor of Texas Oliver Parker, Mexico has had eight revolutions in five years since Warday.
• Russia Called; They Want Alaska Back: A bunch of Russian military vessels docked in Anchorage, and Russian submarine crews regularly steal food and other supplies from coastal settlements in Alaska. Subverted, however, in that all that this causes is Canada taking over Alaska in 1992, citing security concerns; they do pay the United States thirty-five million gold dollars for the state.
• Secret Police: The California Immigration Police may arrest any person who is in the state illegally, as Strieber and Kunetka personally find out when sneaking into San Francisco International Airport. A sham court sentences them to two years of hard labor to be deported afterwards, but they successfully escape from the prison transport bus.
• Shout-Out: While in California, Strieber and Kunetka come across newsstands carrying two separatist journals named Westworld and Ecotopia.
• Tuckerization: Authors Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Walter Tevis^note he actually died the year the book was published appear in Warday as minor characters; the former as a San Francisco detective, offering her assistance to Strieber and Kunetka due to their pre-Warday acquaintance, the latter as an economist at Berkeley in California.
• Unexpected Successor: The Under Secretary of the Treasury ends up being the self-described caretaker President, as he had been holidaying in Key Largo, Florida. (Note that in real life, this office is not in the official chain of succession.)
• Western Terrorists: The Destructuralist movement, which believes people should have in-groups no larger than their extended family.
• Winged Humanoid: An urban legend Strieber and Kunetka encounter in California describes a seven-foot-tall bat-like monster with sharp talons and huge glowing red eyes. It is reportedly often seen on the roofs in populated areas at night. This evokes The Mothman somewhat, but instead of just being a harbinger of doom, this creature attacks people and steals children off to the sky.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: After Warday, there have been a couple of children suffering from something called the hyperintelligence syndrome. These children are often fully aware of their surroundings at birth and can vocalize and move their limbs in a coordinated manner at the age of just a few hours. Some of them read Shakespeare at three. The oldest is proficient in four languages, has a deep understanding of mathematics and physics, and is looking forward to being accepted to Oxford University at the age of seven.
• World War III: The overall theme of the book, though the exact terms "World War III" or "Third World War" do not appear a single time.
• You Are Too Late: The Soviets prepare to hit the U.S. with a nuke from outer space using a military satellite disguised as a communications satellite. As soon as the U.S. finds out the satellite's true purpose, they destroy it. However, it is too late, as the satellite fired its weapon just moments before it got destroyed. The Soviet nuke detonates miles above North America, causing an EMP effect that wipes out the electrical grids of much of the U.S. and Canada.

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