Note: there's a bit of an Evangelion spoiler at the bottom.

   From: "Erin Mills version 2.5" <MILL0622@Badger.Snow.edu>
   Date:          Sat, 13 Apr 1996 12:27:12 MST/MDT

   All right! 
       Apparently I didn't make myself clear enough. "Aftermath" IS a 
   STORY! I am NOT writing a political epic on the stupidity of nuclear 
   war! If my facts are screwed up, SO WHAT!

The "SO WHAT" (as far as I'm concerned) has to do with "the duty of
intellectuals to be intellegent."  By incorporating known lies and
propaganda into your story, your are furthering a morally questionable
enterprise.  I would hope that such a potential for moral complicity
would give you pause....

   My intention here was to write a entertaining fanfic, not cause a
   big debate on what nations can blow the living hell out of each
   other!

"Ideas have consequences."   

(BTW, writing something that sparks debate is not a crime in my book!)

   I'll admit the whole U.S.- China thing came from a newspaper
   headline I saw a few months back, but other than that, there is no
   basis in fact that I know of.

I'll certainly agree that nuclear war between the US and China within
the next quarter century is a prospect worth worrying about, and it
would have bad consequences for Japan (depending on what's downwind of
the Chinese hard targets that would require high fallout producing
ground strikes).

       I appreciate the C&C but I really don't want to spend six months 
   researching the causes

People are historicly prone to kiling each other---nothing new here.

(What's unsusal is the restraint shown up to now; the world owes the
Japanese a lot for providing a couple of object lessons so stark that
they, plus the threat of "Massive Retaliation" from the US, have
prevented nuclear weapons from being used in anger since then.)

   and effects of nuclear war.

This is relatively exotic.  Still, "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons" by
Glasstone? should be available in any library, and couple of evenings
spent with it would put you on a far firmer foundation.

   If anywhere something doesn't fit with your facts and research,
   consider it a plot device. As I said half-jokingly in an earlier
   post, I am a theatre major, not a political science, science or
   physics major.

And I don't think you have a duty to become an *expert* on the
subject, but I do think you have a duty to be minimally accurate.

       I just want to explore an intriguing idea in Ranma fanfiction.
       Or should I just stop right now, while I'm ahead?

Nope, this has possibilities.

If it wasn't necessary for Akane to not get to the shelter in time,
I'd just advise being as unspecific about the cause and details as the
first two Mad Max movies were.

In this case, its more difficult.

One possibility is to shift the cause of the disaster:

It could be magical, and Cologne could be shelter provider.  The
anti-nuke crowd would still (correctly) see it as an allegory of
nuclear apocalypse, and you'd side step lots of problems (like the
fact that Japan isn't big on Civil Defense).

(A rather amusing fanfiction (unfinished, as I remember) has the
crowd gathering at the Tendo Dojo with it's old fallout shelter (built
back in the 60s or so); it reads very much like a nuclear survival
drama, but the threat is uniquely Ranmaesque.)

It could be cosmic: alien attack, asteroid or comet strike,
etc. (although the latter two wouldn't get you the mutants).

It could be genetic engineering/bio warfare and/or nanotech based,
but that's even more exotic and speculative....

Evangelion spoiler below


























>From what I've heard on the net, Evangelion is a combination of alien
invasion (maybe, or something like that) and genetic engineering, with
results that more dire for the human race that "Aftermath."

The really frightening thing is that I think it's akin to what I
expect to be one of the *better* possible outcomes of the development
of nanotechnology....

					- Harold