What if Washington or London were destroyed?

[Destructionator XV]

First, I apologize if this is the wrong forum, but I think this falls under politics.

I am trying to think out succession in my fictional universe, and I asked myself the question of what would happen if the capital were to be lost, and to answer it, I figure looking at the real world should give some clues.

Say Washington, DC were to be destroyed with all the federal government there, all killed. Like a nuke dropped on it or something. What would happen to the US government?

I think that the Cold War got us ready for that possibility; I'm pretty sure the government would be taken over by a group of military officers in an underground bunker (Cheyenne Mountain or something like that) at least in the short term. Does the civilian line of succession go to anyone outside Washington with the loss of all the cabnient, House, and Senate? But what happens then? Getting elections going for everyone would take some time, and without the established government, I imagine it there would be some level of chaos and panic, though perhaps the individual states could keep things under control on their own while the federal government is rebuilt (by the military or the states?).

What if a similar thing happened in the UK, with London being nuked or whatever killing their whole government and most, if not all, the Royal Family? What would happen to Parliament? The monarchy? Would the resulting chaos be any better or worse than the US? (Discount the economic aspect here; London is a more major city than Washington in itself, but I want to focus primarily on the government) My guess is the monarchy would fall to whatever surviving member is in the line; even if that means going down to a third cousin twice removed or some such absurd distance, who would then have to maintain order while rebuilding the rest of the government. How far does the line of succession go?

EDIT: I focus on the US and UK because I am an American anglophile, and thus my mentioned fictional government is in large part based on them, but if you happen to know what any other country would do in a similar situation, that is good too.

[Batman]

I take it that we are to assume for the purposes of this scenario that the entirety of the Cabinet, House, and Senate are within the AOE of the attack and none of them lives (same for the UK government)?

[Destructionator XV]

Yeah, basically none of the federal government remains. (Or whatever country you want to talk about; I say US and UK, but the scenario can apply anywhere).

[Narsil]

The United Kingdom would likely devolve into its original four nations, and England would probably be the one that lags behind. England, unlike the other three countries, lacks its own separate parliament. The three countries will likely to move to elect their own leaders, and trouble starts from there. Feuding is unlikely, but constant mistrust and anarchy will be something of an issue. People don't react well to the deaths of 3,000 people, and tend to wage war and become McCarthyist because of it. Imagine the rolling effect of around 7,000,000 deaths in a country that's about one fifth of the size.

The royalty, however, is going to have much more widespread damage. It'll essentially effect Canada, Australia and New Zealand along with the United Kingdom, albeit to a lesser effect.

[LadyTevar]

((No, this did not belong in News & Politics. MOVED.))

[frigidmagi]

First off the entire of the federal government is never all in Washington D.C. That's by design. There is always at least one member of the Cabinet outside of D.C in the event of D.C being wiped out, the survivor is the President and his job is to reassemble the Federal government, he is aided in this by the fact that our military command sturcture (the Pentagon) isn't in D.C. In the event of such an attack the Dictatior Clause is automatically triggered and given to the surivivor until the next regularlly scheulded election, which cannot be canceled by anyone... Legally anyways.

No clue about London.

[LadyTevar]

Yes, the Pentagon is in Arlington, not DC.

HOWEVER, Arlington isn't far enough away from DC to matter, in fact it's all but part of DC anymore due to sprawl and the layout of the roads. By subway, it's not 30 minutes from one end of the DC sprawl to the other.

[frigidmagi]

Given that blast radius of any nuclear weapon likely to catch us with our pants down the Pentagon is indeed far away enough to matter. The brass will evac but they'll be alive and the command sturcture of the military forces will be intact.

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

Given that blast radius of any nuclear weapon likely to catch us with our pants down the Pentagon is indeed far away enough to matter.

Use two nukes, then.

[frigidmagi]

See now we're branching out, this is suppose to be an attack on the city not a wide spread brawl designed to take out the command.

[Batman]

I wonder why I even bothered.

[Destructionator XV]

Aye, I was curious what would happen if the head, if you will, were to be lobbed off the country.

But since the government is more spread out (location wise) than I thought, it looks like we would be able to carry on in just about any semi-realistic situation.

Interesting what Narsil said, though I'll have to think about it more and come back to comment later.

[Josh]

Aye, I was curious what would happen if the head, if you will, were to be lobbed off the country.

But since the government is more spread out (location wise) than I thought, it looks like we would be able to carry on in just about any semi-realistic situation.

Interesting what Narsil said, though I'll have to think about it more and come back to comment later.

Yup, exactly. The Cold War and the late unpleasantness have given rise to many, many, many contingency plans.

In addition to the presidency being passed on to the surviving cabinet member, the senate and the congress can be reappointed from individual states and districts. In light of the circumstances, it's strongly likely that for the most part the representation would be apportioned in accordance with the party ratio at time of the blast (it'd be political suicide for either party to try to abuse the situation and stuff the delegations).

It'd hurt, no denying that. We'd lose a lot of Federal infrastructure that would likely take years to recover, but we've got things well enough decentralized that we could essentially take a hit like that and come right back in the functional sense.

That's one of the reasons I'm such a big fan of decentralization- if you have a knock-out spot, sooner or later someone's bound to hit it.