Odd Treasure Troves
 

Along the lines of Last Voyage of USS RAZORBACK I thought it might be a good idea to post some ideas for odd treasure troves.

The following is a real world example I was exposed to in the mid 90's. On the 34th floor of an office building in downtown Chicago with a room sized safe containing between 201 and 1300 (2d6*100 + d100) high end desktop servers. The servers were being preloaded with software before being shipped to retail automotive repair locations as part of an intranet development.

The status of the servers would of course depend on the Effects of EMP within your game, however I feel the servers would have a reasonable chance of survival for the following reasons.

• They were behind a 2 inch steel door (Combination lock).
• They were stored without power cords attached.
• They were resting on wooden shelves (on metal frames)
• The room itself was shielded from every radio frequency I could test easily. (Pager, walkie talkie, Radio, TV)
• The room was located in the center of a middle floor, with 20 floors above and 32 floors below. (Might provide protection from a high altitude burst)
• Other buildings would block line of sight to most low/mid level bursts in the vicinity.

The pre war value of the servers was over 10 million dollars. The post war value would be priceless.

Not my weapons cache, but a fellow reenactors' private collection.

View from one side of the room.
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i32/dxdunner/GR1a.jpg
View from the other side.
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i32/dxdunner/GR2a.jpg
Picture of home.
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i3...r/Exterior.jpg

Stumbling across that cache would be "intense" to say the least.

///ed///

Good Golly that's a weapons room!!! :eek:

That's someone with a ludicrous amount of money to spend. But you ain't kidding about finding it! He'd likely never give it up, but just imagine some unfortunate occurence happening....a heart attack, for example, and then house sits empty. Someone checks it out after fire demolishes nearly the entire hourse, but the basement/weapons cache is untouched. The stragglers see the sealed door, bust it open and WAAAAHOOOOO!!! Jackpot!

I've 'read on the internet' (and we know how reliable that is) that these pictures were from Charlton Heston's estate?

I once gave my players an intact, perfect-condition pallet of Cottonelle toilet paper. They got a fortune for it in trade goods!

Paul, you make me think of "Baa baa black sheep" and "Operation Petty Coats", two great stuff in my opinion. Both are comedies on WW2 but they are almost entirely about that: What you can get in exchange for toilet papers and a box of old true Bourbon.:D

I find them nice for inspiration. By the way, according to a friend of mine, working in the french army, it is still working that way (If you have something to give you get some supply faster than the next unit). Does this work in the US Army (navy, air force...)?

It's like that everywhere, military or civilian. There's an American saying, "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."

Yes but for civilians, your life doesn't depend on it.

Not always true my friend. Though it might not be fighting intense, there are civilian situations where, after a hurricane, that getting necessities can be such. Water, gas, food, medicines... You'd be, then maybe you wouldn't, surprised at the gaftyness of the business world.

Grae

As a former supply sergeant in the US Army, I can state that it absolutely, positively does not happen! ;)

We work on a "consideration" basis... you give me what I need now, and three weeks from now you will get a call from me at 7 on a Sunday morning with what I need.

And that seemed to work in some of the multi-national supply transactions in the NATO SFOR peacekeeping force in Bosnia.

Michael Lee Lanning wrote an interesting book about being a mech. company commander in Germany in the early '70s, when the US Army was at a low point. I found his stories about supplies amusing. The first one being when he asked his supply sergeant how the paperwork was, the sergeant paused before answering, "Well, sir, MY ass is covered."
Lanning showed (I think) his own wisdom by next asking the sergeant what he was hoarding for trading use. The answer was some number of spare barrels for the heavy MGs. Those popped up in the memoir again, of course.

Here's a cache I always wanted to use, it's the equipment on a building site where I worked that I tallied when rained in;

Excellent Chalkline. I like lists like that. A great example of stuff likely to be found at such a site. In my games I always try to mix up mundane salvage with odd little bits and pieces. Charatects will always find a way to trade or utilise unusual items somewhere along the way.

How about that world seed bank built into the side of a frozen hill on a Norwegian island above the arctic circle? I'm not sure if construction on the project began before '97 (I think not), but a GM could fudge it a bit I suppose. The underground warehouse contains hundreds, if not thousands, of seed species from all over the world including some ancient and very hardy strains of staple ones as well as modern hybrids and high yield varieties. It needs no electricity because the permafrost provides natural refrigeration.

Might not be as fun as Charlton Heston's basement, but it could be a godsend (or godfind) in the slow and painful process of rebuilding civilization.

This is a good idea.

"The Nordic Gene Bank has stored a backup of Nordic plant germplasm as frozen seeds in an abandoned coal mine at Svalbard since 1984."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbar...nal_Seed_Vault

The new bank is an evolution of an older project. I believe originally it was more for local seeds. It has now evolved into one including seeds from the entire world.

Watched a TV documentary about it just the other day. One of the principal scientists conducting seed collecting for it is an Australian (we make good adventurers!). He works mainly in the "Fertile Crescent" and is based in Syria for part of the year.

How about stubling into a 'survivalist' holding. Very remote and out of the way, why the PC's 'stumble' across it. The 'survivalist' either didn't make it to the holding, or perhaps they find his skeleton, but there is a treasure throve of freeze dried and bulk food items, seeds, tools for different jobs (carpentry, pioneer, mechanic, gunsmithing, etc), weapons and ammunition as well as reloading, medical supplies, BOOKS on how to do it, as well as literature, viable shelter in a secluded spot, but I would not have animals since the owner did not make it, I doubt any domestic animals would, unless the demise is recent, then it's another story. (There could also be the hidden stash of gold and silver coins too.) Your imagination is the limit of course.

Grae

Then there's stumbling across a deserted Mormon house. I'f I'm not mistaken, they're supposed to keep a years food on hand.

In my campaign Major Po's ultra wealthy family had holiday properties spread across the US and he has visited a few of them to clean out any goodies he could find. One he visited had a small bunker with a variety of outdoorsy and survivalist equipment not to mention guns and ammo. It helped that Major Po knew where the properties and their caches were and the security devices there.

A good plot for an epic post-apocalyptic campaign!! Of course, the characters must be somewhat altruistic for the Twilight standards. Perhaps they are a group of volunteers from a community in Central Europe and they had found an article about the Norwegian seed bank in a scientific magazine they are about to throw to the fireplace. They must initiate a difficult travel through a devastated Europe looking for a little hope for the future of their people. The group must plot a route using old road maps, find the supplies needed for the travel and face all kind of dangers to accomplish the goal...:rolleyes:


Quick, I must annotate it!!!

Of course, depending on the ability of the family/member, the type of food might be the basic four (wheat, dry milk, honey, salt) to extravagant freeze dried items.

And not just food.

Grae

Cool ideas. Working for Fed EX and now Advanced Auto Parts, I'm trying to come up with an idea of a team and/or cache where the main purpose is to repair and rebuild vehicles and equipment in a Morrow Project or Twilight 2000/2013 environment. I'm getting ideas what I see in the store of what would be needed plus I'll have to beef things up more. BTW, Chalkline, you have a good idea for a cache.

Chuck M.

I think my favourite type of campaign is a mix of the patrol-and-encounter and nation-building.

Most of my PCs are not straight out war dogs, but are usually paramilitaries (I play with a lot of RL soldiers, and I've come to accept it's an entirely different culture and society of which the outside knows little) with emphasis on rebuilding and law and order skills.

While bunkers may seem a bit of a drawback in a world where you can carry the a packload of RPG rounds, they can be good strongpoints to base a fluid battle on.

We're supposed to...but I know of only a handful in my area who actually do. My family and I don't, largely because we live in an apartment and there is no room for such a cache.

What you almost always can find in the home of an LDS member, however, is a Ward or Stake directory...a phone book listing the addresses of other church members in the area. Somebody in that book is likely to have a large cache of food...

...assuming that it is still there. In the event of an emergency along the lines of the Twilight War, many LDS members will "circle the wagons" and gather at the church building with whatever food and other supplies they can bring with them. Many LDS members become active locally in disaster response organizations such as CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) or are even volunteer firefighters, so they tend to have that equipment as well.

Not that marauders would find them to be an easy target...a respectably large percentage of LDS males tend to serve at least one hitch in the military, and a significant percentage of those serve that hitch in some branch of combat arms in not some special operations component. (Without going into details, the Elders' Quorum alone in my own Ward claims nearly a dozen combat veterans among those members with prior military service, including three former Rangers and one ex-Special Forces medic. That doesn't count the veterans in the High Priests' Quorum, nor the female military veterans among the Relief Society.)

useful items
 

along the lines of Graebeards posts about obsolete technology I guess displays of old gear like ox drawn plows and hand crancked water pumps etc that some place have for decoration or as an educational exhibition would have stuf that could be useful .Most scavengers would go right by not knowing what it is or not having the means to haul it off.

( survivor a:"what did you do before the shtf ?"

survivor b:"I was a financial analyst and senior acount manager at JP Morgan .And you ?"

a: "I was pool guy and gardner at the houses of senior account managers.I got to do some serious thinking about our potatoplanting operation .Go get some pails of water in the meantime and do not disturb until I tell you". )

Same could apply to weaponry as well.Factory loaded or well made handloads ,reliable ammo in general will get expensive in relative terms.Having a firearm that is useful on "homegrown ammo" is going to be an asset. Shooting every pesky stray dog that threaten your rabbit cages with a .223 or scaring of a hungry vagabond with a warningshot from your 9mm is going to be costly over time.Collections of nice blackpowder firearms ,crossbows etc could be a useful gaming objective .
A few civil war-/revolutionary war -/Indian wars-/subjugating the wild west- etc - display cases with uniforms,a musket and maybe a Colt navy 1851 along with bulletmoulds etc .As long as weapons are well kept since they were made ,you could use them .Or trade them etc

Great info, Ed, thanks. I can't imagine having a years supply of food stored. I've got about a week's worth for my family of scavenged MREs left over from Ike and they take up some space.

Iron Mountain
 

There was a piece on the NBC national news tonight about something called Iron Mountain. I'd never heard of it before. Apparently, it's a giant, underground storage facility in a converted coal mine in Pennsylvania somewhere. It countains hundreds of thousands of original government documents, film reels (E.T., Jaws, etc.), music recordings (Elvis' "Houndog"), patents (Edison's lightbulb), and other items. It's all temperature controlled and they said that it was "earthquake safe". I'm not sure if they meant that there are few earthquakes in that region or that the facility is structurally reinforced somehow. Anyhow, being underground, under a nominal mountain, would probably protect it from the effects of nearby nuclear blasts (not sure what PA sites are on the T2K target list).

Seems like one could find some helpful (or harmful) information- technical, legal, historical, cultural, etc.- for the process of rebuilding CONUS there. I didn't catch it if it was specifically mentioned, but I believe that the entire facility is privately owned and operated, although they did say something about 2000 odd government employees working there (the government won't specify what it is they exactly do there nor what documents are stored in the facility).

Anyway, Iron Mountain could make for a neat campaign destination.

This Iron Mountain facility sounds like it might have been the inspiration behind the government caches in the Allegheny Uprising module.

The facility is in Boyers, Pa (not far from Pittsburgh). It's a former limestone mine in a very hilly (but not necessarily mountainous) area. It is owned by a private company and the US government, among others, stores records there.

A TV news piece on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aou6c2MOmg

I found this about it on the net:

A long Washington Post article about Boyers, published in the mid-1990s, began this way: “Ten thousand years from now, space aliens are doing to discover the catacombs of Boyers and think they have hit an archeological jackpot: Millions of government documents stored in acres of filing cabinets 250 feet below the Earth’s surface, safe from flood, fire, famine, Iraqi nerve gas, nuclear holocaust and roaches. . . . OPM [Office of Personnel Management] started to move records to Boyers in 1960, a few years after National Underground Storage, Inc., a Pittsburgh company, bought the mine from U.S. Steel and converted it to a secure facility so individuals, companies and the U.S. government would have a safe place to keep things. . . . The only thing above ground is a parking lot and a tunnel mouth wide enough to accommodate a railroad car.”

As far as earthquakes, strangely earthquake "waves" move along the earth's surface down to a depth of about 10-15 feet. In the 1950s or 60s, a pair of scientists volunteered to go into Carlsbad Caverns, 700 feet below the surface, during a nearby underground nuclear test. The felt nothing and came back up and asked why the test had been canceled.

Heh heh...there's a museum I am part of back home that served as my reenacting unit's home, and sponsor...that has just that, and more... at least two of each gun museum, we call it...owned and operated by an old Red Leg named Bill Douglas...he's been a Class III and Curio and Relics firearms dealer since WAY BACK...1971 is when he went Class III...great guy, and a good friend to have in times like T2K.