An ELF system for initial team wakeup-and-orders has a couple of useful gaming features:
- the team knows they probably can't turn on their radio and call back
- direction finding for ELF signals is not trivial, so Prime Base (or at least the antenna array) won't be found easily after the Atomic War. And even if you do direction-finding, you 'just' find the area with the big rocks underground, heh.
The entire antenna system can be buried underground; the Navy was gonna do that, but it was too expensive. I wonder if a North-America-only system might be more suitable for an underground antenna? An organization with powerful cutting lasers might find making an underground antenna a bit easier.
A useful description of the Navy's first ELF system:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...60444564,d.cGU
Note the coverage areas in the first big "Seafarer" map, and the labels: Michigan (where the ELF system was eventually built), New Mexico, and Nevada (where PB is located).
Info on ELF direction finding:
http://www.vlf.it/minimal2/minimal2.html
A limitation for the Morrow Project: they probably wouldn't ever want to transmit on their big ELF antenna before the Atomic War. Also, the antenna needs to be placed at a location with a wide (kilometers long) ancient granite.
Hmm, from a Geological Society bulletin: " ... The Precambrian complex of the Gold Butte-Bonelli Peak area [in Nevada] is about 25 by 35 km and consists of gray porphyritic perthite-quartz-biotite granites and quartz monzonites (adamellites) that intrude Precambrian garnet-cordierite-sillimanite and hornblende gneisses, migmatites, and older granites, pyroxenites, and hornblendites. These younger granites strikingly resemble the Finnish rapakivi granites geologically, petrographically, and chemically. They are exposed over an area approximately 20 by 30 km and represent the roof of a batholith with numerous stocks, dikes, roof pendants, inclusions, and plutonic breccias."
More info on Gold Butte:
http://mrdata.usgs.gov/geology/state...unit=NVYgr%3B0
http://angeles.sierraclub.org/dps/archives/dps00514.htm
Gold Butte is a ghost town on the Nevada/Arizona border.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Butte,_Nevada
The mesa has very old granite, the basic requirement for an ELF transmitter. According to page 12 of this book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=QJk...nevada&f=false
... that's about the only Precambrian granite in Nevada, so quite likely the Navy's (not-taken) choice.
--
Michael B.