[dragoon500ly]

This is the introduction I use in my home grown games, as always, comments and flames are cheerfully welcomed!

On 29 August 1949 at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan when the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb; code named “First Lightning.” This explosion, at roughly twenty kilotons was roughly equivalent to “Trinity”, the first U.S. explosion.

It was not until September 3, 1949 when a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft flying off the coast of Siberia picked up the first evidence of radioactivity from the explosion. Later that month, President Harry S. Truman announced to the American people that the Soviets had the bomb as well. Three months later, Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist who had helped the United States build its first atomic bombs, was arrested for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets. While stationed at U.S. atomic development headquarters during World War II, Fuchs had given the Soviets precise information about the U.S. atomic program, including a blueprint of the “Fat Man” atomic bomb later dropped on Japan, and everything the Los Alamos scientists knew about the hypothesized hydrogen bomb. The revelations of Fuchs’ espionage, coupled with the loss of U.S. atomic supremacy, led President Truman to order development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

It all began on May 5th, 1952 with a closed meeting of some of the country’s leading industrialists and scientists in St. Louis, Missouri. After intense debate, the meeting elected twelve individuals to sit on the Council of Tomorrow. Their mission, to assist in the reconstruction of the U.S. after a nuclear war. The means to accomplish this ambitious plan was to develop innovative power generation, scientific processes and a means to cryogenically freeze the teams and their support equipment.

For many years the Project secretly recruited, trained and stored their teams at hundreds of locations across the United States and Canada, awaiting the proper time for the reawakening. Gradually their scientific research improved and their equipment became more and more advanced. In 1979, the project developed a functioning, portable fusion power plant and advanced laser technology. In 1987, the Project carried out a complete updating of all of the previously stored equipment, opening the buried and sealed chambers of the sleepers without waking them and leaving behind new equipment, vehicles and the instruction manuals on how to operate them.

The Prime Base of the Morrow Project is a vast underground complex designed to sustain the lives of some three hundred personnel through the nuclear Holocaust as the recorded the data concerning the war. Designed to also act as the primary communications nexus for the Project when they should wake. So through will be their recording of these events that they will be only one of two locations with the only comprehensive sources of information on pre-war times.

Omnicron Base is the frozen back-up to Prime Base and houses back-ups of all information recorded by Prime Base. Prime Base automatically downloads every twelve hours to Omnicron Base. In the event that Prime Base misses a scheduled transmission, twice within twenty-four hours. This will trigger a recall scheduled to reawaken Omnicron Base from its freeze. In the event of such an occurrence, Omnicron will assume control of the Project.

Prime Base was built in the hills in the northwestern corner of Nevada. Omnicron Base was built in the rolling hills of southwestern Missouri. Both locations are anticipated to be outside the majority of the heavy fallout paths as well as in (relativity) seismic inactive areas.

The Bases differ in radically different designs: Prime Base consists of three cylinders and a large stores annex, deep under a mountain. Omnicron Base consists of four tiers of multiple tunnels and an extensive annex network, deep under a mountain. While Prime Base depended upon its relative isolation, Omnicron Base is concealed by the Morrow Industries Ozark rail yard (MIORY) storage, an extensive shipping container storage, decontamination and refurbishment facility near a major east-west rail line facility located just south of Springfield, Missouri.

Prime Base started its construction in May of 1967 and was completed in March of 1980. The construction of Prime Base was carried out under the cover of mining operations (for further information on Prime Base’s construction, please consult Project File 008.)

Omnicron Base started its construction in August, 1984 and completed in August 1993. Its cover plan involved the Morrow Industries being granted a contract from the EPA for the cleanup of a designated Superfund Hazardous Waste Site. The transportation of equipment, supplies and essential personnel were transported by a variety of cargo and dump trucks based at the MIORY facility

The construction crew was never very large, sufficient to operate the tunnel boring machinery, and to maintain the recovery and loading equipment. The crew was composed of carefully selected Morrow Industries employees who were ultimately destined to staff the Base and so the only people would know where the base was built, would be the people who were assigned to it.

As the years progressed, the underground portions of the Base were completed, permanent party personnel would be moved into the Base and begin operation of the Base or furthered its ongoing construction.

Only the personnel assigned to Sigma would know the exact location. Other Project personnel knew of Omnicron, and an even smaller number of personnel knew its approximate location. These latter personnel would be provide with clues that would enable them to reach the Base in the event of some emergency. But ultimately, knowledge of and access to Omnicron Base was the carefully guarded secret of its personnel. Not even the Council of Tomorrow or Bruce W. Morrow were not privy to the location.

Several missions were deemed necessary to the operation of the Base and its successful mission. the Base had to provide living areas to its personnel; stores/supplies and manufacturing facilities and finally and most importantly, command, control, communications and information apparatus. In the end, and following the example of Prime Base, it would be split into three sections: Base administration and mission operations; living and support facilities; and a facilities for supply and manufacturing.

The final design of Omnicron Base included four Tiers, each consisting of five parallel major tunnels, inter-contacted with five parallel secondary minor tunnels. Each major tunnel averages 200 meters in length and 30 meters in width. Lined with reinforced concrete walls, floors and roofs, a uniform 2 meters thick. The secondary tunnels average 200 meters in length and 10 meters in width and with walls, floors and roofs that average 2 meters thick, constructed out of reinforced concrete. The physical floors were one meter thick, allowing crawlspaces through which runs the communications, air, water, sewage lines as well as HVAC, humidifiers and other air circulation equipment. A feature of the tunnels are the series of bays that are placed on each side, these house the various functions of the base. Each Tier is separated from the next by 30 meters of rock, with the upper Tier resting 100 meters under the surface.