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Old 04-10-2018, 07:25 PM
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StainlessSteelCynic StainlessSteelCynic is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Western Australia
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NOTE: There is a reason my reply is so long.
It does relate to the game I promise!

Quote:
Originally Posted by swaghauler View Post
That is a really GOOD idea. I was surprised to see that 40% of the trucks in the US (the total of which is just over 2 Million in 1998 and 4 million today) are generally present in just TWO locations, Long Beach CA and Newark NJ, the two biggest cargo terminals in the US. I didn't realize just how concentrated commercial trucking in the US is until I researched it.
I believe that is probably the result of the push for "centralizing" by most businesses/corporations and governments.
Centralizing a network (of any sort) results in some large cost savings because obviously, you don't have as many buildings. vehicles, staff etc. etc. to manage and pay for.
But it also makes the system vulnerable if a break occurs in the central part of the network or in the transport system.

For example, many food shops these days don't have a storeroom, what's on the shelf or in the fridge is all the stock they have. They rely on small deliveries every day (or every two/three days) to keep supplied rather than having one or two big deliveries in a week.
If anything happens to interupt the supply chain, those deliveries do not happen and the shop runs out of whatever product was being delivered. I've experienced this myself in Australia when the local shops didn't have bread or milk for a few days due to delays in the transport system.

So the point of all that exlanation? The push towards centralizing networks began (as near as I remember) in the early 1990s although the general public didn't really notice much change until the 2000s. If your Twilight timeline starts in the mid-1990s or later, centralizing of networks can be a real hindrance (lethal in some cases) to people away from any distribution centres at the start of the war and more so after the end of the war.
For example, food supplies are not going to reach the smaller locations or those little stores out on the secondary highway for example. In fact, once the transport stops, most stores will run out of basic foodstuffs within two to three days (three or four if they're really well stocked or really lucky).
Hospitals might have good stocks of medical supplies for a while but smaller medical centres or individual doctors offices will be depleted very quickly.

Centralizing is much more profitable than having a distributed network with many smaller warehouses & supply systems but it does literally "put all your eggs in one basket".
However it does provide a "resource rich location" for anyone close to that supply centre. Which also makes the PC's job easier if they want to recover supplies - assuming they can get to the distribution centre!
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