[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I think you overestimate the number of "skilled" people in this country, compared to the number of people who answer phones or wait tables or groom dogs or any of the thousands of occupations that earn people money but do not necessarily translate well to a post-apocalyptic setting. I also think that even people with useful skills are going to be at a competitive disadvantage for years compared to people whose primary skills are simply survival.

I think you vastly UNDERestimate the number of skilled survivors. Sure nuclear bombs and biowarfare do not discriminate but, nature is harsh. If you didn’t have any skills one day after the war, you were dead by day seven. People with skills were valuable to one another, they were valuable to anyone with even some advantage.

Define a skill like survival in a post apocalypse anyway. Finding clean water? Finding canned goods and wild berries? Knowing which way is north? Fishing in uncontaminated streams? Killing people with something, so you can go one more day?

We know that in every case hunter gatherer cultures remained small and ineffective at holding terrain versus static agrarian cultures. By year 3-5 the survivalists have looted all the food from stores, depots, and small survivor groups. They have burned through their ammo and lost their most aggressive members to wounds.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

So... you see the Project as basically showing up, dumping a set of gear, and leaving after showing them how to turn it on? Then why bother with the college degrees? Why bother with psychological and civil affairs teams (who will take months or years to see a result with any particular population)? Heck, the basic challenge of reconnoitering and securing an area is going to take substantially longer than 1-2 weeks! I would expect marauders to just follow the groups around, pillaging those untrained and unprotected villages as fast as Morrow leaves!

I see the project arriving at a suitable location probably a small town that already exists. They leave some alcohol powered generators, two way base station radio, drill a well, stock a clinic, gather people and have the people hold an election. By 3-5 years the weak and those incapable of defending themselves are dead and gone or they have learned.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

That is a lot more callous approach to aid than I can imagine working. I also think that a lot of Morrow equipment is effectively irreplaceable, and giving it over to a bunch of shoe salesmen and hoping they will figure it out is more than a bit optimistic.

After 3-5 years the survivors know a hell of a lot more about surviving than any Morrow Project member has ever learned.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Those are indeed very important, but they are also large-scale projects that will take a long time to implement for even a small area - Morrow is not building and maintaining a national power grid in the first year, probably not in the first 5.

Those are the hubs you start building from. You don’t need to bring the municipal water system for the greater Seattle area online or any other major city for that matter. Every small town has a water treatment plant that has been isolated by the loss of the national power grid. It needs some techs to make it run, power, and the right chemicals. That is where you start.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

You have to worry about any level of politics that has control over equipment/supplies you are distributing and/or that has the ability to pose a threat. CG Seattle has 79 people. A modest village that knows the lay of the land and has spent 5 years fighting for survival might be one election away from being the exact kind of militia that can take down a bunch of idealists who eventually have to leave the V-150 to urinate.

If they were that way before Project personnel were to make contact then that would be apparent. Recon and specialist Psyops teams would have effectively identified these groups.

You can’t stand over these villages and hold them hostage to your preferred form of government. That isn’t what the Project is about and it ties up Project members like MARS indefinitely.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

There are a lot of variables in there, but I was being far, far more favorable to the Project in my estimates than I actually think realistic. At any given time in this country, we have about a third of a percent of our population incarcerated not counting those still going through the courts, those released, and those simply not yet caught. Add to that the opportunists and other types who won't commit a crime in a "civilized" society but who turn wolf after missing a couple of meals, and one percent seems awfully darned low to me.

By year three these guys have starved to death and died of exposure. These career criminals definitely are violent predators but, they don’t know a blessed thing about providing for themselves. When all the stores and depots are looted these guys become cannibals and later die.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

It's an odds game. You cannot handle every contingency, but you can't just ignore them either, you have to prepare for enough challenges to have a solid chance of success, and considering that this is a completely unknown set of challenges I can't see doing this in a minimalist manner and expecting anything other than disaster. When you are stretched so thin, there are just too many things that can go wrong and take you down, and why would TMP accept that?

Because the Project isn’t a conquering army ready to set things right for God and Justice….. They have limited personnel and lots of resources.

A village is built, the people moved in, and 10 miles away another is built. These are set up to mutually trade and mutually assist. One have the mechanics and the dentist, the other the electricians and the doctor.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

When you provide no security, no policing, and no permanence, probably not that many. Five years post war I would expect that vast majority to have formed small, tight communities that do not trust outsiders and are not likely to accept the brigands' promises to be good in return for three hots and a cot. It is going to take more than a few weeks for a bunch of educated novices to take a population scattered and changed by years of post-war struggles, identify and filter out the "bad eggs", and integrate the rest.

I expect few brigands to be left. The hostiles are a few of these villages that are hostile to other groups and raid for what they don’t have. However, once they can get what they need without being killed trying to take it, that will be incentive enough.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Per your staffing level, MARS would be less than 100 people for the entire country, the Snake Eaters are unknown to the pre-war Project and may be hostile even post-war, other surviving government assets may or may not be the exact enemy you are fighting against, and the survivors likely lack the weapons or training to protect anything that anyone else really wants to take.

That is better than a Morrow Project of 20,000 that is 1% science, 9% recon, and 90% MARS.