FYI one reason its hard to do module followups is the whole albatross around the neck of writers like me that is Howling Wilderness - after re-reading it again I am basically still standing by my statement that it painted GDW into a corner as to the future of the game - basically it kills off the US and makes campaigning in the US into nothing more than a game of Aftermath or Fallout.
Even if you accept the (completely unrealistic) drought as canon and its effects on the US and try go forward from there the simple fact is that the history of the American units in the US is frankly nonsensical - especially considering that it has multiple MilGov units basically melting away and disappearing between June 2000 and April 2001 - when if anything those units would be getting bigger either by adding reinforcements from Europe or by recruiting locally since the best way to stay alive in a low food environment would be to join the military similar to what happened in Krakow
Let alone events that make no sense - MilGov pulling the 40th out of Bakersfield and basically abandoning the last oil production area in CA when the rest of HW goes out of its way stating that MilGov is doing everything it can to hold onto areas that are still producing oil
And the wasting away of units is at a pace that its hard to believe there would be any intact military units left by the end of the summer
Two examples - the 40th goes from 24 tanks and 3000 men to 1200 men and 3 tanks (with 900 going to join the 46th) and the 46th goes from 1000 men to 1100 men - but only because 900 men join up from the 40th.
So that means the 46th has 800 of its 1000 men desert or get killed in 9 months and somehow the division is intact when the 900 men from the 40th arrive?
And what happens to the 78th is worse - it has 1000 soldiers in June 2000 but by December of 2000 only 100 are left when the 800 men show up from Norfolk to bring them up to 900? The division had 90 percent of their men desert or became casualties over six months and somehow it survived as a cohesive unit until the 800 new men show up?
Add in that MilGov lets the two biggest collections of AFV's in NA just waste away - 36 tanks in the 194th to 8 (when they have plenty of gas and if they did go to the tank plant in Lima a huge collection of M1 spare parts to keep them going) and the 24 tanks in the 40th go to 3 (again stationed in an area that is still producing oil) when there are no replacements since they abandoned everything in Europe?
It would be one thing if you saw this as a pattern elsewhere in other modules - but you dont see this pattern of units having huge changes in numbers of personnel or vehicles.
Example - Going Home - almost every US unit in November of 2000 have the same number of men and tanks they had in June of 2000 - i.e. 36th has 5000 men and 35 tanks in US Army Vehicle Guide on June 1 - and at Going Home it has 5000 men and 35 tanks - i.e. no loss of men or equipment at all in 5 months.
Yet in the US with a lot more access to manpower and spare parts and in many cases petroleum fuel the units are withering away, not recruiting new personnel and worse yet not even using the men who came home - many of whom are in units that arrived at Bremerhaven intact and still obeying orders - and thus could have been stood up at the pier in Norfolk as intact units to send out to help stabilize the country?
They had multiple divisions show up intact and fully functional with intact command structures at Bremerhaven - where did they go? A perfect example is the 28th - its the PA National Guard after all. The state is mostly in chaos, the western part is being preyed on by a homicidal marauder group and the eastern areas are out of control refugee camps - and five months after landing in Norfolk no one has sent the 28th to PA to try to bring some kind of order to the state?
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