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Old 11-02-2017, 09:04 AM
mmartin798 mmartin798 is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: Michigan
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Your points are valid. Even studies from 1961 showed that most food seeds do die off in large quantities within 70 years, though legumes were shown to be particularly hardy in this regard. This all seems to be a problem with the walls of the seeds being thinner on food crops. Weeds, with their thicker walls, can live several decades without careful storage and still be viable in large quantities.

Food seeds routinely get treated in a number of methods to inhibit molds and other pathogens that hamper seed germination. It is not outside the realm of possibility that, given the prevalence of nanotechnology in the Project, a graphene treatment is used that helps mitigate moisture loss and thereby improving seed viability. While this would not make the seeds immortal, such a treatment could help achieve the 40% viability at 150 years that would make such a cache still useful.

The whole seed issue does need to be addressed in some manner, as they are present in so much of game canon. Third edition has agricultural teams and seeds explicitly listed in Delta Base. Fourth edition also has agricultural teams and says they have seed stores and frozen livestock as well. So all these agricultural teams are either just some additional farmers with a supply of fertilizer trying to improve on some wild plants they find or they have the ability to quickly start up some new farms with their supply of seeds and start churning out lots of food and surplus seeds within three years. Either way could be a scenario for your game.

As to who would use the seeds in game, back in 1981 my group used them to help a community that had recently be attacked by raiders that burned their fields. So play group vary too.
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