A new idea for a cover for Prime Base

[Sprocketteer]

Originally Posted by tsofian

In my estimation, Prime should actually be under a big fallout plume. It won't hurt the base. It will help keep people away from it and by 3-5 years later most of it will be gone anyway.

How about the Project setting off their own "safe"/low power nuke to hide itself?

[cosmicfish]

I am inclined to say that a grain elevator is probably not a good cover. First, the areas that have grain elevators are also areas that have a not-inconsiderable population. Second, these locations are probably going to be suspicious if they fall out of use without replacement. Third, you cannot disguise nearly enough stuff as grain.

I think an old mine or other such venture are probably a lot more desirable - no/minimal nearby population, easy explanation for a decade or two of heavy activity followed by abandonment, lots of use for a variety of heavy equipment.

[tsofian]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I am inclined to say that a grain elevator is probably not a good cover. First, the areas that have grain elevators are also areas that have a not-inconsiderable population. Second, these locations are probably going to be suspicious if they fall out of use without replacement. Third, you cannot disguise nearly enough stuff as grain.

I think an old mine or other such venture are probably a lot more desirable - no/minimal nearby population, easy explanation for a decade or two of heavy activity followed by abandonment, lots of use for a variety of heavy equipment.

Have you been out West? There are plenty of grain elevators in the middle of nowhere. There are also plenty of abandoned grain elevators. Plus why do you need to shut it down? It can operate until the end of the world.


And about your third comment https://www.steelcar.com/sites/defau...d-hopper_0.jpg

What's in this covered hopper car? It could be anything!

"Operating at a gross rail load of 286,000 pounds, the above 5,431-cubic foot hopper car is equipped with a through centre sill, designed for transporting medium-density commodities covering a variety of agricultural products as well as chemicals and allied products."

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by tsofian

Have you been out West? There are plenty of grain elevators in the middle of nowhere.

Yes, I have been out west, and yes, there are grain elevators... in farming territory. If the land is commercially viable for agriculture, then there are farmers, and towns, and lots of other stuff that you would prefer to keep away from your super-secret underground command base.

Originally Posted by tsofian

Plus why do you need to shut it down? It can operate until the end of the world.

You don't have to... but the challenge, as you note later, is in camouflaging the traffic in and out of the base, and that is going to be really hard to do when you have substantially varying amounts of traffic. One way to address that is to just shut down the site once you are done with the bulk of the work... but that doesn't work for agricultural property because it is tied to the actual land. You can shut down a mine (mine's are always temporary) or a distribution center (just move it elsewhere), but farms don't stop, they only get replaced with higher-density usage. So shutting it down without putting in a shopping mall or real estate development would be unusual and suspicious.

Originally Posted by tsofian

And about your third comment https://www.steelcar.com/sites/defau...d-hopper_0.jpg

What's in this covered hopper car? It could be anything!

"Operating at a gross rail load of 286,000 pounds, the above 5,431-cubic foot hopper car is equipped with a through centre sill, designed for transporting medium-density commodities covering a variety of agricultural products as well as chemicals and allied products."

Sure, but grain elevator rail operations generally happen in the open, and farmers usually take notice. You can put a lot of things in these railcars, but you can't discretely unload them. Additionally, I would note that you can't fit everything in those railcars and would have a hard time explaining why a helicopter, for example, is getting unloaded at a grain elevator. And farmers usually keep track of each other, in my experience - they are likely to note the unusual traffic and question why this set of farms is doing so much more traffic than their own.

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Sure, but grain elevator rail operations generally happen in the open, and farmers usually take notice. You can put a lot of things in these railcars, but you can't discretely unload them. Additionally, I would note that you can't fit everything in those railcars and would have a hard time explaining why a helicopter, for example, is getting unloaded at a grain elevator. And farmers usually keep track of each other, in my experience - they are likely to note the unusual traffic and question why this set of farms is doing so much more traffic than their own.

I was going to overlook this, but you are correct. Despite the way the buildings look at a grain elevator or even a transfer station, the rail cars are loaded and unloaded in plain view of everyone, not inside a structure. This would make secrecy a problem.

[tsofian]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Yes, I have been out west, and yes, there are grain elevators... in farming territory. If the land is commercially viable for agriculture, then there are farmers, and towns, and lots of other stuff that you would prefer to keep away from your super-secret underground command base.

There were at least three on I-70 past Grand Junction and you can't call that farmland at all


You don't have to... but the challenge, as you note later, is in camouflaging the traffic in and out of the base, and that is going to be really hard to do when you have substantially varying amounts of traffic. One way to address that is to just shut down the site once you are done with the bulk of the work... but that doesn't work for agricultural property because it is tied to the actual land. You can shut down a mine (mine's are always temporary) or a distribution center (just move it elsewhere), but farms don't stop, they only get replaced with higher-density usage. So shutting it down without putting in a shopping mall or real estate development would be unusual and suspicious.

No grain elevator every went out of business? I have seen a lot of abandoned grain elevators on my travels

Sure, but grain elevator rail operations generally happen in the open, and farmers usually take notice. You can put a lot of things in these railcars, but you can't discretely unload them. Additionally, I would note that you can't fit everything in those railcars and would have a hard time explaining why a helicopter, for example, is getting unloaded at a grain elevator. And farmers usually keep track of each other, in my experience - they are likely to note the unusual traffic and question why this set of farms is doing so much more traffic than their own.

They do "generally happen in the open but there are a lot that have covered bays. I did a quick search of images and found plenty of them. Heck they could be part of a small repair facility attached to the grain elevator. There is absolutely nothing strange about a repair shop having doors that close, especially in crazy hot summers and awful winters.

[tsofian]

An even easier solution is that the elevator is owned by one o Morrow Industries shadow companies and is surrounded by experimental low water farms. Now you have a reason for an elevator to be there. You have no "nosey farmers" to be looking about. You can have the elevator and the farms staffed with MP folks. You can have the town be basically a company town. You can now put it anyplace where land is cheap and available and someone wants to make the desert bloom.

When the experiemtn fails or the grants dry up you close the mill, the town dies and you are left with just another ghost town in the old west

[cosmicfish]

If you desperately want Prime Base to be accessed by a grain elevator, you can do so. It feels incredibly forced to me.

Sure, you can cover the grain elevator loading bay. You can fake a farm. I still think this stuff draws attention and risks exposure, for the reasons previously mentioned and more. Your farm has to be large enough that the substantial quantity of goods coming in can be disguised in the reasonable traffic of the farm, and that means a big farm. You have to have a reason to cover the unloading area, not at all common in the Midwest or Nevada*, and a reason for all those rail cars to go through there. You can make it an experimental farm but then you have to justify the expense and defy the interest it would reasonably attract. You could make it a whole company town, but that has a TON of risks associated with it, including letting a bunch of other people in on the secret who otherwise have no reason to be (because if they had a reason to know about the Project, they would be working on Project necessities and not running an experimental low water farm in the desert).

In short, I think there are less risky options out there, AND those options also address other needs for the Project - a mine** handles the excavation of the base, a distribution center helps with the large volume of supplies being shipped by the Project, etc. This, to me, looks the Project getting into a whole new, unnecessary, otherwise unneeded field of endeavor for no real reason.

And please don't think I am trying to be mean or unusually critical - this is how critical I always am, and your grain elevator idea already shows more thought and logic than the canonical "under a ranch" idea. But I don't think it works unless there are other unmentioned factors, like drastically scaling back the size of the base.


*: Not an expert, but I've spent time in backcountry Nevada and Midwest farm country.

**: A mine is probably *as* risky. The mine risks exposure by a small number of government people, the farm risks exposure by a larger number of ordinary people.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by Sprocketteer

How about the Project setting off their own "safe"/low power nuke to hide itself?

Very dangerous and conspicuous. The major powers could note that they didn't target the area, so enemies might presume it is a test site or other valid target, while friendlies might wonder what is going on and send people out to investigate. Even those unaware might notice that a nuke went off out in the middle of nowhere with no apparent associated missile. Plus the possibility of damaging your own site or rendering it unusable for some longer length of time.

Plus, you need a nuke, a regular old-fashioned nuke, and TMP doesn't need that exposure.