Prime Base [Archive]

dragoon500ly

11-10-2011, 07:08 AM

Things have been a bit slow so I thought to get a debate started about Prime Base; specifically the various problem areas that are present throughout the module. The basic starting point is an old MP Guns & Gear List article "Unauthorized Prime Base Repairman", I have no idea who the author was, my hard copy was water damaged during a hurricane, but kudos to the original author!

"A) I changed the cover of the base. Instead of a ranch, placed in a very nontypical location I made this a location for one of the major charities of Morrow Industries, a children's hospital and hospice. This had several advantages: it allowed personnel to come and go in large numbers, with their families; since it was a real facility, the real patients, families, and staff provided good cover for Project personnel; it gave a good reason for large quantities of material to be brought up to the ridge; construction, enlargement and renovation of the many buildings at the hospital gave cover for Prime Bases' construction; the locals knew this to be a hospital for terminally ill children, they quickly learned not to get close to any of the patients or their families or to be surprised when they suddenly disappeared, this was put down to a death or recovery of a child, with the parents simply returning home; the facility could provide the core of a colony after the war; its mission would, possibly, shield it from the worst of the war, targeting a children's hospital is pretty low; it was good cover for shipping high tech equipment into Prime Base."

Not a bad idea. The hospice would also explain a small airstrip being built to handle mid-sized aircraft (one less thing to worry about when the Project goes operational).

"B) No one can pilot a helicopter through a few hundred meters of tunnel. I got around this by changing the natural cavern into a quarry entrance. A set of disused mining rails are on the cavern floor. The helo launch pad actually rides on these once the doors to the hanger have been opened. The pad moves out of the cavern, with the helo on it, then the helo is launched."

Have to admit, this is a very telling point, flying a helo through tunnels certainly qualifies as "an incredibly stupid idea". Don't know about the pad, I would simply have the helo moved out onto the quarry floor and launched from there.

"C) The cyclotron in Support needs to be put in its own bunker, far from anything you want to be alive later. Cyclotrons emit neutrons when in operation. These are bad to be around. I put all of the industrial stuff in its own cylinder, off the annex tunnel. This prevents an accident from rendering the entire base unusable."

Agree with this completely, I don't know about another cylinder, but certainly an additional tunnel with rooms opening off for such things as the forge (especially when conducting any sort of pours), the chemical weapons research facility, the cyclotron, and nice thick doors to cut off the area in case of an accident.

"D) The Decon Area is not very good. Where do the baskets go? No place, they just stay there until somebody walks through all the contamination to go get them and take them where? Here is my fix. Decon is a circular corridor around a central core. Dumbwaiters, with airlock doors, are at each check point. Baskets are placed in the dumbwaiters and automatically sent to a BIOLEVEL 4 containment facility. Using remote manipulators the items are sorted and undergo decon. Items too contaminated for reuse are incinerated. The operators work from the center of the core. The entire facility can be sealed off from the base by a smaller contamination reduction corridor."

This was one of the weakest areas of the modules. The module Decon Area, well, it can best be described as an accident waiting to happen.

dragoon500ly

11-10-2011, 07:36 AM

"A) The environment that is stipulated for Hidden Valley will not lead to lizards developing endothermy (warm bloodedness). The constant temp of the environment is perfect for ectothermic animals (cold blooded). I'm also uncertain if, even under the worst conditions, that you can get lizards to mutate that fast. I had a fix for this. In my campaign NASA was much more a going concern. They were about to terraform Mars when the war broke out (2012). Part of the terraforming was to use biological organisms to change the Martian environment by biological action. Additionally, they also wanted to use animals and plants that could live on Mars. Instead of engineering each organism, they decided to let the environment do the job for them. To ensure that they would get organisms that could live on Mars a virus was developed that would mutate lower lifeforms and went to work on local animals."

I always found the flora and fauna of Hidden Valley to be a very poorly considered idea. Never liked it, never used it.

"B) The Project had almost no need of transuranic radioactives. Fusion uses Hydrogen and makes Helium (and a neutron). The radioactive sludge at the bottom of Prime Base has no reason to be there. Additionally, NO ONE (except the Federal Government at Hanford) stores high energy radioactivies this way. What did the Project do? Place its idiot children in the safety department? Write this stuff out, its stupid!"

Concur.

"C) There is not enough housing on the base. Some day count up the number of places people work in the base. It comes to way more than the number of adults that can be housed in the base. Even with the fact that not all the jobs need to be going on at once, there just isn't room for all the people needed. Add to this the fact that some of these jobs need to be done 24-7 and things get even more sticky. The quick fix for this is to duplicate the Life Module. Stick it next to the existing one in that big hole that Morrow Industries dug in the ground. This will give a base of 4 (not 3) cylinders. The good thing about this is that you don't need to do any extra work, just duplicate the life cylinder."

According to the module, with just 3 cylinders, Prime Base had a maximum capacity of 448 Project personnel and 390 dependents (i.e. 838 people). It is also stated that there were actually 247 Project personnel and 160 dependents (407 people) living in Prime Base when the war began. The original author certain had a point about the need for 24-7 operations, but I feel that with 448 active personnel, Prime should have been able to handle the critical posts. Otherwise, the war simply happened before Prime was fully manned.

"D) The defenses of the base have always seemed capable of defeating any attack through the main entrance. However, if you really want to screw with players here are some things that you can do: place booby traps in the hallway. They may no longer work, but they are scary; every 25 feet put up a screen of wire mesh, this was both to slow movement and to prevent some Rambo from firing a LAW at the guard post. Since a LAW would have done a number on the weapon turrets, this will prevent that. As long as the weapons function, ain't nobody getting down this hallway; fill the hallway with water, it sucks being a player character; fill the hallway with Chlorine gas cylinders, bobby trapped to open of the hallway is entered."

Kinda of getting into the old Killer PD mode here. From a defensive standpoint, I can see Claymores set into recesses in the walls and roof, and controlled from Post One and the wire mesh screens are simply common sense protection from rockets. The water and Chlorine, overkill. If any of my players are reading this, I did not include this. No! Really!

mikeo80

11-10-2011, 07:40 AM

These are some excellent points. I have always wondered just what the filp-flap the MP planners were thinking???!! A ranch on TOP of a mesa?? FLY A HELO through a tunnel????

I did like the idea of the "Morrow Air Force". Very usefull aircraft with known capabilities. I also liked the FASCME idea. (If I mis-qutoed the name, my bad, I do not have Prime Base at my fingertips right now :confused:)

Krell has always been a puzzle! The who, what, where, and when of the Krell Empire, at least as presented to date, does not seem logical.

A "typical" leader under Krell might have the thought. "Gee, the Boss is asleep right now. I am in charge right now. Maybe the Boss's sleep tube will have a critical OOOPS.... " :p

End of Krell empire, kind of like end of Alexander the Great's empire. Once the squabble starts as to just WHO is in charge....chaos ensues.

Enough for now... RL is peeking it's head in the door, I have to go to work. :p

My $0.02

Mike

dragoon500ly

11-10-2011, 08:12 AM

"A) Is there a church or even an area for multi-use worship in Prime Base? If not, there should be. Maybe the civic center can be used this way. If not, put such a room in the additional life cyclinder. It can replace the civic center or the hospital, both of which need not be repeated in the new spaces."

Good idea. I would see the civic center being used for worship if you go for a 3-cylinder base. Going with a 4-cylinder base, replacing the civic center totally in the new cylinder. As for what replaces the hospital in the 4th cylinder?

"B) Why are the archives in the Base. They should be in the Annex. Its not like anything here is useful for the mission of the Base. I made the archives vault a large nitrogen-filled room over in the annex tunnel. If the players ever get in there, they will find the bodies of the archivists inside."

Its a good point. This material, while essential for Humanity, really has no purpose for the Project. It doesn't need to be in Prime Base for this reason, the annex is an excellent storage place.

"C) The Mission Annex is a great idea. Here is my problem with it as it was written. Why does it open onto the ridge line? Like somebody could build an airport up there. Like people would want to build communities on a rock with very limited access to resources. The Annex should open up to the desert floor. Logistical access to the rest of the world is pretty decent from the desert. There is lots of flat space to build a decent runway at the foot of the mountains. There is room to set up limited agriculture at the foot of the mountains. The water is at the bottom of the hills, not on the ridge line. All in all, I'd build the major colony at the entrance to the valley, where the streams exist the mountains. The construction of Pahute Place can still be up in the hills, since that could have been started with materials from the children's hospital and salvage. Construction of the colony up there would also have revealed less of the Base's assets right away."

Concur.

"The armory, except for the ready use material, should be stored in the Annex. The weapons should be stored as they are, the ammunition should be in sprinklered magazines."

I would even go so far as to have an additional leg dug at right angles to the annex, placing the ammunition magazines as far as possible from Prime Base and placing several sets of blast doors in between.

"I again screwed with the heliport. The Annex tunnel has a narrow gauge railroad in it. This leads into all the annex caves by the use of sidings. The Annex tunnel leads straight to the heliport, out the great big doors, into the disused quarry, down the valley and to the old mining camp. The idea was that this would be the main link to the new colony. The trams are large enough to handle the biggest pieces in storage. This method also prevents any break in from the base from the Annex. The Annex is a dead end. The level with the heliport now becomes a nexus of transportation for the entire base, so Post Two gets moved in here."

Still not sure how this works out, I'm still debating a few issues, such as survivors having access to any part of Prime.

"By moving the Annex, both deeper and more towards the end of the ridge, you can put the bomb where the ridge meets the mountain. The resulting crater now makes the ridge an island once the vally floods. Now have the players fry to get there."

Now this is just plain cruel!

"D) The firefighting and prevention stuff for the base is very minimal. There should be sprinklers in all rooms (either Halon or water). There needs to be a second fire station. There needs to be little fire/first aid and rescue equipment lockers all over the place. Go to any big industrial complex and take a look at the stations they have for their Emergency Squads. At the very least there should be three of these per level and one at each levl of the transcore. They should have a set of confined space entry gear, Scabs, fire extinguishers, forcible entry tools, fire hoses, a fire hydrant, HAZMAT spill materials, etc., etc., etc. (there should also be some type of lighting equipment plus portable genetrators). All the doors should be rated for at least 2 hours under fire conditions. Individual sections of the base should be capable of being sealed off in case of fire. Certain sections should be designated as fire refuges where people can close themselves off from the heat and smoke of a fire. Some large buildings have these features. It saves lives. This thing about the base being a giant airflow is silly. It makes no sense.Each cylinder should be capable of being isolated, at the very least. Each floor or even various sections should be capable of being isolated. Fire doors should be widely used. The air should travel through ducting, either between floors or between the interior walls of the cylinders and its actual structural skin. Pipes and other utilities have to be run the same way. The one big air loop makes no sense. The draft were the air is being forced out of the cleaners must be really amazing and don't stand anywhere near the intakes with less than $50.00 worth in Mexican change in your pockets! This leads to an interesting alternate for the Final Deception. The Base personnel didn't just burn some papers on level one, they turned off the sprinklers, threw some flammable solvent and stacks of papers in and top it off with some O2 bottles and a detonator. When the PCs break in they find the entire upper level totally burnt out, except for one transcore, where the nuclear material shtick going."

Gotta agree with this, its well thought out and fills in several critical gaps in the design of Prime Base.

"E) There should be almost no radiation in Hidden Valley. Here is the deal, radiation from nuclear weapons will disappear from the environment in two ways. The first is through radioactive decay. We all know how this works, with half lives and daughter products and what not. The other way is through a process called weathering. Decay will operate on a scale notable to players. By the time of the wake up, all the short-lived stuff will be long gone. This will still leave a pretty big count of longer lived material (Strontium-90). Weathering is a different process. It part of erosion and similar natural processes. The Hidden Valley environment, with huge amounts of rain and subsequent erosion will weather very rapidly. The good side is that the background in the valley will be pretty normal. However, I would recommend not eating anything that was feeding at the bottom of the lake. This is were all the radioactives will get weathered to and they will become a hot layer of sediment. This still should not be too terrible, except for biological systems that concentrate various radio active materials. Needless to say, NO SCUBA DIVING!!!!!"

From what I have been able to research on this, he's on the ball.

"F) Remove the diving board from the 8 foot deep pool. After the first three people broke their necks diving into 8 feet of water, they would probably have taken it down."

No arguments here!

"G) The ramp in the Support Cylinder has a track for the narrow gauge tram. The tram lines also run through the two lower sets of inter cylinder passageways. This allows better logistics."

Good point, concur!

ArmySGT.

11-10-2011, 06:11 PM

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j218/ArmySGT_photos/Morrow%20Project/PrimeBase.jpg

ArmySGT.

11-10-2011, 06:27 PM

The location is down wind of Sierra Army Depot. That defeats the purpose of placing it where it is now.

The Communications suck badly. How were they going to contact Teams, send the Wake up signal, and coordinate Operations that far removed?

ULF? ELF?

Why does Prime Base need the Johnson space center to run their satellite?

Logistics. Where is the Stuff. Left out for the PDs creativity I suppose.

The Krell. Yes, that Group would at least have had a write up by the time this module was rolled out. Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri. Nevada. Washington State (Krell Navy).

What? Mindless Neo-barbs with no skills. Yes development fail.

dragoon500ly

11-13-2011, 07:26 AM

Going by the module, the communications exposure module was supposed to allow for continent wide communications, supposedly through HF....its one of those areas that was not well thought out when it was written. Ditto for Operation Lonestar and its seizure of the Johnston Space Center in order to control a MP satellite.....but the purpose of this thread is to ID these weak points and suggest fixes.

My own view of Prime Base runs along with the unknown author of the original post...placing a ranch on top of a ridge just didn't make any sense. A children's hospice/hospital makes better sense in that it explains the movement of people and equipment. The downside is that there are no major towns/cities in the immediate area. Still, it beats a ranch...

The plus sides of the hospice idea is that it can justify the building of a small airfield nearby (on the valley floor!).

ArmySGT.

11-13-2011, 12:43 PM

I don't know. Ted Turners "Vermijo" ranch covers a good chunk of norther New Mexico. The airfield for that is "County" , however it is much better equipped than that part of the State could afford.

This is a Twofer. Top of the screen is the NRA Whittington Center and the airfield is below. Just south of Raton NM on the way to Santa Fe. Wasn't unusual to see a couple of Lear Jets and other private air craft there. The rich coming in to hunt on Ted's place.
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j218/ArmySGT_photos/WhittingtonCenter.jpg

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j218/ArmySGT_photos/AirfieldforRanchandWhittcenter.jpg

dragoon500ly

11-15-2011, 06:34 AM

Been doing some research on towns in Nevada and it seems that almost all towns in this area are built near the mouths of the various canyons. Looking over a topo map of the Prime Base region, it seems to me that instead of building on top of the ridge, that the Project may have been better served by building on the canyon floor just off of Soldier Meadow, perhaps with the ranch/hospice backed onto the ridge. This way its a more normal construction.

This would also mean that the Ops Cylinder would have to be rebuilt (Level 1 would be at the bottom and so on). OR the entrance tunnel could be replaced by a entrance stairway.

Comments?

mikeo80

11-15-2011, 11:34 AM

In many of the games I have played, there has always been a second Prime Base. This was an identical setup as the original, however everyone was in deep sleep. It has been located (depending on game) in Kansas, North Carolina, Saskatchawan, or Maine.

When Prime Base realized they were going to die, they sent the "wake call" to PB2. With a full description of what had happened, a full data dump for the PB2 computers, and, basically, a last message. "Good luck, God bless, you are on your own."

In the Kansas game, the "wake up" message did not get through. I was part of a Recon/Frozen Watch team that woke in the "canon" time frame of Big Bang +150. The commander of the Recon portion of the team had a vector to PB2.

When the game ended (PBEM is very difficult.) We had found the base, got the sleepers awake, and were scouting the area for first contact/local conditions for deployment of Morrow Air Force.

My $0.02

Mike

dragoon500ly

11-15-2011, 05:57 PM

I've never argued the existence of a "backup" Prime Base, it simply is common sense. But the issue with having Prime Deuce automatically take over is that it screws up the canon material beyond an acceptable level.

My own take on it is that Prime Deuce's wake up code fell prey to the same programming bug that prevented the wake up of the Project after the fall of Prime Base.

In my own campaigns, Prime Deuce is asleep, waiting for the proper wake up commands, i.e. the PCs need to discover Prime Base, find the wake up codes and kick start the Project into gear.

ArmySGT.

11-15-2011, 06:40 PM

Then why not have Prime Base 2 be the Atlantis project? I wasn't supposed to come online for more than 75 years anyway. Where should it be? Iceland? Safe except for Keflavik. The Orkneys, probably ignored all together, secretive, and well placed for Comms. North Africa? Like Morroco. Certainly safe from Europe going down to nukes and plagues. Can you imagine all the Anglo refugees in North Africa skewing the demographics? An Island in Aegean sea? Morrow Navy heave ho!

Good News boys! Your going to find and wake up the second Morrow Base. After 69 days at sea you should be close..

mikeo80

11-15-2011, 07:48 PM

dragoon500ly

11-16-2011, 07:42 AM

ArmySGT.

11-16-2011, 06:03 PM

Ah, but the Atlantis Project is about rebuilding Europe. The UK makes sense except that it is sure to get pasted in a Nuclear exchange. Canada is to far out of position.

mikeo80

11-16-2011, 08:50 PM

Ah, but the Atlantis Project is about rebuilding Europe. The UK makes sense except that it is sure to get pasted in a Nuclear exchange. Canada is to far out of position.

IIRC, Atlantis was concerned with rebuilding the world, not just Europe.

If I am correct, then I could see several small PB's available to co-ordinate.

One in Switzerland (Europe) ( I do not know about this one. Switzerland might have survived, but the rest of Europe will glow in the dark for the next 1000 years.)

One in Congo (Africa)

One in Nepal (Main Land Asia) (Same problem as Switserland)

One in Chile (South America)

One of the small islands of Philipenes, or Indonesia for that corner of the world.

I would think that Middle East/North Africa is still glowing in the dark. Likewise India/Pakistan, South Africa and surrounds.

Russia, China, Europe, Japan, Korea, pretty much WASTED.

Australia, New Zealand, etc might have survived. Major cities are toast, but coast and interior might be ok.

South America could end up being the next Super Power. No real strategic targets, good agriculture areas esp. Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil. Some Oil production, some iron, coal etc for industries. They could just have enough to make it.

Northern Canada with all of its' raw materials should still be there.

Central Africa probably survived, however the tribal warfare would have devistated any hope of rebuilding.

My $0.02

Mike

dragoon500ly

11-17-2011, 06:02 AM

Looking over the choices, then the best place to plant Atlantis is South America, low-priority nuclear targets and a tech/pop base to use to rebuild the rest of the world.

ArmySGT.

11-17-2011, 05:57 PM

The Morrow Project was supposed to wake up three to five years after the nuclear exchange and the Atlantis Project was slated for 75 years later. Presumably to get support from a reforming North America.

I would place it in North Africa (all low priority targets widely dispersed), Southern Spain, South of France, or an Aegean Island.

The Aegean Island fits the most, mythological Atlantis was an island, and this would be the easiest to conceal construction and other operations prior to WW3.

dragoon500ly

11-18-2011, 09:10 AM

Drawbacks to the island placement, is that you will have to have some kind of sea-borne capability and, unless the island is large enough to support an air strip, any aviation assets would be restricted to helicopter.

Spain may be a better choice than the south of France, but thinking over it, I'm sticking to a South America location. Looking over the various websites, it appears likely that SA would not receive a large number of nukes, giving a better chance of some kind of surviving industrial capability as well as a larger population base. Assets that the Atlantis Project could use to good effect.

dragoon500ly

11-18-2011, 09:10 AM

Does anybody have any opinions on the 4-cylinder Prime vs. the canon Prime?

mikeo80

11-19-2011, 11:11 AM

Does anybody have any opinions on the 4-cylinder Prime vs. the canon Prime?

I have no real problem one way or another. I can see the need for more people to man the various posts at PB. Then you need more living space. As we have said here, there are some things that are missing from PB that should have been there. There are some things at PB that should NOT have been there. (Esp U-235 or PU-239 in the basement????)

One way I could see this happening....

The extra cylinder (s?) are there...Need a button pushed from the Commander of PB...,.OPEN SESAME!!!!

Could also be more storage?? Could be more teams in Deep Sleep?? I mean come on, the only external team is Phoenix????

BTW, I DO NOT believe in the Phoenix team concept...They are not there in MY version of PB. A couple of Recon Teams, a MARS team and a Science team are all resonable IMHO.

My $0.02

Mike

ArmySGT.

11-19-2011, 01:23 PM

Me too. I never cared for the Pheonix Team concept.

Their really in the Module so the PD can cut the Players loose again and have someone to run Prime Base (NPCs).

I favor a Command Staff in cryo sleep. Then you do have NPCs to take over and run Prime Base and the Players can get out of house keeping and back to adventuring.

I think of the Canon Prime Base Commander and his staff as the Garrison or Caretaker staff. The equivalent of a Colonel. That one level of Prime Base has the Staff that was meant to run the Project. There is a Four Star equivalent with a few two and one star department heads as well as Staff Specialists (Junior Officers and NCOs) in sleep waiting to start the Project.

dragoon500ly

11-19-2011, 04:04 PM

I have no real problem one way or another. I can see the need for more people to man the various posts at PB. Then you need more living space. As we have said here, there are some things that are missing from PB that should have been there. There are some things at PB that should NOT have been there. (Esp U-235 or PU-239 in the basement????)

One way I could see this happening....

The extra cylinder (s?) are there...Need a button pushed from the Commander of PB...,.OPEN SESAME!!!!

Could also be more storage?? Could be more teams in Deep Sleep?? I mean come on, the only external team is Phoenix????

BTW, I DO NOT believe in the Phoenix team concept...They are not there in MY version of PB. A couple of Recon Teams, a MARS team and a Science team are all resonable IMHO.

My $0.02

Mike

Got to agree about the radioactive sludge...I'd rather have a facility to recharge the fusion engines.

The good thing about the fourth cylinder is that it would give you extra teams, a MARS team for certain, 5-6 Recon Teams just to help control/patrol the local area. Another farm, extra storage for critical items (all though I simply add a short tunnel extension off the mission annex) could go into the extra cylinder. Hmmmm, ever seen a map of the Malinta tunnels on Corrigador? Might even be a better idea than the one long tunnel concept.

Then there is Phoenix....

I'm of two minds about Phoenix. From one point of view, they make sense, a final protection of the Project or a means of "controlling" a rogue team. But isn't that part of the duties of a MARS Team? But Phoenix always was opitional...your mileage may vary.

mikeo80

11-21-2011, 09:04 AM

The good thing about the fourth cylinder is that it would give you extra teams, a MARS team for certain, 5-6 Recon Teams just to help control/patrol the local area. Another farm, extra storage for critical items (all though I simply add a short tunnel extension off the mission annex) could go into the extra cylinder. Hmmmm, ever seen a map of the Malinta tunnels on Corrigador? Might even be a better idea than the one long tunnel concept.

Now that I think about it, a larger force is a better idea than my force structure. I only had 2 Recon Teams. THIS IS PRIME BASE!!! I agree that 5-6 Recon just to keep the neighborhood safe. The people who staff PB have a LOT of work to do. They do not need to worry about some scruffy ingrate who might have a grudge doing something STUPID.

Also, I would not have set up the village so close to Prime. Yes there was some water available. But if I were the commander of PB, I do not want any trouble on my doorstep!!??!! Yes the directives of TMP say to help others. No problem. Just do not help them HERE!! Move them 10-20 klicks elsewhere. I am sure you can find water in other places.

Also, once the teams release, I would think no return to PB. No back track possible, no bio/chem/nuclear contamination to deal with. With a 5-6 Recon team force, you can send a LOT of duce and a halves with resupply as needed to any one in need.

Also, don't you find it interesting that in the canon, there is NO mention of the doctors in PB using U.A. to try and stop the bio??? I mean, as soon as you suspect something, out come the Bio-Beds, and you start an assembly line to try to innoculate as many as possible in as short a time as possible.

Well, enough of me on a soap box today. :p

My $0.02

Mike

dragoon500ly

11-21-2011, 10:50 AM

I know I'm going to get flamed....

But IMO, the weakest part of Prime Base was the decision to open the base up to aid local survivors, not to mention the decision to build a colony.

Yes, I am well aware of Morrow Project General Order Number One...but the chief responsibility of Prime Base was to activate and manage the Morrow Project, that job almost certainly demands that Prime Base has to remain sealed off and ignore local survivors.

Cold, yes, but Prime had the ability to recall teams in the area to help survivors, THAT IS THE PRIMARY MISSION of these local teams. The opening of Prime Base in order to assist survivors and to build a colony was, at best ignoring its primary mission to rebuild North America for the short term "I Feel Good About Myself" mission.

This is the failure of the module.

Flame Away!

mikeo80

11-22-2011, 02:23 PM

Flame Away!

Not from me. In fact I'll put up a pair of flame retardant long johns for you.

I said the same basic thing in my previous post.

Once PB started operations, a recon of the area WAS in order. No problem there. Yes there are people suffering and dying....

To quote that great American Philosopher, Homer Simpson, "D'oh!!!!" :D

THIS IS PRIME BASE!! You do not have ANY true recon teams on board. At most, some Recon experience. Same with the helicopter rescue attempt. In RL, we saw just how DAMNED difficult that particular op can be.

(Here I will refer you to Desert One, the Iran rescue mission, and Mogadishu, and the offing of Bin Laden)

IF we follow canon time line, Big Bang is 1987, PB comes up to full on line status say early - mid 1991. If the MARS leader had any sense, even faced with Morrow captives, he would have referred the Base Commander to the nightmare of Desert One in Iran. MIND you, Desert One was attempted by troops who TRAINED for this kind of op. And they still FUBAR'ed

Now to get back on point. The Morrow commander, had he lived, should have been shot for extreme negligence. AS far as he knows, he IS TMP. (There may or may not be a PB2) He has to organize and implement the most dangerous, complicated, long term recovery mission in the history of the WORLD. Simple survival would dictate you do not bring trouble to your own doorstep!!

Let me get off of my soap box for now! Enough of my ranting and raving.

My $0.02

Mike

ArmySGT.

11-22-2011, 06:41 PM

No complaints from me.

Stunningly dumb mismanagement. Let's see open up the uber top secret burn after reading primary (possibly sole) Headquarter as a refugee camp.

I guess it made for a plausible, though tragically dumb way to remove Prime Base and set up the game for the 150 year lapse.

BTW what the hell has Krell been doing for 150 years? The had to know that was Prime Base. Nuke the village, then a Biowar weapon on your enemies state of the art facility staffed with PHDs of all stripes? Kind wander off because suffering villages in wisconsin are more interesting?

Dumb.

Another thing I dislike about the PB module is the failure to detail the Krell Warriors. There they were an organized force right after the war and capable of delivering a nuke. A hundred years later their spear chuckin abos? Really?

The whole module needs a re-write.

mikeo80

11-22-2011, 07:29 PM

What the hell has Krell been doing for 150 years? The had to know that was Prime Base. Nuke the village, then a Biowar weapon on your enemies state of the art facility staffed with PHDs of all stripes? Kind wander off because suffering villages in wisconsin are more interesting?

Army Sgt:

As I read the PB module, Krell was in deep sleep when PB was neutralized. According to the module, the next time Krell woke up, he sent a team to see what happened. They found the valley like Jurrasic Park and bailed on the mission. Krell had the operatives killed, and moved on, figuring PB was DEAD.

There are so many parts of that scenario that are WRONG.

1) IF Krell was as Brilliant and demented as hinted at in different modules, he HAD to know that the first team had killed, if not PB, something really really important. If Krell had as many followers and as much tech as hinted at, a nuke, bio, etc, he would have sent teams until he was SURE it was dead. Then strip the body.

2) The mutants in the PB module could not have mutated THAT fast for the second Krell team to find Jurrasic Park. Radioactivity, swamp, ok, maybe...

3) The mutants could not have evolved that fast for "today", i.e. BANG +150. Natural selection does not work THAT fast. Yes, man introduced all kinds of radioactivity into the bio-sphere, but still....Mini T-Rex? Mini sauropods? Mini velociraptors? Even something that could (maybe) be edging toward intellegence? Not in MY Morrow world.

4) If Krell knew that this was PB, Krell associates "today" would STILL be talking about the day they killed Morrow. No hint of that in any module. We Americans still talk about Picketts Charge at Gettysburgh, Washington crossing the Delaware, Francis Scott Key and the "Star Spangled Banner". Surely a prize THAT big would be still talked about. Inflated, maybe, but a kernel of truth in the story.

5) Krell had inside information about Morrow. IF we are talking about BANG + 150 years, and Morrow teams are coming up here and there, and they are starting to organize, Krell would have re-visited the PB area...This time no quarter until he has an answer...one way or another.

(I refer you to the modules Fall Back, Damocles, Operation Lucifer, Ruins of Chicago, and Bullets and Bluegrass. In each there are hints that TMP is trying to start itself.)

My $0.02

Mike

Matt W

11-22-2011, 09:17 PM

"Krell caused the capture or destruction of several Morrow bases. He captured one intact and had himself frozen"

Consider the implications of the above quote. The exact number of Morrow Bases captured by Krell is at the discretion of the PD - but Krell doesn't really NEED Prime Base anymore. He has probably salvaged more resources than Prime Base and may even have control of "Alternate Prime"

dragoon500ly

11-23-2011, 08:49 AM

Canon requires that Prime Base be knocked out, inserting any kind of common sense blows the module to pieces. So, how do we fix it?

The simple fix is to have Soviet Intelligence observe the construction of Prime Base, and chalking up the ranch/children's hospice concept as simply a poor effort to camouflage the new American command base...a salvo of ICBMs solves the problem in typical massive overkill fashion. The damaged Prime Base computer is only able to broadcast a random code over the ELF broadcast system, which is the reason for the slow and haphazard wake up of the Project. For this purpose, I'd place "Prime Base" in the Snake River Valley in Idaho.

The Prime Base module now becomes the frozen Prime Deuce as well as the headquarters for the Atlantis Project. This deletes the flashback to too many Saturday afternoon Japanese monster movie marathons, deletes the Krell episode, deletes the incredibly stupid decision to open the base and "feel good about ourselves" mission and now the objective of the team is to locate Prime Deuce and reawaken it.

I'd still like to go with a fourth cylinder with MARS/Recon/Science teams for control of the local area. Perhaps a larger aviation section (has anybody noticed that Autogyros are used only in TM1-1 and never show up in any module?). A fusion refueling facility in place of the HAZMAT in Support and an expanded Mission Annex tunnel facility.

As for Phoenix....I'd rather replace them with a large MARS Team, dedicated to the protection of Prime Deuce.

Comments?

Gamer

11-24-2011, 03:48 PM

This I don't agree with you on Dragon,
"A) I changed the cover of the base. Instead of a ranch, placed in a very nontypical location I made this a location for one of the major charities of Morrow Industries, a children's hospital and hospice. This had several advantages: it allowed personnel to come and go in large numbers, with their families; since it was a real facility, the real patients, families, and staff provided good cover for Project personnel; it gave a good reason for large quantities of material to be brought up to the ridge; construction, enlargement and renovation of the many buildings at the hospital gave cover for Prime Bases' construction; the locals knew this to be a hospital for terminally ill children, they quickly learned not to get close to any of the patients or their families or to be surprised when they suddenly disappeared, this was put down to a death or recovery of a child, with the parents simply returning home; the facility could provide the core of a colony after the war; its mission would, possibly, shield it from the worst of the war, targeting a children's hospital is pretty low; it was good cover for shipping high tech equipment into Prime Base."

Not a bad idea. The hospice would also explain a small airstrip being built to handle mid-sized aircraft (one less thing to worry about when the Project goes operational).

The hospital, any hospital is still a target, it may not be by any bomb but it's a target for all the wandering refugees and military personnel.
Seriously if you had survived and was wandering by soon afterwards would you just keep on going by or would you scrounge for meds?
Nobody is dumb enough to just go on by especially if the facility was in decent shape, after all a roof is a roof.
The MP personnel wouldn't have to advertise a refuge camp, it becomes one before the dust even clears.

I agree with most everything else everyone has said and I too got rid of the Phoenix team, what a waste of space.

dragoon500ly

11-25-2011, 08:40 AM

This I don't agree with you on Dragon,

The hospital, any hospital is still a target, it may not be by any bomb but it's a target for all the wandering refugees and military personnel.
Seriously if you had survived and was wandering by soon afterwards would you just keep on going by or would you scrounge for meds?
Nobody is dumb enough to just go on by especially if the facility was in decent shape, after all a roof is a roof.
The MP personnel wouldn't have to advertise a refuge camp, it becomes one before the dust even clears.

I agree with most everything else everyone has said and I too got rid of the Phoenix team, what a waste of space.

The initial problem with access to the base, in the module, was placing a ranch on top of a ridge. Nobody in that portion of Nevada builds ranches on top of ridges, primarily due to a lack of any reliable source of water. In and of it self, that screams "government installation" in 100 foot tall LED flashing lights. The hospice idea, especially a children's hospice for terminally ill patients makes better sense (all though the lack of a water supply rears its ugly head yet again). Another idea would be to place a open pit mine (but again, that on top of the ridge thing is kinda unique in this state).

My own personal views, after a lot of research into local conditions would be to build the ranch on the floor of the valley and then dig an access tunnel into the ridge. Instead of building a steep incline (elevators, stairs) in order to get to Level One of the Life Cylinder, I'd simply reverse stack the levels (One moving to the bottom of the cylinder) on all of the cylinders.

I also have a few thoughts on the Grand Deception....surely, at some point in time, the probability of the location of Prime being discovered by a hostile force had to have been discussed (and if it wasn't, then we have some very poor planners!). The entrance tunnel could have had a series of "annexes" holding food stuffs, clothing, building and medical supplies then end at Post one and the "official" three "pod" base. This would also allow for the transcore to be deleted from the first level with access up to level two through a hidden staircase. So if anyone did crack the entrance tunnel, a prepared deception is already in place (besides, these emergency supplies could always be issued to the local teams).

Just a few thoughts!

Gamer

11-25-2011, 11:08 AM

Nobody in that portion of Nevada builds ranches on top of ridges, primarily due to a lack of any reliable source of water.
I had one at Eagle peak in 87 and I had no problem with water.
Only problem had was fire.
It only screams government facility in hindsight.
Go through all the ranches like this you see on maps all over the north american continent and you'll see just how many aren't government facilities.

A mine was the better way to do it, especially if you place toxic mine tailing warning signs around the perimeter.
A better option would have been toxic waste facility.
Before the war and after the war it would keep people away, the last thing the refugees want is more contamination.
You can't just build such a facility with thoughts of only keeping people away pre-war.
Operational security before, during and after the war MUST be taken into account or don't even bother with it.
When survivors are roaming around after the war they are going to be looking for places of safety and a hospital is about the very worst thing anyone could have come up with.
It offers refugees shelter and possible medical help, it gives military personnel a nice FOB.
Might as well put up a giant neon sign "Refugees welcome" and a continuous fireworks display.
A hospital would be the very first thing I got rid of from the book.
Again, operational Security, before, during, and after the war must be maintained.
You don't reveal the site until you are absolutely sure it is the right time to do so.
If this group of people are even remotely good at planning for contingencies they would never even think of something so ridiculous as a hospital.

If this group was to think of creating refugee camps they would have already planned for that contingency.
Prepared sites would have already been created, using such guises as dude ranches, retreats, even hollywood movie sets like some old west towns similar to these:
http://employees.oxy.edu/jerry//iverson.htm
http://employees.oxy.edu/jerry//melody.htm
http://employees.oxy.edu/jerry/corrigan/corrigan.htm
http://www.billcotter.com/disney/golden.htm
http://employees.oxy.edu/jerry//bell.htm
http://circlemcity.com/
http://www.nps.gov/samo/planyourvisit/paramountranch.htm

I like your deception plan, but one problem there, once the deception base is discovered what is going to make the badguys move on?
What keeps them from staying and holding the facility?
You don't know if this is the entire hostile force or just a part of it, you take it back and then they come back and on it goes back and forth and the primary facility will eventually get discovered, it's only a matter of when not if.
Great, now I'm giving myself a headache thinking about it. :)

dragoon500ly

11-25-2011, 01:17 PM

I had one at Eagle peak in 87 and I had no problem with water. Only problem had was fire. It only screams government facility in hindsight. Go through all the ranches like this you see on maps all over the north american continent and you'll see just how many aren't government facilities.

A mine was the better way to do it, especially if you place toxic mine tailing warning signs around the perimeter. A better option would have been toxic waste facility. Before the war and after the war it would keep people away, the last thing the refugees want is more contamination. You can't just build such a facility with thoughts of only keeping people away pre-war. Operational security before, during and after the war MUST be taken into account or don't even bother with it. When survivors are roaming around after the war they are going to be looking for places of safety and a hospital is about the very worst thing anyone could have come up with. It offers refugees shelter and possible medical help, it gives military personnel a nice FOB. Might as well put up a giant neon sign "Refugees welcome" and a continuous fireworks display. A hospital would be the very first thing I got rid of from the book. Again, operational Security, before, during, and after the war must be maintained. You don't reveal the site until you are absolutely sure it is the right time to do so. If this group of people are even remotely good at planning for contingencies they would never even think of something so ridiculous as a hospital.

If this group was to think of creating refugee camps they would have already planned for that contingency. Prepared sites would have already been created, using such guises as dude ranches, retreats, even hollywood movie sets like some old west towns similar to these:

I like your deception plan, but one problem there, once the deception base is discovered what is going to make the badguys move on? What keeps them from staying and holding the facility? You don't know if this is the entire hostile force or just a part of it, you take it back and then they come back and on it goes back and forth and the primary facility will eventually get discovered, it's only a matter of when not if.
Great, now I'm giving myself a headache thinking about it. :)

Buy stock in Bayer.... :p

Sitting down and thinking it over, a mine that works over a 10-15 year stretch and then closes when "the vein ran out" may be a better approach; I like the HAZMAT idea, even plays into canon (Starnaman Incident's Delta Base cover).

As far as the modified deception, the part of the canon that I liked was having the remaining transcore in the Supply Cylinder and its "leaking radiation hazard"...that would certainly encourage people to move on, and with a lack of power (no water, no air circulation) what use would the base be?

As far as the refugee sites, no argument from me! I think the covers would be great. My point is that any refugee site would need to be placed as far as possible from Prime Base. Of all TMP installations, Prime is the one that requires "no assistance of any kind to refugees". Prime should be directing other teams to move into the area and encourage refugees to move away from the area, I can even see a PsyOps Team telling stories about the deadly monsters in the area, perhaps even stashing a can or three of nuclear waste and then using their geiger counters to "prove" how deadly the radiation in the area is.

Just a couple of ideas....now going back to watch all of the idiots doing the Black Friday thang!

Gamer

11-25-2011, 03:39 PM

Buy stock in Bayer.... :p
why? docs have me on Flexeril :p (migraines):(

The only thing that would stop me from using deception as a base would be such a hazmat leak.
No power or water means nothing as it is still a viable location/asset for now.

Having deception near prime is a very bad Idea.
Once Deception base is discovered it can no longer be used by MP personnel. The primary reason is people like me would place an OP near there to see if any more people appear and if the MP personnel at prime (or anywhere else really) are that stupid to return they just jeopardized themselves.

Im right there with you on the whole refugee thing though, they should be kept away from Prime.

Prime should be directing other teams to move into the area and encourage refugees to move away from the area
I'm of the mindset that Prime should already have it's own teams to "encourage" people to move on.
Deadly monster tales might only encourage some of the more heavily armed to go deal with the "deadly monsters".

For a modern game I'd be more likely going to to make a MP "front" out of something like these guys:
http://www.hardenedstructures.com/index.html
who built things like this for other "fronts" like these guys:
http://www.undergroundvaults.com/
or a "front" like this http://www.hardenedstructures.com/missile-silos.html
or this
http://probyte2u.hubpages.com/hub/Vivos-Underground-Security-Shelter-For-2012-and-Beyond
Made for a rich 2012 "nut case".

dragoon500ly

11-25-2011, 04:00 PM

Now here's a thought.....

We have Prime Base built on the ridge with the mission annex tunnel running northwards along the ridge. The only openings in the canon Prime Base is the decon entrance, the two exposure modules and the access through the ave for the heliport. But how about a fifth entrance?

This is an elevator shaft that runs down to the base of the ridge. Here it enters a "deception" base. It has a tunnel leading from a deserted ranch with supply annexes (all empty except for scraps and garbage), the tunnel ends in a security station with a decon setup and then a small, three or four level base that has already been "abandoned" and only needing an infusion of thermite and gasoline for that "just roasted" effect. Anyone breaking the security finds the base abandoned. Prime Base Security could monitor anyone who accesses or occupies the base, just in case they can be used to further Project needs.

As for the concealed elevator access, there are no ladders, no stairs, just that tube running 400 feet straight up. And as sadistic PD....there would be a ton or so of concrete slabs ready to be loaded into the elevator...right before its cables are cut.

Just a thought!

ArmySGT.

11-28-2011, 06:44 PM

Here's another thought.

Why in each of these modules (Prime Base and Desert Search) did the planners bury the heavy equipment necessary to open the base inside the base?

Really? Every undertaking to get started begins with a pick and a shovel?

Let the damn door open inward and have a area to one side to dump the spoils, then use the loader bucket to open the exit ramp.

Why wear out or worse injure personnel just to open the damn door.

dragoon500ly

11-29-2011, 06:56 AM

ArmySGT.

11-30-2011, 07:04 PM

dragoon500ly

12-01-2011, 05:32 AM

The Hydroponics set up in PB is pretty small for 500 people. That are of N. Nevada and SE Oregon is pretty desolate scrub too.

So.............. food. What where they and the Teams in the Field going to eat when the ration packs run out?

Yeah it is gonna grow food, but not a lot and not much variety. Aquaponics is a better set up as it will add fish (tilapia, catfish, carp), crayfish (red claws are 1lb!), fresh water mollusks, as sources of protein to the diet. Still for 500?

Would need a whole cylinder just itself.

Have you noticed there isn't a cannery and/or a freeze dry facility in there? What replaces the ration packs at 30 days into the operation?

To really make Prime work, it looks like the Supply Cylinder would have to be gutted, moving the heavy industrial stuff out into the mission annex, and using the freed space for aquaponics as well as a cannery/freeze dry facility. I'm really starting to think that a fourth cylinder may be required just to help fix the obvious points!

ArmySGT.

12-01-2011, 05:55 PM

To really make Prime work, it looks like the Supply Cylinder would have to be gutted, moving the heavy industrial stuff out into the mission annex, and using the freed space for aquaponics as well as a cannery/freeze dry facility. I'm really starting to think that a fourth cylinder may be required just to help fix the obvious points!

Oh no you gonna need a fifth cylinder...........

Where is the factories and the foundries to make tools, replacement parts, even complete machines? Fusion power packs are good for 18 months I think there is facilities for recharging one (helium 3 ?) but what if you need a new one?

Detroit won't be making any of those, let alone any new V-150 parts.

dragoon500ly

12-02-2011, 06:10 AM

Oh no you gonna need a fifth cylinder...........

Where is the factories and the foundries to make tools, replacement parts, even complete machines? Fusion power packs are good for 18 months I think there is facilities for recharging one (helium 3 ?) but what if you need a new one?

Detroit won't be making any of those, let alone any new V-150 parts.

I'd remove the radiation dump in Supply and replace it with a fusion recharge facility. I'd also move the industrial stuff out into the mission annex tunnels (and possible add 2-4 additional tunnels either running the same way or at cross angles), Ammunition needs to be at the end of a very long tunnel and as far as possible from Prime, and behind several sets of very thick blast doors!

Moving the industrial stuff out of supply opens up those areas for additional farming, canning, freeze-drying, etc. And moving the industrial stuff out into the tunnels gets them out and away from the living areas and allows for more space (if needed).

ArmySGT.

12-13-2011, 05:08 PM

"B) The Project had almost no need of transuranic radioactives. Fusion uses Hydrogen and makes Helium (and a neutron). The radioactive sludge at the bottom of Prime Base has no reason to be there. Additionally, NO ONE (except the Federal Government at Hanford) stores high energy radioactivies this way. What did the Project do? Place its idiot children in the safety department? Write this stuff out, its stupid!"

Concur.

I had a thought. This could explain the radioactive materials necessary for the deception to work and removes the implausible stockpile of radioactive waste from inside Prime Base.

Easy Peasy.

Volunteers that were going to die anyway.

A few Science Team Members in HAAM suits entered to center of the blast zone from the Krell nuke and collected radioactive debris.

Done.

robj3

12-15-2011, 10:05 PM

Terry Sofian wrote the 'Prime Base Repairman' article.
He has a background in fire and radiation safety (I think he mentions this).

A pdf copy can be found in the files area of the Morrow Project yahoo group.

Prime Base needs a rewrite.

The only advantage to the Nevada location is a relatively low amount of
post-attack fallout exposure (from FEMA's NAPB-90); the lack of water,
arable land and proximity to targets like Nellis AFB, Hawthorne and Sierra Army Depots are big problems.

The location of ELF transmitters is limited by the conductivity of rock, hence the location of the U.S. system in Wisconsin and Michigan where the geology is right. The Project isn't going to have an ELF transmitter.

Alternate communication modalities with continental range include shortwave and meteor burst. The problem with these are reliability in the post attack environment, but data rates are high and large transmitters and receivers are not required.

Other options include "stratellites" (balloons or UAVs) to act as very tall antennae.

Really big Projects could use something like 'Perimetr' or the US ERCS (Minuteman ICBMs with transmitters) to send the wake up signal.

I agree with many of the comments upthread.

The neutron bombardment from an operating reactor[1] may produce considerable amounts of radioactive material (e.g. the reactor walls and heat exchange machinery).

However, the half life of induced radioactivity is short (30 years), and after 150 years detectable but harmless levels would be present.

A hardened complex with the cover story of a mine or waste storage facility
makes the most sense - it provides a good cover story. For later collapses,
archival storage or secure data centres could be another cover story.

Rob

========

[1] Criteria for Project fusion fuels:
- Stability - nothing with short half-lives (e.g. tritium's [T] 12 years)
- Relatively cheap (helium-3 is 1 part in 10,000 of the helium obtained from
gas and oil fields, so is horrendously expensive)
- Minimal neutron production.
- Net positive energy yield (reaction energies below are expressed in mega
electron volts [MeV]; 1 MeV = 1.6 x 10^(-13) joules).

This leaves us with:

a. Deuterium (hydrogen-2, D)
Found in seawater (0.02%); stable.

D + D -> T + p + 4.03MeV (50%)
D + D -> He-3 + n + 3.27MeV (50%)

Proton (p) can be trapped electrically and its kinetic energy harnessed.
Neutron (n) has an energy of 2.45 MeV and is a radiation problem.
It may be possible to encourage the first reaction over the second.

Optional reaction to use the He-3:
D + He-3 -> He-4 + p + 18.3MeV

Big advantages: one fuel type, storable as heavy water. Relatively easy to
initiate, high energy density.

Big disadvantage: neutron production - major radiation hazard. Need for
coolant jacket, heat exchangers, etc. to efficiently produce electricity.

b. Lithium-6 (Li-6)
Makes up about 6% of naturally occurring lithium. Stable.

D + Li-6 -> 2He-4 + 22.4MeV

Alternate (side) reactions:
D + Li-6 -> He-3 + He-4 + n + 2.56MeV
D + Li-6 -> Li-7 + p + 5 MeV
D + Li-6 -> Be-7 + n + 3.4MeV

If the fusion plant includes a proton source (synchotron) and supply
(hydrogen) we could use:
p + Li-6 -> He-4 + He-3 + 4MeV

The big problem for the Project is the military demand for lithium-6 (for
the fusion stage of nuclear weapons).
Another, lesser one is the need for deuterium or hydrogen (2 fuel
materials).
It's also relatively hard to start (worse than boron) and energy density is
low.

c. Boron-11 (B-11)
80% of natural boron; stable.

p + B-11 -> 3He-4 + 8.7MeV

Needs a source and supply of protons.

On reflection, the best candidate. Minimal messy neutrons from helium-boron
side reactions (~0.2%), no proliferation potential, no diversion of
traceable materials with military applications.

The biggest disadvantage is that it's relatively hard to start (~16x harder
than deuterium).

DigTw0Grav3s

07-11-2012, 02:16 AM

Hey all.

Apologies for the resurrected thread, but I figured it would be better to consolidate my questions here instead of starting fresh.

Has anyone considered modernizing Prime Base? Technology is a lot more advanced now than it was in 1987, and I subsequently believe that Prime could get a great deal more "bang for its' buck", even if you keep it confined to three modules.

Computers would get much, much smaller. This could either free a great deal of the space in Ops, or give the base room to double-down, and install larger systems, possibly cloud-based. A cloud system could be used as a centralized processing resource, which could be dynamically allocated to whichever department needed it most.

Flight Operations is fine conceptually (ignoring the tunnel thing), but could definitely benefit from modern technology. The V-22 Osprey's S/VTOL capability and long(er) legs make it a practical shoe-in for the hangar. Some kind of UAV like the Fire Scout would be great for maintaining situational awareness around Prime, and assisting any patrols that get in firefights nearby.

The exposure modules could probably use some growth, too. Perhaps a third dedicated module with area search radars would be wise; the project had the air base planned for some time, and it never hurts to know what's in your area.

I love some of the ideas floated. A fourth cylinder would be really cool to design from the floor up, as would a dedicated industrial capability. In my mind, both life and support would be much different.

Life should probably be converted over to entirely housing and living facilities. All agriculture should be moved into a separate module that can take advantage of a dedicated vertical farming design. Using gravity to manage water flow would be great for the agricultural viability of the base. If you make it a full cylinder, you also have tons of room for an ark-like seed bank and genetic storehouse, which is a cool set piece. Thematically, more cryo-tubes fit here. Biochemical reactors could be useful for growing and deactivating microorganisms for the purpose of medicine. You could also put a secondary fire station here.

Support should get a workover as well. Whether or not you move industrial gear to a different part of the base, you're going to get a lot of space in here either way. Technology has scaled down quite a bit. Printing, for example, no longer needs a dedicated level for the same output that the Project wanted. I think a good chunk of that space should be dedicated to 3D Printing technology. Imagine the applications of a small, robust, intelligent system that can make a three-dimensional copy of anything you have a CAD file for. I would also like to see support (or a hypothetical industrial cylinder) get a limited petroleum / ethanol refinement facility, if that's possible.

What do you guys usually put in the space that was left unallocated for the Phoenix Project?

mikeo80

07-11-2012, 08:55 AM

I agree that Prime Base needs to be looked at. It all depends on when TEOTWAWKI occurs.

IF you follow canon as it exists today, then guess what, you are stuck with the original Prime.

IF you push the date out, then, as you correctly state, technology evolves.

It just really depends on YOUR game. When do you want to light up WWIII?

One thing I have done in a lot of games, even those built around 1989, is better information about Prime to the field commanders.

IF you follow the canon, and Prime dies, then I have had at least some of the following things occur.

1) The delayed message to wake the teams occured. However, there was additional information encoded in the message. If a field commander of sufficent rank used his/her ID card to access the vehicle commo, then the rest of the message was issued. It showed the commander the location of the nearest regional supply base.

2) Once at the supply base, the commander's card would access a part of the computer's memory that contained the full story of the death of Prime. (At least as much as was known) The location of Prime was also released/

3) Upon activation of 20% or more of the field assets (Based upon attempts to contact Prime.) another signal was sent. This was to Prime Beta. The alternate command center. THis would wake the sleepers at Prime Beta with the story of the death of Prime Alpha. It also would bring on line a solid C3I base to begin the work of Morrow Project.

Just some ideas to kick around.

My $0.02

Mike

ArmySGT.

07-11-2012, 02:22 PM

Hey all.

Apologies for the resurrected thread, but I figured it would be better to consolidate my questions here instead of starting fresh. I don’t mind this has been a great thread. Any inputs is a better game.

Has anyone considered modernizing Prime Base? Technology is a lot more advanced now than it was in 1987, and I subsequently believe that Prime could get a great deal more "bang for its' buck", even if you keep it confined to three modules. I generally play the canon date of 18 November 1989. As we know what technology and events were happening at the time. This is the GMs call completely, the rules are a framework so tweak it if that makes it more exciting.
As for the technology, well fusion power, Man portable laser, powered exoskeletons, digital maps, and Damocles….. I treat the technology available to the Morrow Project as 10-20 years ahead of that in use by the Federal Government and others. The Council of Tomorrow is comprised of successful businessmen in a variety of fields comprising the industrial capacity of multinational conglomerates.
Computers would get much, much smaller. This could either free a great deal of the space in Ops, or give the base room to double-down, and install larger systems, possibly cloud-based. A cloud system could be used as a centralized processing resource, which could be dynamically allocated to whichever department needed it most. I re-designate the space as Data Centers. Holding the knowledge and scientific achievements of all of the Pre-War cultures for the rebuilding effort.

Flight Operations is fine conceptually (ignoring the tunnel thing), but could definitely benefit from modern technology. The V-22 Osprey's S/VTOL capability and long(er) legs make it a practical shoe-in for the hangar. Some kind of UAV like the Fire Scout would be great for maintaining situational awareness around Prime, and assisting any patrols that get in firefights nearby. I was thinking instead of an electro-magnetic catapult to launch drones with a short dirt runway and disguised elevator on the roof for recovery. The Osprey is not a little bird, but I am not excited by the Flight ops in Prime Base either.
My solution to Flight Ops is to turn it to Drone ops, and move Flight Ops out of the Cylinders with access by subway train from the Ops cylinder. Maybe move it to Gerlach, Nevada. The Playa there is big enough to land 747s in the dry season.
I think a drone would call to much attention to Prime Base. It would be like vulture circling a kill and be visible to radar for miles, and miles. Not to say one would not be launched to look around, but I think Prime Base would have fixed sensors that are passive or short ranged like Closed circuit cameras, LIDAR, and phased array radar in a low power setting. Most would be semi autonomous and alert a human operator when something in their area changed. Modern CCTV does this now.

The exposure modules could probably use some growth, too. Perhaps a third dedicated module with area search radars would be wise; the project had the air base planned for some time, and it never hurts to know what's in your area. I think that make a great side adventure for the Team to locate and get into operation sensor modules that are off the Prime Base and out of the area. Prime Base is hidden and a RADAR is an active radio transmitter that can be tracked back to its source. Prime would either need to give up their deception and go public, or use systems off site that can transmit back to Prime. An AWACS UAV perhaps, or a series of RADAR stations that relay their signals to Prime through MPsat.
I love some of the ideas floated. A fourth cylinder would be really cool to design from the floor up, as would a dedicated industrial capability. In my mind, both life and support would be much different. I agree. I am not satisfied that Prime can do the Mission in the original write up. Though this was very advanced for the time the Module was written so kudos to the authors for what was put together. Nitpicking is easy, creation is hard!
Life should probably be converted over to entirely housing and living facilities. All agriculture should be moved into a separate module that can take advantage of a dedicated vertical farming design. Using gravity to manage water flow would be great for the agricultural viability of the base. If you make it a full cylinder, you also have tons of room for an ark-like seed bank and genetic storehouse, which is a cool set piece. Thematically, more cryo-tubes fit here. Biochemical reactors could be useful for growing and deactivating microorganisms for the purpose of medicine. You could also put a secondary fire station here. I don’t know why agriculture was so overlooked. Any computer models of the fallout patterns for a nuclear exchange showed the major crop producing regions of the US covered in highly radioactive isotopes. Bad juju. I think agriculture is going to be important but probably further out from the main cylinder as the whole process is a bit stinky.
Support should get a workover as well. Whether or not you move industrial gear to a different part of the base, you're going to get a lot of space in here either way. Technology has scaled down quite a bit. Printing, for example, no longer needs a dedicated level for the same output that the Project wanted. I think a good chunk of that space should be dedicated to 3D Printing technology. Imagine the applications of a small, robust, intelligent system that can make a three-dimensional copy of anything you have a CAD file for. I would also like to see support (or a hypothetical industrial cylinder) get a limited petroleum / ethanol refinement facility, if that's possible. I think you will still find printing to be large scale. Making books, and informational news papers is large equipment. I don’t think of this as say a Kinkos copy center but, as a print plant for a major book distributor capable of 100,000 school textbooks a month or a week.
With Daedalus, and Lasers I don’t see why not the Support can not have that and more CNC machinery. Just be careful what you dole out to players.
I think a refinery is essential to the Project but not inside Prime. It is to dangerous, and toxic, plus better suited to be built where the oil is, or where a pipeline can be tapped into.

What do you guys usually put in the space that was left unallocated for the Phoenix Project? I treat the Pheonix as Frozen Watch. There are back up personnel there, that were never activated because of the contagion, most will be too old for field work but excellent Science and Operations staff personnel. Alternates for the Projects Regional field and supply bases. This way I can have a low level functioning Prime Base and send the Players back into the field.

dragoon500ly

07-28-2012, 06:49 AM

So looking over the "new" Prime Base...

A base with four cylinders, Operations, Life I and Life II, Support and a Annex Tunnel.

A mine runs into the mountain and stays operational for 10-15 years (cover for the construction of PB) and will serve as the entry into the base.

At the end of one shaft is the entry corridor leading to level one of the Ops cylinder. This consists of the Security Complex, Medical Screening,Records, Central In-processing and a small Billeting area for vistors

Level two Ops remains the same, Personnel and Accounting

Level three Ops remains unchanged, this is Mission Operations, the command center of the Project.

Level four Ops is Branch Operations, unchanged.

Level five Ops is the ELINT center, unchanged.

Level six Ops is the Communications Center, unchanged.

Level seven Ops is Administration, consisting of the Base Internal Telephone Exchange, Security Post Two, the Base Video Complex, Ops Fire Dept and the Base Administration offices.

Level eight Ops is TMP's Technical Library. In the module this also houses the World Holo map, I've often wondered on the utility of this and I find myself tending towards deleting the holo map and using the space for a larger library/additional computer space.

Level nine Ops is also dedicated to the Technical Library and World Holo Map, here I replace the holo map with a Main Briefing Room.

Level ten Ops is the Situation/Briefing Rooms, unchanged.

Level eleven Ops is the Holo Map Viewing and Control. Since I disagree with the idea of a Holo Map, I simply convert this into office spaces for the various teams assigned to PB.

Level twelve Ops is the Holo Map Floor. I convert this into just plain Maps. Not only is it able to project maps up to Mission Operations and the Briefing rooms, it is also the storage space for hardcopy maps as well as equipment needed to update maps.

Level thirteen Ops is the Archives and Atlantis Project Liaison. Here I move the archieve vaults out into the annex tunnels and replace them with computers storing the archived material in e-format.

ArmySGT.

07-28-2012, 03:51 PM

1896

A couple of variations on Cylinders arrangement.

ArmySGT.

08-31-2013, 11:18 PM

Klaatu, Verata, Nictu!

A base with four cylinders, Operations, Life I and Life II, Support and a Annex Tunnel.

I am going with Operations (Base), Operations (Mission), Life I, Life II, Support I, Support II, Support III, Annex tunnel and Magazine.

Operations (Base) cylinder just for running Prime Base itself. There is a few hundred personnel, and their dependents, the maintenance of facilities, and the maintenance of support activities. This is a full time job. This one is concerned only with the Base itself. Think of it as the Garrison Command that watches over any Army post or Air Base. Their not in charge of the Troops, except those that maintain the facilities, and those that care for the logistics of keeping the lights on, hot and cold water on tap, and toilets flushing. 24/7, weekends and holidays.

Operations (Mission) this is staffed with the Command Team, and Mission specialist for running the Project. This the Commander in Chief and Prime Base is his Pentagon. They have a large area to cover and not enough people to oversee it. Everything to do with the Project external of Prime Base itself.

Life I and Life II, possibly a Life III....... have to have room for everyone. A bed for every head.

Support I, II, and III........ Prime Base is going to be forced to manufacture anything, and everything the Project requires. The projections made by think tanks is that the Soviet response is going to cripple manufacturing and transportation hubs. Someplace, if it had power, may not be able to import raw materials and export goods even if they had the personnel. So these support facilities make everything from Apple sauce to X-ray film. Their are facilities to smelt recycled metals, can or freeze dry meals, synthesize medicines, and recycle plastics, even forge or pour large casting like motors. Fusion packs and fusion powerplants can also be refurbished here.

Annex Tunnel is actually a grid, One main thorough fare with parallel tunnels and side tunnels that paralellel each other. Divided into holding areas.

Magazine. Continuing on past the Annex tunnel leads to a manned guard station and a blast door. This leads to another grid of tunnels with further blast doors, and fire suppression systems for safeguarding the Project ammunition stockpiles and component for reconditioning or refurbishment.

ArmySGT.

09-07-2013, 08:16 PM

You know what else makes a great deception and won't catch attention or be flooded by refugees after the war? A waste disposal incineration power plant. Any kind of truck can be coming and going. Waste is screened for metals and plastics that can be recycled by other means. Water lines, gas lines, a railyard, power lines and a power substation do not look out of place. All the underground digging and construction can be spun to the public as buffers and coffer dams that prevent contamination of ground water. Even after the facility were to go online any manner of truck could enter the facility and other items brought in on rail.

A waste disposal incineration power plant. Think on it.

ArmySGT.

09-28-2013, 12:42 PM

If this group was to think of creating refugee camps they would have already planned for that contingency.
Prepared sites would have already been created, using such guises as dude ranches, retreats, even hollywood movie sets like some old west towns

I really like this idea.. I may have to build a module around the idea. Maybe with a specialist team (lightly armed) that was part of the group meant to open it up.

Harsh, narcissistic, selfish baddies have taken up residence not realizing what is underneath the facade.

ArmySGT.

09-28-2013, 05:06 PM

Sitting down and thinking it over, a mine that works over a 10-15 year stretch and then closes when "the vein ran out" may be a better approach; I like the HAZMAT idea, even plays into canon (Starnaman Incident's Delta Base cover).

So what do you suppose is going into the never opened Yucca Mountain? :D

ArmySGT.

08-16-2015, 12:22 PM

Live Again!

Placeholder as I am working on something.

Rockwolf66

08-18-2015, 03:51 AM

Oh and I have discovered a Plausible reason that the radioactive waste was being stored. IRL they have managed to create a radiation "eating" bacteria by splicing two other types of bacteria. The reason it hasn't been "Field" tested is a combination of Anti-Nuke and Anti-GMO hysteria.

The bacteria eventually make radioactive materials inert. I'm not sure how long that takes but it's fast enough to be observed in a lab setting.

mmartin798

08-18-2015, 11:25 AM

Unfortunately, radioisotopes don't work that way. The bacteria you reference is radiation resistant and can decontaminate a radioactive site of other chemical contaminants, but not the radioisotopes.

midnight77

08-18-2015, 03:32 PM

Unfortunately, radioisotopes don't work that way. The bacteria you reference is radiation resistant and can decontaminate a radioactive site of other chemical contaminants, but not the radioisotopes.

Don't they concentrate the radioactive material also? That makes it easier to clean up, right?

mmartin798

08-18-2015, 08:53 PM

Don't they concentrate the radioactive material also? That makes it easier to clean up, right?

The article I read about them did not address that. The one bacteria in the pair derives biological energy from the radiation, essentially using the radiation for food. This protects the other from the radiation and allows it to do the rest. It is possible it could concentrate the radiation, but the article only mentioned breaking down toxins and releasing mercury from being bound and allowing it to go into the atmosphere.

ArmySGT.

08-19-2015, 11:58 PM

The article I read about them did not address that. The one bacteria in the pair derives biological energy from the radiation, essentially using the radiation for food. This protects the other from the radiation and allows it to do the rest. It is possible it could concentrate the radiation, but the article only mentioned breaking down toxins and releasing mercury from being bound and allowing it to go into the atmosphere.

This would be radiosynthesis, a process by which the organism uses the energetic radioactive particles to synthesize O2 and Carbon into carbohydrate chains. A process similar to chemosynthesis or photosynthesis. There is a mold within the shattered nuclear containment vessel at Chernobyl doing this very thing. However, this would not be consuming the radioactive material. One would expect the levels of measurable radiation to be lower due the absorptive properties of the organism. Absorption being affected by the mass of the organism and coverage in square centimeters, surely.

ArmySGT.

08-19-2015, 11:59 PM

Unfortunately, radioisotopes don't work that way. The bacteria you reference is radiation resistant and can decontaminate a radioactive site of other chemical contaminants, but not the radioisotopes.

I am ok with this because the Morrow Project is a science fiction game.

I mean Blue Undead and a Universal Antidote are a thing.

ArmySGT.

08-21-2015, 11:19 PM

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j218/ArmySGT_photos/Morrow%20Project/Locations/Slide2.jpg

tsofian

09-02-2015, 06:32 PM

Hello
This is Terry Sofian. I wrote the original Prime Base Repairman almost two decades ago! It's nice to see that a couple of years ago it was still being discussed. In the time since I wrote it I've looked at the original module more than a few times and even had a campaign get all the way to, and thru-the base.

It is still one of my three favorite published modules for the game. I think the original authors did an outstanding job with it and what I did was nothing more than tune it up and put some new tires on it.

That being said in the years since I wrote the article I have learned a hell of a lot. There is a lot more I would love to do to the module.

I've been reading through this thread and a lot of what has been said makes a lot of sense. Some I disagree with and some of the points caused me to thump the palm of my hand repeatedly against my forehead!

I am going to run through the thread again and make some notes and post a massive reply, which will also include new ideas and thoughts on the original module.

Just in case anyone is curious here is my Linkedin Profile with my part of my resume https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=AAIAAAEP478BXEIPoqGlFW33xUuPOvIKBltIL4I&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile

ArmySGT.

09-04-2015, 08:46 PM

3489

This is one way I imagine the mission annex appearing, as a network of interconnected tunnels with bays to store equipment inside of.

Blue is large tunnels and bays for storing or moving material about. Red is life supporting electrical and ventilation. Green is pedestrian tunnels. Yellow is a survival shelter in case of tunnel collapse or other hazard.

tsofian

09-05-2015, 09:08 AM

That makes good sense. The area would have to be large and well subdivided as different types of environments for preservation. It will also make construction easier and the general structure would be much more safe.

tsofian

09-07-2015, 03:13 PM

Staffing and a few other ideas

In the original module the Grand Deception was a key part of play. The deal was that the top level of all three cylinders was converted into the appearance of a wrecked base. It was also supposed to indicate that there was a reactor and that the reactor shielding had failed.
This is a great idea and a really serious issue for any players trying to unravel the mystery of what happened to the Base. I suggested some tweaks about 20 years ago when I wrote. Over the last generation I have occasionally thought about Prime Base and the Grand Deception and have a few comments and corrections to add to the discussion.
Let’s start with the three “transcores” or transportation cores. As these were written there are a number of issues with them. The Life and Operations cylinders have transcores that consist of a group of 8 passenger elevators, a freight elevator and a set of stairs. The Support cylinder has fewer elevators and a ramp. According to the text the elevators are not on emergency power. This means that if the base loses power the only way to get up and down are stairs in two of the cylinders and the ramp in Support. So any heavy equipment will need to either be dragged up flights of stairs or taken up the ramp in Support and then humped over to the place it is needed.
The text says these transcores are not primarily structural, but that makes a limited amount of sense. They will need to be strong enough to support a number of high speed passenger elevators, a 16 ton freight elevator and a wide staircase. The square transcore structure makes this a bit difficult. A hollow tube would make more sense. The whole 8 elevator system; some of which open in each direction, doesn’t really make much sense and just complicate everything. Also eight elevators for a structure the size of the cylinders seems a bit excessive. I would skip the staircase and go with a central bank of elevators surrounded by a ramp. The ramp will have a flat landing section on each level. The freight elevator opens to the ramp. The passenger elevators will open to the opposite side of the cylinder. The core can be sealed at each level by drop down fire doors that close off the fronts of the elevators as well as the entrance to the ramp. This will prevent the transcore from becoming a conduit for heat, smoke and flame in the event of a fire.
It also means that there has to be emergency staircases someplace else in the base. I would go with a staircase at each end of the tubes that connect the cylinders. This allows the staircases to be separate from the basic structure of the cylinders and they only have a small entrance that disrupts the strength of the cylinders. Self-closing fire doors with panic bars will close off the staircases and in the event of really serious issues there will be heavy remotely controlled drop down doors.
This change up in the vertical movement systems of the base makes the Grand Deception a lot easier. In the module there was concern about intruders tapping against the transcore walls and hearing an echo. Even in the original module I don’t think that is likely, but in this case they will be banging against either the structural portion of the tube, or the heavy drop down fire barriers. The transformation of the transcores into a fake damaged nuclear reactor would consist of some paint and some radioactive material brought up from the radioactive material storage associated with the operation of the cyclotron. Also since everyone is going to die, or has already died putting a few corpses in radiation gear near the damaged reactor before setting the entire place on fire would help sell the story. Its brutal but the event called for brutal solutions.
Another issue that could be easily fixed is the problems caused by the farm on Level 1 of Support. It really doesn’t make sense to have the farm on the top level. It does make sense to a warehouse which “supports” the other activities on Level I of the other two cylinders. This would be all the items needed in the decontamination area of the Base entrance, medical supplies for the medical section in Operations. It also gives a place where items that might be needed in a hurry for surface activities. It is a big space for these things, but it also means that instead of trying to explain why there is a farm that can’t possibly supply either enough food or enough replacement oxygen to the people in the base having a great big warehouse (from which everything that wasn’t nailed down has been removed) makes a lot more sense.
The Grand Deception calls for the top three levels to look like they had been abandoned after being heavily damaged by fire. To sell this (and to make it possible) the automated fire systems would all have been turned off. The sprinklers would have been valved off and drained on the top levels. All the extinguishers were either removed or just discharged before the fires were set. To make the fires actually burn a lot of material from throughout the base would have had to have been brought in, since the base was built to be as close to fire proof as possible. This means that almost every room will have either had a drum of flammable liquid or a high pressure gas cylinder of flammable gas thrown in and opened before the matches were struck. This would also have reduced the hazard to the rest of the base, since there will be a lot less hazardous materials around. It also means that the upper level of the base will have a highly toxic and possibly oxygen deficient environment. Too this either a timer would need to be placed or a person close to death, but not too close, would need to stay on Level1 to ignite the fires. They would be sealed in as their compatriots closed off the rest of the base from below. Once the fire starts it will continue to burn until all the fuel is used up or all the oxygen. Either way the entire level will be filled with toxic smoke and combustion products such as CO, CO2, NO2, probably phosgene and phosphine. The upper levels of the base have to be absolutely sealed from the lower levels or those products will fill the entire base. Even after a few hundred years there will no place for this gas to go so the level will still be filled with a stew of toxic gases. The fire will probably produce an overpressure within the upper level that will possibly leak out over time but there will be very little gas moving back in, so the toxic gases will not be diluted very much.
I honestly can’t see how a team can survive long enough to explore unless they have close circuit breathing apparatus or a nearly unlimited number of bottles for SCBAs.
Instead of the fire perhaps a couple of claymores or some grenades were put in every room. This will give a goodly level of destruction without making the top level totally deadly.

I got back to counting positions in the base. On page 35 of the book detailing OPS Cylinder level 5 (Communications Intercept Center). It is broken up into CW, Crypto, Microwave, Satellite, Media, Voice, Recording and Traffic Analysis. In the book it calls out 16 + 20 + 40 + 100+ 12 or 188 operators without staffing for Microwave, Crypto and Traffic Analysis being specifically called out. The statement for these is made that these numbers are “at one time”. So this is around 200 people right there, on a single shift. The Module states that there is capacity for 448 active staff and actually had 247 staffers at the time of the war. If the staffing numbers are correct then a 24 hour operation with 3 eight hour shifts would require 600 staffers for this one level of the base alone. That is more than the base is set to house in total. So I’m thinking that it might require three cylinders with accommodations, one being set for mostly singles rather than families so perhaps a total of 1500-1600 active staffer and about 1000 dependents.

So a few more tweaks
Let’s go back to first principals. Prime base would absolutely not have any single points of failure. The most obviously place where they have a single point of failure is the fusion power plant. There is discussion about the use of an Emergency Power Grid. However since the Project doles out fusion power generators like doctors give out lollypops there is no reason why there is a single power unit in Prime Base. I would go with two complete physical plants, power, water, air. Even in these plants there would be some redundancies. I would have three fusion plants in each location. The entire plant can be run by any two fusion units. So an entire triple unit can be taken off line for repairs or individual units so long as two of the six are up and running. The Emergency Power Grid can run off of a single unit. Each cylinder also has a number of vehicle power units available that can run the emergency power for that cylinder. In this I am thinking about how a warship has a highly survivable power system that consists of multiple busses and various types of emergency generators. Prime Base should be at least as well provided.
The hospital is a mess. The concept is that the hospital is designed only to serve the base personnel and that the staff here is the “second string” with the very best physicians-especially specialists being in the field teams. This doesn’t make any sense. The field team medical folks are likely to be working on a shoestring. Even after only five years most medical supplies and equipment will be used up, destroyed in the crossfire, ruined by lack of proper storage or maintenance or otherwise rendered useless. The only thing planners could have counted on was the items the Project would have preserved. There will certainly be some well-equipped field hospital teams, but these will still not be able to rival the facilities at a base, especially Prime Base. Prime Base should have the very best medical teams, if for no other reason than to consult with the field teams. Also with the aviation assets critical patients can be flown back to the base for treatment or physicians can be flown out to field units for special care as needed.
In canon there are two operating theaters in the level 1 Ops in Medical Screening, four standard and two overflow in the Hospital in Life. Since there are two overflow operating suites in medical it must be assumed that planners would staff for at least six and possibly eight simultaneous medical operations. So if it takes 8 people to conduct an operation this is 48 to 64 for a single shift. Surgeons can be counted on to work 12 hour shifts so that means if maximum use is anticipated for over 1 shift we are looking at 100-130 people. This is just the surgery staff. If everyone in the base gets a physical once a year that means about 3,000 hours of work for a physician or similar skilled clinician. That is basically a full time position and a half. That doesn’t include the lab techs needed to process the tests. Dental cleanings will be similar, but those are twice a year so we can see a staff of several dental hygienists as well as a couple of general dentists, a couple of first rate oral surgeons and an orthodontist or two, so the Dental staff will be at least a dozen or perhaps a bit more. There will also be a couple of optometrists and at least one ophthalmologist, maybe two. In addition there will be a group of staff phycologists and related disciplines (living underground and waiting for the end of the world has got to be depressing. There will also be some veterinarians. These will take care of animals in the farms and laboratories as well the pats that people will bring with them. In my view there is no way that people won’t bring pets. Animal companionship will be a good treatment for depression and will lighten the burden of the children, especially. I give the medical group as being somewhere between 200 and 250 staffers, plus dependents.
So let’s talk about the fire department of Prime Base. Prevention will be the goal of this group. They will be servicing the various detection and suppression systems. Every extinguisher in the place will need to be visually inspected once a month and serviced annually. The detectors will each get tested annually. The alarms and such tested annually. Piping and valving will get tested on anything from a weekly to an annual basis (at least they won’t need back flow preventers). The fire water pumps will need to be tested as well. In the outside world Firefighters work Kelly Shifts (24 hours on and a variable number of days off depending upon where they are in the cycle. Paramedics usually work 12 hour shifts. I can see the base going either way. The canon is that everyone in the base would be trained to fight fires. This makes a great deal of sense but the problem becomes one of equipment. How much turn out gear will the base have? I can see the base training everyone to fight “incipient” fires (which are the first stages of a fire) and then sealing the fire barriers, letting the sprinklers do their work and the fully equipped full time fire fighters going in for aggressive attacks against the fires. To do this will require full crews of firefighers, probably based more on Navy Damage Control than upon civilian firefighting pre 1990. So three man hose teams (two) a gas free engineer and such on each shift, plus a couple of paramedics. As I said before I would put at least one firehouse in each cylinder and in annexes as well. So this will be, let’s say each station has ten staffer and there are ten of them and they are running Kelly shifts so that is 10X10X3 or 300 fire fighters. This is probably really excessive so we can halve it to 150.
Let’s talk about Facilities Management personnel. Prime base is a huge complex and complex is the operative word. It has everything from a hospital to food service to warehousing to research laboratories to what amounts to several luxury apartment buildings. They also have the added problem that they cannot just call in a contractor to do the work. The base has to be totally self-contained so that when the balloon goes up they can fix any problem that could possibly arise. I worked at Monsanto’s Saint Louis campuses which housed around 5000 employees and contractors. I was part of the contract company that provided full service Facilities Management to the campuses (which included support for the Monsanto leased aircraft hangar with its five aircraft, a research farm, several leased properties and a large warehouse facility. The company I worked for had over 100 people on that contract, which I think is probably a fairly reasonable number, divided into a main day shift and smaller second and third shifts.
The Mission of Prime base is to support the field teams. To do this they have a number of operation centers within the base, so let’s say they can run six simultaneous operation centers as well as one that manages the base itself. A State level command center might have as many as 30 or even more people in it, but I have run regional command posts with as few as 10. So this will be three shifts with seven operational groups with maybe 15 people per shift on average. That is another 315 people.
Branch operations is another group, and this might well be 30 people or even more per branch, so let’s say there are 200 staffers in the group.
That is 1600 staffers already, so now I am thinking four Life Cylinders!

tsofian

09-07-2015, 05:21 PM

Besides what goes on below the surface in the base itself and its annexes what goes on above the ground?

In the original module the Project basically abandons the surface having no combat power, limited personnel access and even limited amounts of sensors.

I can see the lack of combat power. Building a Maginot Line Fort in the middle of the US if you aren't the Federal Government would raise some eyebrows. The access issues comes from the problem that if you make it hard to get in you make it hard to get out.

The final point is a little tougher to explain. The entire upper surface of the base should be under direct observation by as many instruments as possible. The question becomes how to get the data from the sensors to the base. Hard wiring will work but it means that an enemy who finds one sensor can follow the wires back to the base.

Another method would be to use something omni-directional like radio, but that will also leave a big signature footprint.

Finally something tight beamed and unidirectional like microwaves. These could be beamed to a tower at the edge of line of sight and then beamed back to a receiver that is wired into the base

cosmicfish

09-07-2015, 05:47 PM

The final point is a little tougher to explain. The entire upper surface of the base should be under direct observation by as many instruments as possible.
Agreed.

The question becomes how to get the data from the sensors to the base. Hard wiring will work but it means that an enemy who finds one sensor can follow the wires back to the base.

Another method would be to use something omni-directional like radio, but that will also leave a big signature footprint.

Finally something tight beamed and unidirectional like microwaves. These could be beamed to a tower at the edge of line of sight and then beamed back to a receiver that is wired into the base
There currently isn't any way to move significant amounts of data through earth without wires or some other kind of physical passage. Soil and rock scatters EM waves really well, and even the best case (HF radio, as far as I know) will still have limited bandwidth and a poor data rate, especially if you are not using a directional transmitter. And if you ARE using a directional transmitter then it will point right to the base even better than any wire would!

Realistically, a series of wires could be run to the base in a manner that would be practically impossible to trace. Anyone able to follow a zig-zagged cable through hundreds of meters of rock is going to get to you anyway.

tsofian

09-07-2015, 05:57 PM

cosmicfish

09-07-2015, 06:14 PM

Let me explain my idea in a bit more detail.

The top areas of the base has a sophisticated sensor array. This array transmits its data to a microwave tower off in the distance. That tower re-transmits the data back to a well hidden that is wired to the base. Since the receiver is well hidden it will be difficult for the bad guys to get a good start point to trace the wires.
Is that supposed to be "well hidden antenna"? I am going to assume that it is. Here's the problem.

If your goal is to make tracing the wire difficult, then the wire from the "well hidden antenna" should not be that much harder to find than the wires from the sensors. Remember that the antenna cannot be THAT well hidden if it is still going to function!

And the cost for whatever improvement you have is a whole bunch of radiating sources that are relatively easy to detect and locate, all of which can be crippled by killing the easily identifiable "microwave tower off in the distance". Remember that your antennas are waging a constant war between directionality and size, unless you are putting a pretty big array on all of these they are going to be radiating all over the place. And if you ARE putting big arrays on them, well then stealth won't matter anyway.

tsofian

09-07-2015, 07:16 PM

Is that supposed to be "well hidden antenna"? I am going to assume that it is. Here's the problem.

If your goal is to make tracing the wire difficult, then the wire from the "well hidden antenna" should not be that much harder to find than the wires from the sensors. Remember that the antenna cannot be THAT well hidden if it is still going to function!

And the cost for whatever improvement you have is a whole bunch of radiating sources that are relatively easy to detect and locate, all of which can be crippled by killing the easily identifiable "microwave tower off in the distance". Remember that your antennas are waging a constant war between directionality and size, unless you are putting a pretty big array on all of these they are going to be radiating all over the place. And if you ARE putting big arrays on them, well then stealth won't matter anyway.

Most of those points are well made.

Hiding a receiver can be done. Build a thing that looks like a rock out of what they make radomes out of and there ya go. In fact the Project probably has a number of hidden arrays like this scattered around prime base to support the communications module when it goes active. Actually I figure the antennae in the communications module are all concealed by this sort of thing even when they are in the raised and active position, as much as they can be depending upon wave length

ArmySGT.

09-07-2015, 07:49 PM

Would not Receiver to wire, wire to re-transmitter, re-transmitter to re-transmitter, to receiver to wire..........solve most of the detection problems...... It doesn't make it uncomplicated.

Also if you are using Omni directional burst transmissions along with frequency hopping ........like SINCGARS....... detection is near impossible and the direction of the intended receiver is unknown too.

SINCGARS transmits over a range of one to 1500 channels.. You can use one channel for instance to do direct with a civil authority. Normal operation is in frequency hopping mode. You upload the "Key" that tells the microprocessor in the SINCGARS radio which frequencies are true and for how long. Most are transmitted on for nanoseconds individually, thus you need to know precisely which frequencies and duration or you get nothing... It all sounds like solar static and bleed off from everything else transmitting radio noise.

cosmicfish

09-07-2015, 09:45 PM

Hiding a receiver can be done. Build a thing that looks like a rock out of what they make radomes out of and there ya go. In fact the Project probably has a number of hidden arrays like this scattered around prime base to support the communications module when it goes active. Actually I figure the antennae in the communications module are all concealed by this sort of thing even when they are in the raised and active position, as much as they can be depending upon wave length
You can always try and conceal an antenna, but you can't permanently conceal one in a convincing way - the materials you can easily transmit through are not generally the kind you can do convincing foliage out of. There are some recent developments that can last a few months at a time, but that is about it, and that isn't really any better than the sensors you want to install.

And radiating sources are still relatively easy to spot, with relatively simple instrumentation, but more on that later.

cosmicfish

09-07-2015, 09:51 PM

Would not Receiver to wire, wire to re-transmitter, re-transmitter to re-transmitter, to receiver to wire..........solve most of the detection problems...... It doesn't make it uncomplicated.
Remember that every link is another chance for something to go wrong. Indeed, the more links you have, the easier it is for someone to deliberately render you blind.

Also if you are using Omni directional burst transmissions along with frequency hopping ........like SINCGARS....... detection is near impossible and the direction of the intended receiver is unknown too.

SINCGARS transmits over a range of one to 1500 channels.. You can use one channel for instance to do direct with a civil authority. Normal operation is in frequency hopping mode. You upload the "Key" that tells the microprocessor in the SINCGARS radio which frequencies are true and for how long. Most are transmitted on for nanoseconds individually, thus you need to know precisely which frequencies and duration or you get nothing... It all sounds like solar static and bleed off from everything else transmitting radio noise.
Yes and no. We have a tendency to assume a certain superiority in our technology that is not always 100% true. SINCGARS is extremely difficult to detect... if you only have a limited time and instruments to catch it. If I have the right tools and the ability to park near a stationary transmitter, I can find it after a relative handful of transmissions. Remember that you are talking about a set of stationary transmitters - concealing the message is pretty easy, concealing their location is not.

ArmySGT.

09-07-2015, 10:14 PM

Remember that every link is another chance for something to go wrong. Indeed, the more links you have, the easier it is for someone to deliberately render you blind. True, failure is in the system but, you would have an army of technicians available.

As for deliberate intent. No system is fool proof or survives first contact with a hostile force. Redundancy and simultaneous transmission. Sure, they go a signal; one, five, twenty, and echoes. Then they have to pin it down form all the camouflage and ground clutter. I would rather herd cats.

Yes and no. We have a tendency to assume a certain superiority in our technology that is not always 100% true. SINCGARS is extremely difficult to detect... if you only have a limited time and instruments to catch it. If I have the right tools and the ability to park near a stationary transmitter, I can find it after a relative handful of transmissions. Remember that you are talking about a set of stationary transmitters - concealing the message is pretty easy, concealing their location is not.

You would have to have a system that could scan the entirety of the radio spectrum; then discern nanoseconds of deliberate transmission from radioactivity or solar activity, even stellar activity. The time spacing between the deliberately chopped up radio is also deliberately at different intervals. Far too fast for a human, it takes a computer processor to gather it all, and render it back into a coherent, properly ordered transmission. Note, it is also encrypted too. This way private snuffy can't eavesdrop on the Corps commanders push to Divisions, separate Brigades, and task forces. If you don't have the encryption; you don't have the time (satellite cesium clock regulated), the frequency hop, or the message unlocked to determine if you heard the noise from a star that died a billion years ago or .000000001 of second transmission for "Radio check, over".

This makes radio intercept unlikely in the extreme.

cosmicfish

09-07-2015, 10:25 PM

True, failure is in the system but, you would have an army of technicians available.
And the point is not to risk them. If your concern is being located, sending a guy out a door is the last thing you want to do!

As for deliberate intent. No system is fool proof or survives first contact with a hostile force. Redundancy and simultaneous transmission.
But it still isn't better than just running a wire. I can't believe how often I have to tell this to junior engineers, most of the time getting fancy causes you more problems than it solves. If your current widget solves the current problem, don't go looking to defeat molemen capable of following a cable through rock down to the horizontal pipe it then follows to the base. As you mentioned, you have experienced staff, why burden them with an overly-complex system when a simple one will do just as well and still leave them free to respond to that hostile force?

Sure, they go a signal; one, five, twenty, and echoes. Then they have to pin it down form all the camouflage and ground clutter. I would rather herd cats.

You would have to have a system that could scan the entirety of the radio spectrum; then discern nanoseconds of deliberate transmission from radioactivity or solar activity, even stellar activity. The time spacing between the deliberately chopped up radio is also deliberately at different intervals. Far too fast for a human, it takes a computer processor to gather it all, and render it back into a coherent, properly ordered transmission. Note, it is also encrypted too. This way private snuffy can't eavesdrop on the Corps commanders push to Divisions, separate Brigades, and task forces. If you don't have the encryption; you don't have the time (satellite cesium clock regulated), the frequency hop, or the message unlocked to determine if you heard the noise from a star that died a billion years ago or .000000001 of second transmission for "Radio check, over".

This makes radio intercept unlikely in the extreme.
We're not talking about radio intercept, we're talking about radio location. We're also talking about relatively simple blocking just by raising the noise level. RF was my bread and butter for years, first as a technician and then as an engineer. If PB is hull down and acting like a rock, I can sit there all day and listen to those sensors chatter back and forth at each other. And if I have the resources to endanger PB then odds are pretty good that I have the resources to do this - it takes less than you might think if you have someone reasonably knowledgeable. And the fancier your system gets, the more power it needs and the easier it is to find.

So again... why not just run wires through the rock? If they can tunnel after them, won't you already know it and take action against them?

tsofian

09-08-2015, 01:27 PM

Someone brought up the possibility that the base is in the fallout pattern from a known nuclear target. In a way I think this is actually a very good thing. If the base gets a dusting of fallout it is even less likely to have visitors. The base itself is totally protected from the threat this would pose.

By the end of the five year fallow period a lot of the fallout will have decayed (basically everything with a half life of 6 months or less will have undergone its ten half life cycles and be gone). Weathering will also help, at least to a certain extent.

However I propose that the fallout pattern was not as predicted and the base wasn't hit by any fallout. At first this was viewed as a blessing-Then the refugees started showing up

ArmySGT.

09-09-2015, 02:27 PM

Remember that every link is another chance for something to go wrong. Indeed, the more links you have, the easier it is for someone to deliberately render you blind. I would think that Prime Base would have many, many transmitters. These would be spread about to conceal the location of the Base..... The transmission antennas are expendable. They spent a lot of time and money on the unmanned transmission site in Final Watch. I would expect that Prime Base can use directional antennas or burst transmission to Morrowsat to communicate through a retransmission site. A retransmission site would have Omni and directional antennas built in. You could find it but, any one of several directional antennas could be point back toward Prime Base or another retrains site, or a U.S. facility, or a precoordinated trans site for a Combined Group.

TMP excels in sophisticated over the top and elaborate schemes.... So any of this isn't out of character for the Morrow Project.

Yes and no. We have a tendency to assume a certain superiority in our technology that is not always 100% true. SINCGARS is extremely difficult to detect... if you only have a limited time and instruments to catch it. If I have the right tools and the ability to park near a stationary transmitter, I can find it after a relative handful of transmissions. Remember that you are talking about a set of stationary transmitters - concealing the message is pretty easy, concealing their location is not. That finds one transmitter. If that transmitter is a retransmitter or one that links to another omnidirectional burst transmitter in a chain what did you gain?

tsofian

09-10-2015, 10:47 AM

That was pretty much what I was thinking, a network of nodes. Most nodes can be sacrificed. Unless the bad guys are really lucky they can hunt through nodes without destroying the overall intergity of the network or finding Prime base.

During the pre 1989 era the nodes can consist of numerous microwave towers. If they have an extra horn who would know? In a more modern project there can be all sorts of cell towers and such.

cosmicfish

09-10-2015, 12:05 PM

I'm not going to press this any more since you guys are so enthusiastic about it, I've worked with defense communications for a long time now and everything about this screams "danger danger danger!" to me. Overly complicated and massively counterproductive, as it will make the base MORE obvious while simultaneously introducing unnecessary complexity in a vital network.

tsofian

09-10-2015, 03:28 PM

tsofian

09-10-2015, 03:35 PM

These are the kind of arrays Prime Base needs to do the mission as described

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QtYofBF-Bbs/VLmRZoLSq1I/AAAAAAAACig/Hez-wYn5PKE/s1600/MongeA601.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4HFInM8U_wo/VLmL01_amPI/AAAAAAAACiQ/U4MUNQLDv8c/s1600/dupuy-de-lome.jpg

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2011/084/8/7/soviet_ural_command_ship_by_kara_alvama-d3cfpdy.png

http://www.findmodelkit.com/sites/default/files/pb053679.jpg

cosmicfish

09-10-2015, 07:51 PM

Cosmicfish
Given what you say how does Prime Base, before the ultra kaboom, gather all the electronic signals that it is designed to do? It is collecting radio (everything from CB to Ham to commercial and military) television, microwave and satellite downloads.
This was always one of the weak points in the PB concept, and it is somewhat related to the problem with connecting sensors to PB through free-space communications channels.

Yes, there is a big problem with having all the antenna arrays that PB would need to do the aforementioned monitoring. They would be all but impossible to conceal and would draw attention to the site - remember that PB has to survive Russian satellite scrutiny, and there is no way to keep massive and functioning dishes and antenna arrays from getting painted as a missile target. The only solution I could see for this would be to disguise them as a commercial satellite comms facility some substantial distance away and run some subterranean cables to the actual facility - a daunting task but they did it for the Chunnel! And then give PB a secondary, dormant facility that can be unpacked once the shooting stops if the primary is taken out.

And at least that would be a non-radiating facility. There is a risk to finding any cables, but even with burst communications, a fixed transmitter is going to be identified before too long. And that is why I would hardline the security/environmental sensors - you can conceal a cable a lot more effectively than you can conceal constantly operating transmitters. You're shouting at the universe, someone is going to hear.

ArmySGT.

09-10-2015, 10:06 PM

cosmicfish

09-10-2015, 10:14 PM

Why not just have them under camouflage until the War has begun or finished?

War plus 30 days blow the panels and raise the dish.

The exposure modules in the module are already hidden by fake doors and rise up to be used.
That would be the "secondary, dormant facility" I was talking about. But if it is dormant it cannot monitor before or during the war, and that is perhaps the most important period anyway.

And by the way, remember that all of these antennas and arrays are going to require some degree of maintenance. If I was curious about an antenna, I might sabotage it and see if anyone comes out to fix it.

tsofian

09-11-2015, 07:31 PM

This has and still does bother me. I liked my hospice idea, but can see the down sides. I don't like the ranch for the reasons that have been talked about since 1987 (Dear Lord almost 30 years ago!)

So let's go back to first principals:

The cover has to last a couple of decades
It has to allow for a large number of people to come in and a much smaller number to go out of the base during normal prewar operations
It cannot attract undue attention before the war either from the public, the government or the Soviets looking for a place to drop excess nuclear materials
It cannot offer much in the way of shelter or resources to survivors of the war

We know the original base was built under cover of a mine. If as SGT suggests the base was staffed and provisioned in one step and then walled off until the war was over no other cover is needed. I am not so certain the base was staffed and sealed, but it does make life a whole lot easier and it requires absolutely no cover story after the mine closes.

If on the other hand there is going to be some in and out, and especially if the base needs to be resupplied during the prewar period then there needs to be a cover story that allows for it. I think the base is at least partly open during this period. The march of technology during the period seems to be to require that the base be open. New technology, especially computers, and communications gear, as well as drugs and medical devices will be developed between when the base is completed and the war starts.

The ghost town idea got used in Desert Search and seems a nogo anyway. It would attract people.

The hospital idea I see the flaws with, but perhaps it can be modified (more later on that)

The ranch, is again, out-although if the ranch was not on top of the ridge that might make it a more viable option

The hazardous materials storage facility (it would be a TSDF or Treatment, Storage and Disposal Facility technically) has some things in its favor but will attract regulators (a hospital would as well) and possibly protesters before the war

I am wondering if a simple salvage yard would maybe fit the bill. The idea would be that the salvage yard would turn over its material very quickly so instead of acres of wrecks just screaming "parts and shelter" there is a very small amount of material that has arrived and not yet been processed and shipped back out. The facility consists of a small yard, a number of really beat up tin buildings which contain the tools used to break down what every is being salvaged, (maybe kitchen appliances, or something else really useless in the post war world-how about a place that recycles phone books?) Wait I like the phone book idea. The "books" come in great big trailers. The plant has a couple of giant shredders that reduce the books to mulch which is then shipped out in other big trucks.

There is another shredder that isn't. Its the secret entrance to the base. The trucks with supplies or staffers mate up with the "shredder".

This facility would have maybe a dozen "employees. When the big kaboom happens the twelve guys throw some torches into the facility and close the hatch behind them. All that is left is the burned out remains of a couple of Quonset huts.

"nothing to see here, move along"

RandyT0001

09-11-2015, 07:55 PM

nuke11

09-11-2015, 07:57 PM

If you need a covert way to get transmissions to and from PB, you could always use the AT&T Long Line Microwave Repeater system that was built across the country in the 50's and 60's. It was shut down in 1984, but most of the sites where sold off, which doesn't mean that MPI couldn't have bought most of them up and continued to use them well into the 2000's

Since the list of industrialists is long and full of very important companies, it would stand to reason that AT&T would be on this list somewhere.

There is a series of towers that runs thru northern Nevada south of PB. It would be easy to camouflage a single thru this system.

A good history and further site links : http://www.coldwarcomms.org/

You can also poke around on this site to get the locations of the current system : http://www.city-data.com/towers/other-Nevada.html

ArmySGT.

09-11-2015, 08:37 PM

Since the list of industrialists is long and full of very important companies, it would stand to reason that AT&T would be on this list somewhere.

Does AT&T maintain the Defense Service Network (DSN)? The hardened landlines that connect all installations.

ArmySGT.

09-11-2015, 08:46 PM

tsofian

09-12-2015, 10:00 AM

tsofian

09-12-2015, 10:08 AM

Change the location to western Missouri. The construction of the site uses the cover story of a limestone mine about 500 to 1000 feet deep. The mine closes once the excavation is done. The site remains dormant for a few years. The site is bought by a new company that modifies the mine to be used as a underground storage facility and office space. A small portion is leased out while deeper in the mine the base is outfitted with the equipment, personnel and stores. The storage company files bankruptcy and the leases are evicted. The base is sealed. A "front office" is established to "monitor the mine" (and the war) and the items stored (the base that is in cyro sleep).

Missouri is a central location, close to the geographic center of the lower 48 states and the population center of the US as well.

Now the WoK do not have to travel across the Rockies to get to PB. PB is in a state close to their home area (area 7 (4th) - Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, etc.)

Western Missouri is going to take a hammering because of the ICBM field and also Kansas city. KC is basically the back up capital of the United States it has regional headquarters for nearly every single Federal Agency. There are also a number of critical defenses and nuclear industry contractors in KC. Eastern Missouri is in the same boat. Almost 70% of all east west rail traffic passes through St Louis. Boeing's fighter production facility is there. The Chain of Rocks Canal is critical to Mississippi River barge traffic. Scott AFB is within 45 miles. Unless something really odd happens Missouri will basically cease to exist because it is going to get slammed with a couple of hundred warheads, many of which are going to be surface bursts.

tsofian

09-12-2015, 10:28 AM

I am ok with the ranch cover story.

Cattle and sheep doesn't call for a lot workers. Those workers have a place in PB as well. They are the hands on teachers of animal husbandry. Likewise, there is still good reason for trucks, even large semi trailers to come and go. Feed mostly, you have to lay in supplies of hay and grains for cattle and working horses. Manure is shipped out in great loads by semi trailer to fertilizer companies. Cattle are sold in the late fall to meat packing plants and that is another reason for semis coming and going.

The problem with the ranch has always been placement. I cattle ranch on top of the ridge makes even less sense. A lot of water will need to get pumped up for the cows. Cows are not exactly all terrain animals so getting them up and down the steep slopes might cause issues (unless these are the cute highland cows). A Ranch in such a commanding position would make a very good post whoops location. If it is still standing the buildings offer shelter. The windmill pumping water offers that life-giving resource. If the cows are still alive they are a huge resource.

This leads to a question about the cows. When the balloon goes up do they get euthenized? Do they get herded into the base (How the Hell do you decon a cow?), because if left free to wander about they will attract everyone with a knife and a hibachi.

I'm still liking the paper to mulch conversion plant.

Terry

cosmicfish

09-12-2015, 11:44 AM

tsofian

09-12-2015, 02:05 PM

Why try and solve this with a single installation? Create a small town out in the middle of nowhere and give it a small number of businesses and residences, all Project-owned, that combine to explain the needed traffic. Have a regional trucking company or other distribution center. to explain trucks going in and out. Perhaps have some kind of communications company that uses the low-noise region to test different antenna technologies, to explain the antennas.

Then run a tunnel a few miles away to the actual Base, housed in an old mine or some such. You could do all pre-war operations through the tunnel, and open the PB main doors from the inside with hydraulic rams when it is safe to do so.

There is some really great stuff here! The communications company idea is perfect-although it could be a SETI station which means it will have no staff and no one really expects any results, link it up via the "dead" microwave system discussed earlier and I think that the issue with prewar communications is totally solved. The communications array in the middle of no place offers a great clue to help the players find the base.

The issue with the town is that it still provides shelter and the possibility of supplies and salvage for wandering survivors. I see the long tunnel to Prime from the "peacetime" service entrance. It would be deep, over 150 feet. It zig-zags about a bit before it heads to the base, just to mess with folks trying to figure out which direction to Prime Base.

I figure the tunnel either gets collapsed or flooded with water (or both!)

There is still a guard post at the rump entrance of the tunnel.

dragoon500ly

09-12-2015, 05:53 PM

dragoon500ly

09-12-2015, 05:58 PM

tsofian

09-12-2015, 06:01 PM

My two cents...so Prime would consist of a central command cylinder, then Life 1, Life 2, Life 3, Medical, Lab and Support. Around the bottom level of these cylinders 2-3 rings of food production and storage tunnels, with a annex of tunnels stretching down the ridge line for manufacturing and storage of supplies. In the opposite direction and running deeper into the ridge, we have the ammo magazines. Sound about right?

I think I can live with this!

A train system like this will be needed
http://c8.alamy.com/comp/DH3MYJ/electric-train-station-hackenberg-fortress-maginot-line-DH3MYJ.jpg

Here is a map of an M1 magazine as part of a Maginot Line fort
http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/maginot_29.jpg

tsofian

09-12-2015, 06:03 PM

It also.sounds like a rewrite of the bottom levels is needed, like a dedicated section for the fusion power plants, emergency batteries, sewage treatment, water pumps/filtration and storage tanks and the air circulation machinery...by the way, anybody give any thought on wear the air intakes and exhausts are.going to be located?

Prewar the main entrance is open and air flows in through it. However even them most of the base air is recycled. Once buttoned up the base totally recycles all air and water

dragoon500ly

09-12-2015, 06:08 PM

Prewar the main entrance is open and air flows in through it. However even them most of the base air is recycled. Once buttoned up the base totally recycles all air and water

Perhaps, but even prewar, we are still talking about the need to circulate a large amount of air, I just think that there would have to be some means of venting air in and out of Prime. I'm thinking armored vents, concealed along the cliff face.

As for the train, Love It!

RandyT0001

09-12-2015, 07:53 PM

Western Missouri is going to take a hammering because of the ICBM field and also Kansas city. KC is basically the back up capital of the United States it has regional headquarters for nearly every single Federal Agency. There are also a number of critical defenses and nuclear industry contractors in KC.

There is no ICBM field in Missouri anymore. It was deactivated in 1995. That means there is about 150 miles of western MO border south of KC unaffected by bombs and about 50-75 miles of western MO border north of KC unaffected by bombs. Plus any location along the Missouri-Iowa border seems suitable as well.

tsofian

09-12-2015, 07:58 PM

There is no ICBM field in Missouri anymore. It was deactivated in 1995. That means there is about 150 miles of western MO border south of KC unaffected by bombs and about 50-75 miles of western MO border north of KC unaffected by bombs. Plus any location along the Missouri-Iowa border seems suitable as well.

Sorry, I'm a original end date in 1989 guy, so yes the ICBM field is gone. Whiteman AFB is home of the B-2s so it will still get a pasting.

There is a nuclear powerplant close to the Iowa Missouri border so it will take a nuke and screw up everything downwind Chernobyl Style!

cosmicfish

09-12-2015, 10:04 PM

There is some really great stuff here! The communications company idea is perfect-although it could be a SETI station which means it will have no staff and no one really expects any results, link it up via the "dead" microwave system discussed earlier and I think that the issue with prewar communications is totally solved. The communications array in the middle of no place offers a great clue to help the players find the base.
I suggested a research facility because they would have good reason to avoid people while also having a reason to have a variety of antennas - a fake SETI installation would attract alien enthusiasts and conspiracy nuts and would have a hard time explaining why they have all those other antennas that could only communicate with Earth facilities.

The issue with the town is that it still provides shelter and the possibility of supplies and salvage for wandering survivors.
To a certain extent this is unavoidable - anyplace will draw survivors or scavengers eventually. But the town can be just "over the hill" from any highways and after the war PB could do a lot to divert attention from the facility and move stragglers away.

nuke11

09-13-2015, 11:29 AM

Isn't there a ranch just south-west of PB? Soldier Meadows Ranch and Lodge : http://soldiermeadows.com/. It seems to have been there for at least 100 years. Wouldn't this make a decent place to use as a cover to help the base?

ArmySGT.

09-13-2015, 11:54 AM

The problem with the ranch has always been placement. I cattle ranch on top of the ridge makes even less sense. A lot of water will need to get pumped up for the cows. Cows are not exactly all terrain animals so getting them up and down the steep slopes might cause issues (unless these are the cute highland cows). A Ranch in such a commanding position would make a very good post whoops location. If it is still standing the buildings offer shelter. The windmill pumping water offers that life-giving resource. If the cows are still alive they are a huge resource. Cows will surprise you. I worked a summer on a dairy farm. I never want that job again. Milking were 4am and 4pm starts and last about three hours. Then another two sometimes four hours of cleaning to get ready to do it again.

Typically, myself and the other guy didn't have to go get the cows. They would be at the gate waiting for us. Once a month or so, something would spook them and they would be in the hills. We would have to go find them. Out on ATVs in the dark and the cold. Fortunately, some grain would remind them that there was sweet molasses grain in the bin and they would obediently come back down.

If this happened to many times the dairy owner and some others would arrange a dog/coyote hunt.

This leads to a question about the cows. When the balloon goes up do they get euthenized? Do they get herded into the base (How the Hell do you decon a cow?), because if left free to wander about they will attract everyone with a knife and a hibachi.

I'm still liking the paper to mulch conversion plant.

Terry I think you just leave them. If ringing the cow bell and the time of day doesn't have them at the barn; just let them go.

I have seen plans on the internet for earth sheltered barns for protecting livestock after a nuclear exchange. Always to small (pens), not enough fodder, and no place to remove the tremendous amount of manure cows produce.

Better to slaughter them, keep a small number of cows for breeding, and use artificial insemination of good stock after the radiation has died down.

This ranch can also be the place that the ag teams are supplied the cryosleep contained livestock too.

tsofian

09-20-2015, 06:39 PM

So if Prime Base requires 4000 active staff members (which I think is the upper limit) how many total people and of what age groups would that population contain?

So I'm going to make some assumption.
The Project was more willing to take a couple if both members were functional within the Base in preference to a couple in which only one of the members was.

I am going to throw out that 85% of all couples in the base are both staffers and only 15% are couples that consist of one staffer and a "dependent".

The birth rate among couples in Prime Base was 1/8 that of the average (some couples will bring children with them, but I would bet that most would likely hold off until after the war "just in case".

That the rate of married vs single people is 80% of normal. Instead of around 45% this is around 36%. Each couple has an average of .45 children.

So let's see if I can get this math right.

4000 staffer. 36% are married. Since 15% of these marriages include a partner that is a dependent that means 38.7% of 4,000 or 1548 people are in 774 couples and at 1/4 the normal population rate that means 190 children. Now this will still be a bit high for such an environment. In a normal population a large number of these "children" will be grown. Very few parents would go hide underground while their children are above ground in a nuclear holocaust. I suspect that in such cases either the adult children were recruited, adults without adult children were recruited or the demographic was skewed to younger people, ones too young to have adult children.

So what is the total (OK, I know I screwed this word problem up, but I think I am at least close)

4000 staffer

108 married dependents
190 minor dependents (these can be evenly distributed in age from 1-18 years of age)
About 4300 total residents

So I will say
720 Couples apartments
150 Family Apartments

That leaves around 3200 or so people
I would suggest 1/2 are in doubles, 1/4 are in singles and 1/4 are in suites suitable for 4 people
so 800 doubles
400 singles
100 suites

This gives a total of 2170 apartments.

In the Original Module the maximum population was 448 staffers and up to 390 dependents. That is a lot of unproductive mouths to feed, but if that ratio is used 4000 staffers could have up to 3500 dependents.

I will need to draw out the cylinders to see if all these people can be crammed into three cylinders, with all the other stuff that should be in what amounts to a small town

tsofian

09-21-2015, 05:15 PM

So Prime will certainly have something like this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault

Also I can see it having a number of freeze tubes for animals.

RandyT0001

09-21-2015, 06:18 PM

I read the post above that stated the upper limit of PB was about 4000 personnel. IMO, 4000 people are too, too many people. In both 3rd and 4th edition rules PB has less than a thousand people. In 4th, PB is noted to have 250 personnel. I think that too many functions are being added to PB. Prime Base is the command, coordination, and control center of MP. It is not a supply depot, repair facility, manufacturing site, nor a rebuilding test site. It has five years worth of stored food, powdered/dried, freeze dried, frozen, canned, etc. There are no hydroponics growing fresh food. It was designed to serve for five or six years until the start of the recovery. The regional bases are the primary rebuilding facilities with supplies, assigned supplemental bases (Ag, manufacturing, etc.).

Personnel Needs of Prime Base

The Command Council consists of the Branch Leaders for each branch and sub-branch (MARS, Recon, Science, Medical, Agricultural, Engineering, Communications, Energy, Civilian Affairs, Production, Resources, and Logistics) plus the Chairperson. (13)
Each member of the Command Council has a second or deputy. (13)
Each member of the Command Council has two administrative assistants. (26)
There is a liaison for each of the twelve regions. (12)
Each liaison has three communication specialists to maintain 24 monitoring of signals and requests. (36)
Each liaison has an administrative assistant. (12)

During the attack each deputy branch leader (12), each region liaison (12), and one of the three communication specialists have the responsibility to monitor the attack through video and radio signals and to transmit the weather readings from pre-positioned stations to the weather team. After the first eight hours have passed, a new shift of communications specialists relieves the deputy branch leaders. After the second eight hours have passed, the next shift of communications specialists relieves the region liaisons. At the end of the first 24 hours, the first shift of communications specialists ends their shift. After eight hours of sleep, the first shift relieves the second shift of communications specialists. Thereafter, the three shifts rotate every eight hours.

Aviation operates only during daytime when there is good weather at the base and the destination because the pilots are limited to VFR.
Three C-130 aircraft crew (12) – There are actually five C-130 aircraft but two are spares.
Maintenance Crew (4)
Cargo Riggers/ Loaders (4)
Flight Line Ground Crew (4)

Medical
Three doctors, six nurses, six orderlies (15) – One doctor, two nurses and two orderlies per eight hour shift.

Base Support
Food Service (6)
Custodian (4)
Laundry (4)
Maintenance
Electrical (4)
Plumbing (4)
HVAC (4)
Physical (4)
IT (2)
Communication (4)

Administrative Records
Base (4)
Regions (12)

Processing
Decon (2)
Exam (2)

Power Plant
Ops (10)
Maintenance (7)

Security (5)
Base Counseling (5)
Logistics Support Team (12)
Weather (4)

Prime Base has 250 personnel with no dependents. One of the primary criteria for personnel selected to serve at Prime Base was a lack of surviving family. Virtually all of PB personnel are between thirty and forty years of age.
The chairperson, deputy chairperson and their two assistants also serve as the HQ section of the group assigned to Prime Base. None of the frozen members of the Prime Base Group know the location of PB.

Prime Base Group
3x Recon (3x2=6), 3x Commando Scouts
3x MARS (3x4=12), V150 w/ TOW, 2x V150 w/ mortar
Science (4), 2x HMMWV M1025
Communications (4), 2x HMMWV M1025
Civil Affairs (4), 2x HMMWV M1025
Engineering (4), DED, M35 Dump Truck, V150 ARV

Prime Base Two is identical to PB1.

tsofian

09-21-2015, 06:55 PM

Personnel Needs of Prime Base

The Command Council consists of the Branch Leaders for each branch and sub-branch (MARS, Recon, Science, Medical, Agricultural, Engineering, Communications, Energy, Civilian Affairs, Production, Resources, and Logistics) plus the Chairperson. (13)
Each member of the Command Council has a second or deputy. (13)
Each member of the Command Council has two administrative assistants. (26)
There is a liaison for each of the twelve regions. (12)
Each liaison has three communication specialists to maintain 24 monitoring of signals and requests. (36)
Each liaison has an administrative assistant. (12)

During the attack each deputy branch leader (12), each region liaison (12), and one of the three communication specialists have the responsibility to monitor the attack through video and radio signals and to transmit the weather readings from pre-positioned stations to the weather team. After the first eight hours have passed, a new shift of communications specialists relieves the deputy branch leaders. After the second eight hours have passed, the next shift of communications specialists relieves the region liaisons. At the end of the first 24 hours, the first shift of communications specialists ends their shift. After eight hours of sleep, the first shift relieves the second shift of communications specialists. Thereafter, the three shifts rotate every eight hours.

Aviation operates only during daytime when there is good weather at the base and the destination because the pilots are limited to VFR.
Three C-130 aircraft crew (12) – There are actually five C-130 aircraft but two are spares.
Maintenance Crew (4)
Cargo Riggers/ Loaders (4)
Flight Line Ground Crew (4)

Medical
Three doctors, six nurses, six orderlies (15) – One doctor, two nurses and two orderlies per eight hour shift.

Base Support
Food Service (6)
Custodian (4)
Laundry (4)
Maintenance
Electrical (4)
Plumbing (4)
HVAC (4)
Physical (4)
IT (2)
Communication (4)

Administrative Records
Base (4)
Regions (12)

Processing
Decon (2)
Exam (2)

Power Plant
Ops (10)
Maintenance (7)

Security (5)
Base Counseling (5)
Logistics Support Team (12)
Weather (4)

Prime Base has 250 personnel with no dependents. One of the primary criteria for personnel selected to serve at Prime Base was a lack of surviving family. Virtually all of PB personnel are between thirty and forty years of age.
The chairperson, deputy chairperson and their two assistants also serve as the HQ section of the group assigned to Prime Base. None of the frozen members of the Prime Base Group know the location of PB.

Prime Base Group
3x Recon (3x2=6), 3x Commando Scouts
3x MARS (3x4=12), V150 w/ TOW, 2x V150 w/ mortar
Science (4), 2x HMMWV M1025
Communications (4), 2x HMMWV M1025
Civil Affairs (4), 2x HMMWV M1025
Engineering (4), DED, M35 Dump Truck, V150 ARV

Prime Base Two is identical to PB1.

I can see this for a regional base but this number of people can't manage all the tasks that Prime is supposed to be able to handle. Prime is supposed to record as much of the events of the lead up to the war and the war and its immediate aftermath as possible. This means they have to cover a lot of varied communications systems. staffing you have everyone basically works EVERY Day.

The Medical team in particular would be a bit over worked. If they get a major issue or even a moderately serious surgery two shifts are going to have to work together at least.

I can't see four mechanics keeping three C-130s in operational condition if the tempo is even moderate.

I can't see 5 people providing security for the base.

RandyT0001

09-21-2015, 08:23 PM

Ops, it is 150 people left unfrozen to monitor the attack and it's aftermath. I will have to redo. And it looks like there are frozen personnel at the base and various facilities built in according to 4th edition.

Reset!

mmartin798

09-23-2015, 09:46 AM

I just recently had a thought about Prime Base. Realistically, once the war is in has reached it's peak, the amount of information available to Prime Base diminishes greatly. But this is the time they really need some more up to date environmental data. Sure you can wake up a team locations far from bomb drops, but that is somewhat risky to valuable human resources.

The thought I had was what about a sensor network? It would be fairly easy and cheap to make a bunch of small sensors and place then on utility poles, Morrow Industries facilities and so on. They could have their electronics isolated from the grid and hardened to have a large number survive. Then a timer, chemical or mechanical, which starts after EMP are detected activates the sensor and it's radio. The sensor then attempts to join with the other sensors in a packet radio mesh network like PRNET. This way sensors can access data from something like the M1 CBR Kit, as well as other sources, like meteorological sensors. Using this near real-time data, Prime Base would be able to make better decisions where to wake up teams and bases and could even use it as a slow, but usable nationwide communications network.

cosmicfish

09-23-2015, 12:53 PM

The thought I had was what about a sensor network? It would be fairly easy and cheap to make a bunch of small sensors and place then on utility poles, Morrow Industries facilities and so on. They could have their electronics isolated from the grid and hardened to have a large number survive. Then a timer, chemical or mechanical, which starts after EMP are detected activates the sensor and it's radio. The sensor then attempts to join with the other sensors in a packet radio mesh network like PRNET.
I always figured some type of environmental sensing package had to be attached or available to each bolthole anyway - you need to be able to know what is outside the doors beyond what a periscope can see! So why not put them sensors at a slight distance (maybe 100 yds?) from each bolthole and have them communicate by a wire or radio with the bolthole, then have the bolthole use its radio (which it MUST have!) to provide the data automatically to PB?

mmartin798

09-23-2015, 02:02 PM

I always figured some type of environmental sensing package had to be attached or available to each bolthole anyway - you need to be able to know what is outside the doors beyond what a periscope can see! So why not put them sensors at a slight distance (maybe 100 yds?) from each bolthole and have them communicate by a wire or radio with the bolthole, then have the bolthole use its radio (which it MUST have!) to provide the data automatically to PB?

Putting such a sensor near bolt holes is fine, but that does little to tell PB about the conditions 10, 25, 100 km from the bolt hole. A mesh network like this could still use the radios in the bolt holes. It just does not require them and adds to the resiliency of the communications.

cosmicfish

09-23-2015, 05:01 PM

Putting such a sensor near bolt holes is fine, but that does little to tell PB about the conditions 10, 25, 100 km from the bolt hole. A mesh network like this could still use the radios in the bolt holes. It just does not require them and adds to the resiliency of the communications.
It all depends on how much resolution you require in your environmental mapping. If there are 1000+ boltholes then some decent signal processing could give you a pretty good look at environmental conditions. Would more help? Sure, but it adds expense and exposure, and I am not sure that the additional resolution is going to have real meaning when your teams are already an ad hoc mobile sensing network.

I look at the Project like I would look at a satellite - the things you need must be as close to perfect as possible because repair is impractical, and the things that you want but don't need just make it more likely that the whole thing goes down in flames. If you feel that this network is needed, then go for it. Personally, I think added radio traffic and antennas and sensors are the kinds of things that get noticed and endanger the Project.

RandyT0001

09-23-2015, 10:33 PM

For a 1989 EOTW game PB will have to rely on TV newscasts and the NWS predictions for weather information. For the 2017 EOTW game there are a couple of nationwide weather networks (WeatherBug, etc.) that PB could use to gather surface readings. In both cases the absence of upper atmosphere weather balloons will make charting those winds impossible. It is the upper atmosphere winds that are important for creating fallout patterns post war.

PB is going to record what it can of the attack and the aftermath. The Project always knew that the information gathered by PB would be limited and that the first recon teams to be revived would be those necessary to complete the assessment. Once that was done then PB could decide where to start the rebuilding process and what resources were needed at those locations to bolster the chance of success.

mmartin798

09-24-2015, 10:29 AM

Pre-EOTW, the weather data is not that important. Neither is predicting the fallout pattern. The sensor net I suggested would be near real-time data, so the radiation detector will tell you the exact fallout pattern. The weather sensors would let meteorologists at PB to predict severe weather events and direct more aid to those areas than to ones that will have more temperate weather and can wait a bit longer. Relying solely on fairly widely spaced teams to provide this kind of data seems foolish. The sensor net, using only Morrow Industries sites, would likely be able to let PB map radiation levels, chemical contamination and local weather conditions for most of a state in just an hour. One to three teams would take better than a day to get an idea of the same condition with less resolution. Just seems a packet radio mesh network of sensors would be very useful.

tsofian

09-24-2015, 04:17 PM

The Plan
Here is the way I see the original plan for how the Project would roll out post war.
After the war is over Prime Base will continue to conduct a listening watch of all frequencies expected to be used by survivors in the field. This will include Ham, CB, Emergency Services, Military, FAA and others. This listening watch will try and locate the sources of the signals and attempt to determine the local conditions as well as any human activities in the areas. Rather than being information for the archives this is critical intelligence that will be used to make operational decisions.
Prime Base will maintain a large map showing known and suspected radio transmission locations, amount of traffic, type of transmitter, strength and frequency. The language or encryption of the broadcasts will be noted, as will the content of messages. Are the transmissions calls for help? Are they traffic associated with combat?
The Project will also pick up any data that is still being downloaded by any satellites. This will be hit or miss and wasn’t counted on by the Project, since it was possible that the war would destroy every orbital device in existence. However Prime Base was fully equipped to continue monitoring download traffic.
Finally the base was capable of using the small sensor packages (SSP) located at each bolt hole. These packages serve a primary function of letting a recently arisen team know what the conditions just outside their door are like. Their secondary function is to provide Prime with a snapshot of local conditions around each bolt hole. The SSP is connected to the bolt hole radio receiver and spends most of its time in a powered down mode. It can be activated in any of a number of ways. It should be automatically activated if the bolt hole wake up sequence is initiated in any manner. It can also be placed in active mode without impacting the rest of the bolt hole, either via a coded radio signal or manual at the bolt hole itself.
Once activated the SSP has the following functions: Weather Module-Temperature, Humidity, Wind Speed and Direction, and the M8A1 Chemical agent monitor that can detect nerve agent. The data that this collects will require very little band width and can easily be sent via radio back to Prime. This means that the bolt hole needs a transmitter as well as a receiver. I would feel this would be shortwave and the data will transmit twice a day as the atmospherics will be good for long range transmission.
So Prime Base will be collecting data from each of the bolt holes and logging all the information as well as that collected from other radio sources.
This data will be used to build a map of the continent and will help determine what areas will be slated for Project help and which teams will be recalled. In any area the first teams up will be Recon. As soon as the Recon teams get the lay of the land Prime will wake up other resources as required by the situations. Ideally the next groups out will be teams to restore communications infrastructure, and satellites, the prewar microwave towers and long range radio networks. Science Teams will start doing more advanced analysis of the environment and begin developing recovery plans with the support of Engineering Teams. Logistical teams will salvage and recover resources as well getting materials that have been pre-staged by the Project. MARS teams will be recalled if other teams find themselves in conflict with locals. As more Project resources are recalled in an area MARS teams will be added as a precaution. In general once six teams are awakened four MARS teams will be recalled, and a ration of two Mars teams will be activated for each additional six non-Mars teams thereafter. MARS teams will also provide manpower resources for other teams and for efforts as a whole.
The initial regions selected will be those that do not have radio traffic that indicates the presence of large military units or widespread violence. Only after secure base areas have been developed will the Project even scout those areas, if at all possible.