Odd Treasure Troves

[kato13]

Along the lines of Last Voyage of USS RAZORBACK I thought it might be a good idea to post some ideas for odd treasure troves.

The following is a real world example I was exposed to in the mid 90's. On the 34th floor of an office building in downtown Chicago with a room sized safe containing between 201 and 1300 (2d6*100 + d100) high end desktop servers. The servers were being preloaded with software before being shipped to retail automotive repair locations as part of an intranet development.

The status of the servers would of course depend on the Effects of EMP within your game, however I feel the servers would have a reasonable chance of survival for the following reasons.



They were behind a 2 inch steel door (Combination lock).
They were stored without power cords attached.
They were resting on wooden shelves (on metal frames)
The room itself was shielded from every radio frequency I could test easily. (Pager, walkie talkie, Radio, TV)
The room was located in the center of a middle floor, with 20 floors above and 32 floors below. (Might provide protection from a high altitude burst)
Other buildings would block line of sight to most low/mid level bursts in the vicinity.


The pre war value of the servers was over 10 million dollars. The post war value would be priceless.

[BigEd]

Not my weapons cache, but a fellow reenactors' private collection.

View from one side of the room.
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i32/dxdunner/GR1a.jpg
View from the other side.
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i32/dxdunner/GR2a.jpg
Picture of home.
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i32/dxdunner/Exterior.jpg

Stumbling across that cache would be "intense" to say the least.

///ed///

[Grimace]

Good Golly that's a weapons room!!! :eek:

That's someone with a ludicrous amount of money to spend. But you ain't kidding about finding it! He'd likely never give it up, but just imagine some unfortunate occurence happening....a heart attack, for example, and then house sits empty. Someone checks it out after fire demolishes nearly the entire hourse, but the basement/weapons cache is untouched. The stragglers see the sealed door, bust it open and WAAAAHOOOOO!!! Jackpot!

[Haven]

I've 'read on the internet' (and we know how reliable that is) that these pictures were from Charlton Heston's estate?

[pmulcahy11b]

I once gave my players an intact, perfect-condition pallet of Cottonelle toilet paper. They got a fortune for it in trade goods!

[Mohoender]

Paul, you make me think of "Baa baa black sheep" and "Operation Petty Coats", two great stuff in my opinion. Both are comedies on WW2 but they are almost entirely about that: What you can get in exchange for toilet papers and a box of old true Bourbon.:D

I find them nice for inspiration. By the way, according to a friend of mine, working in the french army, it is still working that way (If you have something to give you get some supply faster than the next unit). Does this work in the US Army (navy, air force...)?

[pmulcahy11b]

Paul, you make me think of "Baa baa black sheep" and "Operation Petty Coats", two great stuff in my opinion. Both are comedies on WW2 but they are almost entirely about that: What you can get in exchange for toilet papers and a box of old true Bourbon.:D

I find them nice for inspiration. By the way, according to a friend of mine, working in the french army, it is still working that way (If you have something to give you get some supply faster than the next unit). Does this work in the US Army (navy, air force...)?

It's like that everywhere, military or civilian. There's an American saying, "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."

[Mohoender]

Yes but for civilians, your life doesn't depend on it.

[Graebarde]

Yes but for civilians, your life doesn't depend on it.

Not always true my friend. Though it might not be fighting intense, there are civilian situations where, after a hurricane, that getting necessities can be such. Water, gas, food, medicines... You'd be, then maybe you wouldn't, surprised at the gaftyness of the business world.

Grae

[chico20854]

By the way, according to a friend of mine, working in the french army, it is still working that way (If you have something to give you get some supply faster than the next unit). Does this work in the US Army (navy, air force...)?

As a former supply sergeant in the US Army, I can state that it absolutely, positively does not happen! ;)

We work on a "consideration" basis... you give me what I need now, and three weeks from now you will get a call from me at 7 on a Sunday morning with what I need.

And that seemed to work in some of the multi-national supply transactions in the NATO SFOR peacekeeping force in Bosnia.

[Adm.Lee]

Michael Lee Lanning wrote an interesting book about being a mech. company commander in Germany in the early '70s, when the US Army was at a low point. I found his stories about supplies amusing. The first one being when he asked his supply sergeant how the paperwork was, the sergeant paused before answering, "Well, sir, MY ass is covered."
Lanning showed (I think) his own wisdom by next asking the sergeant what he was hoarding for trading use. The answer was some number of spare barrels for the heavy MGs. Those popped up in the memoir again, of course.

[ChalkLine]

Here's a cache I always wanted to use, it's the equipment on a building site where I worked that I tallied when rained in;

So, this was the items at a largish building site with ongoing phases, we were putting in five story unit blocks, about eight of them.

- Mobile 25t crane, four-wheel drive, as ten-ton truck. This has four wheels and a crane only as structure, and is abysmally slow on the road.
- 3x Hoists, each hoist lifts a steel, 1m high, 'basket' about 3m², the hoist gantry is three sided and runs on an inbuilt generator. Each gantry section was 6m long. There is no 'floor' button on each level; an operator at the foot of the gantry controls it. Total gantry length would be about 60m but it wouldn't be safe up to that height!
- 8x Oxy Acetylene welding kits, usually about 60% full. There was a supply container (20') onsite for welding supplies.
- 18 wheeler and pup trailer, dumper.
- 2x Compressors (trailer size, mondo)
- First Aid demountable shed, well stocked
- 20x temporary power poles, steel, 6m high
- 100m power cable
- 2x mini refrigerators
- 4x civilian sedans
- 3x civilian utilities (pick ups)
- 2x civilian vans
- 1300m² form-boards, 16mm 12ply. We were making the structures out of concrete. This is sufficient to make an eight-story building with three lifts in one shot. Of course, it was spread over eight buildings.
- 3x bobcats and interchangeable tools
- Four wheel drive forklift, about 8t
- 100x pallets of concrete block bricks
- 13x 20' shipping containers
- 4x 40' shipping containers
- 2x backhoes
- 1x excavator
- 1x concrete pumping truck, the arm had a ten-story reach.
- 2x concrete trucks
- 7x demountable sheds, with sinks.
- 2x demountable toilet/shower blocks, filthy.
- 14x power-boards
- 8x garbage skips
- 870x star pickets (star droppers, steel stakes)
- 3000m x 3m (9m sections) Green plastic shade cloth
- 3000m x 3m (9m sections) steel 'cyclone' chain-link mesh
- 3x 25' cabin cruisers (I have no idea either)
- 35' yacht (ditto)
- 60x (2m x 3m) 'cyclone' chain-link mesh frames with 2" steel pipe frame.
- 10x 40m (40mm) Water hose (we were always pumping)
- 5t truck with extendable crane and bore for footings
- 5x 50m coils copper water pipe
- 20' container plumbing supplies
- 20' container paint supplies
- 20' container power tools and expendables
- 20' container electrical supplies
- 20' container safety supplies

[Targan]

Excellent Chalkline. I like lists like that. A great example of stuff likely to be found at such a site. In my games I always try to mix up mundane salvage with odd little bits and pieces. Charatects will always find a way to trade or utilise unusual items somewhere along the way.

[Raellus]

How about that world seed bank built into the side of a frozen hill on a Norwegian island above the arctic circle? I'm not sure if construction on the project began before '97 (I think not), but a GM could fudge it a bit I suppose. The underground warehouse contains hundreds, if not thousands, of seed species from all over the world including some ancient and very hardy strains of staple ones as well as modern hybrids and high yield varieties. It needs no electricity because the permafrost provides natural refrigeration.

Might not be as fun as Charlton Heston's basement, but it could be a godsend (or godfind) in the slow and painful process of rebuilding civilization.

[kato13]

How about that world seed bank built into the side of a frozen hill on a Norwegian island above the arctic circle? I'm not sure if construction on the project began before '97 (I think not), but a GM could fudge it a bit I suppose.

This is a good idea.

"The Nordic Gene Bank has stored a backup of Nordic plant germplasm as frozen seeds in an abandoned coal mine at Svalbard since 1984."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_International_Seed_Vault

The new bank is an evolution of an older project. I believe originally it was more for local seeds. It has now evolved into one including seeds from the entire world.

[Targan]

Watched a TV documentary about it just the other day. One of the principal scientists conducting seed collecting for it is an Australian (we make good adventurers!). He works mainly in the "Fertile Crescent" and is based in Syria for part of the year.

[Graebarde]

How about stubling into a 'survivalist' holding. Very remote and out of the way, why the PC's 'stumble' across it. The 'survivalist' either didn't make it to the holding, or perhaps they find his skeleton, but there is a treasure throve of freeze dried and bulk food items, seeds, tools for different jobs (carpentry, pioneer, mechanic, gunsmithing, etc), weapons and ammunition as well as reloading, medical supplies, BOOKS on how to do it, as well as literature, viable shelter in a secluded spot, but I would not have animals since the owner did not make it, I doubt any domestic animals would, unless the demise is recent, then it's another story. (There could also be the hidden stash of gold and silver coins too.) Your imagination is the limit of course.

Grae

[weswood]

Then there's stumbling across a deserted Mormon house. I'f I'm not mistaken, they're supposed to keep a years food on hand.

[Targan]

How about stubling into a 'survivalist' holding. Very remote and out of the way, why the PC's 'stumble' across it.
In my campaign Major Po's ultra wealthy family had holiday properties spread across the US and he has visited a few of them to clean out any goodies he could find. One he visited had a small bunker with a variety of outdoorsy and survivalist equipment not to mention guns and ammo. It helped that Major Po knew where the properties and their caches were and the security devices there.

[Marc]

How about that world seed bank built into the side of a frozen hill on a Norwegian island above the arctic circle? I'm not sure if construction on the project began before '97 (I think not), but a GM could fudge it a bit I suppose. The underground warehouse contains hundreds, if not thousands, of seed species from all over the world including some ancient and very hardy strains of staple ones as well as modern hybrids and high yield varieties. It needs no electricity because the permafrost provides natural refrigeration.

Might not be as fun as Charlton Heston's basement, but it could be a godsend (or godfind) in the slow and painful process of rebuilding civilization.

A good plot for an epic post-apocalyptic campaign!! Of course, the characters must be somewhat altruistic for the Twilight standards. Perhaps they are a group of volunteers from a community in Central Europe and they had found an article about the Norwegian seed bank in a scientific magazine they are about to throw to the fireplace. They must initiate a difficult travel through a devastated Europe looking for a little hope for the future of their people. The group must plot a route using old road maps, find the supplies needed for the travel and face all kind of dangers to accomplish the goal...:rolleyes:


Quick, I must annotate it!!!

[Graebarde]

Then there's stumbling across a deserted Mormon house. I'f I'm not mistaken, they're supposed to keep a years food on hand.

Of course, depending on the ability of the family/member, the type of food might be the basic four (wheat, dry milk, honey, salt) to extravagant freeze dried items.

And not just food.

Grae

[Nowhere Man 1966]

Cool ideas. Working for Fed EX and now Advanced Auto Parts, I'm trying to come up with an idea of a team and/or cache where the main purpose is to repair and rebuild vehicles and equipment in a Morrow Project or Twilight 2000/2013 environment. I'm getting ideas what I see in the store of what would be needed plus I'll have to beef things up more. BTW, Chalkline, you have a good idea for a cache.

Chuck M.

[ChalkLine]

Cool ideas. Working for Fed EX and now Advanced Auto Parts, I'm trying to come up with an idea of a team and/or cache where the main purpose is to repair and rebuild vehicles and equipment in a Morrow Project or Twilight 2000/2013 environment. I'm getting ideas what I see in the store of what would be needed plus I'll have to beef things up more. BTW, Chalkline, you have a good idea for a cache.

Chuck M.

I think my favourite type of campaign is a mix of the patrol-and-encounter and nation-building.

Most of my PCs are not straight out war dogs, but are usually paramilitaries (I play with a lot of RL soldiers, and I've come to accept it's an entirely different culture and society of which the outside knows little) with emphasis on rebuilding and law and order skills.

While bunkers may seem a bit of a drawback in a world where you can carry the a packload of RPG rounds, they can be good strongpoints to base a fluid battle on.

[Ed the Coastie]

Then there's stumbling across a deserted Mormon house. I'f I'm not mistaken, they're supposed to keep a years food on hand.
We're supposed to...but I know of only a handful in my area who actually do. My family and I don't, largely because we live in an apartment and there is no room for such a cache.

What you almost always can find in the home of an LDS member, however, is a Ward or Stake directory...a phone book listing the addresses of other church members in the area. Somebody in that book is likely to have a large cache of food...

...assuming that it is still there. In the event of an emergency along the lines of the Twilight War, many LDS members will "circle the wagons" and gather at the church building with whatever food and other supplies they can bring with them. Many LDS members become active locally in disaster response organizations such as CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) or are even volunteer firefighters, so they tend to have that equipment as well.

Not that marauders would find them to be an easy target...a respectably large percentage of LDS males tend to serve at least one hitch in the military, and a significant percentage of those serve that hitch in some branch of combat arms in not some special operations component. (Without going into details, the Elders' Quorum alone in my own Ward claims nearly a dozen combat veterans among those members with prior military service, including three former Rangers and one ex-Special Forces medic. That doesn't count the veterans in the High Priests' Quorum, nor the female military veterans among the Relief Society.)

[headquarters]

along the lines of Graebeards posts about obsolete technology I guess displays of old gear like ox drawn plows and hand crancked water pumps etc that some place have for decoration or as an educational exhibition would have stuf that could be useful .Most scavengers would go right by not knowing what it is or not having the means to haul it off.

( survivor a:"what did you do before the shtf ?"

survivor b:"I was a financial analyst and senior acount manager at JP Morgan .And you ?"

a: "I was pool guy and gardner at the houses of senior account managers.I got to do some serious thinking about our potatoplanting operation .Go get some pails of water in the meantime and do not disturb until I tell you". )

Same could apply to weaponry as well.Factory loaded or well made handloads ,reliable ammo in general will get expensive in relative terms.Having a firearm that is useful on "homegrown ammo" is going to be an asset. Shooting every pesky stray dog that threaten your rabbit cages with a .223 or scaring of a hungry vagabond with a warningshot from your 9mm is going to be costly over time.Collections of nice blackpowder firearms ,crossbows etc could be a useful gaming objective .
A few civil war-/revolutionary war -/Indian wars-/subjugating the wild west- etc - display cases with uniforms,a musket and maybe a Colt navy 1851 along with bulletmoulds etc .As long as weapons are well kept since they were made ,you could use them .Or trade them etc

[weswood]

Great info, Ed, thanks. I can't imagine having a years supply of food stored. I've got about a week's worth for my family of scavenged MREs left over from Ike and they take up some space.

[Raellus]

There was a piece on the NBC national news tonight about something called Iron Mountain. I'd never heard of it before. Apparently, it's a giant, underground storage facility in a converted coal mine in Pennsylvania somewhere. It countains hundreds of thousands of original government documents, film reels (E.T., Jaws, etc.), music recordings (Elvis' "Houndog"), patents (Edison's lightbulb), and other items. It's all temperature controlled and they said that it was "earthquake safe". I'm not sure if they meant that there are few earthquakes in that region or that the facility is structurally reinforced somehow. Anyhow, being underground, under a nominal mountain, would probably protect it from the effects of nearby nuclear blasts (not sure what PA sites are on the T2K target list).

Seems like one could find some helpful (or harmful) information- technical, legal, historical, cultural, etc.- for the process of rebuilding CONUS there. I didn't catch it if it was specifically mentioned, but I believe that the entire facility is privately owned and operated, although they did say something about 2000 odd government employees working there (the government won't specify what it is they exactly do there nor what documents are stored in the facility).

Anyway, Iron Mountain could make for a neat campaign destination.

[Targan]

This Iron Mountain facility sounds like it might have been the inspiration behind the government caches in the Allegheny Uprising module.

[chico20854]

The facility is in Boyers, Pa (not far from Pittsburgh). It's a former limestone mine in a very hilly (but not necessarily mountainous) area. It is owned by a private company and the US government, among others, stores records there.

A TV news piece on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aou6c2MOmg

I found this about it on the net:

A long Washington Post article about Boyers, published in the mid-1990s, began this way: “Ten thousand years from now, space aliens are doing to discover the catacombs of Boyers and think they have hit an archeological jackpot: Millions of government documents stored in acres of filing cabinets 250 feet below the Earth’s surface, safe from flood, fire, famine, Iraqi nerve gas, nuclear holocaust and roaches. . . . OPM [Office of Personnel Management] started to move records to Boyers in 1960, a few years after National Underground Storage, Inc., a Pittsburgh company, bought the mine from U.S. Steel and converted it to a secure facility so individuals, companies and the U.S. government would have a safe place to keep things. . . . The only thing above ground is a parking lot and a tunnel mouth wide enough to accommodate a railroad car.�

As far as earthquakes, strangely earthquake "waves" move along the earth's surface down to a depth of about 10-15 feet. In the 1950s or 60s, a pair of scientists volunteered to go into Carlsbad Caverns, 700 feet below the surface, during a nearby underground nuclear test. The felt nothing and came back up and asked why the test had been canceled.

[bigehauser]

along the lines of Graebeards posts about obsolete technology I guess displays of old gear like ox drawn plows and hand crancked water pumps etc that some place have for decoration or as an educational exhibition would have stuf that could be useful .Most scavengers would go right by not knowing what it is or not having the means to haul it off.

( survivor a:"what did you do before the shtf ?"

survivor b:"I was a financial analyst and senior acount manager at JP Morgan .And you ?"

a: "I was pool guy and gardner at the houses of senior account managers.I got to do some serious thinking about our potatoplanting operation .Go get some pails of water in the meantime and do not disturb until I tell you". )

Same could apply to weaponry as well.Factory loaded or well made handloads ,reliable ammo in general will get expensive in relative terms.Having a firearm that is useful on "homegrown ammo" is going to be an asset. Shooting every pesky stray dog that threaten your rabbit cages with a .223 or scaring of a hungry vagabond with a warningshot from your 9mm is going to be costly over time.Collections of nice blackpowder firearms ,crossbows etc could be a useful gaming objective .
A few civil war-/revolutionary war -/Indian wars-/subjugating the wild west- etc - display cases with uniforms,a musket and maybe a Colt navy 1851 along with bulletmoulds etc .As long as weapons are well kept since they were made ,you could use them .Or trade them etc

Heh heh...there's a museum I am part of back home that served as my reenacting unit's home, and sponsor...that has just that, and more... at least two of each gun museum, we call it...owned and operated by an old Red Leg named Bill Douglas...he's been a Class III and Curio and Relics firearms dealer since WAY BACK...1971 is when he went Class III...great guy, and a good friend to have in times like T2K.

[TiggerCCW UK]

There was a piece on the NBC national news tonight about something called Iron Mountain. I'd never heard of it before. Apparently, it's a giant, underground storage facility in a converted coal mine in Pennsylvania somewhere.

I think that might be where they filmed Dawn of the Dead - certainly a facility something like that.

[Earthpig]

I've 'read on the internet' (and we know how reliable that is) that these pictures were from Charlton Heston's estate?
These popped up at the Game squad forums.....I believe the house was owned by a wealthy lawyer type somewhere in the southeastern part of the US.(ie South/North Carolina's, Virginia, Maryland...or something...not sure).

[Nowhere Man 1966]

There was a piece on the NBC national news tonight about something called Iron Mountain. I'd never heard of it before. Apparently, it's a giant, underground storage facility in a converted coal mine in Pennsylvania somewhere. It countains hundreds of thousands of original government documents, film reels (E.T., Jaws, etc.), music recordings (Elvis' "Houndog"), patents (Edison's lightbulb), and other items. It's all temperature controlled and they said that it was "earthquake safe". I'm not sure if they meant that there are few earthquakes in that region or that the facility is structurally reinforced somehow. Anyhow, being underground, under a nominal mountain, would probably protect it from the effects of nearby nuclear blasts (not sure what PA sites are on the T2K target list).

Seems like one could find some helpful (or harmful) information- technical, legal, historical, cultural, etc.- for the process of rebuilding CONUS there. I didn't catch it if it was specifically mentioned, but I believe that the entire facility is privately owned and operated, although they did say something about 2000 odd government employees working there (the government won't specify what it is they exactly do there nor what documents are stored in the facility).

Anyway, Iron Mountain could make for a neat campaign destination.

One of my former co-workers and now friend, his sister works there and we are planning to get together and we will go on a tour of Iron Mountain. It is to the north of me. If I ever get to go and if I'm allowed to take pictures, I'll let yuns know and show pics if I can. I know before you can get on the grounds, you have to be checked out by the Feds. One time, a truck driver delivering items to the mine had his 11 year old kid with him and they wouldn't let him in with the kid because he wasn't checked out but they finally allowed them to go on after some debate.

I also had a client who worked there too, basically, he told me that it is so big down there, you can drive entire semis down there.

As to earthquakes, I know if you go north a little bit, there have been some small ones, the largest I know if was a 5.2 in 1998 near Greenville/Jamestown, PA, at the time it happened, I owned property up there and I think it was close to the epicenter.

Chuck

[Nowhere Man 1966]

I think that might be where they filmed Dawn of the Dead - certainly a facility something like that.

It was filmed in Ellwood city which is fairly close to Boyers. BTW, one of our local weathermen and now disc jockey for one of our radio stations played the reporter in that film, "Chilly Billy" Cardille. "Chilly Billy" also hosted a local Saturday nite horror show called "Chiller Theatre" from 1963 to 1983, I used to watchi it as a kid, I remember Dad brought home pizza and pop and we chowed down as we watched it.

Chuck

[kato13]

Found this list of firearms museums when looking for one I saw on "History Detectives"

http://www.armscollectors.com/museumlist.htm

[pmulcahy11b]

Nowhere Man, is that a Burmese on your avatar? We had one when I was a teenager. Fiendish little thing, but she and my dog were best buddies.

[Nowhere Man 1966]

Nowhere Man, is that a Burmese on your avatar? We had one when I was a teenager. Fiendish little thing, but she and my dog were best buddies.

That's Pixie, she is an American Shorthair but who really knows. I did have a Burmese cat once, Muffin (1987 - 2004), she was my aunt's cat and when my aunt was on her deathbed in 1995, she asked us to take care of her. She went into the county home and we were going to take Muffin in to see her one day but my aunt passed away the day before.

Burmese cats are usually friendly, but Muffin was kicked around by my cousin in a drug rage and she never trusted men except for me and my best buddy. She was a good, little cat, so was Pixie. We lost Pixie on October 2nd, she was the last black cat I had.

Pixie 1992 - 2008

Chuck M.

P.S. - I'll have to post some pics of Muffin.

[pmulcahy11b]

That's Pixie, she is an American Shorthair but who really knows. I did have a Burmese cat once, Muffin (1987 - 2004), she was my aunt's cat and when my aunt was on her deathbed in 1995, she asked us to take care of her. She went into the county home and we were going to take Muffin in to see her one day but my aunt passed away the day before.

Burmese cats are usually friendly, but Muffin was kicked around by my cousin in a drug rage and she never trusted men except for me and my best buddy. She was a good, little cat, so was Pixie. We lost Pixie on October 2nd, she was the last black cat I had.

Pixie 1992 - 2008

Chuck M.

P.S. - I'll have to post some pics of Muffin.

Leilani was a little twerp who delighted in stealing my D&D dice and batting them around the house at night. But she and Kona (my dog at the time, a year older than Leilani) were absolutely tight. A nutty pair. When Leilani came to live with us, she immediately put her foot down to Kona as to who was in charge!

[Targan]

How is this for a treasure trove?
http://www.smallarmsreview.com/pdf/jan04.pdf

[jester]

In my Southwest campaign, I had the PCs raid a casino in a boarder area of Nevada, I had the upper rooms on the floors above the 5th floor still have some items in them, with more items found the higher they went.

They had everything from viagra, to small bottles of liquor to larger bottles to all maner of medicines from the former occupants and lots of bedding, and the best was finding the storerooms on the upper floor with the maids cart filled with soap, shampoo and toilet paper! And of course the miints that get left on the pillows.

[GDWFan]

How about the many Small unincorporated towns off major highways.
Im sure theres small enclaves or starved dead houses full of goodies.
Guns,canned goods,gardens,tools.

Places like the show american pickers on history channel would be good.
Scroungers should check this show out.

[pmulcahy11b]

How is this for a treasure trove?
http://www.smallarmsreview.com/pdf/jan04.pdf

That's funny; I actually have that whole issue, scanned and in my computer. (I concluded many years ago that I would never have room in the house to keep all the magazines I wanted to keep.) Yeah, that would be a treasure trove!

[sglancy12]

We're supposed to...but I know of only a handful in my area who actually do. My family and I don't, largely because we live in an apartment and there is no room for such a cache.

What you almost always can find in the home of an LDS member, however, is a Ward or Stake directory...a phone book listing the addresses of other church members in the area. Somebody in that book is likely to have a large cache of food...

...assuming that it is still there. In the event of an emergency along the lines of the Twilight War, many LDS members will "circle the wagons" and gather at the church building with whatever food and other supplies they can bring with them.

In the TW2000 campaign/timeline/gazeteer I have been fiddling with for years, rumors about giant Mormon stashes of food lead to LDS folks being the targets of a lot of marauders, many of whom mix in a bunch of the standard anti-Mormon hysteria to justify killing and stealing from Mormons. Many Mormons are ejected from their communities for "hoarding." Those that can begin the long trek to the relative security of Utah do so. But they are not the only people headed to Utah.

Groups of Non-LDS refugees flood into Utah on the false presumption that every Mormon family has stocked away food for three years. Told by state and local authorities that this is not true, concentrated in under-fed refugee camps, these refugees ultimately riot and turn marauder. This invasion by violent, desperate non-LDS members shocks the citizens of Utah into taking on a very isolationist stance. Non-LDS Utah residents get the same treatment from the out-of-state marauders who think everyone in Utah is a Mormon.

Utah residents are tortured for the whereabouts of their giant "Mormon" stashes by marauders too stupid to realize there is nothing to steal.

Per canon, the State Governor withholds the National Guard from Federal Service and (although they refuse to actually say they are seceding) refuses to recognize the authority of MilGov or CigGov.

In my timeline, this causes a lot of bad blood with MilGov (which is closer), but no outright combat. MilGov has a couple airbases that are still manned that the Utah State Government is hoping MilGov will abandon so the state can occupy them. Some of those bases have nuclear weapons and MilGov wants to remove them to Colorado for storage, but without the State government's help, transporting them could be precarious. The result is a tense stand off that's not quite a siege, but more of an endurance contest. Can the MilGov facilities hold out until such time as one Federal government has enough resources to force Utah back into the union?

Well, maybe not "force them back into the union." Maybe it's more like "get them to recognize the legitimate authority of the new federal government." I'm imagining that if the reformed US government isn't a religious state hostile to the LDS, then the state of Utah will rejoin the union, and pretend that this was all just a big misunderstanding.

Of course, there are plenty of LDS extremist who want to declare Utah the State of Deseret, creating a nation where church and state are one, bring back polygamy and kick the "children of Ham" out of the church. A violent minority, they are sort of a mini-New America for Utah, constantly causing trouble. Perhaps the Extremists even attempt to provoke a shooting war between MilGov and Utah? If these idiots gain control of any nukes, they are going to be serious trouble. They might even use it to try and stage a coup, seizing the state house and declaring a real secession from the USA.

Not that marauders would find them to be an easy target...a respectably large percentage of LDS males tend to serve at least one hitch in the military, and a significant percentage of those serve that hitch in some branch of combat arms in not some special operations component. (Without going into details, the Elders' Quorum alone in my own Ward claims nearly a dozen combat veterans among those members with prior military service, including three former Rangers and one ex-Special Forces medic. That doesn't count the veterans in the High Priests' Quorum, nor the female military veterans among the Relief Society.)

Well that's good to hear, but I'm still thinking that enough minority LDS communities and individual members are going to get caught flat footed outside Utah and the tide of numbers is going to result in them being injured, killed and their homes and property looted and destroyed. Nevertheless, it does mean that the Utah National Guard and State Militia will have a lot of talent to pull from when it comes time to close the state.

I'd be interested to know what percentage of fringe-wacko LDS members participate in national military service. I expect that since these groups are insular, and secret, they wouldn't get out much and their access to Uncle Sam's training would be lower... which is good. It means that the orthodox LDS would be fighting amateurs, not professionals. Of course, amateurs can suprise you.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

[sglancy12]

along the lines of Graebeards posts about obsolete technology I guess displays of old gear like ox drawn plows and hand crancked water pumps etc that some place have for decoration or as an educational exhibition would have stuf that could be useful .Most scavengers would go right by not knowing what it is or not having the means to haul it off.

I just re-read Pat Frank's Alas Babylon. A great book whose only flaw is that I think the author over-estimates the Soviet strike capacity of 1959. The number and armament of the ICBMs comes off like something out of the mid-to-late '60s... 5 megaton warheads on soviet ICBMs just didn't exist in 1959.

Nevertheless, one of the greatest moments of the books (for me) is when one of the kids explores the "attic full of junk" the adults have forgotten about and discovers a treasure trove of early 20th century technology:

A hand-cranked gramaphone and a large collection of 78 rpm records.

A sewing machine that uses a foot-petal to provide energy.

A couple of old kerosene lamps with wicks, but no oil.

An old pot-bellied iron stove with lengths of straight and hinged stove pipe

An old fashioned grooming kit including a strap and two straight razors

Any group of TW:2000 players had better recognize how valuable an intact pot bellied stove would be.

So? What kind of helpful cache of supplies have you thrown at your players that they turned their noses up at because it wasn't ammo, MREs, fuel or medicine?

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

[sglancy12]

Just thought of an interesting treasure trove...

What about something like the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation? http://www.mvtf.org/

A private collection of military vehicles... currently there are 240 vehicles in the collection. Most, if not all are functional. The staff has the facilities and th skills to machine parts to restore the vehicles... perhaps even restore or replace their weaponry with something useful.

Obviously the wouldn't be as many tanks in 1997 as there are today, but the tools and equipment for working on tanks might be worth more than the tanks themselves. It's a privately owned tank depot!

For me, this place would have fallen into the hands of the US 6th Army, particularly the 40th ID (Mech), which might partly explain how the unit has managed to keep so many vehicles operational.


A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing.

[Dog 6]

http://www.manta.com/coms2/dnbcompany_csh6xy


I use to work for them. lol

[WallShadow]

I left a special treat for thieves or marauders in one farmer's smokehouse--cheese made from milk produced by cows that had ingested fallout-contaminated meadow grass. Biologically concentrated, some of the medium and lots of the longer-half-lived radioisotopes would still be present 3 years later. The farmer, rather than discard it, decided to leave this as a delayed-reaction booby trap for the uninvited.

[jester]

I had the PCs find a Royal Engineer Section complete with vehicles all in mid stages of decomposition. It is a lucky thing they never tried the water ine tank trailer.


In the same town near the river, they found a nezt of someone who had been living under a building foundation. They also found several cans of food again, good thing they never tried it, it was contaminated with radioactivity and would have rocked their world.

Its good to be the evil GM:D

[Matt W]

Some bound copies of "Popular Science" - dating back to the 40's and 50's

Seriously... have a look through them on "Google Books". There's some amazing stuff in there (for example, the April 1940 issue includes an article on how to make a crossbow).

[Targan]

I had the PCs find a Royal Engineer Section complete with vehicles all in mid stages of decomposition. It is a lucky thing they never tried the water ine tank trailer.

In the same town near the river, they found a nezt of someone who had been living under a building foundation. They also found several cans of food again, good thing they never tried it, it was contaminated with radioactivity and would have rocked their world.

Its good to be the evil GM:D

In my campaign Major Po's group found a large stash of powdered icecream (the powdered component of icecream ready to have milk, cream and other ingredients added for manufacture) while they were exploring in the northern third of Manhatten Island. Some of the stash had been deliberately contaminated with smallpox by a CIA faction. Typically Major Po determined the nature of the contamination and used the material to start spreading smallpox himself. It was of course with great irony that he sometimes referred to himself as "The Medicine Buddha".

[sic1701]

Michael Lee Lanning wrote an interesting book about being a mech. company commander in Germany in the early '70s, when the US Army was at a low point. I found his stories about supplies amusing. The first one being when he asked his supply sergeant how the paperwork was, the sergeant paused before answering, "Well, sir, MY ass is covered."
Lanning showed (I think) his own wisdom by next asking the sergeant what he was hoarding for trading use. The answer was some number of spare barrels for the heavy MGs. Those popped up in the memoir again, of course.

I am reminded of a story from Robert Mason's "Chickenhawk", about helicopter pilots in Vietnam.

After a supply Huey crashed enroute, some naive new Supply guy was instructed to go around to the various units and ask the supply sergeants if they had anything that had been coming in on that downed chopper that now had to be replaced. The supply sergeants recognized a unique opportunity to balance their books, so to speak, and said, "Now that you mention it, I had ordered six cases of this, and seven boxes of that..." By the time it was all calculated, the Huey had some eleven tons of materials on it, according to the supply sergeants' tally. "No wonder the goddammed thing went down!", Mason commented.

[chico20854]

I am reminded of a story from Robert Mason's "Chickenhawk", about helicopter pilots in Vietnam.

After a supply Huey crashed enroute, some naive new Supply guy was instructed to go around to the various units and ask the supply sergeants if they had anything that had been coming in on that downed chopper that now had to be replaced. The supply sergeants recognized a unique opportunity to balance their books, so to speak, and said, "Now that you mention it, I had ordered six cases of this, and seven boxes of that..." By the time it was all calculated, the Huey had some eleven tons of materials on it, according to the supply sergeants' tally. "No wonder the goddammed thing went down!", Mason commented.

I was a supply sergeant in a battalion once that had a similar event happen... we had a CUCV (GI Chevy Blazer) on a train that was derailed, and some items were missing. By the time the paperwork made it to approval, that CUCV was carrying something like 5 tons of gear. But the commander signed it, and that made it official.

When I got back from one deployment, the National Guard state HQ supply guys were there when I cracked open the container full of equipment we redeployed. By the time they left, they had what my commander (naively) was referring to as "the extra list" - a few things that were not officially accounted for. On that deployment I had 4 or 5 little stash locations that nobody new about... they assumed some other unit owned that space.

As far as trading, good supply people don't operate on a "transactional" basis - "I'll trade you this for that" - but on a "relationship" basis - "I'll hook you up when you need something, and when I'm in a bind I can count on you to help me out if you have what I need". Helps get things done. (With that, I once pulled a deal that involved the Danish and Turkish armies and four different US bases... it was epic!)

[sic1701]

God bless easy-going commanders who don't ask a lot of questions!

[chico20854]

God bless easy-going commanders who don't ask a lot of questions!

Actually, that particular commander had already tangled with me once and ended up $400-some poorer as a result. If he had been a little more easy-going maybe his items would have shown up after he lost them...

A lesson for junior officers... don't try to needlessly court martial your supply sergeant in a war zone.

[kato13]

A lesson for junior officers... don't try to needlessly court martial your supply sergeant in a war zone.

For some reason a vision of a conglomeration of Radar O'Reilly and Major Po just flashed before my eyes and I was very scared of the concept.

[M-Type]

Thread revival and all, but I was just doing some research and came across this thread. I was thinking about odd treasure troves myself, and thought about Coca-Cola. I know that in the present you can find Coke in every country except Cuba and North Korea (and even then ;) ), so I thought about the possibility of a group coming across some carefully protected 12-packs or a barely functioning soda fountain.

I looked into it, and low and behold, Poland got its first Coca-Cola corporate office in 1991. And guess where it was? The Palace of Culture and Science, the home of the 'ol Black Baron. Guess he has another leg up on the militia, artillery aside!

Over the next year more facilities opened up, as follows:

*Coca-Cola Poland Ltd. (Radzymin), with branches in Gdynia and Niepołomice, owned by The Coca-Cola Company

*Warszawa Coca-Cola Bottlers Ltd. (Warszawa), a joint venture of the Norwegian company Ringness and The Coca-Cola Export Corporation

*Coca-Cola West Poland Sp. z o. o. (Środa Śląska), with a branch in Poznań, owned by the German company Coca-Cola Erfrischungsgetraenke GmbH

*Bydgoszcz Coca-Cola Bottlers Ltd. (Bydgoszcz), a joint venture of the Norwegian company Ringness and a local company Pubrex

*Łódź Coca-Cola Bottlers Ltd. (Łódź), a joint venture of the Austrian company Brau-Beteiligung AG and the German group Marszalkowski

*Lublin Coca-Cola Bottlers (Lublin), owned by the Norwegian company Ringness

Now I envision a literal cross-country journey to find the secret to manufacturing Coca-Cola again! I found this info here (http://en.coca-colahellenic.pl/Aboutus/History/) if you're interested.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Coke requires kola beans which do not grow in non-tropical environments, generally; however, some are cultivated in northern italy or southern germany, according to this map:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/KolanutYield.png

Also note a crapton are grown in central southern California, but well enough away from LA that they might not be fallout contaminated.

What was the yield of weapons used on and around that region?

We can use nukemap to maybe determine what the crops would be like...

Also: I had a character (didn't get to play, unfortunately) among his treasures was a 12 pack of canned coke.

[Wolf sword]

Well I work at a woodworking store (http://www.woodcraft.com/) we stock power and hand woodworking tools. But the big thing would be the books on working with hand tools.

[M-Type]

Well I work at a woodworking store (http://www.woodcraft.com/) we stock power and hand woodworking tools. But the big thing would be the books on working with hand tools.

I can imagine that if a library was able to stay in good conditions (not sure how, given the fallout, looting, and whatnot), 'How-To' books would be extremely valuable. Same with hardware stores like you mentioned. They can offer both in-universe and in-game benefits (Observation learning from reading a book?).

[Rockwolf66]

These popped up at the Game squad forums.....I believe the house was owned by a wealthy lawyer type somewhere in the southeastern part of the US.(ie South/North Carolina's, Virginia, Maryland...or something...not sure).

I know that Michael "Mad Mike" Williamson knows the guy who owns that room. According to Mike the Owner recently sold a Livingston rifle for $500,000. And yes it was once owned by that Livingston.

[Brother in Arms]

I had a few thoughts....

One has anyone ever seen the show hoarders? Now most of these people on the show hoard garbage and junk not fit to be around but some of them hoard things like Books and tools. My old boss legitimately was a firearms, ammunition and accessories hoarder. Some people hoard canned food and batteries and household goods useful things to the end of world traveler. My moms house is a mixture of all the above!

The second thought was Liberty tool shed and captain Tinkhams.....two real places here in Maine that have nothing but antique tools and farm equipment!!!!

I read that John Denver was a gas hoarder in the 1970's had several underground tanks full of gasoline/petrol on his property.

Perhaps these are all easy ideas and there could be something more bizzare but also useful.....

what about a place with functioning hot water? Say a farm house with a wood boiler and gravity feed water tank (not that uncommon here in the north east)

ill think of more soon

[pmulcahy11b]

Hoarding books...I'm guilty.

My mother calls me a hoarder, but I don't think I'm that far gone. But perhaps my biggest aspect of hoarding is computer parts and files. I have some old RAM in my closet that wouldn't fit in any computer made for quite some time now. And I have files that I wrote on my first computer in 1991 (just converted into something readable by today's programs), and some of the JPGs have been on one of my computers since the beginning.

A lot of time, these things become useful. It's not hoarding -- I know where to look for everything.

[TrailerParkJawa]

My mother tends to hoard. Its irrational. She keeps unopened bank statements from like 15 years ago, receipts that are decades old, etc. Not very useful in a T2K sense. Aside from a nice source of paper to start a fire with.

[WallShadow]

While not a "private" stash, there are a few things mentioned in passing in the Allegheny Uprising strategic reserve that might actually turn out more valuable than at first glance.
--Crates of DoD and tax forms; lots of paper, which, if densely compressed, will slow down projectiles if the reserve's location becomes a combat zone. Also useful with moderate treatment (soaked with water and dried) as toilet paper. Not great but better than leaves, brother. Perhaps also useful if soaked in water, rolled tightly and bound into 11-inch-long "logs", dried, then soaked in waste fat/oil for erszatz firewood. And finally, as a source of information about the addresses of small businesses that might have hidden/abandoned resources nearby that could be used in the recovery efforts.
--Crates of oil pipeline xrays, which are negatives. Which contain lots and lots of recoverable _silver_. Also, the filmstock itself might come in handy to water proof small items, or as sunglass lenses.
More as they occur to me.

[unkated]

I think that might be where they filmed Dawn of the Dead - certainly a facility something like that.

No. Dawn of the Dead was filmed at the Monroeville Mall. They even refer to it (the zombies swarm the mall due to some bearly-remembered instinct for shopping).

I (along with a dozen friends, awake at stupid o'clock in the morning on different Sat nights/Sunday mornings) was one of the extras, but near as I can see I ended up on the cutting room floor.

Uncle Ted

[unkated]

Coke requires kola beans which do not grow in non-tropical environments, generally; however, some are cultivated in northern italy or southern germany, according to this map:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/KolanutYield.png

Also note a crapton are grown in central southern California, but well enough away from LA that they might not be fallout contaminated.

What was the yield of weapons used on and around that region?

We can use nukemap to maybe determine what the crops would be like...

Also: I had a character (didn't get to play, unfortunately) among his treasures was a 12 pack of canned coke.

Are you pushing for actual Cola Wars?

Picture a mad-eyed senior officer....

"Dammit, major! My men will need to have heart to push those dammned Mexicans out of California! They'll need the promise of Coke! Served by cute American girls in short shorts! Your battalion WILL take that area this week, and secure the area until the harvest is complete!."

Uncle Ted

[unkated]

I used to work for Iron Mountain about 12 years ago.

In addition to tons of paper records (government & corporate), there are private physical storage areas, with anything from photo albums to sets of china (these are rare, because access is difficult and the storage is expensive - but then, what is there is probabaly of value - or was of value before TDM and nuclear war.

There (is) also a (very) large data center, designed to hold corporate (and government) electronic data. While the data may be of limited value, you will get a large functioning data center in a place specifically designed NOT to be damaged by natural and unnatural disasters, including nuclear attack, and is not near a specific target. The computers, of course, can be re-purposed, and corporate finance and operations records for a few hundred randomly selected US Fortune 5000 corporations deleted (heck, its available on back-up anyway).

Uncle Ted

[dragoon500ly]

Just for entertainment...Try surfing some of the survival food web sites, the claims and counterclaims can be amusing. Although the five gallon plastic buckets holding four weeks of food for one person are intriguing...

[unkated]

A trunkful (or suitcase or storage box) of particularly ugly sweaters, part of collection of that which should not be worn: bright, clashing colors, peculiar shades, decorated with elves, trees, moose, reindeer, big red hearts, badly rendered ice skaters, large silvery stars, etc.

There could be matching socks in the bottom.

Found in an attic or basement in November in a northern climate. (Last folk passing through in summer did not need or want them them).

You can provide a clue by having a shredded sweater on the stairs leading to the rest. "Is that a smurf?"

Uncle Ted

[dragoon500ly]

Have the team exploring an abandoned house, and finding a hatch in the backyard. Exploring the hatch leads to a bomb shelter...packed of U.S. Civil Defence supplies, nothing like 50-year old canned water and enriched crackers for dinner. Would that be a +5 for the upchoke roll!

[unkated]

Slightly off the road, your PCs find a set of trailers, slightly weathered.

On further examination, these are carnival rides, abandoned by the trucks that towed them a years or two back. Some rides have been plundered, in that seats or some decorations are missing.

With some persistence (if the ride is opened up), some of the rides have their own generator or engine - each with 0-50L of gasoline (2D6-2 x 5) that can be siphoned out.

Uncle Ted

[WallShadow]

<Snip>
On further examination, these are carnival rides, abandoned by the trucks that towed them a years or two back. Some rides have been plundered, in that seats or some decorations are missing.

With some persistence (if the ride is opened up), some of the rides have their own generator or engine - each with 0-50L of gasoline (2D6-2 x 5) that can be siphoned out.

Uncle Ted

Some of them also have hydraulics, from which might be siphoned the fluid. That is if you're not going to salvage the systems themselves.
You never know when you might need an MG/periscope on an extension arm.
Might also be handy equipped with a rake or hook attachment to try to remove objects without getting too close (AP mines). :cool:

[dragoon500ly]

Visiting a friends house, who runs the local civil war living history unit, and his arms room got me thinking...a 12pdr Napoleon, a dozen Springfield and Enfield rifle muskets, Spencer rifles and carbine, Colt and Remington cap and ball revolvers, sabers, bayonets, enough to field a company.

Amazing what one can find in the Deep South!

[WallShadow]

Visiting a friends house, who runs the local civil war living history unit, and his arms room got me thinking...a 12pdr Napoleon, a dozen Springfield and Enfield rifle muskets, Spencer rifles and carbine, Colt and Remington cap and ball revolvers, sabers, bayonets, enough to field a company.
The Napoleon is the prize here, followed by the rifles and revolvers. The Spencers are going to have the same problem faced by the Southerners who captured them--once the rimfire ammo's gone, it's a fancy club.
The Napoleon, though, could take out soft-skinned vehicles and make a APC think twice. IIRC some ACW artillerists live-fire their weapons with appropriately-diametered food cans filled with cement. One wonders what would happen if a nice hardened steel spike is centered along the long axis of the projectile?

[swaghauler]

The Napoleon is the prize here, followed by the rifles and revolvers. The Spencers are going to have the same problem faced by the Southerners who captured them--once the rimfire ammo's gone, it's a fancy club.
The Napoleon, though, could take out soft-skinned vehicles and make a APC think twice. IIRC some ACW artillerists live-fire their weapons with appropriately-diametered food cans filled with cement. One wonders what would happen if a nice hardened steel spike is centered along the long axis of the projectile?
While I generally agree with you on the cannon, I think the black powder pistols and rifles will be more useful and the caps are a pretty easy fix. The better (more useful?) use for those food cans is to fill them with stones or scrap metal fragments and just bend the top back down. They fragment wonderfully upon impact.

[dragoon500ly]

The Napoleon is the prize here, followed by the rifles and revolvers. The Spencers are going to have the same problem faced by the Southerners who captured them--once the rimfire ammo's gone, it's a fancy club.
The Napoleon, though, could take out soft-skinned vehicles and make a APC think twice. IIRC some ACW artillerists live-fire their weapons with appropriately-diametered food cans filled with cement. One wonders what would happen if a nice hardened steel spike is centered along the long axis of the projectile?

I do know that this has been used to fire grapeshot and canister as well as solid shot as part of an archeological research project, copies of artillery manuals from the Civil War showing to make shells and fuses, and several members claim they can manufacture the same, so I can see certain possibilities. This is part a battery in lower Mississippi and eastern Louisiana and they have access to another Napoleon, a 12pdr mountain howitizer, a 6pdr field gun and a 12pdr Cohorn mortar. So enough guns to defend a small town.

[swaghauler]

Also, note that the carriage on that Napoleon can be removed and the gun placed on a more "modern" mount. There would be no problem mounting that on the back of a 5-ton flatbed using the parts of a light truck suspension to mount the gun without damaging the truck or the gun. In fact, I'm willing to bet there's a "Technical" out there with just such an arrangement.

[WallShadow]

Also, note that the carriage on that Napoleon can be removed and the gun placed on a more "modern" mount. There would be no problem mounting that on the back of a 5-ton flatbed using the parts of a light truck suspension to mount the gun without damaging the truck or the gun. In fact, I'm willing to bet there's a "Technical" out there with just such an arrangement.
One wonders how much more beneficial a recoil mechanism would be for accuracy. Of course a soup can packed with 6d nails or heavy staples (heh,heh), or even barbs clipped from barbed wire (suitably rusty, of course), would most definitely have a beneficially adverse effect on enemy morale.
Hmmmm....soup can with razor wire coiled inside it....?

[dragoon500ly]

[QUOTE=WallShadow;71287]One wonders how much more beneficial a recoil mechanism would be for accuracy. Of course a soup can packed with 6d nails or heavy staples (heh,heh), or even barbs clipped from barbed wire (suitably rusty, of course), would most definitely have a beneficially adverse effect on enemy morale.
Hmmmm....soup can with razor wire coiled inside

Soup cans are a tad small in a diameter, coffee cans are normally used, stuff one full of musket balls and you have canister, pour concrete and let one set, you have solid shot.

The artillery manuals also all kinds of useful info like how to make illumination and incendiary rounds as well.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Not an odd treasure trove, more an odd place to find certain things...

In regards to finding firearms for scenarios set in the United Kingdom (and for almost anywhere else really), there is one source of civilian firearms that doesn't get much attention... zoos/wildlife parks.

In many countries, operators of these facilities have an obligation to protect the public should a dangerous animal escape and for some, one option is to deploy their own armed response teams.
Zoos/wildlife parks are by no means very common but aside from people going there to kill the animals for food or find vehicles, construction supplies etc. etc., how many people would raid a zoo thinking it has firearms locked away somewhere?

For some more info, The Firearms Blog has this page,
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016/06/01/zoo-weapons-response-teams/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheFirearmBlog+%28The+Firearm +Blog%29

[swaghauler]

[QUOTE=WallShadow;71287]One wonders how much more beneficial a recoil mechanism would be for accuracy. Of course a soup can packed with 6d nails or heavy staples (heh,heh), or even barbs clipped from barbed wire (suitably rusty, of course), would most definitely have a beneficially adverse effect on enemy morale.
Hmmmm....soup can with razor wire coiled inside

Soup cans are a tad small in a diameter, coffee cans are normally used, stuff one full of musket balls and you have canister, pour concrete and let one set, you have solid shot.

The artillery manuals also all kinds of useful info like how to make illumination and incendiary rounds as well.

Two small Campbells soup cans can be loaded into a ("roughly") 120mm bore side by side. You must lightly crimp them but they fit. The coffee can must be lightly crimped as well. However, the coffee can will have a reduced range because of the weight of the shot load (or will require a larger powder charge which can be dangerous). The IDEAL canister round is a Bondo/body putty canister. It fits nicely inside a 12 pounder and is short enough in height to not produce an overweight shot charge.

[WallShadow]

[QUOTE=dragoon500ly;71289]

Two small Campbells soup cans can be loaded into a ("roughly") 120mm bore side by side. You must lightly crimp them but they fit. The coffee can must be lightly crimped as well. However, the coffee can will have a reduced range because of the weight of the shot load (or will require a larger powder charge which can be dangerous). The IDEAL canister round is a Bondo/body putty canister. It fits nicely inside a 12 pounder and is short enough in height to not produce an overweight shot charge.

Mighty funny how someone would already know this, as if they'd tried it for real....:rolleyes:

[swaghauler]

[QUOTE=swaghauler;71292]

Mighty funny how someone would already know this, as if they'd tried it for real....:rolleyes:

I try to get my sweaty mitts on every kind of weapon where ever I can (the REASON I joined the artillery...can you find a bigger gun to shoot?). I have been a party to "experiments with muzzle loading cannon" from time to time.

I cannot wait for D-Day Conneaut OH this August. I love the German 88mm, the Russian 76mm, the half dozen 37mm AT guns, and the 3 or 4 US 75mm Pack howitzers. The tanks are cool too but they won't let me play with those guns....:(

[unkated]

The Napoleon is the prize here, followed by the rifles and revolvers. The Spencers are going to have the same problem faced by the Southerners who captured them--once the rimfire ammo's gone, it's a fancy club.
The Napoleon, though, could take out soft-skinned vehicles and make a APC think twice. IIRC some ACW artillerists live-fire their weapons with appropriately-diametered food cans filled with cement. One wonders what would happen if a nice hardened steel spike is centered along the long axis of the projectile?

The original AP ammo was called a bolt, and was a solid chunk of cylindrical iron (as opposed to a ball). However, a bolt was usually fired from a rifled gun (ex: Union 20-lb or 30-lb (3"-4' diam approx) Parrott Rifle, as opposed to a smooth-bore Napoleon). The spin kept the bolt end-on to the target, and it decelerated less quickly than a ball. (So a cement-filled can is not as strange a projectile as it might seem.)

With some hardened steel chisels, a blacksmith and a woodshop, you could probably make some crude APDS.

With a little research, you could also make cannister - a cylinder filled with small lead balls (or a collection of 1/4 - 1/2-in nuts and short bolts) that splits apart as it leaves the barrel, making a giant shotgun. Other than only being deployable at close range, it would be effective against infantry. Reload time is kind of slow.

Uncle Ted

[StainlessSteelCynic]

With a little research, you could also make cannister - a cylinder filled with small lead balls (or a collection of 1/4 - 1/2-in nuts and short bolts) that splits apart as it leaves the barrel, making a giant shotgun. Other than only being deployable at close range, it would be effective against infantry. Reload time is kind of slow.

Uncle Ted

As I recall, ships (and even castles) of the gunpowder era where often fitted with swivel guns for pretty much that same purpose - a short range anti-personnel weapon.

For those who haven't heard about them, a swivel gun is basically a small canon on a swiveling mount to allow wide arc of movement, filled with grapeshot to help repel enemies attempting to board the ship (or castle).
Again, reload time is slow but you can mitigate that somewhat by having multiple swivel guns in the same place so that one (or more) are available while the first gun is reloading.
The main point here is that you can get multiple swivel guns for the cost of a single larger cannon and they have a greater range of movement as well as being much faster to move.

[swaghauler]

As I recall, ships (and even castles) of the gunpowder era where often fitted with swivel guns for pretty much that same purpose - a short range anti-personnel weapon.

For those who haven't heard about them, a swivel gun is basically a small canon on a swiveling mount to allow wide arc of movement, filled with grapeshot to help repel enemies attempting to board the ship (or castle).
Again, reload time is slow but you can mitigate that somewhat by having multiple swivel guns in the same place so that one (or more) are available while the first gun is reloading.
The main point here is that you can get multiple swivel guns for the cost of a single larger cannon and they have a greater range of movement as well as being much faster to move.

Also, keep in mind that swivel guns being black powder and generally of small caliber do not necessarily fall under the guidelines of either the NFA (National Firearms Act of 1934) or under the Gun Control Act of 1968 which makes them very easy to acquire legally. This means that they can still be made (as "replica firearms") unlike larger caliber BP cannon (which are "Destructive Devices" under NFA). That alone would see them "pressed into service" during the Twilight War. Even today, a large number of sailors have small BP swivel guns as "saluting guns" or just for fun on the decks of their ships.

[LT. Ox]

Also, keep in mind that swivel guns being black powder and generally of small caliber do not necessarily fall under the guidelines of either the NFA (National Firearms Act of 1934) or under the Gun Control Act of 1968 which makes them very easy to acquire legally. This means that they can still be made (as "replica firearms") unlike larger caliber BP cannon (which are "Destructive Devices" under NFA). That alone would see them "pressed into service" during the Twilight War. Even today, a large number of sailors have small BP swivel guns as "saluting guns" or just for fun on the decks of their ships.

I own two and have "made" several others. We have used all manor of "tubes" from drill rod ( Oil field type) to 20 mm up to 40mm cut offs from decomished tubes. I like them better then some of the cast reproduction guns.
Not hard and as you say very legit.
As to speed, that is another thing I can reload a 24"(long) swivel in less time than it takes for the smoke ta clear. Laugh< which in calm weather is a bit.
I have used them in many rendezvous and ren fair locations and at the Highland games here in Estes park.
we use blank and cast .45 most times and have done the canester and loose loads.
I have made black powder ( some years ago) and it is not [U]too[U] hard but some what dangerious. sic the best carbon being from willow we found.
Oh well my 2 cents once more
harry O

[WallShadow]

Not an odd treasure trove, more an odd place to find certain things...
<SNIP>
Zoos/wildlife parks are by no means very common but aside from people going there to kill the animals for food or find vehicles, construction supplies etc. etc., how many people would raid a zoo thinking it has firearms locked away somewhere? <SNIP>
Having just done a very short search online, an obvious (in retrospect) opportunity to obtain firearms and ammo would be at several of the smaller private military academies . I searched a couple and found references to "rifle range" "rifle team" and photos of cadets in formation, some with '03 Springfields, some with M-14s. A rifle range, especially one located underground, would not be readily recognized, and, since the student were most likely home for the holidays, they would not have necessarily been able to access it. Not to mention the treasure-as-trade-in only-fired-once brass awaiting disposal, and expended lead in the backstops that might be used to produce more ammo.
Orrrrrrr....Assume a cadre of students and instructors remained at, or returned to, the academy, with its dining hall supplies, firing range weapons and ammo, "Taps", anyone?

[swaghauler]

When considering the manufacture of heavy weapons one cannot forget the radio-controlled planes/cars and model rockets you can find in hobby shops. Explosives-laden radio-controlled vehicles can be used as a "poor man's guided missile."

Model rocket launchers can easily be converted into RPGs. Many model rockets can carry payloads and the explosive "micro charge" in most rocket motors (which is used to deploy a parachute) can be strengthened with flash powder to boost its power for igniting an explosive charge.

The electrical ignition system (using a 9-volt battery) can easily be modified into a launcher by simply attaching it to a steel tube, thus creating a "makeshift RPG-16."

[StainlessSteelCynic]

"Taps", anyone?
A sadly under-rated movie and while I don't know how much firepower a military academy like the one shown in the movie would be likely to have, it would still be a potential resource for items such as beds, bed linen, books, household cleaning supplies (I'm thinking particularly about bulk supplies of bleach), clothing supplies (even though they may be smaller sizes the material could be reused to make clothes for adults), even toilet paper and possibly bulk fuel for generators, lawn mowers, academy motor vehicles and so on.

Assuming the academy is out of the way and hasn't been cleared out by any government agency of course.
I think a typical high school/academy would have too much "uninteresting" loot for scavengers to bother with but it's the type of stuff that groups looking to rebuild could be interested in. Obviously a military academy is going to be interesting because of the potential for "military loot" but I think that that would result in most raiders leaving items that would be useful for rebuilding - I'd assume they'd be after guns, food and fuel and wouldn't bother with the gear I've mentioned above.

[swaghauler]

There are 129,817 Licensed Gun Dealers in America. The breakdown of those "Dealers" is as follows:

61,562 are "Licensed Collectors," either private or for museums.
7,356 are "Pawn Shops (retail)"
51,438 are "Gun Shops (retail)"
all of the remaining License holders are manufacturers or importers.
There are approximately 270 MILLION guns in American civilian hands (no accurate count is available).

I though this could be a very interesting figure for those of you setting up a World War Z scenario where you need to know how many firearms are available.

[WallShadow]

There are 129,817 Licensed Gun Dealers in America. The breakdown of those "Dealers" is as follows:

61,562 are "Licensed Collectors," either private or for museums.
7,356 are "Pawn Shops (retail)"
51,438 are "Gun Shops (retail)"
all of the remaining License holders are manufacturers or importers.
There are approximately 270 MILLION guns in American civilian hands (no accurate count is available).

I though this could be a very interesting figure for those of you setting up a World War Z scenario where you need to know how many firearms are available.

Wait, the US population is over 322 million...we are in danger of a gun gap!:eek: Quick, fire up the machinery, we have about 55 million more weapons to produce!!!:come::shaft::gewehr::mgwhore2::xyxgun:: schiessen:rifle:

[swaghauler]

Wait, the US population is over 322 million...we are in danger of a gun gap!:eek: Quick, fire up the machinery, we have about 55 million more weapons to produce!!!:come::shaft::gewehr::mgwhore2::xyxgun:: schiessen:rifle:

Except for the fact that the number I quoted is the number of guns registered since the Gun Control Act of 1968. All of the guns made before 1968 didn't just cease to exist, so this number is WWAYY LOW!

[WallShadow]

https://gma.yahoo.com/family-plans-destroy-stockpile-inherited-guns-ammo-worth-232706532--abc-news-topstories.html
Without getting into a debate regarding the disposition of the cache, that was one (wealthy, apparently) owner's accumulation of 1500 weapons with 6.5 _tons_ of associated ammo. From the photo, most of the visible ones appear to be sporting arms (shotguns, bolt-action rifles), but still, enough to bolster a fair-sized militia, with a reserve arsenal, _and_ have some left for trading to a neighboring enclave. Imagine an underground resistance to the Mexican invasion having this to arm the disarmed populace with.
Update: according to the LA Times, it was _1200_ guns and over _2_ tons of ammo. Two days later it's over _6_ tons. Let's hear it for accurate reporting. yay.
BUT--it does reveal that the deceased claimed to have been an alien hybrid sent to protect the human race. The death occurred about a year ago, and the family's decisions about the cache is being publicized currently.

[WallShadow]

Not so much a personal cache, but ISTR a business in West Pittsburgh (which is actually North-West of Pittsburgh and south of New Castle, that dealt in literally tons of end-market machined metal metal items. From steel rods, plates, and tubes to nuts, bolts, rivets, and stuff people weren't using in mainstream. The place closed afew years ago, but it would have been open when the balloon went up.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Not so much a personal cache, but ISTR a business in West Pittsburgh (which is actually North-West of Pittsburgh and south of New Castle, that dealt in literally tons of end-market machined metal metal items. From steel rods, plates, and tubes to nuts, bolts, rivets, and stuff people weren't using in mainstream. The place closed afew years ago, but it would have been open when the balloon went up.
This raises an interesting side note - in most 1st & 2nd World nations, the largest percentage of sales that the business sector makes is not business to end-user (i.e. the individual buying the end product) but it is business to business (often seen expressed as B2B in trade lingo).

That is to say, the majority of sales are from one business supplying items to another business who makes the end product. This means that there's probably a whole lot of companies doing the same type of business transactions as the company WallShadow mentioned above. What that means in terms of gaming is, I think, that a lot of those items that would make rebuilding society a lot easier, will be found as parts in different company warehouses.

That makes for an adventure in itself but one with at least a high chance of success because I don't imagine looters thinking far enough into the future to cart off box loads of nuts & bolts, steel rod, sheet metal and so on. I think they will be focusing on what's immediately useful - food, water, fuel, tools, weapons, ammo etc. etc. They'll make off with a washing machine but they're not so likely to make off with the parts to make a washing machine.

[unkated]

Remember though that there are not that many supplies laying about in a warehouse laying around.

The 1980s had this entire Just In Time (JIT) movement that involved coordinating production, with the goal of NOT having warehouses holding months of raw parts for industry. This skipped the cost of warehousing, and eliminated warehouse staff for many industries.

For example, a computer manufacturer would have motherboards (and connectors and wires and disk drives and mice and casings and tiny screws and all other components) delivered on a schedule a few days to a couple of weeks apart, retaining no more than a few days worth of materials to manufacture on hand. This depends on the component manufacturers delivering (guaranteed by contract with penalties for non-compliance) every few days, but skips needing to have enormous warehouses.

The downside, of course, is that this complex network makes it quicker for production to fall apart. If a component manufacturer was set up near a nuke target, and has to shut down, in a few days, whatever was made with that component stops being made until a replacement can be found.

(To my mind, this is the main problem with trying to start a new production line for an older but simpler military vehicle post TDM as we discussed a few months ago; as things start to breakdown after TDM, getting multiple manufacturing locations up, running, and coordinated becomes too difficult to produce en masse, even if the completed article is simpler than what it is replacing, ie. M113 for M2 Bradley, not to mention re-creating the heavy machinery needed to create the components in the first place...).

So, you can go somewhere and perhaps find the components needed for a limited production run of something in quantities perhaps as high as 2-3 truckloads, but you are unlikely to find acres of warehouses filled with components. This is fine for campaign level, and may produce enough of something to save a city, but this is not restarting a national industry....

Uncle Ted

[WallShadow]

If saving a city means that city can begin to manufacture machine tools and precision instruments of even the most basic type, civilization will follow and spread.

[WallShadow]

An open question: how much skilled training is required to rewind motor armatures, small-to-medium transfomers, and the like?

[swaghauler]

An open question: how much skilled training is required to rewind motor armatures, small-to-medium transfomers, and the like?

Not that much. I have actually done this working at Sharon Steel during the summers of my college years. Davey Crocket (our 250 Ton Overhead Crane) required his armatures re-wrapped every year as there were NO replacement armatures available for him (he was built in 1911 and still in service in 1991 when the Open Hearth shut down).

I have spent MANY A DAY combing a junk yard for parts to the older machinery we used to farm with. Repurposing is a way of life on the smaller family farms prevalent in the Northeastern US. If you drive "out in the country" in PA, you will often see rows of derelict vehicles near farms. These are not actually "derelicts," but rather supplies of nuts, bolts, wire and steel that can be used to repair the machines still in use on that farm.

[swaghauler]

Remember though that there are not that many supplies laying about in a warehouse laying around.

The 1980s had this entire Just In Time (JIT) movement that involved coordinating production, with the goal of NOT having warehouses holding months of raw parts for industry. This skipped the cost of warehousing, and eliminated warehouse staff for many industries.

For example, a computer manufacturer would have motherboards (and connectors and wires and disk drives and mice and casings and tiny screws and all other components) delivered on a schedule a few days to a couple of weeks apart, retaining no more than a few days worth of materials to manufacture on hand. This depends on the component manufacturers delivering (guaranteed by contract with penalties for non-compliance) every few days, but skips needing to have enormous warehouses.

The downside, of course, is that this complex network makes it quicker for production to fall apart. If a component manufacturer was set up near a nuke target, and has to shut down, in a few days, whatever was made with that component stops being made until a replacement can be found.

(To my mind, this is the main problem with trying to start a new production line for an older but simpler military vehicle post TDM as we discussed a few months ago; as things start to breakdown after TDM, getting multiple manufacturing locations up, running, and coordinated becomes too difficult to produce en masse, even if the completed article is simpler than what it is replacing, ie. M113 for M2 Bradley, not to mention re-creating the heavy machinery needed to create the components in the first place...).

So, you can go somewhere and perhaps find the components needed for a limited production run of something in quantities perhaps as high as 2-3 truckloads, but you are unlikely to find acres of warehouses filled with components. This is fine for campaign level, and may produce enough of something to save a city, but this is not restarting a national industry....

Uncle Ted

While I agree with your post for the most part; Repurposing "broken parts" is a way of life in many parts of the World. Those motherboards that were fried by EMP still have lots of small screws, copper wire and even gold and silver solder in them. The amount of other "salvage" is only limited by your imagination. I have seen *"trains" made from old trucks (or bogeys to our European posters), lumber, a leather belt, and an outboard motor, *a repurposed "main-frame" that a friend of mine built out of old desktops (what an electrician's nightmare that was), *a round-bailer built out an old Chevy truck, and various parts such as motors, alternators, and capacitors "repurposed" into all sorts of weird equipment. NEVER underestimate the ingenuity of a desperate man! Where to all of these "devices" originate from? They originate from all the "stuff" that quits working and is "abandoned" by those without the "vision" to see that something that's "broken" may still be useful....

[WallShadow]

While I agree with your post for the most part; Repurposing "broken parts" is a way of life in many parts of the World.
<Snip>
NEVER underestimate the ingenuity of a desperate man! Where to all of these "devices" originate from? They originate from all the "stuff" that quits working and is "abandoned" by those without the "vision" to see that something that's "broken" may still be useful....

Which reminds me of the ingenuity/desperation of the American Army officer trying to organize, run, and supply the Phillipine Resistance to the Japanese during WW2. Making bullets by hand-filing brass curtain rods to shape, cobbling together a radio out of some really unlikely stuff, and lots of other "Mother of Invention" stuff.

[unkated]

If saving a city means that city can begin to manufacture machine tools and precision instruments of even the most basic type, civilization will follow and spread.

You're missing my point. You DON'T have enough to spread.

For example, my town recovers a enough spare parts for us to make 25 alarm clocks. We can now have 25 houses live in a synchronized civilized manner.

But we cannot make another 25 to trade with another town. No parts.

When someone elbows their clock and cracks the case, we cannot build them a spare. No parts.

When you use the parts for 5 computers to make one that works, you have... one computer. You cannot mate them to make more.

My point was that you cannot make another visit to a giant warehouse of parts to take away a truckload and build another load of stuff. One trip to a dead factory may get you a useful load - but there won't be more built to go back a second time.

Salvage is not a bottmless pit, and its scattershot for what you find; it may be useful - or it may not be helpful at this point in time.

IMHO

Uncle Ted

[The Dark]

Somewhat tangential to the current discussion, but a book I've found useful at times when determining what salvage is useful is Lewis Dartnell's The Knowledge, which is intended to help bootstrap a civilization after the end of the world as we know it. He primarily focuses on a plague scenario, simply because it decimates the population while leaving large amounts of potential salvage, but the general principles remain the same.

[swaghauler]

Somewhat tangential to the current discussion, but a book I've found useful at times when determining what salvage is useful is Lewis Dartnell's The Knowledge, which is intended to help bootstrap a civilization after the end of the world as we know it. He primarily focuses on a plague scenario, simply because it decimates the population while leaving large amounts of potential salvage, but the general principles remain the same.

That's a pretty good book you recommended. I've ordered my copy after reading some excerpts.

[WallShadow]

You're missing my point. You DON'T have enough to spread.

For example, my town recovers a enough spare parts for us to make 25 alarm clocks. We can now have 25 houses live in a synchronized civilized manner.

But we cannot make another 25 to trade with another town. No parts.

When someone elbows their clock and cracks the case, we cannot build them a spare. No parts.

Unkated, I _got_ your point: true, if you only scrounge components, you only have limited opportunities.
But-- what I was trying to put forward is, if you focus not only on parts, but on components of _machine tools_--tools which can make tools-- you have a greater chance of making an industrial base that can make parts or repair damaged parts, and there are probably lots of broken clocks out there that can be _fixed_ if the right capacity in manufacturing is built up.

When you use the parts for 5 computers to make one that works, you have... one computer. You cannot mate them to make more.

My point was that you cannot make another visit to a giant warehouse of parts to take away a truckload and build another load of stuff. One trip to a dead factory may get you a useful load - but there won't be more built to go back a second time.

Salvage is not a bottmless pit, and its scattershot for what you find; it may be useful - or it may not be helpful at this point in time.

IMHO

Uncle Ted

I agree that _salvage_ is a crutch and a bandage, but the time gained in their use must be put to use in growing industry and agriculture. If that is done, then, yes, a community can get enough industrial muscle to reach out in trade and aid to their neighbors, mutual defense agreements, protected trade routes and convoys, reestablishment of the infrastructure, perhaps fixing/rebuilding a bridge or highway tunnel, clearing blocked roads, fixing connecting roads, loan or lease (perhaps paid with a small, fair percent of the harvested crop) of heavier agricultural machinery, offering armory/gunsmithing service to keep cooperating militias' weaponry in working repair, creating a hydroelectric dam for a local power net, reestablishing phone/telegraph lines, or repurposing a connecting rail line as a transportation/trade artery, with associate armed oversight, patrolling, and escort.