Silver Shogun

[Webstral]

I’m at an impasse in my effort to turn Silver Shogun into a script for a graphic novel. A little back-and-forth with the boys of Twilight: 2000 might be the trick for getting out of my own head and gaining some perspective, if you guys are willing to indulge me.

Some things are settled on. The protagonist, David Tokugawa, is a major shareholder in a Las Vegas casino and hotel named The Phoenix. The story begins with him at The Phoenix on the evening before Thanksgiving 1997. A series of vignettes set the stage, establishing that the war has been going on for a couple of years and has turned nuclear in Europe and China. Vegas is packed with people trying desperately to ignore what has been happening in Eurasia. Profits have been at an all-time high everywhere in Vegas, but things are getting out of hand. Some vignettes hint at the activity at Nellis AFB. Others show that the City of Las Vegas has been taking some action in the direction of contingency planning. Tokugawa has a number of brief encounters all over the casino that show the relationships he has with other principal players at the casino as well as his approach to management.

When EMP knocks out the power on Thanksgiving, the masses panic. On this weekend, Vegas is particularly susceptible to the mess we have described amongst ourselves over the past few years because there are more visitors in Clark County than residents. Whether the visitors hit the road, riot, loot, or have sex in public places, their manifestation of mass panic will be as intense as or more intense than any other city in the US. The first 24 hours after the power goes out will be very, very intense. I intend to immerse the reader in this experience through Tokugawa’s eyes.

Soon enough, though, the military and the police appear on the Strip and enforce law and order. Like an elastic stretched and released, the people snap back to the patterns of civilized behavior, though not ever again like it used to be.

There’s a period of time between the initial calming in many parts of the city and the abandonment of Las Vegas and Nellis AFB by the military (see my notes on 99th Wing) that I have not defined to my satisfaction. While I intend for Tokugawa to take on the role of the leader of a powerful alternative force in Clark County prior to the departure of 99th Wing, I’m having trouble sorting out a number of the details that need to be sorted for him to make the transition from the de facto owner/CEO of the casino to the leader of an army that includes gang members, outlaw bikers, armed civilians, casino security forces and other private security forces, organized crime, subverted city and county employees (including police), and subverted military.

So far, the best I have been able to come up with is that Tokugawa goes down a path on which each step towards becoming the enemy of 99th Wing has its own logic answering to the events of the moment. While we see during the vignettes that Tokugawa plans carefully and looks at the big picture, events in the immediate aftermath of Thanksgiving prevent him from looking beyond the next moment in a systematic fashion. He has immediate crises, like caring for the needs of guests and staff at The Phoenix in a totally unprecedented situation.

I haven’t developed a detailed picture of Las Vegas at various points after Thanksgiving. Obviously, it sucks big time. The orgy of death and suffering right after Thanksgiving dies down but then slowly builds to a new, better organized crescendo. During this time, where is the food coming from? How is the water getting to people? These two questions are very important because they dictate the shape of things in Vegas during the first 10 days after Thanksgiving.

I’ve considered cheating on the water by having electricity restored. My deus ex machina is the idea that the Hoover Dam generators are just too important to be allowed to be knocked out by a single burst of EMP. Backup electrical equipment is located on site after July 1997. Contingency plans are put into effect, turning the pumps back on in Vegas. Water doesn’t go to everybody, though. It’s distributed at central locations, which also can serve for distributing rations.

This goes back to the food issue. Where’s the food coming from? Obviously, the government will have seized all local warehouses and other stores. There are farms and ranches in the northern part of the state. I’m stuck on how this translates into a situation inside Las Vegas, though. What the relationship between Tokugawa and the people who control the water, food, and fuel during the first week of December? I’ve considered having Tokugawa and the other heads of casinos on the Strip assemble to try to figure out what they are going to do while supplies last with the result that Tokugawa becomes leader of this conglomerate. But then what? Does the city government recognize him in any meaningful way? Does Nellis AFB (by which I mean the Air Force command) recognize him in any meaningful way? What would their acknowledgement of his leadership of these hotels full of guests mean? Do they dump rations with Tokugawa’s security forces and tell him to handle distribution? Does he get assigned responsibility for local security? While the fact that the rest of Clark County is descending into anarchy is a given, what does this look like from Tokugawa’s perspective? What are they telling the surviving guests of the casinos about their fate and futures? How do these developments bring Tokugawa into conflict with gangs, ad hoc militia, and ultimately the surviving government forces?

I’m thinking, too, that Tokugawa needs to be part of a scheme to get people through the coming lean times that fails. I don’t yet know what form this takes. Maybe there is an effort to plant gardens inside and around the city. Maybe there is a Nevada version of relocation, taking survivors from the urban areas of Las Vegas to farms throughout the state. I’m sure other crushingly tragic possibilities exist.

I’m certain of a couple of things, though. One of Tokugawa’s chief weapons in this stage is diplomacy and subversion. I’m thinking of having him bring a minor gang into the fold, then using them to cripple a larger gang. This would require rapid consolidation of all the security forces on the Strip. Why aren’t these guys drafted by the Air Force? I don’t have a good answer for that yet, but I need them not to be drafted by the Air Force or the story dies.

[Targan]

With Tokugawa being an existing major player in the Vegas scene, he must have had solid links to some pretty serious underworld figures. Maybe he had some dodgy side businesses going on pre-war (illicit substances, firearms, human trafficking perhaps related to the sex industry). If, in the lead up to the TDM, he was able to play some of those forces off against one another with an eye to consolidating them under his own banner, that would give him an excellent pool of muscle to draw on once the fertilizer hit the ventilation.

Alternatively or in addition, perhaps he had a major financial stake in labor hire and/or private security companies. Both of those areas would provide excellent synergies with his casino interests.

[Rainbow Six]

How local strongmen evolve is something that I’ve been thinking a bit about lately (as you probably know I’ve been working on an Alternative Survivor’s Guide to the UK for some time and one of the challenges I have is how to make different strongmen more diverse rather than having them all be variations of the same theme), so a few thoughts that may or may not be of use.

In many areas the man (or woman – for brevity I will use male pronouns but no reason why it couldn’t be a she) who controls sources of food and water will probably have significant influence / power. He may have gotten control of that food through legitimate (or at least pseudo legitimate) means (one option I’ve used was a man who owned a trucking company that was contracted by the Government to deliver essential supplies) or illegitimate means. Sometimes someone may find themselves in the position almost by accident (I’m currently trying to flesh out a leader who comes to power after the 1997 nuclear exchange and subsequent food riots as a consequence of being an unwilling (at least initially) ringleader of the riots).

Much of that is tangential at best to the questions you’ve put forward, but the underlying theme of how / if Tokugawa takes control of much of the city’s food distribution may help answer the question of what happens if he becomes leader of the conglomerate as you’ve described. I’d endorse the idea that the remaining military elements recognise him as leader and delegate to him the task of distributing food / water. It’s one less thing for them to be worried about, particularly if he already has a proven and effective distribution system in place. Whether the City Government (or what’s left of it) recognise him or not may or may not matter dependent on what sort of state the City Government is in by then – is it still intact and providing the basic functions of Government? Or has it been superseded in that role by Tokugawa, who, perhaps crucially, is being supported by the military.

As to what Tokugawa is telling the survivors, if he is controlling food distribution there is a message, perhaps implied but unspoken, or perhaps subtly spread by his minions (I don’t like that word particularly but it serves a purpose here) namely that if they support him they will do OK going forward. Maybe not great, but OK, and OK is probably better than much of the country at that point. In time these supporters will then become the footsoldiers, camp followers, and specialists that may make up a significant portion of his Army.

Re: the drafting (or not) of the gangs into the Air Force, would the Air Force have the resources (not to mention the will) to attempt to draft every gang? Even if they tried how many gangs would simply ignore the instruction to report for duty? Alternatively, I note you do say you are certain which route you want to take, but rather than using an overtly criminal gang to bring down the larger gang could you use another group? Targan mentioned Casino security guards; perhaps these guards have been brought under the aegis of City government as some form of auxiliary police so are exempted from any Air Force draft on the grounds that they have already been effectively drafted by the City Government? Perhaps Tokugawa has covertly taken over the remnants of City Government by then (possibly he has the head of the Government in his pocket, either by means of blackmail, intimidation, or influence, making Tokugawa the puppet master pulling the strings) so these men end up doing his bidding, possibly without even knowing that they are doing so.

Just a few thoughts…hope they help

[Raellus]

I like the idea of Tokugawa coopting a local gang (bikers, methinks) to help bolster his casino's organic security force in the increasingly chaotic period leading up to the TDM. Think Altamont without the music and hippies. This gives him added muscle and establishes potentially useful connections to the other illicit activities and underworld figures associated with the OBG. It also gives him the ability to exert greater pressure on his fellow/rival casino owners, eventually bringing them to heel. An alternative to the bikers is the mob, with which Vegas has strong historical ties. This, IMO, has been overdone, so I prefer the bikers.

Now that Tokugawa has the largest non-governmental security force in Vegas, the military authorities at Nellis make a huge mistake by coopting Tokugawa, essentially deputizing him and his security apparatus in a bid to get the city back under control. When he shows willingness to participate in this arrangement, they then delegate to him the task of handling food distribution, since he's got enough security to make sure mobs of rioters don't make off with the goods. Perhaps he talks them into supplying him with some military surplus weapons to help him accomplish this difficult task.

Coopting Tokugawa is a huge mistake by the civil/military authorities because they've given Tokugawa both de jure and de facto legitimacy and authority (and possibly some firepower). In the eyes of many of the hungry locals and refugees, Tokugawa is the savior, not the government or the AF. In the meantime, Tokugawa absorbs or destroys potential rival power groups (street gangs, mafiosos, etc.), consolidating his power and growing his army.

If and when the military pulls its material/moral support from Tokugawa- perhaps they realize the mistake they've made, or they decide to evacuate or whatever- Tokugawa can turn that into a propaganda coup, spinning it so that the government/military look like the bad guys. By that time, he's got popular support and an increasingly powerful paramilitary army- a force to be reckoned with.

[Webstral]

How local strongmen evolve is something that I’ve been thinking a bit about lately (as you probably know I’ve been working on an Alternative Survivor’s Guide to the UK for some time and one of the challenges I have is how to make different strongmen more diverse rather than having them all be variations of the same theme)...

This is exactly my challenge. I'm mindful of the fact that I'm inclined to lean towards certain ideas that characterize Thunder Empire. Tokugawa has to be a unique character, not a variant on MG Thomason. I need to find patterns and solutions in Tokugawa's rise that are fundamentally different from anything happening in southern Arizona. At the same time, events have to have a credible logic.

[simonmark6]

Would it be too clichéd to go with some Japanese systems?

The simplest would be the Japanese feudal system which went from:
Shogun
Daiyomo
Samurai
Peasants

If a charismatic leader was able to gather together several dispirit groups who happened to control the means of keeping the city together, the leader of each group would be the Daiyomo and many of the gangsters could become the Samurai.

To make it less obvious, Tokugawa could base his control on the concept of the Japanese corporate system. This is essentially a conglomerate of inter-linked groups that together form the means of production. The inter-dependency in this case could be a further means of control for the leader with hostages of every "family" living with the Shogun.

This has the benefit of being different to other ways that warlords have been introduced in TW2K.

Japanese Corporate Theories break down to:
•Management technology is a highly transportable technology.
• Just-in-time production exposes problems otherwise hidden by excess inventories and staff.
• Quality begins with production, and requires a company-wide "habit of improvement."
• Culture is no obstacle; techniques can change behaviour.
• Simplify, and goods will flow like water.
• Flexibility opens doors.
• Travel light and make numerous trips, like the water beetle.
• More self-improvement, fewer programs, less specialist intervention.
• Simplicity is the natural state.

Something like this could form the basis of Tokugawa's plans. Basically, he could initially secure the means to control organised violence within the city, both legal and illegal and then sets up "industrial clans" to secure certain vital resources and organisations.

The key to these would be protection: Tokugawa insinuates his own "samurai" into the clans that have loyalty to him, or at least something outside the clan as security and in exchange certain members of each clan "visit" Tokugawa.

You could combine the two ideas as the culture develops: industrial clans in the city with protected key workers and a more transient population of "peasant" workers and then, agricultural clans that represent the old Feudal systems with a Daiyamo appointed by the Shogun and Samurai supporting them whilst peasants labour to produce food.

Anyway, it's a few ideas to kick about.

[Raellus]

It bears noting that under the Tokugawa Shogunate, farmers had a higher social status, at least in theory, than merchants. This despite that many farmers were more or less impoverished while many merchants could be quite wealthy. From my understanding, the reasoning was that farmers were producers, while merchants simply trafficked in goods produced by others.

[Targan]

It bears noting that under the Tokugawa Shogunate, farmers had a higher social status, at least in theory, than merchants. This despite that many farmers were more or less impoverished while many merchants could be quite wealthy. From my understanding, the reasoning was that farmers were producers, while merchants simply trafficked in goods produced by others.

I was going to bring up similar points but you beat me to it. The Shogun/Daiyomo/Samurai/Peasants social hierarchy works ok for the point Simonmark was making, but it was more complicated than that in feudal Japan, and particularly in the late feudal era. The merchant class and the two distinct priestly classes were also important players and in the case of the merchants didn't fit well into the structure at all (as in, they had increasing economic power but were looked down upon socially). And then there were the occasional conflicts with the more militant Buddhist monasteries, and finally the partial breakdown of the samurai system with the introduction of firearms.

Of course, the finer points don't matter. The Silver Shogun isn't trying to recreate feudal Japanese society, he's using a mish-mash of modern analogues of the samurai system along with some of its mystique. Web, you've probably mentioned before in other discussions of the Silver Shogunate's backstory, but how much of an expert on Japanese history was the Silver Shogun? With a name like Tokugawa I'm assuming his family took great pains to educate each generation about their glorious legacy?

[Badbru]

With regards to food I've worked in fast food, specifically Pizza shops and Cafe's most of my life. Pizza shops and less so Cafes generally get all there stock from dedicated food distributors. In Perth our shop used two; Variety Foods and European Foods. There were about two or perhaps three others I could have used. These three or four distributors serviced most Pizza shops in Perth and as example there were 15 other shops in the 5 or 6 kilometer delivery radius we had (competition was huge).

The restaurant trade is going to be similar. And historically has been a target for extortion-standover tactics by the Mob.
"Nice place you got here. It'd be a real shame if it caught fire. Now for a small weekly fee my boys and I could make sure that'd never happen, capishe?"

Consider that the Casino will have atleast one restaurant and possibly a seperate kitchen for room service and there is your conection to food distribution post TDM. Your protagonist just needs to also have one or more of these Food Distributon companies in addition to his Casino and he'll have links to all the food outlet points throughout the city, or atleast a significant portion of them as there is allways competion. His distribution truck drivers may even be the bag men for kickbacks etc and he also has a network of trucks available to him too.

I beleive the supermarkets opperate in a similar fashion although often with their own distribution networks.

That'll get him established in controll of local food distribution untill the imports and factories and all the actual infrastructure breaks down and also put him in a position to see how quickly local supplies will run out and thus he'll be ahead of the game looking for alternative sources of food.

This is where he reachs into another arm or his empire, those motorcycle gangs others have talked about. Their high mobility could be used to access surviving farm communities and by force, negotiation, or hostage taking he secures local farms, protects them and has the trucks and escorts to get the now more raw produce to the markets. The products change and his role alters slightly but it's still essentially the same.

[Webstral]

Thanks, all, for the input.

I have been avoiding mixing the mafia and Tokugawa partially because the mafia and Vegas does seem so cliché and partially because I lack confidence that I can represent the mafia correctly. However, I did create a mob character for possible use with Tokugawa. I made Jimmy Silver (for “silver tongue”) as a possible means for Tokugawa to conduct subversion and collect information. I haven’t fleshed him out very much, though. I haven’t decided whether he is a mob lieutenant who maintains liaisons with Tokugawa or a former mob guy who is now one of Tokugawa’s lieutenants. I’m going to have to think about the mob thing some more.

There are the drug and sex industries that will definitely impact The Phoenix. It would make sense for Tokugawa to have some means of governing their access to his guests, which would mean either a partnership or capturing a small segment of the industry. Capturing a small segment of the industry gives Tokugawa more control, but a partnership allows him greater deniability.

I had planned to imply that Tokugawa had put some money into the private security industry in Las Vegas once it really starts to take off after the start of the Sino-Soviet War. This would give him access to manpower and hardware that might not otherwise be available to a major shareholder of a casino. Also, if Tokugawa’s company has supplied a portion of the private security operating on the Strip, this gives him ready access to the surviving management as well as a position of leverage and leadership. I did plan for him to have control over some of the armored cars and crews in the city. He uses these to retrieve the families of important employees from the city when things start looking bad.

Bikers… They have the potential to be drug runners for whatever entity distributes narcotics at The Phoenix. Again, I’m wondering whether it’s better for Tokugawa to have a working relationship with someone independent or start the story with a small in-house group.

I definitely don’t want Tokugawa to start the story as a major crime lord. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem possible to operate in Sin City without coming to grips with the presence of the underworld in one fashion or another. This bears more consideration.

Regarding a draft, I really just meant the uniformed security working on the Strip and elsewhere in Las Vegas. They are organized, have some training, and have some weapons. A manpower-starved 99th Wing would look upon these guys (not street gangs, bikers, or wise guys) as potential recruits. I think the question of how far they are willing to go to get hold of them is a critical one to have answered. I wonder if this issue might not be the one that really breaks the relationship between the Air Force and Tokugawa. It’s not hard to imagine the Air Force, which is trying to control Clark County with active patrols throughout the area, announcing a draft of 200 men from the private force Tokugawa consolidates on the Strip. Tokugawa refuses, though he commits to allowing volunteers. Someone in the Nellis chain of command decides to impress some of Tokugawa’s men in the Royal Navy sense. This creates a rift that never closes. Perhaps.

As long as the Air Force has armored vehicles and firepower, they have a real trump card to play in Clark County. Small scale crime will be endemic. However, concentrations of outlaws of any description will draw a reaction from 99th Wing. As others have suggested, it’s certainly possible for the military (which absorbs the government of the City of Las Vegas and perhaps the whole of Clark County fairly early) to decide that the easiest solution to the manpower crunch is to assign a sector of Las Vegas to Tokugawa once it becomes obvious that he has assumed responsibility for a large block of civilians (who need feeding and services) and a controls a conglomeration of private security that is too large to deputize at gun point without major pain. Assuming Tokugawa is given de facto control over a section of the city centered on the Strip, he is then in a position to shelter those on the run from the Air Force (which soon comprises the entire government, agencies, and personnel of greater Las Vegas). This can give him the opportunity to bring in smaller gangs being menaced by larger ones or gangs reeling from an attack by the Air Force.

So one question becomes how Tokugawa gets control over the Strip. The day after Thanksgiving he is the uncontested leader of a modest casino at the southern end of the Strip. He is a major shareholder in a new private security corporation that absorbed several smaller operations in Las Vegas. Many of the newest additions to the casinos’ security types are employees of the security firm contracted out to the casinos and elsewhere. Still, he’s not about to launch a coup against the leadership of the other casinos. The best I can think of at the moment is that the casino bosses have been meeting with city leaders in an effort to talk about what they will do if nuclear war comes to CONUS but does not directly affect Las Vegas. What’s going to happen with the people in the major hotels if the power goes out? I did a rough count of the rooms available in the hotels on the Strip. Even in 1997 there are more than 40,000 rooms available in the major hotels on the Strip. If they average 2 people per room, then there are possibly 80,000 people rooming on the Strip on Thanksgiving, plus however many people are in the casinos when the lights go out. Many of these people will disappear or become casualties very soon, but there will still be tens of thousands of people crammed into a small area in Las Vegas. I can’t envision any of the details, but I’m thinking that Tokugawa gets made chairman of a new board made up of the on site senior leaders of the casinos. This board becomes responsible for basically trying to manage the people on the Strip while food distribution and public sanitation gets worked out. The board liaises with government agencies and forces as they struggle to get the situation under something like control.

I’m thinking that the casinos gradually fill up with employees and their families as the residential neighborhoods of greater Las Vegas become uninhabitable due to fires and violence.

Under these circumstances, I can begin to see how Tokugawa’s subversion of government personnel can function. He’ll have to have agents working on Nellis, which is a whole other subject.

Tokugawa does in fact use his Japanese identity extensively. He is the Shogun. The officers of his army, the Gunryo, are samurai. The enlisted men are ashigaru. He adopts distinctly Japanese images and philosophy to give his army a strong bond that marks them as separate from the society they take over. His senior leadership are daimyo.

One theme I want to play up is that Tokugawa is not interested in being a post apocalyptic warlord. He starts down his path to make some money and build a legacy. He cares about quality, and he cares about the welfare of the people in his organization. His outlook is that employees who can see the evidence of care for their interests and well being on the part of the management work better and produce a high quality service and/or products. This idea extends to safeguarding the people who are stuck in his casino the day after Thanksgiving. At each step along the way, Tokugawa feels compelled to move in a given direction to provide for the people under his protection. I want to show how the logic of this thinking leads him to initiate his own raids against rival powers in Las Vegas and ultimately take control of Nevada at gun point. He installs secret police in the towns, wipes out a town, and conducts motorized raids against surviving farming communities in California, Utah, Idaho, and Arizona because these things have to be done in order to secure the well being of the people under his protection. I suppose one could say that the central theme of Silver Shogun is that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Thanks for the ideas and discussion, gentlemen. I welcome more as long as people are interested.

[Rainbow Six]

With regards to food I've worked in fast food, specifically Pizza shops and Cafe's most of my life. Pizza shops and less so Cafes generally get all there stock from dedicated food distributors. In Perth our shop used two; Variety Foods and European Foods. There were about two or perhaps three others I could have used. These three or four distributors serviced most Pizza shops in Perth and as example there were 15 other shops in the 5 or 6 kilometer delivery radius we had (competition was huge).

The restaurant trade is going to be similar. And historically has been a target for extortion-standover tactics by the Mob.
"Nice place you got here. It'd be a real shame if it caught fire. Now for a small weekly fee my boys and I could make sure that'd never happen, capishe?"

Consider that the Casino will have atleast one restaurant and possibly a seperate kitchen for room service and there is your conection to food distribution post TDM. Your protagonist just needs to also have one or more of these Food Distributon companies in addition to his Casino and he'll have links to all the food outlet points throughout the city, or atleast a significant portion of them as there is allways competion. His distribution truck drivers may even be the bag men for kickbacks etc and he also has a network of trucks available to him too.

I beleive the supermarkets opperate in a similar fashion although often with their own distribution networks.

That'll get him established in controll of local food distribution untill the imports and factories and all the actual infrastructure breaks down and also put him in a position to see how quickly local supplies will run out and thus he'll be ahead of the game looking for alternative sources of food.

This is where he reachs into another arm or his empire, those motorcycle gangs others have talked about. Their high mobility could be used to access surviving farm communities and by force, negotiation, or hostage taking he secures local farms, protects them and has the trucks and escorts to get the now more raw produce to the markets. The products change and his role alters slightly but it's still essentially the same.

Badbru, there are some good ideas in there. Thanks for posting that. If you don't mind I might try and adapt some of those ideas into my UK work.

[Webstral]

Badbru, I must apologize for not writing feedback for your ideas in my previous post. I offer the lame excuse that I needed a bit more time to digest your food slanted idea.

There are lots of good ideas in your post. I think I’ll several, though I’ll scale them back a bit. I have a couple of ideas. I may have Tokugawa own a piece of the company that supplies The Phoenix with its food items. Alternatively, I may have The Phoenix have an in-house operation that goes to all of the distributors, bypassing the usual middle men. I think it’s a good idea that Tokugawa have some idea of where the food all comes from and how much is really left at the usual distribution points when the military confiscates the lot. He could and should have an inside source at one or more of these warehouses. I also like the idea of him having some sort of connection with the drivers, who would be in a position to pass information to him.

A couple of ideas have matured a bit more. If Tokugawa becomes the chairman of the conglomerate of casinos on the Strip, and if he becomes responsible for management and defense of the Strip with his own security force, etc., then where are the boundaries drawn? I can’t help noticing that the University of Nevada at Las Vegas is also very nearby. While the students will have gone home for the long weekend, the faculty and staff are going to be local residents. They won’t be on campus when the nuclear war catches up with CONUS, but they will be nearby. The facility and the faculty represent an invaluable resource. The campus will have unoccupied dorm rooms, while greater Las Vegas will become less and less tenable. If Tokugawa can extend his security zone to include the campus, and if he can get the faculty to move into the secure zone, then he will have a gained something really important.

The Strip is also very close to McCarran IAP. This is an obvious base of operations, since it is easily defensible and basically devoid of residents. I wonder if the Las Vegas government or Clark County government or both don’t move there early in the process or if they don’t go straight to Nellis. The people stranded there when the nukes start flying will have to be moved, of course.

[Badbru]

Rainbow Six and Webstral thanks for the kind words and by all means use or adapt anything you can. It's why I posted afterall.

Webstral, you seem fixated on the notion that the military will confiscate all the food, as seen in this quote

I think it’s a good idea that Tokugawa have some idea of where the food all comes from and how much is really left at the usual distribution points when the military confiscates the lot. He could and should have an inside source at one or more of these warehouses. I also like the idea of him having some sort of connection with the drivers, who would be in a position to pass information to him.


Yet in the following you also want him to have recieved some sort of legitimacy by the City, to be in some sort of unquestioned position of power atleast over a segment of the city, as seen here


A couple of ideas have matured a bit more. If Tokugawa becomes the chairman of the conglomerate of casinos on the Strip, and if he becomes responsible for management and defense of the Strip with his own security force, etc., then where are the boundaries drawn?


Have you considered the later happening before the former? That way he is "legitimately" in controll of, a segment atleast of, the City food distribution.

[Webstral]

Have you considered the later happening before the former? That way he is "legitimately" in controll of, a segment atleast of, the City food distribution.

I had not considered that idea. To be honest, I see the immediate seizure of food and fuel by the government as a foregone conclusion. If there are any preparations made by the government regarding nuclear strikes against CONUS, I believe seizure of food and fuel stocks will be at the top of the list. Not every scrap of either resource will fall into government hands on D+1. Private stocks of both probably will remain untouched by the government, unless the government knows about them and thinks obtaining them is worth the potential trouble. But fuel distribution points and warehouses, storehouses, and processing facilities will be well known to local governments and the local military leadership. I see food flowing from the government controlled warehouses and other stockpiles through the hands of the chairman's organization to the people on the Strip. I'd be very willing to consider an alternative point of view, though.

Now I suppose it's possible that Tokugawa assumes his new position on the Strip prior to the organization of a city-wide rationing system. Even then, though, the best that could be said is that stores already inside the zone of control of the new chairman would be "let go".

[Targan]

Some sort of public relations coup would be a helpful addition to Tokugawa's narrative. Whatever it is would need to occur while everyone still has easy access to TV and radio broadcasts. If, in the months leading up to the TDM, Tokugawa did something that was lauded by the media across the state of Nevada, maybe even across the nation, various authorities including the military may seek to use him as an ally or co-opt him into their own PR plans. Then they find themselves outmaneouvered by Tokugawa, the master of spin, as he moves himself into a position of actual (not just puppet) prominence.

I freely admit I haven't come up with a suitable chain of events for him to achieve popular acclaim.

[Webstral]

Some sort of public relations coup would be a helpful addition to Tokugawa's narrative. Whatever it is would need to occur while everyone still has easy access to TV and radio broadcasts. If, in the months leading up to the TDM, Tokugawa did something that was lauded by the media across the state of Nevada, maybe even across the nation, various authorities including the military may seek to use him as an ally or co-opt him into their own PR plans. Then they find themselves outmaneouvered by Tokugawa, the master of spin, as he moves himself into a position of actual (not just puppet) prominence.

I like this idea, but I'm going to use it for someone else. At the moment, I'm leaning towards having Tokugawa's image among the Nellis types come about as a result of his unusually high level of planning and involvement during the period of time leading up to Thanksgiving 1997. He knows many city officials because he and his staff were proactive in asking how things were supposed to evolve in the event that EMP knocked out the grid and other strikes destroyed the transportation system. (I suppose in that way Tokugawa is rather similar to Thomason in that they take getting ready for the worst case more seriously than the balance of their peers.)

I have been thinking that the immediate aftermath on the Strip have markedly different results for different hotels. The Phoenix, located at the southern end of the Strip very near Luxor, deals with the initial chaos much more effectively than most other casinos. There are challenges inside and outside that change Tokugawa and his staff in a major way; but with a plan in place and a superior security force, The Phoenix is able to protect its physical integrity and the lives of most of the guests. Not so everywhere on the Strip. One casino collapses in a catastrophic fire. Others suffer very significant damage. The situation really doesn’t get under control until forces out of Nellis arrive on the Strip. It does not escape the notice of the surviving casino owners that casinos protected by Tokugawa’s private security fared the best during the crisis. This is one reason for the rest of the casino leadership to pick him as the chairman of a new board governing the casinos, their assets, and the surviving guests as soon as order is restored on the Strip. The chairman or his designee work directly with the surviving government on matters like food distribution, head count, public health, physical security, and so on. The city folks tell Nellis that Tokugawa is a good egg with whom they’ve been working. At any rate, he’s a much better choice than the other options.

This makes me think that I need to do a little research on how this sort of thing is managed in real life. If there’s a major earthquake that knocks out power and throws the city back on its own resources, how are things set up so that the needs of the guests at the major hotels are met?

I’m thinking of changing the name of the casino to Phoenicia so I can use the name Phoenix Security for the private security company partially controlled by Tokugawa.

[Targan]

This makes me think that I need to do a little research on how this sort of thing is managed in real life. If there’s a major earthquake that knocks out power and throws the city back on its own resources, how are things set up so that the needs of the guests at the major hotels are met?

If things in the US are anything like they are here, planning and structural engineering rules and regulations get tighter over time. If the Phoenix/Phoenicia was a very new casino, it no doubt incorporated all of the latest and greatest structural/safety/fire suppression/emergency power/water sewerage systems. That alone would make it all the more likely it would survive intact and functioning while the casinos around it fail and fall.

Then there's the targeted clientele. I've never visited Vegas but I'm guessing that some of its casinos market themselves to a much more affluent crowd than others. What if one of the Phoenix/Phoenicia's major selling points was that it had absolutely everything covered in terms of taking care of its favoured clients? ER-grade infirmary. Gen sets and fuel for weeks of uninterrupted power. Better than average water pumping and filtration from independent reservoirs. First rate air conditioning including air filtration. Michelin star rated restaurants with vast larders containing the very best in culinary ingredients. Maybe even tax breaks related to a reserve FEMA facility in the basement.

[Webstral]

If things in the US are anything like they are here, planning and structural engineering rules and regulations get tighter over time. If the Phoenix/Phoenicia was a very new casino, it no doubt incorporated all of the latest and greatest structural/safety/fire suppression/emergency power/water sewerage systems. That alone would make it all the more likely it would survive intact and functioning while the casinos around it fail and fall.

Then there's the targeted clientele. I've never visited Vegas but I'm guessing that some of its casinos market themselves to a much more affluent crowd than others. What if one of the Phoenix/Phoenicia's major selling points was that it had absolutely everything covered in terms of taking care of its favoured clients? ER-grade infirmary. Gen sets and fuel for weeks of uninterrupted power. Better than average water pumping and filtration from independent reservoirs. First rate air conditioning including air filtration. Michelin star rated restaurants with vast larders containing the very best in culinary ingredients. Maybe even tax breaks related to a reserve FEMA facility in the basement.

Now that's an interesting idea.