Non standardized cache ideas.

[kato13]

I was thinking about the homes of the Counsel of Tomorrow from my thought that making one of them an historical aviation enthusiast. That let me to think about what the Counsel might place around that does not scream "Armed paramilitary survivalists"

If one of the Counsel is along the lines of a Tony Stark, perhaps well hidden on his remote property is a full machine shop (with fusion hookups). Ostensibly the machines are procured to assist him in making parts for his classic car collection.

If such caches are looted or destroyed it is a shame, but if they are one third as difficult/expensive to produce as bolt holes and half survive you have a net gain.

Anyone have any other thoughts on this.

[stormlion1]

It really counts on who makes up the Counsel Of Tomorrow. Use Howard Hughes as a example. Man had so much money (ToolCo, TWA, he sold and then retried to buy TWA at one point) he spent petty cash to buy a casino to move a sign that was annoying him. He could build a Ranch out in the Mojave desert with a airfield and underground hangers and storage and machine shops and no one would bat an eye at it because its something they would expect him to do. For say a member of the Guggenheim family that would be well out of his profile. But building a reinforced storage depot in the mountains of lower New York to store art or antique cars would be believable. Quite a bit could be hidden as part of there business's assets if done properly.

Other options for storage would be abandoned Rail Cars on unused sidings owned by CoT members, Caches hidden behind public works built by CoT assets, or one recently found by my crew. An entire airfield hidden as a Golf Course.

[Gamer]

I agree Storm, it really will depend on just WHO those members are, eccentricity of the members will make a big difference.

Kato, your 'Tony Stark' example could be a member who specialized in industrial 3D printers.
A fully automated system that built god only knows what for the MP.
Non standard cache? no problem..

[kato13]

Howard Stark was a natural choice for the Counsel. I kind of have Tony thrust into the Counsel when his father dies in 1981. (No Ironman stuff)

His technology would not be the same as the movies, but would be quite advanced for the times.

[mikeo80]

Howard Stark was a natural choice for the Counsel. I kind of have Tony thrust into the Counsel when his father dies in 1981. (No Ironman stuff)

His technology would not be the same as the movies, but would be quite advanced for the times.

If we are going to go this direction, may I suggest the following additions to CoT.

Reed Richards
Bruce Banner
Bruce Wayne
Lucius Fox
Lex Luthor

Let's see. Early members of CoT.

Jonas Salk
Albert Einstein
Henry Kaiser
Robert Oppenheimer

These are a few names that come to mind.

My $0.02

Mike

[stormlion1]

I prefer to use real world people for my CoT so Howard Hughes made my list, last campaign even had him frozen at a facility beneath the Las Vegas Ruins and had us go find and revive him. Lee Iacocca was another one who didn't survive the bombs. Those are the only two I remember at the moment.

[kato13]

While I do keep my game as realistic as possible (no bottle sized fusion, no time travel, no universal antidote), I like making the change from Howard Hughes to Howard Stark (the creeping madness can be ignored then). Of course I put them on this earth not the comic book one. Tony never makes a suit, though he may be interested in power armor if there is a later war date.

I have Howard and Tony as unique Renascence-esque geniuses who are able to move many different techs forward without the need for Bruce jumping back and forth. Reed Richards could be the same type of genius, but I expect his expertise would be more theoretical than practical. Banner is mostly focused in one field.

DC characters are generally too out there for me to look at them as being real in any way.

[mikeo80]

While I do keep my game as realistic as possible (no bottle sized fusion, no time travel, no universal antidote), I like making the change from Howard Hughes to Howard Stark (the creeping madness can be ignored then). Of course I put them on this earth not the comic book one. Tony never makes a suit, though he may be interested in power armor if there is a later war date.

I have Howard and Tony as unique Renascence-esque geniuses who are able to move many different techs forward without the need for Bruce jumping back and forth. Reed Richards could be the same type of genius, but I expect his expertise would be more theoretical than practical. Banner is mostly focused in one field.

DC characters are generally too out there for me to look at them as being real in any way.

I included Bruce Wayne (Multi-billionare, CEO of a major company), Lucius Fox (Designed a lot of tech that ended up in Batman's arsenal) Lex Luthor (Multi-bilionare, inventor,)

Yes, DC characters can be outrageous. But, heck, this is a game, and if we are going to tinker with it, brining in the Marvel or DC universe is not TOO far out of bounds.

My $0.02

Mike

[kato13]

I included Bruce Wayne (Multi-billionare, CEO of a major company), Lucius Fox (Designed a lot of tech that ended up in Batman's arsenal) Lex Luthor (Multi-bilionare, inventor,)

Yes, DC characters can be outrageous. But, heck, this is a game, and if we are going to tinker with it, brining in the Marvel or DC universe is not TOO far out of bounds.

My $0.02

Mike

Yeah I can see Bruce and definitely Lucius. Maybe Thomas Wayne is still alive. Once he hears about the coming apocalypse he no longer has time for the opera. Bruce instead directs his energy and intellect into the project.

[kato13]

Henry Kaiser


I have him in my original COT list
http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=4423

Great minds .... ;)

[ArmySGT.]

I would think that famous names associated with large corporate empires would be enough.

http://www.nndb.com/lists/439/000127058/

Families are listed in ranked order (according to 1924 tax records) with their primary sources of wealth.

1 Rockefeller Family Standard Oil
2 Morgan Family J. P. Morgan & Co.
3 Ford Family Ford Motors
4 Harkness Family Standard Oil
5 Mellon Family Aluminum Company
6 Vanderbilt Family NY Central R&R
7 Whitney Family Standard Oil
8 Standard Oil Families Standard Oil
9 Du Pont Family DuPont
10 McCormick Family International Harvester, Chicago Times
11 Baker Family First National Bank
12 Fisher Family General Motors
13 Guggenheim Family American Smelting & Refining Co.
14 Field Family Marshall Field's
15 Curtis-Boks Family Curtis Publishing Co.
16 Duke Family American Tobacco Company
17 Berwind Family Berwind-White Coal Co.
18 Lehman Family Lehman Brothers
19 Widener Family American Tobacco Company, public utilities
20 Reynolds Family R. J. Reynolds
21 Astor Family Real estate
22 Winthrop Family Miscellaneous
23 Stillman Family Citibank
24 Timken Family Timken
25 Pitcairn Family Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. (now PPG Industries)
26 Warburg Family Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
27 Metcalf Family Rhode Island textile mills
28 Clark Family Singer Sewing Machine Co.
29 Phipps Family Carnegie Steel
30 Kahn Family Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
31 Green Family Stocks and real estate
32 Patterson Family Chicago Tribune
33 Taft Family Real estate
34 Deering Family International Harvester
35 De Forest Family Corporate law practice
36 Gould Family Railroads
37 Hills Family Railroads
38 Drexel Family J. P. Morgan & Co.
39 Ryan Family Stock market
40 Foster Family Auto parts
41 Johnson Family Victor Phonograph
42 James Family Copper and railroads
43 Nash Family Automobiles
44 Schiff Family Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
45 Patten Family Wheat market
46 Hayden Family Stock market
47 Weber Family Allied Chemical & Dye Corp.
48 Blumenthal Family Lazard
49 Mills Family Mining
50 Friedsam Family Merchandising
51 McLean Family Mining
52 Higgins Family New York real estate
53 Cochran Family Textiles
54 Kirkwood Family
55 Tyson Family
56 Huntington Family Railroads
57 Storrow Family Lee Higginson & Co.
58 Rosenwald Family Sears Roebuck
59 Baruch Family Stock market
60 Kresge Family Merchandising

[ArmySGT.]

I was thinking about the homes of the Counsel of Tomorrow from my thought that making one of them an historical aviation enthusiast. That let me to think about what the Counsel might place around that does not scream "Armed paramilitary survivalists"

If one of the Counsel is along the lines of a Tony Stark, perhaps well hidden on his remote property is a full machine shop (with fusion hookups). Ostensibly the machines are procured to assist him in making parts for his classic car collection.

If such caches are looted or destroyed it is a shame, but if they are one third as difficult/expensive to produce as bolt holes and half survive you have a net gain.

Anyone have any other thoughts on this.

So a cache system outside of the Morrow Project that belongs to members of the Council of Tomorrow?

What does the Rich Five cache that they haven't opened and used?


A Vineyard? Waiting for nuclear winter and then the current ice age to end to re-cultivate the Napa Valley in wine grapes. All the presses, vats, and bottling equipment.

Council Comms sites. A corporation must communicate internally and externally to operate. A Council system of comms relays. Fiber, microwave, possible a satellite ground station all tucked away in hilly small country estate.

A fusion powerplant to operate a large refining or manufacturing facility. Some of these facilities are going to survive because they are too large and solid to be significantly damage by a nuke aimed at a nearby city. A steel plant for example. However, these do consume tremendous amounts of electrical power. An early model of fusion plant to large for vehicle or one specifically designed for the output to operate a steel plant could be emplaced under the cover of a massive environmental cleanup.

[ArmySGT.]

A cache of Wine, Cheese, and Caviar.

No need to eat like savages just because of an apocalypse.

[ArmySGT.]

A tech level A high end medical clinic.

Automated and robotic lab facility to assist a handful of Doctors and specialists to maintain the health of these Council members.

Somewhere that can synthesize vaccines from pathogen samples. Store whole blood. Surgical theater for open heart and transplant surgeries. Pre and Neo natal care.

Fusion powered and capable of producing synthetic opiates. Possibly on the bleeding edge of lab grown organs and high end prosthetics.

[Askold]

I know that rpg players like conflict and therefore are eager to find and look for guns and military equipment. In fact, looking at this forum most people are interested in purely what kind of military stuff the Morrow project would have and making rules for those.

On the other hand, if the project is supposed to save humanity and help them rebuild after a nuclear war guns are not that high on the priority list to rebuild society. Sure, you need some weapons for defense and hunting but having those be the priority means that the Morrow project simply becomes the best armed group of warlords and marauders. And if those caches are found and fall into wrong hands it means that there are other well armed groups that may be a threat to the project.

Instead, having caches with tools, machinery etc. will help rebuild the society, possibly EVEN IF THOSE SUPPLIES ARE FOUND BY ANOTHER GROUP OF SURVIVORS!

Stuff like a fully stocked (even if small) hospital built into an underground bunker would do wonders.

[kato13]

I know that rpg players like conflict and therefore are eager to find and look for guns and military equipment. In fact, looking at this forum most people are interested in purely what kind of military stuff the Morrow project would have and making rules for those.

On the other hand, if the project is supposed to save humanity and help them rebuild after a nuclear war guns are not that high on the priority list to rebuild society. Sure, you need some weapons for defense and hunting but having those be the priority means that the Morrow project simply becomes the best armed group of warlords and marauders. And if those caches are found and fall into wrong hands it means that there are other well armed groups that may be a threat to the project.

Instead, having caches with tools, machinery etc. will help rebuild the society, possibly EVEN IF THOSE SUPPLIES ARE FOUND BY ANOTHER GROUP OF SURVIVORS!

Stuff like a fully stocked (even if small) hospital built into an underground bunker would do wonders.

Actually the one of the first posts I made was on such a subject.

http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=275 (feel free to comment on that thread if you find it interesting)

My thought is that under every Finmart (Walmart in this world), there are Agricultural caches.

They are semi difficult to recover, requiring some organization before they are accessed.

[ArmySGT.]

I thought this was about any cache that was built by the Council of Tomorrow outside of the Morrow Project.

The Rich Five were council members, had themselves and a portion of their corporate empire frozen before the war. With 2000 willing "employees".

Other members may have done so too or frozen not themselves but their children, grand children, great grand children along with loyal employees.

[ArmySGT.]

Why not a textiles mill and processing facility to make polar fleece? Ready to make whole cloth rolls of cotton, wool, linen, and polyester fabrics in a multitude of dyes. This would enable the project to disseminate the bolts of cloth to communities to make clothing, blankets, and other fabric garments or household goods based on local need.

Resupplied with raw cotton, raw wool, raw flax, raw hemp, and for the artificial line, polyester beads this minimal personnel facility could continue production for decades.

[kato13]

Why not a textiles mill and processing facility to make polar fleece? Ready to make whole cloth rolls of cotton, wool, linen, and polyester fabrics in a multitude of dyes.


As the US garment industry moves overseas during the 1970s, I have the project buy the machinery that used to be used to make clothing as scrap. The machines are disassembled and stored with fusion hookups in abandoned chalk mines along with tools from other industries that lost their domestic advantage.

Something like this seems like a fun adventure seed. You have something tremendously useful, but not to a party of 6-8. You need a town with excess personnel, raw materials, and external markets in order to maximize use of such a cache. If one does not exist locally maybe you need to build such a town up, or figure out how to move the cache to a town that has what you need.

[ArmySGT.]

Why not a cannery?

A mine tunnel or subway tunnel that is closed off and sealed pre-war..... At one end you input glass, steel, silicone, and a processed food. At the other end you receive mason jars with lids, rings, and seals filled with a shelf stable seal jar.

Doesn't matter if the food is creamed corn, green beans, or beef chili. The system will keep it safely above 160 F to prevent bacteria ( or even irradiate it). Does cost many, many man hours of labor devoted to maintenance and stringent cleaning procedures.

The jar, lid, and seal making operations could be separate..... Salvaged glass; such as auto glass, windows, and other clear glass can be collected easily. Steel salvage doesn't need explaining for that process, only that it will be melted and rolled into sheets. Sheets are then sent through a die cutter that stamps out rings and lids. Silicone can be salvage or from stored blocks.

[RandyT0001]

Canning Food: "Miracle of the Can" 1956
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e61omDYJdeU

1900 tech
10:40-12:00

1940-1950 tech
19:05-26:00

[stormlion1]

I work in food production of food, primarily soups that goes in a can. Its not small and its not cheap, maintenance heavy, and takes a lot of power. Starts with a kitchen with giant kettles then out to a filler that puts in the soup and separate area's that add ingredients than a lid machine that attaches the lids all the while dozens of checks are going and then its off to a cooker and I mean huge cooker where the cans heated by steam to high temps to kill off bacteria. Its a multi man job up till that point. We could skip the labels and packaging but those are still manpower intensive jobs. And we don't make or grow the ingredients or the cans or lids. Those come from outside sources. Can's are a great idea if that's what your eating, but making canned goods is a nightmare unless you have a preset up line and trained personnel and lots of spare parts and plentiful supply. Even something as Chicken Soup broken down to its most simple form of just chicken, water, and noodles and salt is going to take a large supply chain.

[RandyT0001]

For general and quick videos of How Stuff is Made try this:

https://www.youtube.com/user/HowItsMadeMovie/featured

Even if the community does not have the automated equipment and production lines because of tech limitations one can see some of the steps in making various products.

This Del Monte video explains canning peas from harvest to can sealing in 1939. The number of cans per hour is probably lower than today's production lines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmNzXbe8iV0#t=1207

[ArmySGT.]

I work in food production of food, primarily soups that goes in a can. Its not small and its not cheap, maintenance heavy, and takes a lot of power. Starts with a kitchen with giant kettles then out to a filler that puts in the soup and separate area's that add ingredients than a lid machine that attaches the lids all the while dozens of checks are going and then its off to a cooker and I mean huge cooker where the cans heated by steam to high temps to kill off bacteria. Its a multi man job up till that point. We could skip the labels and packaging but those are still manpower intensive jobs. And we don't make or grow the ingredients or the cans or lids. Those come from outside sources. Can's are a great idea if that's what your eating, but making canned goods is a nightmare unless you have a preset up line and trained personnel and lots of spare parts and plentiful supply. Even something as Chicken Soup broken down to its most simple form of just chicken, water, and noodles and salt is going to take a large supply chain.


Interesting... Good to hear from someone with first hand experience.

Since robots and artificial intelligence is a thing in the Morrow Project universe do you think this could offset much of the manpower needs? The Project would have decades to perfect the process before it was actually needed?

Could this be something that survivors could have learned to do and worked on; if the five year plan had worked?

[stormlion1]

It would kind of count. Are we making the same soup every day, changing it out? What goes into Clam Chowder has nothing to do with Chicken Noodle and the tanks, kettles, and fillers need to be scrubbed. But I could see if money was no object and if you were making one soup or just beans in a can automating most of it. I have seen automated labelers and packers and the cookers if there monitored correctly can run by themselves. Same with the Boilers that send the steam to them. The lines could be automated and I once worked in a warehouse which used robots to move cases of oil around so that could be repurposed to move cans, lids, and ingredients about. You probably could drop it all down to maybe three guys in the end. Two to monitor sections and one maintenance guy but I wouldn't see it running very fast. Maybe a 100 cans a minute (normal is near 500) so everything can run smoothly and if they only make one simple soup or food with a minimal of ingredients and complexity. Its the tests for thickness and cooking that require real tests. I mean some things you don't mess with. Don't cook a food in a can long enough and your going to have botulism.

[RandyT0001]

How many square feet is this cannery? How much time in an 8 hour day is spent on cleaning the line for a change in soup? Does is operate 24 hours or just 8 hours a day? About how many workers per 8 hour shift? Is this modern equipment like shown here: http://www.azo-inc.com/fileadmin/user_upload/News/PDF2014/Food-Marketing-Technology_2014-2.pdf ?

Just asking?

[stormlion1]

Counts on what were making. Some can be produced for up to 40 hours while others can only be produced for 16 before cleaning due to microbe count getting too high. Place isn't cool, its a hot environment even in dead of winter. Summer the place is a furnace. So Bacteria grows quickly. Worker wise counts on what's being made but an average might be about thirty people from making it and drivers to cooking and labels and packing. Size wise I really can't tell you footage. Its one long line that takes me about ten minutes to walk from one end to another. I just work on one small part of the system.

[ArmySGT.]

How about an exotic animals hospital and cryostorage...... Somebody with a passion for exotics of all types has stored animals and all the equipment a Tech level A veterinary hospital would need to treat elephants and smaller.

[bobcat]

i like to add in the wildfire labs from The Andromeda Strain. it makes the Universal Antidote somewhat more plausible. i also like having supply dumps filled with construction supplies. of course i tend to push my games into helping where they can with very limited focus on combat. (makes the bandit raids stand out a bit more.)

[ArmySGT.]

i like to add in the wildfire labs from The Andromeda Strain. it makes the Universal Antidote somewhat more plausible. i also like having supply dumps filled with construction supplies. of course i tend to push my games into helping where they can with very limited focus on combat. (makes the bandit raids stand out a bit more.)

The Universal Antidote is pretty implausible so I break it into 4-6 separate serums. A sample of blood is taken, cultured, and each of the serums used on a different culture. The Medic administers the most effective serum as a treatment regimen. I realize why it was written into the game (playing the Doc isn't much fun) and simplistic (a million diseases) but, it smacked of being to lazy. I would leave it or make it more complex based on the attitudes of the PCs at the start.

[stormlion1]

I was driving down a road today and stopped to wait for a construction crew while they were building an overpass. I noticed that beneath it they had installed a huge storm drain pipe and several others that led into it and one that led to a manhole to the surface. And most of it will be hidden behind a wall when its complete. Which made me think that a construction project like that would be perfect for hiding a cache of goods, equipment, a team, or anything else that needs to be hidden. The storm drains can be rerouted with pipes leaving the main really large pipe open and usable.