Do you really think that?

In the apocalypse a church will take anyone in and be forced to support them? I think there is a limit to that kind of hospitality since at some point, it will effect the groups ability to feed itself. Too many slackers and they all die...

I think every group will have a breaking point where they will start to have requirements of its new members/citizens.

No one else has every dealt with this in their campaigns?

I used those two examples as the extremes. Most (99.99%) will be somewhere in between if they've got any hope for survival in the longer term.

I'm not sure you wanted to use "fictitious" to describe tantalum, element #73 (Ta) on the periodic table. Nor is Lanthanum (#7 La) fictitious, although used in Original Traveller as a substance essential to jump-drive operation.
Zuchai Crystals, perhaps?:)
Here endeth the nerdification.:p

Let you fingers do the walking
 

I just obtained a 1996 edition of the Schuylkill County PA Yellow Pages Directory, which will be handy to figure out what industries are available to assist Harrisburg in rebuilding.

Communications came up earlier in the thread, and one thing I was surprised to find out is that some of the missiles in silos are held in reserve and topped with communication satellites to be launched post-strike, assuming they survive and aren't destroyed on the ground prior to launch.

So while priority-wise it might not be at the top of the list, OTH communication would be back up and running fairly quickly. Or could be, anyway.