Natural disasters in T2K??
 

Looking at posts by Marc, I thought of that. Playing T2K we are all familiar with natural disasters such as "nuclear winter", "drought", "epidemics"...

Do you know anything on other type of natural disasters. Do you know anything on Volcanoes, Earth quakes...?

Do you think that a fairly large amount of nuclear devices could influence them?

Yellowstone volcano, earthquakes in California or southern Europes, Japan...?

Any thinking on that?

One of the most exciting couple of sessions in my current campaign was during the Operation Omega crossing of the Atlantic and there was a huge storm which resulted in the capsizing of the (already damaged) ro-ro ferry the PCs were travelling on. There have been a couple of nasty blizzards in Poland and the CONUS that the PCs have been caught in as well.

Some of the more "mundane" natural disasters that occur could end up being pretty dangerous in the T2K setting. Without adequate command and control, as well as the manpower and air resources, forest fires/wild fires would be absolutely devastating. Think of the fire in California this last year where houses were burning. Imagine those fires without the people to fight against them, or the aircraft to help drop retardants on them. Whole cities would literally be burned down.

Other things like floods and/or mudslides would be seriously damaging. You'd lose roads, bridges, key transportation points! Beyond the property damage that they could cause, those things also bring in lots of disease. Sewage system back up, industrial chemicals and other things end up seeping all over, and clean water gets polluted. Plus, without equipment, or men, or someone to organize the rescue/clean up effort, you're going to have a lot of people dying.

Earthquakes can be damaging, but they're really only damaging to standing structures. Most earthquakes are pretty localized in the area of damage. They usually don't invite disease, and unless you've got people moving around unstable stuff, the aftershocks really aren't going to do too much more than what the main earthquake did. So, for places that get hit by earthquakes fairly frequently (Southern California), you could have some damage from earthquakes, but not as much as what you would suffer from a wild fire.

Well dam failures due to a lack of maintenance and the resulting flood of a specific region.

as a GM
 

..I have applied weather and earthquakes to the campaign to give damage to gear and infrastructure .The characters are well to do still though and havnt really felt this on their skins as much -but as things are deteriorating rapidly ,they might soon feel the brunt of disasters themselves .

Looking forward to it :)

I saw a documentary a month or so back here in Australia - I think it was called "Life after People" - which gave a really good indication one what would happen if the day dawned and there simply wasn't any humans.
Not dead, just "gone", no bodies, etc.

Most systems are automated. Nuclear power stations would shut down in a matter of days (if not hours) as even minute faults cause automated safties to kick in. Conventional power generation (coal, oil, etc) would only last as long as the fuel kept flowing, hours in most cases.

Hydro-electricity on the other hand could last for centries. Fuel is effectively unlimited and control systems are highly automated. Circuit breakers would kick in as parts of the national grid failed minimsing the impact on the generating plant.

Only once the machinery itself began to wear out due to insufficent lubrication, etc, would the generation of electricity cease. Hoover dam was used as an example which would last several hundred years until barnacles (or something similar, can't remember exactly) native to the area blocked the coolant intakes.

With the solid construction of many modern dams themselves, nothing short of a nuke is likely to cause enough damage to breach them. Of course in WWII dams were prime targets, so I'm sure a few of the more suseptible around the would would have found themselves home for a cruise missile or similar.

Tsunami's I think would be a significant problem during the actual exchange as nukes either miss their intended coastal targets and explode out to sea, coastal ground bursts, or perhaps antishipping nukes. It's doubtful the waves power is likely to be as damaging as Christmas 2006(?) in India and southern asia, but who knows.....

I saw the program a couple months ago as well.


The conventional power plants would last unmanned a couple says until the fuel ran out.

The nuclear plants as you stated until something caused a shutdown.

As for damns, the Hoover Damn would last they said about 11 years. Not barnacles but silt build up from Lake Mead. The tunnels inside that channel water to the turbines would silt up and become clogged. Then the damn wouldn't release water, it would build up then spill over and then the thing would crumble eventualy.

But, I am thinking about alot of the smaller damns that are used for water. Most damns in the US were made in the 30s and 40s and then 50s the last being made in the early 60s. So, they are kinda old as it is.

And without maintenance, they are more suseptible, but also the things they are supposed to protect against, basicaly a domino effect, say an unusualy heavy spring melt, causing the damn to hold back water above its capability withouth the ability to spill it off adding more stress and this happens several years where it is beyond capacity, then water spills over the top <flooding it internaly adding more stress and also adding water to the inside and metal structures causing them to rust> and if its in a cold climate that freezes more cracks apear further weakening it.

Floods sending debris from upstream impact the damn wall and so you have a constant battering of say logs that batter the sides with the current action of the damn. And one day one small section of the dam fails and water pours through making a bigger and bigger breach.



Although a cool idea would be the PCs to find a damn that was shut down. And they are working to bring it online, or they just use it as a cool easily defended headquarters. After all most larger damns have tunnels and rooms and chambers inside making a maze, in addition to buildings topside and a road along the top as well that is a natural choke point.