I think I might have a couple suggestions here, I drive this area quite often.
First, everyone is right about canon, Warren AFB is pretty much the edge of Cheyenne, and its missile fields extend to the east and south as far as Ive been able to guess (and thats good enough for a game as far as Im concerned). That 1mt would probably have been spread out across several warheads all set to ground burst as the primary targets would be the minuteman silos, and surface equipment such as support and communications would get residual blast damage. Either way, Cheyenne would be completely destroyed. There just isnt the topography there to protect any of the city from multiple blasts.
Therefore, I would suggest moving the 104th's location to Laramie Wyoming if you wanted to keep it in the general area. It would work as a secondary transportation hub with Cheyenne gone, and it suggests itself for several other reasons. First is that Laramie would have taken quite a bit less damage being behind the Medicine Bow range of mountains that separate the two cities. Also Laramie has the junction of I80 and US287 to recommend it as well as a large railyard.
Ideas about operations in Idaho and Montana are easy to justify, hard to perform. If we use Laramie as the starting point, there are several small oilfields around the I80 area starting from Laramie, and going west to Rawlins, Rock Springs, Green River, and Evanston. There is even a refinery complex just east of Rawlins built around the town of Sinclair (guess how the town got its name).
From the I80 stretch which spans the southern length of Wyoming, its possible to jump onto US30 in between Green River and Evanston and it will take you into Idaho suprisingly fast if youre not familiar with the area. Once in Idaho there is a lot of national forest (the Caribou and Cache NFs) and quite a lot of ranching and small farming as Ive been able to see. Continuing on US30 will get you to I15 and eventually the next city of any size which would be Pocatello.
Getting to Montana from this I80 stretch can be done easiest from either Rawlins or Rock Springs using a variety of secondary roads and US highways that take you through a lot of National Forest, private land, and plenty of small towns along the way. The routes I usually wind up taking meet up at US310 at the Wyoming/Montana border to the west of Billings Montana. Billings has several oil refineries there as well.
As probably all of you reading this has figured out by now, the biggest problem is transportation. Its roughly 450 miles from Laramie to Billings and over 500 from Laramie to Pocatello. Fuel wont be the only problem either. I know from some hair raising personal experience that Wyoming DOT works their butts off trying to keep roads open in the winter and sometimes their HUGE efforts arent enough (much like my home state of Colorado). Conditions after 1998 in game time would be ruinous for road transport I would think.
However this discussion does get the brain moving as to how things could work. There is an extensive rail network in the area though I dont have maps of it. Coal mining is pretty prevalent in Wyoming as I understand are other types of mining in Idaho and Montana. There is quite a bit of oil still being taken out of the area, and as a result of all of this industry, its not suprising to find some pretty extensive machine shops in some small towns quite a way off the beaten path.
Raellus is correct when he says it doesnt look like theres much out there...what we cant see from the highways are the farms and ranches, ranches being more predominant in Wyoming and SW Idaho, and farming being the rule west of Pocatello and onto the I84 corridor leading to Twin Falls, Mountain Home, and Boise. Thats a lot of food that could be put to good use (or not). The I84 stretch between I15 and Boise is mostly rolling hills and some flat areas which suggest itself to mechanized warfare, but also have huge obstacles in the form of canyons, gullies, and of course the Snake River. One blown bridge would wreck an advance until engineers were able to figure something out. Even on foot it wouldnt be easy getting to Mountain Home or Boise. And I dont even want to think about trying to get to Lewiston in the face of a determined defense with the winding river canyons, mountains, and even the town of Lewiston is bisected by the Clearwater river with high ground on either side. Seems like great places for the 104th to be...but coordination would be a nightmare and having two seperate main forces like that rings my "splitting the force" alarm bells.
I think Jester has a great idea with the seperate detachments idea too, it almost brings a "Magnificent Seven" kind of scenario to mind.
Anyway, thats a few cents worth from someone who should be sleeping about now but starved for T2k gaming LOL
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