[Webstral]

So we might see a CVN laid up permanently at Alameda with wiring running to the shore. Between the machine shops aboard (would they go ashore?) and the machine shops at the naval base, a lot of work could be done with the power from the nuke plant. I don’t have any figures, but it would be interesting to know how much electricity could be generated if the plant were run at 80% capacity.

Being an island, Alameda would be relatively easy to secure. Bandits might come over in small boats at night, but a halfway decent shore patrol would go a long way towards managing that problem. Checkpoints and machine guns on the bridges would control access. With electricity and order, Alameda would be a haven for anyone with skills to offer in return for food and shelter. I foresee people being jammed in like Tombstone’s Chinatown neighborhood. Pretty soon, new construction would start.

Alameda, then, could be the engine for the Recovery in the San Francisco Bay. There would be a need for food, which would move by water as much as possible. (Blue Two might spend a lot of time escorting riverine convoys down the Sacramento River.) There would be a need for labor and raw materials. Materials could be recovered from the metroplex that encloses the SF Bay. Provided raw materials could be moved to Alameda, ammunition and small arms could be fabricated (or repaired) and traded for more raw materials.

As with every other place in post-Exchange America, bringing food supplies in line with demand would be the first order of business. When this came up in the thread about USAF and USN personnel a couple of years ago, I selected a 40% survival rate for SF Bay residents. Leg suggested having another million survive but migrate. Without mechanized agriculture, the Central Valley is going to need more manpower. For now, at least, I’m going to go with Leg’s suggestion and peg the SF Bay population at 3 million in early 2001. There is the usual dynamic of food being grown in every available plot of land, survivors clustered into communities for self-defense, and the whole pattern we see on Manhattan in Armies of the Night. Some food can some in from outside, like the Central Valley or fishing communities along the coast. Something is going to have to go out, though. I’m thinking that by early 2001, the Navy will have become a broker for the movement of food and goods throughout the region. Alameda, Treasure Island, and Alcatraz are all easily-secured locations to which water-borne goods can be brought for sale and/or redistribution. Obviously, local barter and exchange will continue all around the Bay. But with control over the rich waterways of the region, the Navy will be in a much better position than most Milgov cantonments.

I just had a thought: Sixth US Army is supposed to have control over the Sacramento-Oakland stretch of land. This leaves room for the Navy to control most of the Bay Area and possibly have ownership of the waterways. It seems to me that there is room here for rivalry between the Army and the Navy.