Groups with explicitly "Tech Level A" in the Third Edition:
- Snake Eaters - that's what they had in their bunkers
- Rich Five - they were frozen with Tech A stuff, but if you presume the KFS are the Rich Five, they could be making some Tech A stuff 150 years after The Big Oops.
- The Morrow Project
- Wandering Warlock
(The Frozen Chosen are Tech Level C. And I too haven't gotten the 4th Edition.)
So this community is manufacturing:
- smokeless ammunition, suitable for gas-operated weapons
- semi-automatic handguns
- gas-operated assault rifles
They are thus either making/mining, have made/mined, or have been given a hoard of:
- metals needed for all of the above (ordnance steel, zinc, brass, lead, tool steel, etc.)
- chemicals needed for all the above (nitrates, acids, sulfur, at least; lubricants for the machinery and the weapons)
- a gun-factory worth of machine tools
- dimensioned drawings for the weapons and ammo, with tolerances and units that more or less match the machinery in the gun-factory, the materials and processes available, and the skills of the workers
And they have some way to power a gun factory, an ammunition plant, and possibly a chemical plant. Plus they have skilled employees: for example, Para-Ordnance nowadays has about 60-65 workers, and they clearly don't mine their own iron ore, make their own ammunition, produce their own electrical power, etc.
I don't agree this has to be post-recovery (it's not all of America, after all; and many campaigns feature the KFS having all these capabilities) -- but it seems a bit ... much, for one community. Is this part of a larger nation: like, say, the Connecticut Valley in the early United States? Or something established
ab initio by the Morrow Project?
"Rules for industry", mmm? How do those work?
--
Michael B.