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In the MP module “Final Watch” part of the combined group is Medical Facility VF-1C, originally this was cut to save space. So here is a description of a Project Medical Base.

MEDICAL FACILITY VF-1C from “The Final Watch”

By: Joseph Benedetto, Jr.

INTRODUCTION
The task of the Morrow Project- the rebuilding of a devastated civilization--was one so massive that there was simply not enough time before the War to plan and provide for everything that would be needed. To make the Project world, the Morrow Project Planners decided to use a flexible approach to the problem.

In the case of Medicine, it was realized that the Project could not hope to provide the medical care and aid necessary for an entire population two or three years after a nuclear war. Instead, the Planners went with the idea, where possible, of providing a core of dedicated, trained and experienced medical personnel who could work with the surviving doctors and medics, rather than replacing them. These MP teams would be provided with a large stock of drugs, medicine and supplies which would be used to assist the population until the civilian sector could start providing such things again. While the Project could have provided entire hospital facilities (and in some cases actually did) it was more practical to go with a system that was flexible enough to provide at least ample, rudimentary medical support to a wide area. Thus, was born the concept of the Medical Facilities.

Each Medical Facility was given three basic items: trained personnel, drugs and supplies, and specialized equipment. The actual hospital building itself was expected to be a local pre-War hospital that was still standing, or at worst any pre-War structure that was available. (Two pre-fabricated Quonset Huts were included at VF-1C for use in an emergency, such as providing shelter for patients of an epidemic or other post-War disaster.) In any case, the first concern of the Project was to provide trained medical personnel: Specialty Team VB-1, which consists of 21 doctors and paramedics who are frozen in place at Medical Facility VF-1C. The Project recruited General Practitioners rather than specialists; each candidate had to have several years of experience working either in rural America or undeveloped Third World countries, treating people in less-than-ideal conditions, dealing with sicknesses not often seen by modern doctors. Paramedics were chosen for skills in emergency medicine and problem management.

The second concern of the Project was to provide medical supplies. VF-1C contains a considerably large supply of drugs, plasma substitutes, bandages, hypodermic injectors, insulin, and so forth, all of it stored in inviolate storage of varying degrees -- inert gas, vacuum packaging, and the like. It was realized how quickly the War would deplete such stocks at hospitals and warehouses, and VF-1C is designed to help alleviate that shortage until the normal civilian supply could be restored.

The third concern that needed to be addressed was specialized equipment. Not stethoscopes or penlights, but rather x-ray machines, CAT scanners, and so on. The storage facility at VF-1C contains at least one of every major piece of equipment that might be found in a well-stocked Trauma or Emergency Center, as well as such needed objects like power in the form of Fusion Packs, as well as objects like the "Water Treatment Unit, Portable, Trailered" and the "Trauma Treatment Unit, Emergency Medical, Automated, Computerized, Portable, Trailered, Mini-Med" (both of which are detailed in PF-005, THE STARNAMAN INCIDENT). Such items, although not stored in large numbers, were vital to proper medical care.

Unlike Regional Supply Bases (like as Delta Base) which were placed far from the target zones, it was felt that Medical Facilities should be placed closer to the cities so as to provide medical care to those who would likely most need it.

These facilities and the teams of medics frozen at them were not expected to do the entire job of doctoring, but to receive a large amount of assistance from survivor doctors, paramedics and nurses, and from survivors or other MP personnel temporarily pressed into service to help them.

Transportation was a major concern; for this reason, the Project provided VF-1C with 6 Ranger Ambulances, 4 Ranger APCs and 5 XR311 jeeps with trailers (it was expected that the Project Medical Personnel would make house calls!).

As with other Morrow efforts, there was not enough time before the War to do everything. There were a small number of Medical Facilities and an even smaller number of complete Hospitals completed, and all were hidden in ways to conceal their true nature; no two camouflage jobs were the same and each site was hidden carefully.

PD NOTE: Much of this information would be generally available to the Command team. Specifics are up to the PD.

Because it is so large, a Medical Facility is awfully hard to conceal. In the case of VF-1C, the first of the Medical Facilities, the Planners found an ideal site: a very large, old warehouse along the Burlington & Northern Railroad line just north of Auburn. The site was obtained by Wilkinson Storage, a dummy company actually runs by Morrow Industries, and construction started in 1965. The new owners were busy renovating the warehouse when it was "found" that the old foundation was faulty, and would have to be completely excavated from within the site and rebuilt. In early 1967 it was "discovered" that the new foundation work was substandard, and the work had to be done over, extending the construction time (all of which allowed enough time for the construction of VF-1C beneath the warehouse). The warehouse was finished in November of 1966. When completed, VF-1C was a huge, two-level underground storehouse prepared to hold medical personnel, equipment and supplies.

Since the parent company had supposedly been bought out before the warehouse renovation was completed, the site remained empty for several months before being purchased by United Consolidated Corporation, a division of Morrow Industries. (This allowed the Project enough time to obtain and assemble all of the equipment and supplies that would be stored at VF-1C.)

United Consolidated soon moved in and began using the warehouse as a distribution center. (Much of what initially entered the warehouse was used to stock the Medical Facility buried beneath it; this included Medical Team VB-1 and all of their vehicles. After all, who pays that much attention to what people are moving into a plain old warehouse?)

The warehouse above VE-1C saw much use over the next 20 years, as Morrow Industries (in the form of United Consolidated Corp.) used the site to store and transport large portions of the Morrow Project gear and supplies, especially cache materials and such, for distribution to Morrow sites across the Pacific Northwest. Being a warehouse, no one was suspicious of the large numbers of trucks that came and went, loading and unloading crates all the time. What else does a warehouse do? It had only the usual minimal security expected of such a place: a guard shack, one guard, and little else. VF-1C does not have complicated defenses or weaponry; since it was a closed site that would not see extensive use, such defense was judged unnecessary. Likewise, the personnel of Medical Team VB-1 were given only minimum armament for self-defense, such as pistols and smoke grenades (see Standard Equipment, Medical Issue, p33 of the Game book). Heavy defensive firepower, if necessary, could easily be brought to bear in the form of the MARS teams at either Black Diamond or Southworth.

Entry to the Facility was not normally possible until after the Medical team was awakened; the site was constructed to be used mainly as a storage site until a suitable above-ground facility, preferably an existing hospital, could be found. Thus the only possible entry points would be through either of the standard emergency exits (one of which comes up within the warehouse, another outside of it) and/or through the Primary Exit, which is the usual ramp that rises up, but at VF-1C the exit point is hidden behind a thin brick wall at one end of the warehouse interior structure, which would be broken through when the hydraulic rams forced open the Main Exit doors. Because of its age, VF-1C was constructed with, and uses, technology that might be considered somewhat old; within the facility there is no automation of the level that would be found in a later Morrow base. The members of VB-1 were expected to simply walk through to whatever shelf they wanted and physically remove the material they needed. Also, because of the presence of a team on-site, it was felt that extensive internal/external defenses were not necessary. Again, the main function of the site after activation was merely storage of materials until they could be moved out to a more practical location. To this end the team could simply close the Primary Exit armored outer doors and relies on them to keep potential looters away from the medical Supplies. The presence of MARS Team L-3 at Black Diamond would help insure the safety of Team VB-1.