[Webstral]

I’m thinking about changing the narrative for Poseidon’s Rifles. Now that I am a little better educated about synthesizing natural gas using electricity and about the feasibility of converting gasoline or diesel engines to run on natural gas, I am reconsidering options for USCG First District along the coast of New Hampshire and southern Maine. I’m thinking now that the reason for a successful resurgence of a Milgov associated government is the Yankee nuclear plant. I know that the canon material in The Last Submarine states that New America is in control of the inoperable plant. Having already kicked that portion of canon to the curb, I’m willing to make a few more alterations to pursue a narrative I hope the boys at GDW would have liked if I could go back in time and talk with them then.

I’m still on board with the basic thesis that the Maine Yankee is inoperable because there aren’t enough technicians left. I don’t have a detailed story yet about how these technicians and engineers became unavailable, but those are details for another time. For now, what matters is that Maine is left with an out-of-order nuke plant that could be brought back online if the right people could be found.

As it happens, there’s also a nuke plant in southern Vermont. As with all the other nuke plants, this one goes offline at the end of 1997. Vermont Yankee is located just south of Brattleboro, VT. This is the where the tsunami of refugees from the urbanized portions of the Connecticut River Valley breaks. The Vermont State Guard and State Police pull out as soon as they realize how bad things are. The Black Watch, a modest survivalist group, moves in to establish order with no shortage of violence. It’s very ugly. The leadership of the Black Watch holds a serious grudge against the government of Vermont for abandoning them and against the federal government for not even trying to help them.

(In fairness, federal forces are pretty sorely taxed in December, 1997. Southern Vermont is the high water mark of the tide of refugees fleeing the southern Connecticut River Valley and metro New York. Things are truly horrible throughout Connecticut and western Massachusetts following the Thanksgiving Massacre. As Montcalm was told during the French and Indian War regarding his request for several thousand infantry for Quebec: “One does not worry about the stables when the chateau is on fire.”)

A number of the workers of Vermont Yankee find themselves living under the protection of the Black Watch. The plant itself, shut down, is occupied by refugees who need someplace—anyplace—to get out of the cold. It does not take much imagination to think about how much damage to the facility unruly refugees might do. To make a long story short, even when then Black Watch manages to eject them from the facility, the surviving plant staff declares that they cannot reopen the plant without resources the Black Watch cannot even think of providing.

By early 2000, First District has gotten word that nuclear power types are alive and well in southern Vermont. The problem becomes how to get hold of them. It’s no secret that the Black Watch is not friendly. Getting a party from coastal Maine to southern Vermont, assessing the situation, and perhaps devising a strategy for making the surviving nuclear experts available to Maine Yankee might make for an interesting short campaign. This mission being completed in the early part of 2000, Maine Yankee comes back online. Having a vastly increased source of electricity changes everything for First District (even though Maine Yankee is operating at a fraction of its full capacity). As a consequence, there’s a sharp uptick in manufacturing, fuel for transportation, and agricultural output (as a result of ammonia synthesis). This is why and how First District comes out of its corner swinging in early 2001 when prior to this de facto control of the southern New England coastline was ceded to the UBF and others.