Encounter Group #24 Snake Eaters

[ArmySGT.]

Name: Snake Eaters
Geographical Location: Anywhere
H&M Average:12
H&M Range 8-16
Number found : 2-12
Tech Level: A
Power / Resources : A smaller version of the Project backed by the U.S. Military.
Weapons: Any modern weapons including a possible laser.
Special Attributes: Especially interested in the Morrow Project.

Special Forces teams of American Green Berets and Canadian Commandos. Frozen before the war with the express purpose to find out what the Morrow Project is. They were triggered to wake up on the release of a Morrow wake up signal. Reasonable men but, fast and vicious when necessary. They can be fiercely loyal, talk fast or else. Experts in all forms of warfare.

[mikeo80]

We have been talking about the GB in other part of Morrow Forum.

But one thing to keep in mind, read what a single A Team did in the module "Ruins of Chicago". 12 men built and still maintain a working outpost near Chicago. Yes, they have had losses. But the survivors are still working, still surviving. AND they have a sense of humor. Fort Morrow indeed!!!

And there is also the other side of the GB. Their motto. They live it, they breath it. They will DIE for it.

So if you have that odd Morrow team who wants to take what is NOT theirs...

The Green Berets will make it right..... Count on it.

My $0.02

Mike

[Gelrir]

From TM 1-1:

"Frozen before the war with the express purpose to find out what the Morrow Project is. They were triggered to wake up on the release of a Morrow wake up signal."

From "The Ruins of Chicago", mostly around pg. 12-14:

" ... ordered only to find out about the Morrow Project."

" ... drawn from volunteers at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center in June of 1985. The Federal Government was very curious about something going on known only as "The Morrow Project". Vague rumours were all they had to go on, but some SF A-teams, made up of volunteers with few family ties, were frozen in order to find out what they could. No one suspected the true nature and duration of The Morrow Project. So, as usual, the A-teams were "left hanging".

"(Captain Bauer) familiarized with his team for six months and they were frozen in 1985."

So freezing was presumably in December of 1985. Note the scenario was published in 1983.

Page 24 mentions a cache; pg. 25 lists some equipment that was presumably stashed with the frozen team.

They don't seem to have any anachronistic equipment in Chicago; their cryogenic capsules and power supply are presumably at Woodstock (about 50 miles from Chicago).

From "Damocles", pg11:

"Construction of Damocles began in 1980 and was scheduled to take 7 years to complete."

Note the scenario was published in 1982.

pg. 29:

"U.S. government research teams broke the fusion power deadlock in 1985. In this room one of the first fusion reactors furnished power for the Damocles complex."

The reactor is 18 cubic meters in volume, and "has sufficient fuel to operate until the year 2300."

So: deductions.

• Snake Eater teams have a bulky fusion reactor in their boltholes, along with a good supply of weaponry either in the bolthole, or in caches. Their reactors are too big to be used as a power supply for any reasonable "overland" vehicle.
• the 20 year fuel supply for Project reactors is a lot less than the 300 year supply for Army reactors; of course, most Project reactors have already been operating for 150+ years, the 'fuel supply' description might be just a simplification of the different amount of fuel remaining.
• The Rich Five and Frozen Chosen might have just as easily gotten their technical assistance from Federal programs. If the Department of Energy reactors are much bulkier than Project reactors, that might explain why no Rich Five/KFS or Frozen Chosen fusion-powered vehicles are described in the published material.
• given the late-Seventies date of the original game, it's possible that Dockery, Sadler and Tucholka expected fusion power to be available in a general way by 1989 -- not secret, just very expensive. Sort of like space travel, say, or supersonic aircraft.
• the Federal Government didn't know where many (any?) Morrow Project teams were located; the sample team in Ruins of Chicago certainly didn't.

If I ever have Snake Eaters meet up with MP characters, I'd really want to work up more about those "vague rumors", to make Snake Eater reactions more interesting.

I mean: if the rumor was "the Project is going to wake up after a nuclear war", would the Snake Eaters be the proper response? The rumors have to result in freezing Special Forces teams as (part of) the most rational response. The rumors should not be something that paints the Project as a James Bond villain group from the start (like "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Moonraker", say).

We also don't know that "Operation Freeze-An-A-Team" was the only response by the Federal government ... just the part that's still around to make a difference in 2139.

Heh, TM 1-1 doesn't actually say that Morrow Industries didn't introduce fusion power publicly ... or that it remained a "secret known only to the Project". The secret nature of fusion power is a reasonable assumption from the published game, but it's not made an explicit condition.

Anyone had any good thoughts on what the United States government might have learned (or mistakenly assumed) about the Project?

--
Michael B.

[RandyT0001]

From "Ruins of Chicago":

The team was activated some four years ago, presumably by a Morrow signal meant for some other team.

IIRC, in the Prime Base module it stated that due to the (Krell) attack the computers were damaged. Instead of sending out scores of signals a day to activate teams only one activation signal per day (or week) is sent out. (I have not been able to find any of my old copies of the modules except RoC.) In another module (maybe in PB as well) there was a statement that the Feds knew some of the activation signals but not all. The Feds then used these few known signals to activate their frozen SF teams. The SF and MP teams were not always in close proximity to each other.

It is my impression that Feds didn't find out about MP until 1984-1985. Their response was to freeze a few SF teams per year, under secret CIA budgets, using newly discovered cyro tube technology (still somewhat "experimental"). The Feds knew that MP was involved in a upcoming nuclear world war within a few years time but didn't know exactly when, therefore, each year, a few SF teams were frozen using the latest advance in cyro tube tech.

I don't think that the SF or MP boltholes "officially" used fusion power for energy requirements. I think it was left unanswered because they were only supposed to be frozen five years and if MP fusion packs only last 20 years then how would you explain the survival of the MP teams after 150 years? Remember that alot of things are driven by plot necessities, somewhat independent to reality or "predicted reality" like Damocles 300+ year fusion power supply.

[Gelrir]

I think the best assumption about the Project reactors is that 20 years is how long they can continue to produce power at full power. Running a few hundred watts or so in the bolthole doesn't use up much of their nuclear fuel.

The question I'm really asking in my previous post is, "What does the Federal government think the Morrow Project is?" If the answer is only, "Involved in an upcoming nuclear war in a few years," I think that landing on Morrow Industries with both feet might be more appropriate.

Imagine this as a high-level government briefing circa 1984:

"Sir, it's backed by at least one of the major defense contractors. They fully expect that a nuclear war will occur within the next decade, and apparently they are preparing some sort of secure communications system, to be activated and operated within the United States after the war. Who would be communicating, about what, from where and to whom, we don't know. We do have a lot of samples of their encrypted broadcasts, probably test transmissions; we haven't been able to extract any useful intelligence out of them."

"So Morrow Industries is part of this ... project? And Bruce Morrow? If this outfit are using the name 'Morrow Project' he's got to be deep in it."

"Well, there are some odd gaps in our records on him, sir -- apparently he just vanished for several years before 1979. Even now, long periods of time -- months -- go by during which we have no clue about his location."

"Is there any chance he's a Soviet agent, preparing some sort of strategic network inside the U.S.? Or some kind of double, returned in 1979? Some kind of 'Manchurian Candidate' thing?"

"We can't rule it out, sir, although we haven't found any links to the Soviets or Chinese."

"What do you recommend? Should the FBI pick Morrow up for questioning?"

"He's fairly high-profile sir, and we haven't got anything solid on what he's up to. Plus, as I said, he's often in hiding; our guess is he may have some sort of bunker or shelter. But we can try, if that's what you want."

"Why do they expect a war to occur? Are they planning to cause a war?"

"We don't know, sir."

So: given that, what else would be appropriate for the U.S. government to know, so that freezing a bunch of Green Berets seems like the best way to investigate? Whatever it is, it can't have made the Government believe the Morrow Project was part of the cause of a war -- or the Government would have been pulling in everyone who ever worked for Morrow Industries for questioning. "Vague rumors" have to be more substantial than "I heard in a bar" ...

I've got the "Rogue 417" CD; the articles and stories on there depict the U.S. government finding out about the Project, though perhaps only as something Bruce Morrow was up to ("Morrow built some sort of fortress"), three months before the War. An FBI agent infiltrates a Morrow base in South Dakota, and the National Science Advisor got a report from the infiltrator literally on the day of the Atomic War. Clearly not enough time to set up a bunch of cryogenically frozen soldiers to investigate "The Morrow Project" -- well, not enough time to recruit the volunteers and give them special training. The information on that CD isn't canon, but it gives some idea of what Robert Sadler and Richard Tucholka had in mind. Copyright dates are 1973 to 1975.

A possible premise (though it contradicts the background in "Ruins of Chicago"): if the government had various secret bunkers in existence, with cryogenic berths and possibly fusion reactors -- intended as backups to Damocles, or for whatever other purpose -- and if the government only has hours, days or a week's warning about "Morrow is gonna shut himself away on X date" -- it might explain a relatively "quick and expedient" Snake Eater project. "We have some cryogenic berths prepared in the bunker at Greenbrier; get a team in there just in case, and tell them ... well, they'll know if Morrow's prediction is correct." This would require the Feds to only "catch on" about the Project just before the War, and would partly explain why they don't have much information, and didn't do anything during the 1980s.

--
Michael B.

[Gelrir]

After talking with some friends: the physical outcome (soldiers frozen by the Government, to investigate the Morrow Project), and the encounter text, are already determined canonically. What would be useful to know is what the Snake Eaters have been told about the Project. You get very different reactions from these briefings, for example:

"Idealistic scientists hoping to rebuild America after a nuclear war."

and

"Soviet agents preparing for a possible nuclear attack."

Or even:

"Bruce Morrow is one of half-a-dozen right-wing industrialists who are preparing shelters and bunkers, with cryogenic capsules and fusion reactors, to survive and re-emerge after a possible nuclear war. They are gathering hundreds or even thousands of followers, and have access to modern military equipment."

After all, to the Federal government in the Eighties, there might not have been any perceptible difference between the Morrow Project and the Rich Five. Depending on your view of where the Rich Five got their cryogenic equipment, there may not have been as much difference as the Project would hope.


--
Michael B.