How dark is the future of the Morrow Project

[Project_Sardonicus]

An interesting angle for me is how dark is the future of the project.

A typical team starts off spreading the good news, runs into a few happy villagers and some bullying, bandits. Maybe armed with muskets or battered old guns and shows them the error of their ways.

Then bam they run into a horde of Krell, or an organised patrol of KFS. And suddenly they're over matched and fleeing for their lives.

Fairly soon they realise that the project failed. Most of it's big resources were wiped out in the first year of operation. Many teams would have woken to unfriendly faces in their bolt holes and a truly horrible fate.

They're part of a handful of survivors trying to turn around not just the remains of the project, but the rest of the world around them.

With the realisation that people like the KFS have come up with an actual industrial base, whilst all the MP has is what it can dig out of the ground.

[stormlion1]

The main problem is a lack of a central command and control. With Damocles there is the start of one and we have a hint or two of it happening regionally but in the end there still well and truly separated with maybe a third of the Project awake, some having awoken way to early, or even on time after the nukes. If they could get there acts together and get a signal out to awaken all the remaining teams they would have a much better chance.

[ArmySGT.]

I go for the dark dystopian future.

Those that survived were survivors because they were more ruthless, less forgiving, and even more self serving than those that did not. Those that hid food from others, those that turned away hungry people knowing if they shared their cache they would starve too before spring. Those that burned books for heat and ate their neighbors pets.

They lived. They had children, and those children had children.

The Humanity and Motivation scales for typical encounters are in the middle and lower most often.

Though villages and other survivors maybe within a days walk of one another there is no trade, no contact, and only confrontation. Those "others" may be hunting on your land. Looking in your territory for good salvage. Trying to steal your women.

It is the MP teams that convince them to open up to more than Mailmen, Emdees, and passing traders.

The MP team has to show them through skill and cooperation that more is achieved by sharing and working together with neighboring villages; not just their own village, tribe, or clan.

Such a small, small Morrow Project for such a big undertaking.

[stormlion1]

Its also going to be location based. Area's with more villages and settlements may have more open trade with each other while areas with less settlements will be more hostile to outside contact.

[Project_Sardonicus]

Probably the most grinding and depressing thing that the project has to deal with is it failed, but other rival organisations didn't.

Certainly the KFS amongst others have recreated an industrial base. So the project will be on a back foot as it's equipment can't be replaced.

But the KFS and MM can build tanks, planes and train the crews to replace them.

Another angle will be if the Snake Eaters are basically benevolent, if they start working witht the MP will they inevitably start to take over.

[stormlion1]

Well yeah, the MP personnel are upgunned civvies with little real world experience. The Snake Eaters are motivated and experienced so in many ways there taking over would be a good thing. The Project was designed to work in the early years after the nukes fell, but 150 there out in the cold and screwed and scavenging like everyone else. In many ways the best bet would be to start nation building in one area and begin to rebuild a tech base they could work with and base themselves out of. Four to Six guys in a Humvee are not going to rebuild a whole lot, but dozens acting as a cadre for several towns can begin to rebuild a nation. It just has to be the right area is all. Up by Damocles is good, Chicago is a maybe. Don't know much about area's on the East Coast though.

[Ieqo]

Originally Posted by Project_Sardonicus

An interesting angle for me is how dark is the future of the project....


With the realisation that people like the KFS have come up with an actual industrial base, whilst all the MP has is what it can dig out of the ground.

Well, on the rare occasions that I use the KFS (I tend to run games up in Yankeeland), I always do my best not to forget that even in the KFS, there exists the seed of hope. It would be a completely nonstandard MP game (being very dissatisfying to the run&gun style of players), but I've always wanted to run the long-term espionage-style "help out the resistance movement(s)" game. The Project can't hope to conquer the KFS...but they can help to change it into something more idealogically-acceptable.

When/if that's come about, as regards to Krell and his boys... Well, Boris Badinov said it best: "Den vee get moose and squirrel!"

[RandyT0001]

It is true. The setting of the Morrow Project is dark. A team wakes up, does a little recon, and drives to the nearest community. They let the team believe they are helping and, once lulled into a false sense of security, whack them in the head and take their goodies. Soon the team (and the players) go rogue and abandon the MP goals for basic survival. Players quickly tire of a game without hope.

The solution is to provide the team with a friendly base for operations. I tend to favor university towns, preferably one more than a couple hundred miles from MM, KFS, and WoK that was home to a medical school (for teaching future eemdees), which had a county wide pre-war population of 100-150,000. Assuming a war survival rate of just one percent and a growth rate of one percent (equals the world population growth rate from 1800 to 1987) for 150 years, the community will have a population between 4500 and 6700, plenty of folks for growth and protection from entities smaller than MM, the KFS, and the WoK. Another possibility is that a command team for a Combined Team woke up several decades ago and was able to establish a friendly base. (A good area for such a base of operations would be the Wilson, Rocky Mount, Greenville, NC triangle of small cities. Greenville is home to ECU, a university with a medical school. Such an operations base with about 18,000 people might be the source of MP teams that the KFS’ Fourth Regiment was sent out to find and destroy.)

Teams do not want to spend time building their own base; it’s boring to most players. Players want action; why else do their characters have the weapons?

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by RandyT0001

It is true. The setting of the Morrow Project is dark. A team wakes up, does a little recon, and drives to the nearest community. They let the team believe they are helping and, once lulled into a false sense of security, whack them in the head and take their goodies. Soon the team (and the players) go rogue and abandon the MP goals for basic survival. Players quickly tire of a game without hope.

The solution is to provide the team with a friendly base for operations. I tend to favor university towns, preferably one more than a couple hundred miles from MM, KFS, and WoK that was home to a medical school (for teaching future eemdees), which had a county wide pre-war population of 100-150,000. Assuming a war survival rate of just one percent and a growth rate of one percent (equals the world population growth rate from 1800 to 1987) for 150 years, the community will have a population between 4500 and 6700, plenty of folks for growth and protection from entities smaller than MM, the KFS, and the WoK. Another possibility is that a command team for a Combined Team woke up several decades ago and was able to establish a friendly base. (A good area for such a base of operations would be the Wilson, Rocky Mount, Greenville, NC triangle of small cities. Greenville is home to ECU, a university with a medical school. Such an operations base with about 18,000 people might be the source of MP teams that the KFS’ Fourth Regiment was sent out to find and destroy.)

Teams do not want to spend time building their own base; it’s boring to most players. Players want action; why else do their characters have the weapons?

That is up to the PD to roleplay the NPCs well, and Players to find solutions in something other than 5.56.

Why should a village throw open their arms and welcome strangers with weapons and an armored car? After 150 years of scraping by and fighting off those with weapons that have come to kill and plunder. Why should that same village cooperate with the next one down the road, likely the one that raiders have come from before?

Role play or Roll play?

[Ieqo]

The future is dark for Project teams. Bleak, even. For me the central conflict of the game is and always will be, "How do they react to the darkness?"

Do they try and find other Project teams and assets? [Generally, unless something really big and unsubtle (read: the setup for Desert Search) hits them in the face, very few take it upon themselves to try and locate any Project resources.]

Do they try to do their mission anyway? [Generally, yes, though quite often "Rule Number 3" very quickly begins to take precedence over the other two until in short order the "Project" shows little difference from any other despotic "do it our way or else" pocket empire. They may try to be enlightened despots, but they still want to take over.]

Will they come up with ambitious missions and projects of their own? [Same as above.]

Do they go native? [This is almost always an unqualified "no". For some reason, despite whatever hints you might give them that the locals they encounter have managed to survive and thrive without any help for 150 years, the Project team still feels themselves to be intellectually and morally-superior. They never assimilate into the post-oops culture.]

The answers in brackets are, of course, my own cynicism born and reared of what I consider to be unsuccessful games. It is really hard to find a mix of players who, given the darkness of the world they find themselves in, can retain the idealism of the Project while still being pragmatic enough to adapt their mission to current conditions. If you've got them (and I finally found a great core group), great. Keep them. Listen to them.

[RandyT0001]

Originally Posted by Ieqo

Do they go native? [This is almost always an unqualified "no". For some reason, despite whatever hints you might give them that the locals they encounter have managed to survive and thrive without any help for 150 years, the Project team still feels themselves to be intellectually and morally-superior. They never assimilate into the post-oops culture.]

Survive, yes; thrive, no. IMO to be considered "thriving" they would have to have developed beyond individual communities into city-states or small nations that had re-learned more of the lost technology than is typically portrayed in games in the given 150 years. The teams are intellectually superior to the average person in the MP setting because the average person does not have a college degree. If the characters (or the players through their characters) present a condescending attitude toward the people that should have consequences. Isn't rule three about the teams assimilating into the post war culture of depotism? IMO the team is not supposed to assimilate to the new culture but strive to change it back to "pre-war American" culture.

The answers in brackets are, of course, my own cynicism born and reared of what I consider to be unsuccessful games. It is really hard to find a mix of players who, given the darkness of the world they find themselves in, can retain the idealism of the Project while still being pragmatic enough to adapt their mission to current conditions. If you've got them (and I finally found a great core group), great. Keep them. Listen to them.

Amen.

[RandyT0001]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

That is up to the PD to roleplay the NPCs well, and Players to find solutions in something other than 5.56.

Why should a village throw open their arms and welcome strangers with weapons and an armored car? After 150 years of scraping by and fighting off those with weapons that have come to kill and plunder. Why should that same village cooperate with the next one down the road, likely the one that raiders have come from before?

Role play or Roll play?

Roleplaying is the key. Trust is earned, both ways. Typically, the team has to do a series of tasks for the community, not all requiring gunplay. The community has to assist the team by providing material (tires, metal stock) for repair of the vehicle, reloading of brass, food and medical supplies and/or surgery for bullet removal, etc. After a few months, maybe a year's, worth of gaming the PC's are integrated into the community.

Do your players-characters come into town on foot without weapons and roleplay the team's instruction and education of the locals about crop rotation, germ theory, representative government, etc. for a year, two or five to convince the community of the team's sincerity? Or do they run from one community to another, constantly fighting off everybody wanting to steal their weapons, vehicle, etc., until they meet their final ambush and are killed?

Isn't it a balance of the two?

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I like it. Unlike the last offering, this is being marketed towards a military market which suggests that it is better suited to the Morrow mission. The only problem I would have with this beasty would be coming up with a cover story for why you are transporting hundreds or thousands of these around the US pre-war.

Hundreds, Yes; thousands, No.

Typically, rail to a depot with a railyard. Then under canvas to the bolt hole.

For inspection purposes, there is a data plate on the driver side door jamb and a VIN plate like any other vehicle. These identifiers are listed with the DMV and titled as demonstration units for sale purposes.

Cops and DOT inspector would look for those and wouldn't be looking for serial numbers anywhere else.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Hundreds, Yes; thousands, No.

Depending on the size of the Project, there might be thousands!

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Typically, rail to a depot with a railyard. Then under canvas to the bolt hole.

For inspection purposes, there is a data plate on the driver side door jamb and a VIN plate like any other vehicle. These identifiers are listed with the DMV and titled as demonstration units for sale purposes.

Cops and DOT inspector would look for those and wouldn't be looking for serial numbers anywhere else.

Sure, but it is going to be next to impossible to keep eyes off of these vehicles - they are just too bulky and conspicuous, and orchestrating the movement of all these vehicles is going to be tricky. Of course, we already know that the existence of the Project was already compromised by the time of the war, perhaps this is how!

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Depending on the size of the Project, there might be thousands!

I am in the camp that the Project only has a few hundred personnel. Due to all the security constraints and that people accepted would have to give up their lives and family, worse without warning them or aiding them for the impending, inevitable war. I do think that CG Seattle is indicative of a Combined Group. I don't think the Project would bother half staffing anywhere. I think the will fill a region at a time, starting with regions with the highest probability of recovery according to the plan.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Sure, but it is going to be next to impossible to keep eyes off of these vehicles - they are just too bulky and conspicuous, and orchestrating the movement of all these vehicles is going to be tricky. Of course, we already know that the existence of the Project was already compromised by the time of the war, perhaps this is how!

I don't think so...... Your average civilian has no idea what they are looking at. Any thing with tracks is a tank, for example.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

I am in the camp that the Project only has a few hundred personnel. Due to all the security constraints and that people accepted would have to give up their lives and family, worse without warning them or aiding them for the impending, inevitable war.

I agree that those are serious issues, but I do not think that it is an impossible challenge considering the sheer population of the country and the time scale of recruiting. I also think that the recruiting process is likely to be in stages that allow the Project to not only identify but actively groom and indoctrinate prospective members.

Importantly, I just do not see a Project of a few hundred or even a few thousand making any real dent in the post-war problems. There are just too few of them, spread too thin. Even if nothing goes wrong, they are going to have a heck of a time providing any level of service, and being so few they would be tremendously vulnerable to any number of problems. It's just a bad bet. With a few hundred people, think of how few experts in any given field you really have, and think about how easy it is then to lose entire disciplines (as an example).

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

I do think that CG Seattle is indicative of a Combined Group. I don't think the Project would bother half staffing anywhere. I think the will fill a region at a time, starting with regions with the highest probability of recovery according to the plan.

I am not sure how this works then - if CG Seattle is typical for the population it serves, are you saying that the Project is only distributed across portions of the country? If CG Seattle was serving a pre-war population of 1.4 million (King County, in 1987) then 10 such combined groups (790 field staff) would serve only 5.8% of the 1987 US population of 242.3 million.

It is hard for me to believe that Morrow hoped to have any real impact with such a low level of coverage.

[ArmySGT.]

In all these cases I expect the Project to be heavily recruiting from the survivors to fill out the thousands of jobs that are not highly skilled or needed a someone frozen before the War.

I expect the Project to move into an area, establish a refugee camp from pre-positioned supplies, recruit from the refugees persons with competent skills or abilities. Then expect them to depart to start another camp somewhere else. This with detachments moving about trying to get essential service like water treatment and sewerage operational, to establish a clinic and staff this with surviving medical personnel. Etc.

I don't expect them to do it. I expect them to provide the materials and a kick in the ass to get it started.

Then I expect them to protect said from marauders and politicians both most likely to plunder a recovery effort.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I expect that too, but it is like the F550 parts issue - if you are expecting 98% of the population to die in the war, how much can you depend on finding experts to recruit in any given area? Especially if, as you mention below, you are taking your time getting to that area?

I didn't mean engineers and cardiac surgeons..... I meant people capable of running a village with a little jumpstart..... The Project isn't going to be able to dictate who is in or out by much. Still at 3-5 years your going to find electricians, plumbers, warehouse managers, policemen, chefs, hoteliers, green house operators and local politicians and a host of people that can learn.

I can't believe truly unskilled people are going to be around at 3-5 years.

Your right, you cannot plan for every contingency. You can't recruit people on the scaled needed to rebuild a large metro area either. You spread it around and create a system of villages,that make them interdependent and cooperative.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

How long do you expect them to spend in each area? Realistically, even if you work every Project member for the rest of their lives (hard for recruiting) you won't have much time with any one population before you would have to either move on or abandon your goal of covering the US. And incidentally, you have every reason to expect that areas waiting on Morrow teams to arrive are going to see ongoing deaths and loss of resources - take too long to get to an area and there might not be anyone left to help!

One to two weeks tops. Jumpstart, get it going, and leave it in the hands of locally recruited competent persons.... The survivor population is going to elect and follow their own, unless the Project is installing a dictatorship and shooting dissenters.

Forget about controlling it. Deliver the equipment, install it, and bring in the survivors. The survivors will self identify and it will shake itself out.

The Project has more important tasks like water treatment plants and power plants..... Things that will speed recovery by orders of magnitude.

Don't fret about village level politics.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I think this is the biggest issue I have. If you assume a surviving population of just 1%, you have 2,423,000 survivors. If just 1%* of those are problematic, then you have TMP dealing with 24,230 "problem" people. The game provides numerous examples of large groups 150 years post-war who still have significant military hardware, I cannot imagine how the Project would deal with a dispersed array of military forces 20+ times their own number. Even with Phoenix that is a tall order, and considering that they are likely only supported by maybe 80** MARS teamers and 200*** Recon teamers, they are really outnumbered more like 80 to one, combatant-to-combatant. And no one knows about Phoenix.

Plus remember that you have to deal with protecting your entire force, which is going to rapidly become publicly known and spread across 3.8 million square miles. With the few aircraft available, you are spread too thin to protect anyone, and we've already seen how quickly people will turn to tyrants who provide security over good people who can't.

Going back to the recruiting problem, I would think this to be one of the biggest issues - recruiting people to save the world is hard enough without one of them doing the math and realizing that it is a suicide mission.


*: Personally, I would expect a lot more than 1% to be problematic - murderers and militants have pretty good survival instincts.

**: Based on CG Seattle. And remember that half will be tasked as protective details for Science teams.

***: Also based on CG Seattle.

That has so many variables it can be argued anyway either of us wants to spin it. How many come over when there is a warm bed and food on the table?

I leave it to MARS, the Snake Eaters, surviving .gov assets, and frankly the survivors populating the recovery site who know damn well what they stand to lose.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

I didn't mean engineers and cardiac surgeons..... I meant people capable of running a village with a little jumpstart..... The Project isn't going to be able to dictate who is in or out by much. Still at 3-5 years your going to find electricians, plumbers, warehouse managers, policemen, chefs, hoteliers, green house operators and local politicians and a host of people that can learn.

I can't believe truly unskilled people are going to be around at 3-5 years.

I think you overestimate the number of "skilled" people in this country, compared to the number of people who answer phones or wait tables or groom dogs or any of the thousands of occupations that earn people money but do not necessarily translate well to a post-apocalyptic setting. I also think that even people with useful skills are going to be at a competitive disadvantage for years compared to people whose primary skills are simply survival.

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

One to two weeks tops. Jumpstart, get it going, and leave it in the hands of locally recruited competent persons...

So... you see the Project as basically showing up, dumping a set of gear, and leaving after showing them how to turn it on? Then why bother with the college degrees? Why bother with psychological and civil affairs teams (who will take months or years to see a result with any particular population)? Heck, the basic challenge of reconnoitering and securing an area is going to take substantially longer than 1-2 weeks! I would expect marauders to just follow the groups around, pillaging those untrained and unprotected villages as fast as Morrow leaves!

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Forget about controlling it. Deliver the equipment, install it, and bring in the survivors. The survivors will self identify and it will shake itself out.

That is a lot more callous approach to aid than I can imagine working. I also think that a lot of Morrow equipment is effectively irreplaceable, and giving it over to a bunch of shoe salesmen and hoping they will figure it out is more than a bit optimistic.

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

The Project has more important tasks like water treatment plants and power plants..... Things that will speed recovery by orders of magnitude.

Those are indeed very important, but they are also large-scale projects that will take a long time to implement for even a small area - Morrow is not building and maintaining a national power grid in the first year, probably not in the first 5.

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Don't fret about village level politics.

You have to worry about any level of politics that has control over equipment/supplies you are distributing and/or that has the ability to pose a threat. CG Seattle has 79 people. A modest village that knows the lay of the land and has spent 5 years fighting for survival might be one election away from being the exact kind of militia that can take down a bunch of idealists who eventually have to leave the V-150 to urinate.

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

That has so many variables it can be argued anyway either of us wants to spin it. How many come over when there is a warm bed and food on the table?

There are a lot of variables in there, but I was being far, far more favorable to the Project in my estimates than I actually think realistic. At any given time in this country, we have about a third of a percent of our population incarcerated not counting those still going through the courts, those released, and those simply not yet caught. Add to that the opportunists and other types who won't commit a crime in a "civilized" society but who turn wolf after missing a couple of meals, and one percent seems awfully darned low to me.

It's an odds game. You cannot handle every contingency, but you can't just ignore them either, you have to prepare for enough challenges to have a solid chance of success, and considering that this is a completely unknown set of challenges I can't see doing this in a minimalist manner and expecting anything other than disaster. When you are stretched so thin, there are just too many things that can go wrong and take you down, and why would TMP accept that?

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

How many come over when there is a warm bed and food on the table?

When you provide no security, no policing, and no permanence, probably not that many. Five years post war I would expect that vast majority to have formed small, tight communities that do not trust outsiders and are not likely to accept the brigands' promises to be good in return for three hots and a cot. It is going to take more than a few weeks for a bunch of educated novices to take a population scattered and changed by years of post-war struggles, identify and filter out the "bad eggs", and integrate the rest.

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

I leave it to MARS, the Snake Eaters, surviving .gov assets, and frankly the survivors populating the recovery site who know damn well what they stand to lose.

Per your staffing level, MARS would be less than 100 people for the entire country, the Snake Eaters are unknown to the pre-war Project and may be hostile even post-war, other surviving government assets may or may not be the exact enemy you are fighting against, and the survivors likely lack the weapons or training to protect anything that anyone else really wants to take.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I think you overestimate the number of "skilled" people in this country, compared to the number of people who answer phones or wait tables or groom dogs or any of the thousands of occupations that earn people money but do not necessarily translate well to a post-apocalyptic setting. I also think that even people with useful skills are going to be at a competitive disadvantage for years compared to people whose primary skills are simply survival.

I think you vastly UNDERestimate the number of skilled survivors. Sure nuclear bombs and biowarfare do not discriminate but, nature is harsh. If you didn’t have any skills one day after the war, you were dead by day seven. People with skills were valuable to one another, they were valuable to anyone with even some advantage.

Define a skill like survival in a post apocalypse anyway. Finding clean water? Finding canned goods and wild berries? Knowing which way is north? Fishing in uncontaminated streams? Killing people with something, so you can go one more day?

We know that in every case hunter gatherer cultures remained small and ineffective at holding terrain versus static agrarian cultures. By year 3-5 the survivalists have looted all the food from stores, depots, and small survivor groups. They have burned through their ammo and lost their most aggressive members to wounds.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

So... you see the Project as basically showing up, dumping a set of gear, and leaving after showing them how to turn it on? Then why bother with the college degrees? Why bother with psychological and civil affairs teams (who will take months or years to see a result with any particular population)? Heck, the basic challenge of reconnoitering and securing an area is going to take substantially longer than 1-2 weeks! I would expect marauders to just follow the groups around, pillaging those untrained and unprotected villages as fast as Morrow leaves!

I see the project arriving at a suitable location probably a small town that already exists. They leave some alcohol powered generators, two way base station radio, drill a well, stock a clinic, gather people and have the people hold an election. By 3-5 years the weak and those incapable of defending themselves are dead and gone or they have learned.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

That is a lot more callous approach to aid than I can imagine working. I also think that a lot of Morrow equipment is effectively irreplaceable, and giving it over to a bunch of shoe salesmen and hoping they will figure it out is more than a bit optimistic.

After 3-5 years the survivors know a hell of a lot more about surviving than any Morrow Project member has ever learned.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Those are indeed very important, but they are also large-scale projects that will take a long time to implement for even a small area - Morrow is not building and maintaining a national power grid in the first year, probably not in the first 5.

Those are the hubs you start building from. You don’t need to bring the municipal water system for the greater Seattle area online or any other major city for that matter. Every small town has a water treatment plant that has been isolated by the loss of the national power grid. It needs some techs to make it run, power, and the right chemicals. That is where you start.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

You have to worry about any level of politics that has control over equipment/supplies you are distributing and/or that has the ability to pose a threat. CG Seattle has 79 people. A modest village that knows the lay of the land and has spent 5 years fighting for survival might be one election away from being the exact kind of militia that can take down a bunch of idealists who eventually have to leave the V-150 to urinate.

If they were that way before Project personnel were to make contact then that would be apparent. Recon and specialist Psyops teams would have effectively identified these groups.

You can’t stand over these villages and hold them hostage to your preferred form of government. That isn’t what the Project is about and it ties up Project members like MARS indefinitely.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

There are a lot of variables in there, but I was being far, far more favorable to the Project in my estimates than I actually think realistic. At any given time in this country, we have about a third of a percent of our population incarcerated not counting those still going through the courts, those released, and those simply not yet caught. Add to that the opportunists and other types who won't commit a crime in a "civilized" society but who turn wolf after missing a couple of meals, and one percent seems awfully darned low to me.

By year three these guys have starved to death and died of exposure. These career criminals definitely are violent predators but, they don’t know a blessed thing about providing for themselves. When all the stores and depots are looted these guys become cannibals and later die.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

It's an odds game. You cannot handle every contingency, but you can't just ignore them either, you have to prepare for enough challenges to have a solid chance of success, and considering that this is a completely unknown set of challenges I can't see doing this in a minimalist manner and expecting anything other than disaster. When you are stretched so thin, there are just too many things that can go wrong and take you down, and why would TMP accept that?

Because the Project isn’t a conquering army ready to set things right for God and Justice….. They have limited personnel and lots of resources.

A village is built, the people moved in, and 10 miles away another is built. These are set up to mutually trade and mutually assist. One have the mechanics and the dentist, the other the electricians and the doctor.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

When you provide no security, no policing, and no permanence, probably not that many. Five years post war I would expect that vast majority to have formed small, tight communities that do not trust outsiders and are not likely to accept the brigands' promises to be good in return for three hots and a cot. It is going to take more than a few weeks for a bunch of educated novices to take a population scattered and changed by years of post-war struggles, identify and filter out the "bad eggs", and integrate the rest.

I expect few brigands to be left. The hostiles are a few of these villages that are hostile to other groups and raid for what they don’t have. However, once they can get what they need without being killed trying to take it, that will be incentive enough.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Per your staffing level, MARS would be less than 100 people for the entire country, the Snake Eaters are unknown to the pre-war Project and may be hostile even post-war, other surviving government assets may or may not be the exact enemy you are fighting against, and the survivors likely lack the weapons or training to protect anything that anyone else really wants to take.

That is better than a Morrow Project of 20,000 that is 1% science, 9% recon, and 90% MARS.