Prime Base

dragoon500ly · #1 11-10-2011, 07:08 AM

Things have been a bit slow so I thought to get a debate started about Prime Base; specifically the various problem areas that are present throughout the module. The basic starting point is an old MP Guns & Gear List article "Unauthorized Prime Base Repairman", I have no idea who the author was, my hard copy was water damaged during a hurricane, but kudos to the original author!

"A) I changed the cover of the base. Instead of a ranch, placed in a very nontypical location I made this a location for one of the major charities of Morrow Industries, a children's hospital and hospice. This had several advantages: it allowed personnel to come and go in large numbers, with their families; since it was a real facility, the real patients, families, and staff provided good cover for Project personnel; it gave a good reason for large quantities of material to be brought up to the ridge; construction, enlargement and renovation of the many buildings at the hospital gave cover for Prime Bases' construction; the locals knew this to be a hospital for terminally ill children, they quickly learned not to get close to any of the patients or their families or to be surprised when they suddenly disappeared, this was put down to a death or recovery of a child, with the parents simply returning home; the facility could provide the core of a colony after the war; its mission would, possibly, shield it from the worst of the war, targeting a children's hospital is pretty low; it was good cover for shipping high tech equipment into Prime Base."

Not a bad idea. The hospice would also explain a small airstrip being built to handle mid-sized aircraft (one less thing to worry about when the Project goes operational).

"B) No one can pilot a helicopter through a few hundred meters of tunnel. I got around this by changing the natural cavern into a quarry entrance. A set of disused mining rails are on the cavern floor. The helo launch pad actually rides on these once the doors to the hanger have been opened. The pad moves out of the cavern, with the helo on it, then the helo is launched."

Have to admit, this is a very telling point, flying a helo through tunnels certainly qualifies as "an incredibly stupid idea". Don't know about the pad, I would simply have the helo moved out onto the quarry floor and launched from there.

"C) The cyclotron in Support needs to be put in its own bunker, far from anything you want to be alive later. Cyclotrons emit neutrons when in operation. These are bad to be around. I put all of the industrial stuff in its own cylinder, off the annex tunnel. This prevents an accident from rendering the entire base unusable."

Agree with this completely, I don't know about another cylinder, but certainly an additional tunnel with rooms opening off for such things as the forge (especially when conducting any sort of pours), the chemical weapons research facility, the cyclotron, and nice thick doors to cut off the area in case of an accident.

"D) The Decon Area is not very good. Where do the baskets go? No place, they just stay there until somebody walks through all the contamination to go get them and take them where? Here is my fix. Decon is a circular corridor around a central core. Dumbwaiters, with airlock doors, are at each check point. Baskets are placed in the dumbwaiters and automatically sent to a BIOLEVEL 4 containment facility. Using remote manipulators the items are sorted and undergo decon. Items too contaminated for reuse are incinerated. The operators work from the center of the core. The entire facility can be sealed off from the base by a smaller contamination reduction corridor."

This was one of the weakest areas of the modules. The module Decon Area, well, it can best be described as an accident waiting to happen.

dragoon500ly · #2 11-10-2011, 07:36 AM

"A) The environment that is stipulated for Hidden Valley will not lead to lizards developing endothermy (warm bloodedness). The constant temp of the environment is perfect for ectothermic animals (cold blooded). I'm also uncertain if, even under the worst conditions, that you can get lizards to mutate that fast. I had a fix for this. In my campaign NASA was much more a going concern. They were about to terraform Mars when the war broke out (2012). Part of the terraforming was to use biological organisms to change the Martian environment by biological action. Additionally, they also wanted to use animals and plants that could live on Mars. Instead of engineering each organism, they decided to let the environment do the job for them. To ensure that they would get organisms that could live on Mars a virus was developed that would mutate lower lifeforms and went to work on local animals."

I always found the flora and fauna of Hidden Valley to be a very poorly considered idea. Never liked it, never used it.

"B) The Project had almost no need of transuranic radioactives. Fusion uses Hydrogen and makes Helium (and a neutron). The radioactive sludge at the bottom of Prime Base has no reason to be there. Additionally, NO ONE (except the Federal Government at Hanford) stores high energy radioactivies this way. What did the Project do? Place its idiot children in the safety department? Write this stuff out, its stupid!"

Concur.

"C) There is not enough housing on the base. Some day count up the number of places people work in the base. It comes to way more than the number of adults that can be housed in the base. Even with the fact that not all the jobs need to be going on at once, there just isn't room for all the people needed. Add to this the fact that some of these jobs need to be done 24-7 and things get even more sticky. The quick fix for this is to duplicate the Life Module. Stick it next to the existing one in that big hole that Morrow Industries dug in the ground. This will give a base of 4 (not 3) cylinders. The good thing about this is that you don't need to do any extra work, just duplicate the life cylinder."

According to the module, with just 3 cylinders, Prime Base had a maximum capacity of 448 Project personnel and 390 dependents (i.e. 838 people). It is also stated that there were actually 247 Project personnel and 160 dependents (407 people) living in Prime Base when the war began. The original author certain had a point about the need for 24-7 operations, but I feel that with 448 active personnel, Prime should have been able to handle the critical posts. Otherwise, the war simply happened before Prime was fully manned.

"D) The defenses of the base have always seemed capable of defeating any attack through the main entrance. However, if you really want to screw with players here are some things that you can do: place booby traps in the hallway. They may no longer work, but they are scary; every 25 feet put up a screen of wire mesh, this was both to slow movement and to prevent some Rambo from firing a LAW at the guard post. Since a LAW would have done a number on the weapon turrets, this will prevent that. As long as the weapons function, ain't nobody getting down this hallway; fill the hallway with water, it sucks being a player character; fill the hallway with Chlorine gas cylinders, bobby trapped to open of the hallway is entered."

Kinda of getting into the old Killer PD mode here. From a defensive standpoint, I can see Claymores set into recesses in the walls and roof, and controlled from Post One and the wire mesh screens are simply common sense protection from rockets. The water and Chlorine, overkill. If any of my players are reading this, I did not include this. No! Really!

dragoon500ly · #3 11-10-2011, 08:12 AM

"A) Is there a church or even an area for multi-use worship in Prime Base? If not, there should be. Maybe the civic center can be used this way. If not, put such a room in the additional life cyclinder. It can replace the civic center or the hospital, both of which need not be repeated in the new spaces."

Good idea. I would see the civic center being used for worship if you go for a 3-cylinder base. Going with a 4-cylinder base, replacing the civic center totally in the new cylinder. As for what replaces the hospital in the 4th cylinder?

"B) Why are the archives in the Base. They should be in the Annex. Its not like anything here is useful for the mission of the Base. I made the archives vault a large nitrogen-filled room over in the annex tunnel. If the players ever get in there, they will find the bodies of the archivists inside."

Its a good point. This material, while essential for Humanity, really has no purpose for the Project. It doesn't need to be in Prime Base for this reason, the annex is an excellent storage place.

"C) The Mission Annex is a great idea. Here is my problem with it as it was written. Why does it open onto the ridge line? Like somebody could build an airport up there. Like people would want to build communities on a rock with very limited access to resources. The Annex should open up to the desert floor. Logistical access to the rest of the world is pretty decent from the desert. There is lots of flat space to build a decent runway at the foot of the mountains. There is room to set up limited agriculture at the foot of the mountains. The water is at the bottom of the hills, not on the ridge line. All in all, I'd build the major colony at the entrance to the valley, where the streams exist the mountains. The construction of Pahute Place can still be up in the hills, since that could have been started with materials from the children's hospital and salvage. Construction of the colony up there would also have revealed less of the Base's assets right away."

Concur.

"The armory, except for the ready use material, should be stored in the Annex. The weapons should be stored as they are, the ammunition should be in sprinklered magazines."

I would even go so far as to have an additional leg dug at right angles to the annex, placing the ammunition magazines as far as possible from Prime Base and placing several sets of blast doors in between.

"I again screwed with the heliport. The Annex tunnel has a narrow gauge railroad in it. This leads into all the annex caves by the use of sidings. The Annex tunnel leads straight to the heliport, out the great big doors, into the disused quarry, down the valley and to the old mining camp. The idea was that this would be the main link to the new colony. The trams are large enough to handle the biggest pieces in storage. This method also prevents any break in from the base from the Annex. The Annex is a dead end. The level with the heliport now becomes a nexus of transportation for the entire base, so Post Two gets moved in here."

Still not sure how this works out, I'm still debating a few issues, such as survivors having access to any part of Prime.

"By moving the Annex, both deeper and more towards the end of the ridge, you can put the bomb where the ridge meets the mountain. The resulting crater now makes the ridge an island once the vally floods. Now have the players fry to get there."

Now this is just plain cruel!

"D) The firefighting and prevention stuff for the base is very minimal. There should be sprinklers in all rooms (either Halon or water). There needs to be a second fire station. There needs to be little fire/first aid and rescue equipment lockers all over the place. Go to any big industrial complex and take a look at the stations they have for their Emergency Squads. At the very least there should be three of these per level and one at each levl of the transcore. They should have a set of confined space entry gear, Scabs, fire extinguishers, forcible entry tools, fire hoses, a fire hydrant, HAZMAT spill materials, etc., etc., etc. (there should also be some type of lighting equipment plus portable genetrators). All the doors should be rated for at least 2 hours under fire conditions. Individual sections of the base should be capable of being sealed off in case of fire. Certain sections should be designated as fire refuges where people can close themselves off from the heat and smoke of a fire. Some large buildings have these features. It saves lives. This thing about the base being a giant airflow is silly. It makes no sense.Each cylinder should be capable of being isolated, at the very least. Each floor or even various sections should be capable of being isolated. Fire doors should be widely used. The air should travel through ducting, either between floors or between the interior walls of the cylinders and its actual structural skin. Pipes and other utilities have to be run the same way. The one big air loop makes no sense. The draft were the air is being forced out of the cleaners must be really amazing and don't stand anywhere near the intakes with less than $50.00 worth in Mexican change in your pockets! This leads to an interesting alternate for the Final Deception. The Base personnel didn't just burn some papers on level one, they turned off the sprinklers, threw some flammable solvent and stacks of papers in and top it off with some O2 bottles and a detonator. When the PCs break in they find the entire upper level totally burnt out, except for one transcore, where the nuclear material shtick going."

Gotta agree with this, its well thought out and fills in several critical gaps in the design of Prime Base.

"E) There should be almost no radiation in Hidden Valley. Here is the deal, radiation from nuclear weapons will disappear from the environment in two ways. The first is through radioactive decay. We all know how this works, with half lives and daughter products and what not. The other way is through a process called weathering. Decay will operate on a scale notable to players. By the time of the wake up, all the short-lived stuff will be long gone. This will still leave a pretty big count of longer lived material (Strontium-90). Weathering is a different process. It part of erosion and similar natural processes. The Hidden Valley environment, with huge amounts of rain and subsequent erosion will weather very rapidly. The good side is that the background in the valley will be pretty normal. However, I would recommend not eating anything that was feeding at the bottom of the lake. This is were all the radioactives will get weathered to and they will become a hot layer of sediment. This still should not be too terrible, except for biological systems that concentrate various radio active materials. Needless to say, NO SCUBA DIVING!!!!!"

From what I have been able to research on this, he's on the ball.

"F) Remove the diving board from the 8 foot deep pool. After the first three people broke their necks diving into 8 feet of water, they would probably have taken it down."

No arguments here!

"G) The ramp in the Support Cylinder has a track for the narrow gauge tram. The tram lines also run through the two lower sets of inter cylinder passageways. This allows better logistics."

Good point, concur!

ArmySGT. · #4 11-10-2011, 06:11 PM

ArmySGT. · #5 11-10-2011, 06:27 PM

The location is down wind of Sierra Army Depot. That defeats the purpose of placing it where it is now.

The Communications suck badly. How were they going to contact Teams, send the Wake up signal, and coordinate Operations that far removed?

ULF? ELF?

Why does Prime Base need the Johnson space center to run their satellite?

Logistics. Where is the Stuff. Left out for the PDs creativity I suppose.

The Krell. Yes, that Group would at least have had a write up by the time this module was rolled out. Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri. Nevada. Washington State (Krell Navy).

What? Mindless Neo-barbs with no skills. Yes development fail.

dragoon500ly · #6 11-13-2011, 07:26 AM

Going by the module, the communications exposure module was supposed to allow for continent wide communications, supposedly through HF....its one of those areas that was not well thought out when it was written. Ditto for Operation Lonestar and its seizure of the Johnston Space Center in order to control a MP satellite.....but the purpose of this thread is to ID these weak points and suggest fixes.

My own view of Prime Base runs along with the unknown author of the original post...placing a ranch on top of a ridge just didn't make any sense. A children's hospice/hospital makes better sense in that it explains the movement of people and equipment. The downside is that there are no major towns/cities in the immediate area. Still, it beats a ranch...

The plus sides of the hospice idea is that it can justify the building of a small airfield nearby (on the valley floor!).

ArmySGT. · #7 12-13-2011, 05:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

"B) The Project had almost no need of transuranic radioactives. Fusion uses Hydrogen and makes Helium (and a neutron). The radioactive sludge at the bottom of Prime Base has no reason to be there. Additionally, NO ONE (except the Federal Government at Hanford) stores high energy radioactivies this way. What did the Project do? Place its idiot children in the safety department? Write this stuff out, its stupid!"

Concur.

I had a thought. This could explain the radioactive materials necessary for the deception to work and removes the implausible stockpile of radioactive waste from inside Prime Base.

Easy Peasy.

Volunteers that were going to die anyway.

A few Science Team Members in HAAM suits entered to center of the blast zone from the Krell nuke and collected radioactive debris.

Done.

mikeo80 · #8 11-10-2011, 07:40 AM

These are some excellent points. I have always wondered just what the filp-flap the MP planners were thinking???!! A ranch on TOP of a mesa?? FLY A HELO through a tunnel????

I did like the idea of the "Morrow Air Force". Very usefull aircraft with known capabilities. I also liked the FASCME idea. (If I mis-qutoed the name, my bad, I do not have Prime Base at my fingertips right now

)

Krell has always been a puzzle! The who, what, where, and when of the Krell Empire, at least as presented to date, does not seem logical.

A "typical" leader under Krell might have the thought. "Gee, the Boss is asleep right now. I am in charge right now. Maybe the Boss's sleep tube will have a critical OOOPS.... "

End of Krell empire, kind of like end of Alexander the Great's empire. Once the squabble starts as to just WHO is in charge....chaos ensues.

Enough for now... RL is peeking it's head in the door, I have to go to work.

My $0.02

Mike

robj3 · #9 12-15-2011, 10:05 PM

Terry Sofian wrote the 'Prime Base Repairman' article.
He has a background in fire and radiation safety (I think he mentions this).

A pdf copy can be found in the files area of the Morrow Project yahoo group.

Prime Base needs a rewrite.

The only advantage to the Nevada location is a relatively low amount of
post-attack fallout exposure (from FEMA's NAPB-90); the lack of water,
arable land and proximity to targets like Nellis AFB, Hawthorne and Sierra Army Depots are big problems.

The location of ELF transmitters is limited by the conductivity of rock, hence the location of the U.S. system in Wisconsin and Michigan where the geology is right. The Project isn't going to have an ELF transmitter.

Alternate communication modalities with continental range include shortwave and meteor burst. The problem with these are reliability in the post attack environment, but data rates are high and large transmitters and receivers are not required.

Other options include "stratellites" (balloons or UAVs) to act as very tall antennae.

Really big Projects could use something like 'Perimetr' or the US ERCS (Minuteman ICBMs with transmitters) to send the wake up signal.

I agree with many of the comments upthread.

The neutron bombardment from an operating reactor[1] may produce considerable amounts of radioactive material (e.g. the reactor walls and heat exchange machinery).

However, the half life of induced radioactivity is short (30 years), and after 150 years detectable but harmless levels would be present.

A hardened complex with the cover story of a mine or waste storage facility
makes the most sense - it provides a good cover story. For later collapses,
archival storage or secure data centres could be another cover story.

Rob

========

[1] Criteria for Project fusion fuels:
- Stability - nothing with short half-lives (e.g. tritium's [T] 12 years)
- Relatively cheap (helium-3 is 1 part in 10,000 of the helium obtained from
gas and oil fields, so is horrendously expensive)
- Minimal neutron production.
- Net positive energy yield (reaction energies below are expressed in mega
electron volts [MeV]; 1 MeV = 1.6 x 10^(-13) joules).

This leaves us with:

a. Deuterium (hydrogen-2, D)
Found in seawater (0.02%); stable.

D + D -> T + p + 4.03MeV (50%)
D + D -> He-3 + n + 3.27MeV (50%)

Proton (p) can be trapped electrically and its kinetic energy harnessed.
Neutron (n) has an energy of 2.45 MeV and is a radiation problem.
It may be possible to encourage the first reaction over the second.

Optional reaction to use the He-3:
D + He-3 -> He-4 + p + 18.3MeV

Big advantages: one fuel type, storable as heavy water. Relatively easy to
initiate, high energy density.

Big disadvantage: neutron production - major radiation hazard. Need for
coolant jacket, heat exchangers, etc. to efficiently produce electricity.

b. Lithium-6 (Li-6)
Makes up about 6% of naturally occurring lithium. Stable.

D + Li-6 -> 2He-4 + 22.4MeV

Alternate (side) reactions:
D + Li-6 -> He-3 + He-4 + n + 2.56MeV
D + Li-6 -> Li-7 + p + 5 MeV
D + Li-6 -> Be-7 + n + 3.4MeV

If the fusion plant includes a proton source (synchotron) and supply
(hydrogen) we could use:
p + Li-6 -> He-4 + He-3 + 4MeV

The big problem for the Project is the military demand for lithium-6 (for
the fusion stage of nuclear weapons).
Another, lesser one is the need for deuterium or hydrogen (2 fuel
materials).
It's also relatively hard to start (worse than boron) and energy density is
low.

c. Boron-11 (B-11)
80% of natural boron; stable.

p + B-11 -> 3He-4 + 8.7MeV

Needs a source and supply of protons.

On reflection, the best candidate. Minimal messy neutrons from helium-boron
side reactions (~0.2%), no proliferation potential, no diversion of
traceable materials with military applications.

The biggest disadvantage is that it's relatively hard to start (~16x harder
than deuterium).

DigTw0Grav3s · #10 07-11-2012, 02:16 AM

Hey all.

Apologies for the resurrected thread, but I figured it would be better to consolidate my questions here instead of starting fresh.

Has anyone considered modernizing Prime Base? Technology is a lot more advanced now than it was in 1987, and I subsequently believe that Prime could get a great deal more "bang for its' buck", even if you keep it confined to three modules.

Computers would get much, much smaller. This could either free a great deal of the space in Ops, or give the base room to double-down, and install larger systems, possibly cloud-based. A cloud system could be used as a centralized processing resource, which could be dynamically allocated to whichever department needed it most.

Flight Operations is fine conceptually (ignoring the tunnel thing), but could definitely benefit from modern technology. The V-22 Osprey's S/VTOL capability and long(er) legs make it a practical shoe-in for the hangar. Some kind of UAV like the Fire Scout would be great for maintaining situational awareness around Prime, and assisting any patrols that get in firefights nearby.

The exposure modules could probably use some growth, too. Perhaps a third dedicated module with area search radars would be wise; the project had the air base planned for some time, and it never hurts to know what's in your area.

I love some of the ideas floated. A fourth cylinder would be really cool to design from the floor up, as would a dedicated industrial capability. In my mind, both life and support would be much different.

Life should probably be converted over to entirely housing and living facilities. All agriculture should be moved into a separate module that can take advantage of a dedicated vertical farming design. Using gravity to manage water flow would be great for the agricultural viability of the base. If you make it a full cylinder, you also have tons of room for an ark-like seed bank and genetic storehouse, which is a cool set piece. Thematically, more cryo-tubes fit here. Biochemical reactors could be useful for growing and deactivating microorganisms for the purpose of medicine. You could also put a secondary fire station here.

Support should get a workover as well. Whether or not you move industrial gear to a different part of the base, you're going to get a lot of space in here either way. Technology has scaled down quite a bit. Printing, for example, no longer needs a dedicated level for the same output that the Project wanted. I think a good chunk of that space should be dedicated to 3D Printing technology. Imagine the applications of a small, robust, intelligent system that can make a three-dimensional copy of anything you have a CAD file for. I would also like to see support (or a hypothetical industrial cylinder) get a limited petroleum / ethanol refinement facility, if that's possible.

What do you guys usually put in the space that was left unallocated for the Phoenix Project?

mikeo80 · #11 07-11-2012, 08:55 AM

I agree that Prime Base needs to be looked at. It all depends on when TEOTWAWKI occurs.

IF you follow canon as it exists today, then guess what, you are stuck with the original Prime.

IF you push the date out, then, as you correctly state, technology evolves.

It just really depends on YOUR game. When do you want to light up WWIII?

One thing I have done in a lot of games, even those built around 1989, is better information about Prime to the field commanders.

IF you follow the canon, and Prime dies, then I have had at least some of the following things occur.

1) The delayed message to wake the teams occured. However, there was additional information encoded in the message. If a field commander of sufficent rank used his/her ID card to access the vehicle commo, then the rest of the message was issued. It showed the commander the location of the nearest regional supply base.

2) Once at the supply base, the commander's card would access a part of the computer's memory that contained the full story of the death of Prime. (At least as much as was known) The location of Prime was also released/

3) Upon activation of 20% or more of the field assets (Based upon attempts to contact Prime.) another signal was sent. This was to Prime Beta. The alternate command center. THis would wake the sleepers at Prime Beta with the story of the death of Prime Alpha. It also would bring on line a solid C3I base to begin the work of Morrow Project.

Just some ideas to kick around.

My $0.02

Mike

ArmySGT. · #12 07-11-2012, 02:22 PM

Quote: