Living in prime base

[tsofian]

In the plan the crew at prime base was to sit out the world for tg
The last years of civilization watch several billion people die and wait another five years or more before lifting a finger to help anyone.

No wonder they let the colony happen. How did the project think the kind of people they hoped to attract could be put in that situation and not act?

[ArmySGT.]

How many committed suicide anyway? From the supplemental material we know that the war lasted for months. Everyone went back for reloads.

[cosmicfish]

Did they have an alternative? It's not like PB was in a heavily populated area where they could expect refugees - it pretty sparse, the kind of place people should have avoided. There probably isn't any place they could have placed PB where it would have been less likely to attract refugees but still have been at all useful as a Project base. And I suppose they could have put THEM to sleep as well, but that would much worse all around.

[tsofian]

Since it appears that the intent of my question has been misconstrued, let me rephrase it.

How did the Project plan to deal with the psychological issues that the crew of Prime Base would face in the period between their entry into the base and te point when the Project would become active?

[cosmicfish]

By screening the base personnel as thoroughly as they screen anyone else, and by providing a good counseling staff in PB. I always thought that the hardest thing about putting the Project together had to be finding people caring enough to be trusted with the job but tough enough to thrive post-apocalypse. I always thought that was limiting factor on the size of the Project. But such people exist, coming out of the military and the Peace Corps and other places, and the Project had to find them.

[tsofian]

I was looking for something a bit more specific:
Did everyone in the base do an hours of yoga every day?
Was Physical activity mandatory?
Did everyone go to group therapy once a week?
Were there specific types of therapy or counseling that might prove more effective?
How big a staff of therapists were available?
Was there a weekly movie night? Was the holographic room used as a planetarium so people could "see" the night sky?
Was there some form of periscope leave?
Was there a large amount of craft equipment kept for therapy (model building, wood working, pottery, painting etc.)?
So very little is better for moral than sex. Did the Project have professional sex therapists/surrogates that provided more intimate services than just talking therapy?
Was the water in the base chlorinated, fluoridated AND thorizinated (just a joke)

What if someone in the base absolutely could not deal with it? Would they be frozen? Was there an "Island of Misfit Toys" bolt hole someplace were all the people who couldn't handle Prime Base were basically stashed? If that place was Prime Base did the frozen patients survive the plague? Could a group of player characters wake them up? If so this could lead to some very strange adventures!

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by tsofian

No wonder they let the colony happen. How did the project think the kind of people they hoped to attract could be put in that situation and not act?

I just wanted to point out, one of the purposes of training (almost ANY kind) is to hammer it into people that the right thing to do is not always what they want to do. Some of the nicest people I've ever known were doctors who got into medicine to help people, and yet these same people will strap people to beds and saw off limbs and pull the plug on someone they can no longer help. Despite being "the kind of people <medicine> hoped to attract", their training hammered it into their heads that winning the game takes sacrifice, and the moment you forget that you lose.

I think it is really underselling the Project and the game to say that the people they relied on most couldn't keep it together but that the players, at the bottom of the org chart, are going to somehow find the moral strength to bring the Project back from the dead. I don't see how to justify that.