More on Prime Base-I've been off for a while

[tsofian]

So I took time off to run a successful kickstarter for Hive, Queen and Country (we funded three books!)

Let me get back to some issues with Prime Base, which is never far from my mind.

First let's think about entrances. I figure there are five types of entrances to the base: Prewar entrance, sally port (for scouting), emergency exits, small and large service exits for use during the active phase. These will all be different. The prewar entrances will need to be based on the cover story. They will have to be large enough to allow access for all the big parts of the base. They will have to be of a nature that they can be sealed and concealed when the base is completed and they are no longer needed.

The sally ports will be small, for nothing bigger than a small vehicle, if that. They will be well hidden and protected and there will only be a few of them.

The easiest to design are the emergency exits. These will be vertical shafts that are very deep. The top part will be filled with sand. The bottom half is empty. If they need to be used the fill from the upper half drops into the empty portion and opens up the passageway. The top has a covering that can be opened from below.

The service entrances are also based on the cover story and location of the base.

I think the base was oversized in the original module. There are a HUGE number of people who are supposed to be monitoring radio traffic during the war itself. Why is this not automated? It should be all sorts of recording equipment but no one needs to be listening to it. So instead of hundreds of seats being occupied it might be a dozen or so. This means the base might not need all the personnel I think it did originally. I still think it needs a second habitation unit, but probably not two.

There are a lot of options for cover for the base. One would be based on the Swiss Nuclear Plant incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucens_reactor, with an experimental nuclear plant. Another possibility is something like the old Proton Decay Experiment http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lpt/erie.htm. Both these have large underground chambers. Another option is hardrock mines, such as they have in Missouri. I was at the Missouri Mine Museum https://mostateparks.com/park/missou...-historic-site a couple of months ago. The lead mines had huge chambers, that would be idea for Prime Base. the problem is that in Missouri the ground water is so high that all the chambers would be flooded. The Bonne Terre mine http://www.bonneterremine.com/ is famous as an underground dive site. The region would be have some excellent geology for the base, but the ground water is a huge issue. I'm not sure if there are hard rock mines out west that might also serve the purpose with huge deep chambers, but I'm not sure.


I'm still going to stick with my live rabies virus in the smallpox vaccine story for the destruction of Prime Base and why the field teams were never woken up. Someone on here reported that CDC had found rabies may not be 100% fatal to humans. I went and looked up the report http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/0...to-rabies.html

The population that CDC looked at have lived in South America in a region where rabies carrying vampire bats are very common. This is a tiny population in an extremely specific environment with very little genetic variability from outside sources. I am willing to concede that there might be a person in the Prime Base who is from this group and has this amazingly rare genetic modification. I really doubt it though. So I'm going to stick with all the field teams getting one batch of smallpox vaccine before freezing and the Prime Base getting the tainted batch after a suspected breach of the base. Krell had tainted the vaccine. Prime realized what happened after symptoms surfaced. They couldn't know if all the vaccine was bad. If the field teams got bad vaccine waking them up without getting the rabies vaccine to them would be a death sentence.

I know folks have complained about the small pox vaccinations. It seems a prudent policy to vaccinate against this known potential biowarfare agent for the field teams and to have a supply of the vaccine for the base as well. With the CDC protocols in place in the 1980s the live rabies virus would have gone unnoticed in the QC process.

Just a few notes on this Christmas Day-Happy Holidays to all

[dragoon500ly]

Alrighty then, have to disagree with you about the size of Prime Base, no argument with the need to automate as much as possible, but Prime was also intended to be the command facility for the entire project, including having field teams calling in for emergency tech support, etc.. I think that Prime would consist of around 400 personnel, with the majority being techies and Scientists/Engineers.

I think you are onto something with the exits, so a loading dock type level with a entrance and exit; another 3-4 sally ports to let a Recon or MARS Team out to clear the immediate perimeter; as for the emergency exits, I'd say at least 3 per tower, and another 5-6 in the annex levels.

As for the live rabies theory....it beats my idea of trained ninja mice...LOL!

Looking forward to the feedback, and a Happy New Year!!!

[tsofian]

Thanks for the feedback!

400 isn't a bad size. In fact I think it's too small. My original estimate was about ten times that, including families and everyone else. I'm going for something between these two sizes.

I agree with your number estimates for exits. I was thinking along those same lines.

So the two types of exits for the operational phase aren't actually finished. They are drilled to about 1000 feet from the surface and the big ass boring machines are parked in the tunnels, waiting to be activated to drill out the last 1000 feet. There are probably two very large machines, capable of digging large vehicle sized exits and two-four smaller machines for exits for smaller vehicles or personnel. The undug tunnels mean that they don't have to be disguised. They have 1000 feet of natural "camouflage".

I think those Ninja Mice might well be an issue.

Getting back the size of Prime Base. I go with the philosophy "It is better to have something or someone and not need them than to not have them and to need them" I'd make the base very resource heavy. If it needs one guy to do a job there are three people to cover it. If it might need a skill set there is certainly two people there to do it. If it would never in a million years need such a person there is one just waiting.

It needs several recon teams, both inside the base and nearby. There should be a number of resources available within easy reach of the base so that if the area over the base has some problems they don't need to uncork to get them cleaned off, they just call these support teams (Recon, MARS, Engineering in particular) and have them show up and deal with the problem. They should have some clever methods to scout the area, communicate securely with the base without compromising it and decoying anyone off the site, or otherwise causing anyone to scurry off.

But it will still need a dozen recon teams and half a dozen MARS teams. These will be charged with base security during the inactive phase, as well as scouting upon activation. That's about 180 folks right there.

I figure each tower gets the equivalent of an engine company and an ambulance crew so about 8 people. This is multiplied by three shifts so that is 24 people per tower, so if there are four towers that's about 100 more. There will also be a hazardous materials response team staged for the industrial areas, an EOD team for the ordnance area so let's say another fifty total for those groups.

There needs to be all the plumbers and HVAC technicians and electricians and such to run the place, so I think a staff of between 20-40 for those services.

A crew of a couple of dozen to run the diggers when they are operational. These guys will keep the basic structure of the underground buildings together otherwise

A fully staffed hospital, ready to uncork and get sent someplace to set up, but also to deal with anything and everything within the base.

I'm going to have to look over the operational people for command staffs and such, but I feel the base should be able to handle 3-5 regional level incidents at one time-These would be floods, or wildfires or epidemics or military campaigns. They should also be able to juggle a dozen "minor" problems. This means full commo for the bandwidth needed for all these simultaneous events 24 hours a day.

So I think 500 for the major events and 120 for the minor issues, so about 650 all together.

Add Janitors, catering staff, hydoponics, assorted other folks

So with all this its around 2000 people, plus families, so maybe 3000 total?

Im open to discussion about this, of course

[bobcat]

thinking about it from the perspective of automated everything that doesn't need a human brain or human hands based on likely morrow tech.with minimal manning until the project goes live(staff that won't be needed during the inactive phase will be in stasis to reduce logistical needs) this is roughly how i would staff it. remembering that the project tried to avoid people with families for obvious security reasons.

(Staff numbers are Awake/Stasis)

C3: 15/30
Intelligence: 20/20
Maintenance:20/40
Supply: 5/25
Medical: 5/45
Laboratory:10/50
Agricultural: 20/40
Engineering: 5/45
Manufacturing: 5/45
MARS teams: 0/120
Recon Teams: 18/30

this gives us a total of 613 personnel of whom the vast majority are in stasis. which also would explain the loss of prime base and the lack of a wakeup signal had most of the prime base staff be caught still in stasis.

now the reason i have all of the MARS team members in stasis is because barring a complete failure of the intelligence and recon teams there should be some warning before they would be needed and it reduced the logistical strain of having to keep a combat force mission capable without revealing their existence.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by tsofian

Getting back the size of Prime Base. I go with the philosophy "It is better to have something or someone and not need them than to not have them and to need them" I'd make the base very resource heavy. If it needs one guy to do a job there are three people to cover it. If it might need a skill set there is certainly two people there to do it. If it would never in a million years need such a person there is one just waiting.

As an observation, this is in direct contrast to both the "reality" of the Project and the feel of the game: scarcity was always supposed to be there, the Project was always trying to do too much with too little. Why make Prime Base so abundant?

Originally Posted by tsofian

But it will still need a dozen recon teams and half a dozen MARS teams. These will be charged with base security during the inactive phase, as well as scouting upon activation. That's about 180 folks right there.

Other than actual security for the base (which should be well less than 6 full MARS teams!), why have all this? Seriously, they have the entire rest of the Project to go out and do these things, why expose the HQ when you can call in a nearby team to do the same thing? There is no good reason for the HQ to be anything but an HQ.

Originally Posted by tsofian

I figure each tower gets the equivalent of an engine company and an ambulance crew so about 8 people. This is multiplied by three shifts so that is 24 people per tower, so if there are four towers that's about 100 more. There will also be a hazardous materials response team staged for the industrial areas, an EOD team for the ordnance area so let's say another fifty total for those groups.

There is no way Prime Base or the Project can afford dedicated fire and ambulance crews. Think about how Navy ships operate - everyone learns how to fight fires and you trust that the minimal distance to the medical bay is short enough to not require dedicated EMT's just for transport. Likewise, your hazmat teams are likely to be your regular maintenance staff - you don't have space for such specialists who are otherwise likely to spend all their time training for disasters that don't come.

Originally Posted by tsofian

A crew of a couple of dozen to run the diggers when they are operational. These guys will keep the basic structure of the underground buildings together otherwise

Do you really need a couple of dozen people to maintain the structure? For the relatively short period of time Prime Base is expected to operate in isolation, the structure should require minimal maintenance, perhaps none at all.

Originally Posted by tsofian

A fully staffed hospital, ready to uncork and get sent someplace to set up, but also to deal with anything and everything within the base.

The base hospital needs to serve the base. There is no need for Prime Base to also serve as a general hospital.

Originally Posted by tsofian

I'm going to have to look over the operational people for command staffs and such, but I feel the base should be able to handle 3-5 regional level incidents at one time-These would be floods, or wildfires or epidemics or military campaigns. They should also be able to juggle a dozen "minor" problems. This means full commo for the bandwidth needed for all these simultaneous events 24 hours a day.

So I think 500 for the major events and 120 for the minor issues, so about 650 all together.

Why would Prime Base be handling these issues, and what would they be doing, anyway? Prime Base can coordinate a response, but they don't need 100 people to remotely manage a wildfire. I think you need to define more exactly what these people are doing, but I think C&C is likely on the order of 50-100 general staff plus a small pool of experts.

Originally Posted by tsofian

So with all this its around 2000 people, plus families, so maybe 3000 total?

What is the total size of the Project? And how many links are there in the command chain? 2000 operational staff is huge for a Project even as large as 50,000, even if it is the only level of command. Throw in regional commands and group commands (both of which exist in canon) and you quickly have a Project that is all HQ and no line.

3000 people is the crew of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. For comparison, the USS Blue Ridge has an operational staff of 842 to run the ship and a command staff of 599 to run the 60-70 ships, 300 aircraft, and 40,000 personnel of the US 7th Fleet*. The mission of the Project was expected to be lower tempo than large-scale war, and the resources were expected to be lean or outright scarce. 2000 people is just too much for the Project to have sitting in the desert listening to radios.

And as a note... there is really no good reason for Prime Base to do more than national-level command, and lots of great reasons for them NOT to do anything else. Everything else in the Project is compartmented into little sections for security, there is no sense in having the national HQ also be responsible for local assistance and national transportation and logistics and everything else in the original Prime Base. All those entrances and traffic make the base a target. Prime Base should be a few hundred people buried in the desert with radios.

Someone gets sick? Have a separate hospital. If the site gets compromised, you lose a hospital and not a headquarters. Need some big planes? Keep 'em at a dedicated air base. If someone targets it, you lose some planes and not your entire command staff. The Pentagon does not include manufacturing and the White House does not handle local law enforcement beyond securing its own perimeter, and there are good reasons for both of these things.

EDIT: I know that the canonical Prime Base could do all those things, but I think that is the result of the designers wanting to make things easier on the players - all of those resources in one location make it a lot easier for a handful of people to "run" the Project if you don't think about it too hard. But it makes zero sense from the perspective of someone designing a command structure with the expectation that it will actually be used as designed. And as a bonus, the fewer assets present at Prime, the fewer assets LOST in the fall of the base and therefore available to the team in resurrecting the Project.

*: Yes, there are additional "command" assets NOT on the ship, but the Fleet is supposed to be able to be commanded from the Blue Ridge for extended periods without land-based resources.

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Do you really need a couple of dozen people to maintain the structure? For the relatively short period of time Prime Base is expected to operate in isolation, the structure should require minimal maintenance, perhaps none at all.

There are many maintenance needs that still need to be done, so a staff of 25 is not unreasonable. Take the geothermal power plant for instance. The main power was provided, as described in canon, by a kind of binary power plant. This make sense, since all the water is returned to the reservoir making depletion a non-problem. The way it is described though is not quite how actual binary plants work and would be terribly inefficient. But assuming in the rewrite it is an actual binary plant, the geothermal heated water is in one loop and a working fluid is in a separate closed loop that gets heated by the first one via a heat exchanger and the working fluid drives a turbine. Prime Base has four of these as modules and requires only two to be operating to supply the base will all the power it needs.

This means your regular maintenance includes cleaning the heat exchangers, checking the pump and turbine seals, checking the water return pumps and replacing them periodically (most are on a 4 year rotation), and performing routine lubrication, filter changes, chemistry checks for the cooling water in the condenser and adding scale inhibitors in the geothermal water loop. You can automate some of this, but definitely not all. Then you have the normal things in underground structures that need to be maintained, like air handling so everyone can breathe, lights, plumbing, HVAC, etc. 25 people sounds about right.

[mikeo80]

As I was reading this thread, a thought popped up. (Spell check wanted to say pooped up. That might be true as well)

Instead of small pox or rabies, I want to explore another avenue. IF you work with Ver. III, 1989 Big Bang, remember what was happening. AIDS. NO ONE knew just what the hell was going on. It had long incubation, multiple symptoms. It SEEMED localized in the gay community, but with the first non gays being infected. (Blood transfusion)

Sooooo

What if some of the conspiracy theories of the day were true. It was a weapon released first into Africa as a test. Slow morbidity did not make it a very viable weapon.

So Krell scientists developed a faster response bug. Days instead of years. NOW it is a weapon. IIRC, the first attempt at gene splicing was happening at this time. Mix AIDS with the flu you have an air deployable, fast acting multiple symptom KILLER.

Just a thought. I have run MY Prime Base fall on this premise.

My $0.02

Mike

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

There are many maintenance needs that still need to be done, so a staff of 25 is not unreasonable. Take the geothermal power plant for instance. The main power was provided, as described in canon, by a kind of binary power plant...

I have no problem assigning staff to the power plant, that's just not what I understood as "structure".

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by tsofian

Add Janitors, catering staff, hydoponics, assorted other folks

This is one of the mysteries of TMP.

How do you get several hundred people to give up their lives, families, and futures to be a janitor, line cook, waitress, launderer, and dozens of other low paying service jobs.

I get all the smart kids with degrees in the cool jobs, but where do these service skills people come from?

I have only one explanation. They are poor or otherwise at a disadvantage in society. So the project hires them by doing something for them. They disappear into the Project and their family gets a big life insurance pay off. Their children are accepted into great universities, maybe with an eye to making Project members of them too.

[tsofian]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

This is one of the mysteries of TMP.

How do you get several hundred people to give up their lives, families, and futures to be a janitor, line cook, waitress, launderer, and dozens of other low paying service jobs.

Having done a lot of those jobs in the service I'm not so sure its that servile. The cooking staff certainly doesn't have to be meanials.

Terry

[tsofian]

It dawned on me that the digging machines will almost certainly be completely disassembled. They know that the tunnel out won't be dug for 3-5 years from the end of the war. There will be a period of years between the completion of the base and the beginning of the war that the machines will not be needed. This means there will be X=3 to 5 years when the machine will either need a lot of upkeep. I think it will be easier to take it apart and then put it back together. Just a thought

[Project_Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by tsofian

Having done a lot of those jobs in the service I'm not so sure its that servile. The cooking staff certainly doesn't have to be meanials.

Terry

I think everyone would have multiple roles, post apocalypse safe real estate will be the only real estate with any kind of value.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

This is one of the mysteries of TMP.

How do you get several hundred people to give up their lives, families, and futures to be a janitor, line cook, waitress, launderer, and dozens of other low paying service jobs.

I get all the smart kids with degrees in the cool jobs, but where do these service skills people come from?

I never saw this as much of a mystery.

First, the Project has advanced technology and I see no reason why they wouldn't have spend some "above-board" assets on minimizing menial labor for Prime Base. Buy some Roombas.

Second, a lot of these jobs can be either secondary tasks assigned to regular staff or primary jobs for people with significant other (and more advanced) responsibilities. I once worked in a classified lab that was unable to get janitorial staff cleared for the area, so all those tasks were divvied up between a dozen or so engineers and scientists. It can work.

Lastly, for those jobs that cannot be eliminated or given to someone on a part-time basis... time to justify saving your spouse! Seriously, there are probably a lot of people who would be ideal for the Project except they have that one person they won't go without. Make them a package deal. One person takes an important Project job, the other gets to come along and cook. Heck, even if you are separated into separate bases, at least you know the other is alive. Probably.

Makes for a nice side plot for a character - they're in Recon Team K-7, but their wife/husband/other is doing laundry at Prime Base and they WILL get there to find out what is going on!!

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by tsofian

I know folks have complained about the small pox vaccinations. It seems a prudent policy to vaccinate against this known potential biowarfare agent for the field teams and to have a supply of the vaccine for the base as well. With the CDC protocols in place in the 1980s the live rabies virus would have gone unnoticed in the QC process.

I still have problems with this route of exposure. Smallpox vaccine is administered via a bifurcated needle dipped into the vaccine and basically tattooed to the skin of the upper arm. Add in the rabies virus and the rabies virus is delivered via a nonbite exposure. This rarely develops into a rabies infection according to the CDC and in nonbite exposures they may not even administer the rabies vaccine as a post exposure prophylactic. So if we read "rarely" as meaning 50% of the time, Prime Base would still survive. You need to find an intramuscular injection if you want the rabies to work in the manner you describe. If you can make it getting MMRV boosters that are tainted with rabies, then you have your infection and kill rates where you want them.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

I still have problems with this route of exposure. Smallpox vaccine is administered via a bifurcated needle dipped into the vaccine and basically tattooed to the skin of the upper arm. Add in the rabies virus and the rabies virus is delivered via a nonbite exposure. This rarely develops into a rabies infection according to the CDC and in nonbite exposures they may not even administer the rabies vaccine as a post exposure prophylactic. So if we read "rarely" as meaning 50% of the time, Prime Base would still survive. You need to find an intramuscular injection if you want the rabies to work in the manner you describe. If you can make it getting MMRV boosters that are tainted with rabies, then you have your infection and kill rates where you want them.

It is worthwhile to remember that in this universe, the US government has already found a way to steal or independently develop things like cryogenic freezing of living humans, so it is probably not a stretch to say that new biological weapons, that don't match current performance, could be in play.

That having been said, a biological weapon that is 100% fatal is highly improbable and pretty stupid (unless there is a counteragent that for some reason the Project cannot develop). I still think that sabotage in Prime Base is probably the best bet.

[tsofian]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

I still have problems with this route of exposure. Smallpox vaccine is administered via a bifurcated needle dipped into the vaccine and basically tattooed to the skin of the upper arm. Add in the rabies virus and the rabies virus is delivered via a nonbite exposure. This rarely develops into a rabies infection according to the CDC and in nonbite exposures they may not even administer the rabies vaccine as a post exposure prophylactic. So if we read "rarely" as meaning 50% of the time, Prime Base would still survive. You need to find an intramuscular injection if you want the rabies to work in the manner you describe. If you can make it getting MMRV boosters that are tainted with rabies, then you have your infection and kill rates where you want them.

The sore caused by the small pox vaccination will likely be enough to introduce the rabies virus into the host-I can't state this as a fact because I doubt there is any literature on this, but since the smallpox vaccine causes a small to moderate amount of tissue damage at the inoculation site it doesn't seem unreasonable to me. The rabies virus would quite likely find a lovely place to hang out and multiply in that region until it can get into the host.