Supply Cache Idea...

[robj3]

Darkwing wrote:
In response to:
I think we should avoid feedlots, battery farms and high-density pig farms though. There are better ways to produce meat.

You may not have much choice in methodology, depending on what the locals have been doing, and what their building capabilities are.

If the local's food system is that well developed that they can run feedlots, battery farms and modern high density pig farms they don't need Project assistance. These forms of intensive farming require lots of externally sourced inputs (e.g. feed, growth promoters, antibiotics, waste management) which imply a well developed economy.


On budgetary issues:

Still more than enough for bean-counters to sniff out money being diverted

Counter-examples:
Enron. WorldCorp. The recent GFC.
The Pentagon/DOD complex is infamous for shoddy accounting.

In any case we're talking about extremely small diversions of flow - cents in the tens of dollars in my example. Noise in the system.

Yes, the project isn't possible with omniscient auditors, spies and investigative journalists. Evidence suggests they are in short supply.


So how big is the Project?

I'd say 10,000 is a bare minimum to be prepared to rebuild if you're trying to cover the whole country.

I agree; I was merely reporting the range I have seen over the years.


On concealing project efforts:

It is a problem, though, which can delay and raise costs of projects.

I've never said that it wasn't a problem. You seemed to be arguing that it was an insurmountable problem.

If you wake up and find that the local area has lost something like that, having a small supply of such seeds would help restart agriculture until the regional base can be contacted for larger issuances.

While I've been on the thread I've argued for an emergency food supply. A seed supply seemed so obvious I didn't explicitly mention it. Mea culpa.

On seed/animal banks:

So they are in the plan, then?

They have to be, however the only canonical description of an Agricultural team is in the module 'Fall Back'. It is a regional level asset.

Note that in reality, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has a facility at Fort Collins, Colorado that is the national seed bank:

http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/site_ma...de=54-02-05-00

On the need for equestrian and veterinary expertise:

They would definitely need to have those skills in a post-apocalyptic world. Cars won't exist, except for what you brought with you, and there haven't been road crews repairing the highways since the event.

Some personnel, not all. There's a limit to training time, but no limit to the size of the potential curriculum.

Project issue vehicles are largely military AFVs which have proven off-road capability.

I largely agree with dragoon500ly's remarks.

On the Project's extraordinary hardware:

10 years is wildly optimistic. How long have we worked on SDI-scale lasers, fusion, cold-fusion, et al?

In the published material, Bruce Morrow provides a helping hand. Whether this comes from the future, a parallel timeline or Alien Space Bats isn't clear.

Agreed, cryogenic suspension with successful revival and vehicle sized fusion plants are going to require many profound advances in knowledge.

For the sake of the story, the divergence point is that these enabling technologies are successfully developed - otherwise there is no Morrow Project.

[WallShadow]

On the topic of seeds, I could see where high-yield hybrids might seem desirable, but on the long-view side, heritage species would be more likely to be more renewable after the first couple of growing seasons/generations.

Again, depending on the state of civilization/population base in the team's area of operation, focusing on intensive rotated integrated-crop farmsteading, including a family pig and/or goat/sheep/cow if available, might provide the simplest, most defensible food production arrangement. Especially if you have nearby neighbors who are willing to come to help you if raiders are attacking, as long as it's understood you'll return the favor. There might be a common central field for grain production, with the farmsteads on the perimeter. This would help build a sense of community and civic duty, if the current civilization is one radish away from collapsing into anarchy and starvation.

[whassupman03]

Hello...

Hey, it's me. I haven't posted for a while, but I thought of something interesting that came from my bookmarks. All of you were talking about how much food to store in the supply cache, and I believe you mentioned using ISO containers, so I pulled up this archived website:

http://web.archive.org/web/200801260...t/tunga/i3.htm

This website detailed a simple plan that could save around 800 people from a comet impact a la the movie Deep Impact, with materials and supplies you can easily find on the present-day, real-life open market. It could be prepared in less than three months (I think), and would be able to not only save them, but sustain them long enough to rebuild. Please note that the website in this archive is not complete, but most of the vital material is there.

According to the website, to feed 800 people for three years you would need one ton of grain for each person, such as from corn and soybeans (Which can be replaced with rice). This can fit in 18 40' ISO containers, holding 800 tons of grain altogether. Of course to supplement this you would add canned vegetables and meats (Which were home canned in the plan), as well as 12 gallons a head of cooking oil (9,600 gallons for 800 people). Also added would be roots and edible tubers, such as potatoes, carrots, etc, as well as powdered milk, salt, and canned fruits. While I haven't done the math for exactly how much of these supplemental foods would be needed per person for three years, I do know that all you would need to do is add some more containers, which were included by the creators of this plan (See the map of the shelter site - it's at http://web.archive.org/web/200601121...t/tunga/F2.jpg.

One more thing - when they made this plan, they proposed using a 20' ISO container to store 8 tons of wheat seeds and 8 tons of soybeans (Which would be non-hybrids, and would yield 240 tons of wheat and 270 tons of soybeans). I would think that when they said that smaller quantities of other seeds would be added, such as for fruits and vegetables, they could be stored in at least one more 20' container. While I think that they should have included more (In my opinion), they planned for two pairs of chickens and two pairs of rabbits to provide a little more nutrition as well as pelts and feathers when it is time to begin growing food.

So pretty easily, you could extrapolate this to meet your 3,000-person refugee camp. That's just my two cents.

whassupman03

[Gelrir]

I also haven't posted much. I ran a MP campaign in the 80s (as a review for a game magazine, originally), and the whole "why didn't they try to stop the war, why wait 5 years, what did Bruce Morrow really know" package bugged the players ... and the characters.

A lot of discussions like the ones on this thread were no doubt had by planners within the MP; given 20-30 years of work, they may have had changes in policy, differences of opinion, etc. Maybe even conspiracies! Heh, if you can hide a massive industrial scheme from the government, you can hide a piece of it from itself.

"I don't agree with the Council; I'm gonna make sure that in my district, there are some large amounts of food supplies stashed away for the survivors!"

The 'camp in a box' idea sounds very appropriate for *some* form of the Project, at some period. My campaign didn't feature the MP as being quite such a gigantic scheme as to divert 2% of grain production, though. But I think the main issue with several of these concepts is the "what were the planners planning for?"

For any number of reasons in canon, it's "wake up 3 to 5 years after the war (or whatever event". But the actual snooze period turns out to be 150 years. I'm pretty sure that buried ISO containers full of food, etc. are probably not gonna be in usable condition in 150 years. How rust-resistant are they?

On a related topic: I've heard of miles-long sets of railway container flats stored on unused sidings in some Western states lately; and this news story:

http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=234087

The durability of MP caches and bolt-holes is sort of a requirement for the game to proceed at all; but there's no reason at all to presume that every other cache, supply, stash, base, etc. was laid down ready for a 150 year delay.

"You manage to pry open the rusty steel cover, and peer down the concrete steps. The air smells ... off, and you decide to let it ventilate for a couple of hours. Proceeding inside, you enter the underground space; the concrete is very thick but crudely finished. There are rusty water stains up to shoulder height on the walls, and a few dangling remains of light fixtures on the ceilings. Some cracks in the concrete walls and ceiling have wept long strings of cement and dirt from outside. As you proceed around the hexagonal passage, the corroded end doors of formerly-sealed containers are on your left hand. All of them are completely rusted out at the bottom; a layer of mold, bits of cardboard, deteriorated plastic, rust flakes, and broken glass covers the floor for 20 cm or so. Prying open one of the doors, you see what was once an ISO box container packed with MREs - now reduced to a dry, mildew-smelling compost about waist-deep. Do you want to look in more containers?"

The bigger the stash, the more likely that it will have been found, or degraded environmentally. Still, nice to lure your bunkering Recon team out to a remote site and the usual fun with the locals.

So: camp-in-a-box may well have existed, but doesn't mean you have to make up a 200 page spreadsheet listing all the contents.

[shenglu]

Food stumbling block. Pre-fab housing, food and short-term solutions to long-term problems. How much is too much? 27 containerloads feed 3,000 people three months is too much, in my opinion.