Odd Treasure Troves

[TiggerCCW UK]

Originally Posted by Raellus

There was a piece on the NBC national news tonight about something called Iron Mountain. I'd never heard of it before. Apparently, it's a giant, underground storage facility in a converted coal mine in Pennsylvania somewhere.

I think that might be where they filmed Dawn of the Dead - certainly a facility something like that.

[Earthpig]

Originally Posted by Haven

I've 'read on the internet' (and we know how reliable that is) that these pictures were from Charlton Heston's estate?

These popped up at the Game squad forums.....I believe the house was owned by a wealthy lawyer type somewhere in the southeastern part of the US.(ie South/North Carolina's, Virginia, Maryland...or something...not sure).

[Nowhere Man 1966]

Originally Posted by Raellus

There was a piece on the NBC national news tonight about something called Iron Mountain. I'd never heard of it before. Apparently, it's a giant, underground storage facility in a converted coal mine in Pennsylvania somewhere. It countains hundreds of thousands of original government documents, film reels (E.T., Jaws, etc.), music recordings (Elvis' "Houndog"), patents (Edison's lightbulb), and other items. It's all temperature controlled and they said that it was "earthquake safe". I'm not sure if they meant that there are few earthquakes in that region or that the facility is structurally reinforced somehow. Anyhow, being underground, under a nominal mountain, would probably protect it from the effects of nearby nuclear blasts (not sure what PA sites are on the T2K target list).

Seems like one could find some helpful (or harmful) information- technical, legal, historical, cultural, etc.- for the process of rebuilding CONUS there. I didn't catch it if it was specifically mentioned, but I believe that the entire facility is privately owned and operated, although they did say something about 2000 odd government employees working there (the government won't specify what it is they exactly do there nor what documents are stored in the facility).

Anyway, Iron Mountain could make for a neat campaign destination.

One of my former co-workers and now friend, his sister works there and we are planning to get together and we will go on a tour of Iron Mountain. It is to the north of me. If I ever get to go and if I'm allowed to take pictures, I'll let yuns know and show pics if I can. I know before you can get on the grounds, you have to be checked out by the Feds. One time, a truck driver delivering items to the mine had his 11 year old kid with him and they wouldn't let him in with the kid because he wasn't checked out but they finally allowed them to go on after some debate.

I also had a client who worked there too, basically, he told me that it is so big down there, you can drive entire semis down there.

As to earthquakes, I know if you go north a little bit, there have been some small ones, the largest I know if was a 5.2 in 1998 near Greenville/Jamestown, PA, at the time it happened, I owned property up there and I think it was close to the epicenter.

Chuck

[Nowhere Man 1966]

Originally Posted by TiggerCCW UK

I think that might be where they filmed Dawn of the Dead - certainly a facility something like that.

It was filmed in Ellwood city which is fairly close to Boyers. BTW, one of our local weathermen and now disc jockey for one of our radio stations played the reporter in that film, "Chilly Billy" Cardille. "Chilly Billy" also hosted a local Saturday nite horror show called "Chiller Theatre" from 1963 to 1983, I used to watchi it as a kid, I remember Dad brought home pizza and pop and we chowed down as we watched it.

Chuck

[kato13]

Found this list of firearms museums when looking for one I saw on "History Detectives"

http://www.armscollectors.com/museumlist.htm

[pmulcahy11b]

Nowhere Man, is that a Burmese on your avatar? We had one when I was a teenager. Fiendish little thing, but she and my dog were best buddies.

[Nowhere Man 1966]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Nowhere Man, is that a Burmese on your avatar? We had one when I was a teenager. Fiendish little thing, but she and my dog were best buddies.

That's Pixie, she is an American Shorthair but who really knows. I did have a Burmese cat once, Muffin (1987 - 2004), she was my aunt's cat and when my aunt was on her deathbed in 1995, she asked us to take care of her. She went into the county home and we were going to take Muffin in to see her one day but my aunt passed away the day before.

Burmese cats are usually friendly, but Muffin was kicked around by my cousin in a drug rage and she never trusted men except for me and my best buddy. She was a good, little cat, so was Pixie. We lost Pixie on October 2nd, she was the last black cat I had.

Pixie 1992 - 2008

Chuck M.

P.S. - I'll have to post some pics of Muffin.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Nowhere Man 1966

That's Pixie, she is an American Shorthair but who really knows. I did have a Burmese cat once, Muffin (1987 - 2004), she was my aunt's cat and when my aunt was on her deathbed in 1995, she asked us to take care of her. She went into the county home and we were going to take Muffin in to see her one day but my aunt passed away the day before.

Burmese cats are usually friendly, but Muffin was kicked around by my cousin in a drug rage and she never trusted men except for me and my best buddy. She was a good, little cat, so was Pixie. We lost Pixie on October 2nd, she was the last black cat I had.

Pixie 1992 - 2008

Chuck M.

P.S. - I'll have to post some pics of Muffin.

Leilani was a little twerp who delighted in stealing my D&D dice and batting them around the house at night. But she and Kona (my dog at the time, a year older than Leilani) were absolutely tight. A nutty pair. When Leilani came to live with us, she immediately put her foot down to Kona as to who was in charge!

[Targan]

How is this for a treasure trove?
http://www.smallarmsreview.com/pdf/jan04.pdf

[jester]

In my Southwest campaign, I had the PCs raid a casino in a boarder area of Nevada, I had the upper rooms on the floors above the 5th floor still have some items in them, with more items found the higher they went.

They had everything from viagra, to small bottles of liquor to larger bottles to all maner of medicines from the former occupants and lots of bedding, and the best was finding the storerooms on the upper floor with the maids cart filled with soap, shampoo and toilet paper! And of course the miints that get left on the pillows.

[GDWFan]

How about the many Small unincorporated towns off major highways.
Im sure theres small enclaves or starved dead houses full of goodies.
Guns,canned goods,gardens,tools.

Places like the show american pickers on history channel would be good.
Scroungers should check this show out.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Targan

How is this for a treasure trove?
http://www.smallarmsreview.com/pdf/jan04.pdf

That's funny; I actually have that whole issue, scanned and in my computer. (I concluded many years ago that I would never have room in the house to keep all the magazines I wanted to keep.) Yeah, that would be a treasure trove!

[sglancy12]

Originally Posted by Ed the Coastie

We're supposed to...but I know of only a handful in my area who actually do. My family and I don't, largely because we live in an apartment and there is no room for such a cache.

What you almost always can find in the home of an LDS member, however, is a Ward or Stake directory...a phone book listing the addresses of other church members in the area. Somebody in that book is likely to have a large cache of food...

...assuming that it is still there. In the event of an emergency along the lines of the Twilight War, many LDS members will "circle the wagons" and gather at the church building with whatever food and other supplies they can bring with them.

In the TW2000 campaign/timeline/gazeteer I have been fiddling with for years, rumors about giant Mormon stashes of food lead to LDS folks being the targets of a lot of marauders, many of whom mix in a bunch of the standard anti-Mormon hysteria to justify killing and stealing from Mormons. Many Mormons are ejected from their communities for "hoarding." Those that can begin the long trek to the relative security of Utah do so. But they are not the only people headed to Utah.

Groups of Non-LDS refugees flood into Utah on the false presumption that every Mormon family has stocked away food for three years. Told by state and local authorities that this is not true, concentrated in under-fed refugee camps, these refugees ultimately riot and turn marauder. This invasion by violent, desperate non-LDS members shocks the citizens of Utah into taking on a very isolationist stance. Non-LDS Utah residents get the same treatment from the out-of-state marauders who think everyone in Utah is a Mormon.

Utah residents are tortured for the whereabouts of their giant "Mormon" stashes by marauders too stupid to realize there is nothing to steal.

Per canon, the State Governor withholds the National Guard from Federal Service and (although they refuse to actually say they are seceding) refuses to recognize the authority of MilGov or CigGov.

In my timeline, this causes a lot of bad blood with MilGov (which is closer), but no outright combat. MilGov has a couple airbases that are still manned that the Utah State Government is hoping MilGov will abandon so the state can occupy them. Some of those bases have nuclear weapons and MilGov wants to remove them to Colorado for storage, but without the State government's help, transporting them could be precarious. The result is a tense stand off that's not quite a siege, but more of an endurance contest. Can the MilGov facilities hold out until such time as one Federal government has enough resources to force Utah back into the union?

Well, maybe not "force them back into the union." Maybe it's more like "get them to recognize the legitimate authority of the new federal government." I'm imagining that if the reformed US government isn't a religious state hostile to the LDS, then the state of Utah will rejoin the union, and pretend that this was all just a big misunderstanding.

Of course, there are plenty of LDS extremist who want to declare Utah the State of Deseret, creating a nation where church and state are one, bring back polygamy and kick the "children of Ham" out of the church. A violent minority, they are sort of a mini-New America for Utah, constantly causing trouble. Perhaps the Extremists even attempt to provoke a shooting war between MilGov and Utah? If these idiots gain control of any nukes, they are going to be serious trouble. They might even use it to try and stage a coup, seizing the state house and declaring a real secession from the USA.

Originally Posted by Ed the Coastie

Not that marauders would find them to be an easy target...a respectably large percentage of LDS males tend to serve at least one hitch in the military, and a significant percentage of those serve that hitch in some branch of combat arms in not some special operations component. (Without going into details, the Elders' Quorum alone in my own Ward claims nearly a dozen combat veterans among those members with prior military service, including three former Rangers and one ex-Special Forces medic. That doesn't count the veterans in the High Priests' Quorum, nor the female military veterans among the Relief Society.)

Well that's good to hear, but I'm still thinking that enough minority LDS communities and individual members are going to get caught flat footed outside Utah and the tide of numbers is going to result in them being injured, killed and their homes and property looted and destroyed. Nevertheless, it does mean that the Utah National Guard and State Militia will have a lot of talent to pull from when it comes time to close the state.

I'd be interested to know what percentage of fringe-wacko LDS members participate in national military service. I expect that since these groups are insular, and secret, they wouldn't get out much and their access to Uncle Sam's training would be lower... which is good. It means that the orthodox LDS would be fighting amateurs, not professionals. Of course, amateurs can suprise you.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

[sglancy12]

Originally Posted by headquarters

along the lines of Graebeards posts about obsolete technology I guess displays of old gear like ox drawn plows and hand crancked water pumps etc that some place have for decoration or as an educational exhibition would have stuf that could be useful .Most scavengers would go right by not knowing what it is or not having the means to haul it off.

I just re-read Pat Frank's Alas Babylon. A great book whose only flaw is that I think the author over-estimates the Soviet strike capacity of 1959. The number and armament of the ICBMs comes off like something out of the mid-to-late '60s... 5 megaton warheads on soviet ICBMs just didn't exist in 1959.

Nevertheless, one of the greatest moments of the books (for me) is when one of the kids explores the "attic full of junk" the adults have forgotten about and discovers a treasure trove of early 20th century technology:

A hand-cranked gramaphone and a large collection of 78 rpm records.

A sewing machine that uses a foot-petal to provide energy.

A couple of old kerosene lamps with wicks, but no oil.

An old pot-bellied iron stove with lengths of straight and hinged stove pipe

An old fashioned grooming kit including a strap and two straight razors

Any group of TW:2000 players had better recognize how valuable an intact pot bellied stove would be.

So? What kind of helpful cache of supplies have you thrown at your players that they turned their noses up at because it wasn't ammo, MREs, fuel or medicine?

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

[sglancy12]

Just thought of an interesting treasure trove...

What about something like the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation? http://www.mvtf.org/

A private collection of military vehicles... currently there are 240 vehicles in the collection. Most, if not all are functional. The staff has the facilities and th skills to machine parts to restore the vehicles... perhaps even restore or replace their weaponry with something useful.

Obviously the wouldn't be as many tanks in 1997 as there are today, but the tools and equipment for working on tanks might be worth more than the tanks themselves. It's a privately owned tank depot!

For me, this place would have fallen into the hands of the US 6th Army, particularly the 40th ID (Mech), which might partly explain how the unit has managed to keep so many vehicles operational.


A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing.

[Dog 6]

http://www.manta.com/coms2/dnbcompany_csh6xy


I use to work for them. lol

[WallShadow]

I left a special treat for thieves or marauders in one farmer's smokehouse--cheese made from milk produced by cows that had ingested fallout-contaminated meadow grass. Biologically concentrated, some of the medium and lots of the longer-half-lived radioisotopes would still be present 3 years later. The farmer, rather than discard it, decided to leave this as a delayed-reaction booby trap for the uninvited.

[jester]

I had the PCs find a Royal Engineer Section complete with vehicles all in mid stages of decomposition. It is a lucky thing they never tried the water ine tank trailer.


In the same town near the river, they found a nezt of someone who had been living under a building foundation. They also found several cans of food again, good thing they never tried it, it was contaminated with radioactivity and would have rocked their world.

Its good to be the evil GM

[Matt W]

Some bound copies of "Popular Science" - dating back to the 40's and 50's

Seriously... have a look through them on "Google Books". There's some amazing stuff in there (for example, the April 1940 issue includes an article on how to make a crossbow).

[Targan]

Originally Posted by jester

I had the PCs find a Royal Engineer Section complete with vehicles all in mid stages of decomposition. It is a lucky thing they never tried the water ine tank trailer.

In the same town near the river, they found a nezt of someone who had been living under a building foundation. They also found several cans of food again, good thing they never tried it, it was contaminated with radioactivity and would have rocked their world.

Its good to be the evil GM

In my campaign Major Po's group found a large stash of powdered icecream (the powdered component of icecream ready to have milk, cream and other ingredients added for manufacture) while they were exploring in the northern third of Manhatten Island. Some of the stash had been deliberately contaminated with smallpox by a CIA faction. Typically Major Po determined the nature of the contamination and used the material to start spreading smallpox himself. It was of course with great irony that he sometimes referred to himself as "The Medicine Buddha".

[sic1701]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

Michael Lee Lanning wrote an interesting book about being a mech. company commander in Germany in the early '70s, when the US Army was at a low point. I found his stories about supplies amusing. The first one being when he asked his supply sergeant how the paperwork was, the sergeant paused before answering, "Well, sir, MY ass is covered."
Lanning showed (I think) his own wisdom by next asking the sergeant what he was hoarding for trading use. The answer was some number of spare barrels for the heavy MGs. Those popped up in the memoir again, of course.

I am reminded of a story from Robert Mason's "Chickenhawk", about helicopter pilots in Vietnam.

After a supply Huey crashed enroute, some naive new Supply guy was instructed to go around to the various units and ask the supply sergeants if they had anything that had been coming in on that downed chopper that now had to be replaced. The supply sergeants recognized a unique opportunity to balance their books, so to speak, and said, "Now that you mention it, I had ordered six cases of this, and seven boxes of that..." By the time it was all calculated, the Huey had some eleven tons of materials on it, according to the supply sergeants' tally. "No wonder the goddammed thing went down!", Mason commented.

[chico20854]

Originally Posted by sic1701

I am reminded of a story from Robert Mason's "Chickenhawk", about helicopter pilots in Vietnam.

After a supply Huey crashed enroute, some naive new Supply guy was instructed to go around to the various units and ask the supply sergeants if they had anything that had been coming in on that downed chopper that now had to be replaced. The supply sergeants recognized a unique opportunity to balance their books, so to speak, and said, "Now that you mention it, I had ordered six cases of this, and seven boxes of that..." By the time it was all calculated, the Huey had some eleven tons of materials on it, according to the supply sergeants' tally. "No wonder the goddammed thing went down!", Mason commented.

I was a supply sergeant in a battalion once that had a similar event happen... we had a CUCV (GI Chevy Blazer) on a train that was derailed, and some items were missing. By the time the paperwork made it to approval, that CUCV was carrying something like 5 tons of gear. But the commander signed it, and that made it official.

When I got back from one deployment, the National Guard state HQ supply guys were there when I cracked open the container full of equipment we redeployed. By the time they left, they had what my commander (naively) was referring to as "the extra list" - a few things that were not officially accounted for. On that deployment I had 4 or 5 little stash locations that nobody new about... they assumed some other unit owned that space.

As far as trading, good supply people don't operate on a "transactional" basis - "I'll trade you this for that" - but on a "relationship" basis - "I'll hook you up when you need something, and when I'm in a bind I can count on you to help me out if you have what I need". Helps get things done. (With that, I once pulled a deal that involved the Danish and Turkish armies and four different US bases... it was epic!)

[sic1701]

God bless easy-going commanders who don't ask a lot of questions!

[chico20854]

Originally Posted by sic1701

God bless easy-going commanders who don't ask a lot of questions!

Actually, that particular commander had already tangled with me once and ended up $400-some poorer as a result. If he had been a little more easy-going maybe his items would have shown up after he lost them...

A lesson for junior officers... don't try to needlessly court martial your supply sergeant in a war zone.

[kato13]

Originally Posted by chico20854

A lesson for junior officers... don't try to needlessly court martial your supply sergeant in a war zone.

For some reason a vision of a conglomeration of Radar O'Reilly and Major Po just flashed before my eyes and I was very scared of the concept.

[M-Type]

Thread revival and all, but I was just doing some research and came across this thread. I was thinking about odd treasure troves myself, and thought about Coca-Cola. I know that in the present you can find Coke in every country except Cuba and North Korea (and even then ), so I thought about the possibility of a group coming across some carefully protected 12-packs or a barely functioning soda fountain.

I looked into it, and low and behold, Poland got its first Coca-Cola corporate office in 1991. And guess where it was? The Palace of Culture and Science, the home of the 'ol Black Baron. Guess he has another leg up on the militia, artillery aside!

Over the next year more facilities opened up, as follows:

*Coca-Cola Poland Ltd. (Radzymin), with branches in Gdynia and Niepołomice, owned by The Coca-Cola Company

*Warszawa Coca-Cola Bottlers Ltd. (Warszawa), a joint venture of the Norwegian company Ringness and The Coca-Cola Export Corporation

*Coca-Cola West Poland Sp. z o. o. (Środa Śląska), with a branch in Poznań, owned by the German company Coca-Cola Erfrischungsgetraenke GmbH

*Bydgoszcz Coca-Cola Bottlers Ltd. (Bydgoszcz), a joint venture of the Norwegian company Ringness and a local company Pubrex

*Łódź Coca-Cola Bottlers Ltd. (Łódź), a joint venture of the Austrian company Brau-Beteiligung AG and the German group Marszalkowski

*Lublin Coca-Cola Bottlers (Lublin), owned by the Norwegian company Ringness

Now I envision a literal cross-country journey to find the secret to manufacturing Coca-Cola again! I found this info here if you're interested.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Coke requires kola beans which do not grow in non-tropical environments, generally; however, some are cultivated in northern italy or southern germany, according to this map:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lanutYield.png

Also note a crapton are grown in central southern California, but well enough away from LA that they might not be fallout contaminated.

What was the yield of weapons used on and around that region?

We can use nukemap to maybe determine what the crops would be like...

Also: I had a character (didn't get to play, unfortunately) among his treasures was a 12 pack of canned coke.

[Wolf sword]

Well I work at a woodworking store (http://www.woodcraft.com/) we stock power and hand woodworking tools. But the big thing would be the books on working with hand tools.

[M-Type]

Originally Posted by Wolf sword

Well I work at a woodworking store (http://www.woodcraft.com/) we stock power and hand woodworking tools. But the big thing would be the books on working with hand tools.

I can imagine that if a library was able to stay in good conditions (not sure how, given the fallout, looting, and whatnot), 'How-To' books would be extremely valuable. Same with hardware stores like you mentioned. They can offer both in-universe and in-game benefits (Observation learning from reading a book?).

[Rockwolf66]

Originally Posted by Earthpig

These popped up at the Game squad forums.....I believe the house was owned by a wealthy lawyer type somewhere in the southeastern part of the US.(ie South/North Carolina's, Virginia, Maryland...or something...not sure).

I know that Michael "Mad Mike" Williamson knows the guy who owns that room. According to Mike the Owner recently sold a Livingston rifle for $500,000. And yes it was once owned by that Livingston.