PF 006 Lonestar.

[dragoon500ly]

My apologies, it's the supply bunker website, never, ever use a BlackBerry for anything important!!!

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

BlackBerry

2000 called. Wants to know where you have been.

[nuke11]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

2000 called. Wants to know where you have been.

Actually the current Android based BlackBerry's are very good.

It might be this one: http://www.thesupplybunker.net/sjackson/snj0101.html

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

2000 called. Wants to know where you have been.

Sorry, I work for the government, we still have, and use, typewriters and carbon paper. Our email system still tries to translate into Chinese...and a certain Army base STILL uses 8 inch disk drives and Tandy computers for its logistical system.

Remember! The Department of Defense, still maintains warehouses with Civil War era small arms and cannons, Spanish-American War uniforms, World War 2 rations and a wide variety of junk from the last 150 years. We are prepared to fight all of America's wars, simultaneously and with period correct equipment.

Now I have to board my airship and inspect DOD property in Kuwait, and report my findings via telegraph!

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

We are prepared to fight all of America's wars, simultaneously and with period correct equipment.

That part made me laugh right there!

[mmartin798]

Playing Operation Lonestar at epic difficulty.

The bolt hole computer wakes the team because of the flooding, the vehicles can't launch and the team escapes in these. Proceed as normal.

http://survival-capsule.com/Products.html

[tsofian]

Do they paddle to shore?

[Sprocketteer]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

Remember! The Department of Defense, still maintains warehouses with Civil War era small arms and cannons, Spanish-American War uniforms, World War 2 rations and a wide variety of junk from the last 150 years. We are prepared to fight all of America's wars, simultaneously and with period correct equipment.

Shhh! These are stockpiled for use by Voltigeurs who travel back to the past as part of The Bureau of Temporal Affairs *


*Time & Time Again rpg, by Timeline ltd.

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by tsofian

Do they paddle to shore?

No one said it would be easy.

[tsofian]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

OMG do I really, really, really despise the whole Air cushioned vehicle as a Project Machine.

I really, really do. The SK-5 was a Navy toy for interdiction in inland waterways and swamps. The Mekong delta for sure. I hate it. Not that I am fond of boats anyway. This thing is an annoying pin pick for the bad guys, it zooms by, shoots wildly, and hauls ass out to avoid return fire...... Harrassment fire at best. Royally screwed if the terrain is not favorable.

I am opting that and the Bolthole afloat concept out. Completely along with the other two ACVs. Somebody at Timeline thought these were sexy and cool. Damned if I know why.

I think you are misjudging the ACV. The SK-5 also served with the Army in Vietnam and then the machines were transferred to the Coast Guard where they worked doing SAR.

ACVs have done a number of very impressive exploration voyages

http://kickasstrips.com/2014/06/the-...ition-of-1969/

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/01...9284379227600/

http://kickasstrips.com/2016/02/by-h...pain-trinidad/

https://cgaviationhistory.org/1970-e...use-conducted/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Craft_Air_Cushion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrol...ushion_Vehicle

ACV's can cross something like 80% of the coastlines of the oceans, and in the Gulf I'd be hard pressed to think of any parts of the coast of texas, Louisiana, Mississippi or Florida where an ACV can't make landfall (unless heavy forest goes all the way down to the water. They can travel from the oceans, over any bars at the mouth and up to the headwaters of the major rivers in the region.

I've ridden a civilian ACV in the Solent through about 10 foot swells. The ride was rough but service was maintained. It was a little like a roller coaster, super fun!

CT-13 can use ACVs effectively and the region is particularly suitable for such operations. in the 5-10 year time frame even the growing of trees will probably not be enough to exclude ACVs from most landfalls.

That being said the machines in the module, except for the Science Machine are pretty lame. I upgraded the MARS vehicle with a pair of rocket pods and 2 40mm AGLs on side mounted pylons to supplement the 20mm (now a 25mm Bushmaster). It gets a 50 cal on a central pintle mount as well as the two existing M60 side gunners. In addition add a decent sensor suite.

The Recon machine gets replaced with a Stealth Ducted Fan Helicopter. This is a fancy two seat machine consisting of a kevlar shell with a big central fan. It seats two and has all sorts sensors and countermeasures. It is armed with a minigun in an Emerson MiniTat turret and a pair of Stingers. This is fast and can fly high and is basically invisible to most sensors, passive or active.

[tsofian]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Machine shops require huge quantity of consumables to make product.

High speed steel to make tool bits or tungsten carbide premade bits. Those are consumed as resharpened or chipped in use. Cutting oils and kerosene for lubricating parts as these are cut and generating heat. Sand paper in strips or sheets from 80 grit to 5000 grit to polish parts for fit gets used up fast. Sandpapers think three to six feet of strips for barrel polishing. Valve grinding compound in 40 to 600 for final fitting two parts that must have below .003 tolerances like gas valves. Drill bits (especially certain preferred sizes) last from a month to a year with periodic resharpening. Same goes for reamers to be sure a hole is true to the specified diameter.

Barrel reamers (cutters or buttons) are made by few specialized shops (Pacific Tool & Gauge is one) as are the specific reamers for a chosen caliber. These come in sets of three. One and Two basically open up and establish to chamber shape and size. Number three is the Final and cuts the chamber to SAAMI specs in depth, shoulder, and leed. One and Two would last about six months if you used a drill bit to hog out material. Three or Final has to be precise and would be out of spec if you were trying to cut several chambers a day for a month.

A machine shop needs three phase 240 or 440 watt power at 60 cycles without interruptions. Any loss or power that fluctuates will cause imprecise cuts a trained machinists would need to assess and recut.

Most of all a machine shop needs steel, iron, aluminum, copper, and lead in pure or as alloys in correct ratios. Most salvaged metals can't be trusted to make parts that must endure with out destructive testing first for hardness, ductility, etc, etc.

The Republic is must build a blast furnace to be fed with coke (cooked coal) and some metallurgists that know how to add in alloys like chromium, manganese, boron, and others to make steels for various purposes.

That is why I think the Republic and the KFS have a trade established about New Orleans with beef, ammonium nitrate, leather, motor oil, gear oil, lamp oil, kerosene, diesel, and plastic pellets going to the KFS. The KFS is sending back textiles, machine shop consumables, containers (55 gallon and 30 gallon drums, metal boxes with lids, and assorted tupperware or glass jars with lids), and horses for the Cavalry.

Machine shops do not need electricity at all. They need an energy source but it could be steam or hydraulic to name two. There was a long period when all the machines in a shop were powered by belt drives off line shafts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D_V5smCaOw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_shaft

Perfect alloys make equipment last a lot longer, but they aren't required. Most of the alloys you mention didn't come into general use until well after the 1903 Springfield was in production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel#History

Also steel is widely recycled today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrap#...etal_recycling so getting it graded and sorted is not only possibly but commercially viable.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by tsofian

Machine shops do not need electricity at all. They need an energy source but it could be steam or hydraulic to name two. There was a long period when all the machines in a shop were powered by belt drives offline shafts.

Those have been out of fashion since the 1930s and won't be found outside of a museum with most having been scrapped for the metals in WW2. Postwar date 1989 or 2017 electrically driven machinery is going to be found in industrial zones, high schools, colleges, and trade schools.

forget conversion. That would take more effort than it would be worth.

[tsofian]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Those have been out of fashion since the 1930s and won't be found outside of a museum with most having been scrapped for the metals in WW2. Postwar date 1989 or 2017 electrically driven machinery is going to be found in industrial zones, high schools, colleges, and trade schools.

forget conversion. That would take more effort than it would be worth.

Who said conversion? This technology will be remade after the war. Folks will use generators and remaining fuel to build systems that are sustainable. Things like hit and miss engines and PTO off truck and tractors will be powering equipment. Antique stores and museums and barns will be raided for hit and miss motors and similar pre electrical technology. This won't happen everywhere. The places it doesn't happen will either find other ways or not develop technologically

[tsofian]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

A quick search for vendors that service the petroleum industry in Texas that offer machining services yields about 100, some with mobile on-site capabilities, many of which are in the greater Houston area. If some of these were considered necessary for survival, then it is likely that a few mills and lathes may have survived. The bigger questions are: did enough skilled operators survive that can mill replacement parts for the machines, can tooling be created of sufficient quality and hardness to keep up with wear and can the generators be maintained.

I would claim that on a small scale this is possible, but whether or not it scales to the manufacturing of arms for an army is your call.

In the late eighties a lot of things had not yet been outsources so large industrial facilities often had their own in house machine shops. These places also often had emergency generators. Some of these facilities will be in the middle of nowhere and won't be nuclear targets. Marine salvage yards will also have machine shops and may be able to get out to sea for a the immediate postwar period (forming the beginning of the Gulf shipmen). Remember the scale up doesn't have to happen in a minute, they have decades to switch from cannibalization and salvage to restoration and new construction.

BTW here is an interesting article on ammunition feed systems http://www.m1919tech.com/26513.html

[tsofian]

How could the oil rig with the bolt hole have survived 150 years?

First let's look at some historic structures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_Tortugas_Light

https://www.nps.gov/drto/learn/histo...-jefferson.htm

Although the lighthouse was repaired while in service it did survive a number of direct hits by hurricanes over the century and a half since it was built. The Fort however went a hundred years without any care at all.

If a pair of brick structures could survive that long I think a facility designed by the Project could last 150 years as well.

Back in the Nostromo days there was a discussion about why any bolt hole could survive 150 years. It comes down to planned lifespan and over engineering. If the project started freezing people in the 1960s or so and the war could be anywhere up to 40 years later, that gives us a decent starting point. All structures had to survive 40 years. The standard bolt hole would be designed to survive 40 years of the worst case scenario. That would include erosion, ground water earthquakes, a nearby nuke, tornados and such. From there we can look at over engineering the structures and they will double or triple the life, as a factor of 2-3 is not excessive. A factor of 5 is not unheard of.

So let's look at the Lonestar Bolt Hole. It would have been designed for a worst case scenario. In this case I'd say it would be designed to survive a direct hit by a Cat three hurricane every three years and a Cat five direct hit every ten and a nearby nuke hit.

I have no problem seeing the platform leg lasting 150 years

[mmartin798]

It is still a stretch for a bolt hole to be in a offshore rig. A compliant tower is anchored to the seafloor, but they are designed to flex and that would seem to be contrary to long term survivability. That leaves us with a steel jacket fixed platform.

While it is conceivable that you could build a bolt hole inside the jacket of a leg prior to final construction, the jacket does get most of its strength from being round rolled steel welded together with the smaller braces welded between them. This would mean that everything would have to be inside the bolt hole before the jacket was finished and that you could not update the contents of it once sealed. There is also the problem of it jacket being constructed on its side and then having one end slowly submerged to stand it after it is towed to the final location. This means that everything has to be very firmly strapped down to the "floor", including all the vehicles, since it will be on its side for a decent amount of time. These straps would likely entail some sort of steel bracing, brackets and large explosive bolts for the vehicles. Assuming there is such a bolt hole, the normal wake up and launch would be thaw the personnel, have them detonate the bolts to free the vehicles, and then punch the button to activate the thermite charges to burn the door through the jacket with a laser or cutting torch in reserve to use if the thermite fails to open the side correctly for any reason.

This just seems like a lot of work when a more "conventional" design that is used in hundreds of location would just make more sense from an economics and design standpoint.

[tsofian]

Lots of rigs are towed completed and in an upright position. The vehicles would need to be tied down anyway, Oil rigs are dynamic structures and move with the wave action.

I can see a couple of reasons to do this. One has to do with the large number of potential nuke targets on the Gulf Coast. There is also the possibility of the bad guys using tsunami bombs against the entire region. Additionally the threat of hurricanes and weather isn't just against an oil rig. Look at the recent flooding in Texas or Louisiana and the question becomes how many bolt holes could be lost in a Cat 5 hurricane hitting those areas?

Also having CT-13 in the middle of the Gulf gives MP the option of deploying them to anywhere in the Gulf from Mexico all the way around to Florida.

I think there will be some really interesting "one off" bolt holes scattered around, just so all the MP eggs aren't in one kind of basket.

Plus the Team Wake up is so much fun for the PD. Tom, Jeff and I made an audio tape (yes it was THAT long ago) of the bolt hole computer letting the team know their house is falling apart around their ears. I also took four pieces of foam and stuck hundreds of little cocktail toothpicks in them. I had a "Remove Before Flight" ribbon and told the players each toothpick was such a ribbon and they had to pull them all out (one by one) before they could safely get the craft operational. Plus their gear was all downstairs.

The visual of the door falling away when the explosive bolts fire and then the big wave coming in is just a great way to introduce players to the world!

EMBRACE THE SUCK!

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by tsofian

Lots of rigs are towed completed and in an upright position. The vehicles would need to be tied down anyway, Oil rigs are dynamic structures and move with the wave action.

I eliminated floating platforms because of secrecy. There would be no place that does not receive periodic inspections where you could hide the bolt hole. You could assume that the entire platform is owned and operated by a Morrow company and all the platform operators and workers have fairly high security clearance. Though you still have government inspectors to deal with. Not all of them will take a bribe.

[tsofian]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

I eliminated floating platforms because of secrecy. There would be no place that does not receive periodic inspections where you could hide the bolt hole. You could assume that the entire platform is owned and operated by a Morrow company and all the platform operators and workers have fairly high security clearance. Though you still have government inspectors to deal with. Not all of them will take a bribe.

That depends on the time period. Before 1990 there might be fewer and less in dept inspections. WE know from the Deepwater Horizon incident that the inspections, even of the mobile platforms were shoddy.

This isn't a floating platform, but is a fixed one. There are a lot of these out there http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-sp...nd_gas_we.html

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by tsofian

That depends on the time period. Before 1990 there might be fewer and less in dept inspections. WE know from the Deepwater Horizon incident that the inspections, even of the mobile platforms were shoddy.

This isn't a floating platform, but is a fixed one. There are a lot of these out there http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-sp...nd_gas_we.html

I don't mean to be overly pedantic, but in this case it make a big difference with regard to characteristics and descriptions of different platform types. The numbers are also important since there is a vast discrepancy between oil well and drilling platform.

Just to be clear, the assumption here is that the team is in a fixed platform. I am in total agreement that the team is in a fixed platform. So now, what is a fixed platform and what are its characteristics? A fixed platform has an underwater steel jacket that is firmly anchored to the floor by steel piles that themselves are over 100 ft long. The jacket extends above the sea level by a height greater than the expected wave height from storms and the platform is built on the jacket at this height and above. Once completed, baring structural failure of the jacket, the fixed platform will not move, rock, twist or in any way show movement from storm and surge. This is how they are designed to work.

As for the number of platforms that exist, that number is much smaller than the number of wells drilled. From a report written in 1997 forecasting the number of fixed structures in the Gulf of Mexico, since the first offshore structure was built in the Gulf of Mexico in 1942, there have been a total of 5,561 fixed structures installed. During that same period about 1,645 platforms were removed, leaving 3,916. There is not a one-to-one correlation to the over 27,000 wells and the number of platforms. The report also showed the trend was more platforms being removed than being built, leading to a decline in their numbers to about 3,000 in 2017. With the time to asteroid discovery to impact being just over a year, it is unlikely the number would be any higher.

The other consideration is that the average lifespan of a platform before it is removed and recycled is less than 20 years. So the platform in question should be built and operational by 1998. That will tell you where your should limit the gear to if the bolt hole is sealed into the jacket.

[tsofian]

With a few thousands out there having a handful that have some sort of MP resource on them doesn't seem ridiculous. Even if most are getting recycled those owned by Morrow Industries could be publicly repurposed as automated weather, climate and marine pollution monitoring stations.

[cosmicfish]

Nothing important (including freeze tubes) should be on a mobile facility long term. Too hard to control, too hard to maintain, not very durable, more at the mercy of the elements, etc. If you want an unmanned sensor or comms station on an oil rig, sure - you've got an overfilled network, you can lose a few without impacting operations. But don't freeze people on an oil rig for 20 years.

[tsofian]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Nothing important (including freeze tubes) should be on a mobile facility long term. Too hard to control, too hard to maintain, not very durable, more at the mercy of the elements, etc. If you want an unmanned sensor or comms station on an oil rig, sure - you've got an overfilled network, you can lose a few without impacting operations. But don't freeze people on an oil rig for 20 years.

An oil rig isn't a mobile structure once it is emplaced. The Principality of Sealand is built on a very similar structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand. It's been standing since emplaced in the 1940s. So this structure has been around for 70 years and it absolutely wasn't built to last through the war.

[tsofian]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

The Republic of Texas is pretty loose and mostly small villages. The Army there is the only large and coherent organization. Lonestar is barely functioning as a State above the village level. All it really has is good Law and Order and the Army to keep the villages safe. The Universities and Oil Industries serve themselves.

Just looked through Operation Lonestar, The lesser state of Texas has a population of 5 million. This is about the same as the population of ALL of Texas in 1920. So there is no way this is a land of small villages.

The Brotherhood has 1 million in total population of which 100,000 are warriors. This is their level of technology

"Thus medicine, forging, husbandry, agriculture and myriad other skill either declined or disappeared. ... Only those technical skills which related to small arms and ammunition maintenance and production were preserved."