After Stabilization?

[Webstral]

instituted the drought of Howling Wilderness was to keep things moving along for the purposes of adventuring. I ask this because when the population stabilizes, more or less, there will be a food regime in place sufficient to feed almost all of the people left in the nation. Obviously, this is a grotesque overgeneralization. Productivity and availability will vary wildly from one region to the next. Shortages will persist everywhere. Nevertheless, sans the drought there will be a rough equilibrium established by the end of 2000. Now what? This question applies everywhere, not just the US.

Obviously, one of the primary goals of cantonments everywhere will be to increase output without additional inputs of labor. As output per laborer increases, manpower can be freed for other tasks necessary for rebuilding on micro and macro scales. I have been thinking lately that one of the main goals of Manifest Destiny will be to move engineering and agricultural expertise between cantonments loyal to Milgov. MacArthur remarked that the Pacific War was an engineers’ war. Based on the numbers, he was right. There were more engineers in the Pacific than infantry. This makes me think that a sort of agricultural and engineering Special Forces will be needed for the US—indeed, for every recovering nation—even more than rifles. In the short term, shortages of manpower for combat can be made good with improved weapons and supply. In the long term, shortages can be made good by using improved agricultural techniques to free manpower from food production for combat duty.

These types of missions might be very interesting for a party more interested in playing their part as Special Operations types than go-it-your-own types. Getting needed experts to a given location can be an adventure all its own, if for some reason an airship isn’t available to do the job.

Other worthwhile missions might include tracking down leads on machinery Milgov needs for industrializing Colorado. Howling Wilderness states that Milgov is building industry from the ground up as resources allow. An airship that can haul 100 tons could bring a huge variety of useful machines to Colorado. The trick is knowing where they are and extracting them. The possibilities here are limitless.