A Snake Eater origin story

[mmartin798]

Things have been slow here, so I thought I would dress up some of the backdrop information I use for my campaign to make a little story to share. I just need to clarify somethings I have that are not canon. All my portable reactors use He3 as fuel. He3+He3 reactions do not produce fast neutrons, making the need for shielding less of an issue. Also, since He3 is extremely rare on Earth, my Project fixed that by using a few large D+D reactors. The reaction path has a 50% chance of making He3. These reactors have a way to strip the He3 out of the plasma stream in a significant ratio to be bottled and used as the fuel for portable reactors. So with that out of the way, I hope you enjoy this little look at the pre-war project in my world.


September, 1972
Fusion Reactor Reverse Engineering Debriefing
One Prudential Plaza
21st floor offices of Lyman and Associate
In attendance:
Dr. Warren Allan, Fusion Reactor Project Chief
Dr. Kelly Volker, Science Section liaison to the Counsel of Tomorrow
Martin Powers, Logistical Manager for Power Production
Ernest Rutter, Manufacturing Supply Chain Manager
Tyler Green, Morrow Project Intelligence and Security, Eastern Bureau Chief
Dr. Allan stands up, “Good afternoon. I am happy to report that we finally cleared the last hurdle for He3 production test facility. It came on-line last month and continues to operate. It has given us enough He3 in the last month to press forward with the portable reactor testing. On that front, I am pleased to report that we have successfully built our first two portable reactors that are operating at 40% output. We have had one of them operating at 105% rated output, but the plasma instability grew and we could not sustain it. The plasma stabilized again at 60%. We believe this is something we can correct by finer confinement of the pre-collision focusing fields. We should be on schedule to have the man portable reactor and standard vehicle and bolt hole reactor production up to speed by next month.”
Dr. Volker smiles widely, “This is excellent news!”
Mr. Rutter looks up from the speadsheets he has in front of him. “Will anything in your build list need to be changed before scale up?”
“There is a very minor change we would like to see in the laser spec, but that is just to give us more wiggle room. The existing spec should give us what we need for the start.”, Dr Allan replies.
Rutter and some of the others nod, but Tyler Green continues to read from a file he brought with him. He then looks up at Dr. Allan.
“Dr. Allan, I am hoping you can shed some light on something that only today came across my desk. During the on-going audit of classified documentation in your lab, we discovered part of one of the files concerning the He3 production facility was missing. My people were told this happened almost two months ago. Why were we not informed of this immediately?”
Dr. Allan chortles a bit, “I had considered it, but the pages in question were of little value.”
“That is not the point! The fact they EXIST is secret and if that gets into the wrong hands, the entire project would be compromised.”
Dr. Allan shakes his head slightly, “It can’t be that bad. The pages in question only had drawings about the pre-ignition injectors and fuel stream accelerators. Things that might, only might, lead to a discovery that allows for a viable and very large fusion reactor to be built.”
Green stares down Dr. Allan. “Still, the pages do have the Morrow Project name on them. Where did you last remember having them? I can have a team sent over to look for them.”
Dr. Allan smile, “Ah, I remember it well. Dr. Nunheimer and I were on Lake Shore Drive enjoying a lovely lunch in the park. A gust of wind came up and the pages went over Lake Michigan. It’s no big deal, I am sure they are long gone by now.”
Green lets out an exasperated sigh. No big deal? We have no idea where those documents are, the entire Project could be in peril and it’s no big deal? We will be having more talks about this. I have to go get some things started.”
Green gets up and starts to head out of the room. Dr. Allan looks over to Green.
“Chief Green, they won’t be able to figure out the rest. It’s not like there were any references to the Primary or Secondary Ion Extraction Discriminators. Without those, they just have a nice little power plant.”
Green, still looking quite serious and grim replies, “I still need to see what damage there might be.”
Chief Green closes the door and the others in the debrief continue their discussions.

Meanwhile in Washington DC in a meeting room in the Pentegon, Section G, sub-basement 6. There are 10 men, both military and political, sitting around a conference table. The air is a little heavy with the scent of cigarette and cigar smoke as a general in an army uniform starts the briefing in earnest with a slide presentation.
“Something is happening here at home and we do not have enough intel to know what it means. If you look at page 4, you will see a number of reports from various agencies that hinted at a covert organization being formed between 1964 and 1966. After that, nothing. With nothing but unconfirmed whispers and rumor to go on, this was almost completely forgotten. Until 2 months ago.”
The general advances the slide to show two water stained fragments of paper with technical drawings on them.
“These were recovered by an NIA officer drilling with a Coast Guard cutter in Lake Michigan two months ago. Analysis of the drawings seem to indicate these are part of a plan for a fusion power plant. Researchers at DARPA attempted to create these devices, despite not understanding the science behind their operation and guessing at the missing parts. But when they did, they found that they were able to ignite a D+D reaction utilizing only 80% of the normal power and increase the reaction cross section by an addition 30%. This is a powerful reactor that is economically feasible.”
There is some muttering and whispers in the room now
“These new documents add some credibility to those earlier reports of a covert organization. There were indications that fusion power was a goal of this group, this Project. These new documents show that they have been actively researching this and have succeeded to some extent. Moreover, we now have a name for the group: The Morrow Project.
Armed with this new information, all we really know it that they have been operating for almost a decade and have shown great nuclear engineering skill. We have no idea as to their goals or ambitions. These same skills could be use for weapons development.I have liaised with the CIA and they put some analysts on this to help make a threat assessment. The Morrow Project has been assigned the code name Anaconda.
While the research has been short, this is what we do know. Anaconda has been linked to some weapons and armored vehicle purchases. In addition, there have been other purchases that seem to be similar to ones made by NASA for some manned deep space exploration research, specifically cryogenic suspension research. Experts seem to agree that if they have other technology as advanced as the fusion tech we have seen, it is likely they have a functional, reversible cryogenic suspension technology.
Again I must stress, we have no intelligence on their objectives. But with arms, armor and the need for cryogenic suspension, there are not many that fit those parameters and those are largely not good. It all points to conditions that would be lethal for an extended period of time and the use of force when the lethality diminishes. We cannot let this threat go unanswered.
Therefore, once we do have more intel, we want to be ready to act on it. A top secret operational and support special access program, codename Mongoose, has been created for this purpose. This OS-SAP will be further compartmentalized to maintain operational secrecy with only those in this room having full knowledge of the program. When the time comes, we will be ready to meet the Anaconda threat head on.”