How to keep massive logistical operations secret.

[kato13]

As many of you know I approach my project first from a logistical prospective (in many cases sacrificing some aspects of gameplay). The sheer amount of materials needed is staggering. Keeping such movement secret compounds the situation.

Here are some solutions I have come with are

Semi Public Caches
Every time the COT built a retail location underneath they placed basic life saving materials in storage under it. This thread has more information.

Ground delivery distributions centers
If the COT can run a business like UPS, placing massive underground vaults at their distribution centers seems like a good solution. Perhaps such centers can be built upon abandoned mines. Thousands of trucks moving in and out of such a facility would draw no attention. If one half of one percent of materials routed through such a facility was spirited off to the underground catacombs (via a specific barcode and conveyor belts) a huge amount of useful material could be stored there.

Looting of the upper levels would be expected of course but if the centers were closed before war day that could be kept to a minimum (as looters would expect the facility to be empty).

I am less likely to persue the option of air shipment distribution centers (like FedEx's Tennessee facility) as anything near airports is probably a (or near a) nuclear target.

Railway yards within Tunnels
I have always thought that the project needs to move a majority of its materials by rail. COT purchases and expansion of railroad companies is to be expected. If a few rail cars a day could be delivered to several facilities for many years massive stockpiles could be established. In order to hide these transactions I felt railway tunnels would be a natural place for them to take place as everything would be away from prying eyes.

Options I have consider.

Full train swap. Train A pulls into the tunnel and stops to be unloaded (perhaps on a railroad siding). Train B pulls out of the tunnel apparently continuing Train A's trek. This would be confusing to maintain from a record keeping perspective and marking perspective but it would be repeatable and would allow A LOT of equipment to be transferred and things could happen rather quickly. You would also need a very long tunnel.

Multiple Car swap. The train pulls in and 10 or so cars are swapped out. Perhaps 5 empty ore loaders to haul away excavated rock and 5 loaded cargo cars are dropped off and 5 full ore loaders and 5 empty cargo cars are hauled away. If this were to happen daily for 10 years you could build a massive reserve.

ISO container (CONEX box) swap. Using cranes hidden in the roof of a tunnel full ISO shipping containers could be removed from a train and replaced with empty ones (or ones filled with excavated materials). This option would probably allow the train to have minimum interruption, but seems like a difficult engineering solution.


These are just some basic ideas but I would be very interested in hearing any comments or other creative logistic ideas.