Op Omega, Milgov & CivGov, farming & world recovery

[kato13]

ReHerakhte



Op Omega, MilGov & CivGov, farming & world recovery
Ed the Coastie's thread and a few other threads (such as TR's mention of Howling Wilderness and CivGov) got me trawling through some of my archive files.

I have a large compilation made from two threads dealing with Operation Omega, the recovery of the USA regards MilGov & CivGov and farming/agriculture dated from 2002. Included is some real world data about farming and so on.

Unfortunately, although it's only 200kb in size it's about 30 pages long so I can't repost it here in one hit but will post it in installments if anyone's interested.


Cheers,
Kevin


__________________
It's not whether you win or lose...

It's whether I win.


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graebarde
Philosopher





I would be interested in seeing it. You could send it to me e-mail if you want. Definately interested though.

grae


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When you die, we're splitting up your gear!


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thefusilier




5

Sounds good.
Hey,

I too would like to read it. Or like graebarde said, by email. I always wished Howling Wilderness was more in depth, so in filling the gaps, would like to see your material.

The Fusilier


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shrike6






Count me in among those who'd like to read it as well.


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TiggerCCW UK






I'm definitely interested in it as well. Again, feel free to email it to me if you don't want to post it all here.


__________________
'Do you see yon loons on yon grey hill? Well, if ye dinna kill them, they'll kill you!' - Sir Andrew Agnew, Battle of Dettingen 1743


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pmulcahy
Someone needs to invent more diet food!





Count me in!


__________________
Before we work on artificial intelligence, why don't we do something about natural stupidity?
--Steve Polyak


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Antenna
Evil Game Master


å, Sweden


I would like to see your work to

Antenna

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Jason Weiser
Roadkill on the information superhighway






me too!

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Ed the Coastie

Yeah...deal me in on that, too.

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ReHerakhte

Part One
Okay, first up, this is a compilation of threads so I am not the author, just a mad collector of info with a dodgy archive system so apologies if I gave the impression that this was my own work.
Considering these threads ran on the old Townhall RPG server, some of you are going to recognise names of former & present members (Paul, you crop up a few times and TR makes an appearance too!)

Part the First...

Twilight 2000 Operation Omega thread
From the Townhall WebRPG forums

Subject: Operation Omega
Posted by: Nick Butta
Date: 07/30/2002 00:16
We can probably create a model for reconstruction based on the 43,000 troops who return. Lets assume that there are 50,000 troops in total in the area of return (Virginia).

These 50,000 troops should initially be able to - once organised control an area populated by approximately 500,000 people assuming that ten soldiers can protect 100 people.

The next step in this model is to work out the number out of the 500,000 people who are required to work to feed the 500,000. Then we can work out the number of surplus workers and use that figure to work out the resources available for reconstruction.

Once the environment is more stablised the 10 soldiers protecting 100 ratio will increase. Perhaps, if successful the number of people in this community or settlement could double to one million after a year, two million after two years. Particularly if militia are organised for internal security - allowing the 50,000 trained soldiers to maintain external security.

The region as a whole is quite a good one i believe as it has coal for heating and power generation and is near the coast - which would allow for trade by sea up and down the coast and potentially as far away as the middle east (oil!!!!).
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Subject: RE: Operation Omega
Posted by: El Tee
Date: 07/30/2002 13:16
I hadn’t put much thought into the ratio of soldiers/citizen for defense purposes, but I’d probably consider units being sent out in anti-marauder activity as part of the "active" defense of the region.

After the events of various modules occur, and supposing that a good portion of the returnees of OpOmega stay in the military - I’d say 85% or better, (see Webstral’s post in another thread, for example) Milgov controls a good portion of the East Coast - with outposts in the Northeast (New England, New York), Virginia, and, depending on different referee’s take on the situation, more outposts all the way down to Florida.

With troops returning from overseas assignments (on the West Coast, the forces from Korea), Milgov could continue to project power, at least enough to fight effectively against New America. As Nick Butta mentions, with this kind of security, more refugees will tend to gravitate towards the Milgov enclave for protection/survival. The policy might amount to "you work hard and follow the law, you get to eat" which would be a great motivating factor for the refugees. Those with a particular skill would be even more valuable in the rebuilding of society.

In sum, I don’t think those returning from Europe or wherever else would be anxious to get out, simply because staying in offers them stability and a better chance at survival.

El Tee
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(Next section was too long to fit into one post but I didn't want to break it up so Part Two follows - Cheers, Kevin)

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ReHerakhte







Part the Second...

Subject: after Omega (non canon)
Posted by: Brian S.
Date: 07/30/2002 13:25
Nick,
I found this webpage interesting. You might too.
http://www.physics.ucf.edu/~bar/t2kplan.html

Conjecture
Here's my take on the future of the T2K universe. I'm aware that many fans of the game are rather dismissive of the continuation in Traveller: 2300, and for me that spoils the inherent interactive nature of the game; what's the sense in playing if you can't affect the present? I've also noticed a number of people who don't like the US depicted in Howling Wilderness. However, I find that even the situation depicted there isn't hopeless, just an example of the realism of GDW's games. Nuclear war ain't pretty.
Listed here are the future plans of CivGov, MilGov, the unclaimed states, Caldwell's new enclave, and the mysterious fate of the 7th Army. Also, what about the troops still overseas? (More of a question in that case)

CivGov’s plans – CivGov is in dire straits, and the President knows it. He has sidestepped the drought issue in typical bureaucratic fashion by announcing the capital would remain in Omaha – and then start relocating people. However, most of the fears of the Wisconsiners are unfounded; the shift in rain patterns has made the Great Lakes some of the most fertile terrain on the continent and they are seriously overestimating how many people are involved, thinking mostly in pre-war terms. Most people in Nebraska decided to move when it became clear how bad the food situation would be.
Caldwell succeeds in moving the enclave into the Ohio River valley, despite the chaos in Pennsylvania and the marauder bands lurking in the valley. Fortunately, the 228th Infantry Brigade has survived intact, with soldiers from the European evacuation keeping their numbers the same (about 1000 men). They have established several garrisons across eastern Indiana and western Ohio; Findlay, Ohio being the farthest eastern control; the crucial river junction town of Defiance, Ohio; Greenville, Ohio; the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana; Muncie, Indiana; city of Lima, Ohio; and Elida, Ohio. The 184th IB has made it, with 1400 men and 7 M60A4s, Hqed in Camp Atterbury, nominally responsible for southern Ohio and Indiana, but mostly concentrated in eastern Indiana. The Ohio state government collapses under the storm of refugees, but the Indiana government (still in Indianapolis) declares for CivGov, despite the MilGov presence in Evansville. Caldwell begins a training program so that civilians will have something to do and to desperately replace much-needed specialists. He also has recovered a number of secret caches, some dating back to the 1950s, that the government had buried and forgotten about. Those not in the immediate area he has turned over the location of to the units nearby, whether MilGov or CivGov. His current base of operations is Fort Wayne, and a cache from the Carter administration has supplied a rather large number of solar cells to provide rudimentary electricity to the immediate region.
The 108th Infantry Division (Light), already planning an evacuation, are given an opportunity when the city government of Orlando invites the division to base there. They abandon Fort Benning and Fort Stewart, although they turn them over to relatively friendly local militias, and group at Camp Blanding to reorganize. HQ is established at Orlando, Florida (3000 men, 4 M728 CEVs); currently they have formed a “corridor” down central Florida, running from Orlando north to Gainesville (working with the militia there) and Ocala, to a northern post at Camp Blanding. They are currently attempting to convince the Tallahassee state government to relocate, and the military troops in Pensecola to stop fighting each other; also, the reason why Orlando invited them, to stop the cities of Saint Petersburg and Jacksonville and the Seminoles from ravaging the city. They 108th was joined, surprisingly, by the 30th Engineer Brigade (1200, 2 M728 CEVs) who were forced out of South Carolina by the drought and headed to Florida without contacting anyone. The 30th is engaged in various reconstruction tasks along the Corridor. Eventually, the lack of New America’s leader and a growing problem with refugees will cause the Saint Petersburg enclave to collapse, leading to chaos; similarly, the Jacksonville enclave will fall into anarchy as the St. Petersburg NA enclave had control over two of the three factions there. The only problems remaining will be the Seminoles and the turbulent city of Miami, which is the only port in Florida which is still receiving meager international trade.
The main enclave of CivGov remains; north and central Missouri, eastern Nebraska, Iowa, northwestern Illinois, southeastern South Dakota, south Wisconsin, southern Minnesota and eastern Kansas. The drought will cause the ownership of eastern Kansas to exist only in name, the rest of CivGov’s enclave will remain rather constant, and in fact as more civilians are pulled from the west it will expand around the Great Lakes, linking up with Caldwell’s enclave around Chicago and Gary.
MilGov’s plans – MilGov had a number of grandoise plans, as Brigadier General Cummings himself had put forward. Unfortunately, the emergence of New America spoiled a number of these plans, and the drought caused an unexpected increase in desperate marauders trying to get food, any food.
In the far east, MilGov was originally scheduled to take over New York City, a major coup over CivGov in the area and cementing control over the central eastern seaboard. The mission was destined to fail from the start, especially since the retaking of a large metropolitian area had no practical value; however, MilGov did recover the European gold reserves, which was quickly shipped back to Colorado via the long military convoy route. They had also maintained XII Corps HQ thinking they would get back in touch with the 43rd MPB, but once the story of Colonel Fort being killed and the brigade dispersing, the Corps and 1st Army HQ was disbanded; the 78th Infantry Division was left on its own in Fort Dix, NJ. However, the European evacuation produced a large number of rootless troops, and when the evacuated Norfolk enclave arrives at Fort Dix in late July 2001, they find out that 4000 troops have arrived (out of 13,300 troops that had come from disbanded or destroyed divisions in Europe; the rest were tapped for replacements for other divisions, or left to join CivGov, or left to wander home or form marauder bands). Mounting a raid into the now-virtually-deserted NYC, they grab various long-range communications equipment to contact MilGov. Out of all the mid-Atlantic states New Jersey has had a decent, if meagre, harvest, and the troops are probably going to be reorganized into new divisions and the 1st Army reactivated. Southern New Jersey will be totally under the control of MilGov, and they have orders to hold the river lines and let the marauder bands exhaust themselves through the winter before trying to expand.
A disaster of sorts struck in Oklahoma; the drought forced a large number of howling mobs and desperate marauder bands to descend increasingly on the state. Unfortunately, the 90th Corps both could not hold them back nor retreat due to the oil fields it occupied. In Dec 2001, 90th Corps HQ was overrun and destroyed, and the front collapsed.
This was the final straw for Cummings, and with the loss of his primary source of oil reserves he knew that it was time to come to some sort of agreement or the US would face extinction. He contacted President Broward, who was faced with his own problems, and also surprisingly the Provisional Canadian Government. It took a brief amount of time at a summit in Omaha to decide upon a formal reconciliation between CivGov and MilGov. On the surface, in fact, it looked as if the United States was not only whole again, but that Canada had joined as well. In reality, the meeting was basically an agreement to not attack each other and to assist each other when possible. This allowed both MilGov and CivGov to pull much-needed troops from their respective borders between them and move them elsewhere. For the Canadian forces, it gave them a threat to hold over the revolting forces in Quebec.
The 49th Armored Division, having survived a similar incident in 1999, managed to regroup and head towards Arkansas (Fort Smith, 1000 men, 1 M60A4, 1 M1, 2 Stingrays) and help fend off the marauders attacking there. The 95th Infantry Division simply pulled back to western Kansas (1800 men, 1 M60A4) where the attacks began petering out and they manage to stablize the line. The only silver lining to this dismal turn of events is that the commander of the 95th managed to pilfer a number of crucial components from all the refineries, rendering them useless to marauder bands, hoping that they would still not destroy them in order to somehow use them themselves.
MilGov’s plans to control the Mississippi River valley was more successful. Currently southern Missouri, all of Arkansas, and northern Louisiana is under their control, and in Kentucky and Tennessee they control the land within 100 km of the river. Northwards, they hold Cairo and the newly-restored refinery at Robinson, and southward have small enclaves along the Mississippi border to Baton Rouge to assist barge traffic. Eventually they hope to control the mouth of the river, but New Orleans is no longer located there as the river mouth has shifted.
Northern California has stabilized somewhat under MilGov control, and the quadrangle of Oregon, Washington, Montana and Wyoming is also under MilGov; the weather patterns has made this region fertile. The main problem here is the New America enclave in the Snake River valley, which is cutting access to the Seattle MilGov enclave. Idaho is otherwise in their control.
Colorado itself is in little danger, and Cummings has done a number of small things, including reopening the Federal Mint in Denver, finishing radiation cleanup in Colorado Springs (from the Cheyenne Mountain blast), and open three more power plants (much like the ones in Saint Petersburg, burning trash). Factories in the Denver area have begun to put out limited products, and the people living in the Denver/Colorado Springs area are some of the most contented people in America, which in 2001 isn’t saying much. Cummings also benefits from having control over NORAD; while the HQ at Cheyenne Mountain was destroyed by a burrowing nuke, a top-secret secondary center had been created nearby in case of such an emergency. While all the military satellites are gone, there are still a number of useful functions of the base (one of which is that the EMPs didn’t penetrate) and was responsible in part for detecting the crash of the Russian weather satellite in Feb 2001.
Of course, the big question is, what happened to the 7th Army? During the European evacuation, a number of units maintained their integrity and came across. It would be rather absurd if they dispersed when they came back, and they didn’t; MilGov needed every last troop. Unfortunately, they were a number of armored units, that had left behind all their armor in Germany.
Cummings decided to set into motion Operation Scavenger, to hit every last vehicle and heavy weapons manufacturer/cache/marauder group to resupply the units with whatever they could scrounge up. Also, these troops had been fighting almost constantly in Europe and were under extreme battle fatiuge, and were given smaller tasks such as salvage, guarding the borders with Canada or CivGov, or farming until they were ready. They weren’t ready in time to save Oklahoma, but now the refitting of the 7th Army is done and in spring of 2002 MilGov will expand again.
Current troops of the 7th Army (Jan 2002):
7th US Army HQ – Colorado Springs, Colorado.
I US Corps HQ – Shreveport, Louisiana. Mission: To prevent overrunning of the northern Louisiana enclave by marauders from east Texas and Mississippi. Extend control to the mouth of the Mississippi.
3rd US Mechanized Division (5000 men, M1, 2 Stingrays, M60A4)
6th US Infantry Division, Light (2000 men)
38th US Infantry Division (4000 men)
278th US Armored Cavalry Regiment (400 men, 3 Stingrays)
V US Corps HQ – Salt Lake City, Utah. Mission: To re-establish control over Utah. To destroy the New America enclave in the Snake River valley and recontact Seattle.
3rd US Armored Division (5000 men, 2 M728 CEVs, M1A2, 1 Stingray)
28th US Infantry Division (1000 men)
4th US Mechanized Division (1000 men, 2 M1s)
XV US Corps HQ – Muskogee, Oklahoma. Mission: Retake the Oklahoma oil fields. Redeploy and protect Oklahoma and northern Texas.
1st US Armored Division (4000 men)
2nd Armored Division – 2nd Brigade (300 men, 3 LAV-75s)
44th US Armored Division (2000 men, 5 M1s)
35th US Mechanized Division (2000 men).
MilGov should come out top in both the retaking of Oklahoma and the destruction of the Snake River enclave, but whether they can hold onto northern Louisiana is anyone’s guess.
MilGov will undergo a major surprise when they re-contact Seattle; the USS Corpus Christi, a nuclear sub, took the long way around the coast of Russia and down into Seattle, and arrived with a special surprise; two dissident Russian scientists who had come up with a cheap and easy way to create cold fusion. The Redmond Test Reactor went on-line in Oct 2001, and was a success. Now the 47th Infantry Division devotes itself to building a larger reactor and providing power to the region, also salvaging high-tech equipment from the various laboratories in the Seattle area. Once the secret reaches MilGov and CivGov, reconstruction can finally begin in earnest.
MilGov has begun retooling for the “new age” of warfare, starting with the first construction of military vehicles since the bombs fell – ultralights and dirigibles, used with great effectiveness by the New America enclave in Arkansas. They have also begun (mostly in Colorado) the manufacture of portable storage cells (chemical batteries, fuel cells) and portable ethanol/methanol engines for military personnel and trade with civilians for useful items.
Other States –
The entire northeast is virtually total anarchy. New America controls northern Maine and New York, but both enclaves will be dead by year’s end. The Gloucestermen, an alliance of fishermen, control the coast from Portland down to Gloucester, Massachucetts, and have fortified their villages against the starving hordes and will survive the winter. The UBF, nominally CivGov but really themeselves, controls all of Cape Cod, and trade along the Massachucetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut coast. The Isolationists controlling Rhode Island are in desperate turmoil; their crops are failing and the dispersed 43rd MPB have been menancing them, as former members remember what the Isolationists did to their brigade. Boston is becoming increasingly abandoned, and central Massachucetts is controlled by the remnants of the 43rd. The only forces of good in the region are the Gloucestermen, a strong militia in Salem, and a newly-formed Roman Catholic monk brotherhood which operates in the three-state region. To the north, Vermont and New Hampshire are becoming pre-colonial but Canadian troops are occasionally spotted in the north.
The Great Lakes coast of New York is becoming the last stop for a number of refugees from Ohio and Pennsylvania. New York City is virtually a ghost town now, with isolated communities huddled in farmed parks. Long Island is actually doing okay, as most people fled the other way, and the UBF has begun trade with them; the 78th in New Jersey is thinking about establishing an outpost here.
Pennsylvania’s state government in Harrisburg is beseiged and is really just a city government at this point. National Guardsmen protect the town, however, and it has not been overrun. The regions around Pittsburgh have dissolved into chaos, taking some of the locals with them.
Maryland and Virginia are becoming desolate, as no crops are growing. Marauders are ruining the states. Oddly enough, the abandoned MilGov enclave around the radioactive ruins of Norfolk has become the last home for a number of people, as the defenses are in place and the ruins make most marauders turn away. Otherwise, marauders have successfully raided and destroyed any settlements town to the coast, except in Delaware where a number of coastal villages have banded together like the Gloucestermen. West Virginia was in the process of being conquered by New America during 2001 until the capture of Hughes in April and the passage of CivGov in the summer. Both events took them by surprise, and CivGov managed to capture the supply dump at Bolivar and Hughes’ former residence near Charles Town (while various underlings squabbled inside about what to do with Hughes gone); not only capturing tons of food, thousands of rounds of ammo, and hundreds of weapons, but Hughes' home was virtually a supply cache in of itself, including a number of mainframe computers still in operation. Whatever wasn’t taken was destroyed. Once the CivGov troops left, the New American troops regrouped and took over Winchester. However, as the summer turns into autumn, they have come into conflict with a number of local marauder bands, and by November will be finished as an effective fighting force.
The situation gets even bleaker down the coast. South and North Carolina, once the provinces of CivGov and New America, now belong to no one. Forest fires and the drought have ended any large settlements existing and marauders can pick at the smaller ones before they too succumb to starvation. A few isolated spots may hold out.
Georgia is somewhere in between. While the drought has hit hard, there are a number of determined communities and anti-marauder groups that have attracted large numbers of citizens. The state will survive, but only as a series of isolated communities. Refugees will pour out of the state into Florida and Tenneessee.
Refugees from the other states will plow into Florida, which while is now nominally CivGov still has large regions uncontrolled. They will descend around CivGov’s control to Jacksonville and Saint Petersburg, eventually collapsing the governments there but leaving those regions in chaos for a while.
Both Kentucky and Tennessee will be hit hard by refugees from the mid-Atlantic states, and MilGov will pull back the garrisons from such towns as Nashville to maintain control over the regions near the Mississippi River. The presence of CivGov in the north, however, will box them in and by winter’s end the refugee problem will be over due to fighting and starvation.
The drought is incredibly brutal in Alabama, Mississippi, and southern Louisiana. Some survive at the ocean’s edge in the first two states but the swamplands of southern Louisiana are virtually deserted. Both northern Louisiana and Arkansas have such reduced populations thanks to the Mexican Army, the Texan Legion and New America that the drought isn’t as bad.


(Aack! This was still too long, sorry everyone, the rest of this follows - Cheers, Kevin)

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ReHerakhte


Continuation of Part the Second...

All the southwestern states have been hard hit. Central Texas is a powder keg of marauders exploding outward. The Southern Grange Association has been holding on, barely. The various army units in southern Texas are becoming desperate and rumor has it that the Russians are planning on marching on the ruins of Los Angeles in order to find shipping home, perhaps turning over their heavy equipment to the Americans or Mexicans for a ride much like the Americans did in Germany. Scattered people live across Arizona and New Mexico but there is no state government or American military groups in any large amounts.
Utah had been increasing their use of martial law from the beginning of the exchange, but the state government finally collapses towards the fall. MilGov will make restoring Utah’s government a top priority for the coming year.

American Troops elsewhere – After the success of Operation Omega, the question is: how do we get the other troops home?
CivGov is in a bind, since President Broward has gotten flak for sending the troops to Yugoslavia in the first place when they were desperately needed home. Unfortunately, plans to bring them home (begun when MilGov began the European evacuation) fell through when CivGov abandoned the Atlantic coast and it was discovered that the French had mined the Straits of Gilbratar.
In the case of Korea, the vast distance involved, plus the fact that the Russian troops there show no signs that they believe the war is over, leaves this plan to the distant future. Cummings wishes to re-establish communications with Hawaii first, probably via the USS Corpus Christi, or the remnants of the US Navy.
Finally, there is Iran, where it seems the American troops are better off than they are in America! The question currently is not “How do we get them home?” but rather “How do we get regular fuel shipments from Iran?” Once the fusion tech becomes available, however, the latter will be a moot question. In any case, in the summer of 2001 a major civil war erupts in Iran when a war hero and his unit defects and the Soviet lines collapse. By the end of the year, Georgia will have declared its independence, the last of the former Soviet republics (with the exception of Byelorussia) to do so, closing the main supply lines back to Russia and effectively closing that theatre of war.
So to answer the question: probably MilGov and/or CivGov will have to send troops back to the east coast, and scavenge various ships on both coasts to take their troops home. It should be noted that MilGov still has Task Force 34 (which, while German, they planned to keep – after all, they were turning over all their heavy equipment, and deserved something in return!) probably under the Fort Dix command.

End
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Subject: RE: after Omega (non canon)
Posted by: Cav Scout
Date: 07/30/2002 16:41
That site is a bit confusing -- in the MilGov section he initially says only 13.3K personnel were retained in service, but then at the bottom of the page he has about double that forming a reconstituted 7th Army which somehow scares up as many or more armored vehicles as the rest of MilGov had to its name before they arrive (there must be some hand wringing and forehead slapping there . . . "oh . . . those tanks . . . we forgot all about them, no go ahead and take them . . .") and somehow relocate en masse to the midwest and American west.

I’d put more money on the idea of tying down the east coast as people have outlined on here in the last day. As for units, I’d guess there’d be some significant alteration from the order of battle that got on the boats, maybe even a reversion of a brigade, regiment or battalion-centric organization rather than divisions at 10-20% authorized strength (going back to another recent topic of discussion).

Also, at that guy’s site he talks about the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs being "Brigadier General" Cummings. Is there any support for that claim from T2K stuff? In Howling Wilderness and Gateway to the Spanish Main he’s always called "General" as far as I can recall/find. From GttSM we know he was a full colonel in 1983, with either the Rangers or 82nd Airborne at Port Salines Airport, and there’s no mention of him stepping up to assume command that I’ve found yet, so I just assumed he was a four star in 1996.
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Subject: RE: RE: after Omega (non canon)
Posted by: Nick Butta
Date: 07/30/2002 18:57
That guys players did pretty well in that timeline:

Why - they discovered the secret cache, rescued the russian scientists, recovered the gold and caused the collapse of the russian army in Iran.

Pretty clever guys ; - )

It just seems a bit too much like the fusion discovery comes along and solves everything, the world is destroyed by a nuclear exchange, then a massive drought causes the collapse of civilisation but its OK because we’ve got COLD FUSION to give us power.

I may be departing from canon - especially Howling Wilderness but I think that a recovery from regional recovery and reconstruction rather than the all-cure of Cold Fusion is more interesting. There is commentary in the Allegheny Uprising about Caldwell’s plans to expand in Pennsylvania to recover the coal mines and other resources which implies a long-term reconstruction plan which I find a lot more interesting.

The dislocation and desparation of the drought from Howling Wilderness was just too hopeless for me I’m afraid. Its not the bleakness of the situation, its the fact that there’s nothing to do except travel around and take what you can from where you can. It sux.

On an unrelated topic - does anyone know the number of people that would be required to work in labor intensive agriculture to feed half a million people. I realise that this will depend a lot on crops, land, weather etc but any ballpark figure will be fine ??

You could then put the surplus labour into mining coal and producing infrastructure and assuming a reasonable degree of stability and productivity increasing levels of surplus food production would allow more surplus labor and more industry/infrastructure.
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Subject: SourceFile:Los Angelos to SF...
Posted by:
Date: 07/30/2002 19:48
Heres what my sources are telling me about the West Coast...

As we all know, for several years leading up to tactical nuclear strikes in the LA basin, many situations had already decantralized control in the region. Economic hardship, dissent towards the formal reinstitution of the draft, and rampant organized and unorganized crime made this region a hotbed for anarchy from the get-go. It appears that the Tactical nuke headed to Long Beach was intentionally diverted inland, my assumption bieng the Russian high command had considered Long Beach too valuable an asset to destroy and, instead, cutting off it’s access to the interior of united states. The type of warhead used was also of a lower level of lethality, causing massive firestorms and destruction but leaving most outlying hard structures such as warehouses, some freeway infrastructure, and massive amounts of rail and railways intact. The lead to the re institution of wood and coal burning locomotives and "technicals" to be carried on flatbed cars till needed. Suprisingly, the Dockers Union, several city employee groups, and other various "civil" factions maintained a cohesive control structure and immediately marshalized control of the docks, extensive railyards, and miles upon miles of warehouse districts into a huge supply dump.

My man in the fields best estimates:
4500 ex law enforcement officers
15000 "militia" of various capacity
150,000 strong citizen pool, mostly laborers and skilled artisans
120 Armored Trains, to both ferry trade goods and wage attacks
600 (rough estimite) SUV type armored vehicles
250 strong fleet of "Big Rigs", armored to the teeth as armored semis with escorts
From Los Alamitos:
37 Helicopter(including 3 cobras)
180 Heavy trucks of various sizes
12 M1A2 Main Battle Tanks
37 Humvee’s, with various armaments
Small arms to man 2 National Guard divisions
25 APC’s (envisioned to quell riots)

Note: Included in this union are the Long Beach dockers union, which, immediately upon news of an East Coast strike, moved 7 Oil Frieghters to the Anacapa Island with a 200 man LAPD swat team enterage and 3 helicopters. These tankers have not even been 1/4 depleted and are still docked of Anacapa island, constituting their biggest asset.

The other major faction in the region is various street gangs, running rampant on murdering rampages thruought southern california, where millions of vehicles are still around. Numbering well into half a million members in 40 major factions, they battle the borders of "New LA Union" constantly and have destroyed all nieghboring weaker cities, branching into the slave trade with Mexico and South America.

I-5 is mostly "New Union" controlled, however, patrolled by various technicals, APCs, gaurd towers and armored semis as the alliance maintains trade North to the Las Vegas area and makes convoy runs to Portland and Seattle. The situation is tense, and it appears that the oncoming Soviet advancement will have to play its cards safely, for the "New Union’s" power is growing every day. Vast land farms in the Ventura Area, as well as the control of Lake Casitas, are fueling the regrowth of a massive new marshal infrastructure.
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Subject: RE: after Omega (non canon)
Posted by: El Tee
Date: 07/30/2002 20:06
This is going to go a bit OT, but it relates to the question as to how much food a farm could produce, so if that interests you, read on...I don’t know much about farming, so consider yourself warned. My wife’s aunt runs an organic farm not too far from where we live (don’t know the exact acreage/size), and here are the particulars I can remember:

-Work Force/Labor: five family members (aunt, husband, three kids, eldest is teen-aged), a "regular" staff of twelve employees who do everything from taking care of the cows to raising the livestock to harvesting their crops as well as training the journeymen (see below)

-journeymen/apprentices pay the family to learn and live on the farm, they usually have anywhere from one to four dozen, depending on the season; they produce enough to feed everyone on the farm several times over, sell enough surplus to have a fairly hefty profit (even after accounting for new equipment, repairs, materials, etc.) AND have enough to bring food to every surrounding extended family. Counting my wife and I, that’s six or seven families, with an average of four people to feed. While we don’t necessarily partake in the free food all the time, her aunt laments all the time about "all the food they’ll have to throw away" if we don’t take some. It’s a bit of a drive from our house in the suburbs to their farm (1 1/2 hours+) to get as much food as we can pile into one of our cars, which really isn’t that much considering the trouble we go through, but it’s free and of good quality so I shouldn’t complain. I’d guess that they could feed about 100-150 people, not counting themselves with what they produce (so all in all, roughly 200 people, mostly year round, if you store it properly). Then again, this is just from what I’ve seen on their farm, I couldn’t list specifics or anything like that.

I should also mention that they don’t use all that much technology in farming (part of their "claim to fame") - mostly man or animal power for everything, they use generators to provide energy when necessary...so their farm is a pretty good example of how a farm might run post-twilight war.

Okay, now away from the agriculture part of our show...I thought Howling Wilderness was particularly harsh as well. I got the feeling that the military wasn’t very effective, and most of the population either roamed around finding what they could to survive or stayed in one place and tried to cope. All the campaigns that I’ve been involved in I’ve deviated from much of what’s been described in that module. Overall, like most of you, I’m fairly optimistic as to how the US fares after the return of overseas forces.

El Tee
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(Next section needed to be broken into two parts also, it deals with agriculture specifically)

Subject: RE: RE: RE: after Omega (non canon)
Posted by: Cav Scout
Date: 07/30/2002 20:28
>>On an unrelated topic - does anyone know the number of people that would be required to work in labor intensive agriculture to feed half a million people. I realise that this will depend a lot on crops, land, weather etc but any ballpark figure will be fine ?? <<

This site doesn’t directly answer the question for T2K, but does provide a variety of statistical figures which might be useful (it deals with medieval agriculture) --

http://www.hyw.com/Books/History/Agricult.htm

Short version is 80-90% of the medieval population were involved in agriculture (don’t know if that number also includes fishermen).

I think with modern methods and technology something like 1.5-2% of the US population is involved in farming, fishing, other agricultural work or forestry.

T2K should be somewhere in between, of course, but where exactly a given community falls on that continuum is going to be dependent on lots of variables. My guess is things would slant more towards the medieval numbers but not quite reach them, most places.

Agriculture
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The foundation of the Medieval economy was agriculture. Throughout Europe, 80-90 percent of the population struggled to coax a living, and perhaps a surplus, out of the soil. It wasn't easy, but using a wide variety of techniques it was done and often with marked success. While crops varied somewhat depending on the climate and soil quality, England and France saw mostly wheat, barley, peas and oats being grown, along with vegetables, vinyards and fruit orchards.

Medieval agriculture, like that still practiced in many Third World areas, got by without machines, hybrid seed or chemical fertilizer. A horse, an ox, or a wife, was used to pull the plow. Harvesting was done by hand. Crops available for export went a short distance by ox cart, and thence by river barge or sea going ship to market. For local consumption there were vegetable gardens and fruit trees. Fruit, however, was often turned into cider for export or winter use. Berrys, nuts and anything else eatable was also gathered when available. Bee hives were kept to produce honey . These subsidiary crops kept the farmers busy most of the time, for the main crops only required a few weeks intense labor at planting and harvesting time.

To compensate for the lack of modern fertilizer, the farmland was treated with animal (and sometimes human) manure, and allowed to remain fallow every second ot third year. When fallow, the field was sometimes planted with legumes (peas, beans) that restored the lost nitrogen in the soil. Medieval peasants didn't understand the chemistry of this, but had learned by trial and error over the centuries that it worked. The normal practice was to to leave a field fallow every other year, and more adept farmers would plant leguemes in the fallow year, which increased the nitrogen content of the soil. But if the land was particularly good, the climate right and the farmer particularly skillful, one could get away with fallowing a field every third year. Normally, however, farmers would switch beween the two methods depending on what they thought they could get away with. Too many "every third year" cycles would reduce the yields noticiably, at which point the farmer would have no choice but to use every other year fallowing in order to rebuild the fertility of the land.
The Romans had been avid students of agriculture, and much of that knowledge survived either in practice or in the collection of Roman era manuscripts preserved at monasteries. The Romans were enthusiastic letter writers and a favorite subject was food, how to produce it and how to prepare it. Many of these letters survived the fall of the empire and much knowledge was gained from them.

There were two major agricultural innovations that appeared after the Roman government fell. One was the mould-board plow. This elaborate metal and wood device was developed by Slavic tribes and spread west from the 6th century on. It's design allowed six ot more oxen to pull a plow and break up virgin ground, or the heavy, clay laden soils typical of northern Europe. As an example of the impact of this new plow, consider the huge population growth that occurred after its introduction. The area of France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the Low Countries had a population that flucturated between 10 and 15 million from 1 AD to 600 AD. In came the new plow and during the next six centuries the population grew to about 36 million (from a low of ten million, as a result of all the invasions and civil strife.) These areas now support a population of over 250 million, which gives you an idea of how sparsely populated the area was way back then.

The second innovation was the horse collar. Roman --and ancient-- horse tackle was rather inefficient, resulting in an underutilization of an animal's full strength. The horse collar did away allowed horses to be used for pulling a plow, or heavy loads in general. This created a big increase in the horse population, as the horse was more versatile a beast of burden than the ox. With horses more common on farms, more people learned to ride them, which led to English yeomen (who often used horses for their famrs) to be easily mounted on horseback (using captured or stolen French horses.) This made the English armies even more lethal because of their mobility, and the fact that the yeoman infantry didn't wear themselves out marching on foot all over France.


(Rest in the next post - Cheers, Kevin)