Sigma Base

[dragoon500ly]

This is a background for an upcoming playgroup. As always, criticism, sniping, and comments are carefully accepted. After all, it's just a game! Enjoy!!

Overview

In my timeline, Sigma Base starts construction on 7 March 1975 and is completed on 25 July 1989. Sigma is built in north-central Missouri some ten miles north of the town of Brookfield. Located midway between Brookfield and Sigma Base is a section of rail line belonging to the BNSF Railway (Galesburg IL---Kansas City, MO---Pueblo, CO), this branch line is one of several east-west lines connecting, eventually, the East and West Coasts and sees a tremendous amount of rail traffic (as many as 120+ trains a day).

On the northern side of this rail line is Consolidated Industries (a subsidiary of Morrow Industries) shipping container storage, manufacturing, and refurbishment facility. This facility actually generates a handsome return for Consolidated, although not nearly enough to match the expenditures of building Sigma Base. The surface facility took in dozens of trainloads of “empty” shipping containers that were shuttled around the extensive yard with certain containers that had been “contaminated” being sent to a decontamination facility to be “sterilized.” Inside this facility, the containers were unloaded of their various pallets of supplies and then carefully steam-cleaned and then rotated out to the refurbishment facility where they were sandblasted and then repaired, repainted, and shipped out to new customers.

So heavy was the traffic moving through this facility, that the local workers seldom (if ever) noticed that more people entered the facility than left it. In any event, the Base personnel numbers were kept to an absolute minimum and all of them were carefully selected. To ensure security, all of them were ultimately destined to staff the Base and so the only people who knew the exact location of the Base were the people who were in it. As the underground portions of the Base were completed, permanent personnel moved into them and began operation of the Base or updated and modified existing equipment.

In the end, all of the people who knew the exact location of the Base became part of its staff. Other people knew of the Base, and a handful knew of its approximate location. These latter were also provided with clues that might enable them to reach the Base in the event of some emergency. But ultimately knowledge of and access to Sigma Base was the carefully guarded secret of its personnel. Even the Council of Tomorrow and its Chairman, Bruce E. Morrow were not privy to the exact location.

During the planning phases of Prime and Sigma Base, there was much discussion about the basic design, and what needed to be included in order to accomplish their mission. At a bare minimum, each base would have to provide for living areas, stowage for stores/supplies/raw materials, and basic manufacturing facilities in addition to command, control, communications, and intelligence facilities. The additional study determined that all of these functions would be essential to the mission.

Due to the separate locations, it was determined that different methods would be used for each base. While Prime Base would consist of three cylinders plus support annexes, Sigma Base would consist of tunnels sunk into the bedrock with support annexes.