Who is in the Project and How? Was Cost of a base

[tsofian]

Much snipped from various places within

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Those groups are heavily investigated, and don't have super-futuristic or illegal military equipment. Secrecy is a huge issue.

The government is looking for patriots, the Project is actually looking for a special type of traitor. The government can make reasonably accurate estimates of who will betray them based on past performance, the Project needs to take a fantastical hypothetical and find people really willing to abandon everyone and everything to make it real.

You can take some of those people, you probably can't get that many without raising some uncomfortable suspicions, and most of those people would be more likely to report the Project than join it anyway.

In 4th edition there is a lot of truth to what you say and in more modern setting the Project becomes orders of magnitude more difficult to set up. If it had been set up earlier and was allowed to lay dormant it could still have a chance of being kept secret but even that becomes an issue if the teams are to be upgraded.

The Project is looking for Patriots. I'm curious how you came to the conclusion that joining the Project is treason. Treason is defined as "the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government." The Project is certainly attempting to do neither of these things. By extension they are actually following a number of governmental policies established by the Executive Branch from Ike to Carter. Presidents during that period publicly spoke about civilian preparedness and the need for individual Americans to be capable of sustaining themselves in the case of a nuclear exchange. Although the level of armament is extreme and almost certainly extra legal the intent is in no way treasonous.


I've never agreed with the "leave everyone behind" type of Project member. How can you trust a person to love and support the people they meet after the war if they were willing to walk away from everyone they knew before the war and leave 99% of them to a horrible death and the other 1% probably wishing they had died? Mentally healthy people form attachments. They have friends, family, spouses, children and they want those people they care about to be healthy and happy (and alive). One of the greatest gifts the Project can offer is the safety of family. Certain families will be ideal of bases, either awake or frozen. They will provide stability during long waits and after the wake up. In fact, thinking about this I can see families being preferentially selected for bases. They form core communities upon activation and can be the base of populations of humanity. Also having a disparity of male vs female in base situations will cause no end of issues.

The picking the right people from a mental/personality/security perspective is much harder, but the possibly that BEM had psionic abilities has been mentioned in earlier editions (not sure about 4th). If this is case twice a week he meets a group of 50 prospective candidates (they are unaware they are candidates) has a talk with them in an auditorium about how great Morrow Industries is, or discusses a new focus group issues or whatever and shakes each hand as they enter or leave. He "reads" them and separates the wheat from the chaff. If this is not to your taste there are other things that can be done but they are much more resource intensive.

[dragoon500ly]

My own take is that the Project would seek out members with strong family ties, especially if there were multiple skill sets of use to the Project, an example would be dad is a surgeon, mom is a PhD in Agriculture, older brother is a Fixed-wing Pilot, and sis is a trained RN.

Taking a married couple, if dad qualified as Recon, couldn't mom be recruited and trained for Logistics?

Possibilities!!

[tsofian]

Yep, that is how I've seen it as well

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by tsofian

The Project is looking for Patriots. I'm curious how you came to the conclusion that joining the Project is treason.

I was being brief, but the Project violates numerous laws while knowing that the US was to be attacked and destroyed, without alerting the authorities or doing anything effective to prevent it. While they may not have committed an actual crime for a scenario no current court would even entertain, presented as a reality I think "traitor" would be a reasonable, if not legally-affirmed, appellation.

Originally Posted by tsofian

Although the level of armament is extreme and almost certainly extra legal the intent is in no way treasonous.

Not "extra legal" - that term implies that no law exists to cover the situation, such as private ownership of fusion reactors in a society that is nowhere near to fusion reactors being a reality. After 1986, those weapons are definitely ILlegal, and even before that only under very specific circumstances that the Project doesn't follow.

Originally Posted by tsofian

I've never agreed with the "leave everyone behind" type of Project member. How can you trust a person to love and support the people they meet after the war if they were willing to walk away from everyone they knew before the war and leave 99% of them to a horrible death and the other 1% probably wishing they had died?

... you mean like the people who man our nuclear arsenal now? Those people man the submarines, the bombers, the silos, knowing that at the moment they will be called to do their jobs their families and loved ones will not just be vulnerable but almost certainly in a targeted area! If they knew it was going to happen, would you be unable to find people willing and able to do the job?

But let's go on...

Originally Posted by tsofian

Mentally healthy people form attachments. They have friends, family, spouses, children and they want those people they care about to be healthy and happy (and alive). One of the greatest gifts the Project can offer is the safety of family. Certain families will be ideal of bases, either awake or frozen. They will provide stability during long waits and after the wake up. In fact, thinking about this I can see families being preferentially selected for bases. They form core communities upon activation and can be the base of populations of humanity. Also having a disparity of male vs female in base situations will cause no end of issues.

The picking the right people from a mental/personality/security perspective is much harder, but the possibly that BEM had psionic abilities has been mentioned in earlier editions (not sure about 4th). If this is case twice a week he meets a group of 50 prospective candidates (they are unaware they are candidates) has a talk with them in an auditorium about how great Morrow Industries is, or discusses a new focus group issues or whatever and shakes each hand as they enter or leave. He "reads" them and separates the wheat from the chaff. If this is not to your taste there are other things that can be done but they are much more resource intensive.

The exceptional people the Project needs are almost certainly not only going to have strong attachments to other people, they are almost certainly going to have attachments to people who are not viable as Project candidates. Maybe your spouse is viable... but what about your elderly parents? What about your alcoholic brother? What about your best friend from high school who never went to college and spends every day getting high? Heck, what about that one person in your family who will not be swayed from telling the authorities the second he hears the story of the Bruce Edward Morrow?

Recruiting people whose only attachments are to people the Project needs requires a FAR more massive recruiting program, possibly including the deliberate manipulation of people from a relatively early age to produce tight, inclusive groups that have no outside connections. You know, a cult. Because otherwise, you're going to have some number of people you cannot use that you either have to protect (at cost, with no return) or abandon (which, according to you, our mentally healthy candidates won't do!).

And this is not a new concept in ethics and morality, either. Heck, the Good Place did a whole episode on the Trolley Problem (a lot more entertaining than my old Philosophy professor, incidentally), and there is a lot of other work in the field addressing these kinds of dilemmas and how "mentally healthy people", presented with "no-win" scenarios (like deciding to abandon loved ones to save many others, or to die at their side comforting them in their last moments). So here are some more detailed options and issues that might explain how a "mentally healthy" person might join the Project without dragging along a senile granny and a drugged up bestie:

1) The Project lies. Okay, this is kind of a sinister way to start, but what the heck. All you need is that the people in power (who, statistically, are likely sociopaths anyway!) and a few trusted confidants are willing to trick the Team members, knowing that by the time the reality is revealed the truth can be hidden.

You need your friends and family frozen? No problem! They get interviewed, they get frozen while you watch... and the second you are frozen in your own bolthole, their freeze tubes "malfunction" or their storage location gets hit or the records just get lost and secretly someone goes in and empties the bodies into a deep hole and readies the tubes for the next set of suckers.

Too dark? Yeah, probably. But I could see some corporate CEOs, trying to save the world, pulling some really dark stuff if that is what it took to make it happen.

2) The circles of familiarity. How many people would you die for? How many would you kill for? If you had to trade your friends and family for the lives of unknown, presumably innocent people, what exchange rate would you demand for each one? Just because you are attached to someone, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll risk your life and the lives of unknown others for them. Let's divide the attachments of our hypothetical candidate into three groups: one must be Protected, one must be Assisted, the last can be Abandoned.

Protected means you will at some point demand to see this person after the war. Perhaps a spouse, a parent, a child, a really close friend. You won't get into the tube without guarantee, but if you recruit at the right stage of life, it is not impossible that this group is empty or only has people in it that the Project can use.

Assisted means you don't need to see them after the war... but you need to help them out to some extent. You're willing to let them die if it means saving a hundred others, but you're NOT willing to let them die without at least some kind of warning or preparation. Depending on the level of assistance required, this might not even be difficult.

Abandoned is easy, right? I mean, I like some of my coworkers but if you told me that I had to choose between them maybe dying and a larger number of people definitely dying... well, I would hope I would leave them with a prayer and good wishes.

3) The circles of Morrow Protection. Remember those three groups above? Let's talk about what the Project can do for YOU and your Very Important Person!

Your VIP is Project material, for a position we have vacant? Win-win. VIP recruited, no problem exists.

Your VIP is not Project material, or is the 99th person for 98 openings? Are you valuable enough for us to keep them awake and aware in Prime Base? If not, what about in a freeze tube in a deep storage vault somewhere else? If not that even, what if we got them a job with the "unclassified" Morrow family of corporations, a job that would put them out of harm's way conveniently next to prepositioned resources and early on nearby Teams to-visit lists? And if not even that... how about we provide the funds for their own fallout shelter and concoct some reason to get them out of danger areas when we think war is going to happen?

This is a negotiation not ridiculously like any other. How valuable are you, and what are we going to have to do to get you? TMP would have a pretty high recruiting budget for a field Member but if that "mentally healthy person" has a lot of attachments then not all are getting a job in Prime Base! The daughter you had "earlier than you should" maybe gets to sleep in a tube, but Grandma Betty might have to accept a Project nursing home in Colorado when she really wants to be in Miami, and your best bud may just need to get your fully prepped and non-transferable hunting cabin when you "die".

Intrinsic to this process is the question of what happens to Project candidates who say or no or fail during training. Does Morrow have tech to wipe memories? Is there that prison somewhere? Do they just die for the greater good? An issue for another thread, literally, but germane.