Encounter Group #24 Snake Eaters

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by stormlion1

While this is how it should work, the disappearance of so many personnel would cause notice so I'm betting just a A-Team (heh, heh) were put in cryo and were expected to survive on there own. But on that note I'm also betting the bases that the Snake Eaters were given weren't expected to be abandoned like Project Bolt Holes but to act as a temporary base of operations. Operating like a very small fire base as it were in a nuclear environment. It really counts just how much time they were given to prepare but I could see the Gov't adapting Cold War era facilities for this, ones that had been built during the 50's and the 60's then abandoned and forgotten about soon after. In my area there are still remains of Nike Missile Bases scattered about, one of these could be adapted very easily for a Snake Eater base of operation.

I am expecting A and B teams to be filled and the C Team expected to be formed from surviving active duty, reserves, re-activated retirees, and local force.

I don't think the A teams would have a permanent base or should. Those guys are going where the trouble is, i.e. fighting a guerilla war on U.S. soil against Soviet forces. The B Team likely will or be mobile on trucks to establish themselves near an A team or local force that needs their support.

As for C Team, that would have been formed on a DoD base or post with a core of SF personnel on the operations team and the rest made of non-SF support personnel. After the war started.

[stormlion1]

I'm going to go with there only being A-Teams put into cryo with the expectation of B & C-Teams being drawn from surviving military personel after the nuclear strikes. This is partly to minimize the number of Green Specops types going missing, hence causing people to ask where they are but also to minimize the number of hidden Snake Eater Bolt Holes being placed. As for the Snake Eater installations I do kind of expect there to have a semi-permanent installation set aside for themselves. One is the sheer amount of gear they will be expected to maintain and be issued. And two if they wake up and the location above them is a radioactive hellhole! There going to need a place to operate out from!
I am going to use a Nike Missile Base as a example for a hidden Snake Eater location, mostly because I once crawled through one and have a idea of how big the underground section is. I figure a garage using a ramp to get at least two lightweight jeeps out of it, or maybe using one of the missile silo doors and a crane to get them out to reduce the footprint. A large amount of ammunition for the Snake Eaters weapons and any extra weapons set aside fo any resistance or law enforcement force they feel they might need to arm, six to twelve cryopods, six to twelve bunks, a section set aside for medical needs, and a latrine off to the side. Now it wouldn't be permanent but would be good to operate out of in the case of high radiation, a place to rest and recuperate and handle medical needs, a place to maintain vehicles and weapons and could easily be hidden after a few years of the terrain above it being grown over. Entry is by one of the silo doors or a hatch with a ladder.
Separate caches, not unlike Morrow supply caches would also be hidden but behind or within public works, things that the Snake Eaters could easily find and could be set up in plain sight. Who would believe the roadwork laying in a new pipeline by the side of the road is in reality a pipeline containing a cache of firearms and ammunition?

Wow, I essentially just reiterated myself, didn't I?

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by stormlion1

I'm going to go with there only being A-Teams put into cryo with the expectation of B & C-Teams being drawn from surviving military personel after the nuclear strikes. This is partly to minimize the number of Green Specops types going missing, hence causing people to ask where they are but also to minimize the number of hidden Snake Eater Bolt Holes being placed. As for the Snake Eater installations I do kind of expect there to have a semi-permanent installation set aside for themselves. One is the sheer amount of gear they will be expected to maintain and be issued. And two if they wake up and the location above them is a radioactive hellhole! There going to need a place to operate out from!
I am going to use a Nike Missile Base as a example for a hidden Snake Eater location, mostly because I once crawled through one and have a idea of how big the underground section is. I figure a garage using a ramp to get at least two lightweight jeeps out of it, or maybe using one of the missile silo doors and a crane to get them out to reduce the footprint. A large amount of ammunition for the Snake Eaters weapons and any extra weapons set aside fo any resistance or law enforcement force they feel they might need to arm, six to twelve cryopods, six to twelve bunks, a section set aside for medical needs, and a latrine off to the side. Now it wouldn't be permanent but would be good to operate out of in the case of high radiation, a place to rest and recuperate and handle medical needs, a place to maintain vehicles and weapons and could easily be hidden after a few years of the terrain above it being grown over. Entry is by one of the silo doors or a hatch with a ladder.
Separate caches, not unlike Morrow supply caches would also be hidden but behind or within public works, things that the Snake Eaters could easily find and could be set up in plain sight. Who would believe the roadwork laying in a new pipeline by the side of the road is in reality a pipeline containing a cache of firearms and ammunition?

Wow, I essentially just reiterated myself, didn't I?

I think B teams are a necessity. Lets look at an A team for a second. It is 12 men and can be broken into two teams of six with the Captain leading one, and the Master Sergeant leading the other. This can happen because the other jobs that are E7, E6, and E5 are doubled with a primary and secondary. One is senior to the other, thus there would be an E7 (SFC) weapons sergeant and and E5 weapons sergeant, same for intel, medic, engineer, commo.

B teams don't hold to the 12 man rule, and can be up to 40+ personnel. The B Teams are generally staffed with more senior personnel mostly E7s waiting for an E8 slot to open for example. The B team assists the A Teams in other ways such as highly trained in a specialty. Let us use the weapons sergeant as an example. An SF weapons sergeant is expected to be expert in all U.S. and Allied individual weapons and company level crew served weapons. They can fire them, zero them for qualification, train others to use them, and maintain them at the armorers level. Maintenance at the armorers level is pretty basic, mostly remove and replace, with a little bit on drifting sights or honing a trigger. The weapons sergeant in the B team has spent time on one or more A teams gaining vast operational knowledge, then was selected for a civilian gunsmithing school and various schools put out by weapons manufacturer. Thus the E7 or E8 weapons sergeant can do more than the A team weapons sergeant because he is trained to manufacture parts.

This applies to commo where the B team radio operator is also capable of diagnosing problems on a circuit board then repairing same. A B team medic has been through the teams then, gone on to complete a Masters degree and become Physicians Assist.

The B teams back fill A teams until a replace can be trained up from SF qualifications and also assists A teams in their civil liaison, intel missions, or training locals to be the militias or CIDGs by providing more experienced and trained personnel to assist.

As for SF people disappearing......... SF doesn't advertise their missions, so outside the community, nobody is going to know. As for the Army complaining all its SF assets are dwindling; in the 90s the big Army mafias (Airborne, Infantry, and Armor) were against SF because the SF was stealing their best top 5%. The 4 Stars don't really like SF and how it operates because the rest of big Army doesn't work that way.

The SF community more than any other has a tendency for personnel to retire outside the U.S. Easy to recruit persons who are "retired" from active service because they are past 20 years or medically retired.

I wouldn't be using any facilities like a Nike missile silo simply because with the sheer numbers of missiles available in 1989 there is bound to be some targeting that location.

A teams jobs are out there with the people so I am not including a live in facility but rather several caches in large and small sizes to both assist survivors and arm the populace against soviet invasion. B teams will have a live in facility with room to house several A teams at once (bay style) and facilities to repair and maintain equipment. This isn't going to be on a federal installation or downwind of one either. Probably going to be located beneath a facility inside a national park, national forest, or a wildlife preserve with an expectation that any base, fort, depot, warehouse, facility, or other designated federal property is going to be hit atleast once at a minimum.

In the supplemental Morrow Project story found on the Rogue 417 CD the nuclear exchange is know to take place over a period of months with Denver taking the last, and for the third time, nuclear impact.

[stormlion1]

The problem also is we never see any evidence of a B-Team. Lets look at Ruins of Chicago, the A-Team was outright on its own and essentially had no back up. This says to me one of two things, Snake Eaters are thin on the ground and the number of volunteers was also pretty small. Which it should be when the terms for recruiting are veteran lonely SF's that won't be missed. So this says to me that the plan was for those Cryo'd A-Teams to be serviced by surviving B-Teams, and not ones that were into Cryo. In fact in every instance we see of Snake Eaters showing up there either alone with minimal supplies or operating as a team but with no visible support but what they gather themselves. I think they had plenty of volunteers myself, but to cover the whole US and Canada required spreading those troops out to such a degree that they could only field A-Teams and just give them plenty of spares to draw upon rather than have a B or C-Team to draw upon.

I use Nike missile bases as a example as most were in fact abandoned by the late 70's and most were in fact not on military bases but placed in farm fields or small compounds that were well away from everything. This in fact works in there favor as those small compounds were well away from a nuclear strike zone and probably wouldn't be targeted as they were known to be abandoned facility's. The added advantage of the missile silo's themselves being buried also helps with only the radar stations being above ground and usually well away from the Nike launch silo's themselves, in fact one or two radar stations usually serviced several Nike Silo's. Today most of the bases were in fact in my area given over to developers or schools and had parking lots or housing built on top of them by the mid 90's. And quite often they didn't even dig them up but just built on top of them. The one I explored was abandoned smack dab in the middle of a patch of tree's in a huge farm field and the only reason I found it was google maps! Sure they could fire a nuke at them, but a airburst wouldn't affect them much and would be essentially targeting civilian farmlands or empty forestlands.

Cache wise I see plenty of small and a few large ones being set up as well, but were primarily filled with ammo and weapons and next to nothing else in the smaller ones and larger ones containing the same but with the occasional addition of a vehicle or two.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by stormlion1

The problem also is we never see any evidence of a B-Team. Lets look at Ruins of Chicago, the A-Team was outright on its own and essentially had no back up.

We don't see any evidence of a bolt hole or cryo tubes either, the existence of such is implied.

We don't see any evidence of a command structure for the A team or a means to communicate with one. That is implied too.

We have no evidence that is the only Snake Eater team located in that region. This is the one that has been revived. The existence of more is implied.

The U.S. and Canada has more resources to draw on than the Morrow Project. When the cryosleep program was finalized with Teams going to sleep could have been selected and emplaced for as long or more than the Morrow Project.

The Snake Eater program isn't going to have the Psych evals that washes out MP Personnel. Thus unfit for the Snake Eaters program never lasted in SF to begin with, which is about peer review and team work. Thus more personnel on the ground.

The SOF community is going to have those that have no desire to go back to the civilian world, and the cryosleep programs would be one more awesome deployment were they would be extremely important and at last valued by civilians. Larger, though older, talent pool.

As for any facilities that are or were military, those facilities are going to be nuked. Likely a combination of air-burst to strip away surface structures like buildings and antennae; followed by a ground burst to use ground shock to break foundations, collapse tunnels, and permanently twist doors frames and hatches making them useless.

The Soviet arsenal in 1989 is < 10,000 official warheads. According to one story the War starts 19 November 1989 but, last three months as missiles are continually exchanged, often striking the same target multiple times.

[stormlion1]

I don't think were going to agree, I truly doubt that there are going be enough Snake Eaters to enter Cryo to staff a full set of A and B teams. And the entry from Ruins of Chicago does kind of confirm this.

... drawn from volunteers at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center in June of 1985. The Federal Government was very curious about something going on known only as "The Morrow Project". Vague rumours were all they had to go on, but some SF A-teams, made up of volunteers with few family ties, were frozen in order to find out what they could. No one suspected the true nature and duration of The Morrow Project. So, as usual, the A-teams were "left hanging".

Chain of command wise, well with the idea that there going to awaken soon after a war, they could be plugged into a existing chain of command, so there is no need to cryo a Snake Eater command structure. There should be one existing, if fragmented by a nuclear war.

And while the US and Canadian Governments have more resources than the Morrow project there started well afterword's of the Morrow Project. The first Morrow teams were put into cryo much earlier than the US Government became aware of the Project itself though so they were playing catch up.

Facility wise, well the US is covered in old military bases, mostly from the Second World War but plenty from Vietnam as well. Many in well out of the way places and many shut down soon after those two wars. Most airports in the United States serviced military aircraft during the Second World War but soon afterword's became civilian airports. Would they become targets as well? Doubtful. If the Russians had fired off the entire arsenal at every former Military facility in the US and Canada there wouldn't be anything left but sand, dirt, ruins and glass and the Snake Eaters and the Morrow Project would have awoken to a dead world rather than something that resembles modern day Chernobyl.

No, I feel the Snake Eaters were given some pretty snazzy equipment, had the training, but were wholly unprepared number wise for the environment they awoke to.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by stormlion1

I don't think were going to agree, I truly doubt that there are going be enough Snake Eaters to enter Cryo to staff a full set of A and B teams. And the entry from Ruins of Chicago does kind of confirm this.

... drawn from volunteers at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center in June of 1985. The Federal Government was very curious about something going on known only as "The Morrow Project". Vague rumours were all they had to go on, but some SF A-teams, made up of volunteers with few family ties, were frozen in order to find out what they could. No one suspected the true nature and duration of The Morrow Project. So, as usual, the A-teams were "left hanging".

Chain of command wise, well with the idea that there going to awaken soon after a war, they could be plugged into a existing chain of command, so there is no need to cryo a Snake Eater command structure. There should be one existing, if fragmented by a nuclear war.

And while the US and Canadian Governments have more resources than the Morrow project there started well afterword's of the Morrow Project. The first Morrow teams were put into cryo much earlier than the US Government became aware of the Project itself though so they were playing catch up.

Facility wise, well the US is covered in old military bases, mostly from the Second World War but plenty from Vietnam as well. Many in well out of the way places and many shut down soon after those two wars. Most airports in the United States serviced military aircraft during the Second World War but soon afterword's became civilian airports. Would they become targets as well? Doubtful. If the Russians had fired off the entire arsenal at every former Military facility in the US and Canada there wouldn't be anything left but sand, dirt, ruins and glass and the Snake Eaters and the Morrow Project would have awoken to a dead world rather than something that resembles modern day Chernobyl.

No, I feel the Snake Eaters were given some pretty snazzy equipment, had the training, but were wholly unprepared number wise for the environment they awoke to.

Awaken! Death is not an excuse! Arise Zombie thread!

The military is big on redundant structures and command structures. I can't believe that SF A teams would be emplaced with large caches of war materiel and a vague mission statement.

If looking at the MP was the goal then the troops would be Military Intelligence, Criminal Investigations Division, or Defense Intelligence Agency personnel.

The A-Teams had more to go on then "Find the Morrow Project and tell us what it is".

The Teams were emplaced with caches to fight an insurgency against Soviet invasion. In the 80's this was really thought of as a possibility. You have to place yourself in the Cold War mindset and that the Soviets really do want to knock us out of existence.

SF uses alot of National Guard training camps like Camp Guernsey in Wyoming and vast areas of National Forest for training. So a set up of B Team personnel in cryosleep in one of those areas far from cities or primary and secondary nuclear targets....... A Park Ranger cabin or a federal building on a wildlife preserve in a National Park for example.

[ArmySGT.]

So the SF is an Army asset. After the "Eagle One" mission failure Special Operations Command was formed.

SOCOM and the Pentagon are going to be plastered as is any known or obvious .gov or .mil installations.

So in your game to WHO and to WHERE do you have the Snake Eater and the Canadian Commandos expecting to report? They too are expecting to wake within 5 years of the nuclear exchange.

They are going to be a .mil asset with an almost totally military mission. I would not expect them to report to or necessarily be obligated to work with a .gov asset like FEMA.

[Gelrir]

I think a lot of it depends on what, in your campaign, the US Government knows, and when.

If they know there'll be a nuclear war about XX date, and the Morrow Project expects to wake up about XX + 5 years ... Snake Eater teams should only be a tiny part of the official response.

Heh, the War could be caused by this revelation.

Somewhere in the Pentagon: "Our intelligence says this Morrow outfit expects a nuclear war to happen in mid-November. We'd better go to Defcon 2 that week!"

Meanwhile in Moscow: "Comrade General, the Americans have placed their strategic forces on high alert status! Your fears are correct!"

But with months or years of warning, and sufficient belief in the evidence to be dropping Special Forces guys into cryoberths ... all sorts of activity would be taking place. Like:

• preparing Damocles or other "wierd" strategic schemes
• stocking up FEMA on civil defense supplies
• sending "national command authorities" off to "undisclosed locations"
• stashing supplies in tunnels and mines
• making sure every nuclear sub, bomber, missile, etc. is ready that month
• preparing whatever "Star Wars" system you might be working on for the ultimate test

I agree with ArmySGT: there's not much reason to freeze an A-Team to help FEMA -- especially not five years after an Atomic War.

--
Michael B.

[stormlion1]

They weren't frozen to assist FEMA, though they could do that. They were frozen as a counter to the Morrow Project. They didn't know what they were planning and wanted a counter set up ahead of time rather than when the Morrow Project finally did make its appearance. There backup was supposed to be the remnants of the US Government.

You got two versions of the Snake Eaters I've found. The version found on the Supply Bunker with multi story underground bases set up in each state and one that mirrors the Morrow Teams with six guys, a small bunker and all the gear they can carry. And the one that shows up in Ruins of Chicago is the second type. They woke up, grabbed gear and went out and looked. They didn't even have a vehicle!

[bobcat]

the way i usually run things is that the government has a rough idea what the Morrow Project is doing and freezes the A-teams to provide insurance. the government doesn't trust the morrow project to perform as advertised and wants their own people on hand to keep the project honest. this would also allow the teams enough flexibility to assist with reconstruction efforts since A-teams would have the majority of the needed skills to carry out such a mission.

this provides the government with a plausible reason to freeze a small number of snake eaters while not taking direct actions against the project. as for equipment i would likely issue them surplus WW2 equipment from Civil Defense caches because those weapons are known for their durability and because such caches would be quite heavily stocked.

[mikeo80]

Originally Posted by bobcat

the way i usually run things is that the government has a rough idea what the Morrow Project is doing and freezes the A-teams to provide insurance. the government doesn't trust the morrow project to perform as advertised and wants their own people on hand to keep the project honest. this would also allow the teams enough flexibility to assist with reconstruction efforts since A-teams would have the majority of the needed skills to carry out such a mission.

this provides the government with a plausible reason to freeze a small number of snake eaters while not taking direct actions against the project. as for equipment i would likely issue them surplus WW2 equipment from Civil Defense caches because those weapons are known for their durability and because such caches would be quite heavily stocked.

Any time I have played or run a game, any Snake Eaters are used exactly as Bobcat portrays. They are an ACE in the hole (pardon the pun) to ride heard on TMP IF NEEDED. IF your team is acting as it should, helping others, staying OUT of the local politics, then any SE who looks this over will be glad to help. And any Morrow team that gets a SE on their side should get down on their knees and thank GOD for the insight a SE will add. IMHO a SE should ONLY be played by the GM or, if you are lucky, a person who is/was a SE.

As far as equipment, I think the M14's as portrayed in Chicago are an EXCELLENT weapon. Can be Auto/semi auto/single shot. 7.62 or 30-06 if you prefer is a MAN KILLER. I would have thought the SE's would have had some kind of vehicle. If for nothing else, to help bring in a harvest for the locals. I can see the SE's leaning towards 2 1/2 ton trucks, or M113's at BEST. These men are EXPERTS at unconventional war. The only use of a vehicle is to help locals. A SE will be much better at stealth and surprise.

Time to get off of the soap box.

My $0.02

Mike

[stormlion1]

Actually I see them being armed with the weapons of the day, in the 80's or 90's or the 00's there going to have M-16 derivatives due to how abundant the ammunition type would be and they could easily plug into any military units supply chain they run across. The happen upon a National Guard unit 3-5 years after a nuclear war those M-14's will have a limited supply of parts and ammunition. I do see them being allowed to take the sidearms of choice though so I would expect to see a whole variety of different pistols. Vehicle wise I would expect to see quads. Fuel efficient and good for off road work. There not there to help rebuild, they are there to keep an eye on the Morrow Project and possibly fight Russian troops if encountered. In many ways I expect the Snake Eaters to make do with less and do more with it and with there training they would be several times more effective than a average Morrow Team.

[bobcat]

given that until the late nineties the blanket heads primary mission was to train guerrilla forces it would be less than ideal to have them armed with M16s when civil defense is passing out millions of Thompsons, Garands and BAR's to everyone that can hold one. granted they might even have both in their boltholes since uncle sam loves redundancy. similarly with vehicles why issue them the latest most high tech(and high maintenance) vehicles when you can issue them older gear thats already in inventory and use the fancy stuff for fighting the war.

[stormlion1]

You know, I wonder how many BAR's, Thompsons, and Garands were in Civil Defense armory's in the 80's, or the 90's or even today if your playing the newer edition.

[bobcat]

Originally Posted by stormlion1

You know, I wonder how many BAR's, Thompsons, and Garands were in Civil Defense armory's in the 80's, or the 90's or even today if your playing the newer edition.

well the one i've been in in PA had enough to arm an infantry division and there were about four more next to it. this was back in '05. of course the heaviest thing i saw in there was a 75mm howitzer. the only problem i see with these weapons is according to the target list the area glows in the dark.

(though i guess that would make it easier to find your weapon at night)