Alcohol powered Jets

[Legbreaker]

One more point about the availability of technicians - if the CLS (Central Location System) operated by FEMA can't keep track of the presidential successors after the Secretary of Energy, what hope will the authorities have of keeping track of relatively insignificant techs?

[DocSavage45B10]

Because the military isn't run by idiots and they snapped them up and stashed them away in dispersed locations before the exchange? The military has dispersal plans for everything.

[Targan]

In my last campaign I had MILGOV forces in the CONUS regularly sequestering anyone deemed to have critical and rare technical skills, particularly folks like nuclear reactor techs (or even nuclear phycisist academics with only limited "hands on" experience with reactors), chemical engineers, radar and avionics techs, electronic engineers, the list goes on.

Having said that, when local commanders gathered up and protected such people they often weren't in a position to (or were unwilling to) send them to a central location or even to where they were most needed at any given time. With long-range communications so sporadic and the general slow erosion of MILGOV control in many areas it would be difficult for MILGOV's top commanders to keep an accurate list of all the specialist experts that regional commanders had managed to gather up.

It would be quite a difficult process to identify who was where and get the required people to where you needed them, particularly if you had to move them through areas not firmly under MILGOV's control. I guess my point is that I agree that the military would secure the experts it needed for projects like restarting nuclear reactors, but it would take some time to send out requests for info, send out the orders and move the human resources to the right places safely and securely.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Targan

I guess my point is that I agree that the military would secure the experts it needed for projects like restarting nuclear reactors, but it would take some time to send out requests for info, send out the orders and move the human resources to the right places safely and securely.

That's it exactly. It's VERY unlikely to happen in the short term, but, with luck, it will eventually happen.
Just don't count on making much headway for the first few years of the 21st century.

[Olefin]

You can see this already happening in The Last Submarine Trilogy - i.e. the movement of personnel to get the reactor going in the Colorado Springs area was accomplished by MilGov and then they sent some of those personnel to help get the Corpus Christi back to operational status

One thing that the GDW designers ignored in many ways to get this country back on its feet was how much coal is available in the US - i.e. where is a big effort to get steam engines back up and running for transport or the use of coal to generate electricity? A lot of the Northeast still runs on coal powered stations as does West Virgina and other areas. And there are enough steam locomotives left in this country at various tourist railroads (almost none of which are near nuclear targets) to get transport going again.

And many engines at museums could be made operational again - when we did Allegheny Uprising we were transported to our start point by a steam engine that had been brought back into operation from the PA Railroad Museum, that had several 50 cals and two 105mm cannons installed on two armored gondola cars to defend it. (and did so when we ran into marauders near York)

They concentrate too much on alcohol and nuclear and sort of forget natural gas and coal which the US has in abundance. I.e. where is the effort to convert ships back to burning coal instead of oil? Alcohol is a terrible way to propel a ship but coal will work just fine.

[DocSavage45B10]

Good point about coal, and especially steam locomotives and ships, but I think folks are a mite sanguine about the feasability of large scale chemical synthesis without correspondingly large amounts of electricity. Smokeless powder, for instance, requires nitric and sulfuric acids, and is highly reactive in its intermediate stages before being 'washed' of excess acid.

Originally Posted by Wiki

Short-fiber cotton linter was boiled in a solution of sodium hydroxide to remove vegetable waxes, and then dried before conversion to nitrocellulose by mixing with concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids. Nitrocellulose still resembles fibrous cotton at this point in the manufacturing process, and was typically identified as pyrocellulose because it would spontaneously ignite in air until unreacted acid was removed. The term guncotton was also used; although some references identify guncotton as a more extensively nitrated and refined product used in torpedo and mine warheads prior to use of TNT.[38]

Unreacted acid was removed from pyrocellulose pulp by a multistage draining and water washing process similar to that used in paper mills during production of chemical woodpulp. Pressurized alcohol removed remaining water from drained pyrocellulose prior to mixing with ether and diphenylamine. The mixture was then fed through a press extruding a long turbular cord form to be cut into grains of the desired length.[39]

Alcohol and ether were then evaporated from "green" powder grains to a remaining solvent concentration between 3 percent for rifle powders and 7 percent for large artillery powder grains. Burning rate is inversely proportional to solvent concentration. Grains were coated with electrically conductive graphite to minimize generation of static electricity during subsequent blending. "Lots" containing more than ten tonnes of powder grains were mixed through a tower arrangement of blending hoppers to minimize ballistic differences. Each blended lot was then subjected to testing to determine the correct loading charge for the desired performance.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokeless_powder>