Project Dogs

[mmartin798]

There is a problem with keeping live dogs for assignment after wake up. The only place to keep them would be Prime Base. With wake up at the 5 year mark, you would need to train the puppies and that would put an even higher strain on the personnel at PB than a team carting around a trained and frosty pup.

[stormlion1]

Very true, OK I can see Dogs being frozen at Regional Bases, Prime, or even ones dedicated toward animal livestock but still I wouldn't see freezing ones with Mars or Recon Teams. The footprint for care and feeding would be to large for units that are designed to be on the go.

[kato13]

I agree it would be a logistical increase, but dogs have assisted nomadic humans for at least 20,000 years. There must some sort of beneficial tradeoff.

[stormlion1]

Oh there is tons of beneficial trade off like drug sniffer, hunting, watch dog, etc, etc, but it comes at the expanse of room and mission imperative. Sure the workhorse of the project is the V-150 and in a pinch you could squeeze a dog inside but now things are tighter and that's just the dog, not its own supplies which also have to be packed and stored. And Dog Kibble takes up a lot more room than MRE's. I see Dogs being a replacement for a man and his gear or stored for use in a dedicated Bolt Hole until needed. That or expand on a basic teams size and go from one vehicle to two vehicles so the extra gear and the dog have room or go with a larger initial vehicle. Doing this though expands the initial layout of the Bolt Hole making them harder to hide and more expansive to hide.

[kato13]

Understood.

My basic teams are either 2 LAV or 3 HMMWV so we start from completely different places logistically.

[stormlion1]

Most teams from the modules are usually one vehicle or two smaller ones so that's what I plan for. Having more is nice but just adds to maintenance and other issues like the fact there are no roads anymore! It also counts on starting location. Lot easier to move around in the Mojave but what about the team that wakes up in upstate NY? There going to open the Bolt Hole and discover that there are tree's growing right up to the door and the closest 'road' which might be nothing more than a pony track is a mile or two away. The teams are going to spend a lot of time cutting down tree's or looking to abandon there vehicles. I sometimes wonder if it would be better to have Horses in cryosleep than a vehicle stored away for use!

I usually plan for the worst in most scenarios and plan for my local terrain. I live in an area of old tree's with lots of lakes and streams with roads and farmland breaking it all up. And I ask myself if no one was taking care of the roads and the fields, how long till its over run? Then I look at a world war 1 ammo factory called Belcoville and I get my answer. Not long at all.

[kato13]

IMO A single vehicle is a single point of failure. I don't care how low maintenance fusion is supposed to be (i don't use it at the vehicle level anyway), there can still be failures and the team is lost without its vehicle.

I have done calculations for my teams to operate with 3, 2 or 1 HMMWV. The last one is pretty bare bones with half the members riding in a trailer.

I have considered horses and my covert first contact teams may use them.

[kato13]

Originally Posted by stormlion1

And Dog Kibble takes up a lot more room than MRE's.

My brain forced me to do the math on this.

Dogfood is actually much more compact.

An active 60lb (27 kg) dog would need 3 cups of premium food a day (~1400 cal). This works out to 1.5 Cubic feet for a 60 day supply.

120 MREs on the other hand would be almost 8 cubic feet (Over 9 if you keep them in cases). This is 2500 calories a day for sixty days. The MREs could be significantly compacted, as that is based on the 120 cubic inch brown bag with lots of air in it. Best case you could get it to 3 or 4 cubic feet, so it still loses on a per calorie (barely) and per day basis.

The fact that the dog food is dehydrated also helps with weight, though it does increase the need for clean water.

[kato13]

I forgot I made an Animal Kit, Dog Handling (Large) a while ago as part of my standard kits.


http://games.juhlin.com/equipment/ki...ml?parent=1145