Living in prime base

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by Matt W

4. Outdoor Life vs Indoor Life
IMHO, the subterranean sections are not intended for permanent occupation. Radiation and other hazards might mean that shelter is required for an initial few weeks or months but - after that - the plan would be for people to live and work outside Prime Base.

This is the only one I have a problem with.

First, conditions outside the base could reasonably make the nearby area unlivable for some number of years after the war - a stray nuke gets too close, and you won't want little Timmy playing outside until the radiation levels drop! The base and its personnel HAD to be prepared to stay underground for years.

Second, even without the NBC issues, basic security protocols will force Prime Base to maintain secrecy essentially as long as it is needed. The site was chosen for its desolation, a permanent community of hundreds or thousands of people out in the middle of the desert is going to eventually pinpoint the location as a major facility.

Third, an external Morrow town would require external Morrow protection. Can Prime Base spare the personnel to guard the gates of this proposed town? If a significant enemy force approached, (forgetting for the moment about secrecy) could Prime Base even defend it?

Last, but not least, where do the resources (human and material) come from to build this town? Does Prime Base have that many carpenters and plumbers? Can they justify the room to store hundreds or thousands of prefab houses and other facilities?

Personally, I think the base personnel are just going to have to suck it up, and testing for the ability to do so would need to be part of the screening. As for dependents, well... I can see three options:

1) Don't bring any. Seriously, select PB personnel from those with no dependents. Most are likely to be recruited in or immediately after their college years anyway, enforce on them at recruitment that signing on means not having kids and not forming any dependent relationships with anyone outside the Project.

2) Freeze em. Have a facility at or near PB where dependents can slumber away in cold sleep until a safe village can be established. Maybe they get lucky and it's a matter of months, maybe they don't and its a decade.

3) Combination of the two. Try to only recruit those without dependents, but if you really need Jane Physicist, then her somehow-unfit-for-the-Project husband can join her kids in cryo sleep and she'll just have to wait it out.

I personally like the last option, as it seems to balance the flexibility needed for recruiting while minimizing the non-contributing headcount. Plus, either of the last two options turn the "bury the kids" part of the original module into a "rescue the kids" part, and as a father I really like that idea better.

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Second, even without the NBC issues, basic security protocols will force Prime Base to maintain secrecy essentially as long as it is needed. The site was chosen for its desolation, a permanent community of hundreds or thousands of people out in the middle of the desert is going to eventually pinpoint the location as a major facility.

Third, an external Morrow town would require external Morrow protection. Can Prime Base spare the personnel to guard the gates of this proposed town? If a significant enemy force approached, (forgetting for the moment about secrecy) could Prime Base even defend it?

These two reasons are key to why Prime Base fell according to canon. Insurgents followed the crowds walking into the wilderness and security was insufficient to detect and then eventually deal with the situation. Keeping these "problems" will give you the outcome at Prime Base we have already seen. As story telling plot devices, these may not be problematic.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

These two reasons are key to why Prime Base fell according to canon. Insurgents followed the crowds walking into the wilderness and security was insufficient to detect and then eventually deal with the situation. Keeping these "problems" will give you the outcome at Prime Base we have already seen. As story telling plot devices, these may not be problematic.

I know that is why the Base fell, but creating a permanent Morrow colony would be even worse than a temporary aid station because it would be larger, permanent, constantly linked to the Base through heavy traffic, and utterly impossible to abandon. With so many people involved in the planning of the Project, I find it hard to believe that the idea of external settlement would be accepted as a realistic possibility.

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I know that is why the Base fell, but creating a permanent Morrow colony would be even worse than a temporary aid station because it would be larger, permanent, constantly linked to the Base through heavy traffic, and utterly impossible to abandon. With so many people involved in the planning of the Project, I find it hard to believe that the idea of external settlement would be accepted as a realistic possibility.

In its operational phase, you will have air traffic from the runway and helipad already making the location fairly obvious once it become common place to ship out custom parts, bring in samples, etc. Once that happens, some surface structures would just start to make sense. It seems likely that eventually you will have a semi-permanent settlement on the surface at or very near Prime Base. The only real question is when.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

In its operational phase, you will have air traffic from the runway and helipad already making the location fairly obvious once it become common place to ship out custom parts, bring in samples, etc. Once that happens, some surface structures would just start to make sense. It seems likely that eventually you will have a semi-permanent settlement on the surface at or very near Prime Base. The only real question is when.

And my point is that those are all Project assets, people for whom risking their lives is part of the job description and whose loss is an unfortunate cost of doing business. You do not necessarily need a "safe zone" to have those assets exposed and in use, but you DO need one to have your civilians out. How long does it take to secure things adequately to take that risk? I would be surprised if there was a "good" situation where you really felt you could secure the area and assemble housing and overcome the other problems in less than a year or two. And security concerns are likely to drive that back a couple of years more. At the point where you are so free to operate openly, it probably makes more sense to move major operations out of Nevada anyway!

Heck, if I were designing Prime and Second Base, I would design Prime to be in charge for the first 2-5 years and design Second to take over once open operations were possible. Prime Base needs to be tremendously secret and secure to get to and through the first stages of the Project, getting through after that has very different design considerations!

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

And my point is that those are all Project assets, people for whom risking their lives is part of the job description and whose loss is an unfortunate cost of doing business. You do not necessarily need a "safe zone" to have those assets exposed and in use, but you DO need one to have your civilians out. How long does it take to secure things adequately to take that risk? I would be surprised if there was a "good" situation where you really felt you could secure the area and assemble housing and overcome the other problems in less than a year or two. And security concerns are likely to drive that back a couple of years more. At the point where you are so free to operate openly, it probably makes more sense to move major operations out of Nevada anyway!

Heck, if I were designing Prime and Second Base, I would design Prime to be in charge for the first 2-5 years and design Second to take over once open operations were possible. Prime Base needs to be tremendously secret and secure to get to and through the first stages of the Project, getting through after that has very different design considerations!

I do see where you are coming from and agree the security risk arising from being overrun by refugees, warlords and religious fanatics in the early years if Prime has a more or less permanent surface structure is great. A permanent settlement in the early years is problem. But we are talking about people with families and the desire to get back to a "normal" existence again. What policies were in place for this is the question. One that gets very murky.

The Counsel of Tomorrow was assembled by Bruce Morrow. He told them what he saw and must have had a way to reasonably prove he traveled time. Prime Base is part of the plan the CoT was working toward, but Bruce Morrow wanted no knowledge of its location. How much of the leadership adopted a similar viewpoint, assigning plans for Prime Bases location and construction to the equivalent of a Special Access Program. Only those in the SAP would know where Prime Base would be and what the operational protocols would be with no oversight and review except in a need to know situation. The members would most likely be engineers, psychologist and the workers building and planning for many years underground. Those with extensive military and security backgrounds would have been pressed into the role of instructors doing combat training for team members as they enter the Project and not available to be in the SAP. Security planning might get limited to operational security during construction. As such, the discussions mentioned in the Prime Base module that lead to building the settlement could have been discussed prior to the war and considered acceptable risks. This would seem to be supported by the lack of sound military planning during the failed rescue and the porous security perimeter that allowed insurgents to bring in two WMDs into the settlement.

Better planning could have been done, that is a given. The compartmentalized secrecy in the Project tends to work against coordination and sharing of limited resources.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

I do see where you are coming from and agree the security risk arising from being overrun by refugees, warlords and religious fanatics in the early years if Prime has a more or less permanent surface structure is great. A permanent settlement in the early years is problem. But we are talking about people with families and the desire to get back to a "normal" existence again. What policies were in place for this is the question. One that gets very murky.

But also one that should have been addressed in multiple ways before PB was even staffed. The staff at PB could not be the kind of people who seriously needed to get back to a "normal" existence any time soon, any more than the field teams could be the kind of people who wanted to lead ordinarily selfish lives without risk of violence. If they cannot find people able and willing to live underground for 5 years (rough estimate), and then enforce it, then they cannot have Prime Base!

Originally Posted by mmartin798

The Counsel of Tomorrow was assembled by Bruce Morrow. He told them what he saw and must have had a way to reasonably prove he traveled time. Prime Base is part of the plan the CoT was working toward, but Bruce Morrow wanted no knowledge of its location. How much of the leadership adopted a similar viewpoint, assigning plans for Prime Bases location and construction to the equivalent of a Special Access Program.

I've worked those kinds of programs, and while the details must necessarily be compartmented the overall philosophy and SOP's cannot. Otherwise you wind up with Thunderdome (tm). BEM is a bit of a special case because he is a time traveler, but the CoT had to have a few people shoulder-deep in planning Prime Base.

Originally Posted by mmartin798

Only those in the SAP would know where Prime Base would be and what the operational protocols would be with no oversight and review except in a need to know situation.

Without a general awareness of how PB operates, the entire rest of the Project cannot even really start. You can't set up comminications or command protocols, you cannot lay in appropriate supplies or plan distribution networks, etc. There is a reason that half the people authorized on special access programs don't show up for the meetings - they're in charge of related projects that need a certain amount of information in order for their own projects to work. Or they're in charge of integrating the SAP product into a cohesive force.

Originally Posted by mmartin798

The members would most likely be engineers, psychologist and the workers building and planning for many years underground. Those with extensive military and security backgrounds would have been pressed into the role of instructors doing combat training for team members as they enter the Project and not available to be in the SAP. Security planning might get limited to operational security during construction. As such, the discussions mentioned in the Prime Base module that lead to building the settlement could have been discussed prior to the war and considered acceptable risks. This would seem to be supported by the lack of sound military planning during the failed rescue and the porous security perimeter that allowed insurgents to bring in two WMDs into the settlement.

This plays into one of the basic problems with PB in particular, TMP* in general, and fiction in very general. TMP starts off with the idea that these very competent were recruited, given tremendous resources and the advantage of knowing the future, but them for narrative purposes suddenly turn incompetent when called upon to do the exact jobs they trained for! Yes, the description of the fall of PB demonstrates a tremendous lack of planning and there are a number of inexplicably poor decisions, but the problem with letting all that stand (much less using it as the inspiration for more bad planning and decisions!) is that you can't build off of stupid. At least, you can't build smart off of stupid.

These are supposed to be competent people, if they are going to make predictably bad decisions, there needs to be a good reason why it would happen, otherwise they weren't competent. And if they weren't competent, then the game starts to look like Paranoia.

Incidentally, I always thought that the planners should have sought out a good ballistic missile sub commander to run PB. Get someone who has already been trained for isolation and to manage a ridiculously huge responsibility, and then give them a decade of additional training and experience putting the Project together - they wouldn't bat an eye at doing what needed to be done even when it was what they didn't want to do.