Project Bases

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by kalos72

Great stuff Dragoon, thank you!

I cannot find the Fallback module in PDF but I will keep looking.

Do you have some thoughts on how big the area is for a Project Team?

As for the relay stations, great point and idea. I hadn't thought about this really, is SSB true voice communications versus CW/Morse?

I typically assign a Recon Team a primary operational area of 200kms. They will often have a secondary operational area of about 500kms from their bolt-hole. I want the recon teams to be out and about.

MARS Teams are typically responsible for a 400km area.

Science Teams run about 1,200km area.

[kalos72]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

I typically assign a Recon Team a primary operational area of 200kms. They will often have a secondary operational area of about 500kms from their bolt-hole. I want the recon teams to be out and about.

MARS Teams are typically responsible for a 400km area.

Science Teams run about 1,200km area.

Thanks for the detail dragoon.

Let's take Arkansas as an example, at 137000 square KMS.
685 Recon Teams@ 6 per team=4110 Recon Members
342 MARS Teams@10 per team-3420 MARS Members
114 Science Teams@10 per team = 1140 Science members

Is that the sort of breakdown you see?

[dragoon500ly]

Command and Control

The “US Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms”, defines command and control as: "The exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission. Also called C2.

The edition of the Dictionary "As Amended Through April 2010" elaborates, "Command and control functions are performed through an arrangement of personnel, equipment, communications, facilities, and procedures employed by a commander in planning, directing, coordinating, and controlling forces and operations in the accomplishment of the mission." However, this sentence is missing from the "command and control" entry for the edition "As Amended Through 15 August 2014."

Commanding officers are assisted in executing these tasks by specialized staff officers and enlisted personnel. These military staff are a group of officers and enlisted personnel that provides a bi-directional flow of information between a commanding officer and subordinate military units.

The purpose of a military staff is mainly that of providing accurate, timely information which by category represents information on which command decisions are based. The key application is that of decisions that effectively manage unit resources. While information flow toward the commander is a priority, information that is useful or contingent in nature is communicated to lower staffs and units

Another term often heard in the later part of the 20th Century is “C3I” or Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence. This is further defined as:

Command: The exercise of authority based upon certain knowledge to attain an objective.

Control: The process of verifying and correcting activity such that the objective or goal of command is accomplished.

Communication: Ability to exercise the necessary liaison to exercise effective command between tactical or strategic units to command.

Intelligence: Includes collection as well as analysis and distribution of information.

Typically, C3I is exercised in a command and control center is typically a secure room or building in a government, military or prison facility that operates as the agency's dispatch center, surveillance monitoring center, coordination office and alarm monitoring center all in one. Command and control centers are operated by a government or municipal agency.

Within the Project, C3I is exercised through a tier of command bases. Overall control is exercised through Prime Base.

Prime Base was always envisioned as a facility that would remain awake during the War and its immediate aftermath before recalling the frozen teams. Within Prime, there would be a dedicated team of professionals who would observe the War, collecting data but helpless to affect the outcome. This information, unobtainable in any other way would be of critical importance in determining what teams would first be activated and their immediate mission priorities. Once the teams were recalled, then Prime would act as the “national command authority” for the Project.

So, important is the role of Prime Base, it is the only major facility that has an identical duplicate, Omicron Base, that has its personnel frozen and ready to be recalled if anything happens to Prime Base.

For further details of Prime and Omicron Base, I refer you to the module “Prime Base” as well as the Prime Base thread that has been running on this forum.

In the chain of command, the next tier is the ten Regional Command Bases. Each of these bases contain the regional command team, a communications team, a science team, a MARS team, four Recon teams, a medical team and a logistic support team, all told some 150 personnel work and live here.

GENERAL LAYOUT
(from Chris Thompson on the morrowproject@cuenet.com )

Each base is completely buried with a vehicle access, an aviation access and five personnel exits.

The base itself consists of four levels, and a separate reactor, warehouse complex and communications array.

LEVEL ONE

The first level consists of a decontamination section (for the vehicle and aviation access points) and the bases vehicle parking bay/repair bay. The vehicle access ramp leads down into the vehicle parking bay which holds the bases’ complement of vehicles and aircraft. This area measures some 300-meters in length by 200-meters wide with a ceiling height of 20-meters. Around two of the walls are racks holding essential supplies for the vehicles. Along one wall are larger racks holding tires for the bases’ vehicles.

In one corner of the parking bay is an aircraft lift (30-meters by 30-meters) capable of lifting loads of up to 30,000kgs. This lift runs down to level three.

Opposite the aircraft lift is a personnel entrance that leads to a tunnel that runs roughly along the vehicle ramp.

The attached repair bay is 100-meters long by 50-meters wide with a height of 20-meters. The repair holds several racks capable of holding the weight of any ground vehicle assigned to the base. The walls of the repair bay are lined with tool lockers and racks of spare parts for common Project vehicles. Along the far wall of the repair bay is a section measuring 100-meters long by 10-meters wide with a height of 10-meters. Here are located a series of workshops and offices for the logistical support team. The shops on the first level can handle most vehicle repair needs as well as fabricating larger parts in the machine shop.

Located on an outside wall are two sets of doors, one is a lift that connects all the levels, the second leads to a set of stairs that wrap around the lift shaft.

LEVEL TWO

This level consists of personnel quarters and kitchen/mess hall, rec room, library, computer complex, hospital and offices for the command team, including a map room/situation room and two briefing rooms.

LEVEL THREE

This level holds the aircraft hangar, workshop and stores. The hanger bay takes up 100-meters by 100-meters by 20-meters. The rest of the level mainly consists of store rooms containing spare parts for the bases aircraft. An area adjacent to the lift houses the aviation workshop.

LEVEL FOUR

This level holds the environmental systems for the base including NBC filtration units and a 100,000-gallon tank for fresh water as well as air circulation, heating and cooling and sewage treatment facilities. Along one wall is a gym with weight room, and a firing range. Around the outer wall is a running track. On the south wall are the access corridors to the warehouse complex.

WAREHOUSE COMPLEX
There are four tunnels leading out and down from the base for 100 meters, at the end of each tunnel is a 100-meter by 100-meters by 20-meter storage chamber. Access to the tunnels is controlled through chip readers at the security doors leading to the tunnels and at security doors at the storage chamber end of the tunnel.

Chamber One houses the bases armory and munitions storage.

Chamber Two houses spare parts for MPVs and the bases aircraft.

Chamber Three houses general issue equipment.

Chamber Four houses food stores.

REACTOR CHAMBER
In the middle of level four is a small personal lift (4-man capacity) and a ladder behind a lead-lined security door. This leads down 250 meters to another lead-lined security door. Passing through this second door leads to a 15 meter by 15 meters by 10 meter reinforced concrete room (with lead lining within the walls) Here rests the bases fusion reactor and its support equipment. Along the walls are a series of lockers holding tools, and spare parts for the reactor.

COMMUNICATIONS ARRAY
Located on a hillside overlooking the base is a communications array that includes radio antennas, radio mast, microwave relays and satellite dishes. With this array, the base can communicate throughout its region as well as communicate with Prime Base.

VEHICLES ASSIGNED

6 Ranger MPV
8 V-150 APCs
4 V-150 w/20mm
2 V-150 w/81mm mortars
6 2.5-ton trucks
10 Quadrunners

AIRCRAFT ASSIGNED
2 Otter aircraft
2 Beaver aircraft
2 OH-6 helicopters
4 UH-60 helicopters

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by kalos72

Thanks for the detail dragoon.

Let's take Arkansas as an example, at 137000 square KMS.
685 Recon Teams@ 6 per team=4110 Recon Members
342 MARS Teams@10 per team-3420 MARS Members
114 Science Teams@10 per team = 1140 Science members

Is that the sort of breakdown you see?

Don't go by a KMS, I also modify by critical infrastructure, military bases, etc. Don't forget I also use a 400km secondary operational area, so a Recon team might be responsible for an area of 600km in total.

Each of the Regional Command Bases have the following either assigned directly to the base, or to support regional operations:
Command Team
Communications Team
Operations Team
Logistics & Support Team
Aviation Team
Power Generation Team
MARS Team (Base Security)
MARS Team (HAAM)
MARS TEAM (Special Operations)
Recon Team (LRP)
Recon Team (LRP)
Recon Team (LRP)
Recon Team (LRP)
2-4 Engineering Teams
1-2 Frozen Watch Teams

Because these teams are intended to operate throughout the region, they trend towards the larger size (18-30 personnel).

Each state on the region would have the following:
Command Team
Communications Team
Medical Team
Science Team
1-3 MARS Team
1-8 Recon Teams
1-3 Engineering Teams
Frozen Watch Team
0-2 Decontamination Teams
Team sizes range from as few as six to as many as eighteen. For those states that do not encompass a large area (most of the New England states for example). They would have a command team and 1-2 recon teams assigned OR would fall under a Combined Team that would cover 2-3 of the smaller states.

The MARS Special Operations Teams range from 24-32 personnel in size and are supported by:

Command Team (6 men)
Communications Team (10 men)
Operations Team (15 men)
Logistics & Support Team (30 men)
Power Generation Team (10 men)
Science Team (6 men)
Aviation Team (18 men)
MARS Team (Base Security) (18 men)
Recon Team (LRP) (12 men)
Recon Team(LRP) (12 men)
Recon Team (LRP) (12 men)

Combined Teams range widely in size and composition. These would be groupings intended to secure a critical Project asset (such as Desert Search/Starnaman Incident), dedicated towards a specific area (Final Watch), or with a specific objective (Lonestar).

[kalos72]

So if you RECON Teams can support roughly 600km, is it radius from the bolthole?

How would you calculate the number of recon teams in Arkansas, NOT taking into account special locations or concerns, just pure area?

I am thinking of putting a RECON Team for each County and then a group of Counties would get a higher level command, say District Operations Center/Facility,under my naming, that would house the Specialty Teams and Supplies.

So for Arkansas I would have something like 75 RECON Teams, one for each County. And then assign District Commands for every 1 Million people or something?

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by kalos72

So if you RECON Teams can support roughly 600km, is it radius from the bolthole?

How would you calculate the number of recon teams in Arkansas, NOT taking into account special locations or concerns, just pure area?

I am thinking of putting a RECON Team for each County and then a group of Counties would get a higher level command, say District Operations Center/Facility,under my naming, that would house the Specialty Teams and Supplies.

So for Arkansas I would have something like 75 RECON Teams, one for each County. And then assign District Commands for every 1 Million people or something?

The basic problem for the Project is how big can you be while maintaining security and how many survivors can you help. The best breakdown I have ever seen can be found on the supply bunker web site under "Social Engineering and Sociogenesis, The Project's Real Goals", here Steve Jackson theorizes a Project of 20,000 broken down into 5,400 recon, 2,200 science, 2,200 MARS, 2,400 medical, 1,600 engineering, 1,600 agriculture, 1,400 transportation and 3,200 support.

Now, I feel that with the longer lead that I use, Project reaches some 50,000 personnel, I use different percentages, but the big three are Recon, MARS/Science and Medical.

According to 3rd edition, Arkansas has five major targets (not including that speed trap town that gave me a ticket!), these are Little Rock with 2MT, Pine Bluff Army Arsenal with 3 500KT warheads, Blythville AFB with a biological warhead, Little Rock AFB with 100 2MT warheads and Russelville Nuclear Reactor with 4 200KT warheads.

Based on the target scatter and likely fallout patterns, this rules out planning on a team per county and even a team based on estimated population. Using FEMA and Hurricane Katrina as an example, the entire impacted area received assistance from just under 500 FEMA employees, a bit over 2,000 civil defensive personnel, roughly 4,000 Regular and National Guard personnel and an estimated 20,000 contractors. About 27,000 personnel to assist the three states impacted by the hurricane...and it was not enough!!! It took over three years to rebuild enough to have all the assistance leave and the coastal regions have still not economically recovered. Even in 2017, New Orleans still has areas of the city that has not been cleaned up, let alone rebuilt.

The major argument about the Project is the numbers, with an estimated 95% death rate, you are looking at some 332,500,000 dead out of a population of 350,000,000 or only some 17,500,000 survivors. 50,000 people are still not enough....

[dragoon500ly]

In the MP module “Final Watch” part of the combined group is Medical Facility VF-1C, originally this was cut to save space. So here is a description of a Project Medical Base.

MEDICAL FACILITY VF-1C from “The Final Watch”

By: Joseph Benedetto, Jr.

INTRODUCTION
The task of the Morrow Project- the rebuilding of a devastated civilization--was one so massive that there was simply not enough time before the War to plan and provide for everything that would be needed. To make the Project world, the Morrow Project Planners decided to use a flexible approach to the problem.

In the case of Medicine, it was realized that the Project could not hope to provide the medical care and aid necessary for an entire population two or three years after a nuclear war. Instead, the Planners went with the idea, where possible, of providing a core of dedicated, trained and experienced medical personnel who could work with the surviving doctors and medics, rather than replacing them. These MP teams would be provided with a large stock of drugs, medicine and supplies which would be used to assist the population until the civilian sector could start providing such things again. While the Project could have provided entire hospital facilities (and in some cases actually did) it was more practical to go with a system that was flexible enough to provide at least ample, rudimentary medical support to a wide area. Thus, was born the concept of the Medical Facilities.

Each Medical Facility was given three basic items: trained personnel, drugs and supplies, and specialized equipment. The actual hospital building itself was expected to be a local pre-War hospital that was still standing, or at worst any pre-War structure that was available. (Two pre-fabricated Quonset Huts were included at VF-1C for use in an emergency, such as providing shelter for patients of an epidemic or other post-War disaster.) In any case, the first concern of the Project was to provide trained medical personnel: Specialty Team VB-1, which consists of 21 doctors and paramedics who are frozen in place at Medical Facility VF-1C. The Project recruited General Practitioners rather than specialists; each candidate had to have several years of experience working either in rural America or undeveloped Third World countries, treating people in less-than-ideal conditions, dealing with sicknesses not often seen by modern doctors. Paramedics were chosen for skills in emergency medicine and problem management.

The second concern of the Project was to provide medical supplies. VF-1C contains a considerably large supply of drugs, plasma substitutes, bandages, hypodermic injectors, insulin, and so forth, all of it stored in inviolate storage of varying degrees -- inert gas, vacuum packaging, and the like. It was realized how quickly the War would deplete such stocks at hospitals and warehouses, and VF-1C is designed to help alleviate that shortage until the normal civilian supply could be restored.

The third concern that needed to be addressed was specialized equipment. Not stethoscopes or penlights, but rather x-ray machines, CAT scanners, and so on. The storage facility at VF-1C contains at least one of every major piece of equipment that might be found in a well-stocked Trauma or Emergency Center, as well as such needed objects like power in the form of Fusion Packs, as well as objects like the "Water Treatment Unit, Portable, Trailered" and the "Trauma Treatment Unit, Emergency Medical, Automated, Computerized, Portable, Trailered, Mini-Med" (both of which are detailed in PF-005, THE STARNAMAN INCIDENT). Such items, although not stored in large numbers, were vital to proper medical care.

Unlike Regional Supply Bases (like as Delta Base) which were placed far from the target zones, it was felt that Medical Facilities should be placed closer to the cities so as to provide medical care to those who would likely most need it.

These facilities and the teams of medics frozen at them were not expected to do the entire job of doctoring, but to receive a large amount of assistance from survivor doctors, paramedics and nurses, and from survivors or other MP personnel temporarily pressed into service to help them.

Transportation was a major concern; for this reason, the Project provided VF-1C with 6 Ranger Ambulances, 4 Ranger APCs and 5 XR311 jeeps with trailers (it was expected that the Project Medical Personnel would make house calls!).

As with other Morrow efforts, there was not enough time before the War to do everything. There were a small number of Medical Facilities and an even smaller number of complete Hospitals completed, and all were hidden in ways to conceal their true nature; no two camouflage jobs were the same and each site was hidden carefully.

PD NOTE: Much of this information would be generally available to the Command team. Specifics are up to the PD.

Because it is so large, a Medical Facility is awfully hard to conceal. In the case of VF-1C, the first of the Medical Facilities, the Planners found an ideal site: a very large, old warehouse along the Burlington & Northern Railroad line just north of Auburn. The site was obtained by Wilkinson Storage, a dummy company actually runs by Morrow Industries, and construction started in 1965. The new owners were busy renovating the warehouse when it was "found" that the old foundation was faulty, and would have to be completely excavated from within the site and rebuilt. In early 1967 it was "discovered" that the new foundation work was substandard, and the work had to be done over, extending the construction time (all of which allowed enough time for the construction of VF-1C beneath the warehouse). The warehouse was finished in November of 1966. When completed, VF-1C was a huge, two-level underground storehouse prepared to hold medical personnel, equipment and supplies.

Since the parent company had supposedly been bought out before the warehouse renovation was completed, the site remained empty for several months before being purchased by United Consolidated Corporation, a division of Morrow Industries. (This allowed the Project enough time to obtain and assemble all of the equipment and supplies that would be stored at VF-1C.)

United Consolidated soon moved in and began using the warehouse as a distribution center. (Much of what initially entered the warehouse was used to stock the Medical Facility buried beneath it; this included Medical Team VB-1 and all of their vehicles. After all, who pays that much attention to what people are moving into a plain old warehouse?)

The warehouse above VE-1C saw much use over the next 20 years, as Morrow Industries (in the form of United Consolidated Corp.) used the site to store and transport large portions of the Morrow Project gear and supplies, especially cache materials and such, for distribution to Morrow sites across the Pacific Northwest. Being a warehouse, no one was suspicious of the large numbers of trucks that came and went, loading and unloading crates all the time. What else does a warehouse do? It had only the usual minimal security expected of such a place: a guard shack, one guard, and little else. VF-1C does not have complicated defenses or weaponry; since it was a closed site that would not see extensive use, such defense was judged unnecessary. Likewise, the personnel of Medical Team VB-1 were given only minimum armament for self-defense, such as pistols and smoke grenades (see Standard Equipment, Medical Issue, p33 of the Game book). Heavy defensive firepower, if necessary, could easily be brought to bear in the form of the MARS teams at either Black Diamond or Southworth.

Entry to the Facility was not normally possible until after the Medical team was awakened; the site was constructed to be used mainly as a storage site until a suitable above-ground facility, preferably an existing hospital, could be found. Thus the only possible entry points would be through either of the standard emergency exits (one of which comes up within the warehouse, another outside of it) and/or through the Primary Exit, which is the usual ramp that rises up, but at VF-1C the exit point is hidden behind a thin brick wall at one end of the warehouse interior structure, which would be broken through when the hydraulic rams forced open the Main Exit doors. Because of its age, VF-1C was constructed with, and uses, technology that might be considered somewhat old; within the facility there is no automation of the level that would be found in a later Morrow base. The members of VB-1 were expected to simply walk through to whatever shelf they wanted and physically remove the material they needed. Also, because of the presence of a team on-site, it was felt that extensive internal/external defenses were not necessary. Again, the main function of the site after activation was merely storage of materials until they could be moved out to a more practical location. To this end the team could simply close the Primary Exit armored outer doors and relies on them to keep potential looters away from the medical Supplies. The presence of MARS Team L-3 at Black Diamond would help insure the safety of Team VB-1.

[dragoon500ly]

This is from the supply bunker web site, I've include it simply because it is teh sort of off-beat thing that catches my eye...

Morrow Project, Frozen Watch, Emergency Shelters

By: Joseph Benedetto Jr.

Snipped from Space Gamer/ Fantasy Gamer #85, before it went into print.

"...this combination of FW Team & Shelter was not standard; more like an experiment undertaken during construction (hence the "(S)" or Special designation in the team's code assignment."

The typical MP Emergency Shelter is a one-and-a-half story shed made of steel-reinforced concrete. Normally the visible shed walls look like stuccoed concrete block. This was done to make the building appear unappealing to the eye: utilitarian and cheap. The roof was made from several sheets of rustproofed steel supported by steel I-beam framing and welded together to provide a continuous sloping surface. Morrow industries engineers coated this roof to look like a cheap, common tern-metal (sometimes known as a "tin-metal") roof. The double doors are big enough to admit a truck, and the windows have swinging metal shutters that are designed to be fireproof. (When in an area where there could be forest fires, the buildings “should” (be fireproof, right?)

MP Emergency Sheds are few in number and are only found in remote areas--mostly the mountains, and a few in the deserts. The most common way of disguising one in the mountains was to place it at altitude in a forested region and then have Morrow Industries workers "age" the building so that it appeared to have been abandoned 20 or more years ago.

The normal cover was as a Forestry Service Fire Equipment Storage shed. This included appropriate signs on the front of the building--US FORESTRY SERVICE ... FIREFIGHTING EQUIPMENT ... US GOV'T PROPERTY. Inside, they would put in things that made it appear as though various items had “once” been stored here--a jeep and a water tank, perhaps; there were empty racks obviously designed to hold shovels and hardhats, plus other storage areas now all forlorn and empty. Everything would point to a time, once, when this shed had been placed and stocked for an emergency...a time now long past.
The entrance to the cache of MP emergency gear was a stainless steel panel set in the floor underneath the base of the ladder to the roof, built in such a way as to appear to be a metal floor-pad. The unmarked card slot would be in the wall behind the ladder so as to be rather inconspicuous. Obviously, only a MP member looking for a cache would think to check this panel and then the surrounding area for a card slot.

Once everything was in place the Morrow Industry people would then artfully aged the building, making the vehicle entry doors appear very rusty, covering much of the floor inside with dirt, taking the time to make everything look, feel and smell as though it had been in here, forgotten, for 20-odd years. (A calendar from 1967 did wonders for this effect.) Windows were smeared with dust; cabinets, shutters and the entrance doors were all left half open; every effort was made to make the place look old and abandoned. This included the access road. This was a dead end logging road cut from an original dirt road and leading up to the shed. (This is how the construction crew got in and the stuff got loaded into the shelter.) Once the shed was artfully disguised to look empty and abandoned they shut everything but the front vehicle doors, which were left standing open. This would allow animals to peek inside, and allow the weather to rain in, staining the (waterproof concrete) floor dirt and making it look and feel "old".

After that, the engineers seeded the area all around the shed with seeds representative of the local underbrush, to give the building an overgrown look. They then carefully planted a few young saplings in the entrance road, to make it appear as though no one had driven up here in years. The slightly open front doors would encourage the curious hiker stumbling onto the site to actually investigate it, and see for himself that the shed was just that--a shed.

The whole effect was such that within a month the local underbrush had grown up as desired, and the building blended in perfectly. Of course, now, 150 years after the War, the sheds are in poor condition due to 150 harsh mountain winters; the window shutters have often rusted completely away and the vehicle doors have rusted and fallen away; the windows may no longer be intact, and there is often a good chance that a bird has built a nest in the chimney, blocking it. Still, the concrete will remain viable, and if the roof is intact (or at least doesn't leak too badly) the shed can still be used as a shelter.