An Australian Morrow Project

[mmartin798]

Even predictions of nuclear winter are not as bad in the southern hemisphere. One prediction only shows a 30% reduction in crops. They warn that this could still be bad if there is a large influx of refugees. So the disruption of services in Papau New Guinea and other parts of Indonesia may cause conflict on the northern shores. Alice Springs will be iffy thanks to Pine Gap. Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Perth are likely hit hard. I have to admit I am not very familiar with military bases and power stations in Australia.

Given all that, the role of something like the Morrow Project in Australia may be more focused on helping the agriculture with faster maturing strains of wheat and other crops to make the most of the shorter, drier and cooler growing seasons. They would also have more teams suited less for recon and more towards refugee management and re-settlement. Given the distances and amount of supplies needed, I would assume that we would see land trains larger than already present in Australia, or at the very least many more of them. A fair number of the will be fusion powered.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

This is a more workable situation I think, particularly with the idea of refugees coming in from Indo-Pacific nations swamping the country and helping to deplete any resources available.
In terms of the road trains in Australia, it's common to see two trailers being hauled, these seem to be the most common images in the media. However some trucking companies regularly haul three and four trailers and it is not unusual to see some trucks hauling five trailers and sometimes more.

This is pretty normal because the rail network isn't viable in the more remote regions of Australia. Road transport is the only way and to achieve decent income, economy of scale means hauling many more trailers than would be seen in the more developed parts of the country. So in short, we have a precedent already for long road trains so it won't be much of a leap to having them in an Aussie version of the Project.

[mmartin798]

I have seen pictures of the triples and and quads from Australia. Quite impressive looking. Though given the need for road trains in Australia, the project there would likely have many teams equipped to either maintain or replace existing road infrastructure. Probably with a large number of graders, rollers. compactors, scrapers and loaders. They could either have a concrete plant to make a sealed roadway or just a crusher to convert broken concrete into material for making gravel road or, if they have the tar available, a chip and seal roadway. Growing up I remember the summers spent at my grandparents cabin. There is a quarry nearby and there were hundreds of loaded doubles running along the chip and seal road every month. The road withstood it well with relatively modest maintenance.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Typically , they'll use a lot less road working equipment. The vast majority of roads in the outback are unpaved because it's simply too expensive to seal them and then maintain them. They scrape the road out of the gravel and then level it every few years with a scraper and that's about it.

Australia has an average population density as of late 2018 of 3.3 people per square kilometre. In some outback areas, that density can drop to as little as 0.02 people per square km. We have a number of towns in outback areas revolving around primary industry and the distance between those towns can be hundreds of kilometres from each other so basically, it's just too damned expensive to maintain those "roads" as anything more than wide gravel tracks.

Only specific roads (e.g. state or national highways) are sealed and maintained however they generally travel from one major city to another (or major regional town) and if some smaller towns along the way happen to be nearby, they can claim the benefits of a sealed road as well. Everywhere else gets gravel tracks.

Any Project team will have to be far more self-sufficient than teams in North America or Europe because of the lack of population here. When you're 500 kilometres away from the nearest town with a doctor, you have to manage any medical emergency yourself. When you're 200 kilometres away from the nearest service station, you have to carry plenty of spares, not just fuel but tyres, fanbelts, radiator hoses, tools and more importantly, water, plenty of water (unless you know the area, you aren't going to find anywhere with water until you hit the next town - unless you're lucky and happen to be travelling near a river).
And so on and so on.

I think in this regard, a Project set up for Australia could probably focus more on re-establishing trade/transport and connecting societies with each other rather than spending major effort in rebuilding towns etc. etc. Most of those outback towns are going to be too remote to be worth destroying if we're talking a war type cataclysm and they're too spread out for major spread of disease, earthquake, meteor strike, fire or flooding to damage all of them beyond rebuilding. It needs to be a catastrophe of apocalyptic scale to smash all those spreadout towns to a point where they cannot do something to help themselves.

[mmartin798]

I agree that in the arid outback, the need for equipment to make and create roads is minimal. Unimproved roads would hold up pretty well. But in the north coast of the Northern Territory, New South Wales, and parts of Queensland where they get significant rainfall, you would want an improved all-weather road, like a gravel road. These would require a bit more equipment than just a dozen graders to make and maintain, especially if there is significant truck traffic.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Yeah they definitely want paved roads in some of those places, but in many areas they have to do without. During the wet season there's often a lot of flooding that makes the roads unpassable regardless of being sealed or not.
In some places in the far north it's not uncommon to see roads closed due to the wet seasons.
The Western Australian, Northern Territory and Queensland governments regularly post info on road hazards and what roads are okay to use because of this.
Haha, I call them roads when in fact they're dirt or gravel tracks.
We have just over half a million kilometres out of 900,000 km that are unpaved. However the government has been trying to convert the most important rural/outback unpaved roads to paved for the last few decades.

Having said all that, the quickest way to get communities back in touch with each other is via trade and for trade in Australian, you need roads. So yes I can see your point. Having the Project re-establishing roads is probably the quickest way to get that trade back in operation.

[mmartin798]

So to get a feel for what the Australian Project might prepare for, we should look at what they would likely expect.

The nuclear exchange between China and the US would likely force surviving naval units from both sides most likely south, as Vietnam and Korea would probably suffered heavy damage as well to ports capable of large deep sea ships.This would put highly trained and armed men in places like the Philippines and Indonesia. There would also be some military and refugee movement into Malaysia. This may also displace some refugees into the Java Islands.

Much would seem to stabilize for a short time, until the resource pressure on the smaller island causes another wave of refugee movement. A good portion of this would be through the archipelago toward the larger island of Papua New Guinea. It is likely that from here, refugees may finally make their way to Australia by making the relatively short route to Queensland, or even island hopping the same route.

I would suspect some organized pirate activity, and a possible beach head, from elements that arise from the displaced navies on the more temperate northern shores of Western Australia, Northern Territory and possible getting close to Queensland. There may be some activity around Perth, if for no other reason than to try and find pre-war technology in decent condition for use, repair or parts.

At about the 25 year mark, Australia would see refugees encroaching natives in the northern coastal Queensland area; pirates looking for resources and labor; the outback areas adapting relatively quickly to the new norm and wanting to keep it that way; Australian agriculture being affected by the shorter, cooler and dryer growing seasons being unable to realistically sustaining the external pressures for crops and still serving the native Australian survivors. Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales would become rather resource abundant, and therefor an attractor for the bands of refugees.

That's my first, relatively simplistic look at what will happen. The Project will have to fill in the blanks to keep stability and restoration in this climate.