Supplies was automatic weapons

[tsofian]

When I first started playing TMP i questioned a group rebuilding civilization needing military grade weapons. But being a prolific reader of science-fiction and a variety of "After whatever" books, I've come to the conclusion that the Project does indeed need military grade weapons, not only to protect themselves, but the survivors who need protection from those who are willing to do anything and everything to anybody who has what they want.

This is where TM1-1's shortfalls start to read its ugly head. From a logistical standpoint alone, the Project is doomed to failure.

Assigning six small caches, whose humanitarian supplies amount to a few sacks of seed, a box of two of books and tools, simply isn't going to work. In order to provide for any meaningful level of support until survivors can become self-sustaining averages some 25 pounds per person, per day for anywhere up to six months. In other words one person for six months requires 4,500lbs of supplies...if your survivor community numbers, say 300 peple, for the same period of time, we are now looking at 405 tons. What the Project needs are lots of 5-ton and 10-ton trucks, not V-150s!

This brings up some interesting points. I think there is a couple of things here that are worth noting. First, the 3-5 year period is going to mean lots of people who survived the initial few days of war are going to succumb to all sorts of things. The folks the characters encounter will already be making it on their own, they don't need to be spoon fed for six months. They do need to be brought back to a higher level of social organization and technological sophistication, not be coached through basic survival issues.

Second, the 3-5 year period means a ton of supplies will be still laying around from the prewar days. In my idea of the backstory, the Project Planners did a maxi-min study to see when population would start to stabilize and the remains of material civilization would decay and tried to find a sweet spot where people were starting to do better and lots of stuff still survives.

[dragoon500ly]

This brings up some interesting points. I think there is a couple of things here that are worth noting. First, the 3-5 year period is going to mean lots of people who survived the initial few days of war are going to succumb to all sorts of things. The folks the characters encounter will already be making it on their own, they don't need to be spoon fed for six months. They do need to be brought back to a higher level of social organization and technological sophistication, not be coached through basic survival issues.

Second, the 3-5 year period means a ton of supplies will be still laying around from the prewar days. In my idea of the backstory, the Project Planners did a maxi-min study to see when population would start to stabilize and the remains of material civilization would decay and tried to find a sweet spot where people were starting to do better and lots of stuff still survives.

Hmm, trying to provide support for a survivor community...

If you use the canon cache lists, humanitarian assistance is quite literally, a few bags of seeds, a scratch plow, a couple of boxes of textbooks and a box of tools. It's not until you see the supply lists for Delta Base and Fallback that you start to see some consideration of what is needed. And that list barely scratches the surface!

Would a survivor community need food stocks, possibly, depending on weather conditons, better plan on humanitarian rations, infant food, radiation-resistant seed stock, insecticides, fertilizers, farming tools, parts to repair agriculture machinery, and so on. Would medical supplies be useful Everything from medical kits, to X-Ray machines, to surgical suites. Building supplies, maybe not lumber or bricks, but a powered saw mill As you can see, the possible lists are long.

Every pallet of material the Project begs, borrows, steals, or purchases would still be not enough. We are not talking tons of supplies, but rather millions of tons of supplies, and the machinery to build factories to build more supplies. It goes on and on.

This is why, in my opinion, the Project spends trillions in building an infrastructure that has to rebuild civilization.

I'm trying to get my greedy little paws on some of the lists of humanitarian supplies that are sent on disaster relief efforts, when and as I acquire these, I'll post here, it really is interesting reading!

[ChalkLine]

It is probably best that the project members know that these massive stockpiles exist but also know that these stockpiles won't be revealed by the Project until most of their work is done. As the Project is gone, finding those stockpiles could be their new mission after their stabilisation work

[Father Fletch]

Some Online Resources

I did a little bit of online searching and found the following links.

List of numerous relief supplies.
The International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent web page has many kits. In the list proper you can drill down to see what each kit carries. tldr: this is a quite long list, and really only deals with emergency response, not complete rebuilding of infrastructure.
To quote their webpage;

The emergency items catalogue has been established by the International Federation and the International Committee of the Red Cross, with the support of National Societies. Its aim is to standardize and harmonize the selection and procurement of relief items during emergency operations.(Bolding Mine) Standardization improves quality assurance, communication and reporting, and also helps prevent inappropriate donations.

The catalogue lists over 4,000 standard commodities with product specification details for each item. The catalogue provides information and assistance for suppliers, purchasers operational users such as logistics personnel, donors and national authorities involved in emergency operations.

This link from UNHCR has great details about what think are key supplies.

[dragoon500ly]

thanks for the link!

[bobcat]

after 3-5 years most settlements have established their basic survival needs, from there you just need to expand their industrial capacity. so seeds for textiles, lubricants and other plants that come in handy when bootstrapping industry would be important. if your assuming you just need to repair existing systems, you can fit a milling machine, lathe, some 3D printers(multi material multi head) and some essential components for repairing circuit boards in a commo shelter.

if you assume you'll have to bootstrap industry from scratch, then you resort to something like the Global Village creation kit that i mentioned a long time ago.

of course as mentioned in that thread you would need a lot of CBRN equipment in the caches as well.