1st Florida JMC - fictional unit for T2k (any edition)

[Abbott Shaull]

Thing about it is, most (all) civvie ex-Military vehicles (read: tanks) will have cut breechblocks on the main gun. Good for use as heavy armored cars, but that's about it.

But then on the other hand, it's not like New America has a platoon of T80s or anything.

Remember many of the militia Troop wouldn't stand around wonder if the main gun tube was usable or not. They would want to put as much distant and cover between them and it.

Just some thoughts.

[Abbott Shaull]

In the module that deals with the NA holding in Florida, this is exactly what they had to mobilize one of their Cavalry units was to re-purpose some of the Armor Cars they could get running that were used for moving large amounts of money around.

There was a unit using the regular armor that one would see on the street for I think recon and some times as part quick reactionary force. Then there was another unit with larger Armor Cars that they used as APCs for something similar Mechanized Infantry or Armor Cavalry dismounts, depending on your take of their function.

I recommend that if you don't have them, get the modules dealing with US (especially Armies of the Night and the one in Florida), as well as the Free City of Krakow. They will help you figure some of this stuff out. If you don't have access to those three module, maybe someone could get you enough the details to help you out.

[schnickelfritz]

While there are certainly museums, collectors, and reenactment groups that have tracked armor from both sides still operational, I would thing that the most common armor found outside of federal service in the post TDM T2K would be vintage and surplus (cold war surplus) armored cars belonging in ones and twos to local/county militias. Those don't have the requirements for maintenance and ammunition/main armamment issues that their bigger brothers do and could be fielded and kept in the field with greater effectiveness. Add machine guns or a Mk-19 and go.

A half track or sout car with a couple of machine guns could be all of the difference needed against a biker gang.

I can totally see the federal unit descrbed here (kudos, by the way) working with what passes for local and county militias in the area.

People whenever possible when given no ability/reason to leave an area would attempt to band together to survive. A militia will be as critical to survival in the Orlando area as it is in central Poland. I see law enforcement (active and retired) and veterans, along with your odd soldier home on leave, bading together to forma a municipal militia, which then may be combined to form a larger force across a county. In my county (25mi west of Chicago), the Sheriff has a SWAT team, as do most counties. Larger municipalities have their own. There are American Legion and VFW groups is just about every town in America. I can see these individuals banding together with whatever law enforcement assets remain. Refugees allowed into the area that can be used as manpower will be trained by those with experience. Some of this will arise out of a sense of duty, some from necessity.

You really never know who lives down the street from you sometimes....a lot of Vets don't do the VFW-Legion thing and exist in annonimity. The guy next door to me served in Thailand with the USAF in Vietnam, the son of the lady on the other side of him is an Afghanistan Vet...Army MOS 11-Bravo.

-Dave

[schnickelfritz]

Bank armored cars:
With the the Orlando theme parks (Sea World, universal Studios, and WDW), I see there a significant need for bank armored car companies, even though many guest these days pay via plastic.

On the subject of Disney World, what are the thoughts on how it would be used after 1996 I can't see too many taking vacations to WDW (even me, who goes there a lot) once the war starts in earnest, and especially once the nukes start falling. Travelling 500-1000-1500+ miles for a vacation when that's going on just seems unbelieveable to me to put it mildly. Bat-$h!t Crazy would be more accurate.

Would the Disney Resort be used as a billet and/or an R&R destination for returning/recovering military personnel keep in mind, they have one hotel (Shades of Green) dedicated to retired/active US Military Personnel and their families.

The Resort area does have limited avenues of entry...I could see the State Police/Military being able to keep looters/biker gangs/etc out of WDW with moderate to good success. So what damage would you see WDW suffering post TDM Most of the computers that run everything, at least at the parks, are in underground areas and would be shielded, at least somewhat from EMP.

I have a hard time believing that most of the remaining computer facilities wouldn't be in facilities that arean't hardened to some degree. They must keep working, even on a Class 3 or 4 Hurricane. They do; I was there during Hurricane Wilma several years ago. Things worked pretty well considering, and we only lost about 3/4 of a day to the storm.

Also, keep in mind the presence of FOUR steam engines at WDW, with 3 present at any given time (1 off site per year for a rail-up overhaul). With war afoot, that unit would probably still be on property. Given time and manpower, rail could be laid to the Magic Kingdom from the nearest live rail. Oil for fuel could probably be salvaged from a variety of sources (motor oil recycling for one), as all of the engines have been converted to use oil.

Any ideas

-Dave

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Good points all about Disney; the chief issue with that is that Disney got a dusting of fallout - I'm not up on my disaster physics, how long would it remain "hot"

Disney itself is honeycombed with underground tunnels, and in addition to those are underground op-centers, a small medical facility and it provides most of its own power - Disney is largely off the Orange/Osceola grid thanks to extensive power generation through trash burning. That makes it a valuable asset. Some of the computer systems may well have survived the EMP.

The parks themselves are actually nice fortresses (and I'm not talking Cinderalla's castle either). They're double fenced, surrounded by very inhospitable marshes and swamps, some areas are flat out walled off, and entry and other access can be controlled pretty easily.

The park does a brisk business on holidays and actually sees park attendance go up during times of crisis (9/11 and it's impact on travel being the exception): lots of folks want to just get away from it all. However everyone panicked and got the hell out of Dodge once fallout warnings were issued. Most of the military guests (and there were some, but few) at Shades of Green would have tried to get back to their duty posts or back to families elsewhere, so I can't see a very large contingent (more than a token few) staying in the Orlando area.

Arnold Palmer hospital is nearby to Disney (actually closer to Orlando), but may have been stripped by Osceola County and looters.

I'm not up on my train knowledge so I'm not sure how feasible it would be to extend train tracks out to the park. The Monorails would of course be toast.

[Targan]

Also, keep in mind the presence of FOUR steam engines at WDW, with 3 present at any given time (1 off site per year for a rail-up overhaul). With war afoot, that unit would probably still be on property. Given time and manpower, rail could be laid to the Magic Kingdom from the nearest live rail. Oil for fuel could probably be salvaged from a variety of sources (motor oil recycling for one), as all of the engines have been converted to use oil.

It would have to be easier to convert the burners to wood-fired than trying to source fuel oil, not to mention the fact that you'd conserve oils for use in engines that can only them as fuels/lubricants. Fabricating a wood burner for a steam boiler would not be a difficult undertaking.

[Abbott Shaull]

It would have to be easier to convert the burners to wood-fired than trying to source fuel oil, not to mention the fact that you'd conserve oils for use in engines that can only them as fuels/lubricants. Fabricating a wood burner for a steam boiler would not be a difficult undertaking.

Yeah any thing that uses Steam, I would think would be converted to wood fire than continue to use the limited oil fuel. The oil fuel would be to valuable for other types of vehicle to keep them mobile.

[schnickelfritz]

Keep in mund that the "oil" typically used in an oil burning steam locomotive is as heavy as it gets....as step or two up from tar. If you look it up, many of them, especially as used on the Union Pacific, needed a steam heater apparatus to make it flow it was so thick. I believe it was called "Bunker C." Unless you have specialized refining equipment, most of the "fuel oil" available would have no real use other than for burning, and weed control, I guess.

I'm thinking that the WDW staff would have stockpiled what virgin oil it could and would also have access to a large quantitiy of used motor oil that could be filtered for this purpose, given the sheer size of the Disney vehicle fleet.

If used, lightly filtered motor oil is useable, more could be sourced from abandoned gas/service stations throughout the Orlando area. Missions to guard tanker trucks or obtain tanker trucks from recycling facilities (like those at Safety-Kleen) could be adventures in themselves.

As far as the Monorails go, they are indeed fragile and are stored in a semi-hardened facility in the same building as the steam trains. With the runup to full nuclear war, I would imagine Monorail service would have been curtailed and the units placed in storage at the time of the TDM, if for no other reason than to cut electrical power useage.

-Dave

[Targan]

I know what bunker oil is. We've had long discussions in this forum before about POL. I still believe that if other fuels were available (wood, combustible garbage, non-edible harvest waste for example) they would be used in a steam powered locomotive in preference to any kind of oil. Reason being that it wouldn't be hard to have a locomotive burning fuels other than oils. But it would be hard or impossible to do without oil for other purposes. See what I'm saying

In any case there are cleverer people than me that made some great points about POL in previous threads. I highly recommend that all new members spend a few hours trawling through the thread map the sticky the second from the top of the main thread list. Kato has very kindly made it easy to find some of those excellent older threads on a variety of interesting topics.

[schnickelfritz]

I doubt there would be much virgin fuel oil available, most of what you could use would come via used motor oil, which should be available in abundance.

Convering an oil burning steam boiler to solid fule isn't as easy as it might seem...once you remove the oil apparatus, you need to fabricate a grate and ash pan, among other items.

All 4 Disney Locomotives originally burned solid fuel when they were in service in Mexico. Disney converted them to oil for ease of maintenance and better control of the fire.

Am I wrong in the group's opinion in the belief that a large metro area such as Orlando, there would not be used motor oils available in storage tanks at shops and recycling facilities

-Dave

[Legbreaker]

I think you'll find that most used oil gets recycled/disposed of fairly quickly. With the progression of the war, it would be more and more important that this is done as soon as possible, so it's extremely doubtful you'll find large reserves of used oil anywhere.
At best scroungers might come up with a few drums of it that were missed by previous visitors.

[schnickelfritz]

Yes, I believe that most oil-lube shops would have only a limited storage capacity. However, once the lights go out and places are abandoned, especially trucking companies and school bus firms, you probably could get something useable right there, if you had the truck to pump it out....

Getting off the sidetrack (pun intended) of fuel oil, I'm curious to get people's opinions on what might have become of the Walt Disney World Complex in T2K just before and then after society grouond to a standstill.

I cannot get past the immense amount of cash that Disney could throw at the problem from the beginning of the Sino-Soviet war until TDM.

With the proper planning, forethought, and their resources, I see them as a bit of an oasis in the wasteland that is Florida in 2000.

-Dave

[The Dark]

For helicopters at the time, OCSO had a pair of OH-58C Kiowas. SN 71-20384 (N-number 384CS) was delivered in 1996 and SN 70-15432 (N-number 82844) was delivered in 1995. They also had a Bell 407 (N-number 407KB) delivered in 1998.

They also purchased a HMMWV using drug-forfeiture money in 1997. At least one of FHP's LAVs was acquired in 1998, so it may not exist in the T2K timeline (they bought it for $250 from DRMO). OCSO's XM734 was acquired from Israel, but I don't remember when. It's now at the Vietnam War Museum in eastern Orange County (southeast of UCF). 1994 was when OCSO was converting from revolvers to 9mm Berettas, so both may still be available - I don't remember when the cutover finished.

The Orlando Police Department Mounted Patrol would have 7 horses available in 1997 (the eighth horse, Partner's Pride, died in March 1997 of a heart attack). I think they were already at the Rio Grande stable by the mid-90s.

NASA had 4 of the M113 APCs for firefighting and rescue operations (generally three deployed for a launch, two with firefighting crews and one empty except for the driver to take the astronauts if they had to evacuate). It's possible not all of them survived, though (or that some were taken back into active service).

[The Dark]

I thought of another place to raid for equipment - Fantasy of Flight in Polk City has a huge number of airworthy classical planes, ranging in size from a Fiesler Storch to a Short Sunderland flying boat. There are also tons of spare parts, including a warehouse full of engines (which I've been lucky enough to get to tour). None of it's stuff that would have been useful during the Twilight War, but in the aftermath, they would be useful, particularly since most of them should be able to fly (at least at moderate altitudes) on 87 octane MOGAS (high altitudes might risk vapor lock). Unfortunately, the only synfuel facility I know of in Florida is an experimental facility in Okeechobee that opened in 2012, far too late for the canon timelines, and Florida has no oil refineries. Personally, I wouldn't want to try running aircraft on alcohol, even with appropriate plumbing changes, since the reduction in power and endurance would add risk.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I thought of another place to raid for equipment - Fantasy of Flight in Polk City has a huge number of airworthy classical planes, ranging in size from a Fiesler Storch to a Short Sunderland flying boat. There are also tons of spare parts, including a warehouse full of engines (which I've been lucky enough to get to tour). None of it's stuff that would have been useful during the Twilight War, but in the aftermath, they would be useful, particularly since most of them should be able to fly (at least at moderate altitudes) on 87 octane MOGAS (high altitudes might risk vapor lock). Unfortunately, the only synfuel facility I know of in Florida is an experimental facility in Okeechobee that opened in 2012, far too late for the canon timelines, and Florida has no oil refineries. Personally, I wouldn't want to try running aircraft on alcohol, even with appropriate plumbing changes, since the reduction in power and endurance would add risk.

Polk City is pretty close to New America territory; if anything they might have raided it first.