Occupations and specialists - numbers in T2K

[WallShadow]

That's very cool. At the last Perth Royal Show I attended I hung around a working display of steam engines and steam-powered antique farm machinery for ages. My poor wife had to humour me. They had a bunch of stapled leather belts running from fly wheels, providing motive power to all manner of old wrought iron machines. It was fascinating to watch.

Every May, August, and October, Portersville, PA, hosts a steam show where a spectrum of machines, engines, tractors, etc, are displayed and demonstrated. Portersville is located about 35-40 miles north of Pittsburgh up I-79. The site has a permanent structure housing the local club's apparatus.

There is also another Steam Engine club in western NY near Batavia.
Several other locales have steam hobbyists who would become either god-like in their ability to provide power or would be hunted down and enslaved for the same reason.

[schnickelfritz]

Okay.....deep breath...What I was getting at was a small machine shop or part of a plant's maintenance department, or a school/college shop classroom with a couple or several running, older machines. Your standard Bridgeport style mill, a lathe or two, maybe a grinder. Here in the States, there are shops like this in many places west of the Appalachians. I've seen them, worked/work at them, and worked with them personally.

The size of the operation that I was looking at would be limited first by electric power, then raw materials, and finally manpower. All you need to do is scare up a few individuals that are current/former employees, shop teachers, and hobbyists and you can figure out how to make crude but effective bazookas and mortars. The Wojo Works in Krakow can do it there, we can do it here.

There are small, crusty welding and machine shops all around me that could be used to provide the skills and tools to make some of these larger weapons and a crude armored car/apc (probably from a bank armored car) or two. As far as weapons go it would be a few mortars and or RL's apeice, maybe more if you can take apart a few building sprinkler systems, but you'd be limited by the quantities of propellant/explosives you could make anyway. But every round would make a difference against a biker gang that had nothing to fire like it in return.

It's your game....run it the way you like. If you want to reopen a production line making the LAV...go for it, it's your game. If you want to flesh out a settlement somewhere in the US with a few crude mortars and an armored car, that's an option too. Again, it's your game. I'd probably use some of the WW2 vehicles in some of the vehicle guides because it is a) easy and b) I know they are in the area. There is water power here 10 miles to my west and a hotel on the river has a functioning water driven electric power system that dates from the 1920's and was refurbished in the 90's to provide power to the hotel as a novelty.

All I can do is share what I've seen in real life in my area. You can take it from there.

Incidentally, about 50 miles west of Chicago there is a good sized steam power and vintage tractor show every year. I cannot and will not accept that those older machines wouldn't be the equipment used by T2K era midwestern US rural communities to farm as much as they could keep clear and had seed for. They are compact, durable, easy to work on, and use comparatively little fuel. My Grandfather had a 2-cylinder John Deere that would be started on kerosene and switched to distillate when it got hot enough to run.

My $.05

-Dave

[atiff]

Okay.....deep breath...What I was getting at was a small machine shop or part of a plant's maintenance department, or a school/college shop classroom with a couple or several running, older machines. Your standard Bridgeport style mill, a lathe or two, maybe a grinder. Here in the States, there are shops like this in many places west of the Appalachians. I've seen them, worked/work at them, and worked with them personally.

My father is a mechanical engineer, and has run his own business with 2-3 staff for 30 years. This is in a typical NZ small town (pop 2000 - three such businesses in town). Given a sample, the guys can pretty easily make up pretty much anything (which is what they do daily for hydralics, farm machinery parts, etc.). I don't know what it is like in the US and Europe, but places like his business can be found in hundreds of places around NZ.

Andrew