After Stabilization?

[Webstral]

instituted the drought of Howling Wilderness was to keep things moving along for the purposes of adventuring. I ask this because when the population stabilizes, more or less, there will be a food regime in place sufficient to feed almost all of the people left in the nation. Obviously, this is a grotesque overgeneralization. Productivity and availability will vary wildly from one region to the next. Shortages will persist everywhere. Nevertheless, sans the drought there will be a rough equilibrium established by the end of 2000. Now what This question applies everywhere, not just the US.

Obviously, one of the primary goals of cantonments everywhere will be to increase output without additional inputs of labor. As output per laborer increases, manpower can be freed for other tasks necessary for rebuilding on micro and macro scales. I have been thinking lately that one of the main goals of Manifest Destiny will be to move engineering and agricultural expertise between cantonments loyal to Milgov. MacArthur remarked that the Pacific War was an engineers war. Based on the numbers, he was right. There were more engineers in the Pacific than infantry. This makes me think that a sort of agricultural and engineering Special Forces will be needed for the US"indeed, for every recovering nation"even more than rifles. In the short term, shortages of manpower for combat can be made good with improved weapons and supply. In the long term, shortages can be made good by using improved agricultural techniques to free manpower from food production for combat duty.

These types of missions might be very interesting for a party more interested in playing their part as Special Operations types than go-it-your-own types. Getting needed experts to a given location can be an adventure all its own, if for some reason an airship isnt available to do the job.

Other worthwhile missions might include tracking down leads on machinery Milgov needs for industrializing Colorado. Howling Wilderness states that Milgov is building industry from the ground up as resources allow. An airship that can haul 100 tons could bring a huge variety of useful machines to Colorado. The trick is knowing where they are and extracting them. The possibilities here are limitless.

[Targan]

Web, your post seems to start half way through a sentence. Now I'm burning with curiosity over what is missing!

There's one thing I don't understand about those who dislike the drought posited in Howling Wilderness and citing it as a major reason for not wanting to use HW in their campaigns. If you don't like the drought, have it end in 2002. HW only covers 2001. There's nothing set in stone to suggest that the drought is a permanent feature. Where I live we have periodic droughts. Some are short, some are long, but they all end eventually.

The climate change suggested in HW is most likely due to all the particulate matter thrown up into the atmosphere during the war. As the years go by it seems pretty obvious to me that the climate will continue to change. It may go back to much like it was before the war. That's up to each GM to decide, surely

[Raellus]

Here in Tucson, we've technically been in a drought since 1999. It rained today. I think people misunderstand what a drought really is. It's like the folks that deny that the planet is warming because there's a big blizzard one winter. They're missing the forest for the trees.

I've thought a bit about what a limited nuclear war would do to global weather patterns. Cold War scientists warned of a nuclear winter in the event of a full-scale geothermal nuclear war. Clouds of dust and smoke would block out the sun and the surface temperature of the planet would drop precipitously. In the event of a more limited, piecemeal nuclear war as described in the T2K backstory, a significant amount of dust and smoke would be tossed up, but much less than the planet-blanketing amounts that would be required to cause and sustain a nuclear winter. What if the amount of dust and smoke from the T2K exchanges was enough to allow sunlight in, but not to allow heat/reflected light to escape, accelerating the "Greenhouse Effect" by several factors This could cause a drought like that described in HW.

I like to take the middle ground and envision a planet ravaged by weird weather- sort of demi Nuclear Winter/Greenhouse Effect hybrid. Large migrating dust clouds could cool the climate in some regions, interfering with long-established air and water currents. At the same time, certain other regions would be bathed in almost constant sunshine. Combine this with the climate-alterating effects of disrupted air and water currents (e.g. El Nino/La Nina flip-flopping or one or both stopping, etc.), and precipitation in said sunny regions could be severely curtailed. A severe two-year regional drought, therefore, wouldn't be at all out of the question. In my Pirates of the Vistula PbP, I've got winter coming early to Poland, with the first heavy snow fall occuring in first few days of October.

I hope that I haven't strayed too far off topic here. To get back to your main point, Web, I agree that recovery-oriented missions would be an interesting basis for a campaign.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I've thought a bit about what a limited nuclear war would do to global weather patterns. Cold War scientists warned of a nuclear winter in the event of a full-scale geothermal nuclear war. Clouds of dust and smoke would block out the sun and the surface temperature of the planet would drop precipitously.

Broken data and bad models were used to "make" nuclear winter "work".

http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/03/samuel-glasstone-and-philip-j-dolan.html

[Webstral]

My post was cut off. Weird. Serves me right for trusting that CTRL-A actually highlighted all the text. Not much was missed. I simply mused about the next thing after the stabilization of the food situation.

[Olefin]

If anything all the debris blown up into the atmosphere would cause more rain and snow, not less. And the problem with HW is so what if it ends in 2001 - as described basically the US would have had its population reduced below the level of any possible recovery in less than hundreds of years long before any crops would have been harvested in 2002.

The death toll from starvation and disease (millions of unburied bodies resulting from mass starvation deaths would have resulted in plague, typhus, you name it) from the drought as described basically would have ended all civilization in the US, most likely for any forseeable future, and definitely for so long that there is no way there is an American Arm in Twilight 2300AD. With that kind of death toll you would be lucky if the Dark Ages ended in the US before 2400 and we were back to what we had in 1776, let alone in space with faster than light ships.

Destroying the US like that is not furthering adventure in any way - unless what you want is to stop the game and pull out Aftermath instead and say lets play this now and just transfer over your characters.

As for US recovery without HW ever happening - have heard many people say without HW and Kidnapped then the US would recover too soon and be back to being powerful again and unbalance the game. Again I dont see that either - you are talking about a country split between three different power bases, plus with invaders in command of much of its Southwest and Alaska and with huge power generation and food distribution issues and with much of its infrastructure in ruins.

Thats a lot of work to do right there that could keep players busy with various missions for dozens of years. Heck just a drive the Mexicans out and begin the process of stabilizing the Southwest again campaign would keep a good GM busy for a long long time or a MilGov drive to conquer CivGov and reunite the country by force.

So ignoring HW and Kidnapped makes a lot of sense from both a playability aspect and also from having your characters actually trying to do more than simple survival.

And while simple survival is part of the game, so is recovery and trying to rebuild - if not then why was Reset part of the very first module and why did the Submarine Trilogy include the scientists with the knowledge to build cheap fusion reactors

Now there is a good source of recovery missions- i.e. having characters having to gather the materials needed for those fusion reactors once the Corpus Christi gets back. They could be widely dispersed, in the hands of the New Americans (who may not know what they are sitting on) or even behind enemy lines in Texas or California.

[Raellus]

I'm no HW fanboy (I've only glanced at it briefly on one or two occasions) and I've never played in or GM'ed a campaign that far into the alternate future. So, please don't interpret my posts here as an apologetic for HW or any other T2K module. My assertion is that weird weather is a plausible scenario. Just look at the extremes in weather over the past decade, when nuclear warfare wasn't even a minor factor!

@Olefin: It takes more than dust in the atmosphere to produce precipitation, so what scientific basis is your "more rain" claim based on

@Raketenjadgpanzer: That's quite a blog there- although the author appears to cite his sources, I have some doubts as to the reliability/authoritativeness of the claims put forth regarding the Nuclear Winter theory. I've seen numerous reputable source materials supporting the theory. To be fair, I've also seen reputable source material refuting it. It's all theoretical so I'm fine with declaring the Nuclear Winter question moot. I hope to God that we never have to find out what the climatological effects of a large scale nuclear war are.

[Olefin]

water vapor condenses onto particles in the air (like dust for instance) to form rain drops - the increased particle count due to the dirt and debris blown into the air would lead to increased rain fall - i.e. more water vapor than normal would condense out of the sky thus leading to increased rain fall

and with temperatures dropping due to the amount of sun that would be blocked by the same dust and debris you get increased snowfall - thus the chances of a winter without snow after the level of nuclear and conventional attacks seen in the Twilight War would be essentially zero

if anything, if you want to damage crop yields, you could just fall back on the reduced growing times that would be causes by a lengthened winter due to the dust and debris in the air - i.e. not the nuclear winter where it never shines but a winter that starts in October and wont let go fully till May - that alone would reduce food production, especially in places where agriculture was geared to a longer growing season (i.e. southern CA and FL for instance)

also keep in mind that too much rain can be very bad as well - think about heavy rains hitting before the harvest and what kind of damage that can cause

but a drought like that described in HW and Kidnapped - not possible after that kind of widespread nuclear exchange - it would take years to clear that level of dust and debris from the skies - i.e. most likely you would have shorter summers and longer winters till around 2004 or longer

plus as I have said before - HW and Kidnapped are US killers plain and simple

if you want HW and Kidnapped - then its time to scrap the AD2300 timeline at least as far as the US is concerned - just going by what it says, at best, the US is reduced to 1/8th of its pre-war population - but that assumes no disease, no plague, no typhus outbreak from 3/8 of the prewar US population dying in a few months as starvation leaves only enough food for a quarter of the survivors

add that in as well, plus all the fighting to get at the remaining food, plus destruction of food stocks from that fighting - and you get a US that would be lucky to have 5 percent of its population left by early 2002

no way do you go from there to faster than light starships per the 2300AD timeline

and you dont need an uber drought and plague to "further adventures in the US" - its screwed up enough all on its own long before Kidnapped and HW

again - the game is about recovery as much as it is about survival - otherwise why the Soviet scientists, why Reset, why have an adventure to recover gold in NY or recapture the Ozarks from New America or secure a working oil platform in Texas

HW and Kidnapped throws all that out the window to a drought that is completely implausible - so instead for me and many others they are better ignored -

but again canon is what the GM makes of it after July 18,2000 - after that date everyone is free to do what they wish as to what is in and what is not in their campaign after all (heck I have heard of campaigns that threw Omega out the door and had the US stay in Europe where no one ever went anywhere but Europe and fun was had by all)

again just my two cents

[Raellus]

I'd like to be able to make references to HW without you feeling the need to compose and post screed in response every time. I get it, you hate HW. Like I just said, I'm no fan myself. You don't need to convince me. I am not defending the drought described in HW.

I understand how rain happens. Your hypothesis assumes an atmospheric water vapor constant or a direct relationship between suspended dust particles and atmospheric water vapor. To put it bluntly, neither of those conditions exist. Both are variables; neither are constant. Simpy tossing more dust into the air doesn't necessarily induce increased rain. Cloud seeding doesn't always work- in fact, it rarely does. If it did, there wouldn't be droughts.

[Olefin]

Cloud seeding is one thing - this is a huge injection of dirt and debris into the upper atmosphere in a short amount of time - i .e. similiar to what you get with a volcanic eruption but occuring in multiple locations spreading the dust and debris worldwide, especially with nukes going off in as many places as they did with the worldwide attacks on oil processing centers and oil fields

the effect of such injections of debris and dust from volcanic eruptions has been well documented - The Year without a Summer for instance after one such major eruption

add in all the fires from conventional fighting, forest fires started by weaponry, oil fields burning out of control and you have a perfect mix for increased rainfall and shorter growing seasons due to lack of sunlight penetrating thru the debris clouds

so a large scale drought in such conditions - very highly improbable - local droughts are always possible but not the uber drought after that amount of debris and dust is injected into the atmosphere - and if nukes were used in the oceans to go after ships or subs or to blue out sensors before the TMD - then you have a lot of water vapor blown into the skies as well with the nuke strikes - and we know there were a lot of strikes on harbors and coastal cities

in a way what the war did was cloud seeding on a scale no one would ever attempt - and the extended nature of the global nuclear strikes kept pumping more debris and dust into the air - this wasnt one spasm over a few days but nuclear strikes that went on for months and even into 1998 - thats a very long sustained period of "dust pumping" into the atmosphere - similiar to a sustained series of volcanic eruptions

if the nuclear stage of the war had been short - say a week - or if it had been confined to just the US, Europe and European Russia - it might not have been as bad - but going on for months plus spreading the nukes all over the world - that would have been about as bad as it gets to inject moisture and dust into the atmosphere

as to HW - you are right and I am sorry - no reason to go any further into that particular subject

[Targan]

Web, there are a few little adventures/mini-modules in the Challenge mags that are about salvage and recovering useful commodities (Pennsylvania Crude is the first that comes to my mind) and I love the idea of a campaign or part of a campaign revolving around those sorts of themes.

In my campaigns I've always encouraged my players to create characters with a variety of skills including non-combat skills. After all, once wholesale recruitment and the draft were implemented, the proportion of pre-war professional military would decrease compared to citizen-soldiers from all walks of life.

As for Howling Wilderness creating the conditions for the virtually permanent death of the USA as an entity, I strongly disagree. In any case HW doesn't have total destruction of the US from whisky to echo and it doesn't suggest at any point that the US is on a one way slide into oblivion. I am 100% certain that with a long enough campaign and a dedicated group of players that I could realisticly depict the recovery of the US from a starting point as described in HW.

And once again, on a list of possible deal breakers, I rate the drought in HW very low on the list. You don't like the drought Have it end in 2002. Where's the problem

[Olefin]

per HW there is only enough food for 1/4 of the surviving population to make it to the end of the year

surviving population = 1/2 of prewar US population

Thus only 1/8th of the US population can survive to the end of 2001

so you have 3/8th of the prewar population starving to death and or dying in other ways while figting to get to the food that can keep 1/8th alive - now add in disease from the dead bodies piling up everywhere from the fun and all those who die trying to stave off the 3/8th of the prewar US population who there is no food for

oh and also all those who die when it finally rains and they can put a harvest in again but still no food while said harvest grows

what do you get - maybe, if you are really lucky, 1/16th to 1/32nd of the pre-war US population still alive by the time said harvest happens in 2002

with the result that the US that most likely never be a major power of any sort again - and basically destroy just about any remnant of technology left intact - meaning no American Arm by 2300 AD as was their intention

the authors clearly didnt think thru what they wrote during a time of pressure to get material out and published under looming deadlines - or take the time to game out what would happen with what they wrote

you would have had US cities in that kind of situation ending up looking like Sydney in Max Max Thunderdome - and thats with only a one year uber drought

So there is my answer to you Targan but instead of going on how about looking at this thread from purely a recovery standpoint and not about a discussion on the HW drought, which has been debated ad naseum here for a long time by various people. After all that is what this thread was to be about.

There is a lot of possibilities out there for recovery and stablization missions - as was mentioned the Pennsylvania mini-module in Challenge is a definite guide in how they could be approached.

[mikeo80]

I believe that Albert Einstein said, " I do not know what weapons will be used to fight WW III, but WW IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

I think this is the issue we as a group are trying to understand. As a LONG time Morrow Project player, I can see several similarities.

1) Man was stupid enough to unleash his newest toys. Mankind suffered as a result.

2) In the aftermath, there would be VERY long periond of reconstruction.

3) Most reconstruction would revolve around a group of armed persons trying desperately to keep the wolves at bay so that what ever farmers were left could raise enough food for the entire group to survive the next winter.

4) Most reconstruction would revolve around small groups or towns. Easier to defend and easier to grow enough crops to survive the comming winter.

5) A small group is also easier to set up some sort of self government. There is not enough time or energy to dedicate to professional politicians. Every one has to work together to survive.

6) Craftsmen will be VERY important to survival. A person who can fix broken things will be in great demand.

7) Only after there is enough food for the existing group, do you look outside of your group. Maybe you can exchange some of your iron worker's items for some of the wood worker's items from the next village. Trade/barter/swap meets whatever, become the predominate form of economics.

8) If you find a pre-war cache of ANYTHING, you do your best to bring it all to your village. Who knows, maybe something usefull can be gleaned from this pile of what ever it is you salvaged.

9) Books/libraries become vital resources. You may not know how to build a windmill, say. But this book MIGHT just help....

Yes the T2K nuclear war was not as devistating as the one in Morrow Project. But the resultant chaos would have caused just as much damage as nukes would have. Just not as quick.

Yes there is some form of National government, be it MilGov or CivGov. That is more than Morrow project had. However with the chaos and resultant insanity, how much control either of these two entities could exert is questionable.

Yes there are some coherent US military forces that are still in place. THis happened very rarely in TMP. THis does give either government a group of trained () professionals to draw upon. However you have to FEED them first before you can use them.

These are a few thoughts I want to throw out there.

My $0.02

Mike

[Olefin]

good post Mike - I think thats one thing that people have to look at between Twilight 2000 and things like The Morrow Project or Aftermath - that things are bad but they havent gone completely downhill to where there are no governments or organized military forces left yet

thats a very large distinction between the two

now that doesnt mean you cant play Twilight 2000 as if it was that bad - you just have to pick your place to do it

for instance one place that would fit that bill very well would be China - there is no cohesive national government of any kind left there - whereas in the US and Russia you still have remnant national governments that control significant resources in China it has broken down completely - another place would be India or Pakistan

all of which are places you hardly hear much about in discussions on the board and where you could have a stranded bunch of Americans or Brits in very easily - more so in Pakistan and China than India - in a place where there is no govt at all and its down to the village level

[Rainbow Six]

now that doesnt mean you cant play Twilight 2000 as if it was that bad - you just have to pick your place to do it

for instance one place that would fit that bill very well would be China - there is no cohesive national government of any kind left there - whereas in the US and Russia you still have remnant national governments that control significant resources in China it has broken down completely - another place would be India or Pakistan

all of which are places you hardly hear much about in discussions on the board and where you could have a stranded bunch of Americans or Brits in very easily - more so in Pakistan and China than India - in a place where there is no govt at all and its down to the village level

A while ago someone - I can't recall who - started a thread about ideas for campaigns set in more unusual places. If I recall correctly various suggestions were put forward (one that I recall involved East German troops who had been serving with the Soviet forces in China and were now trying to make their way back to Germany; another - and probably more popular - one was for the pc's to be a group of US Marine Corps Embassy Security Guards stuck somewhere in Africa and trying to make for the coast to get a ship to the US. I think Law went as far as starting a pbem based on that premise).