Odd Treasure Troves

[kato13]

Along the lines of Last Voyage of USS RAZORBACK I thought it might be a good idea to post some ideas for odd treasure troves.

The following is a real world example I was exposed to in the mid 90's. On the 34th floor of an office building in downtown Chicago with a room sized safe containing between 201 and 1300 (2d6*100 + d100) high end desktop servers. The servers were being preloaded with software before being shipped to retail automotive repair locations as part of an intranet development.

The status of the servers would of course depend on the Effects of EMP within your game, however I feel the servers would have a reasonable chance of survival for the following reasons.

• They were behind a 2 inch steel door (Combination lock).
• They were stored without power cords attached.
• They were resting on wooden shelves (on metal frames)
• The room itself was shielded from every radio frequency I could test easily. (Pager, walkie talkie, Radio, TV)
• The room was located in the center of a middle floor, with 20 floors above and 32 floors below. (Might provide protection from a high altitude burst)
• Other buildings would block line of sight to most low/mid level bursts in the vicinity.

The pre war value of the servers was over 10 million dollars. The post war value would be priceless.

[BigEd]

Not my weapons cache, but a fellow reenactors' private collection.

View from one side of the room.

http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i32/dxdunner/GR1a.jpg

View from the other side.

http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i32/dxdunner/GR2a.jpg

Picture of home.

http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i32/dxdunner/Exterior.jpg

Stumbling across that cache would be "intense" to say the least.

///ed///

[Grimace]

Good Golly that's a weapons room!!!

That's someone with a ludicrous amount of money to spend. But you ain't kidding about finding it! He'd likely never give it up, but just imagine some unfortunate occurence happening....a heart attack, for example, and then house sits empty. Someone checks it out after fire demolishes nearly the entire hourse, but the basement/weapons cache is untouched. The stragglers see the sealed door, bust it open and WAAAAHOOOOO!!! Jackpot!

[Haven]

I've 'read on the internet' (and we know how reliable that is) that these pictures were from Charlton Heston's estate

[pmulcahy11b]

I once gave my players an intact, perfect-condition pallet of Cottonelle toilet paper. They got a fortune for it in trade goods!

[Mohoender]

Paul, you make me think of "Baa baa black sheep" and "Operation Petty Coats", two great stuff in my opinion. Both are comedies on WW2 but they are almost entirely about that: What you can get in exchange for toilet papers and a box of old true Bourbon.

I find them nice for inspiration. By the way, according to a friend of mine, working in the french army, it is still working that way (If you have something to give you get some supply faster than the next unit). Does this work in the US Army (navy, air force...)

[pmulcahy11b]

Paul, you make me think of "Baa baa black sheep" and "Operation Petty Coats", two great stuff in my opinion. Both are comedies on WW2 but they are almost entirely about that: What you can get in exchange for toilet papers and a box of old true Bourbon.

I find them nice for inspiration. By the way, according to a friend of mine, working in the french army, it is still working that way (If you have something to give you get some supply faster than the next unit). Does this work in the US Army (navy, air force...)

It's like that everywhere, military or civilian. There's an American saying, "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."

[Mohoender]

Yes but for civilians, your life doesn't depend on it.

[Graebarde]

Yes but for civilians, your life doesn't depend on it.

Not always true my friend. Though it might not be fighting intense, there are civilian situations where, after a hurricane, that getting necessities can be such. Water, gas, food, medicines... You'd be, then maybe you wouldn't, surprised at the gaftyness of the business world.

Grae

[chico20854]

By the way, according to a friend of mine, working in the french army, it is still working that way (If you have something to give you get some supply faster than the next unit). Does this work in the US Army (navy, air force...)

As a former supply sergeant in the US Army, I can state that it absolutely, positively does not happen!

We work on a "consideration" basis... you give me what I need now, and three weeks from now you will get a call from me at 7 on a Sunday morning with what I need.

And that seemed to work in some of the multi-national supply transactions in the NATO SFOR peacekeeping force in Bosnia.

[Adm.Lee]

Michael Lee Lanning wrote an interesting book about being a mech. company commander in Germany in the early '70s, when the US Army was at a low point. I found his stories about supplies amusing. The first one being when he asked his supply sergeant how the paperwork was, the sergeant paused before answering, "Well, sir, MY ass is covered."
Lanning showed (I think) his own wisdom by next asking the sergeant what he was hoarding for trading use. The answer was some number of spare barrels for the heavy MGs. Those popped up in the memoir again, of course.

[ChalkLine]

Here's a cache I always wanted to use, it's the equipment on a building site where I worked that I tallied when rained in;

So, this was the items at a largish building site with ongoing phases, we were putting in five story unit blocks, about eight of them.

- Mobile 25t crane, four-wheel drive, as ten-ton truck. This has four wheels and a crane only as structure, and is abysmally slow on the road.
- 3x Hoists, each hoist lifts a steel, 1m high, 'basket' about 3m2, the hoist gantry is three sided and runs on an inbuilt generator. Each gantry section was 6m long. There is no 'floor' button on each level; an operator at the foot of the gantry controls it. Total gantry length would be about 60m but it wouldn't be safe up to that height!
- 8x Oxy Acetylene welding kits, usually about 60% full. There was a supply container (20') onsite for welding supplies.
- 18 wheeler and pup trailer, dumper.
- 2x Compressors (trailer size, mondo)
- First Aid demountable shed, well stocked
- 20x temporary power poles, steel, 6m high
- 100m power cable
- 2x mini refrigerators
- 4x civilian sedans
- 3x civilian utilities (pick ups)
- 2x civilian vans
- 1300m2 form-boards, 16mm 12ply. We were making the structures out of concrete. This is sufficient to make an eight-story building with three lifts in one shot. Of course, it was spread over eight buildings.
- 3x bobcats and interchangeable tools
- Four wheel drive forklift, about 8t
- 100x pallets of concrete block bricks
- 13x 20' shipping containers
- 4x 40' shipping containers
- 2x backhoes
- 1x excavator
- 1x concrete pumping truck, the arm had a ten-story reach.
- 2x concrete trucks
- 7x demountable sheds, with sinks.
- 2x demountable toilet/shower blocks, filthy.
- 14x power-boards
- 8x garbage skips
- 870x star pickets (star droppers, steel stakes)
- 3000m x 3m (9m sections) Green plastic shade cloth
- 3000m x 3m (9m sections) steel 'cyclone' chain-link mesh
- 3x 25' cabin cruisers (I have no idea either)
- 35' yacht (ditto)
- 60x (2m x 3m) 'cyclone' chain-link mesh frames with 2" steel pipe frame.
- 10x 40m (40mm) Water hose (we were always pumping)
- 5t truck with extendable crane and bore for footings
- 5x 50m coils copper water pipe
- 20' container plumbing supplies
- 20' container paint supplies
- 20' container power tools and expendables
- 20' container electrical supplies
- 20' container safety supplies

[Targan]

Excellent Chalkline. I like lists like that. A great example of stuff likely to be found at such a site. In my games I always try to mix up mundane salvage with odd little bits and pieces. Charatects will always find a way to trade or utilise unusual items somewhere along the way.

[Raellus]

How about that world seed bank built into the side of a frozen hill on a Norwegian island above the arctic circle I'm not sure if construction on the project began before '97 (I think not), but a GM could fudge it a bit I suppose. The underground warehouse contains hundreds, if not thousands, of seed species from all over the world including some ancient and very hardy strains of staple ones as well as modern hybrids and high yield varieties. It needs no electricity because the permafrost provides natural refrigeration.

Might not be as fun as Charlton Heston's basement, but it could be a godsend (or godfind) in the slow and painful process of rebuilding civilization.

[kato13]

How about that world seed bank built into the side of a frozen hill on a Norwegian island above the arctic circle I'm not sure if construction on the project began before '97 (I think not), but a GM could fudge it a bit I suppose.

This is a good idea.

"The Nordic Gene Bank has stored a backup of Nordic plant germplasm as frozen seeds in an abandoned coal mine at Svalbard since 1984."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_International_Seed_Vault

The new bank is an evolution of an older project. I believe originally it was more for local seeds. It has now evolved into one including seeds from the entire world.