What about freeze dried food? Think of all those prepper scam boxes of the stuff. Better then hard tack and more compact then fresh food.
The Guns of Old John Brown
- Thread starter notbirdofprey
- Start date
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Honestly, yeah.
We could draw upon MREs too, if we could find a source either military or literally just on ebay, the crackdown on them seems pretty weak, tbh, and the prepper food too in some circumstances.
Maybe combine it with protein bars, power bars, that sort of thing? Because that's another good way to get calories. Hell, we could even just get jerky, too.
Jerky and power/meal bars for eating on the march..
MREs for supper when you can't do fires and freeze dried soup mixes when you can do fires.
Tractors are overreaching. If you to improve farming there's mechanized farming machinery that doesn't require oil to function. There's plenty of designs more advanced than what they currently have. However that feels too long term thinking. The Freedman Army survived fine off seizing food stocks from the cities because they had the numbers and weapons to fight the state guard straight on. Heavier weapons would be a bigger help but in general more men and more guns will work out in our favour. There's no one simple trick to it besides that. We get a robust, disciplined, and driven force on the move that can fight the state on equal terms and we win.
Hell it sounds like at this moment we'd instantly make the timeline better if we lose. Each turn they get stronger and the south gets weaker.
Hell it sounds like at this moment we'd instantly make the timeline better if we lose. Each turn they get stronger and the south gets weaker.
- Location
- A haze of forgetfulness
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I mean, even in this update John brown's revolt basically controls the entire south besides the British puppet state, if we can figure out some form of bigger artillery/something naval we could probably keep them out.
Asherterix
Out Exploring
- Location
- Approx. 15,600,300,000 miles away
- Pronouns
- He/They
If I'm reading the time travel mechanics right, the current timeline will be wiped out after we finish with what we're doing with Brown. If so, then why are we even bothering with the current timeline? Won't it be pointless in the end?
We bother with up-time because we need more revolutionaries to direct Radical Reconstruction and for more technological knowledge otherwise we would be fighting, as a guerilla, on even ground against a government without a way to sufficiently undermine them or confront them in the field of battle (something that we would need to do if we want to hold territory).
Edit: Helping our fellow revolutionaries helps us gain fame as an organization capeable of hiding fellow revolutionaries from authorities which gives a bigger recruiting pool.
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We can reach for better logistics - in particular converting paddlewheelers to screw drives. Make the ships faster and more efficient and run circles around the opposition.
The big problem is getting a good quality alloy for the screws, of course, since cavication stresses and then destroying anything that isn't tough enough.
The big problem is getting a good quality alloy for the screws, of course, since cavication stresses and then destroying anything that isn't tough enough.
- Location
- Not the asylum anymore
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The current timeline will be wiped as soon as the portal closes; one stretch goal I've seen people kicking about is just never closing the portal, then having Brown's unified (hopefully), communist (hopefully) America help us overthrow the modern day US. The share scale of resources a contient can muster, even if it's a 19th century cont9net, is nothing to be sneezed at.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I honestly don't know if that's realistic. I think we need to create a bail-out plan for basically "Going Loud" and then slamming the door shut behind us on their faces.
It very much is not; even assuming that tech hasn't meaningfully advanced, getting a 1860s US to the point where it can reasonably threaten a post-modern US, even with the timetravel cheat, is going to take a century at the very least just on the reality that you cannot cheat around education and labour.
It's also kinda pointless if we're not looking at a multiverse, and if we ARE there's no reason for the portal to not just get nuked once the upstream US becomes aware of it - which it almost certainly will at some point - so I think the downstream exodus and slamming the door very extremely and irrevocably shut afterwards makes more sense in any case.
It's good sometimes to have unachievable goals.
Going back in time to put right what once went wrong was, of course, impossible not that long ago.
Going back in time to put right what once went wrong was, of course, impossible not that long ago.
- Location
- USA
To be fair I am amazed by the impact of a basic Gatling gun. If we can get these fine men and women higher rifle creation standards, I shudder with anticipation for the devestation.
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Alright, the next update should be coming soon, but first I am going to need some rolls from you all.
6 sets of 5d20s please. Things are about to get interesting in uptime.
6 sets of 5d20s please. Things are about to get interesting in uptime.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Rolling!
- Location
- Not the asylum anymore
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Set number two three...
- Location
- Te Ika-a-Māui
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Rolling
Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
Set 5
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Set 6
Crisis Part 1
"We are bringing breaking news live, directly towards your living room, from the city of New Chicago, where the legacy of violence rears its ugly head once more. Shocking scenes come form the Silent City as a once-peaceful labor dispute and anti-curfew protest escalated dramatically as unhinged radicals launched an internal coup in the legitimate union OH JESUS FUCK!"
-Footage from the Great New Chicago Uprising, censored by order of [REDACTED] until [REDACTED]
"Radical terrorists and identity extremists have launched attacks on 'treasonous figures and false friends' that have killed at least two dozen!"
- The New York Times (Revived)
"The liberation of the workers of this nation is once more at hand! Just as our comrades in the Colored Defense Force and Revolutionary American Indian Movement are striking great blows against the enforcers of white supremacy, the oppressed and downtrodden toilers of New Chicago have seized power from the enforcers of capital. We've taken the factory district and secured the railyard, and from here we will only go on to greater things!"
-Speech by Abigail Delucci, leader of the American Federation of Workers (Left-Anarchist)
"The commies are coming, they are coming for City Hall, we need to evacuate the mayor, what do you mean they have anti-air! Where the fuck did they get anti-air?"
-Radio chatter from the JIA Operating Center in New Chicago
"My friends, we face a battle greater than the one that destroyed the old, decadent nations of this continent. The communist infection has taken hold in this city once more, and we must purge it, burn it out, destroy it!"
-Speech by Joseph Smith III, landlord and leader of the Anti-Communism Defenders of America Front
"They've gotten vehicles. Repeat, the enemy has vehicles, they are trying to encircle our positions and cut us off from the bridges. We need to fall back!"
-Radio chatter from Special Police Brigade 7C, defending the Ocupole Hotel and surrounding neighborhoods.
"Are the helicopter pilots ready?"
"Sir, the pilots have been reporting incredibly high rates of mechanical failure."
"Do you suspect sabotage Lieutenant/"
"Sir, that's the best outcome I can imagine. Otherwise, it's mutiny."
"Alright, send in the IMP, and then get me the Air Force on the line. We're going to need to go out of house, damn the bastards. They just made things worse for everyone."
-Conversation overheard in the Chicago Memorial Army Base
The strike began as planned. After a vote, you had all agreed to take part, and showed up with backpacks full of medical supplies and crates of water...and a few guns, carefully concealed. Victory Square, the hideous monument to blood and slaughter built at the heart of the factory district, was already occupied when you arrived, and vehicles had been chained down or knocked over to form barricades, while the doors of the factories directly on the square were forced open. These buildings were turned to other functions - restaurants, hotels, watchtowers, landing pads, and a command center.
While some of your members were directed to water distribution stations and medical tents, two representatives were sent to that same command center.
Looking around, you see familiar faces, leaders of groups you had worked with many times sitting around a table with a map of the city (a map of the country hangs from a back wall; both are scrawled on), while livestreams and network news blasted from a half-dozen televisions.
You saw a half-dozen people from the constituent groups of the Rainbow Federation, two of them looking slightly uncomfortable with the amount of socialist iconography, communist philosophy, and anarchist jargon being thrown around. You saw eight or nine more sitting beside them. Some you recognized as leaders of underground unions, while others were unfamiliar but presumably from similar organizations. Sitting across them both was Good Ol' Gondler, the big, bruising leader of the official union, the man who had perhaps unintentionally started this whole affair by being one of the few such leaders willing to actually endorse a strike.
He looked lost and confused without his usual crowd of flunkies, but when he saw you approach he seized on your presence. "Ahh, and here's Radical Reconstruction. I heard you were having some trouble with some of your members getting a bit lost, it seems that's all sorted out?"
"Some of our members have become criminal thugs, yes, no better than the ones we're fighting," you lie, "but we are here to fight nonetheless."
"Hopefully it won't come to that," he says, but even he knows how long the odds of this ending peacefully are slim.
Once the square was occupied, once the barricades went up, the die had been cast.
But you do have some slim comfort to offer. "If it comes to it, we have a bolthole, some of us might be able to get away."
As the news reports take universally hysterical turns describing the "brutal looting" and "bloodthirsty slaughter" you are apparently engaging in, Abigail, the fiery woman who started this all, shoots to her feet.
"What's with all this defeatist talk? We're winning here and now. This isn't the only hot spot, we have people in two dozen places. Some of them are better setup than we are here. The city is going to fall in a matter of hours once we give the go-signal, the JIA and the mercs we all pretend to know nothing about are panicking, and the army is refusing to get involved so far. We have a better shot now than we did ever before."
That doesn't mean it's a good shot, you think, but you don't say it. You knew what you could be signing up for.
But you had seen all that had led up to this. The marches, the protests, the blood spilled by the enforcer's baton or the grinding gears of industry, all the struggle against the injustices this society was built on.
You could not turn away, none of you could. So as strikes paralyzed first one city, then another, you agreed to take part, to make ready. You agreed to come out again once things really began.
And on this muggy July evening, they had. The "legitimate" union had been mingling with the radicals for at least two weeks, and they broke with their leadership. An attempt by the police to suppress the strike had been beaten off, and when they went to vent their frustration in minority districts, they were met with organized resistance.
Things escalated from here, even as the city government maintained a pretense of control over the situation for fear of the results of the full intervention. That would only last until they got out of the city of course.
And so the race was on. Parties were sent out to take vital points, gunfire echoed with increasing regularity, police drones were shot down with lasers and counter-drones while friendly ones swooped in bringing small baskets of supplies. Factories were liberated, their machinery seized and then put to better use. Retired soldiers began to train volunteers in how to march and how to fight, while militias of every stripe recruited every adult they could find.
With a cheer, the statues in Victory Square were torn down one by one, hauled off to be melted down, leaving behind only pedestals with defaced carvings. With a cheer, announcements were made of the numerous solidarity strikes and their achievements, of the Mississippi Metropolis being forced to shut down shipping due to strikers blocking the river, of the Boston becoming bedecked in green flags, of Calgary seeing soldiers burn their uniforms and join the strikers.
For three days, it seems an unstoppable tide that rises and rises. The army remains in position, unwilling to advance, but also unwilling to retreat. Organizers make their way out into the rural communities around the city, reaching out to rally the farmworkers and convict-laborers, to break the grip of the agricorps and rancher magnates. Attempts at connecting the disparate movements across the nation begin.
Then the third day ends. Power has been shut off, but improvised sources have kept the most essential functions going, and more capacity is being slowly spooled up and improvised. But it does mean the night is dark, dark enough that no one sees what happens at first.
They hear it instead.
-Footage from the Great New Chicago Uprising, censored by order of [REDACTED] until [REDACTED]
"Radical terrorists and identity extremists have launched attacks on 'treasonous figures and false friends' that have killed at least two dozen!"
- The New York Times (Revived)
"The liberation of the workers of this nation is once more at hand! Just as our comrades in the Colored Defense Force and Revolutionary American Indian Movement are striking great blows against the enforcers of white supremacy, the oppressed and downtrodden toilers of New Chicago have seized power from the enforcers of capital. We've taken the factory district and secured the railyard, and from here we will only go on to greater things!"
-Speech by Abigail Delucci, leader of the American Federation of Workers (Left-Anarchist)
"The commies are coming, they are coming for City Hall, we need to evacuate the mayor, what do you mean they have anti-air! Where the fuck did they get anti-air?"
-Radio chatter from the JIA Operating Center in New Chicago
"My friends, we face a battle greater than the one that destroyed the old, decadent nations of this continent. The communist infection has taken hold in this city once more, and we must purge it, burn it out, destroy it!"
-Speech by Joseph Smith III, landlord and leader of the Anti-Communism Defenders of America Front
"They've gotten vehicles. Repeat, the enemy has vehicles, they are trying to encircle our positions and cut us off from the bridges. We need to fall back!"
-Radio chatter from Special Police Brigade 7C, defending the Ocupole Hotel and surrounding neighborhoods.
"Are the helicopter pilots ready?"
"Sir, the pilots have been reporting incredibly high rates of mechanical failure."
"Do you suspect sabotage Lieutenant/"
"Sir, that's the best outcome I can imagine. Otherwise, it's mutiny."
"Alright, send in the IMP, and then get me the Air Force on the line. We're going to need to go out of house, damn the bastards. They just made things worse for everyone."
-Conversation overheard in the Chicago Memorial Army Base
The strike began as planned. After a vote, you had all agreed to take part, and showed up with backpacks full of medical supplies and crates of water...and a few guns, carefully concealed. Victory Square, the hideous monument to blood and slaughter built at the heart of the factory district, was already occupied when you arrived, and vehicles had been chained down or knocked over to form barricades, while the doors of the factories directly on the square were forced open. These buildings were turned to other functions - restaurants, hotels, watchtowers, landing pads, and a command center.
While some of your members were directed to water distribution stations and medical tents, two representatives were sent to that same command center.
Looking around, you see familiar faces, leaders of groups you had worked with many times sitting around a table with a map of the city (a map of the country hangs from a back wall; both are scrawled on), while livestreams and network news blasted from a half-dozen televisions.
You saw a half-dozen people from the constituent groups of the Rainbow Federation, two of them looking slightly uncomfortable with the amount of socialist iconography, communist philosophy, and anarchist jargon being thrown around. You saw eight or nine more sitting beside them. Some you recognized as leaders of underground unions, while others were unfamiliar but presumably from similar organizations. Sitting across them both was Good Ol' Gondler, the big, bruising leader of the official union, the man who had perhaps unintentionally started this whole affair by being one of the few such leaders willing to actually endorse a strike.
He looked lost and confused without his usual crowd of flunkies, but when he saw you approach he seized on your presence. "Ahh, and here's Radical Reconstruction. I heard you were having some trouble with some of your members getting a bit lost, it seems that's all sorted out?"
"Some of our members have become criminal thugs, yes, no better than the ones we're fighting," you lie, "but we are here to fight nonetheless."
"Hopefully it won't come to that," he says, but even he knows how long the odds of this ending peacefully are slim.
Once the square was occupied, once the barricades went up, the die had been cast.
But you do have some slim comfort to offer. "If it comes to it, we have a bolthole, some of us might be able to get away."
As the news reports take universally hysterical turns describing the "brutal looting" and "bloodthirsty slaughter" you are apparently engaging in, Abigail, the fiery woman who started this all, shoots to her feet.
"What's with all this defeatist talk? We're winning here and now. This isn't the only hot spot, we have people in two dozen places. Some of them are better setup than we are here. The city is going to fall in a matter of hours once we give the go-signal, the JIA and the mercs we all pretend to know nothing about are panicking, and the army is refusing to get involved so far. We have a better shot now than we did ever before."
That doesn't mean it's a good shot, you think, but you don't say it. You knew what you could be signing up for.
But you had seen all that had led up to this. The marches, the protests, the blood spilled by the enforcer's baton or the grinding gears of industry, all the struggle against the injustices this society was built on.
You could not turn away, none of you could. So as strikes paralyzed first one city, then another, you agreed to take part, to make ready. You agreed to come out again once things really began.
And on this muggy July evening, they had. The "legitimate" union had been mingling with the radicals for at least two weeks, and they broke with their leadership. An attempt by the police to suppress the strike had been beaten off, and when they went to vent their frustration in minority districts, they were met with organized resistance.
Things escalated from here, even as the city government maintained a pretense of control over the situation for fear of the results of the full intervention. That would only last until they got out of the city of course.
And so the race was on. Parties were sent out to take vital points, gunfire echoed with increasing regularity, police drones were shot down with lasers and counter-drones while friendly ones swooped in bringing small baskets of supplies. Factories were liberated, their machinery seized and then put to better use. Retired soldiers began to train volunteers in how to march and how to fight, while militias of every stripe recruited every adult they could find.
With a cheer, the statues in Victory Square were torn down one by one, hauled off to be melted down, leaving behind only pedestals with defaced carvings. With a cheer, announcements were made of the numerous solidarity strikes and their achievements, of the Mississippi Metropolis being forced to shut down shipping due to strikers blocking the river, of the Boston becoming bedecked in green flags, of Calgary seeing soldiers burn their uniforms and join the strikers.
For three days, it seems an unstoppable tide that rises and rises. The army remains in position, unwilling to advance, but also unwilling to retreat. Organizers make their way out into the rural communities around the city, reaching out to rally the farmworkers and convict-laborers, to break the grip of the agricorps and rancher magnates. Attempts at connecting the disparate movements across the nation begin.
Then the third day ends. Power has been shut off, but improvised sources have kept the most essential functions going, and more capacity is being slowly spooled up and improvised. But it does mean the night is dark, dark enough that no one sees what happens at first.
They hear it instead.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh fuck oh no.
- Location
- Here & There
I'm getting the same feeling when I read how the US bombed their own lands to kill off workers protesting.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
We have our people ready for underground railroad shenaigans. If the revolt fails we just take them all with us, close the door, and make sure that this cursed future never happens.
Tabascoheath
Unkempt, Evil-eyed Charlatan, and Pseudo-Mystic
- Location
- Your Nearest Orbital Habitat
Well shit.