011: New Arrivals and the Battle of my Cousin's Front Yard

Donner's people picked up three more of our people and sent them our way. Three siblings: the great-grandchildren of my grandmother's sister. Oldest of them is Pyles the Skilled Yet Somewhat-Troubled Marksman.

Youngest is Georgia the Infiltration and Material Acquisitions Expert 

In the middle is Renesmee the Sparkly CGI Baby Propaganda Coordinator

She's been watching the wrong kind of movies.

This contingent is going to set up shop in an abandoned mine near Towne's Hollow. They're better armed, man for man, than the original party, but generally put fewer points into direct-combat skills, preferring stealth and agility as an alternative to brute force. They seem to have a better guerilla mentality than my own branch of the family, which is surprising considering how much younger they are.

I let them pool their Preparedness Credits as opposed to the first cast who were told to buy as individuals (so almost everyone has medikits, but no one could afford a radio), so they're relatively well-equipped. One big shortcoming is transport: they only have access to bicycles and three pack burrows, so their range of operations and ability to transport supplies will be quite limited.

Our first baptism of fire went well enough. The local Stasi sent a team to arrest us all, and they stood in place and died like they were supposed to. This happened one or two times (I took notes on the particulars, but have since lost them) with me giving some advice on cover, concealment, and judicious use of chokepoints before the youngin's started getting the hang of things. Then they started getting bored and wanted to play Go instead.

010: Boom II (Reset)

The ending of the Donner Party reminded me of the ending of A Man Called Sarge:

Leslie Browning: "Thank God we got those twenty-one bombs disarmed in time."
Sarge: "Twenty-ONE bombs?"
*fuel dump explodes in a spectacular fireball*
Sarge: Oh swell.
Narrator: Did we mention that this was not an important story?
*the end*

(We've lately been watching a lot of the old big-budget World War II films which that one parodied, but it's been ages since I've actually seen AMCS, and I can't find any of the better parts on youtube.)

Anyway, I devoted more research than I probably should have into finding out just how long it would take for a 40 foot boxcar loaded with cold-weather clothing, barley, small arms and ammunition, truck and helicopter parts, avgas, two X-ray machines, searchlights and guided missiles to go up in flames. Not very long, actually.

So… train car go boom. And so did the rest of the train. And so did absolutely everything else in the gorge. We could have run at the first sign of smoke and it still wouldn't have mattered; we would have just died tired.

We did pretty good, all things considered: destroyed millions of dollars of enemy equipment, killed a full platoon of highly-trained enemy soldiers, probably forced them to redraw the map of western Pincher County... it would have been a very auspicious first strike if it hadn't also been our last.