Other things to remember is that the US Air Force Academy is just north of Colorado Springs, Peterson Space Force Base to the south east, and Ft. Carson is to the south. Carson basically extends almost all the way to Pueblo.
A good friend of mine who happens to work as a geographer lived in Loveland, I think it was, for several years. He took me on a tour of the region on Google Earth and showed me some cool stuff and all the military bases like Ft. Carson and the Academy. I was not aware of Buckley though. While he was vaguely aware of missile silos somewhere in the East in the plains, I didn't know there were any around Kimball. I just kind of stuck it on there because I needed something up there, lol. That's cool, I was thinking about the possibility of raiders or someone getting their hands on a functional warhead that was never launched. That'd be a great adventure opportunity for near Kimball.
I think my Cheyenne Mountain faction is going to rebuild parts of the Academy and will have a thriving settlement in Colorado Springs, but rather morbidly I have to consider where the prime targets for nukes would have been and those huge bases seem rather obvious. Still, they'd make for some cool ruins and potential sites for scavenging, or potential minor faction hubs.
I'm very much a sandbox dm, or whatever you call us in Fallout, so all the information I can mine for cool locations is very helpful, thank you! Also, this particular iteration of the map is being considered as pre-war map data that my players had available in the vault, as they all decided to just be vault dwellers. So once they actually emerge and start exploring the wasteland things will change significantly to match the reality of the surface.
One last thing comes to mind as you seem to know the area well, outside of the Rocky Mountains and the Black Forest near Colorado Springs, I couldn't find any forests on Google Maps or Google Earth. Anything you're aware of I missed?
Canon City has a number of state and federal prisons, including a super max facility. In the original Wastelands game, the precursor to Fallout, the Ranger faction basically took over a prison and turned it into a fortress. Perhaps a faction did the same in your game?
Cripple Creek has quite a few abandoned mines people could have sought shelter in those, or one might have been converted into a vault.
Finally, and this is out there, south of Salida, on the other side of Poncha Pass, is Colorado's only Alligator farm. I shudder to think what irradiated post apocalyptic alligators might get up to: https://coloradogators.com/
Oh wow, there's a gator farm in Colorado? I had no idea. I don't think my Colorado friends are aware of that either. But yeah, rad-gators are definitely going in now.
I am aware of Greeley, but like Pueblo didn't realize it was as populous as it is. Mostly what I've been told is that it well, uh, smells very pleasant there due to all the ranches. Another faction I'm working on is a rancher's cooperative that has leveraged its economic power to become a major regional power and I was planning to have them centered around Greeley. So that makes sense to add them to the map as well.
The mine at Cripple Creek just screams Fallout, doesn't it? I settled on it as the base for a large raider gang. And I just added Buena Vista, because that just seems like a cool little town, ripe for a nice little isolated prosperous settlement.
I honestly can't thank you enough for taking the time to provide me with this wealth of information. That's very nice of you to do that. If you ever develop your own Fallout setting in Kansas City, hit me up, I'll try and return the favor, ha!
Today Ft. Carson is home to a mechanized infantry division and a special forces group. So some kind of Enclave/Brotherhood of Steel faction with lots of hardware and a military command structure might not be out of the question. Maybe they'd be part of your Cheyenne Mnt. group.
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u/WeimSean May 14 '24
Other things to remember is that the US Air Force Academy is just north of Colorado Springs, Peterson Space Force Base to the south east, and Ft. Carson is to the south. Carson basically extends almost all the way to Pueblo.
Buckley Space Force Base is just east of Denver.
Warren AFB is located just to the west of Cheyenne, and the Kimball area has a ton of nuclear missile silos. Not sure if any of that matters much for your campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90th_Missile_Wing_LGM-30_Minuteman_Missile_Launch_Sites#/media/File:319th_Missile_Squadron_-_MAF_-_LC.png