The Strategic Materials Reserve (codename System 2, originally Project 501) is a covert federal system in Vekllei that maintains secret stockpiles of critical materials across the country’s 83 republics. The Commonwealth is uniquely vulnerable to blockades and disruption, as a scattered archipelagic republic, and the SMR is designed to allow industrial and military operations to continue during such an event. It is not a single type of facility or warehouse, but encompasses a range of distributed methods to store important materials safely.
The reserve is organised into subsystems, since the strategic materials it stores vary from agricultural surplus to rare particles critical for modern fusion reactors. The scale and scope of these stockpiles has seen them characterised as “doomsday vaults,” though the SMRs are generally colocated with factories and laboratories rather than isolated vaults.
Federal SMRs
- Base Commodities Reserve
- Defence Components Reserve
- Federal Grain Reserve
- Federal Pharmaceutical & Medicines Reserve
- Monopole Reserve
As a stockpile approaches capacity, it releases material to the commons economy for industrial use.