Redoubts and Gateways :
Redoubts - Towards the latter part of the 20th century the United States Government, preparing for the eventual outbreak of the third world war decided to build in secret many places with armed personnel, weapons storage, scientific research and other top level secret activities.  These places were usually buried underground, in mountains, under water, in space, under national parks and any place they figured would be a safe haven when the bombs fell.  Most redoubts carried supplies of food, weapons, military vehicles, fuel, clothing, barracks,  kitchen areas, shower rooms, labs and gateways.  Each redoubt was also supplied with a nuclear power plant that for most redoubts is still running 100 years later, fresh water and air purification systems.  For some reason, that can never be revealed as the people responsible are now dead, there was an attempt just prior to skydark to evacuate the redoubts of all goods, notes, equipment etc.  Now these redoubts were built to take a direct nuclear hit and the reasoning behind the evacuations was totally nonsensical, never the less it happened.  Although they attempted to eradicate anything in the redoubts, they were not always successful.  This turns out to be good for Ryan and crew as they are able to resupply in weapons, clothing, ammunition, the odd vehicle, fuel and food along with medicine.  When Mildred joins the crew, her knowledge as a doctor proves a great boon to them and any redoubt with medical supplies is a treasure.
    Redoubts could be a single floor, many floors or spread over an area with separate sections.  There are even a few private redoubts that do not carry a lot of supplies and never did but they do contain a gateway.  Some of these redoubts were in sensitive areas like Russia, China and Japan.  Some were in space as satellites and there was even one on the moon and maybe Mars(?).  Where these become important is in the gateway part of the redoubts.  This is what Ryan and his crew use to hop from place to place in Death Lands allowing them to be seen in two places on the same day as transfer time between gateways was nominal.  Another note is that although all redoubts were different they all used the same three number code for opening and closing the huge sec doors that allowed entrance of personal and vehicles.  Once the numbers were known then they did not have to keep trying different combinations to operate the sec doors.  These numbers though did not allow access into other parts of the redoubts.  These places, unless they got lucky, remained unexplored.

Gateways -  A gateway is a atom transmitter ( matter transmitter also known as Mattrans ) unit that functions quit like the teleporter in the Star Trek series.  The way to operate a gateway was to enter a circular chamber which could fit easily ten people and sit on the floor and close the door.  To stand would be to find yourself face first most likely with a broken nose and black eyes.  The closing of the door set off the mechanism to run the gateway and it soon fills with fog and when our gang wakes up next, it is to find themselves in a different area of the world but usually in the USA.  The theory is that the atoms are broken down to their individual selves, transported to a new gateway through light and sound and then reassembled as the person that was in the previous gateway.  One of the crews biggest worries was that they would enter a malfunctioning gateway but as time goes on they understand that a safety precaution built in prevents that from happening.  Also Ryan and his crew have no choice in where they end up as the gateways are all pre-set and since there are no manuals, they do not know how to use all the functions.  The only function that they later use is a return feature that lets them return to the last spot they were in provided that no one else has used it since.  It is also important to note that the gateways were a prelude to operation Chronos ( see Chronos ), the same experiment that brought Doc into the future.
    The trips in these gateways was hardly ever pleasant.  When Ryan and the crew woke up it was usually to vomit, bleeding noses, headaches and dizziness.  Usually a small time of 1/2 - 2 hours was needed before the crew was back to fighting capacity.  Another side affect from the jumps, as they were called, was to dream during the transfer or should I say experience a nightmare during the transfers.  These were never pleasant and most times felt as real as living the dream, leaving the crew disorientated and waking in fear when these nightmares happened.  So although a fast way to travel, it was not with out side affects that could best  be done with out.  There is always the fear in the back of their minds that the jumps may be taking a greater toll on their bodies and minds than they realized.  Mind you, Mildred noticed that in their group at least most wounds healed rapidly without infection for the most part.  She theorized that it may have to do with the gateway remembering the way the body was built and starting a healing process in the body as they were sent from one place to another.