An "exchange point" system actually makes good sense, and I think it speaks well to the security of the base and how well provisioned it is. The fact that the Post Exchange is open in any form is a good sign, a link to normalcy and a sign that some luxury items are available. That's bound to help troop morale (which is the reason that PXs exist in the first place). And you couldn't use US currency, because there's no way of stopping troops from acquiring more (off dead zombies, out of business during recon missions) and causing crazy inflation.
This is very similar to what
Riley did at
the Tower with her "store". We never knew how goods were distributed from the store, but there must have been a system or else why have a store.
Believe it or not, the military is subject to privacy laws just like everybody else. When a soldier transfers in to a unit his data goes onto the local data servers, and a base like
Fort Irwin isn't authorized to see anything about soldiers not stationed there. Ordinarily your orders arrive at your new duty station before you do, authorizing them to download your records. When you arrive you hand-carry the rest of your data, which the base gets when you in-process. In other words what we saw here was really close to "situation normal".
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