It would probably be possible to hide a very small base under the cover of some sort of legitimate enterprise, but it would require a lot of forethought and management.
I know that, when I'm in a tabletop game set in the present day, I approach finding secret bases through things like power usage and who owns which pieces of property. And a building that doesn't use any power at all is even more suspicious than one that uses some.
In Avatar: the Legend of Korra, the city had electricity supplied by Firebenders who could manipulate lightning. They worked in shifts in a big operation just throwing lightning at some sort of device that turned it into something usable. It apparently didn't pay very well for the benders which kind of astonishes me because being a bender at all is supposed to be rare and not all Firebenders can work with lightning.
I wonder how many people using fire jutsu would be required for a good sized base. It seems likely to tie up people who could be very useful elsewhere. It reminds me of the difficulties I had when presented with a supposedly global organization that had 500 members but people stationed at every major hospital *and* secret bases and a major training facility. And didn't allow anyone into their facilities who hadn't completed five years of potentially lethal training. This was a beta of a GURPS supplement, and I asked the writers who cleaned the bathrooms.
Support staff. It's a thing. The final edition actually had support staff as part of the organization, including janitors and receptionists and food service people, and the organization no longer required the medical personnel to go through the five years of training that were completely irrelevant to their job.
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I know that, when I'm in a tabletop game set in the present day, I approach finding secret bases through things like power usage and who owns which pieces of property. And a building that doesn't use any power at all is even more suspicious than one that uses some.
In Avatar: the Legend of Korra, the city had electricity supplied by Firebenders who could manipulate lightning. They worked in shifts in a big operation just throwing lightning at some sort of device that turned it into something usable. It apparently didn't pay very well for the benders which kind of astonishes me because being a bender at all is supposed to be rare and not all Firebenders can work with lightning.
I wonder how many people using fire jutsu would be required for a good sized base. It seems likely to tie up people who could be very useful elsewhere. It reminds me of the difficulties I had when presented with a supposedly global organization that had 500 members but people stationed at every major hospital *and* secret bases and a major training facility. And didn't allow anyone into their facilities who hadn't completed five years of potentially lethal training. This was a beta of a GURPS supplement, and I asked the writers who cleaned the bathrooms.
Support staff. It's a thing. The final edition actually had support staff as part of the organization, including janitors and receptionists and food service people, and the organization no longer required the medical personnel to go through the five years of training that were completely irrelevant to their job.