Guardsman Bass wrote: Although they obviously aren't as advanced as we are now, the Native Americans (and particularly the Southeast and Northeastern Native Americans) were not small groups of hunter-gatherers - they were fairly large, agricultural societies. Most of them continued to be agricultural societies (the Plains Indians being a bit of an exception) right up to the point when they were displaced westward, even after losing 19 in 20 people on average.
Agreed, althopugh that doesn;t change my point about complexity of society. Our society is so complex and so interrelated that tearing big holes in it is catastrophic.
That's what makes me think society will rebound, at least to an early 19th century level (assuming the Great Bioattack happens).
One could certainly make a case that a regression would stop there although I think it would go back further. We've got no real hard evidence to go by so that's something we can discuss over a beer sometime. The 17th century meme comes out of studies on nuclear attacks so the results of a bio event may not be applicable and I will happily concede that. By the way, the "Great Bioattack" may not be deliberate; it could be an accidental release or simply a mutation of an existing disease, the way the Great Influenza of 1918/19 mutated. By the way, the book "The Great Influenza" by John Barry makes interesting reading in this respect.
After winter kills off a bunch of them, they try their hands at farming. Many of them probably have done gardening to some limited extent (particularly if they are suburbanites), and they can read - it's not as if all the books on agriculture have been burned.
But, there is a problem here,. Yes, they can do gardening but they'll have none of the aids they take for granted. No electricity, probably no gasoline left, little or no fertilizer, no herbicides or pesticides. There's whole swatches of knowledge they just won't have. Textbooks from a library won't help because they'll presume the same basic facilities. At a guess, the ones who will survive will be the ones smart enough to go to the history section and find out how the Romans did it (Roman yields per acre weren't exceeded until the 16th century IIRC.
I'm a bit more skeptical of the 17th century concept. The population in question has some serious disadvantages (they're not used to farming and survival without the technological and societal edifice to support them), but they also have some major advantages, including rapidly-degrading cars (but there are parts to scavenge, and they'll have a strong incentive to be as creative as possible in getting them working), literacy, some remaining technological forms of communication and the knowledge to make them (it's not that hard to build a radio), and so forth. Those are very useful for organizational purposes.
I'll be happy to argue that one out. Communications in the sense of people talking will be fine - as you say, radios can be made as long as the supply of bits lasts out but all of this stuff is going to run out. Trade will die very early on
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CRACK
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For all your Saudi guy's comments about how God will not let the Holy Places be destroyed, I notice that the Saudis have not exactly let the quite-rational defenses go to waste, and when they've been threatened with a real security threat (including from Saddam, who did have weapons like the above), they put their trust in real weapons system and tactics, up to the point of allowing a group of infidels to set up bases in the Holy Land.
I've heard the same thing too often to take it lightly. Sure, the Saudis have built a lot of defenses
against other Moslems but the "Allah will protect us" is a very common meme. It's not unique to Moslems of course, Christians come up with the same "we place our faith in God" (same idea, different words).
I'm not doubting that these guys have irrational ends and motivations ("recreating the Caliphate" and so forth, as well as an afterlife for martyrs). But they've been quite rational in their tactics. The very fact that Al-Qaeda (a group of Islamic extremists if there ever was one) resorted to terrorism attacks and unconventional warfare shows that they have a very strong realization of where their weaknesses lie, and what methods might be best for achieving those aims. I very, very much doubt that unleashing a bioweapon that could potentially kill everyone (including most or all of the faithful - irrational ends, rational tactics again) is something they'd like to do. A smaller scale bioweapon, like Anthrax as it is and so forth? Maybe.
I hope you're right. However, the willingness of al quaeda and its franchisees to kill lareg numbers of their own to get a few of the "enemy" is hardly comforting.
Yes, but I doubt they want to kill all of their own people in the process.
They don't believe they will. Anyway, fundamentalist Islam is a death-cult. They've already crossed the border to where death is an end in itself rather than a means to an end. In a way, they're a bit like the Japanese in 1945, to extreme elements of the Japanese military, getting killed had become an end in itself.
Then why haven't they done it so far? As you mentioned, there are medical doctors in Al-Qaeda, along with sympathizers who would have knowledge of this stuff - and that's been the case for, what, the past 15 years? Why haven't we seen more of this stuff floating around? I think you are over-estimating the "irrational muslim fanatic" factor. Like I said, they have irrational ends, but rational tactics.
Again, I hope you're right. We've knocked off some stuff in Afghanistan that pointed to biowar efforts and there's a few pointers elsewhere. I suspect that it's not flashy enough to serve their ends at the moment. That wouldn't be unique, there are several terrorist tactics that would be dead easy to do and quite devastating (you'll excuse me if I don't list them) yet they haven't used them. Why haven't they is a weak argument until we can get inside their heads and find out. By the way, don't rule out the possibility they tried and failed.
I'd be curious as to see what the Cold War major powers' rule of these things were (i.e. when the Soviets and US would use them). Presumably, if you end up doing a full nuclear exchange, most of civilization is already a goner - bioweapons would just be icing on the cake.
The US planned biowar attacks on China in the 1960s (actually a combination of nuclear and bio) and one of our battlefield missiles back then was primarily a bio-delivery system. The Soviets had quite a few of their ICBMs loaded with bio-agents. In both cases that was due to shortages of nuclear weapons. Basically, bio is a poor man's nuclear deterrent. Those who can build nukes, those who can't look to bio. To put this into perspective, traditionally bio isn't actually that effective unless its carefully focussed (like tossing plague victims into a besieged city or knocking off transport horses). What is changing things in my opinion is the growinga bility to tailor and modify biological agents,
The Soviet Union was going to nuke Poland? I was under the impression that the Army they planned on using to rool over Western Europe was based there.
). The point is that if they are already alert and the world is in general heading to war, wouldn't they though disperse their military assets as to avoid being hit? Like, scramble the Navy, put their planes on reserve ("Spreadout") airfields? I know Russia has such procedures, but I thought they are fairly universal, and the more concentrated your C&C and population are, the more sense such a strategy has.