Commentary from SDN:SoT

[PeZook]

What do people understand by "formation fighting", anyway? It's not like we're going to defend ourselves with swords, and there's just enough soldiers here to allow for effective drilling of a small militia.

[Vehrec]

And they are, individually, vastly more fit than we are. We're a product of a civilization which doesn't make us really work for our calories, and a significant majority of people our modern medical technology allows to live would've died in childhood in a neolithic society.

To be fair, the idea that what doesn't kill you can only make you stronger is a load of crap. What doesn't kill you can easily leave you crippled, scarred or your growth massively limited.

[Academia Nut]

It should be pointed out that while the majority of our population are probably fat sacks of crap, the survivors will harden up quickly and our greater initial health will help a lot as our growth wouldn't have been stunted when we were young. Basically, the vast majority of people we would encounter would already be at or around their peak of physical fitness, while we're all vastly underperforming because we don't need anywhere near peak fitness in order to survive, but given proper nutrition and exercise, we will rapidly make up the difference. Will most of us want to get into close combat with any of these guys? Fuck no. That's what longbows, crossbows, and firearms are for. Not that we would be taking on entire armies anyway, but we could definite discourage raiders from trying to mess with us.

[Formless]

What do people understand by "formation fighting", anyway? It's not like we're going to defend ourselves with swords, and there's just enough soldiers here to allow for effective drilling of a small militia.

Why exactly are we worried about melee combat anyway when we have guns? Are we worried about running out of ammo and not have any way of replenishing it?

Another thought also occurs to me; if the police department of Nantucket has riot gear...

[Simon_Jester]

Really, Nantucket is the wrong place for the SD.netters to stay. The male-female ratio among the population is ridiculously skewed, to the point where the actual breeding population may be unsustainable. The climate on Nantucket isn't that good, either; it's a nice place to visit but you'll notice that not many people actually live there, with reason. It's even less sustainable in a context where there is no possibility of disaster relief from the mainland.

In the novels, the (sex-balanced) population of Nantucket could honestly make a go of it on the island by trying to trade with other parts of the world. Here, just to be sustainable the population would have to import something on the order of a thousand women, and survive in a climate that is foreign to a significant fraction of the overall group.

I think it makes more sense to try to migrate en masse to somewhere nicer, preferably somewhere with a large local population that can supply the Netters with raw materials (and food, and the hope of actually getting married someday).

Of course, the problem with that is the lack of sufficient sealift capacity.

[PeZook]

And, of course, living amongst primitive locals will quickly become unbearable. I'm sorry, but it's true: cultural attitudes of most civilizations of the period would be totally incompatible with our modern sentiments. An SD.netter living amongst, say, the Maya, would never get accepted into the wider community (even if he could learn the language), would live his life amongst truly abhorrent cultural practices and witness barbaric attitudes on a daily basis.

It may sound elitist, but it's true: we are a product of a much more humane and considerate era than anybody who grew up in a 1250 BC civilization. Frankly, if I needed to "go native" in order to survive, I'd seriously consider just laying down to die.

We'd lose all our advantages over the natives by moving elsewhere: we'd be exposed, without most of our technology, with little survival skills, no premade shelter, no resistance to local parasites, no medicine or even basic medical facilities. We'd need to build the new settlement from scratch. We'd quickly become reliant on the locals for food, which means we'd need to submit as vassals to any civilization, or face a generation long blood feud for intruding into native hunting grounds if we settle somewhere else.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

And they are, individually, vastly more fit than we are. We're a product of a civilization which doesn't make us really work for our calories, and a significant majority of people our modern medical technology allows to live would've died in childhood in a neolithic society.

To be fair, the idea that what doesn't kill you can only make you stronger is a load of crap. What doesn't kill you can easily leave you crippled, scarred or your growth massively limited.

Yes. However, the cripples are the sort of people who are likely to stay back at camp and tell children stories of how the braves faced white devils who wielded thunder-sticks; as opposed to being the people who will go out and actually challenge the white devils with the thunder-sticks. Moreover, the hunter-gatherers you are likely to find living in the New England area during this period of history didn't suffer from malnutrition to nearly the degree that those living in early agricultural societies did.

[Simon_Jester]

And, of course, living amongst primitive locals will quickly become unbearable. I'm sorry, but it's true: cultural attitudes of most civilizations of the period would be totally incompatible with our modern sentiments. An SD.netter living amongst, say, the Maya, would never get accepted into the wider community (even if he could learn the language), would live his life amongst truly abhorrent cultural practices and witness barbaric attitudes on a daily basis.

It may sound elitist, but it's true: we are a product of a much more humane and considerate era than anybody who grew up in a 1250 BC civilization. Frankly, if I needed to "go native" in order to survive, I'd seriously consider just laying down to die.

We'd lose all our advantages over the natives by moving elsewhere: we'd be exposed, without most of our technology, with little survival skills, no premade shelter, no resistance to local parasites, no medicine or even basic medical facilities. We'd need to build the new settlement from scratch. We'd quickly become reliant on the locals for food, which means we'd need to submit as vassals to any civilization, or face a generation long blood feud for intruding into native hunting grounds if we settle somewhere else.

I don't know; three thousand or so people with superior background knowledge and a strong technical advantage might very well be able to move to, say, a Mediterranean city-state and set themselves up as the new elite class. You don't like the conditions? Build better ones.

The closest analogy from the novels is what Walker tried to do in Alba (Bronze Age England) and succeeded in doing in Greece. I would strongly oppose following that exact road, because Walker was a monster. But the idea of relocating to somewhere with an existing culture and trying to reshape it is better than spending the indefinite future as subsistence farmers on a rock in the Atlantic with a three to one male/female ratio.

However, this would hinge on laying the groundwork properly: getting together enough sealift to find a suitable place, send an expeditionary force, and start moving things like machine tools over.

[Formless]

Simon, in order to exploit half our knowledge we need an infrastructure. For example, how are we going to build anything more complex than a log cabin without metals? That by itself requires us to be able to mine and refine materials, which takes a special kind of knowledge all its own which I'm not sure anyone on this board has. Nantucket might not have the best climate, but it does have some of the infrastructure we need to work with. Considering that as long as we stay on the island we have access to electricity and natural gas, and that the city serves as fortification against most of the intruders we're likely to run into in this time period, staying on Nantucket and building up our society there increases our likelihood of survival.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not sure. Remember the disadvantages of staying on the island: the immediately available resources are more or less limited to fish (though there are a LOT of fish). Everything else- lumber, metal, grain- has to come from off-island. In the case of lumber and metal you can work for a while by cannibalizing the supplies that are on the island, but that only gets you so far. Lumber at least is readily available from the mainland since there are huge forests covering most of the eastern seaboard, but metal is not, and we're in a singularly bad position to dig our own copper or iron out of the ground.

Moreover, for long term survival prospects to be decent, you need the ability to make and repair your infrastructure; if we don't have a few competent machinists on the island we're boned anyway, because the existing machinery won't hold out forever. If we do, then gathering up the available machine tools and creating more such tools is going to be a top priority... and at some point, it's going to make more sense to move our manufacturing capability closer to a viable permanent supply of raw materials. And labor. And (this is going to be coming up a LOT) a large population that can make up for the gross gender imbalance.

You can argue it either way, and probably the rational solution is some kind of compromise- set up at least a trading post somewhere with a large population and useful resources while maintaining a presence on the infrastructure-rich Island. But simply hunkering down on Nantucket is not going to cut it.

[Formless]

Remember the disadvantages of staying on the island: the immediately available resources are more or less limited to fish (though there are a LOT of fish).

Simon, is not the abandoned city ITSELF a resource? Even if we have to start ripping copper wire out of the walls of the buildings we aren't using there are still lots of things we can scavenge that will no only be useful but which we literally cannot find anywhere else in this time period. Like iron.

[Simon_Jester]

I alluded to that: "In the case of lumber and metal you can work for a while by cannibalizing the supplies that are on the island, but that only gets you so far." Nantucket isn't exactly the steel capital of the world.

Short term, of course, none of this is relevant. But in the books, the actual population of Nantucket (who went with their island) had good reasons to send a ship to England to trade, to start hacking out farms on Long Island, and so forth. In the long term, their only alternative was a steady regression to preindustrial living conditions.

Of course, since they had the whole permanent population to deal with they couldn't afford to tear apart houses for refined metal, but they still had to confront other resource shortfalls that cannot be resolved on the island. Nantucket doesn't have much in the way of heavy timber and never did; even if it were suitable for growing large trees we wouldn't have time to wait for them to grow. The soil is mediocre. Seed for crops suitable for feeding large populations may not be available. Domestic animals, likewise. In the books they had to go find a natural salt lagoon in the Caribbean so they could store all the fish they were harvesting; I don't know how much of a problem that really is. The point remains that the island's resources are not suitable for sustaining a permanent comfortable civilization by themselves. Nor is the SD.Netter population suitable for surviving as a permanent comfortable civilization by themselves, because of that extreme male/female ratio.

Moreover, if the abandoned town (not a city- Nantucket has a permanent population of only 10000 or so) is a resource, it remains no less of a resource if you move half the population off the island. I'm not talking about rushing to abandon the island ASAP and never returning; I'm saying that it isn't in the interests of the Netter community on the island to remain there indefinitely, and that some kind of serious expeditionary trade or colonization will be needed.

[Simon_Jester]

And someone finally makes the connection SDN + impossibly weird situation = RAR.

The guy I really feel sorry for is the one who got a .22 in his leg. Slow and painful, no one deserves that kind of death.

Also, I question the logic of rationing antibiotics in such a way that someone actually dies without them while supplies hold out; how exactly do you justify a rationing system that's holding out for bigger emergencies than death?

Yes, I know, you do it by designating "good people" and "not-good people" and saving all the medicine for the good people. But gah, our self-government capabilities suck in this setting.

[PeZook]

I strongly suspect it would also cause a riot, with people storming the police station/hospital.

Seriously ; I know I'd be pretty pissed off if something like this happened: they essentially let the guy die because...well, because he didn't join the regime straight away and caused some trouble. Unless he murdered someone, I can't see how denying antibiotics to him was justified.

There really should be more consequences out of this.

[Simon_Jester]

The full census was not yet in, but everyone knew that there were somewhere between one hundred fifty and two hundred fifty women on the island, with something like twenty times as many men.

Crap. It's worse than I thought. That makes the long-term prospects of the community completely inviable, as opposed to merely bad, without immigration to or from the Island.

Also, my opinion that our self-government system is going to suck remains; it looks like it's devolving into a military oligarchy with a penchant for ostracizing* anyone who mildly annoys them. That could backfire horribly under these conditions- it preserves group cohesion, but it can also result in things like the only guy who knows how to make natural gas from wood chips getting thrown out into the wilderness to die.

The book Nantucketers had it easier, though they actually had a government to begin with instead of having to form one from the ground up in a state of nature.

*In the classical Greek sense

[Academia Nut]

Crap. It's worse than I thought. That makes the long-term prospects of the community completely inviable, as opposed to merely bad, without immigration to or from the Island.

We've known that pretty much since the start of the thread that kicked this off. We need more women, plain and simple. We need to go exploring if for now other reason than to pick up chicks/dump off excess population.

Also, my opinion that our self-government system is going to suck remains; it looks like it's devolving into a military oligarchy with a penchant for ostracizing* anyone who mildly annoys them. That could backfire horribly under these conditions- it preserves group cohesion, but it can also result in things like the only guy who knows how to make natural gas from wood chips getting thrown out into the wilderness to die.

Military oligarchies are sort of the baseline for human civilization in the beginning when survival is of paramount importance. And yeah, it is a sucky arrangement. Although Alfred Packer has pointed out that his skills were no longer unique when he got kicked off the island.

[CaptainChewbacca]

200 women and 4000 men? Should be interesting. I wonder what job (if any) an environmental geologist with actual experience drilling in soil as well as hard rock will get. Here's hoping I get to keep wearing the white hard-hat.

[Academia Nut]

You know anything about hydrology? Because we're going to start cutting down trees, but apparently the waterworks pumps its water straight out of the aquifier because the local environment is protected and thus provides its own filtration. Keeping us from ruining our supply of water would be immensely useful. Finding new water supplies for any colonies we set up would also be great. There is also the long term need to eventually find the resources beneath the earth. I'm sure you would have plenty to do.

[Simon_Jester]

Crap. It's worse than I thought. That makes the long-term prospects of the community completely inviable, as opposed to merely bad, without immigration to or from the Island.

We've known that pretty much since the start of the thread that kicked this off. We need more women, plain and simple. We need to go exploring if for now other reason than to pick up chicks/dump off excess population.

Yes, but when I suggested as much at least one person argued with me. And that was when I thought the male:female ratio was something less completely insane, such as 2:1 or 3:1.

Given the forum membership as I know it, I should have known better than to make such an absurdly optimistic estimate...
________

Military oligarchies are sort of the baseline for human civilization in the beginning when survival is of paramount importance. And yeah, it is a sucky arrangement. Although Alfred Packer has pointed out that his skills were no longer unique when he got kicked off the island.

Yes, but while his skills may have been transferred his talent as an inventor may not have been. In a community of a few thousand people, even one that trends toward high intelligence, individuals are not necessarily replaceable. Or at least not replaceable with anything of comparable quality.

My concern is that we appear to be forming not only a military oligarchy, but also one that is prone to make contra-survival decisions. The former is forgivable under the circumstances. The latter is not.

[CaptainChewbacca]

You know anything about hydrology? Because we're going to start cutting down trees, but apparently the waterworks pumps its water straight out of the aquifier because the local environment is protected and thus provides its own filtration. Keeping us from ruining our supply of water would be immensely useful. Finding new water supplies for any colonies we set up would also be great. There is also the long term need to eventually find the resources beneath the earth. I'm sure you would have plenty to do.

I have degrees in geology AND hydrology, and practical experience with well installation and water supply maintenance several times, though I doubt there was a portable rig on the island when it went back. The GOOD thing is any geology/resource maps that we have would still be good, only the rivers would have slightly changed, but taking an absolute bearing from some fixed landmarks should let us find things like iron, copper, and coal.

[Academia Nut]

Yeah this is getting great Packer. I wonder if I will make an appearance in the story. Maybe I'll be living in a small home or apartment in the city with a small collection of Socialist magazines, books (Including a copy of the Communist Manifesto) and maybe Stas would be my roommate or a good friend of mine. I'll probably be like the area's chronicler, trying to collect as many books as possible to save up their information for future generations.

You're male, thus you're working at things more immediately useful to our survival. Unless you are getting us more food, fuel, water, or infrastructure for the first year, you're going to be told to get in on one of those subjects if you want to eat. We don't have the caloric budget to support intellectual pursuits unless those pursuits immediately generate results that increase our caloric budget. If you want to chronicle in your spare time you can, but do be aware that you will probably find skills that benefit your survival much more appealing.

In all likelihood the intellectual class that will emerge will be the women, because there will likely be some degree of segregation simply to keep them away from the hordes of horny, stupid men, and since most of the men will be working on survival, unless a woman has an immediately useful skill like hunting, machining, sailing, engineering, etc. she will be better off not in one of the work camps. Best places would be as cooks, clothing repair and manufacture, administration, and possibly looking through the hundreds of thousands of books on the island for anything that we could actually use. Not because these are in any way some sort of sexist 'womanly' pursuits, and if there are men that are really good cooks or tailors or whatever they will go there too, but cooking and tailoring are tasks that need to get done and if cutting wood and farming is out because the women don't want to get stuck surrounded by two thousand horny teenagers with no skills that preclude them from swinging an axe all day, then they are going to need to do something that furthers our survival. Also, when the inevitable pregnancies begin (and will there ever be a bitchfest about that) tasks that require less minimal effort will have to be given over to the women, because again, we need everyone working at something at least marginally useful to our survival and their brains will still be good for working. While I fear our society will become highly sexist within at least one generation, it is unlikely we will ever get to the point where women are considered intellectually inferior to men.

[kh1]

I just wanted to offer some info on the time period (~1250BCE).

This is very late Terminal Archaic -- to pre-Woodland.

Common native settlements in early Woodland (1000BCE) may have had 50 inhabitants.

Based on the evidence we have, there was very little settlement outside of the St. Lawrence River Valley, the Ohio River Valley, and the Mississippi Valley.

In 1250BCE there would have likely been less than a handful of settlements in all of coastal New England.



A group of 100 rifle armed SNDers from Nantucket would constitute an [unstoppable] army that would find no real resistance unless they encountered a mega-settlement like those along the Mississippi (1000+ inhabitants).

As far as resources:

Fuel -
School, Hospital, and business tanks for backup generators
Airport fuel farm
The 6500 vehicles on Nantucket (per city-data)
The city fuel depot
The six gas stations on the island
The marina fuel farm
fuel oil at private houses
fuel oil farm for oil fired furnaces

A conservative Estimate is 100,000+ gallons

Medicine

There is a major hospital on the island that is stocked and equipped to handle the 50,000 inhabitants during summer.

6 Pharmacies

Numerous Doctors offices

There would be no need for the guy shot in the leg to be refused antibiotics

Food:

Deer and squirrel would have been everywhere on the mainland.
A sailboat trip to the mainland with 20-30 armed would have no problem coming back with plenty of meat.

Many of the restaurants, stores, etc would have failover generators that would have kept frozen food, well--frozen. Quick action would have salvaged most if not all of the frozen foods (it takes a long time for meat, etc kept at -10F (grocery freezer) to thaw when the temp is a cold 40 degrees in October). Scavenging diesel and gas from the fuel farms to keep the freezers working would not be difficult.

Taking into account all the canned and frozen vegetables scavenged from homes, groceries, schools, hospital, restaurants, etc-- there would be plenty to make it to the spring or at the very least long enough for greenhouses to be established and fresh veggies grown (topsoil could be brought from mainland by sailboat, or you could go hydroponic)

That's it for now -- more later

[Simon_Jester]

A group of 100 rifle armed SNDers from Nantucket would constitute an [unstoppable] army that would find no real resistance unless they encountered a mega-settlement like those along the Mississippi (1000+ inhabitants).

Given that musket-armed Europeans were in much the same position in real life (except that there were more 1000+ settlements), this is not a great surprise.

As far as resources...

There is a major hospital on the island that is stocked and equipped to handle the 50,000 inhabitants during summer.
6 Pharmacies
Numerous Doctors offices
There would be no need for the guy shot in the leg to be refused antibiotics

I'm interpreting that as a political decision, not an honest one; who said that the ruling council that set itself up in charge of the SDN community would make only rational decisions?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I just wanted to offer some info on the time period (~1250BCE).

This is very late Terminal Archaic -- to pre-Woodland.

Common native settlements in early Woodland (1000BCE) may have had 50 inhabitants.

Based on the evidence we have, there was very little settlement outside of the St. Lawrence River Valley, the Ohio River Valley, and the Mississippi Valley.

In 1250BCE there would have likely been less than a handful of settlements in all of coastal New England.

Squares well with what I've learned. While the river valleys were moving towards semi-permanent settlements; coastal New England wasn't sporting much more than small seasonal settlements. The reason for this, as I understand it, had much to do with the climate at the time.

A group of 100 rifle armed SNDers from Nantucket would constitute an [unstoppable] army that would find no real resistance unless they encountered a mega-settlement like those along the Mississippi (1000+ inhabitants).

It'll get even more lopsided once something like even H1N1 escapes into the aboriginal population.

As far as resources:

Fuel -
School, Hospital, and business tanks for backup generators
Airport fuel farm
The 6500 vehicles on Nantucket (per city-data)
The city fuel depot
The six gas stations on the island
The marina fuel farm
fuel oil at private houses
fuel oil farm for oil fired furnaces

A conservative Estimate is 100,000+ gallons

All squares with what we know. But it's a finite resource. About enough to get us through the winter and develop a sustainable energy economy; but once it's gone, it'll be gone till our descendants conquer Pennsylvania and start drilling for oil.

Medicine

There is a major hospital on the island that is stocked and equipped to handle the 50,000 inhabitants during summer.

I know about the hospital. The definition of "handle" you'll have to be more precise about.

6 Pharmacies

I only found four on-island. Five, if you count the hospital. Source?

Numerous Doctors offices

Most of which are located in two buildings, with a smattering of small private practices around town.

There would be no need for the guy shot in the leg to be refused antibiotics

Aha, remember that you're seeing that story from a single (guilt-ridden) point-of-view. There are a lot of reasons someone might be refused antibiotics in this scenario. Half of them having to do with the horse-trading, bickering, and jockeying about that would be going on to keep this particular herd of cats from going Lord of the Flies. Others being due to extenuating circumstances that the POV character has let slip his mind over the winter and spring months. Again, we'll probably have just enough to get people through the first winter and spring . . . but antibiotics have a relatively short shelf-life; so again, it's a finite resource.

Deer and squirrel would have been everywhere on the mainland.
A sailboat trip to the mainland with 20-30 armed would have no problem coming back with plenty of meat.

Nobody ever said meat wouldn't be a problem. There are a lot of deer on the island. There'd be squirrels and rabbits too. And there'd be fish offshore. We wouldn't even have to go much further than Martha's Vineyard to get meat during that first winter.

A sailboat trip to the mainland, in the dead of a north Atlantic coast winter, seems rather risky to me. Especially since our maps of said mainland are 3000 years out of date, and said mainland is inhabited by aborigines we'd prefer not to encounter until late in the spring.

Taking into account all the canned and frozen vegetables scavenged from homes, groceries, schools, hospital, restaurants, etc-- there would be plenty to make it to the spring or at the very least long enough for greenhouses to be established and fresh veggies grown (topsoil could be brought from mainland by sailboat, or you could go hydroponic)

Did you miss the acres of farmland that are on the island? We wouldn't have to go to the extreme measure of importing soil from the mainland. We would have to adopt crop rotation in short order, though.

[Academia Nut]

The issue in the first few days isn't the presence of medicine, it's the access. We're basically an invading mob with no one to stop us and no one to organize our scavenging and looting for the first few weeks, so added on to the fact that we don't know what is supposed to be around, you'll get people carrying vital supplies off, people hording them, squandering them, and basically no one knowing what is actually available and if they can get it. Add in just general confusion and you're likely to get people only letting out a trickle of antibiotics at first because as far as they know, the bottles in the cabinet are all there will ever be again.