Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
There won't be a lot of call for the more technical skills such as fabrication of new weapons when the average person is struggling to get enough calories every day.
People may develop some mechanical skills (such as fixing their car), but the ability to operate highly technical machinery to make precision engineered items isn't going to be happening.
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At the risk of nitpicking, I disagree that there won't be a call for the technical skills of gunsmithing. Once someone shows up to take the food, the ability to produce arms and ammunition will be valued second only to the ability to produce food--and a close second, at that. As a practical matter, the ability to repair existing firearms will take precedent over the fabrication of new firearms because (generally) repairing existing firearms will yield more firearms per hundred hours of labor than fabricating new ones, provided the labor and machinery for repair and fabrication are comparable. Therefore, fabrication of new firearms by skilled gunsmiths will take a back seat to repair of existing firearms by skilled gunsmiths.
As on so many occasions, Leg, I think we’re speaking to different circumstances. You prefer a more uniform and more complete breakdown of civilization than I do. Your observations tend to be appropriate for smaller cantonments, which would predominate in the version of Twilight: 2000 you prefer. I tend to concur with most of your observations when they are applied to smaller cantonments even in my own concept of Twilight: 2000.
That much said, technical skills are going to survive and be in demand in locations where the food supply permits. By 2000, the food situation largely will have stabilized throughout most of the world. The pre-war foods will have been eaten or have gone bad. The survivors will be eating food they have grown locally. In some locations, like Colorado, the existence of a powerful pre-war agricultural base, combined with the local presence of fuels, minerals, armed might, and technical expertise, will allow a new homeostasis at a relatively high level. The ratio of farm workers to non-farm workers will be much more amenable to industrial growth than in many other parts of the country. In places like Manhattan and Phoenix, the situation will be more medieval: there will be those who grow the food and those who fight over the food. In Colorado, then, Milgov will have the “luxury” of deciding what kinds of arms and armaments should be manufactured based on needs and resources.
At the risk of pointing out what we all know already, the whole point of an assembly line is to save labor. Throughout the US (and the world), non-agricultural/food producing labor is going to be at a premium. Milgov’s interest in producing rifles for export to friendly cantonments is going to have several dimensions. Even where the local forces have enough rifles for every fighting man or woman who will take to the field, there are significant advantages to providing those forces with a new uniform service rifle firing a common ammunition and capable of delivering a high volume of fire out to the typical maximum range of infantry engagements (<300 meters)(1). This is not to say that hunting rifles don’t have their uses. However, Milgov will see the advantage of standardizing small arms in its cantonments to the greatest degree possible by creating assembly lines in Colorado Springs to manufacture a standard service rifle. As an added bonus, the more dissimilar rifles that can be replaced, the more the base of gunsmithing labor in the various cantonments can be economized by reducing the number of separate tasks the gunsmiths must execute to service the rifles of friendly forces. Therefore, the creation in Colorado of an assembly line for a service rifle that can be shipped—with spare parts, etc.—to the various friendly cantonments creates a situation in which labor is saved at the cantonment, local logistics are greatly facilitated and simplified, and the relative advantage of the local forces vis-à-vis marauders and the like is measurably enhanced.
Of course, for all of this to work Milgov needs to select a good candidate for a new service rifle and have the ability to deliver the rifles. I’ve thrown my support behind the AR-18 because it combines relative ease of manufacture with an ability to exploit the existing base of ammunition, magazines, and experience. As for delivery, I’m sure I’ve beaten to death my argument regarding airships. The beauty of using airships to deliver rifles is that the rifles are relatively low-mass items for their utility. It isn’t practical for Milgov to deliver grain or petroleum until the railroads and/or rivers can be opened up again. Rifles (and other small arms) enhance the ability of cantonments to defend their existing assets. With time and breathing space, the isolated cantonments will find solutions to their problems using local resources.
Webstral
(1) I readily acknowledge that the realities of infantry combat will change in the post-Exchange environment. However, certain realities will persist. The attacker will attempt to use covered approaches to get as close as possible to the defender. The defender will want to exploit cleared fields of fire to prevent the attacker from getting very close. Long-range rifle marksmanship is something that requires a fair amount of practice. Militia troops and even some regulars won’t get anything like the required practice in the post-Exchange environment. Therefore, a rifle with a high rate of fire and a high magazine capacity but shortish effective range is superior to a hunting rifle under many circumstances. Both attacker and defender will want to be able to deliver a high volume of accurate fire in close-to-medium combat ranges.