Quote:
Originally Posted by Bullet Magnet
Without looking it up, I seem to recall around 2000 the US had a population of something like 270-280 million. 280 million - 40% death rate = 168 million. Then with my proposed lowered starvation of 25%, that brings us down to 126 million. That should be enough of a population base for an effective, if not rapid, recovery.
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The population estimate is accurate enough, depending on whose figures you use. The casualty rate given in
Howling Wilderness as of April 1, 2001 is 52%, leaving somewhat less than 140 million. This is a lot of people—basically, it’s the population of the US in WW2. Of course, circumstances are so dramatically altered that comparisons between the population of the US in 1942 and 2001 are better couched in terms of contrast than comparison.
How rapid the recovery is depends upon a huge number of variables that Milgov and Civgov are trying to adjust in their favor. Arguably, New America is making the same effort.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Targan
There would also be massive waves of migration. It's rare for humans to just stay in place and starve to death unless they are constrained from moving elsewhere. All through 2000 and 2001 you have large numbers of people travelling by whatever means they can to areas where more food is available (or unfortunately where there is a perception that more food is available).
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Displacement is a huge factor. Displaced people are enormously disruptive.
Alleghany Uprising is all about this effect—and that’s a localized effect. I’ve attempted to talk to this with
Blood Cross, which is about the rise of a marauder army in northern New England. The Blood Cross, which swells to tens of thousands of armed, hungry, and desperate people under the guidance of a charismatic and very intelligent religious leader, acts like a swarm of locusts. They eat everything in an area they conquer before moving on, leaving the area despoiled incapable of producing more food without recolonization. As they move, they devastate successive areas, then whole regions.
Howling Wilderness touches on this phenomenon. The carrying capacity of a sacked area is reduced to a fraction of its former capacity. As long as the horde stays in motion, it leaves a swath of destruction behind it only slightly less effective [at destroying the productive value of the area] than radiation or persistent lethal chemicals.
You can get this effect without the drought. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, by early 2001 the fortified cantonment effect will have run its course in North America, for the most part. The majority of survivors will have moved into defensible settlements based, on all likelihood, on the core of pre-war towns and cities and surrounded by tilled land. In the case of large cities, separate communities will have coalesced around parks and other tillable land, as GDW describes in detail in many locations. Small marauder groups may no longer be able to make a living at this point. Tackling large and well-organized cantonments with their own HRS (hunting rifle and shotgun) militias may be beyond the abilities of a group of 20-50 brigands. Some of them will begin to merge into larger groups in order to tackle larger prizes. Very large groups will not be able to live sustainably off the conquered communities. Charismatic leaders of the sort I expect to emerge at the head of these hordes may not want to see the horde break up into smaller groups that can sustain themselves on the surplus of conquered cantonment, although some might choose to go the warlord route once they have a kingdom of sorts. Those who don’t want the horde to break up will end up destroying the cantonments they are capable of conquering. Thus, the same destructive effects as we would experience in a drought have the potential to appear anywhere and everywhere in North America without our falling back on a sort of meteorological
deus ex machina.