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Originally Posted by Raellus
Do you foresee both MilGov and CivGov adopting this practice? It seems that press-ganging by one or the other of the factions could drive targeted individuals into the arms of the rival (unless, of course, they're both doing it).
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Per the timeline, all of the training divisions were activated on 20 July 1998 and CivGov re-constituted on 19 Apr 1999.
I posit that:
1) The well-organized draft infrastructure disappeared on Nov 27, 1997.
2) The Federal Government limped along for another 8 months until Presidential succession collapsed (in any event, the government was largely running on autopilot based on post-attack FED-P plans and responding to crisis to crisis). This is where press-ganging of the population appears: the service sector largely disappears in the US, most people are unemployed, the credit economy disappears, the cash economy is crippled, the government steps in to mobilize civilian work brigades to put out fires, clear rubble, and of course, replace combat losses for military units. There is still a pretend national government at this point, although a lot of areas are functionally left to "self-survive"
3) The Mexican invasion in the American Southwest, the Soviet invasion of the PNW via Alaska and Canada, and the deteriorating domestic situation resulted in all of the training divisions being mobilized as independent units and sent to various theaters. This essentially marks the end of any "national" organized recruitment.
4) Very much around the same time, the fall 1998 harvest essentially fails, the transportation network fails, the lights go out (again), and the exodus of the starving masses from urban centers begins in earnest. Thus ends any pretense of a functioning national government, and the military cantonment system pops up to defend areas with critical infrastructure or more or less self-sufficient in terms of food production. At this point the rule of law is absolutely dead beyond a local level. Many military units are basically just well organized gangs with more and bigger guns (see the history of the 43rd Military Police Brigade in The Last Submarine), taking what they need to survive and employing slaves that they intentionally work to death so they don't have to feed them through the winter.
5) When CivGov forms in April of 1999, the collapse has already happened. CivGov is at least, nominally, Constitutionally based, whereas MilGov is basically a Stalinist military junta running a full blown tyranny. I see CivGov operating more on consent, but they are a lot less powerful and organized as well, and in many cases, the distinction is moot (as in, who is worse, the UBF who massacred everyone on Cape Cod and is CivGov aligned, or the 43rd MP Brigade who go around terrorizing everyone and seizing everything that they can that is useful and probably killed just as many civilians if not more?)
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That seems very dangerous to the drafting entity. Giving a slave a weapon also gives them the means to violently resist their enslavement. Slave-soldiers haven't really been a thing since the Ottoman empire's 19th century Janissaries- and they were customarily raised from early childhood to become soldiers. Contrary to enduring myth, during the American Civil War, even when the Confederacy was running desperately short of military manpower, slaves were not employed as armed soldiers (although many served in labor units).
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While I largely agree, I'll counterpoint: African child armies, where warlords have gone into areas, massacred all the adults, and then recruited the boys into their army, who then go on to be quite bloodthirsty. Slaves in fact (in most cases, it's join or die, murder or die) but these warlord gangs have tended to be resilient and fairly loyal in places like Liberia. The gangs / militias / units that are able to replenish losses have to have some sort of mechanism to ensure loyalty (maybe you have to be part of a cannon fodder unit first and acquire a good weapon from the battlefield before you find your way to a "real" unit in some of the groups).