Battlefield Medicine in T2k

[Raellus]

Unbelievably, we don't already have a thread dedicated to this topic. (At least, a forum search through five pages didn't turn up much beyond some posts tangentially referencing medicinal drugs). Maybe I missed something, but, in the meantime, let this be a clearinghouse for T2k-relevant medical info.

I've got questions; I hope y'all have answers.

What kinds of pre-war medical supplies would still be available c.2000? What would their availability be (e.g. scarce, rare)?

What kind of ad hoc and/or ersatz substitutes for pre-war medical supplies would in use?

I imagine there'd be few if any one-use, disposable bandages around. I imagine cloth bandages would predominate by 2000. They can be boiled and reused, I believe.

For sutures, cat gut can be used. I assume it wouldn't be too difficult to produce, given its sources. I'm not sure how it could be sterilized, however- unless boiling would suffice.

What about antibiotics? What kind of lab equipment would be needed to culture and grow penicillin? What other anti-biotics could be produced c.2000?

Antiseptics? Ethanol wouldn't be too hard to produce, no? Can methanol be used?

What scientifically-proven, effective herbal remedies would be available (especially in Poland)?

For sedatives/anesthesia, ether and Chloroform, respectively, could be used. How difficult would those substances be to produce in a lab?

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[castlebravo92]

I suspect growing opium poppies for fun and profit would come back in a big way. Same thing with the devil's lettuce.

You can stitch with normal (sterilized) thread.

Ether is apparently really easy to make in a lab - ethanol + sulfuric acid.

[Claidheamh]

I was just looking into sulfa drugs to see how easy they would be to produce. Apparently they were extracted from coal-tar dyes and require ammonia for their production - it seems like it's the sort of thing that might be producible in quantity in an established area like Silesia with coal production and the resources to set up a lab.

[kcdusk]

I think there would still be a reasonable amount of medical supplies left.

1. We saw with Covid, when masks became compulsory, that industry kicked off and suddenly we had millions of masks. Same with a vaccine, industry responded.

2. So i think with a world wide war, tools of the trade - ie medical supplies, would be required. And be around in big numbers. I think towards the end of the war ("your on your own") medical supplies will be lower but still common.

3. I'm torn on this though. But with nuclear war, there will be lots of death. So less people alive to use the available personal medical kits, which tend to assist the treatment of traditional wounds such as gun shots? So again thinking supplies would be common.

4. On the down side, while numerous in number - perhaps medical supplies (in general) might be aged (weathered or perished). Or not kept at required temperature (some need to be refridgerated, such as blood or other drugs). So i think common for availability but perhaps degraded.

I'm still leaning towards normal medial supplies to treat gun shot wounds as being commonly available.

[bash]

Some unordered ideas on the topic:

• A lot of medical supply stockpiles will be vaporized in TDM or post-TDM destruction. Some supplies will be ok while other stuff will be completely gone by 1999 let alone 2001.
• One advantage T2K survivors have over the past is just more and more widespread medical knowledge. The average nurse in a rural clinic in 1997 is going to have a lot more medical knowledge than one in 1945 or 1865. A lot more injuries and illnesses will be treatable even in poor conditions just because the body of medical knowledge is more complete and more widely disseminated.
• Just knowing why clean water is necessary and how to sterilize equipment will help people medically in T2K.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by kcdusk

1. We saw with Covid, when masks became compulsory, that industry kicked off and suddenly we had millions of masks. Same with a vaccine, industry responded.

So i think with a world wide war, tools of the trade - ie medical supplies, would be required. And be around in big numbers. I think towards the end of the war ("your on your own") medical supplies will be lower but still common.

Good point, but industry barely kept up with demand during the height of the Covid Pandemic- and no one was lobbing nukes at essential infrastructure back then. During the Twilight War, supply would be diminished by widespread high-intensity warfare (including the use of NBC weapons), but demand would not (at least not to the same degree). This would inevitably lead to shortages of most medical supplies- especially those with military applications.

@Bash: Good point about the positive impact of basic health knowledge. It's shocking to learn how many soldiers died due to preventable infections and diseases, pre-germ theory. For example, during the Mexican-American War, 7 out of 8 US soldiers that lost their lives died as a result of preventable diseases (cholera, dysentery, typhus). Only 1/8 were killed in battle.

@All: How viable would iodine production be c.2000? It would be useful as both an antiseptic and as a treatment for the effects of radiation (and therefore consumed at a pretty rapid rate during the war, I imagine).

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[castlebravo92]

Put me in the scarcity camp. A single nuclear detonation over a large urban environment would completely overwhelm the country's burn treatment capacity.

1.5 years of high intensity war, then the lights go out but the war keeps rolling on? A lot of medical supplies are going to be in short supply, especially those that depend on the petroleum industry. Even mundane little things like stretchy gauze, plastic syringes, IV bags, and plastic tubing aren't going to exactly be rolling off the assembly line anymore.

Even something like agar (which you would use in a solution to grow bacteria for antibiotic production) comes from bone meal, which presumes a somewhat healthy animal agriculture infrastructure.

Advanced pharmaceuticals requiring 99.9999% pure raws and clean rooms to manufacture? Forget it.

Production would be back to 1850s tech with late 20th century knowledge. Meaning, there would be a lot of people dying from "treatable" conditions, "if only we had the right medicine," while the military hoards scarce stockpiles of existing pre-war medical supplies.