After Stabilization?

[Webstral]

instituted the drought of Howling Wilderness was to keep things moving along for the purposes of adventuring. I ask this because when the population stabilizes, more or less, there will be a food regime in place sufficient to feed almost all of the people left in the nation. Obviously, this is a grotesque overgeneralization. Productivity and availability will vary wildly from one region to the next. Shortages will persist everywhere. Nevertheless, sans the drought there will be a rough equilibrium established by the end of 2000. Now what? This question applies everywhere, not just the US.

Obviously, one of the primary goals of cantonments everywhere will be to increase output without additional inputs of labor. As output per laborer increases, manpower can be freed for other tasks necessary for rebuilding on micro and macro scales. I have been thinking lately that one of the main goals of Manifest Destiny will be to move engineering and agricultural expertise between cantonments loyal to Milgov. MacArthur remarked that the Pacific War was an engineers’ war. Based on the numbers, he was right. There were more engineers in the Pacific than infantry. This makes me think that a sort of agricultural and engineering Special Forces will be needed for the US—indeed, for every recovering nation—even more than rifles. In the short term, shortages of manpower for combat can be made good with improved weapons and supply. In the long term, shortages can be made good by using improved agricultural techniques to free manpower from food production for combat duty.

These types of missions might be very interesting for a party more interested in playing their part as Special Operations types than go-it-your-own types. Getting needed experts to a given location can be an adventure all its own, if for some reason an airship isn’t available to do the job.

Other worthwhile missions might include tracking down leads on machinery Milgov needs for industrializing Colorado. Howling Wilderness states that Milgov is building industry from the ground up as resources allow. An airship that can haul 100 tons could bring a huge variety of useful machines to Colorado. The trick is knowing where they are and extracting them. The possibilities here are limitless.

[Targan]

Web, your post seems to start half way through a sentence. Now I'm burning with curiosity over what is missing!

There's one thing I don't understand about those who dislike the drought posited in Howling Wilderness and citing it as a major reason for not wanting to use HW in their campaigns. If you don't like the drought, have it end in 2002. HW only covers 2001. There's nothing set in stone to suggest that the drought is a permanent feature. Where I live we have periodic droughts. Some are short, some are long, but they all end eventually.

The climate change suggested in HW is most likely due to all the particulate matter thrown up into the atmosphere during the war. As the years go by it seems pretty obvious to me that the climate will continue to change. It may go back to much like it was before the war. That's up to each GM to decide, surely?

[Raellus]

Here in Tucson, we've technically been in a drought since 1999. It rained today. I think people misunderstand what a drought really is. It's like the folks that deny that the planet is warming because there's a big blizzard one winter. They're missing the forest for the trees.

I've thought a bit about what a limited nuclear war would do to global weather patterns. Cold War scientists warned of a nuclear winter in the event of a full-scale geothermal nuclear war. Clouds of dust and smoke would block out the sun and the surface temperature of the planet would drop precipitously. In the event of a more limited, piecemeal nuclear war as described in the T2K backstory, a significant amount of dust and smoke would be tossed up, but much less than the planet-blanketing amounts that would be required to cause and sustain a nuclear winter. What if the amount of dust and smoke from the T2K exchanges was enough to allow sunlight in, but not to allow heat/reflected light to escape, accelerating the "Greenhouse Effect" by several factors? This could cause a drought like that described in HW.

I like to take the middle ground and envision a planet ravaged by weird weather- sort of demi Nuclear Winter/Greenhouse Effect hybrid. Large migrating dust clouds could cool the climate in some regions, interfering with long-established air and water currents. At the same time, certain other regions would be bathed in almost constant sunshine. Combine this with the climate-alterating effects of disrupted air and water currents (e.g. El Nino/La Nina flip-flopping or one or both stopping, etc.), and precipitation in said sunny regions could be severely curtailed. A severe two-year regional drought, therefore, wouldn't be at all out of the question. In my Pirates of the Vistula PbP, I've got winter coming early to Poland, with the first heavy snow fall occuring in first few days of October.

I hope that I haven't strayed too far off topic here. To get back to your main point, Web, I agree that recovery-oriented missions would be an interesting basis for a campaign.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I've thought a bit about what a limited nuclear war would do to global weather patterns. Cold War scientists warned of a nuclear winter in the event of a full-scale geothermal nuclear war. Clouds of dust and smoke would block out the sun and the surface temperature of the planet would drop precipitously.

Broken data and bad models were used to "make" nuclear winter "work".

http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/0...p-j-dolan.html

[Webstral]

My post was cut off. Weird. Serves me right for trusting that CTRL-A actually highlighted all the text. Not much was missed. I simply mused about the next thing after the stabilization of the food situation.

[Olefin]

If anything all the debris blown up into the atmosphere would cause more rain and snow, not less. And the problem with HW is so what if it ends in 2001 - as described basically the US would have had its population reduced below the level of any possible recovery in less than hundreds of years long before any crops would have been harvested in 2002.

The death toll from starvation and disease (millions of unburied bodies resulting from mass starvation deaths would have resulted in plague, typhus, you name it) from the drought as described basically would have ended all civilization in the US, most likely for any forseeable future, and definitely for so long that there is no way there is an American Arm in Twilight 2300AD. With that kind of death toll you would be lucky if the Dark Ages ended in the US before 2400 and we were back to what we had in 1776, let alone in space with faster than light ships.

Destroying the US like that is not furthering adventure in any way - unless what you want is to stop the game and pull out Aftermath instead and say lets play this now and just transfer over your characters.

As for US recovery without HW ever happening - have heard many people say without HW and Kidnapped then the US would recover too soon and be back to being powerful again and unbalance the game. Again I dont see that either - you are talking about a country split between three different power bases, plus with invaders in command of much of its Southwest and Alaska and with huge power generation and food distribution issues and with much of its infrastructure in ruins.

Thats a lot of work to do right there that could keep players busy with various missions for dozens of years. Heck just a drive the Mexicans out and begin the process of stabilizing the Southwest again campaign would keep a good GM busy for a long long time or a MilGov drive to conquer CivGov and reunite the country by force.

So ignoring HW and Kidnapped makes a lot of sense from both a playability aspect and also from having your characters actually trying to do more than simple survival.

And while simple survival is part of the game, so is recovery and trying to rebuild - if not then why was Reset part of the very first module and why did the Submarine Trilogy include the scientists with the knowledge to build cheap fusion reactors?

Now there is a good source of recovery missions- i.e. having characters having to gather the materials needed for those fusion reactors once the Corpus Christi gets back. They could be widely dispersed, in the hands of the New Americans (who may not know what they are sitting on) or even behind enemy lines in Texas or California.

[Raellus]

I'm no HW fanboy (I've only glanced at it briefly on one or two occasions) and I've never played in or GM'ed a campaign that far into the alternate future. So, please don't interpret my posts here as an apologetic for HW or any other T2K module. My assertion is that weird weather is a plausible scenario. Just look at the extremes in weather over the past decade, when nuclear warfare wasn't even a minor factor!

@Olefin: It takes more than dust in the atmosphere to produce precipitation, so what scientific basis is your "more rain" claim based on?

@Raketenjadgpanzer: That's quite a blog there- although the author appears to cite his sources, I have some doubts as to the reliability/authoritativeness of the claims put forth regarding the Nuclear Winter theory. I've seen numerous reputable source materials supporting the theory. To be fair, I've also seen reputable source material refuting it. It's all theoretical so I'm fine with declaring the Nuclear Winter question moot. I hope to God that we never have to find out what the climatological effects of a large scale nuclear war are.

[Olefin]

water vapor condenses onto particles in the air (like dust for instance) to form rain drops - the increased particle count due to the dirt and debris blown into the air would lead to increased rain fall - i.e. more water vapor than normal would condense out of the sky thus leading to increased rain fall

and with temperatures dropping due to the amount of sun that would be blocked by the same dust and debris you get increased snowfall - thus the chances of a winter without snow after the level of nuclear and conventional attacks seen in the Twilight War would be essentially zero

if anything, if you want to damage crop yields, you could just fall back on the reduced growing times that would be causes by a lengthened winter due to the dust and debris in the air - i.e. not the nuclear winter where it never shines but a winter that starts in October and wont let go fully till May - that alone would reduce food production, especially in places where agriculture was geared to a longer growing season (i.e. southern CA and FL for instance)

also keep in mind that too much rain can be very bad as well - think about heavy rains hitting before the harvest and what kind of damage that can cause

but a drought like that described in HW and Kidnapped - not possible after that kind of widespread nuclear exchange - it would take years to clear that level of dust and debris from the skies - i.e. most likely you would have shorter summers and longer winters till around 2004 or longer

plus as I have said before - HW and Kidnapped are US killers plain and simple

if you want HW and Kidnapped - then its time to scrap the AD2300 timeline at least as far as the US is concerned - just going by what it says, at best, the US is reduced to 1/8th of its pre-war population - but that assumes no disease, no plague, no typhus outbreak from 3/8 of the prewar US population dying in a few months as starvation leaves only enough food for a quarter of the survivors

add that in as well, plus all the fighting to get at the remaining food, plus destruction of food stocks from that fighting - and you get a US that would be lucky to have 5 percent of its population left by early 2002

no way do you go from there to faster than light starships per the 2300AD timeline

and you dont need an uber drought and plague to "further adventures in the US" - its screwed up enough all on its own long before Kidnapped and HW

again - the game is about recovery as much as it is about survival - otherwise why the Soviet scientists, why Reset, why have an adventure to recover gold in NY or recapture the Ozarks from New America or secure a working oil platform in Texas

HW and Kidnapped throws all that out the window to a drought that is completely implausible - so instead for me and many others they are better ignored -

but again canon is what the GM makes of it after July 18,2000 - after that date everyone is free to do what they wish as to what is in and what is not in their campaign after all (heck I have heard of campaigns that threw Omega out the door and had the US stay in Europe where no one ever went anywhere but Europe and fun was had by all)

again just my two cents

[Raellus]

I'd like to be able to make references to HW without you feeling the need to compose and post screed in response every time. I get it, you hate HW. Like I just said, I'm no fan myself. You don't need to convince me. I am not defending the drought described in HW.

I understand how rain happens. Your hypothesis assumes an atmospheric water vapor constant or a direct relationship between suspended dust particles and atmospheric water vapor. To put it bluntly, neither of those conditions exist. Both are variables; neither are constant. Simpy tossing more dust into the air doesn't necessarily induce increased rain. Cloud seeding doesn't always work- in fact, it rarely does. If it did, there wouldn't be droughts.

[Olefin]

Cloud seeding is one thing - this is a huge injection of dirt and debris into the upper atmosphere in a short amount of time - i .e. similiar to what you get with a volcanic eruption but occuring in multiple locations spreading the dust and debris worldwide, especially with nukes going off in as many places as they did with the worldwide attacks on oil processing centers and oil fields

the effect of such injections of debris and dust from volcanic eruptions has been well documented - The Year without a Summer for instance after one such major eruption

add in all the fires from conventional fighting, forest fires started by weaponry, oil fields burning out of control and you have a perfect mix for increased rainfall and shorter growing seasons due to lack of sunlight penetrating thru the debris clouds

so a large scale drought in such conditions - very highly improbable - local droughts are always possible but not the uber drought after that amount of debris and dust is injected into the atmosphere - and if nukes were used in the oceans to go after ships or subs or to blue out sensors before the TMD - then you have a lot of water vapor blown into the skies as well with the nuke strikes - and we know there were a lot of strikes on harbors and coastal cities

in a way what the war did was cloud seeding on a scale no one would ever attempt - and the extended nature of the global nuclear strikes kept pumping more debris and dust into the air - this wasnt one spasm over a few days but nuclear strikes that went on for months and even into 1998 - thats a very long sustained period of "dust pumping" into the atmosphere - similiar to a sustained series of volcanic eruptions

if the nuclear stage of the war had been short - say a week - or if it had been confined to just the US, Europe and European Russia - it might not have been as bad - but going on for months plus spreading the nukes all over the world - that would have been about as bad as it gets to inject moisture and dust into the atmosphere

as to HW - you are right and I am sorry - no reason to go any further into that particular subject

[Targan]

Web, there are a few little adventures/mini-modules in the Challenge mags that are about salvage and recovering useful commodities (Pennsylvania Crude is the first that comes to my mind) and I love the idea of a campaign or part of a campaign revolving around those sorts of themes.

In my campaigns I've always encouraged my players to create characters with a variety of skills including non-combat skills. After all, once wholesale recruitment and the draft were implemented, the proportion of pre-war professional military would decrease compared to citizen-soldiers from all walks of life.

As for Howling Wilderness creating the conditions for the virtually permanent death of the USA as an entity, I strongly disagree. In any case HW doesn't have total destruction of the US from whisky to echo and it doesn't suggest at any point that the US is on a one way slide into oblivion. I am 100% certain that with a long enough campaign and a dedicated group of players that I could realisticly depict the recovery of the US from a starting point as described in HW.

And once again, on a list of possible deal breakers, I rate the drought in HW very low on the list. You don't like the drought? Have it end in 2002. Where's the problem?

[Olefin]

per HW there is only enough food for 1/4 of the surviving population to make it to the end of the year

surviving population = 1/2 of prewar US population

Thus only 1/8th of the US population can survive to the end of 2001

so you have 3/8th of the prewar population starving to death and or dying in other ways while figting to get to the food that can keep 1/8th alive - now add in disease from the dead bodies piling up everywhere from the fun and all those who die trying to stave off the 3/8th of the prewar US population who there is no food for

oh and also all those who die when it finally rains and they can put a harvest in again but still no food while said harvest grows

what do you get - maybe, if you are really lucky, 1/16th to 1/32nd of the pre-war US population still alive by the time said harvest happens in 2002

with the result that the US that most likely never be a major power of any sort again - and basically destroy just about any remnant of technology left intact - meaning no American Arm by 2300 AD as was their intention

the authors clearly didnt think thru what they wrote during a time of pressure to get material out and published under looming deadlines - or take the time to game out what would happen with what they wrote

you would have had US cities in that kind of situation ending up looking like Sydney in Max Max Thunderdome - and thats with only a one year uber drought

So there is my answer to you Targan but instead of going on how about looking at this thread from purely a recovery standpoint and not about a discussion on the HW drought, which has been debated ad naseum here for a long time by various people. After all that is what this thread was to be about.

There is a lot of possibilities out there for recovery and stablization missions - as was mentioned the Pennsylvania mini-module in Challenge is a definite guide in how they could be approached.

[mikeo80]

I believe that Albert Einstein said, " I do not know what weapons will be used to fight WW III, but WW IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

I think this is the issue we as a group are trying to understand. As a LONG time Morrow Project player, I can see several similarities.

1) Man was stupid enough to unleash his newest toys. Mankind suffered as a result.

2) In the aftermath, there would be VERY long periond of reconstruction.

3) Most reconstruction would revolve around a group of armed persons trying desperately to keep the wolves at bay so that what ever farmers were left could raise enough food for the entire group to survive the next winter.

4) Most reconstruction would revolve around small groups or towns. Easier to defend and easier to grow enough crops to survive the comming winter.

5) A small group is also easier to set up some sort of self government. There is not enough time or energy to dedicate to professional politicians. Every one has to work together to survive.

6) Craftsmen will be VERY important to survival. A person who can fix broken things will be in great demand.

7) Only after there is enough food for the existing group, do you look outside of your group. Maybe you can exchange some of your iron worker's items for some of the wood worker's items from the next village. Trade/barter/swap meets whatever, become the predominate form of economics.

8) If you find a pre-war cache of ANYTHING, you do your best to bring it all to your village. Who knows, maybe something usefull can be gleaned from this pile of what ever it is you salvaged.

9) Books/libraries become vital resources. You may not know how to build a windmill, say. But this book MIGHT just help....

Yes the T2K nuclear war was not as devistating as the one in Morrow Project. But the resultant chaos would have caused just as much damage as nukes would have. Just not as quick.

Yes there is some form of National government, be it MilGov or CivGov. That is more than Morrow project had. However with the chaos and resultant insanity, how much control either of these two entities could exert is questionable.

Yes there are some coherent US military forces that are still in place. THis happened very rarely in TMP. THis does give either government a group of trained (?) professionals to draw upon. However you have to FEED them first before you can use them.

These are a few thoughts I want to throw out there.

My $0.02

Mike

[Olefin]

good post Mike - I think thats one thing that people have to look at between Twilight 2000 and things like The Morrow Project or Aftermath - that things are bad but they havent gone completely downhill to where there are no governments or organized military forces left yet

thats a very large distinction between the two

now that doesnt mean you cant play Twilight 2000 as if it was that bad - you just have to pick your place to do it

for instance one place that would fit that bill very well would be China - there is no cohesive national government of any kind left there - whereas in the US and Russia you still have remnant national governments that control significant resources in China it has broken down completely - another place would be India or Pakistan

all of which are places you hardly hear much about in discussions on the board and where you could have a stranded bunch of Americans or Brits in very easily - more so in Pakistan and China than India - in a place where there is no govt at all and its down to the village level

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by Olefin

now that doesnt mean you cant play Twilight 2000 as if it was that bad - you just have to pick your place to do it

for instance one place that would fit that bill very well would be China - there is no cohesive national government of any kind left there - whereas in the US and Russia you still have remnant national governments that control significant resources in China it has broken down completely - another place would be India or Pakistan

all of which are places you hardly hear much about in discussions on the board and where you could have a stranded bunch of Americans or Brits in very easily - more so in Pakistan and China than India - in a place where there is no govt at all and its down to the village level

A while ago someone - I can't recall who - started a thread about ideas for campaigns set in more unusual places. If I recall correctly various suggestions were put forward (one that I recall involved East German troops who had been serving with the Soviet forces in China and were now trying to make their way back to Germany; another - and probably more popular - one was for the pc's to be a group of US Marine Corps Embassy Security Guards stuck somewhere in Africa and trying to make for the coast to get a ship to the US. I think Law went as far as starting a pbem based on that premise).

[Webstral]

The Joint Chiefs in Colorado Springs will be thinking along the lines that Olefin has outlined, I believe. I happen to agree that another significant loss of stability will kill more than 75% of the survivors for whom there is no food. Once the people who produce the food that can be produced start to become casualties in a major way, the entire carrying capacity of the (remains of) the civilization will enter a downward spiral with no end in sight. Although I am loath to take up a contrary position to so many of my respected compatriots, I must agree with Olefin that ending the drought in 2002 isn’t going to solve the problem. A single truly disastrous nationwide harvest in 2001 will bring down the United States. Whatever rises from the ashes in North America (since Canada and Mexico seem to be in on the rainfall problem) will not be the US, Canada, or Mexico. I strongly suspect that a drought that means famine for 75% of the survivors will mean death for 90-95% of the survivors. The population of the US could sink to levels not seen since the early 1800’s.

Of course, this line of thinking is driving the Joint Chiefs to an early grave. I think this is why the 2001-2002 period can make for such exciting adventuring for PCs. The US stands at a crossroads in early 2001. If there is a widespread disaster, the country may never recover. But IF the airship program can be put on a solid footing, IF the remaining Milgov cantonments can be reconnected, IF the necessary expertise and critical machinery can be delivered to the right places, and IF surpluses of food can free labor for industrialization and reconstruction before too many more of the experts die, then the US has a chance to arrest the downward spiral more-or-less permanently and enter a long, arduous upward spiral.

Because it’s not like the rest of the world isn’t doing its best to recover.

[Targan]

Some areas will be worse affected by the drought than others. Howling Wilderness says as much. Also, coastal communities will have more food options than inland communities. Once again it will come down to whether available food can be moved far enough and safely enough to where it is needed.

If we stick to things as described in HW the 2001 spring/summer/autumn harvests in the CONUS will largely be a write-off (compared to pre-war crop yields). Winter precipitation at the end of 2001 may offer a glimmer of hope for the following growing season but in the colder lattitudes it won't be much consolation.

Bear in mind, in the real world the US is a huge net exporter of food. Crop yields late in the Twilight War will be hit by a lack of manufactured fertilisers, a lack of fuel for farmn machinery and then the drought but we've never crunched the numbers to determine at what point crop yields fall to below subsistance levels. And a drought doesn't automatically mean that the entire CONUS turns into a giant, parched dustbowl. It means sustained, reduced average precipitation.

Like it or not, enough people DID survive in the CONUS (according to GDW's writers) to allow the USA to once again become a major world power. As usual I choose to find ways for that to have happened rather than throw out HW altogether. My respected fellow forumites are of course entitled to do with HW as they see fit

[Olefin]

Personally I dont think GDW's writers really sat down and thought much about how their modules interconnected let alone the different games. (For instance Allegheny Uprising flat out contradicts Kidnapped and HW - it takes place after the drought begins in both, is set in the area that CivGov is trying to move thru, yet makes absolutely no mention of the drought or the fact that most of the Eastern Seaboard and Mid-Atlantic States are being evacuated).

And I agree with what Webstral posted - any famine that kills off 3/4 of your remaining population will kill off the country pure and simple - there is no way the uber drought occurs as written and the United States ever rises again - and certainly not per the timeline in 2300AD.

If you go with 2300AD as the future then HW and Kidnapped, as written, doesnt work, pure and simple. There wouldnt be a US left.

At best, with the HW and Kidnapped drought, even if only one year long,. you would be looking at a fragmented nation that would look more like Germany did before they reunified in the 1870's - a patchwork of small states, city-states, and minor empires, all fighting each other and all claiming to be the true US and none able to have the power to rule much more than the small patches of territory they sit on. If you want to see what that will be like read A Canticle for Liebowitz and see how long it took for something like the US to rise again - it was a long long time.

Especially since HW says that MilGovs' communications will be breaking down - meaning that MilGov and CivGov will both be coming apart at the seams.

Now if you ignore 2300AD then you can have anything happen.

As I have said before - it may be one of the reasons they went back to Europe right after HW - because they had just written the US off as anything other than a place to play Aftermath in.

I.e. it was either tell people "whoops we went too far, please ignore those two modules and we will be refunding you your money after we do a rewrite so we can have playable modules again in the US" or "ok well so much for being able to do anything with the US anymore after painting ourselves into the corner by Loren, hey lets go back to Europe"

[Raellus]

In defense of the GDW crew, it's going to be difficult to have a fully unified, integrated vision when module writing work is being farmed out to various freelance or semi-indipendent contributors, especially before the communications advances of the interweb. Those guys didn't have video-chat, instant or text messages, or anything like that. They probably didn't even have e-mail. And the editor/s was dealing with a large amount of material- most of the v1.0 materials came out in a single five-year span.

That said, HW is kind of a mess. Still, I think that some of you aren't giving GMs enough credit. Most GMs are going to be able to make adjustments to the published stuff in order to suit their own tastes and those of their players. Frankly, a GM that runs something straight out of the book without making any mods is probably not a very good one. I think that Web is a great example of how a thoughtful person can take the starting material presented in the official modules and modify them into something better.

I don't have HW in front of me, but I wanted to bring up a couple of points for continued discussion.

I think that the effects of the HW drought might be a bit overstated. One needs to take into consideration a couple of factors, one being the degree to which farming in America is mechanized. The ratio of labor to production is pretty crazy. Large corporate agribusiness farms produce a huge amount of food with a relatively puny labor force. As Targan pointed out, the U.S. is a net food exporter and has been since WWI. If enough farm machinery could be kept running, food could be produced.

There's historical precedence to look at. My AP U.S. History students are currently studying the Great Depression and I've been doing a fair bit of reading about American agriculture during the first half of the 20th century. The Dust Bowl of the mid thirties was an ecological distaster previously unseen in American history. Tens of millions of acres of farmland were effectively put out of use for two years (in some regions, significantly longer). America's Breadbasket was badly hurt by the Dust Bowl but the country didn't starve. In fact, it didn't even need to start importing food. Granted, some parts of the country were not as badly effected by the '30s drought (Florida actually experienced a net gain in rainfall in 1934). Droughts don't often effect an entire continent equally adversely. I would contend that by 2000, the total population of the U.S. would be much closer to 1935 numbers, if not even lower.

Would a bad two-year drought mean the end of American civilization? I doubt it. The Maya survived much worse for much longer before their civilization collapsed.

[kato13]

Originally Posted by Raellus

There's historical precedence to look at. My AP U.S. History students are currently studying the Great Depression and I've been doing a fair bit of reading about American agriculture during the first half of the 20th century. The Dust Bowl of the mid thirties was an ecological distaster previously unseen in American history. Tens of millions of acres of farmland were effectively put out of use for two years (in some regions, significantly longer). America's Breadbasket was badly hurt by the Dust Bowl but the country didn't starve.

The caloric numbers that HW presents as being available represents about 2% the US's prewar production (of the 7 major grains and excluding all other food sources). Given I expect that the percentage of Americans involved in agriculture (or other food acquisition) would increase at least fivefold in the intervening years, and the fact that this is the 4th harvest after TDM, that number just seems ridiculous to me.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by kato13

The caloric numbers that HW presents as being available represents about 2% the US's prewar production (of the 7 major grains and excluding all other food sources). Given I expect that the percentage of Americans involved in agriculture (or other food acquisition) would increase at least fivefold in the intervening years, and the fact that this is the 4th harvest after TDM, that number just seems ridiculous to me.

2% ?!? That is ridiculous. Yeah, that's definitely a non-starter. 20% maaayyybe, but even that seems very, very low. I think the Dustbowl example kind of puts that 2% figure to bed.

[kato13]

Originally Posted by Raellus

2% ?!? That is ridiculous. Yeah, that's definitely a non-starter. 20% maaayyybe, but even that seems very, very low. I think the Dustbowl example kind of puts that 2% figure to bed.

On the old board I had done all the math and had calculated that 10% of prewar production of just the 7 major grains (excluding fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, fishing, hunting, etc) would provide 2850 calories daily for the remaining US population in the beginning of 2001.

HW clearly states that production is only enough for 1/4 of the population so that gets us to around 2-2.5%. I rounded down because 2850 is a little high when people would be starving and I assume there would be some other source of calories somewhere.

[Olefin]

Also keep in mind that per HW the last time that gas and fuel was part of agricultural production in the US was the spring planting of 1999.

I,.e page 9 "It would be the last one in which gasoline and diesel fuel were major factors for many years"

That implies that agricultural production in the US and distribution of food would be almost all done manually or with horse or ox power from spring 1999on for probably a decade or more.

Like I said - HW goes way way too far in destroying the US - if you follow HW to its obvious conclusion you end up with a depopulated US with maybe 6 percent of its population still alive by the harvest of 2002 with any remaining technology basically gone, no governments of any kind left except maybe around Colorado Springs with a remnant of MilGov forces totalling maybe around a brigade or so, and the US so broken up that it would be finished as a country - i.e. the only possible govt that could arise would be New America and even then it would be a patchwork of various New America's fighting among themselves for the next few centuries

and that flies totally in the face of Twilight 2300AD which the same GDW writers said was where the timeline was headed

thats the conclusion my GM came to after reading it and then deposited his copy along with Kidnapped (both of which he bought at the same time) into the garbage can and said that as far as he was concerned they were not canon - and after I fished it out and read them I could see why he did it

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Olefin

Also keep in mind that per HW the last time that gas and fuel was part of agricultural production in the US was the spring planting of 1999.

I,.e page 9 "It would be the last one in which gasoline and diesel fuel were major factors for many years"

That implies that agricultural production in the US and distribution of food would be almost all done manually or with horse or ox power from spring 1999on for probably a decade or more.

Not necessarily. If military vehicles could be converted to run on alcohol or other alternative fuels, so could tractors and combines and the like. Refute this assertion and you pretty much deep six the whole game world.

[Olefin]

its part of the whole picture that HW paints - i.e. that the US, in general, because of the drought and its effects will be reduced to basically manual labor and horsepower - that there wont be enough food to allow ethanol production and that even methanol production will be curtailed to the point that there wont be anything left for civilian use - i.e. agriculture

remember it also has MilGov's 90th Corps breaking up with the result that the Oklahoma refineries and oil wells are lost and the one big refinery they still have left at Robinson having an accident and going to only 1 percent of capacity - meaning no fuel left for MilGov

the picture it paints defintely doesnt lead to any kind of reunited US in any forseeable future

[Bullet Magnet]

Unless I'm misreading, it sounds like the HW drought is effectively that for most of the North American continent, hardly a single drop of rain falls for the duration of the drought. Perhaps that's what needs to be modified, maybe more along the lines of the dry spell we got in the midwest last year (2012, in case this post lasts into posterity ). We got rain, just not that much. Sure I thought it was kind of nice that I didn't need to mow my lawn for all of July, but it did suck not being able to find a decent ear of corn.

So, to bring this back to the game, rather than the drought starving out 75%(?), maybe it starves a "mere" 25%. A shortage here, a shortage there, insufficient distribution of goods to areas, etc. All these and I'm sure things I'm not thinking of here, would contribute to the ones who do die off.

Another thought that comes to mind is the rampant disease mentioned (in the v1 timeline at least). As I recall, it says by the time all that had run its course, around 50% of the global population had been wiped out. I'd say that should not be applied equally. Life ain't fair; some places will handle it better than others. Places like the US, Canada, the UK, and so on, will have stocks of medicines to lower the death rates in their areas, while some other nations will have no access to these life saving medicines, due to the nearly nonexistent shipping industry of the time. So, my thought is that the first world countries might have a lower death rate from the plagues ... maybe 40 or even 30%, while poorer nations may see death rates of 70% or even higher. 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.

Of course, food production will be a priority in the recovery. Then, medical care would certainly be something people would think of. During the worst, many people working in the fields to get some food to stay alive are obviously not farmers by trade. As the food situation begins to stabilize, the doctors in the fields will get back to their hospitals and clinics once the opportunity arises. Similar for those in technical trades. Getting the machines back up and running will help move things along.

Of course, none of this will happen overnight. Getting completely back to the prewar lifestyle may take a generation, but people will want to get back to it. Also, in the T2K universe, we'll still have "the Evil Soviet Empire" to worry about, so there will be a push to get back to a point where we can face them again if needed, because we know they'll be doing the same thing regarding us.

That said, let me also say I'm not claiming to be any kind of expert on these matters. So, I might be way off base; I'm just speculating in a lot of what I said.
I also think the writers at GDW back in 87 were largely speculating as well. And, they didn't have the access to information we have here a quarter century later. And, they had deadlines to meet. So, Howling Wilderness may be crap, but maybe, just maybe, parts of it can be 'fixed' so it makes a more realistic picture of things, and still provides the recovery that leads into the 2300 timeline.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by kato13

HW clearly states that production is only enough for 1/4 of the population so that gets us to around 2-2.5%. I rounded down because 2850 is a little high when people would be starving and I assume there would be some other source of calories somewhere.

As I said in an earlier post, populations close to the coast (and near the Great Lakes and other major waterways now that I come to think of it) would have more food options than those in inland, modern agriculture-intensive areas. It seems obvious to me that major depopulation would occur in some areas and not others. It may well be that some inland, severely drought-affected states may end up with absolutely catastrophic die-offs. The cultural and societal aftershocks in those areas would likely resonate down through the centuries. Other areas may well find that their populations have stabilised or even be on the increase by late 2001.

In the first decade of the new millenia the start of America's recovery is likely to come from a couple of dozen hubs, spreading out into the depopulated areas as the decades roll by. It may be 50 years or more until some areas regain enough population and infrastructure to be considered even partly "civilised" again. Hence the great campaign possibilities posited by Webstral when he started this thread.

Originally Posted by Raellus

Granted, some parts of the country were not as badly effected by the '30s drought (Florida actually experienced a net gain in rainfall in 1934). Droughts don't often effect an entire continent equally adversely.

I touched on this earlier in the thread. At no point does Howling Wilderness say that the entire CONUS is equally affected by drought. Even in the late '80s/early '90s there was enough general knowledge about climate science in the western world for GDW's writers not to suggest anything so stupid. In fact I regard their drought scenario as quite clever. They didn't jump straight to the cliched nuclear winter scenario that goes with most nuclear war scenarios. They came up with a slightly more unforseen outcome. I know that many of my American friends would be all too familiar with the concept of droughts. Here in Australia that awareness is even stronger. My continent exists in a perpetual state of semi-drought. Really, our good times in terms of rainfall are mostly just the breaks between one drought and the next. Droughts are almost never continent-wide events. Just look at recent news reports. Here in the south-west of the Australian continent we've been experiencing a succession of droughts for years. In the north east of the continent, they're experiencing once-in-a-lifetime floods.

In the same way that the published material describes in many, many instances the efforts of MILGOV, CIVGOV and even New America to identify and gather up military and civilian experts to get remaining infrastructure up and running again, you can be absolutely certain that the remaining authorities would also be exploring all available food options, even those "outside the box". They'd be wracking the brains of a myriad of horticulturalists, biologists, aquaculturalists, you name it, trying to bootstrap any kind of viable food production option into existance. Also, it's just this sort of discussion we're having here that brings into sharp focus how important the meteorological data held in the satellite in Satellite Down would be.

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). International borders would mean very little so I'm sure Americans would move into neighbouring parts of Canada where the rains hadn't entirely failed. In fact if Canada was able to maintain higher than subsistance levels of food production, the US would be it's most obvious trading partner. Even with the US in the shocking state it is in 2001, it's still the dominant regional military power, and the Canadians are dealing with a serious French-supported civil war in Quebec.

Look, I'm not above honest self-reflection from time to time. Maybe I'm lazy and too ignorant of life in the USA, resulting in me keeping to the published materials so I don't have to re-write HW from scratch. Maybe I'm hopelessly sentimental and that's why I cling to the published materials as a drowning man might cling to a floating piece of debris. But I think it's most likely that I just enjoy the mental stimulation of making all the existing pieces of the puzzle fit into the outcome that GDW presented for its game universe's future 300 years down the road.

[John Farson]

I was thinking about something that I don't think has been touched upon regarding the HW famine (if it has been discussed then apologies):

Much has been made about how the HW famine, if going by what was written, basically kills the United States - and likely, by extension, also Canada and Mexico seeing as its a North American phenomenon. But what of the rest of the world? Without fuel, and without the granaries of the U.S. and Canada, the countries that are reliant on import of food (which is most nations on Earth) would suffer severe famine. And of course Russia has also been damaged, and China has been plastered, and India looks to be also devastated, so what major food producing nations does that leave? Australia, New Zealand and South America would be less damaged, but would they be able to supply food to those regions needing it?

My point is: Much has been made about how a killer famine like the one in HW would make America's position in 2300AD impossible. I'd be willing to go further and say that no country would be in any shape to go to the stars by 2300 or so. Then again, I've never really been much into 2300 in any case. There were certain aspects of it that have always seemed a bit outlandish to me.

[Webstral]

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.

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.

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).

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.