Environmental Collapse in T2k

[Raellus]

Back in the early 1980s, Carl Sagan and other preeminent scientists popularized the nuclear winter theory. Thankfully, it wasn't tested. During the 1990s-early 2000s, the idea fell out of fashion as some among the new generation of scientists poked holes in it. Recently, it seems to have come back to the fore. In Annie Jacobsen's Nuclear War: A Scenario (2024), nuclear winter is once again (and rather convincingly, I might add) presented as the most likely long-term climatological effect of a nuclear war.

I recently read a history of the Vikings. Just prior to the dawn of the "Viking Age", during the middle of the 6th century A.D., there was a "nuclear winter" event believed to have been caused by 2-3 massive volcanic eruptions occurring within a few years of one another. This might have inspired the mythical Fimbulwinter- the "Mighty Winter" preceding the Armageddon-like Ragnarok of Norse mythology.

To make a long story short, IRL there was a pretty significant die-off in Scandanavia (50% of the total population, perhaps more) mostly due to crop failures caused by several years of reduced sunlight and lower average temperatures caused by huge quantities of volcanic particulates lingering in the upper atmosphere (an estimated 87 cubic kilometers!). This die-off, greater than that caused by the Black Death and the 30 Years War combined (!), led to the collapse of most social institutions in Scandanavia, resulting in, or greatly exacerbating, a period of warlordism, in which strongmen preyed on the weak and/or fought amongst each other for scarce resources.

This event, and similar massive volcanic eruptions, have generated short-term (several months to several years) of nuclear winter-like environmental conditions (sans radioactivity of course). These natural phenomenon lend credence to the nuclear winter theory posited by Sagan et al.

Then there's Howling Wilderness' treatment of environmental conditions brought on, or exacerbated, by the effects of multiple ground-burst nuclear detonations. HW takes the opposite tack, positing a mega-draught that, nevertheless, leads to large scale environmental collapse across much of the USA.

In a similar vein, the Mad Max post-apocalyptic world (caused, in large part, by nuclear warfare) presents a particularly dry world- at least, Down Under.

In either the Cold or the Dry post-apocalypses, the net effect is the same: Fewer natural resources, and much competition for same among the dwindling numbers of survivors.

Back to T2k, nearly two decades ago, I briefly played in a 1e PBeM, set in Poland, in which it was almost always raining- IIRC, the Ref explained that this climatological effect was caused by a mini-nuclear winter. The near constant rain- steady, but not particularly heavy- killed crops, caused localized flooding, and generally made life very difficult and uncomfortable for survivors. It was the grimmest T2k I've ever experienced.

Have any of you included or experienced aspects of nuclear winter- or other types of environmental collapse- in your T2k campaigns? How did you handle it? In what ways did environmental collapse affect the game world?

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[castlebravo92]

The mega drought was a fairly unrealistic contrivance to essentially destroy the U.S. to (IMHO) pave the way for France being the dominant superpower in Traveller:2300 / 2300 AD.

It's unrealistic because the US has several different major sources of water. Aquifers aren't going to deplete during a single dry season, coastal areas will still get rain - most of the Atlantic / Gulf region simply does not have the geographical features to not get rain and the Mississippi and it's tributaries span the largest continental water system in the world, which is partially fed by the Great Lakes. Now, if you ignore "mega-drought" and instead use "climate/weather upheaval", then it allows more wiggle room. Some areas are in drought, other areas are inundated, some areas get the Goldilox rain, but maybe those are the areas outside MilGov/CivGov/NA control and thus there is no organized large scale planting, etc.

Now, I realize that it was largely a contrivance to set the stage for 2300AD and explain why America wasn't the pre-imminent superpower for that setting, and it was probably thought up in a week or so under a deadline, but I've always ignored it. IIRC, the mega-drought was published around the same time GDW was publishing Traveler:TNE, and they were going through their "kill everyone" phase of RPG publishing.

The bottom line is, mechanization, inorganic fertilizers, hybrid seeds, and pesticides account for about a 5x increase in agriculture yields. Take away all that and not even have animal labor to fall back on (because what farms in America are configured to plow fields with oxen these days?) and you'll have a precipitous drop in population pretty quickly.

Incidentally, the US keeps around 12-24 months worth of grain, so we are also more than one bad harvest away from starvation. My head cannon to explain the fall 1998 collapse is that much of that food reserve was shipped to Europe during late 1997 and early 1998 to keep our European allies from starving given the earlier use of nukes and the larger disruptions to agriculture that would have happened by the war.

[Homer]

I always visualized the “last harvest” scene in Threads. The end of mechanized agriculture, modern food preservation and distribution infrastructure, and outright losses of skilled agriculturalists seem like they’d be more than sufficient to cause famine once any reserves are looted/exhausted/spoiled. The “Charlottesville” study touches on things like the early slaughter of livestock to preserve grain stocks, distribution issues and food riots, depletion of game, and the lack of capacity of post-industrial agriculture. Throw in disease, violence, exposure, died of wounds/radiation/acts of war, loss of medical care, and things like depressive suicide and there’s potential for a pretty hefty drop in population even without the mega-drought.

Like CastleBravo said, it’s pretty hard to see water sources drying up per Howling Wilderness. Having grown up in the ArkLaTex, even our drought years still had plenty of water around. Maybe short term variations in rainfall and temperature, but the idea of a continent wide drought seems like it’s not supported by the amount of damage done in the exchange. That said, areas that saw heavy combat, like Central Europe and China seem like they’d be devastated and hard put to produce sufficient food for even their depleted populations.

[Raellus]

I wonder why the 1e creative team decided to go with a megadrought in HW, instead of nuclear-winter, the latter being very much in vogue at the time it was written. Maybe it was precisely because nuclear-winter was so in vogue and they decided to zig instead of zag, to make T2k stand out?

Anyway, a megadrought makes even less sense given the high probability of a global cool-down due to massive clouds of particulates and smoke (caused by even limited nuclear warfare) in the upper atmosphere blocking out a significant amount of sunlight. Although, I suppose that such ash clouds could concentrate in certain areas and not others, leading to extreme variations in regional weather patterns. This might mean that Europe gets darker and colder whilst large parts of the USA get sunnier and hotter. This seems like quite a stretch, though, given how many nuclear strikes occurred on US soil.

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