After Stabilization?

[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 isnt 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 1800s.

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 its not like the rest of the world isnt 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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, its 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.

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 thats a localized effect. Ive 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 dont 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.