Spoken like someone who’s never grown up in a rural area without electricity.
Spoken like someone who’s never grown up in a society with no modern medicine, famine, no pain relievers, no birth control, a life expectancy in the 30s ( at best ), parasites, plagues, no pure water, no toilet paper, a greater than 50% child mortality rate, and a host of other ills.
True, but I was originally commenting on your defeatist statement, “To be blunt, how many people would want to bring children into so terrible a situation ?” which was preceded by your assertion in an earlier post that 2,000 people wouldn’t even try to survive, which was in turn followed by your advocacy of suicide-by-shotgun. I mean, yeesh. Don’t you have a human survival mechanism, or skills you can pass on?
What’s the incentive now? Things aren’t great for a lot of people today, but they keep it going. Maybe they want better for their family, offspring, etc…
Top 10% IQ?
That means two thousand cold, frightened, hungry, posssibly sick SMART people with guns. I can see some factions, warlords, and bloodshed happening pretty soon.
Still, I guess that would happen with 200 bozos too.
There was a programme on TV a year or so ago, where they took some Americans and Brits and dumped them somewhere on the coast of Maine in a replica of one of the original North American settlements. They had period supplies, tools, animals and seeds and in addition to that the land was cleared and there were houses prebuilt for them.
In the months they lived there, they failed to produce enough food to survive and relied almost entirely on the supplies (stuff like dried peas, sugar, flour, cured meat, corn, beer and wine) they were given. Even starting a fire every morning was a big issue.
The wanted to be there and had been given training before embarking on the project and they didn’t have the skills and will to survive on their own.
Critically, the group fractured. They argued about petty issues, and generally didn’t get along.
Based on that imo, dropping 2000 people back in time with nothing but a rifle is a death sentence.
Apart from the ‘external’ problems, I think the biggest issue would be ourselves. Just think about it: 2000 random individuals, thrown together, most probably scared and confused. There’d be some assertive individuals who would try to dominate either by grouping people under them, or by intimidating them. (Those rifles really worry me).
Soon, some would want their own fiefdoms. Others would want to retain their individuality, and strike out on their own. Some would want to get everyone together to talk about it (there’d bound to be some politicians), and some would want to fight their way to the top: don’t forget - there’d have to be some immoral and unscrupulous people. In short, very soon there’d be anarchy and chaos.
In fact, I think that the sooner the majority wiped each other out, the better. You’d be left with a core who really wanted to survive (incentitive) and who were able to survive (survival of the fittest).
Please, someone, tell me that my view on how society would survive is unutterably bleak and wrong.
Personally, I’d much rather have an incentitive than an incentive.
Toilet paper??? Geez, I guess you’ve never gone backpacking, huh?
No toilet paper is your idea of living in hell? Modern toilet paper is a luxury, for sure, but ancient humans up to today’s humans can utilize other natural items to wipe their asses with, such as moss or leaves.
Also, modern humans, unlike ancient humans, understand how babies are made, so could practice natural birth control.
We also understand the fundamentals of modern medicine; we know about microbes and infection control. Doctors in the group could provide basic care, and perform a variety of services, from assisting with birth (yes, no pain relief, but this is how humans have been giving birth for millions of years, and many still do it today); to caring for broken bones, wounds, etc.
No pure water? This is way before modern pollution, so many fresh water sources would be safe to drink from. Again, ever been camping? Ever drink from a spring or fresh stream? Even though, making pottery and boiling water in it would be no problem.
We could also easily produce alcohol, which would serve as a crude pain reliever and antiseptic.
Millenia of selective breeding. For most of human history, life has been a fate worse than death; only those with an irrational desire to survive lived long enough to have children, instead of flinging themselves off the nearest cliff.
Except that the land had been hunted and fished out in the last 200 years. In a 2million year Europe, there’d be vast herds of animals that have no reason to be wary of humans with guns, flocks of birds that could be killed with a stick, and schools of fish that had never seen a hook. For while, things would be fat & easy.
But other than the gun and 10 rounds, they’d need some survival goods*- firestarters, knives, fishooks, line, axes, and some decent clothes and blankets. Give me just that gear and the gun, and I could live quite well for years.
There’d be some initial arguments and die offs, sure. But after the social issues were dealt with, we could do it. If you took 2000 volunteers with nothing but a normal backpak load, I’d expect much better results.
*Even a ‘caveman’ would have problems surviving with nothing but the equivilant (a bow and 10 arrows). He’d want a flint knife (and it appears that only a few had decent flint-knapping skills, and flint was rare), and a firestarting kit- which he could likely make, sure. Even paleolithic humns depended on the skills and supplies of a whole tribe.
Hmmm, I’m seeing some odd declarations here.
Starting fires is difficult, but it’s not impossible. It just takes time and effort. Once the fire is started you keep it going and don’t let it die out, or you’ve got to start all over again. Everyone knows you can make fire (eventually) by rubbing dry sticks together, you can make sparks from flint and steel. That’s the long term value of those rifles…steel for firestarters.
The biggest problem will be lack of axes. If you’ve got an axe making a log cabin is no problem. A handmade flint axe isn’t going to be much help.
There’s not going to be much problem with disease. The only contagious diseases will be those that the group brings with them. Only someone infected with a contagious disease will be able to transmit the disease. So most modern diseases will vanish, because in a group of 2000 people it’s not likely that any of them will have any particular disease. AIDS might be a worry…but any HIV positive people in the group should know their status and with luck the disease will become extinct when those people die. There’s very little risk of encountering new contagious diseases from the surrounding animals, witness the population of the Americas. Before Columbus infectious disease was almost unknown in the Americas.
There’s going to be lots of meat available. Most animals aren’t going to be wary of humans, and they will be present in densities that modern humans will find hard to believe. Yes, European colonists famously starved in the Americas…but the Americas weren’t empty, indians hunted, fished and farmed there extensively. The rivers 2 million years ago will teem with fish, the shorelines will be packed with shellfish. Even with just thrown rocks and sticks getting small animals should be easy.
The big problem will be plant foods. There will be no domestic plants, and the wild relatives of today’s domestic plants will be unrecognizable. Ever see Queen Anne’s Lace? Doesn’t look much like a carrot, does it? There will be plenty of grass around, but wild grass seed won’t give you much return on investment. Modern grains have been bred and crossbred and selected for thousands of years. Our colonists will be lucky if they can pass on the notion of farming beyond their grandchildren, much less have much success at it themselves. Now, european forests 2 million years ago will be stuffed with edible wild plants…the trouble comes from recognizing them, finding them, gathering them, and storing them. Expect a meat heavy diet for the next few generations.
Now, the next generations. There aren’t going to be many. Anybody here have kids? Do you know how much work it is to take care of a baby, even with washing machines, supermarkets, and disposable diapers? And modern women don’t expect to be pregnant or nursing their entire lives. The argument that if the women don’t start breeding quickly the population will crash isn’t going to work because what’s in it for them? The grandchildren of the colonists will probably be more traditional, but the first colonist women aren’t. They’re going to be struggling to survive, and certainly aren’t going to be cranking out ten kids each.
However, those who predict an infant mortality of 50% are a bit off as well. Sure, those figures were accurate for, say, medieval times. But the colonists aren’t facing the same conditions. The continent won’t be crowded with millions of other people competing for limited food. There won’t be plagues sweeping through the population every few years. Doctors and midwives know enough to wash their hands. Sure, things will go wrong, and mothers and babies will die of things they’d survive today. No Ceasarian sections, no drugs, no induction, no monitors. But it won’t be nearly as bad as for babies born in the gin-soaked plague-ridden slums of London 200 years ago.
But the women just AREN’T going to start cranking out babies. Not gonna happen. The first generation will have modern child rearing attitudes, those will take a generation or two to dissappear. Expecting more than one or two children per women is wildly optomistic.
Now, priorities. People in survival situations often don’t prioritize correctly. Ever hear of the rule of threes? You can survive 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. Roughly, of course. So unless it’s midsummer, preventing hypothermia is the most important task. Which means shelter. But there should be thick forests covering Europe, so lean-tos and crude cabins are the first order. Next, water. Head downhill and you’ll eventually find a stream. Only after you’ve built a shelter and made a fire and found water do you worry about food. And worrying about predators is fine, but it’s not that big a problem. Sharp sticks, yelling, and being in a group should protect you almost always. The people who get killed by predators will be out on their own hunting by themselves. Probably more people will be killed by grumpy herbivores than by hungry carnivores.
And of course, the other big problem will be political. The old cliche that man is the most dangerous animal. Given that most of the colonists will have democratic expectations, setting up a new feudal system isn’t going to sit very well. And the feudal system depends on tying people to the land, the serfs can’t leave because every other potential farmstead is already occupied by other serfs. In this case, there’s empy land everywhere. A group annoyed at the big men can just pack up and leave. So expect a hunter-gatherer type political structure to evolve. People live in a group as more or less equals, and if someone get too obnoxious they’re either thrown out of the group or their victims pack up and leave.
I agree with lemur866.
I don’t understand though, 3 hours without shelter? I was outside for 3 hours today.
And after that you went inside to warm up / cool down.
In a hostile climate, if you don’t get a shelter improvised within around 3 hours, you’re going to start losing efficiency at such a rate you’ll never get it completed before you NEED it.
In general, a whole 12+ hour day in the sun at 110F/45C is enough to dehydrate people into near madness. The sunburn and eye burn is enough to ensure theyll be debilitated tomorrow when facing the same conditions again.
At the other end, if there’s snow on the ground, sleeping in the open overnight isn’t gonna be survivable either. So you’d better get some effective shelter built before too much hypothermia (or darkness) sets in.
Certainly the nicer the climate the less 3 hours applies. Where I grew up as long as you could find shade you were fine for the day year-round and you only really needed shelter overnight maybe 6 months of the year. But climates like that are rare (and have high real estate prices)
Just having an elementary knowledge of germ theory and sanitation will be a big plus. It won’t be easy to keep wounds clean and sterilized, but at least we know we ought to make the effort - and why it’s important not to shit near where you get your drinking water.
If it happened, near where I live would be as good a place as any. For a start, in Norfolk we have any amount of flint being used as ornamental stone 
and there are prehistoric flint pits within a day’s march. (I could think of many uses for the chalk, too.)
Responding to Lemur866.
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Agreed about keeping fires going, and good thinking about those steel guns as firestarters.
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A handmade flint axe may not be much help chopping down trees, but until mining and metalsmelting is rediscovered stone axes will have to do.
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I think you, and others are waaaaay overly optimistic about the lack of danger posed by diseases, allergents and poisonous plants existing from 2 million years ago, downplaying the danger posed by parasites like ticks, mosquitoes, fleas and mites (among others), ignoring the likelihood of any modern diseases like the contemporary flu virus mutating in a pollutant free environments of 2 million years ago, and conveniently forgetting the fact that any first aid we can render will largely be on the level of bottled and fresh urine and salt brine as the only astringents and disinfectants for cuts and wounds. (At least until soap is re-invented, but where’s the lye going to come from?)
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I’d be a bit cautious about hyperbolic statements like rivers teeming with fish and shorelines packed with shellfish – with 2,000 people suddenly introduced in a densely populated area wanting to eat at least once a day, those numbers are not going to remain high indefinitely. With that many omnivores suddenly hitting an ecosystem, the natural balance of predator/prey will be thrown out of whack, the population levels will crash, hard, and the others will move away. Then there’s still the question of whether or not the meat will be palpable to eat, easy to catch, relatively effortless and safe to clean and slaughter, and whether or not it will be suffering from some disease. For all we know, the mammals of that era might be riddled with disease carrying insects or symbiotes feeding from their flesh. I mean really: if humans of that era barely lived past their 30s because they died early of disease, infections and possible exposure, why not assume other mammals might be similarly afflicted?
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I mostly agree with you on your assessment of plants and protoagricultural efforts.
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Unspoken so far is the belief by most people in this thread is that most of the 2,000 colonists who speak a common language and provided with guns will come from urban backgrounds and so-called “first world” countries. This may not be true, and childbearing and childrearing attitudes may not be as marginalized as you’re thinking if a significant portion of the women come from places like the ecclesiastical Middle East, North or East Africa, suburban India, rural Suriname of South America and the common language just happens to be Arabic. Ten kids is waaaay too much population growth. It will too quickly lead to factionalization before a dominant root culture, history and mores are cemented.
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I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that infant mortality rates over the first 5 years of life may well resemble those in current-day equatorial Africa. Instead of gin-soaked plague-ridden slums, they’ll have no sterilization, innoculations, formulas, high-calorie well balanced meals and medical attention for things like ear infections, rubella, measles, mumps or chicken pox.
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I really liked your rule of 3 advice.
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You’re making quite few assumptions about colonists having democratic expectations, but other than that… I agree.
So I can have your gun when you’re done with it?
So let’s alter the parameters a bit:
1.) 2000 people, as before. High intellect, as before. Common language, as before. But skew the ages young - 50% age 20-25, 40% 25-30, 10% 30-45, with even sex ratios.
2.) Give each colonist two high-quality steel hunting knives. In addition add 200 steel axes.
3.) Add a set of 20 or so “survival manuals” ( not necessarily literally ) printed with laminated pages ( not indestructible, but longer lasting than mere paper ). Volumes on not just hunting and gathering, but structure-building, clay-finding/pottery casting/kiln-making, basket-weaving, farming, large and small animal husbandry, simple metallurgy, first aid, etc.
4.) Give them 100 young, vigorous, well-trained, mongrel dogs on a generalized pharaoh dog/dingo body plan.
5.) Give them 200 domesticated cattle. Tractable, but from a tough free-range, long-horned breed, skewed heavily towards young, productive females with a lkimited number of high-quality bulls.
6.) Give them abundant, genetically diverse seed stock for the ‘three sisters’ of maize, beans, and squash. Plus, let’s say heirloom tomatoes and some tough vine fruits ( melons, grapes ).
7.) Plop them down in an area of naturally rich soil, near both fresh water and the sea.
8.) Finally given them three months rations for the whole, but with long-duration storage ( say three years ), so they can spread them out as needed.
9.) No guns or fishing line.
Howabout then :)?
- Tamerlane
Oh and entire population is lactose tolerant and has no ( expressed in those individuals, but possibly carried ) long-term deabilitating diseases.
- Tamelane
There’ve been previous threads discussing this general subject, but I haven’t had any luck finding them so far. One of them was framed as a discussion of how long it would take to rebuild a modern-looking society starting from scratch, as I recall, and the responses ranged from a generation or two to they’d all die out before getting anywhere. I shall go back to whipping the hamsters looking for them.