Damn good question, in my mind its decided by letting all 3 of them be leaders of their own communities of 1000 each or so and we’ll see in the next ten years which one grows the fastest and overwhelms the others.
Here’s another potential issue with all these cows in Western Australia: where do they get their water? Is it currently provided via plumbing and so forths, or are there natural water sources (streams/rivers) capable of sustaining millions of head of cattle?
Because if the cattle start dying of thirst, you’re going to have rotting cattle carcasses all over the place, which might let you eat meat in the short run but will make you very very sick in the long run.
Another issue: any of this work you’re doing looking for iron ore, making shelters, etc., you’d better not be far from fresh water for yourself, because you won’t have water bottles of any sort (at least until you figure out how to make them out of cow stomachs) so if you’re working in any kind of hot weather at all your efficiency is going to be greatly reduced.
In the real world, though, it never works that way. Bill is happy to send off all the civilians, except for the ones with useful skills: he’ll take the useful ones by force if necessary, because to do otherwise is to doom humanity. He’ll similarly take all the best resources for his group. Zeke will do everything he can to stop Bill from taking anyone from force, and to prevent Bill from hoarding resources, including mounting insurrections against Bill, because to do otherwise is to rebuild humanity in the shape of a tyrant. And Laura will do everything she can to prevent anyone from rebuilding the devil’s technology, because to do otherwise will be to invite God’s further wrath.
These three exact leaders might not come about, but something similar will. Live and let live is a tenuous philosophy under the best of circumstances; what makes you think it’d work post-apocalypse?
some of the cattle will die of thirst or from lack of fodder since there is no infrastructure to transport it to them, but thats fine, because after the human population crashes there is still likely to be many more cattle than people and the landscape could sustain many hundreds of thousands of cattle. And um, why does rotting carcasses make you sick? Unless you’re stupid enough to eat one thats been dead for days having dead cows around lying around is not an issue. Wedge tailed eagles and dingos will pick the carcasses clean over time and there will be an awful lot of hides and bone waiting to be scavenged, which will help immensely with clothing and temporary shelters and tools in the first few months.
The area we are talking about is the wettest region of western australia, see here:
I’m talking about the plains between the stirling range and the porongurup range. Stirling range for minerals, the plains for herding cattle and farming, and the nearby coast for fishing etc.
Well I’m pretty much assuming that our community is a benevolent military dictatorship for the first few years at least. The survivors of the army and navy base in Perth take command but have a council of advisors made up of the academics and engineers that they brought along. Imagine something run along the lines of Singapore.
So basically we’re talking about Bill’s community. Laura and Zeke will have their groups somewhere around in the landscape, but I don’t see them being too much of a threat.
I see them as a serious threat, in the same way that democratic revolutionaries are always a threat to dictatorships, and in the way that religious cults are always a threat to dictatorships.
More so than usual, because usually dictatorships have the advantages of superior weaponry and armor. For the first little while, this advantage will be lost. Sure, the soldiers will have better training, but the difference between a naked person with training and 10 naked people without training isn’t as significant as the difference between an armored person with an assault rifle and 10 unarmored people without assault rifles.
I’m not trying to paint this as any kind of Utopia, I’m imagining that the military survivors took the academics and experts by force from Laura and Zeke already in the first 3 or 4 days and they may well be keeping some of them there against their will. (eg stopping them running off to Laura and Zeke).
And sorry I really disagree, the soldiers are trained in unarmed combat and in working together as a team and have discipline, and they are likely to obtain first spears, then bows, then axes and knives quicker than the other groups. From that point on, Laura and Zeke are irrelevant.
You don’t think any of the soldiers will defect to Laura and Zeke’s camps? I mean, what real-world situations are you looking at in which a power vacuum is filled quickly and with minimal bloodshed in order to form a stable government? My impression is that when such power vacuums loom, sorting out the winners is inevitably a very bloody process.
Would it really matter if a small minority did? I think the majority of people would agree that their best chance of survival was with Bills camp and that democracy can wait for a few years.
As for Laura, yes some people would agree with her that it was some kind of signal that we are not supposed to have technology, but since they don’t have any tech, what are they going to do? Attack a well armed and disciplined settlement with their fingernails and bare teeth?
I just spent 5 minutes on Wikipedia and learned the following. You can make catgut string from cattle or sheep intestines and Lye. Lye is leached from hardwood ashes and can be stored in clay pottery containers. It’s also used to make soap from the fat from those cows they killed using vines.
So our community will have slings within 1 or 2 days. The soldiers that are guarding the perimeter or scouting ahead of the convoy and herd traveling from Perth are also being productive as they are hunting for Rabbits, Feral Pigs and Kangaroos, so they are practicing with those slings 6-8 hours per day. Within 2 or 3 weeks some percentage of them will be experts, and the sling is a very deadly weapon against both game and humans when used by an expert.
I disagree: “benevolent” military dictatorships have a bad habit of not being so benevolent. Bill is really likely to get used to slave labor, and even if he doesn’t, some of his underlings will. Things are going to get nasty quickly.
As for the slings, some of those people using them will defect, and they’ll take knowledge with them. Maybe Laura doesn’t oppose all technology; maybe instead she opposes any technology involving metal, and her cult works to destroy metalworks. Or maybe she puts herself up as the Goddess of the Earth who needs human sacrifices. Or maybe she’s actually a charismatic sergeant with a shitload of friends who declares war on any who don’t adopt her version of apocalyptic Christianity.
You keep assuming that everything will go perfectly in all parts of the endeavor. If you want to make that part of the hypothetical–if you want to say that the aliens also repeal Murphy’s Law–then I suggest making that explicit. However, my experience with using new technology (or even technology is slightly new ways) is that there’s always a learning curve where shit fucks up, and my experience with societies is that people jockey for position constantly. In a postapocalyptic world, I think both things would continue to happen, but with much worse effects than they do today.
Yes, but there is also ample examples of militaries taking power in emergencies and then freely handing power back to civilians when appropriate. Singapore is my model, it became the richest most westernized city in SE Asia exactly because it was run by a benevolent dictator since independence. It’s a relatively ok place to live, you can even criticize the government and there are opposition parties, they just have unwritten lines they are not supposed to step over.
Recently in Thailand the army stepped in took power, then held elections again when appropriate. Considering our culture in Australia it seems pretty realistic to me that the the officers involved would only see martial law as a necessary step for 5-10 years until it’s appropriate to have elections.
And of course, the most famous example is Sulla the Dictator of Rome. Took power, made necessary reforms then retired to his villa and handed back power to the senate of rome.
It happened several more times in Roman history before Julius started the Imperium.
The office of dictator had always been intended as a temporary position. It traditionally was held for six months. Sulla’s break with tradition was having himself declared Dictator for as long as he felt necessary. (The other break was that past dictators were supposed to address a specific crisis - Sulla had himself declared Dictator in charge of everything.) So while Sulla did eventually step down, his precedent was an expansion of the dictatorship not a self-abnegation.
AAAAAnnnd, that’s my point, he could have kept power for life and most people expected that he would but he did step down.
I guess all the naysayers here must be creationists, because the odds of life forming spontaneously required such a perfect storm that hey there’s just no way it could have happened right? And yet we’re here? Given a big enough sample that perfect storm will happen somewhere.
So same goes here, there must be several hundred regions around the world with the right mix of resources and geographic isolation favorable to the sort of rapid recovery I’m describing, and lets say in 98 percent of them warlords take over and they revert to feudal serf societies. The community I’m talking about has just the right mix of level headed senior officers who personally aren’t power hungry, because somewhere on the planet that will happen.
Congratulations for winning the non sequitur of the year award! I do love pizza.
Granted: if these conditions strike over and over for some two billion years across the planet in, let’s say, a thousand instances per second, sure, there’s bound to be one society where it works the way you suggest. I didn’t realize that was your argument, though.
The odds are much higher than you claim… There is actually many many more examples of absolute leaders stepping down throughout history. Most military leaders don’t want to be responsible for also running an entire civilian government. Military culture and tradition in western countries also heavily emphasizes the separation of powers and that the military is ultimately subordinate to civilian authority.
Remember the entire structure of state government would still be intact and could communicate using runners or mirror flashes or smoke signals or whatever. In natural disasters people turn to their existing leaders for guidance.
I suggest you read about the altruism general order and volunteering that happened after the japan earthquake and tsunami and after the Queensland floods in australia. Many thousands of tradesmen volunteered to work for free on the rebuilding.
No, I’m guessing most people expected he would step down when his term of office ended like the seventy dictators who proceeded him did. Sulla doesn’t get credit for resigning when that was what he was supposed to do anyway and he refused to do it on schedule.
If Barack Obama decided to cancel the 2012 election, we wouldn’t be saying it was good of him to allow an election in 2016.
And considering Sulla’s “reforms” included ordering several thousand executions of anyone he thought might oppose him (or anyone who had a fortune he wanted to confiscate) I don’t give him a lot of credit for what he did in office either.
If you’re right that this is not a major difficulty, it should be easy to prove. Just go make one steel knife (or the hand tool of your choice), using only your bare hands, plus tools constructed from your bare hands, plus tools constructed from those tools… When you’re done, let us know how long it took and how it turned out.
Seriously, I’d be interested to hear the results.
I can only assume that you have never done any work with cattle.
While cattle appear docile, that ends the moment they feel threatened. Having done a lot of basic handling of livestock, including eartagging and collecting faecal samples, I can tell you that anybody who tries what you suggest is gonna get seriously injured.
Even dairy cattle, the most docile breeds most used to being handled. need to be placed in a crush for faecal sampling and tagging. As soon as they feel pain they go wild. I can assure you that if you actually tried to garrote even a dairy cow you would end up with several broken ribs at the very least. They are big anaimls and they panic easily and will do anything in their power to throw off a predator that seizes them by the kneck.
Not that it is hard to kill domestic cattle. As has already been suggested, you can make a fire hardened spear very easily. Simply hobble the animal so that it can’t run (well handled cattle will let you tie their legs together easily enough) and then stab it repeatedly.
Tcha, like I don’t have a day job. Like I said in that other thread, it’d take a whole month to get to a steel knife. I’m happy to document my primitivist endeavours in time slices, though, and we can add it all up at the end. I’m scheduled to make quartzite knives in July. Planning a charcoal clamp for sometime September.