Dies the Fire Redux

[DaleCoz]

yes and no, for cats, most of the hunting seems to be instincts and trial/error. as soon as our kitten was old enough to go out, she started bringing back mice and birds and rats and voles and squirrels almost daily. and yes i know its not the same species, but you should give animals more credit. when it comes to instincts, never underestimate them

My understanding is that a lot of animal behaviors are instinctive, but not quite in the way most people understand the term. As I understand it, animals (and to some extent people with language) have a set of behaviors that they are predisposed to learn given an opportunity to do so during a crucial period in their development. In other words, given a chance to hunt or play-hunt during kitten-hood, a cat will become a pretty decent hunter even without learning from mommy. It won't necessarily be as good as a kitten raised by mommy, because mommy probably picked up some tricks she can pass along.

If a kitten doesn't get those hunting instincts exercised during kitten-hood, it gets difficult for them to learn to hunt as adults. I remember when one of our house cats (a big tuxedo cat) encountered tame rabbits. The first time it was a docile little rabbit. The cat pounced and knocked the rabbit down. The rabbit looked up at him like "what are you doing?" and the cat stood there obviously wondering what to do next. Finally it wandered off. I would have stopped it if it had actually started to hurt the rabbit, but it was pretty obvious the cat had no clue what to do.

Same cat ran into a huge (probably 25-30 pounds) and rather aggressive rabbit my step-daughter was keeping for a friend. The rabbit jumped out of its cage and chased the cat around our basement. It was pretty obvious that both animals figured the rabbit could kick the cat's butt. A wild cat that size could have probably taken the rabbit, though it would have had its hands full. This sounds like an oxymoron, but that was one formidable rabbit.

 

[Bavarian Raven]

as a side note, one good thing about "dies the fire" happening now would be that at least the members reading and contributing to this thread would have a several day 'head start' to hole up and horde away what ever you need and "dissapear" for a while. there's that much 2 it.

 

[DaleCoz]

We would also have some coping ideas and in a few cases left over Y2k stuff, though I suppose most of that would have gone bad by now. The feds apparently started getting a handle on the exotic big cat trade in 2004, though not completely.

 

[DaleCoz]

I wonder if a tranquilizer gun would work in a dtf environment. The speed-limit business might or might not be severe enough to keep it from working. Might reduce the range but still let it work.

 

[Bavarian Raven]

I wonder if a tranquilizer gun would work in a dtf environment.

the problem would be making the tranquilizer. a good bow or crossbow (depending on your skill level) are easier to make and sure, and make ammunition for. and would win out imho.

 

[DaleCoz]

the problem would be making the tranquilizer. a good bow or crossbow (depending on your skill level) are easier to make and sure, and make ammunition for. and would win out imho.

I'm thinking mainly of the first few weeks or months after the dtf, and tranquilizers that were already at hand--probably not that many, obviously, but nice to have when almost nobody else has stand-off weapons.

 

[Bavarian Raven]

I'm thinking mainly of the first few weeks or months after the dtf, and tranquilizers that were already at hand--probably not that many, obviously, but nice to have when almost nobody else has stand-off weapons.

i would think it would work, so long as u don't run into a professional archer. then u're out of luck.

 

[Kaurne]

In regards to the population you need to be sustainable, you have to take into account how long for. If you only have 50 people, with all of them fertile adults who all breed, and presumably will have 4 or so kids, then you will start seeing inbreeding by Generation 3 (where Generation 1 is the starting 50). Of course, if you have contact with other nearby settlements then it isn't a problem.

I remember reading about proposed 'generation ships' (sending a slow moving spaceship filled with people to another star system, and let the descendants of the original voyagers colonize the world) and how to maintain a population with the minimum of inbreeding, so that natural mutation makes up for a lack of variance, then you need a starting population of around 250 people. This is assuming that breeding groups will be monogamous, that there is an even male/female split, that every adult breeds and that the fertility rate is somewhere around 2.03 (to make up for those few who will fail to breed due to death). Problem is, this is a system that has very little slack. Just one or two people in a generation who are infertile messes the whole thing up.

As such, you won't have isolated communities lasting more than a couple of generations. However, I think the idea of the Homesteads like the Mackenzie's have are good ideas. A population of 50-100 people means that you can defend the homestead (with a palisade wall) against all but the big threats, and certainly against wild animals. It also means that people don't have to walk far to get to the fields - if you are going to be working in the fields all day, you don't want to walk a mile to get there.

As for animals in captivity, I have to think that while they might be a problems in the short and medium terms, they won't be in the long term. Conversely, bears and wolves and mountain lions will probably not start to be a problem until the long term when they start realizing there are a lot fewer humans and they are much less clustered.

Of our 12000 tigers in the US, around 4000 are in Texas (admittedly, a large area) and the DtF book said most tigers are in cages they could get out of with really determined effort. I doubt this is true, but remember that if a tiger does get out, others are likely too - the average person who keeps a tiger probably has several of them. 3 or 4 tigers (or lions, since the tigers would probably split up pretty soon, being solitary animals) would pose a big threat because suddenly the lions aren't afraid of going up against a single human.

Also, you have to remember the psychological aspects of the problem. The average human being is going to run when they see a lion - it's so ingrained in our psyche that these are much more dangerous fighters than us. With no guns, most people will run. And the average lion, even after captivity, can probably beat the average human over short distances. If there is a decent food source (and there will be) then the lions will probably do great while humans are getting their act together. By that point, there will be more lions. They might not be the best of lions, but they wouldn't have to be. They already have a taste of manflesh.

As for already wild animals, I see them making a comeback after 5 years or so, when suddenly they realize humans aren't masters of the world anymore. There are enough of them that without concerted action, people would find it difficult to hunt them down and drive them to extinction, and there will be a lot more food available.

Also, you underestimate wolves. The real danger of wolves is that they are very smart and work well in teams. Three wolves is a small group, and yet enough to easily beat a human via cutting the hamstrings then tearing out the throat. If you have a pack of 10 or so wolves, you need concerted action to stop them

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

The issue of wolves would be also basedon where they are based. In Europe, wolves are familiar enough with human behavior that they have an adversarial relationship with humans. In North America, it would be complicated. As shown in Never Cry Wolf (1983), North American wolves have never attacked humans. They will attack a person's livestock or pets, but not humans intentionally....

 

[Kaurne]

I think that the wild animal problem will probably depend on how quick the animals work out that humans are in chaos and can be taken down. I mean, do wolves constantly try to move toward cities only to turn back? It would probably be the next generation of animals, who never grew up in a world win massive hman interference, who would start enroaching on the cities-by which time hmans would have moved out.

 

[DaleCoz]

It would be interesting to do a fanfic based on some city in the dtf world. I wonder if Stirling would mind someone doing that. A lot of authors are allowing fanfic as long as it is licensed as Creative Commons as derivative and non-commercial. Anyone know what Steve's position is on that?

 

[Readman]

Or, even looking at things from other parts of the world like the Mid-east and the Corsair empire/caliphate, how it came to fruition, or what happened in China or Russia. But yeah, best to have permission and such before risking copyright infringement,etc

 

[trolleyfan]

Port cities would have the added 'fun' of dealing with shipwrecks, with all of the fun stuff the ships would be carrying. Burning ships carrying something like liquefied natural gas could make for a very bad afternoon.

Though at least in a DtF scenario, you wouldn't have to worry about them exploding...

 

[trolleyfan]

As I pointed out in the last attempted redux, California will not be the "death-lands". Consider that California has one of the largest network of acqueducts on Earth. It is not electrically or steam powered and it has definitely transformed the state of California into one of the largest agricultural regions on Earth. While there would certainly be many deaths, California would survive...

Ummm, a lot of the aqueduct system in California does require pumps - take a look at those big-ass pumps at the southern end of the San Joaquin valley that pipe California Aqueduct water over the mountains to L.A. Or the equally big ones that do the same for Colorado River water. And there are more of them along the route south/west.

Which is not to say every area in California lacks incoming water. Ironically, in spite the failure of the California and Colorado aqueducts, the good old Los Angeles aqueduct from the Owen's Valley will keep on chugging - it's all gravity powered. Oh, it's only a fraction of the water a now-current Greater L.A. area uses...but no one's going to be watering lawns or topping of pools so water usage is going to go down, and we've got a huge backup-supply in several reservoirs in the area (it's always assumed that "The Big One" will knock out one or more aqueducts - so we prepared) that'll last much longer than, well, than the food will. So long before we'd run out of water to support so many people...we'd run out of so many people.

Left to it's own, SoCal can probably support 500K to a million fairly easily on local water supplies. Heck, in a decade or two, they might even turn back on the pipeline from Big Bear Lake, above San Bernadino.

 

[trolleyfan]

5) Model gorgeous young women probably wouldn't starve to death until things really broke down if they were smart and morally flexible.

And they have the advantage of already being used to not eating...

 

[DaleCoz]

There are quite a few pieces of fanfic on the Stirling website, including one DTF/Buffy X-over, which I haven't read yet.

 

[Petike]

Not a Stirling fan at all, but I've got a question :

Is it true the DTFers have bicycle-powered trains in the third trilogy ?

 

[DaleCoz]

Belatedly: I don't know about bike-based trains being in the third trilogy, but it's a logical technology, so I suspect Stirling would use it.

BTW: I did something very unusual for me: Actually wrote a Dies the Fire short story. Stirling asked that I put a notice at the front mentioning that the story was set in a universe based on his copyrighted material, which I did, and that it be within canon, which it is, though I push the boundaries a bit. In any case, I posted it over in the AH writer's section. It's called The Man Who Broke the Speed Limit.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=196808