How long could 1984 have lasted before collapsing?

[zhropkick]

If you believe Goldstein's book, the world of 1984 is three big superstates going at it in a state of constant warfare. The war is fought by a surprisingly small and professional army though, with most of the superstates' populations living far away from the conflict (unless you count the odd rocket bomb, but they could just be the party stirring up its own people anyway). There is not much technological advancement unless it helps the military and law enforcement, the global population appears to be either stagnant or in a situation that would eventually lead it to stagnate, and the superstates are either apathetic about or actively okay with the fact their fighting chews up the world's resources so their populations can be kept under control more easily. The governments in 1984 seem almost solely obsessed with keeping the state of the world completely stagnant, with no sign of anyone being able to change that.

Even though all three superstates want to keep the stagnation going, they can't do that forever. They are pumping oil out from finite reserves in the ground and mining the world's finite coal reserves to make electricity. Without fossil fuels for transportation and electricity their continent-sized military campaigns, superstates which span a third of the world and police forces which analyse every person's thoughts and punish them accordingly would not be possible. Are you telling me Oceania cares about developing renewables? No, it'll just keep rationing what's left of the world's fossil fuel reserves. Looking at new sources of energy would probably look very suspect to a government fixated on keeping stagnation going for as long as possible and have social change written all over it to them. Adjusting the world to renewables WOULD take too much social change for the party to stomach, in all likelihood.

The last thing the three superstates would end up doing before everything starts to fall apart, in my opinion would be invading an oil field unusually deep into enemy territory and lobbing some pathetic Little Boy-sized nukes at said superstate's population centres. At this point the cultures of the three superstates would probably have been socially engineered into total submission to the state, but as transportation becomes progressively more and more of a luxury, as food stops arriving to cities because there isn't enough fuel to waste on it, as the brownouts turn into blackouts for most of the day and law enforcement becomes progressively more patchy, how long until things start to break down? The state of affairs in 1984 is dependent on a centralised government holding whole continents together, which can't happen if the resources required to sustain it don't exist.

How much depletion of the world's fossil fuel reserves would it take to destroy the three superstates in 1984? How long would it take before things start to become a new kind of ugly? Let's say the world has between 3 and 4 billion people with technology stuck in the 1940s to the 1950s, how long does it take to render the world's fossil fuel reserves completely unable to sustain industrial civilisation anymore?

Also, how would the collapse occur? Would it be sudden and violent? Would it be a slow and very painful transition to a pre-industrial existence, followed by decentralisation and eventual breakup? In the absence of the three superstates, wouldn't engineered languages like Newspeak eventually develop colloquial varieties capable of expressing things the party didn't want people to express again?

 

[exilarchia]

I think that by 2010, the superstates would collapse due to massive resource shortages and famines.

What happens after is basically a technological regression back to the 1300s.

 

[Goku_San]

How much depletion of the world's fossil fuel reserves would it take to destroy the three superstates in 1984? How long would it take before things start to become a new kind of ugly? Let's say the world has between 3 and 4 billion people with technology stuck in the 1940s to the 1950s, how long does it take to render the world's fossil fuel reserves completely unable to sustain industrial civilisation anymore?

Most of the military tech is refined, slightly more advanced WW2 vintage, perhaps even older in some cases like small arms and howitzer. While the professional militaries of the super states are small, the resource demand for military production is aswell. I think their oil consumption is on par with Great Depression-levels of 1930 or '31, so they can actually last a very long time on the reserves they're sitting on. Coal could last for thousands of years, especially if they keep the rationing very tight and civil consumption as low as it is depicted. Oil at least a couple of centuries. Other resources are more sketchy, imho, especially iron and other ores needed for steel. In a very odd extreme scenario the threeist states could potentially run out of high grade iron ores for instance before they run into an energy crisis, given that they are hardly willing to develop more efficient and advanced mining methods.

 

[rfmcdonald]

My personal sense is that the world of 1984, assuming that what we saw was accurate and not just (say) the false history created by a totalitarian British state isolating itself from the outside world, was exceptionally fragile. The relative weakness of the East Asian state, confined to a relatively small and resource-poor territory, strikes me as a major potential weakness. What if Eurasia decides to mount a big push against its weakest rival?

I would also think environmental degradation, including global warming, would be a major problem. If you have continent-spanning industrial economies driven substantially by coal, even with relatively low levels of consumption this will end up triggering the sorts of anthropogenic environmental change I'm not sure the superstates would be able to deal with.

 

[Max Sinister]

East Asia would feel the obvious problem (oil running out) first. Russia, America, Venezuela have lots of oil resources, and East Asia isn't exactly close to the Gulf. And tanks need more gas per day than a civilian's car in a year.

 

[Historyman 14]

Eastasia would be the one to kick the collapse thanks to its severe oil issues and high population. (Even for a death cult superstate). A 'Mail Mary' to get more oil from its rivals, or even Eurasia, or Oceania 'goes for the kill' on Eastasia. The environment is probably total crap and getting worst as time goes on.

Somewhere between...1999 to early 21st century the three Superpowers destroyed the other between running out of resources, total economic and environmental collapsed,and nuclear fire. The Governments won't survive as it won't be 'part of the system' and simply can't think outside the box in the world they rule.

We're pushed back to the Dark Ages, with the new powers rising mostly out of the disputed territories.

 

[Mr.J]

East Asia would feel the obvious problem (oil running out) first. Russia, America, Venezuela have lots of oil resources, and East Asia isn't exactly close to the Gulf. And tanks need more gas per day than a civilian's car in a year.

How much do they actually use tanks though? Most of the fighting is probably a bunch of poor conscripts marching around and shooting at each other with largely horse-drawn and railroad based logistics.

 

[Max Sinister]

How much do they actually use tanks though? Most of the fighting is probably a bunch of poor conscripts marching around and shooting at each other with largely horse-drawn and railroad based logistics.

I don't know, but they use more helicopters than before, and they have those Floating Fortresses.

 

[saint polype]

My personal sense is that the world of 1984, assuming that what we saw was accurate and not just (say) the false history created by a totalitarian British state isolating itself from the outside world, was exceptionally fragile. The relative weakness of the East Asian state, confined to a relatively small and resource-poor territory, strikes me as a major potential weakness. What if Eurasia decides to mount a big push against its weakest rival?

I would also think environmental degradation, including global warming, would be a major problem. If you have continent-spanning industrial economies driven substantially by coal, even with relatively low levels of consumption this will end up triggering the sorts of anthropogenic environmental change I'm not sure the superstates would be able to deal with.

Somehwere I read an argument that it was implied the 3 states (if they exist) were actually cooperating as a world state, and the wars they constantly fight were entirely for show (like elaborate, ultra-violent gladiator fights, with the "contested" areas as stable arenas). So that would allow for secretly shifting ressources as needed ("Eastasia calling, we need more oil, or we won't be able to blow up your tank battalions tomorrow!" - "Goodness, that would be awful! Oceania will send some over right away, hang in there!")

The argument being that "the other" is needed to create a stable in-group, so the unity in each "state" depends on seeing the "other states" as a threat, while it really is just an elaborate ruse to actually unite humanity (to the highest degree possible, anyway).

 

[pieman97405]

In the absence of the three superstates, wouldn't engineered languages like Newspeak eventually develop colloquial varieties capable of expressing things the party didn't want people to express again?

If memory serves (it has been awhile since I read the book) Newspeak was meant for the inner and outer party while the proles were left with whatever language their neck of the woods started out with plus a few Newspeak words like doubleplusgood. So when the big three come crashing down, assuming of course they exist, I think English, French, Russian, Arabic, Mandarin and the rest will simply reassert themselves, and with the powers that be gone the free flow of ideas will commence again, though in cruder form thanks to the Parties not being concerned about educating the proles.

Now as for the when of this collapse I'd assume the early twenty first century. The increasing decrepitness of the internal infrastructure we saw in 1984 would likely be even worse after another quarter century, and even if these societies are consuming less resources then us they will also be able to extract and transport less than us. So at a guess the densely populated Eastasia will being to buckle under the weight of a famine sometime around 2004, and if it doesn't lash out violently and begin playing for keeps or burn it all down it will be followed not long after Oceania's sheer size getting the better of it. By that point the atomic bombs probably come out, and what happens next is anyone's guess.

 

[saluto]

The resource depletion is exactly the sort of thing the 1984 regimes want. They don’t look for stability. They want misery and stagnation.

In 1984 they have too many resources. Despite their best efforts they are still producing too much. The regimes keep the war going so they can waste resources and keep everything stagnant. The floating fortresses are exactly this. They are massive resource sinks, for little real gain, and I believe there is a line in the book about sinking them so they need to be rebuilt right away.

The argument of the book, or st least the regimes, is essentially anti-Marxism. They accept Marxist rhetoric and then use it to prevent advancement. So if technological advancement leads to increased production and eventually, inevitably, to Socialism, then the regimes need to prevent this advancement. So they keep the war going and keep wasting resources in order to keep the world stagnant.

The regimes decrease the amount of resources given to the populace already. Despite having enough to give more, they decrease it because that keeps people in misery. The point is that if people are in such a state of misery, and under the right repression, they can’t organise resistance.

So really resources running out is exactly what the regimes want. It makes it easier for them to drive their subjects into the ground. Easier to stop the march of progress. Until eventually it’s all smashed into nothing. Resources running out and the world collapsing into a medieval sort of brutal backwardness wouldn’t be that opposed to what the regimes want. Their greatest worry would be humanity redeveloping over the next millennia.

 

[Goku_San]

Eastasia would be the one to kick the collapse thanks to its severe oil issues and high population. (Even for a death cult superstate). A 'Mail Mary' to get more oil from its rivals, or even Eurasia, or Oceania 'goes for the kill' on Eastasia. The environment is probably total crap and getting worst as time goes on.

Somewhere between...1999 to early 21st century the three Superpowers destroyed the other between running out of resources, total economic and environmental collapsed,and nuclear fire. The Governments won't survive as it won't be 'part of the system' and simply can't think outside the box in the world they rule.

We're pushed back to the Dark Ages, with the new powers rising mostly out of the disputed territories.

East-Asia has trillions of tons worth of coal reserve. If they are really, really desperate they will use it for synthetic fuel. This was a known tech in the 40s and in this timeline the massive synth. fuel plants in central Europe were caputed by the Eurasians - of which East-Asia was a part, if I remember correctly (until they broke away in the late 50s or something like it). So, all three sides have enormous reserves of fossil fuels and even greater sources of unconventional fuels they can tap into if things become really grim and desperate. Other than that, the global population which already is forced to live in shit is much lower. Perhaps two, two and a half billion in total - and it won't grow much with the lack of all the innovations that made the population explosion in the 20th century possible.

So, one of the few ways I can see these states collapsing is the entire Newspeak-thing which will make it impossible for the Inner Party and their equivalents to communicate with the lower stratas of their society. As soon as Newspeak is mandatory for everything above the foreman or lower management level this society will fall apart. The proles who have to work in the factories simply won't be able to understand what the top people, managers, even their officers want them to do. And the upper class have to use force to make them. And that will collapse this system because the numbers are in favor of the proles, Thought Police or not. Even piss poor and uneducated people can topple governments, even if they're as ruthless and evil as the Threeist States.