NS Military Realism Consultancy Thread Mk X Purps Safe Space

[Purpelia]

Honestly I don't think you need to look at people to see why you couldn't make a steam train before the 19th century. It's a matter of metal. A steam train is a bloody big pressure vessel on wheels. And for it not to leak or blow up under the sort of pressures required to move anything useful you need really good steel and more importantly steel of consistent quality. And you can't really get that without the scientific and technological advances that were the results of millennium of human development.

[Gallia-]

Interchangeable parts is just "writing stuff down".

If you can "make" a "steam engine" in the Bronze Age, you can do anything else, because your mindset is so alien to actual Bronze Age people that you're already at the point where you should simply know to write things down. From there you can start developing a patent law system, exchanging ideas or information for money or goods or services, or possibly having a primitive state monopolize information, since the only method of information exchange until the 19th century was by word of mouth and hard copies. The former is difficult to control directly but the latter is easy to control, and without the latter you can't make the former work to any real extent.

The only thing that the 19th century hinged was how people viewed the world and formulated ideas, which was a direct result of the Enlightenment. Everything else fell into place accordingly.

Thank you Gallia!

I was trying to make this very point but I didn't do so correctly.

The problem with 99% of this 'alternate history' stuff that people forget that there's a vast titanic gap between what could have feasibly been done by a modern person who had access to the skill and tools from a given era, and what actual people in the era could have done.

There is some archaeological evidence that really primitive steam engines existed long before they became commonly used for propulsion, and primitive rail existed long before it was fitted with steam. But using the above as an excuse to go 'what is the wonkiest tech I could have physically made with the technology of the era' is not really how anything works.

It's not really some evidence. We have literal Bronze Age batteries and documentation of primitive steam engines. Which is to say, short of actually seeing Heron building his steam engine, it's about as good as we're going to get that the concept of "boil steam, turn thing" existed.

The actual problem with alternate history is more simply put that technology is a product of a specific time and place. If you dragged an American civil engineer from WW2 and put him in 10th century Iceland, absolutely nothing would happen because the disparity of knowledge would be too great to overcome, even if they would communicate the ideas intelligibly.

That said it doesn't necessarily need to take 2,000 years to figure out how chemistry works, but it did. For it to change, you need to go way back, because real life is broadly deterministic, and you need to change some starting conditions. You can't do it in a decade. Or a century. Or a millennia. You need to go back thousands of years and change things to set motion the right events that create what you want. So an industrialized Song Dynasty with huge steel foundries and iron hulled ships would look nothing like the actual Song Dynasty philosophically, and probably not even politically, or geographically, but it's also not terribly far-fetched assuming you have the proper conditions setup in the brains of the people. It's just that this didn't really connect until Francis Bacon or thereabouts IRL.

[Allanea]

It's not really some evidence. We have literal Bronze Age batteries and documentation of primitive steam engines. Which is to say, short of actually seeing Heron building his steam engine, it's about as good as we're going to get that the concept of "boil steam, turn thing" existed.

I was not referring to Heron's steam engine but to claims that some Egyptian temple may have had a device capable of moving a small cargo a distance of several hundred yards (painfully and slowly).

[Allanea]

An actual time traveler - that's to say, not some random dude tragically cast back through time without preparation, but a deliberate time traveler, might be able to do a decent job of it. Or a group of people, like in the Eric Flint novels.

But this hinges on the fact that he possesses a mindset and ideas that didn't exist at the time.

[Gallia-]

An actual time traveler - that's to say, not some random dude tragically cast back through time without preparation, but a deliberate time traveler, might be able to do a decent job of it. Or a group of people, like in the Eric Flint novels.

But this hinges on the fact that he possesses a mindset and ideas that didn't exist at the time.

No. It hinges on the assumption that his mindset and ideas are in any way reconcilable with the people of the past. They aren't, otherwise people of the past would have understood things like people today and they clearly did not.

Poul Anderson does the best job of dealing with Mary Sue alternate histories. Because Poul Anderson realizes that people of the past had no knowledge of the simplest things we take for granted, like bureaucracy, clean water, and smog. If you could intelligibly communicate your ideas through language to them you would just be shouted down by a bunch of farmers or something. Other alternate histories make the easy but false assumption that people of the past are anything like people of the present.

Technology is not a product of new or futuristic ideas. It is a conglomerate result of present ideas and economic conditions. This depends heavily on immediately previous ideas, which is why technology moves relatively slowly and deliberately. It's almost as if people are taking what they know then and applying it to present problems rather than taking what they might know 200 years from now and applying it to present problems.

So no, anyone going into the past with modern ideas about whatever would just be considered a kooky eccentric/lunatic at best.

[Allanea]

This may be (we have no idea of how this entirely fictional scenario would have transpired, and your fictional idea is just as good as mine). But what's certain is that an alternate history where people in the 12th century just happen to start building railroads or conceiving other ideas they didn't actually conceive at the time is a much less feasible one (other than, obviously, the physics issue behind time travel) where they somehow learn these ideas from time travelers.

How exactly alternate history novels should be done realistically is a matter that we won't reach agreement on. What's however perfectly certain is that we can't just go 'China industrializes way early' without some serious explanations.

[Gallia-]

But what's certain

No, it isn't, but the idea of time travelers being able to "teach" ancient people things about their own economic conditions is rooted heavily in paternalism and it doesn't make a lot of sense to begin with. After all, the last time that time travelers tried to teach ancient people things, it turned out it was better to just shoot them with Maxim guns, or chop off their hands, or whatever. You got what you wanted in the most expeditious manner and least fuss. Much easier than teaching people stuck in the past the ways of the future, since that requires both knowing two forms of the present and knowing them well enough to teach. An impossible task.

What's however perfectly certain is that we can't just go 'China industrializes way early' without some serious explanations.

Why do you put words in people's mouths? Why is that the only way you can support your arguments? I literally said this entire statement, after all, so I'm not sure where you're getting the opposite from.

[Purpelia]

An actual time traveler - that's to say, not some random dude tragically cast back through time without preparation, but a deliberate time traveler, might be able to do a decent job of it. Or a group of people, like in the Eric Flint novels.

But this hinges on the fact that he possesses a mindset and ideas that didn't exist at the time.

Doubtful. The problem is fundamentally that "discovery" is not just a matter of figuring out how to do something but of the whole society reaching such a state that the underlying infrastructure exists for it to be practical and achievable. And so even if our hypothetical time traveler has the knowledge to do these things AND a good way of communicating that knowledge AND we assume people obey him that still leaves the fact that the entire social and economic system of an earlier era is just not conducive to the sort of industrial production required to actually achieve 19th century steel technology.

We are literally talking about societies where most of the population are substance farming. They simply do not have the spare labor required to produce wast quantities of cheap coil and iron, let alone the skilled labor to turn those into products.

[Gallia-]

The Song Dynasty's problem was the opposite: It was producing so much food that it had no need to industrialize.

You would need a reason to actually start mechanizing, and the easiest is that food production is smaller or weaker while population growth is still high, which is what happened in England. But that might just make Song impossible to begin with, since the real problem could very well be that it was simply uneconomical to transport coal from frigid Manchuria to the Yangtze Delta.

[Allanea]

Why do you put words in people's mouths? Why is that the only way you can support your arguments? I literally said this entire statement, after all, so I'm not sure where you're getting the opposite from.

I was agreeing with you.

[Purpelia]

The Song Dynasty's problem was the opposite: It was producing so much food that it had no need to industrialize.

Thing is, could they have kept producing it if a large portion of their population was removed from farming? And I think that the answer is no simply because of how labor intensive medieval farming is.

[Allanea]

After all, the last time that time travelers tried to teach ancient people things, it turned out it was better to just shoot them with Maxim guns, or chop off their hands, or whatever. You got what you wanted in the most expeditious manner and least fuss. Much easier than teaching people stuck in the past the ways of the future, since that requires both knowing two forms of the present and knowing them well enough to teach. An impossible task.

I am not sure the goal of the colonialists was to teach anyone anything other than 'give me all your shit'. In some cases they actually deliberately prevented industrialization.

[The Akasha Colony]

The Song Dynasty's problem was the opposite: It was producing so much food that it had no need to industrialize.

Thing is, could they have kept producing it if a large portion of their population was removed from farming? And I think that the answer is no simply because of how labor intensive medieval farming is.

The answer is actually yes. Which is why China of the period had a relatively high output of luxury goods and crafts which would not be possible if everyone were stuck in subsistence farming. It is also the reason that China was able to sustain a class of scholar-bureaucrats who could spend their time philosophizing about whatever they fancied rather than being forced to spend their time in the fields. China benefited from its vast network of rivers which allowed it to irrigate vast swathes of agricultural land fairly easily, which is why its population could grow to such a size.

The problem is that China produced so much food that it did not have any serious incentive to develop the labor-saving engines of industry. It was already producing substantial quantities of ores and other goods as well, certainly far more than its neighbors, so there was little reason to pursue complicated steam engineering, especially given the abundance of labor. Its ongoing developments in agriculture were generally sufficient to feed its growing population without a dire need for industrialization.

[Kazarogkai]

To be fair the majority of people and sites devoted to alternate history usually seem to focus less on technology and more on politics and social matters to varying degrees. These things can be changed, different decisions by certain people a slightly different string of events occurring at once etc, can all lead to drastic changes within this sphere. For example a rather popular one on a site that I personally frequent is what if america chose a more parliamentary form of government what would be the results? Another one would be say what if Vladimir the Great had chosen Islam and had converted the Kievan rus to it? The ultimate idea behind AH is that history is not deterministic, that we are not set and sealed in the paths we take and that the smallest changes can produce massive butterflies that reverberate throughout history. Aka humans make history, rather than history making humans.

Just trying to clear up some misconceptions.

[Gallia-]

The ultimate idea behind AH is that history is not deterministic

Too bad it is wrong.

[Allanea]

The fact historic determinism is not true doesn't mean you can just snap your fingers and do whatever.

[Gallia-]

History isn't deterministic, reality is.

Since history is a part of reality, it's merely along for the ride.

[Allanea]

It's a hugely debatable statement but really far beyond the scope of this thread, or even this forum.

[ValkyRusia]

Question flying aircraft carriers.....possible by late WW2 ?

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/5b/23/f6/5b23 ... ppelin.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0a/3a/8e/0a3a ... ppelin.jpg

[Allanea]

It was posisble - indeed it was done - to have a sort of Zeppelin carrying 2-3 biplanes under it and possibly also recovering them.

There's not actually any point.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Question flying aircraft carriers.....possible by late WW2 ?

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/5b/23/f6/5b23 ... ppelin.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0a/3a/8e/0a3a ... ppelin.jpg

For what purpose?

[The Akasha Colony]

Question flying aircraft carriers.....possible by late WW2 ?

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/5b/23/f6/5b23 ... ppelin.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0a/3a/8e/0a3a ... ppelin.jpg

Not anything like that, no.

Again, the problem is simply one of lift.

Akron and Macon were the largest helium-filled airships ever built and were roughly the same size as the German battleship Bismarck, making them enormous by any standard. And yet they could each carry only five light scouting planes. The F9C Sparrowhawks they carried were less than 1/3rd the weight of a conventional WWII fighter like the P-51 Mustang, (948 kg vs. 3,465 kg), meaning an airship of that size would be lucky to fit just two WWII-era fighters.

A more useful load of, say, ten fighters would thus require an airship five times the volume, but most likely much more than this in order to accommodate the heavy refueling, rearming, and maintenance equipment required of a more complex aircraft. And this is before considering the launch and recovery systems.

All in order to carry a smaller air wing only half that of a cheap escort carrier.

[Kassaran]

Question flying aircraft carriers.....possible by late WW2 ?

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/5b/23/f6/5b23 ... ppelin.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0a/3a/8e/0a3a ... ppelin.jpg

A normal naval aircraft carrier could be shot at by any number of rounds, consciously or accidentally. Bullets of the size fired at it would not make it lose buoyancy. Only considerably large and expensive torpedoes could really do this in WWII, with the exception perhaps of some lucky deck gun shots.

A flying aircraft carry takes a few incendiary rounds, and dependent upon the content of the buoyancy chambers and what-have-you... well, it's going to sink. A simple high-explosive cannon or rocket strafe will do considerably more damage to your expensive flying aircraft carrier than it ever would have done to your naval carrier, or even an airfield.

So yes, possible, but practical? No, hardly.

[Chinese Peoples]

Should we hand out laptops to our soldiers?

[Allanea]

Should we hand out laptops to our soldiers?

In what context?

In a tactical context on the squad level, a small 7-inch tablet is fully sufficient for anything a soldier might need to do.
Some will argue even that is excessive.