Image: Chris Chow
Looking for insight for an upcoming novel.
Okay, so. It’s thousands of years in the future. A global calamity has caused civilization to collapse. The population cratered to less than a billion people. Modern technological infrastructure was wiped out: power generation, mining, logistics, everything.
Eventually humanity recovered, up to a point. Right now, in the real world, all the world’s near-surface deposits of metals, oil, and most minerals are depleted; a society that lost modern infrastructure would no longer be able to mine iron, find or use oil and other petrochemicals, coal, and so on.
Metals in the fictional society still exist, though in limited quantities. They have to be “mined” from landfills, and the capacity to smelt steel without coal or oil is highly limited. Fortunately, landfills are largely anaerobic environments, so metals would still exist in unoxidized states, but can you imagine trying to smelt anything useable from, say, a stainless steel oven or a car frame without coal or oil?
No oil means limited plastics. Firearms exist, but without modern machining they’re quite crude compared to modern firearms. Computers? No. Electrical power in large quantities? No.
Thing is, the knowledge to make these things still exists; it isn’t lost. Many books and so forth survive (though not, obviously, computer records). People would know how electricity works, how to smelt high-quality steel, and so on; it’s just that without ores, without coal, without oil except for plant oils, it’s difficult to do on a large scale.
So: Horses and carts are the predominant non-pedestrian travel. Simple firearms exist but not in mass-produced, industrial quantities. It’s a weird society: technologically backward but with full knowledge of what has been lost.
My question relates specifically to military doctrine and combat tactics.
Horse-mounted calvary and foot soldiers, armed with swords and mmmmaybe simple cartridge firearms brings to mind, say, Revolutionary War or Civil War tactics…but in this world, the knowledge of modern combined arms tactics, military doctrine, and small-unit tactics still exists, it wasn’t lost, only the technological infrastructure was lost.
So, what would military units look like? What would military tactics and strategy look like? Definitely not Civil War, but not modern either. How would industrial military techniques and doctrine adopt to that level of technological infrastructure?
I’d love to hear your ideas!
Hey Franklin. First off, modern books don’t last as long as they used to. 20 years for a paperback book, longer for a hardcover. So, for the knowledge to be preserved, someone had to preserve those books as the average Joe wouldn’t think about it. The example I’m thinking about is the ancient Maya when Friar Diego De Landa burned all the codices and god statues he could find. The Maya hid their remaining codices in the jungle… which quickly rotted them away (which is why only 3 codices exist, if memory serves). So, if a group preserved those books, they’re going to have an awful lot of power within this society.
What the Maya kept were their oral traditions, so that the pottery archeologists dig up in tombs, is very similar to the pottery crafted by the local people today. Okay, military. Since metal is scarce, leather will become the armor of choice, with pieces of metal sewn or riveted into the material. Boiling leather squares in wax hardens the pieces, which can then be attached. Spears and arrows will likely become the primary weapons. Horses used for war have always been an upper class/ warrior class thing, and I imagine this will continue. Shooting arrows from horseback will likely return, as will the use of shields. Tactics will depend a lot on the terrain, and the military traditions of the society.
I don’t know if any of this is helpful, but I hope so. I’m a retired fighter of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and I use a good bit of what I learned in the books I write (the second book of the series I’m writing has a War Chess match covering a couple chapters, where the pieces fight for the squares). I enjoy your posts, so if I can help you any further, please ask.
David
Hi Franklin,
Very good points by David Talon, particularly the short life span of modern documents.
I’d emphasize the importance of the spear (and other long weapons like the pike, halberd) and very much archery. Where the long weapons keep opponents at some distance, archery covers that distance. Spear and arrow heads
It’s probably difficult to avoid technology dictating tactics. So think the Roman testudo and Greek phalanx, remembering that the global dominance of Victorian England was not based on numbers, but on well trained professionals.
But you’re asking for the impact of modern military doctrine?
What of explosives? Modern chemistry combined with engineering together potentially add up to make significant improvements on such things as catapults and trebuchets – meaning that some ‘explosive artillery’ is still possible – which will be more effective / adaptable than throwing stones.
And to get entirely dystopic: modern germ theory means that one could throw more than just plague-riddled dead bodies over walls with a trebuchet. That would include rudimentary chemical weapons (canisters that upon breaking combine two substances to create toxic gas, for example. Many of the horrors would still be possible and able to be ‘improved’ upon.
Professionals talk logistics? The ability to maintain a professional standing army (and navy; I’m guessing that airforces are out) implies large organised social groups. You’ve nominated a billion person population – did you want nation states, tribal allegiances, or neither?
Do modern social mores mean that you have women fight, or is their reproductivity more important (logistics of maintaining the available amount of cannon fodder)? And if they don’t fight, does that plunge them back into a subservient position, or do they now perhaps become the political and managerial elite?
Note that many of England’s greatest periods/achievements occurred under female leadership: Victoria, and both Elizabeths. So gender is definitely something to like about: procreation (logistics) versus modern equality (which has the logistical benefit of doubling your military force, but at the cost of replacement).
Modern military doctrine… see how quickly the current Ukraine conflict reverted to trench warfare where neither side has the logistics to dominate, and seasonal mud makes vehicle movement near impossible. Without machine guns, you can’t have the stale-mate of Flanders or current Ukraine. But without vehicles (including aircraft) you can’t have the benefits of movement and intelligence gathering (the fog of war descends).
And who has access to maps?
What of battle field communication and cryptography? Perhaps something like the Clacks of Pratchett’s Disc World? The English during the Napoleonic period developed flag signalling (also see Akira Kurosawa films for the use of simpler signal flags in his military movies).
One of Napoleon’s greatest contributions to modern warfare was the canning (preservation) of food. He couldn’t keep an army in the field long enough before food became an issue (‘an army marches on its stomach’) so he created a competition for someone to find the answer. IIRC they initially heated the food in bottles (like preservation in glass jars), and that eventually became canning. Metal cans will be a problem, but glass should be possible. Whoever has the secure food supply has a significant logistical advantage.
And then there’s asymmetric warfare to consider: guerrilla tactics. Fighters that are indistinguishable from the common populace and thus able to sustain themselves domestically. That invariably leads to oppression of civilian populations. The Vietnamese won against a world power because they simply refused to give up and submit; whilst the USA eventually lost the will to fight (rinse and repeat elsewhere). It took the conquering Normans many decades to… become English?
Given the scale of society and conflict that the wording of your question implies, you’ll likely need to consider the logistics to avoid your narrative being riddled with ‘plot holes’, even if the logistical solutions are almost non-apparent in the story line and essentially provide ‘background aesthetic’.
Another element: medicine? Treatment in the field? Sterilisation of water supply (an poisoning); latrines; antibiotics; bone setting? The rigours of war are hard on the body. Scabbies; rats; fleas; lice; yellow fever; cholera; dysentery; etc. O’Brian’s ‘Aubrey–Maturin’ novel series is greatly helped by the juxtaposition of the two main characters: one a fighting man, the other a doctor (and spy); joined by friendship and music.
David Talon also mentions leather armour, and shields. Don’t forget footwear. An army marches on its stomach, with their feet! Clean socks are critically important if you want to maintain momentum. That’s possibly why the Roman’s used sandals: how to produce (or wash) enough socks?
Sorry, the above is as it all came into my head. A disorganised pile rather than a structured essay! Hopefully you may find something of use amongst it.
Salute,
Farley
Air reconnaissance remains a thing. Hot air balloons, telescopes, semaphores, hang gliders and parachutes all allow you to keep track of the enemies’ location (and create and maintain better maps in general) far better than early gunpowder armies managed. Once in a while you’ll even get lucky and be able to bomb things or drop paratroopers, but no sane general is going to count on that.
I’d also expect railroads to persist in a limited manner; even if you have to use horses for motive power, they improve speed and efficiency considerably. Crews that can rapidly lay down a new, temporary track are going to be part of a large nation’s engineering corps. Agree that canned food is also going to make armies move far faster and longer than they did historically.
There are a lot more questions about armaments and small unit tactics, but they’re not so much technological as economic questions; what sort of equipment can the local industrial base reliably produce at scale?