Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: ArfinGreebly on September 18, 2012, 03:06:07 PM
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I have a soft spot for post-apocalyptic cinema. "Cinema" here includes "made-for-TV" and is represented by such favorites as Mad Max, Waterworld, The Postman, I Am Legend, Earth Abides (please make the movie), The Stand, Hunger Games, and so on.
I will pretty much engage on at least the first few episodes of anything that fits the genre, like Jeremiah, Jericho, Falling Skies, and stuff like that.
And now also Revolution (http://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/revolution/)
We watched the premier last night. About fifteen minutes in, I found myself hollering at the TV. The inconsistencies and failed plausibilities are just epic.
Slate has their own complaint (http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/09/14/revolution_the_post_apocalyptic_show_gets_the_hair_of_female_stars_tracy_spiridakos.html), of course.
My own list of gripes didn't even include the hair.
Bad science. The wave front for an EMP -- or anything that produces that same effect -- does not travel at sub-sonic speeds, even if the "electric dominoes" effect does look cool. The cars lined up on the highway would not "blink out" one at a time. Planes falling out of the sky would a) not fall with their freaking lights still flashing (I mean, REALLY?), b) not fall straight down while vaguely spinning like an auto-rotating 'copter. Cell phones would not "flicker" out of service.
Clothing. It's been fifteen frigging years with no electric power, and people are still wearing synthetic fabrics that look like they've just come off the rack?
Weapons. Okay, yeah, swords, bows and arrows, black powder muskets, stuff like that. But a mini-crossbow for close engagement? The lead bad guy carries a Desert Eagle? You couldn't give him something with dirt-common ammunition? Had to pick something that shoots a round that -- after fifteen frigging years -- is going to be hen's-teeth-scarce? Why not something in a 1911? Hell, a Beretta even?
Character character. Yes, the "character" of the characters. It's been fifteen frigging years of off-grid living, and your two adult children still behave like emo-kids?
Plausibility lapses. It's been fifteen frigging years, and somehow the dude the with magic digital talisman has never formulated a fall-back plan, has never briefed his kids on the importance of preserving this thing, hands it over to a used-to-be Google geek without any kind of orientation (although the gratuitous geekness will surely figure in this narrative later), and can't manage to keep his adult son (see emo-kids above) from losing it and precipitating the (plot-enabling) catastrophe that launches the odyssey.
And the "teaser" scene at the end (lifted from Jericho) pretty much guarantees that they will spend much narrative coin "explaining" the global failure of electricity ("physics just went nuts"), and how electric power is really still there but is "suppressed" by some mad-scientist "field" which is abridged somehow by the "magic digital talisman" (alternatively, the talisman "emits" electricity, which would be even worse). And, of course, the "event" (evidently human caused) which killed electricity will also have to "expositioned" in dialog later on, providing lots of filler for plot padding.
The show has potential, and there's plenty of room for the writers to repair things, but lately I get the sense that "writers" are just phoning it in. My wife and I identified at least three other shows from which they ripped off plot-enabling devices, and we see very little that's actually new.
That said, we're probably gonna watch the next couple of episodes anyway.
Because it's better than whatever's on the news.
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I agree with your sentiment. It's problematic, but still entertaining enough
I also object to the immediate evil associations they made with the word "militia"
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AG summed my feelings up nicely.
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Falling Skies.
The Walking Dead.
I get my post-apocolyptic fix there.
Saw the trailers on Revolution and was thinking :facepalm:
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I saw the preveiws and wanted to watch, but our anttena crapped out a month or so ago, and we've yet to replace it, so no tv. I, too, was annoyed by the implication that "militia" = evil
Similar vein, but diffrent, and I don't know if it made a second season, but the fox show Terra Nova was pretty well thought out. One reason I prefer straight scfi, is a lot of the "science" can be readily explained by the fact that it's not based on current scientific knowledge, they can fudge it more to make it work because it's all in the misty future. The only huge annoying fault is, regardless of their future "science" projectile weapons are going to work better on dinosours then the crappy pulse/sonic/whatever dohikys they're using.
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I saw the preveiws and wanted to watch, but our anttena crapped out a month or so ago, and we've yet to replace it, so no tv. I, too, was annoyed by the implication that "militia" = evil
Similar vein, but diffrent, and I don't know if it made a second season, but the fox show Terra Nova was pretty well thought out. One reason I prefer straight scfi, is a lot of the "science" can be readily explained by the fact that it's not based on current scientific knowledge, they can fudge it more to make it work because it's all in the misty future. The only huge annoying fault is, regardless of their future "science" projectile weapons are going to work better on dinosours then the crappy pulse/sonic/whatever dohikys they're using.
Haven't watched Revolution yet. Will do so tonight probably.
Terra Nova was gawdawful, IMO. It had a good premise, but it suffered the same failure as Jurassic Park, Earth 2, and other shows that bring a type of Disney-fied cataclysm but no "grit" because they're trying to hit the "family" demographic. Most of the time they remain too kid-friendly and position kids in too prominent of a role in the series.
I was despairing that Falling Skies was going to suffer the same fate, with the stinking youngest son so prominent in the first few episodes. Someone got some brains in the writing staff and shuffled him further into the back of the plot, where he belongs... and they piled on the grit.
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Saw the trailers on Revolution and was thinking :facepalm:
Same here. It just all looked so unoriginal.
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Terra Nova was gawdawful, IMO. It had a good premise, but it suffered the same failure as Jurassic Park, Earth 2, and other shows that bring a type of Disney-fied cataclysm but no "grit" because they're trying to hit the "family" demographic. Most of the time they remain too kid-friendly and position kids in too prominent of a role in the series.
Yes, the first episode, where they have the mother and father stop to "have a moment" about their parenting skills, all while they are on a rescue mission to stop their moron son from being any second now eaten by an angry dinosaur, was pretty much it for me.
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So, I take it you guys didn't stick around long enough to get familar with the Sixers?
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So, I take it you guys didn't stick around long enough to get familar with the Sixers?
I watched it all the way to its crash-n-burn season series finale.
Too much with teenagers, in the sixers plotline. Still no grit. Looks like the color saturation was done in a Disney Channel studio. Eye candy for 8 year olds. No blood. No fear, no terror. No blowing up gigantic carnivorous animals large enough to eat the entire village for an appetizer... nope. Sonic weapon bullscat instead.
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I saw the preveiws and wanted to watch, but our anttena crapped out a month or so ago, and we've yet to replace it, so no tv. I, too, was annoyed by the implication that "militia" = evil
Similar vein, but diffrent, and I don't know if it made a second season, but the fox show Terra Nova was pretty well thought out. One reason I prefer straight scfi, is a lot of the "science" can be readily explained by the fact that it's not based on current scientific knowledge, they can fudge it more to make it work because it's all in the misty future. The only huge annoying fault is, regardless of their future "science" projectile weapons are going to work better on dinosours then the crappy pulse/sonic/whatever dohikys they're using.
I still get a chuckle when the 2nd Jurassic Park movie comes around and the Big Game Hunter realizes "someone" has removed the shells from his double rifle. Apparently, he carries no extra ammo and never checks his rifle even though he goes out of his way to leave it lying around near the GreenPeace idiot. (that show has been on a lot lately).
I recorded Revolution, but haven't watched it yet. I was thinking it was a take off of that series of books that were out a while back, but maybe not. I heard there were no guns because the "militia" outlawed them or something, as if they actually could.
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Watched it last night.
Wish I had that one hour back.
Planes have airspeed, glide ratios, and backup control cables. They don't flat spin once the noise stops.
EMP zorches electronics, especially semiconductors. The intereference does not linger for long. One EMP pulse or several simultaneous pulses does not equate to 15 years of darkness.
Steam power drove the Industrial Revolution. Coal fired it.
Stationary steam engines and water wheels drove manufacturing plants through overhead belts, shafts, and pulleys.
Mobile steam engines were known as locomotives, steam tractors, and ships. Commerce did quite well using those systems.
Black powder cartridge firearms reigned from about 1874 to the onset of smokeless powder, which still was a steam-era development.
Muzzleloaders and crossbows? Really? The Desert Eagle, when chambered in .357 Magnum (like mine) and .44 Magnum, is not that big a logistics problem or even "rare" for stashed ammo.
How long was that asthma inhaler good for? :O
Awful lot of candles to light a house. Good thing the smoke detectors don't work anymore.
Good use for a Prius, though. =D
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. . . Plausibility lapses. It's been fifteen frigging years, and somehow the dude the with magic digital talisman has never formulated a fall-back plan, has never briefed his kids on the importance of preserving this thing, . . . And the "teaser" scene at the end (lifted from Jericho) . . . And, of course, the "event" (evidently human caused) which killed electricity will also have to "expositioned" in dialog later on, providing lots of filler for plot padding.
And the woman at the end who just happened to have an asthma inhaler from her dead son, which was still good 15 years later. And the blow-dried hair of the characters . . . and the townspeople who didn't focus their attention on the militia general . . . and where did the Militia head get ice for his drink, in what looked like a Civil War era tent camp? And of course, Chicago hotels typically have plenty of ventilation for firepits . . .
The plot is a mashup of Jericho and Flash Forward with a little Hunger Games thrown in.
As for the gadget that turned off the juice, that is lifted right from an old Man from U.N.C.L.E. paperback book - The Dagger Affair where DAGGER fanatics have an "energy damper" that, depending on its setting, can shut down electrical fields, atomic reactions, and human beings - a development that scared THRUSH into a temporary alliance with U.N.C.L.E.
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I caught it Hulu a couple of weeks ago. I don't know why they had it on there before the show started on tv.
I thought it had a couple of promising things but had a lot of bad.
My wife watched it last night. She threw me out of the room for saying "That's BS" one too many times.
jim
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The horton crossbow is now hacked up and useless after the girl failed to reload and used it as a sword parry shield.
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Planes have airspeed, glide ratios, and backup control cables. They don't flat spin once the noise stops.
I guess they were going for the "falling out of the sky" thing. ??? They managed to get just about everything wrong.
I figured Eric Kripke (of Kripke Scrap Metal and Entertainment/Supernatural) would do a little better job.
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Another thing that was unbelievable was people being knocked backwards when shot with arrows, let alone guns.
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Another thing that was unbelievable was people being knocked backwards when shot with arrows, let alone guns.
That was explained - "Physics just went nuts" ;)
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So I guess I shouldn't be too upset that I forgot it was on and missed it.
Oh well.
It's a shame it sucked though. It would be good to have a new post-apocalypse series to occupy an hour each week. I really miss Jericho.
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It beats watching glee
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Sticking toothpicks in your eyes is better than watching Glee.
Anyway this show is another JJ Abrams pile o' crap.
Lost was just a bunch of MacGuffins wrapped up in clever reveals. The recent flop Alcatraz was another "big mystery" loser.
Now this. This is Revolting. About halfway in I really started to abjectly not care about the characters or their situation and I'll not bother to watch another episode. The one thing I did like is that owning a firearm is a hanging offense. I doubt the creators were trying to drop a "gun control aids tyrants" meme into the narrative but they did. Not that the average person will catch it though.
Hey how about just coming up with a plausible TEOTWAWKI scenario and focus the drama around people adapting, striving and overcoming (or not) their new situation.
Set it the day after whatever it was and go from there. With no big mystery, we know what happened and now we have to deal with it. That would be an interesting show provided the writing and other elements were competent.
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That would be an interesting show provided the writing and other elements were competent.
:rofl: Let us know when that happens.
OK, you guys have convinced me to watch the pilot. If it's that bad, I would hate to miss it.
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Well, I saw it last night. I noted many of the problems ArfinGreebly did -- especially the plane cartwheeling down, lights still on. Yet another plane was shown having apparantly landed intact.
The lights of the cars going out like dominos seemed wrong. I understand they would not go out like that ("following" what could not be a subsonic EM pulse) but it seems to me they might possibly have gone out at different times, reflecting differences in car models and their individual electrical natures.
I am not very impressed by this show. I tried to watch LOST when it was on and eventually lost interest and stopped watching that because I thought the islanders were just being stupid and ineffectual.
I see this going the same way. The stuff about the hair and clothes doesn't bother me so much, really. I mean, Ginger and Mary Ann always had nice hair and I never saw any holes appearing in Gilligan's shirts....and they didn't develop beards or five o'clock shadows. That didn't bother me about Gilligan's Island. I just didn't find it all that entertaining. Just silly.
I think I'll spare myself the effort and stick to Warehouse 13 on Sy Fy. The science on that show is even worse ....but atleast it doesn't take itself too seriously and the whackyness is a little more entertaining.
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Passed on it. It's on NBC, that Channel, among others, doesn't get watched in my house
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Got it sitting on my DVR right now....not sure if I want to leave it there or watch it now so I can delete it.....
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I'll give it another couple episodes, but It's not looking great so far.
Writing was bad.
I'll give them a pass on the slow moving blackout front since we don't know what kind of suppression field is being used or how it's propigated. I'd say it's pretty obviously NOT an EMP. The flat spin of the planes was a little hokey but here's my BIG problem (and G98 touched on it): Fire obviously still works. So do firearms. So at a minimum, a mechanicly injected diesel would still be running. Despite Google boy's assertion we don't use electricity for EVERYTHING, and what we do use it for we've had other things to cover in the not so recent past. We'd still have cars, industry, machinery, trains and so on. Where the heck was that stuff?
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Question: Even if an EMP disabled modern electronics & most forms of power generation & delivery; wouldn't older, transitor-type electronics still work? What about local, small-area power generation like hand-cranked generators, solar panels, and rechargable batteries?
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Question: Even if an EMP disabled modern electronics & most forms of power generation & delivery; wouldn't older, transitor-type electronics still work? What about local, small-area power generation like hand-cranked generators, solar panels, and rechargable batteries?
All modern electronics are transistor-type, and an EMP will fry the crap out of them.
Basically, anything that's vulnerable to a surge in power is vulnerable to EMP.
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Once the EMP pulse has done its damage, a clever man could replace the fried components
or drive his bov out of his faraday caged garage. If there was an active electric power damping field,
It's got to run on some kind of power, and I would think suppressing electric microcircuits would give you a fatal headache.
Did you notice the iPod in the girls stash lunchbox? Something like that can be charged on a bicycle based dynamo. http://www.sp-dynamo.com/
I would expect 10 years later that wind, solar and water wheels would be powering the culdesac.
The flashback to her eating the last of ice cream indicated that her parents knew the power was never coming back on...
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Question about EMP's
What about spare parts? stuff thats sitting around not being used?
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One of the biggest surprises to Western intel after the acquisition of Viktor Belenko's MiG-25 Foxbat was the miniaturized vacuum tube electronics found onboard (well, that and the amount of steel used in the airframe vs. the ungodly expensive titanium).
Semiconductors don't do EMP well, and they are often permanently disabled by the pulse. Vacuum tubes fare much better, but save for musical instruments, x-ray machines and home stereo amplifiers, folks on this side of the pond have pretty much migrated entirely to integrated circuits via silicon wafers.
I'm assuming that as this show progresses, they'll explain why alternate energy sources like steam and mechanical-injection diesels haven't caught on in 15 years, while a USB dongle can power up a relic PC-XT in somebody's attic...
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Watched. Was annoyed. Will give 1-2 more episodes a chance.
Felt more like I was watching the plot unfold to a new (and lazily written) video game rather than a TV series.
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I just talked to a guy doing some work at one of our plants who had the hobby of building miniature working steam locomotives that were big enough to ride on. If people can fabricate parts and such to build those, we can rebuild a steam/coal based industry. The biggest challenge would be food distribution in the first 6 months or year.
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I just talked to a guy doing some work at one of our plants who had the hobby of building miniature working steam locomotives that were big enough to ride on. If people can fabricate parts and such to build those, we can rebuild a steam/coal based industry.
Except, wait for it, within a few episodes of this show there will be a character discussion about how people have become environmentally enlightened and could have built coal powered machinery, but chose to go without.
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Except, wait for it, within a few episodes of this show there will be a character discussion about how people have become environmentally enlightened and could have built coal powered machinery, but chose to go without.
Unless your coal mining facilities are too far removed from someone with the gumption to build a steam engine.
Distribution is the problem. Even if someone near a coal mine built a steam locomotive or vehicle, he couldn't use the train rails since gigantic modern electric diesels would be straddling the tracks and blocking them, and he couldn't use the roads since tens of millions of vehicles are littering them, unable to be moved.
I don't think I've ever seen a steam powered plane, and the air is going to be about the only means of travel that is still open, other than horseback or foot.
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Unless your coal mining facilities are too far removed from someone with the gumption to build a steam engine.
Distribution is the problem. Even if someone near a coal mine built a steam locomotive or vehicle, he couldn't use the train rails since gigantic modern electric diesels would be straddling the tracks and blocking them, and he couldn't use the roads since tens of millions of vehicles are littering them, unable to be moved.
I don't think I've ever seen a steam powered plane, and the air is going to be about the only means of travel that is still open, other than horseback or foot.
The action takes place in Illinois. The entire state is one big coal-shelf. You can dig almost anywhere in the state and find some.
http://www.isgs.uiuc.edu/maps-data-pub/coal-maps/county-index.shtml
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This is why APS knows where the NR-1 is stored,
OUr culdesac will be nuclear powered
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he couldn't use the train rails since gigantic modern electric diesels would be straddling the tracks and blocking them
Not that big a deal. Teams of horses with block and tackle can topple an EMD SD-60 and roll it like a turtle, or those same teams can pull it on the tracks to the nearest turnout or wye.
We use elephants in the summer here to load and move railroad flat cars at the circus museum, and that's just for show.
People built Stonehenge and the pyramids without steam power or electricity. All those post-apocalyptic kids sans video games represent a huge kinetic energy resource.
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Not that big a deal. Teams of horses with block and tackle can topple an EMD SD-60 and roll it like a turtle, or those same teams can pull it on the tracks to the nearest turnout or wye.
We use elephants in the summer here to load and move railroad flat cars at the circus museum, and that's just for show.
People built Stonehenge and the pyramids without steam power or electricity. All those post-apocalyptic kids sans video games represent a huge kinetic energy resource.
This. 15 years is nothing given the knowledge base possessed by mankind.
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Not that big a deal. Teams of horses with block and tackle can topple an EMD SD-60 and roll it like a turtle, or those same teams can pull it on the tracks to the nearest turnout or wye.
We use elephants in the summer here to load and move railroad flat cars at the circus museum, and that's just for show.
People built Stonehenge and the pyramids without steam power or electricity. All those post-apocalyptic kids sans video games represent a huge kinetic energy resource.
300 million people that predominantly own no livestock.
I was talking with a horse-owning friend about this, this last weekend: Given an EMP or dramatic fuel scarcity, horses are gold. Even with a 19th century population level, our current raw horse population is insufficient to have 1 horse per household. I'd be shocked if there were 10 million horses in the United States. That would be 1 per 30 people, or about 1 per 10 households.
OK, so people die off and only 50 million are left alive.
Horses will die off, too. Supply chains are horribly mangled from no functioning tractors to bail the hay, no trucks to deliver it to ranches, the people that own horses being gang-robbed for the animals by people who don't know how to maintain livestock, et cetera. Maybe a million horses left once supply chains stabilize?
Yeah, it becomes vogue to breed horses again... and the remaining few hundred thousand or a million become more significant after a few years.
I dunno. A lot of assumption to think that livestock are going to be put to work for communal issues like clearing non-functional railway, rather than pulling plows and facilitating travel.
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Not eating the horses took a long time to get ingrained in human behavior.
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There'd be a huge die-off in the first 5 years, but after that, I'd imagine that in the subsequent decade, people would get back to a Civil War/Steam era of tech pretty quickly, especially since there's an over-supply of housing that would still be standing (minus wildfires, which could admittedly be bad until enough fire-breaks were cut, or the fires themselves did it...) so that means there's only a time-sink for food going on, and the HUGE amounts of metals and tanks, pipes, chassis, parts, chains & cables that could be salvaged and re-purposed.
Not that big a deal. Teams of horses with block and tackle can topple an EMD SD-60 and roll it like a turtle, or those same teams can pull it on the tracks to the nearest turnout or wye.
We use elephants in the summer here to load and move railroad flat cars at the circus museum, and that's just for show.
People built Stonehenge and the pyramids without steam power or electricity. All those post-apocalyptic kids sans video games represent a huge kinetic energy resource.
Agreed. And even if they can't topple the heavy diesel electric locomotives in one go with plow animals, they can do it bit by bit, and shore up the tipping locomotive with logs and cribbing until it does topple, inch by inch. Would only take a few days time.
Although honestly, all the technical and social nitpicking and MMQB'ing, like the tech level, or the people being too clean (I don't imagine folks in the 1800's LOOKING much dirtier than they did today, unless in battle, or working in a mine or something... doesn't bother me with this show.
It's that the writing and that the show is devolving immediately into the usual TV tropes and memes right away. It's like when you got too old for those "choose your own adventure" books, and you could extrapolate all the plots ahead of time.
I gave them a fair shake.
I'm going to pass.
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http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-After-William-Forstchen/dp/0765356864/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348083447&sr=1-1&keywords=one+second+after
Probably glean more realistic scenarios from the above book than from anything on tv.
There'd be a huge die-off in the first 5 years,
They author predicted some pretty staggering die off figures- within the first year of such an event, with some areas of the country becomeing nearly completely depopulated.
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I think a fall from grace would land you back at pre industrial era really quickly.
Many colonial skills were caste and guild based and no one knows how to make bricks like they did in 1620.
Our current disposable tool culture is lacking in pit saws and people that will run them properly all day long.
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I sort of figured - incorrectly, it turned out - that the show would be patterned after Stirling's "Change" series of books.
In those books, most modern technologies were inhibited by some sort of other-worldly "magic spell". Gunpowder (propellant) simply burned, and very slowly. Only low-pressure steam could be generated; barely above atmospheric. Gravity, spring tension/compression and muscle power were the primary sources of power.
Horses were valuable. Bow & arrow and sword & pike were the 'modern weapons. Trebuchets, catapaults and ballista were the "artillery".
Fire was the only source of heat and light.
Mrs. B. and I turned off "Revolution" after 15 minutes but I was done watching after the first confrontation. Lame. Utterly lame. Hell's bells! They didn't even have lookouts. The "militia" walked in not only unopposed but unanounced. Gah! Why have walls around the compound if the gates are open and ain't nobody on guard?
I did read the entire series of Stirling's books, though. They're pretty good. Repetitive but good. Sound tactics and strategies; Stirling does good research.
jb
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I think a fall from grace would land you back at pre industrial era really quickly.
Many colonial skills were caste and guild based and no one knows how to make bricks like they did in 1620.
Our current disposable tool culture is lacking in pit saws and people that will run them properly all day long.
True,
But I still contend that the survivors will be able to "coast" on the remaining infrastructure. There'll be literally thousands of structures to be used as houses and barns that will last without significant rebuilding for a few generations.
There'll be tons of hand-tools to go around. And tons more metals pipes and fittings that can be salvaged to make boilers, forges etc. And the other examples like using rail cars pulled by draft animals higher up in this thread. Even the existing roads, no longer pummled by cars will make wagon and horse travel extremely easy.
So I think a 1890's level of civilization, save for the telegraph etc. would be do-able within a generation of the rebuilding.
I admit it COULD definitely regress further, but a lot of things, people just wouldn't need to worry about. Like your example of colonial brick making. Why would they need bricks? There's a surplus of buildings that can be used as-is, or scavenged for materials, assuming about a 90-95% die-off in the population in the initial disaster. That leaves more time to get going on the steam engines and boilers and coal...
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but what if there were zombies in the cities?
;)
there was a quote about how the people that stayed in the cities died
lack of ventilation, sanitation and no food deliveries prolly made them un fun rather quick
i gather all the ar15 ammo was used up in the revolution scenario
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How long after Rome fell was it before there was running water and sanitation in Europe again?
From steam power through Apple iphone (5 is it now?) happened in a blink of an eye, but if the lights go out, we'll be starting well before the steam engine, all of the old skillsets are gone, as well as the societal organization.
Its pretty hard to worry about advancing technology when you are scratching for food to eat while fighting off the 'barbarians' in the neighboring village who are trying to do the same.
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Unless your coal mining facilities are too far removed from someone with the gumption to build a steam engine.
Distribution is the problem. Even if someone near a coal mine built a steam locomotive or vehicle, he couldn't use the train rails since gigantic modern electric diesels would be straddling the tracks and blocking them, and he couldn't use the roads since tens of millions of vehicles are littering them, unable to be moved.
When steam locomotives operated beyond coal supply lines, which was often the case in frontier areas, they used wood.
Also, once roads are cleared, steam-powered automobiles might be employed, like in the old days.
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How long after Rome fell was it before there was running water and sanitation in Europe again?
From steam power through Apple iphone (5 is it now?) happened in a blink of an eye, but if the lights go out, we'll be starting well before the steam engine, all of the old skillsets are gone, as well as the societal organization.
Its pretty hard to worry about advancing technology when you are scratching for food to eat while fighting off the 'barbarians' in the neighboring village who are trying to do the same.
Rome isn't exactly a fair example. It had higher tech, but most of it was an issue of planning and hand-skilled artisans. It really was the "same tech" as the Dark and Middle Ages. Stacked rocks and wood, with some iron. The Romans just did it better. And like in my example, the Roman stone that was cut was used in new castles and structures, and the roads saw lots of use, which arguably kept the Dark Ages from being even "Darker".
So I'd think a comparable "fall" from the 21st century to the late 19th would be a fair comparison. With so much metal and salvageable mechanicals, the ruins of 21st century America would be infinitely better pickings than the stones and the occasional lead pipe of Rome. I'd even wonder if someone could figure out a crank or cartridge fired compression diesel that had no electronics at all. We know those existed, and could possibly be retrofitted from scrap cars.
And it's arguable that all would be banditry and warlords so quickly, coming from a population of folks who'd lived their entire lives in a democratic republic.
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And it's arguable that all would be banditry and warlords so quickly, coming from a population of folks who'd lived their entire lives in a democratic republic.
To how many of those folks was the democratic republic a means to give themselves stuff taken from others?
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To how many of those folks was the democratic republic a means to give themselves stuff taken from others?
Well, there is a certain assumption on my part that after the die-off, that good or evil, there'd be much more than a simple 50/50 split between the producer types and eater types than we see in our demographics today. =D
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Well, there is a certain assumption on my part that after the die-off, that good or evil, there'd be much more than a simple 50/50 split between the producer types and eater types than we see in our demographics today
Good point.
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Realistically there would likely be a minimum 2/3 reduction in population. The cities would go first then the more populated urban areas. Starvation, disease and fighting would pretty well do most of it. Those that rely on technology and medical science wouldn't last very long at all.
Coal and wood fired steam tech is not that far a stretch if you can find the knowledge to do it, even small B&S type engines can be modified to run on steam. As far as that goes there are a significant number of people still running working steam engines at the hobby level and beyond
Mostly the types that write this kind of stuff have not clue one about what can be done and is still being done with old school tech. They assume they are the enlightened ones and project their own ignorance onto the masses.
ETA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz_Kgkzfaxk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz_Kgkzfaxk)
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It's on again
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It's on again
Ayup - watching now + DVR.
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Our current disposable tool culture is lacking in pit saws and people that will run them properly all day long.
I think you underestimate how much old stuff is sitting around on various farms and large lots. We have two good saws suitable for use in a pit saw operation just sitting out in the machine shed, and maybe one or two others that just need new handles. My ancestors had to clear the land here in order to farm it back in the 1800s, and we still have quite a bit of the stuff they used to do it sitting around in one out building or another.
And that's just our one farm, where we don't even personally do the farming any more. The neighbors we rent the land out to and have been farming next to our family for probably over a hundred years now probably have even more stuff, given that their entire clan has three or four different farms in this area and farm several thousand acres between them.
I don't doubt a die-off would happen, but I think there is enough expertise and stuff sitting around to either use directly or use as a pattern for people to bring back steam-era technology fairly easily.
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I have a usable 2-man crosscutsaws and the tools to sharpen it, a coal fired forge, a very large circular saw complete with shaft and bearing, several pieces of horse drawn equipment that I actually use behind the tractor. I know several people that have working teams, both horses and mules.
Like the man said, a country boy can survive.
I just don't see the typical dystopian scenario where most of the people end up as subservient peasents to a small brutal overlord class.
Too many seriously smart folk capable of seriously nasty guerilla warfare to just roll over and take it.
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The midwest is home to some of the biggest infrastructure machinery and mining companies in the world. From Caterpillar to John Deere, Cummins to Joy Global. These are all based in the Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, & Indiana region. These all engineer and manufacturer their halo products in their home states too. Mining trucks in Decatur, bulldozers in Peoria, wheel loaders in Aurora, mining shovels in Milwaukee, etc, etc, etc.
Then add in the coal available under Illinois. The massive farmland available in this region. The oil refining plants. Excess fresh water supplies. And enormous networks of navigable waterways. [I think folks who grow up out west don't quite realize how much excess water we usually have around here.]
Would an EMP halt the machine shops and foundries in this region, of course. But I would think some of us engineers & metallurgists & machinists & assemblers with massive manufacturing footprints and years of experience in these states would be able to figure out some solutions to post-apocalyptic infrastructure problems. Peoria alone has 3 active foundries in the area of various scale, and a dormant 4th not too far away. Who knows what the rest of the state has. This industrial city is an island of manufacturing in a sea of farmland and grain silos, split in half by a 1/2 mi wide river.
Also realize that we still have full production lines that build mechanical diesel engines. Off the top of my head I know of plants with this active production in the US, UK, India, Japan, and China.
Methanol can be used as a gasoline substitute distilled from wood.
DME is a diesel substitute made from methanol.
Or coal can be gasified to whatever syn fuels, plastics, and rubbers are needed - using 1930's tech.
blah, blah blah...
If you aren't familiar with America's infrastructure and manufacturing industry, then you don't understand that we aren't as helpless as fiction makes it out.
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Mostly the types that write this kind of stuff have not clue one about what can be done and is still being done with old school tech. They assume they are the enlightened ones and project their own ignorance onto the masses.
Yup, after the EMP apocalypse they will make great pets though, they're entertaining mimics.
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Wouldn't be worth the cost of feeding them.
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It was not an EMP.
It seems more like a nanite infestation.
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Great, the Internet caught a case of crabs. =(
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It was not an EMP.
It seems more like a nanite infestation.
So... the solution to the problem would be an EMP?
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it might explain the domino wave as they responded to the local neighborhood cascade.
the usb dongle programmed talisman could suppress their communication
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it might explain the domino wave as they responded to the local neighborhood cascade.
the usb dongle programmed talisman could suppress their communication
USB requires your ATX power supply to be able to provide 5v through the mobo.
The mobo must be powered first.
To read a "program" on the talisman, the mobo must at a minimum be able to boot its BIOS (and then boot from the USB dongle directly), and possibly the operating system as well.
To intercommunicate with other computers, you need routers/switches/wireless repeaters/satellites/bridges and a host of other devices to provide a communications path. All of them must be running their various operating systems from cisco/nortel/linksys and other vendors. And to have the mobo on that first computer function, you must feed it 120v AC into its AT power supply.
Has anyone seen an AT power supply computer with a USB port on it? Even USB 1.0?
I've seen PCI riser cards for USB in the past. But they weren't bootable. The earliest bootable USB motherboard BIOS environments are fairly advanced ATX systems.
Which tells us that the AT PC itself in this scene at the end of the episode has code that allows it to run, independent of the dongle. On the local hard drive, possibly.
And no one plugged anything into the monitor. The monitor takes the same 120v AC power input as the PC. No dongle for it. Just power, and a VGA signal.
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My Raspberry Pi has more horsepower than an old AT system, but will run quite happily off a 5v power supply. You could fit a RaspPi and enough battery to run it for months in an AT case. Unfortunately, that doesn't include a screen or network connectivity (assuming some flavor of long-haul wireless which could run off battery as proven by Amateur Radio folks with WiFi or D-Star). There are screens that run off 12v. Batteries can be charged via discrete solar panels.
Point is, I think I could recreate the system the show, have it connect to others within 100 miles, and run it off battery power. What I'm not sure about is having it usable 15 years later or survive whatever killed electronics in the show.
Chirs
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theres a reason why theres an apple portable in my basement archive?
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Sniper rifles are valuable
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Has anyone seen an AT power supply computer with a USB port on it? Even USB 1.0?
I'll look first chance I get but I think I have one or two of the late AT boards that had a USB header built into the motherboard.
My wife has informed me the show is fantasy and I am not allow to argue logic with the TV.
jim
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I'll look first chance I get but I think I have one or two of the late AT boards that had a USB header built into the motherboard.
My wife has informed me the show is fantasy and I am not allow to argue logic with the TV.
jim
Snort.
I can only take so much "fantasy" before the BS is too thick.
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Sniper rifles are valuable
I saw that tonight as I had to be in bed by sunset yesterday and DVR'd it
That was C Thomas Howell of WOLVERINES! fame that got killed!!!
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I just watched the first 3 episodes with my gf... who is greatly amused by my rants. I've had to pause the tv a few times for the lengthier ones...
Sooo, at what point are they going to show, rather than just tell, us why Monroe's militia is the bad guys? That ex-claim's investigator seemed to gives folks every possible chance. I've not seen or heard anything especially heinous or otherwise terrible. The daughter did make one statement about her father not stopping armed men from taking the village's women, but that wasn't linked to MM and had never come up before; it doesn't really seem to fit their MO at all either.
I do love the American system, but frankly, tech is down, that is a lot of overhead to support. Scale it up with the infrastructure; those rebels are just terrorists.
I've got to go get me one of those M pins... >:D
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I've got to go get me one of those M pins...
Be man, go for the brand...
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Be man, go for the brand...
:laugh:
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When do the Amish notice that something is wrong? This is their chance to totally take over...
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The Amish figure it out when everyone from miles in every direction starts showing up pleading to be taught in the old ways.
Out in this neck of the woods, it would be the Mennonites (technically, the non-Amish Mennonites, since the Amish are a splinter Mennonite culture, as I remember it).
In any case, when the power goes, their first indication might be when they rode into town and found that the general store was dark and the pay phone on the corner no longer worked. However, I'm guessing a distressed population of "them English" would have already showed up begging for guidance.
That would frankly be kind of cool.
Except for the inevitable hordes of armed looters thing . . .
(BTW, up here, the Mennonites actually use electricity, so they'd know it was time to go to fallback systems pretty early on.)
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I just watched the first 3 episodes with my gf... who is greatly amused by my rants. I've had to pause the tv a few times for the lengthier ones...
Sooo, at what point are they going to show, rather than just tell, us why Monroe's militia is the bad guys? That ex-claim's investigator seemed to gives folks every possible chance. I've not seen or heard anything especially heinous or otherwise terrible. The daughter did make one statement about her father not stopping armed men from taking the village's women, but that wasn't linked to MM and had never come up before; it doesn't really seem to fit their MO at all either.
I do love the American system, but frankly, tech is down, that is a lot of overhead to support. Scale it up with the infrastructure; those rebels are just terrorists.
I've got to go get me one of those M pins... >:D
=| Did you not see the parts where they kill people who have guns?
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=| Did you not see the parts where they kill people who have guns?
I did see most of the pilot. When the "militia" came to the village and the kid threatened them with a crossbow and the old man had a rifle or shotgun, they screwed up bigtime. Snipe the guy in charge (the black guy who was doing all the talking), preferably from behind cover so they don't see where it comes from. Don't monologue about it first, just shoot. I was almost yelling at the TV.
Better yet, wait til you get a chance to shoot him in the back while they are out on the road. (Shoot him in the back?? That's not The Cowboy Wayâ„¢!) When you are outnumbered and outgunned, fighting fair is for suckers. We could learn a thing or three from the Afghans.
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The reason I keep watching the show is the bad guys are in favor of gun control.
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=| Did you not see the parts where they kill people who have guns?
I did see the part where the fellow planned to confiscate and let bygones be bygones despite finding both guns and a 'rebel' flag.
But hey, in a land where there is an extremely active terrorist organization with strong grass roots support; what is a fledgling restorer of order to do?
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I did see most of the pilot. When the "militia" came to the village and the kid threatened them with a crossbow and the old man had a rifle or shotgun, they screwed up bigtime. Snipe the guy in charge (the black guy who was doing all the talking), preferably from behind cover so they don't see where it comes from. Don't monologue about it first, just shoot. I was almost yelling at the TV.
Better yet, wait til you get a chance to shoot him in the back while they are out on the road. (Shoot him in the back?? That's not The Cowboy Way™!) When you are outnumbered and outgunned, fighting fair is for suckers. We could learn a thing or three from the Afghans.
If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.
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If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.
Win. Especially in post-apocolyptic world.
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one might wonder how many 50 bmg M2s are in Amish Haylofts
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There's rumored to be a train in an upcoming episode. And by rumored, I mean there is a preview which explains that the protagonists must stop a steam-engined train in order to save baby brother.
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"one might wonder how many 50 bmg M2s are in Amish Haylofts"
Very few, actually.
They're in the backs of the buggies.
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. . . Better yet, wait til you get a chance to shoot him in the back while they are out on the road. (Shoot him in the back?? That's not The Cowboy Wayâ„¢!) When you are outnumbered and outgunned, fighting fair is for suckers. We could learn a thing or three from the Afghans.
I was thinking more along the lines of Mel Gibson's big scene from The Patriot . . . "Aim small, miss small."
There are a lot of movies - and I do mean a LOT of movies - where problems could be solved by following two basic rules: 1) Kill the enemy leader first; 2) Just shut up and shoot. (Works for both good guys and bad guys.)
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"I'm looking for a biography of Joe Biden." :rofl:
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There are a lot of movies - and I do mean a LOT of movies - where problems could be solved by following two basic rules: 1) Kill the enemy leader first; 2) Just shut up and shoot. (Works for both good guys and bad guys.)
This.....times eleventy....
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Hell yeah! Sex in the City would have been over in 20 seconds into the first episode.
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Civilization wouldn't have fallen as far as depicted.
There are still quite a few of these monsters out there working.
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi23.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fb398%2FFLHRI-OK%2FTractor%2520Show%2F001.jpg&hash=8f6ea9deeb2d051c1d9b27b45a7432923f43c1e7)
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi23.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fb398%2FFLHRI-OK%2FTractor%2520Show%2F007.jpg&hash=ae18bc750d9d98236daac284bd20ed6a3424b661)
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi23.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fb398%2FFLHRI-OK%2FTractor%2520Show%2Fth_011.jpg&hash=b754ff5e1f857bd871bc7654a6e57da3bdc9a171) (http://s23.photobucket.com/albums/b398/FLHRI-OK/Tractor%20Show/?action=view¤t=011.mp4)
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Just watched the first episode....now watching the second....I'm not sure I can kill off enough brain cells to actually enjoy this....maybe it will get better once they kill the precocious girl & her buddies off.....
My plan in this situation....find out who the potential warlords are and kill off the first two....the third one will steer clear....
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My plan in this situation....find out who the potential warlords are and kill off the first two....the third one will steer clear....
A good rule of thumb: Anytime you're confronted by multiple bad guys, shoot the mouthy one first. :)
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There's rumored to be a train in an upcoming episode. And by rumored, I mean there is a preview which explains that the protagonists must stop a steam-engined train in order to save baby brother.
Stopping a train is fairly easy if you can get to the railline ahead of it's passage.
My plan in this situation....find out who the potential warlords are and kill off the first two....the third one will steer clear....
Install yourself as the warlord and rule with an iron fist...
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I'd like to see RevDisks multi-part story made into a TV series. Its a little more believable.
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Install yourself as the warlord and rule with an iron fist...
Heck no!.....I might be one of the first two.....