>> - In every community, some people are strictly local, some travel a bit, a few travel very far. <<
Often true. It varies by technology and society, though. In some cultures, there's almost no travel; in some, a lot; a few are nomadic. After an apocalypse, travel becomes difficult and dangerous. People will hunker if they can, or move around if it's the only option. In this case, a lot of people settle in whatever survivable place they can find, and those communities are mostly connected by nomadic traders, rather than muneys traveling.
>> - The easier and safer travel is, the more people will do it. The more surplus stuff people have, the easier and safer travel will be. <<
True.
>> - After an Event, or if there are few resources, most people will be local and use low-tech (feet, horses, maybe bikes). <<
Bicycles would be most popular in the years just after the End, when surfaces were still in decent repair. The more time passes, the less useful they'll get except for local use, and most communes aren't big enough to be worth bothering. Eventually, though bikes may make a comeback if people establish a good trail system; some bikes work fine on dirt paths.
>> The community may pool resources, or have a local entrepreneur who has fancier stuff (the one motorized vehicle that gets used as everything from bus to ambulance to livestock-hauler...all at once.) <<
Likely so.
>> - Nature reclaims stuff faster than you'd think. (The primordial forest of fairy tales...grew after the Black Death hit Europe and reduced the need for farms...and the amount of people to keep the land clear.) <<
No, I'm quite familiar with how fast it works, and especially, the variations. The high wet, like the Hoh Rainforest -- which I've actually seen in person -- will start swallowing things in just a year or two. Large parts of the southwest desert, which I've also seen though we didn't visit any ghost towns, will have recognizable remnants for centuries.
If you look in my Animals post, you'll see references to regrowth: by the time beavers come out of their reserves several years After, there are saplings everywhere. By 15 A.E. most of the east and midwest would be under 10-foot thickets of ... hmm, mostly maples and mulberries, or willows and cottonwoods where it's wet.
Another example: Houses would only remain habitable for a few years if not maintained. By 15 A.E. most of the abandoned ones would be in bad shape and much of their contents no longer useful. City buildings made of concrete, steel, glass, etc. would hold containment longer if not taken down by explosions or fire -- but in this setting, that's a hazard of its own.
>> I went to college in a rural area, where if you missed the 'town's (crossroads wit 4 buildings) you could drive for a half hour before realizing you'd missed your turn. <<
Yep. And out west, it's worse; the least populated areas have towns hours apart by car. Close to the coasts, there are cities, but in the Aftermath those are deserted, so with a few exceptions it amounts to the same thing: populations scattered widely.
>> I suspect that unless one is looking for something attatched to the road(s), it might eventually be easier to wayfinding the old-fashioned way: trigonometry, stars, and landmarks.<<
Two factors complicating this:
1) Early navigational methods have low precision. So the smaller something is, the harder it is to find by those means, and all the settlements are small now. Finding the ruins of a big city? No problem. Finding a commune that now covers 10 acres? Much harder.
2) It depends on what you're using for landmarks. Mountains are stable but imprecise. Rivers, lakes, waterways other than an ocean -- those can change based on shifts in technology. Cities, buildings, statues, trees -- these smaller-scale landmarks are even more prone to change.
>> In reach for most stuff might be, what, a day's walk/ride. You'd likely want to know about the nearest big market (however it's been set up), and how people are getting around. <<
Agreed. In the first years After, most people would have no surplus to trade. The traders would be folks scavenging for supplies, or dealing with scavengers. Markets would emerge only later -- probably several years at least -- as communes established themselves enough to have time and energy to reach out and connect with neighbors. The most knitted I've seen so far are the Pueblo communities, who absolutely depend on each other for survival against the Navajo. They probably established markets quickly among clusters of nearby settlements.
>> The tricky thing would be milita bands - if any of those are around, you'll want to know as far in advance as possible, <<
There are some, although not as many as typical of most post-apocalyptic settings, due to the Grunge killing almost everyone combat-capable.
>> and you'll want to know if they are agressive. <<
Some are, but this is much less common. They literally don't have the manpower. Like everything else here, the women greatly outnumber the men. So while there are some all-male or partly male armeys, there are more all-female ones. On average, women are less aggressive than men. In fact, the surviving men are less aggressive than average compared to Before men. By targeting sex hormones, the Grunge wiped out almost all the high-testosterone types. Afterwards, the only survivors of that type are those who were very young at the End or were in very isolated places. So there are far fewer of them. That means a key biological drive toward aggression is mostly missing.
Consequently, you see people banding together for support and sometimes raiding for supplies, but not the usual rape gangs and despots of most post-apocalyptic settings. I've only seen one ruthlessly expansionist society, the Navajo; and while I know there are violent armeys, I haven't actually spotted one yet.
>> (This would also depend on what tech they have vs what you have.) <<
Armeys consistently have more arsenal than muneys, and they are more focused on military skills, although a commune settled by survivalists would be more like a stationary military camp. Where muneys mostly attempt farming, armeys rely heavily on hunting and somewhat on gathering or trading. But an interesting twist of this locale, almost certainly because of its lower testosterone overall, is that by 15 A.E. a substantial number of those groups have paired off. As we saw in Little Sisters, there are now armeys connected to communes, which is typically a good deal for both groups.
>> Fortunately, most folk are fairly calm and predictable when settled into a familiar routine, and fringed by trusted relationships. <<
True. That would be undermined by all the trauma, but supported by the driving need to band together for survival -- a volatile and unpleasant mix. The lower testosterone overall will help keep serious fights to a minimum.
*ponder* And I think I just figured out how the Navajo got so powerful, so fast. It's not just that they started with a big reservation and cohesive culture isolated enough to take little damage. It's that they were already matriarchal. Unlike most cultures, they didn't have to convert. They had women leaders who could look at the clusterfuck modern society had left, and very quickly decide to put things back like they should be from the old days. They had every advantage to hit the ground running while everyone else was still picking themselves up, and that's exactly what happened.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_serpent
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-02-11 08:04 pm (UTC)Often true. It varies by technology and society, though. In some cultures, there's almost no travel; in some, a lot; a few are nomadic. After an apocalypse, travel becomes difficult and dangerous. People will hunker if they can, or move around if it's the only option. In this case, a lot of people settle in whatever survivable place they can find, and those communities are mostly connected by nomadic traders, rather than muneys traveling.
>> - The easier and safer travel is, the more people will do it. The more surplus stuff people have, the easier and safer travel will be. <<
True.
>> - After an Event, or if there are few resources, most people will be local and use low-tech (feet, horses, maybe bikes). <<
Bicycles would be most popular in the years just after the End, when surfaces were still in decent repair. The more time passes, the less useful they'll get except for local use, and most communes aren't big enough to be worth bothering. Eventually, though bikes may make a comeback if people establish a good trail system; some bikes work fine on dirt paths.
>> The community may pool resources, or have a local entrepreneur who has fancier stuff (the one motorized vehicle that gets used as everything from bus to ambulance to livestock-hauler...all at once.) <<
Likely so.
>> - Nature reclaims stuff faster than you'd think. (The primordial forest of fairy tales...grew after the Black Death hit Europe and reduced the need for farms...and the amount of people to keep the land clear.) <<
No, I'm quite familiar with how fast it works, and especially, the variations. The high wet, like the Hoh Rainforest -- which I've actually seen in person -- will start swallowing things in just a year or two. Large parts of the southwest desert, which I've also seen though we didn't visit any ghost towns, will have recognizable remnants for centuries.
If you look in my Animals post, you'll see references to regrowth: by the time beavers come out of their reserves several years After, there are saplings everywhere. By 15 A.E. most of the east and midwest would be under 10-foot thickets of ... hmm, mostly maples and mulberries, or willows and cottonwoods where it's wet.
Another example: Houses would only remain habitable for a few years if not maintained. By 15 A.E. most of the abandoned ones would be in bad shape and much of their contents no longer useful. City buildings made of concrete, steel, glass, etc. would hold containment longer if not taken down by explosions or fire -- but in this setting, that's a hazard of its own.
>> I went to college in a rural area, where if you missed the 'town's (crossroads wit 4 buildings) you could drive for a half hour before realizing you'd missed your turn. <<
Yep. And out west, it's worse; the least populated areas have towns hours apart by car. Close to the coasts, there are cities, but in the Aftermath those are deserted, so with a few exceptions it amounts to the same thing: populations scattered widely.
>> I suspect that unless one is looking for something attatched to the road(s), it might eventually be easier to wayfinding the old-fashioned way: trigonometry, stars, and landmarks.<<
Two factors complicating this:
1) Early navigational methods have low precision. So the smaller something is, the harder it is to find by those means, and all the settlements are small now. Finding the ruins of a big city? No problem. Finding a commune that now covers 10 acres? Much harder.
2) It depends on what you're using for landmarks. Mountains are stable but imprecise. Rivers, lakes, waterways other than an ocean -- those can change based on shifts in technology. Cities, buildings, statues, trees -- these smaller-scale landmarks are even more prone to change.
>> In reach for most stuff might be, what, a day's walk/ride. You'd likely want to know about the nearest big market (however it's been set up), and how people are getting around. <<
Agreed. In the first years After, most people would have no surplus to trade. The traders would be folks scavenging for supplies, or dealing with scavengers. Markets would emerge only later -- probably several years at least -- as communes established themselves enough to have time and energy to reach out and connect with neighbors. The most knitted I've seen so far are the Pueblo communities, who absolutely depend on each other for survival against the Navajo. They probably established markets quickly among clusters of nearby settlements.
>> The tricky thing would be milita bands - if any of those are around, you'll want to know as far in advance as possible, <<
There are some, although not as many as typical of most post-apocalyptic settings, due to the Grunge killing almost everyone combat-capable.
>> and you'll want to know if they are agressive. <<
Some are, but this is much less common. They literally don't have the manpower. Like everything else here, the women greatly outnumber the men. So while there are some all-male or partly male armeys, there are more all-female ones. On average, women are less aggressive than men. In fact, the surviving men are less aggressive than average compared to Before men. By targeting sex hormones, the Grunge wiped out almost all the high-testosterone types. Afterwards, the only survivors of that type are those who were very young at the End or were in very isolated places. So there are far fewer of them. That means a key biological drive toward aggression is mostly missing.
Consequently, you see people banding together for support and sometimes raiding for supplies, but not the usual rape gangs and despots of most post-apocalyptic settings. I've only seen one ruthlessly expansionist society, the Navajo; and while I know there are violent armeys, I haven't actually spotted one yet.
>> (This would also depend on what tech they have vs what you have.) <<
Armeys consistently have more arsenal than muneys, and they are more focused on military skills, although a commune settled by survivalists would be more like a stationary military camp. Where muneys mostly attempt farming, armeys rely heavily on hunting and somewhat on gathering or trading. But an interesting twist of this locale, almost certainly because of its lower testosterone overall, is that by 15 A.E. a substantial number of those groups have paired off. As we saw in Little Sisters, there are now armeys connected to communes, which is typically a good deal for both groups.
>> Fortunately, most folk are fairly calm and predictable when settled into a familiar routine, and fringed by trusted relationships. <<
True. That would be undermined by all the trauma, but supported by the driving need to band together for survival -- a volatile and unpleasant mix. The lower testosterone overall will help keep serious fights to a minimum.
*ponder* And I think I just figured out how the Navajo got so powerful, so fast. It's not just that they started with a big reservation and cohesive culture isolated enough to take little damage. It's that they were already matriarchal. Unlike most cultures, they didn't have to convert. They had women leaders who could look at the clusterfuck modern society had left, and very quickly decide to put things back like they should be from the old days. They had every advantage to hit the ground running while everyone else was still picking themselves up, and that's exactly what happened.