Days of old
Berryjw
I haven't looked here in a number of years, but a nagging thought brought me
back. Does anyone remember the 'Great Thought Experiment' of the early
1990's which took place here? It involved transplanting Pennsic to period
England. For reasons beyond my understanding, I find myself wondering what
ever became of it......
Alain ap Daffyd
Lyle H. Gray
news:fjIf9.2984$LG4....@eagle.america.net:
It died of the plague... ;-)
Susan Carroll-Clark
That thread was a tremendous lot of fun. And we haven't really tried
anything like it since.
Nicolaa
on the Rialto since '93
JE Anderson
"Susan Carroll-Clark" <nicola...@columbus.rr.com> wrote in message
news:8fRf9.118768$ja.18...@twister.columbus.rr.com...
That was before my time here - what was the scheme?
Eirika
Berryjw
that might have been drawn all those years ago.
The premise, as I remember it, was - Take Pennsic (then only around 8000
people), and move it onto Salisbury Plain, circa 500 years ago. I believe
we included the parking lot for the sake of materiel. Now describe what
happens.
The primary question is - Do we survive? Disease and hunger are the big
issues, with internal strife leading to demise following behind. The
secondary question becomes - How do we effect History?
For those interested, part of what brought me back to this is a book,
_1632_, by Eric Flint. He moves an entire West Virginia town (complete with
power plant) into the midst of the 30 Years War. If he wasn't at least
lurking here during those days, he should have been. (Mr. Flint, if you're
out there, take a bow.) The story is about as balanced as it could be and
still get published, and the characterizations are wonderful.
Meanwhile, back at the rialto, my question is - did this thread of old ever
reach any conclusions and, if so, what were they?
Bj
"JE Anderson" <eir...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:%GSf9.306987$Ag2.15...@news2.calgary.shaw.ca...
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> For those interested, part of what brought me back to this is a
> book, _1632_, by Eric Flint. He moves an entire West Virginia town
> (complete with power plant) into the midst of the 30 Years War. If
> he wasn't at least lurking here during those days, he should have
> been. (Mr. Flint, if you're out there, take a bow.) The story is
> about as balanced as it could be and still get published, and the
It's a good story, but parts of it made me gag. I've never been fond
of the labour movement or paeans to its glories, though. Bits of it
were very enjoyable. `Captain Gars is a mad-man. It is well-known.'
Worth a read, if one has a good political filter, anyway.
And don't get me started about his portrayal of the Catholics...
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give
orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem,
pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently,
die gallantly. Specialisation is for insects.
--Robert Heinlein
Richard Lewis
here and there but it reminds me of the BBC Castaway 2000 project.
36 hand-picked individuals live on an island for a year and try to
build a functioning, self-sustaining society.
Subtract all the bickering and in-fighting, the weekly food drops, the
contraband delivered on a regular schedule, the tons of mailed "gifts"
from supporters and fans....and they did practically nothing. Someone
else can probably remember, but I think in the entire time they made
$25 (pounds, but I can't find the danged brit pound key) on a carved
walking stick one fellow sold to the captain of the supply boat.
Point being that there aren't that many folks in the Society or in
society at large that can support himself or herself if taken from the
current society and dropped into another one so remote.
Just my opinion.
ral
Berry Williams
"...weekly food drops, the contraband delivered on a regular schedule, the
tons of mailed "gifts" from supporters and fans...", there was *No*
incentive to succeed, their primary needs were met. Now add in the likely
reality that these people were "hand-picked" for their marketability in a
commercial venture, not their skills, and you're further down the road to
failure. On the other hand, the Society has a much higher ratio of doers.
We reward accomplishment, and encourage the learning of old technologies,
therefore tend to keep people who 'do' at least as much as 'talk'. SCAdians
are, as a group, much more impressed by someone who *made* their own
_fill-in-the-blank_ than someone who bought it. Unfortunately, the one
thing that is ultimately necessary and impossible to re-create is
agriculture. The person or persons who could keep everyone else fed would
be key. But no venture is going to leave anyone with the true potential for
starvation. Make people hungry enough, and they'll do unbelievable things.
Look at WWII. How many 'Hitlers' are wandering the streets this very
minute? No one pays them any mind. But Germany was starving to death.
Hitler said he could feed them, and they listened. You just have to wish it
had been a Ghandi, instead. Whew, didn't mean to go on this long, just my 2
cents.
Bj
"Richard Lewis" <red...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:alr203$vtt$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net...
Rich Almquist
well. Often simply because if I hadn't, I would have gone hungry. And going
hungry means less energy, and less energy means you cover less ground per
day, and so on and so on. When you're on your own and 45 miles from the
nearest town in the north woods, you have to be able to feed yourself. I'd
be less embarassed by people knowing I had a tree get blown over and split
my noggin' or some other physical cause of death than by them knowing I died
of starvation.
RA
"Berry Williams" <berry...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:Z%mg9.3605$LG4....@eagle.america.net...
Richard Lewis
It's more a problem with "mind" than of "mindset", though. The
necessary knowledge and skills, outside the decorative ones taught in
SCA "colleges", don't exist in any representational form of modern
Society society.
There's a vast difference between knowing what a plow *is*, and
knowing how it *works*, and in having your swollen hands dripping pus
for three days from plowing an acre.
Starvation ranked right up there with disease in terms of common ways
to die, and that was among the folks who had thousands of years of
agricultural knowledge and skill behind them. The amount of food that
just one person needs to keep from starving for just one year is
mind-boggling to most folks and practically impossible to achieve by
modern man without the aid of machinery.
I've often said that if the electricity went off in the world for one
month (if the power goes off worldwide for a month, it won't come back
on in our lifetime), 80% of the population would be dead inside a
year. That's with all the tools and supplies we have around us now.
Does anyone here honestly believe that if a representative grouping
like this year's Pennsic were to be transported to say 1300 England
that the group would do better?
Btw, great topic, Alain!
ral
David Friedman
red...@mindspring.com (Richard Lewis) wrote:
> Does anyone here honestly believe that if a representative grouping
> like this year's Pennsic were to be transported to say 1300 England
> that the group would do better?
As best I recall, it was to England a thousand years back. One relevant
consideration was that there were people there with whom we could trade.
As some posters pointed out, the parking lot represented a fortune in
metal and glass.
--
David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Medieval/Medieval.html
JE Anderson
"Berryjw" <ber...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:U30g9.3469$LG4....@eagle.america.net...
> First, I'm NOT trying to resurect this! I'm interested in any conclusions
> that might have been drawn all those years ago.
>
> The premise, as I remember it, was - Take Pennsic (then only around 8000
> people), and move it onto Salisbury Plain, circa 500 years ago. I believe
> we included the parking lot for the sake of materiel. Now describe what
> happens.
Ahhh, what a cool idea. Sorry I missed it - thanks for explaining it.
Eirika
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> There's a vast difference between knowing what a plow *is*, and
> knowing how it *works*, and in having your swollen hands dripping
> pus for three days from plowing an acre.
I grant your point, but an acre's really not that much land. I'd be
surprised if anyone's hands were that badly injured by plowing it.
Now, plowing 40 acres--that'd be a chore.
> Starvation ranked right up there with disease in terms of common
> ways to die...
Indeed, the word `starve' originally meant `to die.' OE stearban,
IIRC.
> The amount of food that just one person needs to keep from starving
> for just one year is mind-boggling to most folks and practically
> impossible to achieve by modern man without the aid of machinery.
It can be done, with primitive implements and food to spare, on an
acre, easily. The real problem is storing food for when the land
isn't producing anything.
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
Those who beat their swords into ploughs will plough for those that don't.
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> As some posters pointed out, the parking lot represented a fortune
> in metal and glass.
That's an awful lot of treasure, and a rather appealing one to the
less savoury element, I'd think...
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
We're going to Moe's. If we're not back, avenge our deaths.
--Homer Simpson
David Friedman
> David Friedman <dd...@best.com> writes:
> >
> > As some posters pointed out, the parking lot represented a fortune
> > in metal and glass.
>
> That's an awful lot of treasure, and a rather appealing one to the
> less savoury element, I'd think...
Yes. Some people thought we would be able to conquer and enslave the
locals (and were in favor of it), some thought it would be the other way
around. An interesting discussion, in part for what it reflected of
varying modern attitudes.
--
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com
Richard Lewis
>red...@mindspring.com (Richard Lewis) writes:
>>
>> There's a vast difference between knowing what a plow *is*, and
>> knowing how it *works*, and in having your swollen hands dripping
>> pus for three days from plowing an acre.
>I grant your point, but an acre's really not that much land. I'd be
>surprised if anyone's hands were that badly injured by plowing it.
>Now, plowing 40 acres--that'd be a chore.
You're surprised? You've never plowed an acre before then.
Try sitting down one evening and hand-shucking even a half bushel of
dry corn and see how your hands feel. With beginners, that and
plowing are about the same.
>> Starvation ranked right up there with disease in terms of common
>> ways to die...
>Indeed, the word `starve' originally meant `to die.' OE stearban,
>IIRC.
>> The amount of food that just one person needs to keep from starving
>> for just one year is mind-boggling to most folks and practically
>> impossible to achieve by modern man without the aid of machinery.
>It can be done, with primitive implements and food to spare, on an
>acre, easily. The real problem is storing food for when the land
>isn't producing anything.
This one is a great topic to think about for all of you "period food"
lovers.
Robert says he can do it with one acre and have food to
spare....anyone else think so?
Robert, would you care to list your crops/amounts and your proposed
daily menu? Anyone else?
And btw, that Pennsic crowd that popped in just doubled your
population for dozens of miles around. All that steel and glass
aren't worth much when there isn't enough local food within a week's
walk to feed you all. The local farmers don't have 22,000 pounds of
extra food it takes to feed you all for even one day at starvation
levels.....so how much steel and glass can you carry and for how far?
ral
William Newman
> In article <altjrm$mnb$1...@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>,
> red...@mindspring.com (Richard Lewis) wrote:
>
> > Does anyone here honestly believe that if a representative grouping
> > like this year's Pennsic were to be transported to say 1300 England
> > that the group would do better?
>
> As best I recall, it was to England a thousand years back. One relevant
> consideration was that there were people there with whom we could trade.
> As some posters pointed out, the parking lot represented a fortune in
> metal and glass.
If the time-travellers get the parking lot, then after the short term
selling of scrap as treasure, in the medium term they can sell
cobbled-together radios as Force Multipliers From Hell to people who
have big enough empires, armies, or commercial enterprises that it
pays them to support thousands of artisans in order to increase
efficiency by 20-50%.
In the longer term, the time travellers might get to where they can
make vacuum tube radios from scratch, which I (perhaps
optimistically?) think is both within the realm of possibilities for
8000 SCAers, and is all by itself enough of a force multiplier in a
1002 AD context that it'd sustain a community of a few thousand
artisans and a few thousand hangers on.
If that's not enough, or turned out to be too hard, IMO other
plausible long-term trade goods would be cannon, optics (esp.
eyeglasses), or dyes and drugs synthesized by 19th-century chemical
techniques. They might also be able to win by collaboration with the
locals in using 19th-century biological ideas (no spontaneous
generation, germ theory of disease, Mendelian genetics...) to
incrementally improve city and army sanitation, agriculture, and
various fermentation-based industries. (I don't know the details, but
IIRC cheesemakers, vintners, beer brewers, and the like were early
supporters of Pasteur in the controversies over his ideas, which
suggests that his ideas have immediate practical value even in
competition with 10,000 years of accumulated empirical tricks.)
Arranging that this goes smoothly without starvation, extermination by
various xenophobic locals, or repeated decimation from internal
squabbles is left as an exercise for the diplomatic time traveller.
("May you live in interesting times.":-) But 8000 people know a lot,
and the knowledge of the most-suitable 400 or so people could be
fundamentally worth a *lot* in 1002 AD.
David Friedman
red...@mindspring.com (Richard Lewis) wrote:
> And btw, that Pennsic crowd that popped in just doubled your
> population for dozens of miles around. All that steel and glass
> aren't worth much when there isn't enough local food within a week's
> walk to feed you all. The local farmers don't have 22,000 pounds of
> extra food it takes to feed you all for even one day at starvation
> levels.....so how much steel and glass can you carry and for how far?
1. In the short run, you can use whatever vehicles are best at bad
terrain, fueled by gasoline siphoned from other vehicles.
2. One of my suggestions was to get to the seashore, since water born
transport is much cheaper than land transport.
--
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com
Anthony J. Bryant
> David Friedman <dd...@best.com> writes:
> >
> > As some posters pointed out, the parking lot represented a fortune
> > in metal and glass.
>
> That's an awful lot of treasure, and a rather appealing one to the
> less savoury element, I'd think...
The heck with the treasure aspect. I want to know how we'd all survive
once the chocolate milk and Gatorade ran out.
Effingham
Harold Groot
wrote:
>As best I recall, it was to England a thousand years back. One relevant
>consideration was that there were people there with whom we could trade.
>As some posters pointed out, the parking lot represented a fortune in
>metal and glass.
I, too, recall it being 1000 years ago in the thought experiment. As
I recall the discussion, most of the posters split into two camps.
One camp believed that the technological know-how and resources (such
as the above-mentioned parking lot) that we had would be the dominant
factor and that we would become the equivalent of Court Wizards To
Mighty Nobles (who became Mighty by taking our advice on better
weaponry, tactics and such) or even Mighty Nobles ourselves. The
other camp believed that difficulties in transportation, food,
medicine, communication, local political considerations and various
other factors would leave us scratching for survival. Neither side
convinced the other of the correctness of their analysis (though my
own feeling is that the latter group was probably closer to the
truth).
Heather Jones
>
> ru...@4dv.net (Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>) wrote:
>
> >red...@mindspring.com (Richard Lewis) writes:
> >> The amount of food that just one person needs to keep from starving
> >> for just one year is mind-boggling to most folks and practically
> >> impossible to achieve by modern man without the aid of machinery.
>
> >It can be done, with primitive implements and food to spare, on an
> >acre, easily. The real problem is storing food for when the land
> >isn't producing anything.
>
> This one is a great topic to think about for all of you "period food"
> lovers.
>
> Robert says he can do it with one acre and have food to
> spare....anyone else think so?
I wouldn't even try to begin the calculations until I knew what
sort of climate (both macro and micro) I'd have, rainfall,
sunlight patterns (lattitude?), annual temperature patterns, soil
type, and so forth. An acre in upland Wales and an acre in
Suffolk are going to be very different matters ... and frankly
I'd take an acre in the California central valley over any of
them as long as I had access to convenient irrigation. Now, the
last I might try some extremely idealized calculations for, but
the others I wouldn't even begin to start on without a lot of research.
Tangwystyl
--
*****
Heather Rose Jones
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
*****
Julie
find the entire thread at http://www.deja.com , which is a usenet
archive going back twenty years. Go to rec.org.sca there, search for
"great thought experiment" only in that group, and scroll down the list
until you find it (it's the only one with 469 messages, hard to miss).
When I accessed it, I could only get the 250 posts after Oct. 1, 1993,
but that should be plenty to see how it turned out. I'm still reading
it. :)
IS,
Katherine Ashwoode,
mka: Julie
Susan Carroll-Clark
> I wouldn't even try to begin the calculations until I knew what
> sort of climate (both macro and micro) I'd have, rainfall,
> sunlight patterns (lattitude?), annual temperature patterns, soil
> type, and so forth.
I think the original proposal specified "Salisbury Plain" in England. It
was indeed 1000 years--I remember the target year very well as 993.
Nicolaa
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> Robert, would you care to list your crops/amounts and your proposed
> daily menu? Anyone else?
This came up on another mailing list I'm on--I didn't believe it
myself, at first. The following is an excerpt from that discussion.
I've converted the units to real ones, but otherwise everything is as
was originally posted.
...With that qualification in mind, just about anything. Each
person needs to eat about 1/3 ton per year of a balanced diet.
A potato crop of 13-18 tons per acre is normal. Cereal crops tend
to yield 1 1/3-2 1/4 tons per acre. Legumes typically yield
9/10-1 1/3 tons of edible produce per acre. Apples often yield 13
tons per acre.
Grain-fed meat animals typically eat about 15-20 times their
dressed carcass mass during growth, so about 0.09 tons per acre
including both crops and feedlot space. Farmed fish seem to do
better, at about 3-5 times their mass of fillets in feed, for
about 2/5 edible ton per acre per year inclusive of feed.
You could devote 30% of the crop capacity to feed meat animals,
15% to dairy animals and egg-laying chickens, 5% to fish, 10% to
cereals for human consumption, 10% to potatoes or similar basic
staples, 10% to legumes of various varieties, 5% for fruits such
as apples, and 15% to various other items that I haven't thought
of yet.
With that mix, on average per acre per day you could expect:
3 oz., 2 dr. of red meat
1 oz., 14 dr. of fish
3 oz., 11 dr. of eggs
4 3/4 jills of milk
1 tsp. of butter
1 lbs., 4 oz. of cereal products
6 lbs., 1 oz. of potatoes (!)
7 oz., 14 dr. of peas, beans, or lentils
3 lbs., 10 oz. of apples (or other fruits)
If you don't think this is enough to support a person for a day,
you *really* need to go on a diet ;)
...
The yields themselves were *not* plucked out of the air, they were
gathered and cross-checked from various agricultural reports while
I should have been building a document control system today.
I'm actually rather surprised: my original estimate was based on
just eyeballing Tasmania's map and guessing how much of it feeds
Tasmania's population. It looks like my original estimate of 2
1/2 acres per man was grossly high. Based on these firmer and
more authoritative figures, 1/2 acre per man should suffice.
--Timothy Little
> And btw, that Pennsic crowd that popped in just doubled your
> population for dozens of miles around. All that steel and glass
> aren't worth much when there isn't enough local food within a week's
> walk to feed you all. The local farmers don't have 22,000 pounds of
> extra food it takes to feed you all for even one day at starvation
> levels...so how much steel and glass can you carry and for how far?
Well, given a crowd of 8,000 people (which I believe was the Pennsic
crowd at that time), and the figure of 1/3 ton/day of food, that 8,000
people will require something under 15,000 lbs. of food--about 7.3
tons. Given the above figure of 1/2 acre per man per year, one would
only need 4,000 acres, or 6 1/4 square miles, to feed them all.
That's using modern methods--I believe that mediaeval amount was 1 1/3
acres per man per year, so 10,667 acres, or 16 2/3 sq. miles using
mediaeval agriculture. Some of our modern methods are processes,
which might be doable, but some rely on technology for which there
would be no infrastructure, so pick a number somewhere in between.
Regardless, England has an area of 50,334 sq. miles. I think the
extra burden would be workable.
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. --Robert Heinlein
Richard Lewis
Snipped for brevity....
> You could devote 30% of the crop capacity to feed meat animals,
> 15% to dairy animals and egg-laying chickens, 5% to fish, 10% to
> cereals for human consumption, 10% to potatoes or similar basic
> staples, 10% to legumes of various varieties, 5% for fruits such
> as apples, and 15% to various other items that I haven't thought
> of yet.
You really have never done any farming before, right Robert? lol Not
sarcasm mind you, just pleasant, good-natured surprise at a
non-farmer. Trust me bro, it's far harder than it looks on paper.
First off, you can't raise even a single cow on less than 15% of the
acre you propose. We aren't talking about raising the crops and then
feeding the 15% to the cow....we are talking about grazing a single
cow on 15% of an acre up to slaughtering time. Currently, with the
absolute best techniques and chemicals it takes a minimum of 1.6 acres
per cow during the grazing season and just over a half an acre of
silage to provide for one cow the rest of the year. That's over two
acres of land for just one cow for an entire year.
Cows just don't work when we're talking an acre, bro.
On to the veggie parts of your menu....let me copy and paste another
post I made to a survival newsgroup about four years back on a
proposed all-veggie diet....this gets long but I think it's an
interesting read.
---------------------------------------------
Next, lets talk math....
An acre is 43,560 square feet of land. That sure sounds like a hell
of a lot, but if you've ever seen an acre, then you know it isn't that
much. It would roughly form a square about 208 feet on a side.
That's a house with a good sized front and back yard.
Now to hand plow/till that size of an area, you could do it in a day
or two with a good, powerful garden tiller or even a horsedrawn plow.
If you tried to do it with a hoe....well, stock lots of extra food and
lots of extra medical supplies for the aftermath of that attempt.
For the purpose of this example, we'll assume you got the field
plowed/tilled and are ready for planting. Now what do you decide to
plant?
My opinion would be either corn or wheat or possibly even
potatoes....lets look at each of them.
Under *OPTIMAL* conditions today with the absolute best equipment and
care, you can get 80-100 bushels of corn from an acre. To achieve
that level, you'll need to *harvest* somewhere in the area of
14-15,000
plants in that acre....that means you'll need to *plant* between
16-17,000 to cover the 10-15% plant failure. You'll also need to
guarantee at least 5-6 feet of moist soil depth in that acre and at
least 18-20 inches of watering during the growing season (early May
thru mid Oct).
If we figure a harvest of 100 bushels, that's a little less than 1/3
of
a bushel a day that you will be living off of....or one bushel will
have to last you 3.65 days in other words. Sounds like a lot?
Consider that one single can of corn from the supermarket will contain
between 3-4 ears of corn. Now can you survive on say 3 cans of corn a
day? Not at the calory level that you'll be using to grow that corn
and do your other business. 10-12 ears of corn (3 cans of plain corn)
a day will only provide you approx 1000 calories. Considering that
you'll probably be using in excess of 3-4000 calories a day....well
you
see the problem.
Add in the distinctly poor odds of you getting 100 bushels per acre,
and you see that a single acre can't supply a single man with enough
corn to eat for a year.
Let's assume a daily calory level of 3000 to make the rest of this
easier to follow....bear in mind that your actual needs may be a tad
lower or a lot higher....
On a diet of ONLY corn, your daily meal would be approx 35 large ears
of
corn a day.
How about potatoes? You can grow a hell of a lot of potatoes on an
acre
of land, right? Well under *OPTIMAL* conditions with the best of
equipment and labor, you'll get approx 10 tons per acre. Gosh that's
a
LOT of potatoes!!! Thats over 50 pounds of potatoes a day for a
year!!!
Problem is, your potatoes will average about 110-120 calories
each....so to get 3000 calories, you'll need to eat a minimum of 26
spuds a day. Figure 3 potatoes per pound and you get a whopping 8-9
pound bowl of mashed potatoes a day just to maintain your current body
weight. Figure on 3000-4000 calories a day that you'll be using in
growing them tasty taters and you come out with as high as a 12 pound
tatertot a day to avoid starvation. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm that sounds
delicious. ;)
With those two crops at a 50/50 ratio, your daily diet would now be 17
large
ears of corn and 13 potatoes to approximate a 3000 calory diet.
One fellow suggested a crop of onions, leeks, spinach, cabbage, and
garlic. Let's look at those.
Onions average about 60 calories each for large onions....for a 3000
calory a day diet youll need to eat about oh....50 onions a day. Ever
counted how many onions are in a 10 pound bag? You will after the
first day you're forced to eat them ;)
With corn/potatoes/onions in an equal calory amount, you'll be eating
close to 12 large ears of corn, 9 potatoes, and about 17 onions a day
to get
3000 calories.
Cabbage....well those numbers alone made me sick to my stomach and I
always thought I liked the stuff. A cup of cabbage is about 18
calories, so to reach 3000 you'll need to eat about 165 cups of the
stuff a day.
Your daily diet thus far, divided equally per calory level, would be
12 large ears of corn, about 7 potatoes, about 12 onions, and about 41
cups
of shredded cabbage.
Leeks and garlic are too low in nutritional value so I'm going to skip
those and go to spinach. 10 ounces (5 cups) of raw spinach is about
75 calories....so for a diet of ONLY spinach, you'll need to eat about
25 POUNDS of it a day. (1 ounce=7.5 calories....3000/7.5 equals 400
ounces...equals 25 pounds of spinach).
Your daily diet thus far, divided equally by calory level, would
be....7 large ears of corn, 6-7 potatoes (not the small ones. either),
over 12
large onions, 33 cups of cabbage, and about 5 pounds of spinach.
Let's add in good old fashioned green beans! One pound of raw green
beans will tip the scale at about 125 calories....so on a diet of ONLY
green beans, you'll need to eat 24 POUNDS a day to reach 3000
calories.
Let's add in SQUASH!!! Butternut squash has the highest calory count
at about 72 calories per cup (5 ounces) so on a diet of ONLY squash,
you'll be eating 41 cups (13 POUNDS) a day to reach 3000 calories.
Your diet thus far if you included ALL of those crops on equal calory
levels....5 large ears of corn, right at 4 potatoes, over 7 large
onions, 23
cups of cabbage, a little over 3.5 POUNDS of spinach, about 3.5 POUNDS
of raw green beans (water loss or gain doesn't count so don't try to
cheat), and a whopping serving of close to 2 POUNDS of squash.
If you've been keeping a total so far, that's over 1800 ears of corn
(675 pounds), 1460 potatoes (486 pounds), 2555 large onions (630
pounds),
8400 cups of cabbage, 1300 POUNDS of spinach, about 1300 POUNDS of
green beans, and 650 POUNDS of butternut squash that you'll have to
plant, tend, harvest, and preserve off of your one acre EACH year.
That's a total of approx 675 pounds of corn, 486 pounds of potatoes,
630
pounds of onions, God only knows how much cabbage, 1300 pounds of
spinach, 1300 pounds of green beans, and 650 pounds of squash a YEAR
that you'll be eating to reach a daily diet of 3000 calories..
That's a total of about ohhhhh 12 *POUNDS* a day in food that you'll
have to eat to maintain a 3000 calory a day diet off of those 7 crops.
Oh, I forgot to figure in apples....one large apple is about 85
calories....in equal amounts with the 7 crops above, that would be
about 4.5 large apples a day or about 2 pounds a day. Your daily diet
just topped 13 pounds....did ya notice?
Now does anyone else want to tell me how they plan to live off of what
they can grow on their acre or so of land?
Unless you have an acre of black walnuts or pecans to suppliment your
diet, you don't stand a chance.
Now considering that good old lard has about 1800 calories per cup,
and regular old ground beef has about 1400 calories per pound, you
guys should maybe consider planning on animals instead of crops.
Mankind was able to advance, not because of crops (though they do play
a large part), but because of domesticated animals and the
concentrated calories they represented.
And in answer to the "type of animal" postings....cattle produce much
better leather than goats, they can be used for labor, they can stand
temp extremes better, and they can defend themselves from pretty much
all animals they will encounter unless you have a cougar problem in
your neck of the woods. If you raise goats, expect to lose them to
wild dogs. Goats tend to die frequently so they aren't really a good
idea. Sheep are a good idea just for the
meat, and the wool will certainly come in handy sooner or later.
ral
---------------------------------
> With that mix, on average per acre per day you could expect:
> 3 oz., 2 dr. of red meat
> 1 oz., 14 dr. of fish
> 3 oz., 11 dr. of eggs
> 4 3/4 jills of milk
> 1 tsp. of butter
> 1 lbs., 4 oz. of cereal products
> 6 lbs., 1 oz. of potatoes (!)
> 7 oz., 14 dr. of peas, beans, or lentils
> 3 lbs., 10 oz. of apples (or other fruits)
> If you don't think this is enough to support a person for a day,
> you *really* need to go on a diet ;)
Ummmm I think you missed the entire point. Robert. lol
Did you happen to notice the *amounts* of those foods you plan to eat
each and every day? The calory content etc?
Your diet each and every day just from a cursory glance tops about
ohhhhh 15 pounds? You think you can eat 15 pounds of food in a day,
bro?
God's honest truth is that starvation was a common way to die even
when you had thousands of years of skills and breeding behind you.
You don't. You will be learning from day one and you'll need a hell
of a lot of food and luck to survive to your first crop.
> The yields themselves were *not* plucked out of the air, they were
> gathered and cross-checked from various agricultural reports while
> I should have been building a document control system today.
> I'm actually rather surprised: my original estimate was based on
> just eyeballing Tasmania's map and guessing how much of it feeds
> Tasmania's population. It looks like my original estimate of 2
> 1/2 acres per man was grossly high. Based on these firmer and
> more authoritative figures, 1/2 acre per man should suffice.
> --Timothy Little
>> And btw, that Pennsic crowd that popped in just doubled your
>> population for dozens of miles around. All that steel and glass
>> aren't worth much when there isn't enough local food within a week's
>> walk to feed you all. The local farmers don't have 22,000 pounds of
>> extra food it takes to feed you all for even one day at starvation
>> levels...so how much steel and glass can you carry and for how far?
>Well, given a crowd of 8,000 people (which I believe was the Pennsic
>crowd at that time), and the figure of 1/3 ton/day of food, that 8,000
>people will require something under 15,000 lbs. of food--about 7.3
>tons.
By your menu given above, those 8000 will need something over 120,000
pounds of food, bro. 60 tons per day.
See what I meant about "nearly impossible"?
My number (22,000lbs per day) was based on a *starvation-level* diet.
Yours can't be because you have to plant and harvest the food....mine
is a big crowd of people sitting around slowly dying.
>Given the above figure of 1/2 acre per man per year, one would
>only need 4,000 acres, or 6 1/4 square miles, to feed them all.
>That's using modern methods--I believe that mediaeval amount was 1 1/3
>acres per man per year, so 10,667 acres, or 16 2/3 sq. miles using
>mediaeval agriculture. Some of our modern methods are processes,
>which might be doable, but some rely on technology for which there
>would be no infrastructure, so pick a number somewhere in between.
>Regardless, England has an area of 50,334 sq. miles. I think the
>extra burden would be workable.
Long-term workable isn't the question though. Feeding 8,000 extra
people for the time it takes to raise even one *perfect* crop is the
problem.
All the best, Robert!
ral
Julie
top of the excerpt, Timothy says that an acre can produce 13-18 tons per
acre OR 1.33-2.25 tons of cereals OR .9-1.33 tons of edible produce,
etc. When he lists what an average acre can feed per day, he seems to
be listing ALL of these things together, as though they're all growing
on the same acre. Am I just reading the numbers wrong, or is he
assuming that you can fit all that food (18 tons of potatoes, a 1.5 tons
of cereals, etc.) into half an acre of land? To me, that just doesn't
seem plausible. Then again, I've never worked on a farm, so maybe you
can fit all of that food onto an acre of land. I'm just skeptical.
Katherine Ashwoode,
mka: Julie
"Robert Uhl " wrote:
> A potato crop of 13-18 tons per acre is normal. Cereal crops tend
> to yield 1 1/3-2 1/4 tons per acre. Legumes typically yield
> 9/10-1 1/3 tons of edible produce per acre. Apples often yield 13
> tons per acre.
[snip]
> With that mix, on average per acre per day you could expect:
>
> 3 oz., 2 dr. of red meat
> 1 oz., 14 dr. of fish
> 3 oz., 11 dr. of eggs
> 4 3/4 jills of milk
> 1 tsp. of butter
> 1 lbs., 4 oz. of cereal products
> 6 lbs., 1 oz. of potatoes (!)
> 7 oz., 14 dr. of peas, beans, or lentils
> 3 lbs., 10 oz. of apples (or other fruits)
[snip]
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> You really have never done any farming before, right Robert?
No--but the figures are not mine (rather, Tasmanian gov't figures,
apparently).
> First off, you can't raise even a single cow on less than 15% of the
> acre you propose.
I believe that the theory is that this is averaged over many acres.
Obviously, if one just wants to survive, one simply plants potatos,
which yield something like 16 tons and acre. That's enough to feed
nearly fifty people for a year...
> If we figure a harvest of 100 bushels, that's a little less than 1/3
> of a bushel a day that you will be living off of....or one bushel
> will have to last you 3.65 days in other words. Sounds like a lot?
Yeah. A bushel is 9 gallons and change, so three gallons of corn a
day. That's something like 15-20 ears...
And corn doesn't even produce that much per acre.
> How about potatoes? You can grow a hell of a lot of potatoes on an
> acre of land, right? Well under *OPTIMAL* conditions with the best
> of equipment and labor, you'll get approx 10 tons per acre.
Where do you get your figures? The ones from the source I used
claimed about half again as much.
> That's over 50 pounds of potatoes a day for a year!!! Figure on
> 3000-4000 calories a day that you'll be using in growing them tasty
> taters and you come out with as high as a 12 pound tatertot a day to
> avoid starvation. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm that sounds delicious. ;)
Well, that's 12 lbs. of potatoes, leaving 38 a day to spend on
something other than...
So far you're proving my point.
> > With that mix, on average per acre per day you could expect:
>
> > 3 oz., 2 dr. of red meat
> > 1 oz., 14 dr. of fish
> > 3 oz., 11 dr. of eggs
> > 4 3/4 jills of milk
> > 1 tsp. of butter
> > 1 lbs., 4 oz. of cereal products
> > 6 lbs., 1 oz. of potatoes (!)
> > 7 oz., 14 dr. of peas, beans, or lentils
> > 3 lbs., 10 oz. of apples (or other fruits)
>
> > If you don't think this is enough to support a person for a day,
> > you *really* need to go on a diet ;)
>
> Ummmm I think you missed the entire point.
I think you did--that's the food per acre per day--by the other
calculation, that should feed two folks...
> Did you happen to notice the *amounts* of those foods you plan to eat
> each and every day? The calory content etc?
>
> Your diet each and every day just from a cursory glance tops about
> ohhhhh 15 pounds? You think you can eat 15 pounds of food in a day,
> bro?
So it goes from being too little food per acre to too much? Which is
it? Am I starving to death, or dying of bellyache?
Anyway, it works out to 11 pounds, 15 oz. plus milk and butter per
day--for two. I'm fairly certain I could eak an existence out of 5
lbs, 15 oz., 8 dr. a day, plus a bit more than a cup of milk and a
shared pat of butter...
> You will be learning from day one and you'll need a hell of a lot of
> food and luck to survive to your first crop.
I'm not writing about me doing it--I'm writing what land should be
able to produce, when dealt with properly.
> By your menu given above, those 8000 will need something over
> 120,000 pounds of food, bro. 60 tons per day.
Actually, 8,000 * 11'15"8 = 47,750 lbs = 23 7/8 tons per day...
> See what I meant about `nearly impossible'?
Not really. What was the population of London or of Rome? How many
tons of food entered each city, each day? Heck, I live in Denver, a
city of some half-million souls (with the surroundings, I believe the
metropolitan area is some million or two). Anyway, that's 1,492 tons
a day. Somehow we manage it. Obviously we have better distribution
systems--but are they 62 times better?
What was the population of England at that point in time? Was there
enough food to support another 8,000 souls? I don't know, and that's
a very good question. However, it's obvious that England can support
another 8,000 over and above its A.D. 990 compliment in general.
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
You can't enslave a free man. Only person can do that to a man
is himself. The most you can do to a free man is to kill him.
--Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
> At the top of the excerpt, Timothy says that an acre can produce
> 13-18 tons per acre OR 1.33-2.25 tons of cereals OR .9-1.33 tons of
> edible produce, etc. When he lists what an average acre can feed
> per day, he seems to be listing ALL of these things together, as
> though they're all growing on the same acre.
The acre's portioned out to various crops. I _think_ I included that
bit. To prove that, note that producing potatoes @ 13-18
tons/acre/year would yield 71 lbs. a day--yet the listed amount was 6
lbs. Cereals yield an average of 1 3/4 tons/acre/year (for 9 1/2 lbs
a day), yet the listed amount is 1 1/4 pounds. And so on and so
forth.
> Am I just reading the numbers wrong, or is he assuming that you can
> fit all that food (18 tons of potatoes, a 1.5 tons of cereals, etc.)
> into half an acre of land?
In theory, one could--but obviously in practice one would have several
acres cut into plots, some land lying fallow &c. And one would more
likely grow a few crops, and barter for the rest. But the point is
that it take an average of half an acre to feed a man, using modern
techniques. Hard to believe when one is used to a 64
sq. ft. vegetable garden, but so is the fact that a mile is so long
when one is used to driving.
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
The Orthodox Church is not only for one nation, one civilisation, one
continent. It is like God Himself, for all and for every place.
--Ignatius IV, Patriarch of Antioch
David Friedman
> What was the population of England at that point in time? Was there
> enough food to support another 8,000 souls? I don't know, and that's
> a very good question. However, it's obvious that England can support
> another 8,000 over and above its A.D. 990 compliment in general.
According to the _Atlas of World Population History_, the population of
England and Wales was a bit over a million at that point.
But remember that land transport was very costly until the railroad. I
remember a figure, I think from Carlo Cippola, that grain doubled its
price in twenty miles.
Which is why I think a high priority is moving to the coast.
--
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com
Richard Lewis
>red...@mindspring.com (Richard Lewis) writes:
>>
>> You really have never done any farming before, right Robert?
>No--but the figures are not mine (rather, Tasmanian gov't figures,
>apparently).
Apparently from someone in the tax office and not the farming office
lol
Go to www.yahoo.com and type in "potatoes yield acre" and see if you
can match those numbers.
Even better, search on organic potato growing and compare those
numbers to the ones the Taz gov stated.
>> First off, you can't raise even a single cow on less than 15% of the
>> acre you propose.
>I believe that the theory is that this is averaged over many acres.
>Obviously, if one just wants to survive, one simply plants potatos,
>which yield something like 16 tons and acre. That's enough to feed
>nearly fifty people for a year...
Or we could simply eat dirt or drink *lots* of water....neither will
keep you alive for long, though. ;)
Sorry, bro. Old, lame joke.
>> If we figure a harvest of 100 bushels, that's a little less than 1/3
>> of a bushel a day that you will be living off of....or one bushel
>> will have to last you 3.65 days in other words. Sounds like a lot?
>Yeah. A bushel is 9 gallons and change, so three gallons of corn a
>day. That's something like 15-20 ears...
>And corn doesn't even produce that much per acre.
>> How about potatoes? You can grow a hell of a lot of potatoes on an
>> acre of land, right? Well under *OPTIMAL* conditions with the best
>> of equipment and labor, you'll get approx 10 tons per acre.
>Where do you get your figures? The ones from the source I used
>claimed about half again as much.
Like I said, www.yahoo.com and type in "potatoes yield acre" or
anything similar.
>> That's over 50 pounds of potatoes a day for a year!!! Figure on
>> 3000-4000 calories a day that you'll be using in growing them tasty
>> taters and you come out with as high as a 12 pound tatertot a day to
>> avoid starvation. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm that sounds delicious. ;)
>Well, that's 12 lbs. of potatoes, leaving 38 a day to spend on
>something other than...
>So far you're proving my point.
I don't think you ever got the point, Robert.
Do this, bro. Go to your local supermarket and pick up three 20 pound
bags of taters and try to eat them all in one week.
I don't know about you, but I'm pretty damned full after eating two
large baked potatoes. We're talking 10-12 pounds of them a day.
>> > With that mix, on average per acre per day you could expect:
>>
>> > 3 oz., 2 dr. of red meat
>> > 1 oz., 14 dr. of fish
>> > 3 oz., 11 dr. of eggs
>> > 4 3/4 jills of milk
>> > 1 tsp. of butter
>> > 1 lbs., 4 oz. of cereal products
>> > 6 lbs., 1 oz. of potatoes (!)
>> > 7 oz., 14 dr. of peas, beans, or lentils
>> > 3 lbs., 10 oz. of apples (or other fruits)
>>
>> > If you don't think this is enough to support a person for a day,
>> > you *really* need to go on a diet ;)
>>
>> Ummmm I think you missed the entire point.
>I think you did--that's the food per acre per day--by the other
>calculation, that should feed two folks...
Bulk isn't the issue, Robert. Or it *is* the issue. Depends on what
side you look at it from.
You can't eat enough potatoes alone to keep you alive in a year simply
because you *can't eat that many potatoes* no matter how many of them
you grow.
No, don't even suggest that the Irish did it. The Irish ate all the
potatoes they could and on average a pound and a quarter of fat a day
in the form of milkfat, butter, the rare cheese, "sausage" etc.
>> Did you happen to notice the *amounts* of those foods you plan to eat
>> each and every day? The calory content etc?
>>
>> Your diet each and every day just from a cursory glance tops about
>> ohhhhh 15 pounds? You think you can eat 15 pounds of food in a day,
>> bro?
>So it goes from being too little food per acre to too much? Which is
>it? Am I starving to death, or dying of bellyache?
No, it remains that you can't grow enough food on one acre to keep you
alive because what you can grow on an acre isn't going to have the
calories necessary to keep you alive.
>Anyway, it works out to 11 pounds, 15 oz. plus milk and butter per
>day--for two. I'm fairly certain I could eak an existence out of 5
>lbs, 15 oz., 8 dr. a day, plus a bit more than a cup of milk and a
>shared pat of butter...
Want me to go back and figure the calories on your menu and divide by
two then? No, you do it. You'll get a better understanding of the
numbers if you research and add the numbers yourself.
>> You will be learning from day one and you'll need a hell of a lot of
>> food and luck to survive to your first crop.
>I'm not writing about me doing it--I'm writing what land should be
>able to produce, when dealt with properly.
Properly? As I said, it's a lot harder than it looks on paper.
Any farmers here in the group want to quote a few yields to Robert?
>> By your menu given above, those 8000 will need something over
>> 120,000 pounds of food, bro. 60 tons per day.
>Actually, 8,000 * 11'15"8 = 47,750 lbs = 23 7/8 tons per day...
Remember, you fed a lot of your acre worth of food to the cow to
produce the milk, Robert. Add in all the numbers you plan to get from
your acre. The milk didn't appear on its own in a bottle on your
doorstep until at least 1375 ;)
60 tons per day, bro for most of a year until your first crop
harvests.
>Not really. What was the population of London or of Rome? How many
>tons of food entered each city, each day? Heck, I live in Denver, a
>city of some half-million souls (with the surroundings, I believe the
>metropolitan area is some million or two). Anyway, that's 1,492 tons
>a day. Somehow we manage it. Obviously we have better distribution
>systems--but are they 62 times better?
Well, figure on one tractor trailer of say corn....how many
horse-drawn wagons is that? How many carts does it take to fill one
railroad car etc?
You bring up the original point that was raised on the survival
newsgroup I originally argued the topic on and that was transported
food vs locally grown.
Your city of Denver, without a constant influx of food from outside,
would suffer a minimum of 80% dead to starvation in any given year.
Not a pleasant topic for this type of group I know, but then again
most folks here have never used an outhouse or a slit latrine and
disregard that aspect of the "romance of the period".
>What was the population of England at that point in time? Was there
>enough food to support another 8,000 souls? I don't know, and that's
>a very good question. However, it's obvious that England can support
>another 8,000 over and above its A.D. 990 compliment in general.
The key point is that you can't do it alone and there, I agree with
you totally.
The UN and the US Army stated during the Serbia problems that any
increase in population beyond 20% per annum would cause the host area
to become refugees themselves. Based on that loose approximation,
you're talking a minimum of about 3,000-4,000 families necessary to
keep your 8,000 alive. Serbia at that time was running an average
crop surplus of 16-18%....but I can't see any 993 family producing a
greater surplus than modern farmers do.
Always a pleasure, Robert!
ral
Judy Gerjuoy
your seeds.
It is rather unlikely if all you have is Pennsic and a small surounding
area, that you will have corn or potatoe seeds. There are probably *some*
potatoes in camps or in the store, but they will have to be saved from
being eaten and it is unlikely that there will be enough to provide you
much for eating for a while.
Ditto a lot of other foodstuffs we take for granted. For intance, except
for the fava (broad) bean, all the other beans are new world.
Jaelle
jae...@radix.net
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely
challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn
between a desire to improve the world, and a desire to enjoy the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day. - E. B. White
Berry Williams
up! Ok, it appears that this has indeed become Thought Experiment, Phase 2.
So much for "NOT" resurecting anything....
It would appear, as much from the renewed discussion as the words of Harold
Groot, that there are *still* two camps, one convinced of our survival, the
other convinced of our eminent demise. My personal thoughts are that there
would be a dramatic drop in the population through both demise and
departure. Most people dependent on medications would perish, and there
would be those who would see better opportunity on their own. Food would be
a primary issue, but the idea of a 3000 calorie diet is comical, and people
are overlooking the resilience of the human animal. We're also forgetting
that 80%+ of Medevial population is actively involved in agriculture - we
would *all* go to work to feed ourselves, and manage the rest of the
projects on the side, with very few exceptions. Richard, I lived in rural
Appalachia, have lived for weeks at a stretch w/o electricity, running
water, and nothing more than a woodstove to heat and cook on. I *have*
hoed, by hand, about 1/3 acre. It was, by no means, fun, but I did it in
under 2 days, and didn't have "puss dripping" from my hands afterwards, just
very sore muscles. I contend that we would be undernourished and
overworked, but that the vast majority of us would survive. Cariadoc has
suggested the most reasonable proposition I've seen, head quickly and
deliberately to the sea. We might get *very* tired of seafood, but we
wouldn't starve, and the world would open to us. As for the value of the
parking lot, lets remember, Long Island was traded for junk jewelry (I know,
it's an exageration, but the point's still valid). Then there's the
military issue. We have some brilliant military minds in the SCA, and
plenty of 'grunts' who would carry out orders. We would have advanced
weapons, highly advanced tactics, and very little hesitation to apply them
where needed. We would also have the sense to realize that 'plundering the
countryside' is only viable for hunter/gatherer sized groups, and armies
_must have support_. Therefore, the only sensible military position is one
of defense, at least initially. Again, let us not forget that military
force is but *One* political tool....:)
After 'staying fed', I see our own internal politics as our worst enemy. We
would need to agree, in rather short order, on a course of action, and we
tend to be rather opinionated (just read this newsgroup!!). I admit, I'm an
optomist, and like to believe that the group at large would agree to the
leadership of someone like Cariadoc (honest opinion of ability), and not
some egotistical fighter who thinks that winning Crown Tournament makes them
something other than a good fighter, but I know that the process would be
ugly, factional, and, in some cases, destructive. But I still think we
would survive it. Every one of us can trace our ancestry into the middle
ages. Ultimately, we *are* what they produced. I do not see, in any of the
arguements, that we could not repeat ourselves.
Since there doesn't appear to have been a concensus in the original thread,
and I started this one with the goal of finding one, perhaps we should set
that for a goal now, or at least determine if one is possible. Above are my
opinions, Richard (glad you're enjoying this topic:)seems to head the
'failure' camp. Where do we go from here?
Alain
"Berryjw" <ber...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:U30g9.3469$LG4....@eagle.america.net...
> First, I'm NOT trying to resurect this! I'm interested in any conclusions
> that might have been drawn all those years ago.
>
> The premise, as I remember it, was - Take Pennsic (then only around 8000
> people), and move it onto Salisbury Plain, circa 500 years ago. I believe
> we included the parking lot for the sake of materiel. Now describe what
> happens.
>
> The primary question is - Do we survive? Disease and hunger are the big
> issues, with internal strife leading to demise following behind. The
> secondary question becomes - How do we effect History?
>
> For those interested, part of what brought me back to this is a book,
> _1632_, by Eric Flint. He moves an entire West Virginia town (complete
with
> power plant) into the midst of the 30 Years War. If he wasn't at least
> lurking here during those days, he should have been. (Mr. Flint, if
you're
> out there, take a bow.) The story is about as balanced as it could be and
> still get published, and the characterizations are wonderful.
>
> Meanwhile, back at the rialto, my question is - did this thread of old
ever
> reach any conclusions and, if so, what were they?
>
> Bj
> "JE Anderson" <eir...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
> news:%GSf9.306987$Ag2.15...@news2.calgary.shaw.ca...
> > That was before my time here - what was the scheme?
> >
> > Eirika
> >
>
>
w...@buckeye.cb.lucent.com
Well I liked the fellow who *immediately* headed off toward the
civilized regions in southern Spain....
Since I bring my forge and tools to Pennsic my goal was to place myself
under the protection of a *local* noble as a smith able to work all that
scrap on the "hoof/wheel". My Pennsic "tent" could also be adapted for
year round occupation.
The problem is with language. *very* few of us speak any of the local
dialects.
wilelm will smith for food---especially that lovely ham that was at the
vigil Saturday...
--
Best Regards,
W.Thomas Powers
Robin Carroll-Mann
wrote:
>Ditto a lot of other foodstuffs we take for granted. For intance, except
>for the fava (broad) bean, all the other beans are new world.
>
>Jaelle
The lentil, the green pea, and the chickpea are also Old World
legumes.
Brighid ni Chiarain (mka Robin Carroll-Mann)
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
To email me, remove the fish
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
> >
> > > You really have never done any farming before, right Robert?
>
> > No--but the figures are not mine (rather, Tasmanian gov't figures,
> > apparently).
>
> can match those numbers.
Using Google, which is far, far better, I found
<http://www.nass.usda.gov/nv/as1001.htm>. Scrolling towards the end,
I find a record high potato crop. In Nevada, they produced 22 1/2
tons/acre; other figures there work out to 19 tons/acre as record
highs and 18 1/2 tons/acre as last year's yield. That makes me think
that my (actually, Mr. Little's) 12-18 tons/acre is fairly sound.
That same page gives figures for wheat production across the US: 40.2
bushels/acre. I believe that a bushel of wheat is sixty pounds, so
that is 1 ton, 412 pounds per acre--enough to make a _lot_ of bread.
Barley was produced at 90 bushels/acre and is 48 pounds to the bushel,
or 2 tons, 320 lbs. of barley per acre. These are both well within
the quoted `1 1/3-2 1/4 tons per acre' for cereals.
From <http://www.usda.gov/nass/pubs/trackrec/track02d.htm#dry>, one
sees that in 2001 `dry edible beans' produced 1,572 pounds per acre,
or about 3/4 ton--something less than the `9/10-1 1/3 tons per acre' I
had quoted, but of approximately the same order of magnitude.
From <http://www.usda.gov/nass/pubs/trackrec/track02a.htm#corn>, one
sees that in 2001 corn was produced at a rate of 138.2 bushels/acre,
or (at 56 lbs. to a bushel) 3 tons, 1,728 lbs. per acre.
From <http://www.virginiaapples.org/facts/>, an acre of apple trees
yields about 700 bushels, or 14 tons, 1,400 lbs. per acre (at 42
lbs. to the bushel). The quoted figure was 13 tons per acre.
Are you still uncertain regarding the veracity of my figures?
> Even better, search on organic potato growing and compare those
> numbers to the ones the Taz gov stated.
A Canadian document from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Fisheries
at <http://fbminet.ca/bc/pfp/Ent.pdf/orgpot.pdf> assumes an average
yield of 12 tons per acre of organic potatoes. Still within the
bounds of acceptable, don't you think?
A study of organic beans at
<http://www.ent.iastate.edu/ipm/icm/2002/6-3-2002/orgbeanman.html> has
a low figure of 36 bushels per acre, which is respectable.
At <http://www.eat2k.org/research/yield_comparisons.html>, they quote
several figures. The lowest is 76 bushels/acre of corn, or 2 tons,
256 lbs. per acre. Still not to shabby.
The page at
<http://www.sfc.ucdavis.edu/pubs/SFNews/Spring98/apples.html>
estimates a yield of 13 tons of organic apples per acre. From the
analysis, I guess that they're more expensive to produce, but about as
many are, actually, produced.
> > Obviously, if one just wants to survive, one simply plants
> > potatos, which yield something like 16 tons and acre. That's
> > enough to feed nearly fifty people for a year...
>
> Or we could simply eat dirt or drink *lots* of water....neither will
> keep you alive for long, though. ;)
A bellyful of potatoes will keep you alive long enough to walk to the
fellow who grows apples and trade up...
> No, it remains that you can't grow enough food on one acre to keep
> you alive because what you can grow on an acre isn't going to have
> the calories necessary to keep you alive.
As I think I've shown above, a truly incredible amount of food can be
produced on a single acre. A baked potato has about 456 BTU and
weighs about a pound, maybe. That means that one acre will produce
20,536,060 BTU! Assuming a standard working 11,900 BTU a day diet
(4,348,406 a year), that's enough energy to keep 4 1/2 men alive.
Of course, a more varied diet is necessary, so we grow less productive
crops, and aim for 2 men per acre. None of this is rocket science.
> > Anyway, it works out to 11 pounds, 15 oz. plus milk and butter per
> > day--for two. I'm fairly certain I could eak an existence out of
> > 5 lbs, 15 oz., 8 dr. a day, plus a bit more than a cup of milk and
> > a shared pat of butter...
>
> Want me to go back and figure the calories on your menu and divide
> by two then?
Well, I already divided by two to get the nearly 6 lbs. a day of food.
If that menu doesn't look like enough to you, I _really_ think you
need a diet...
For the original figures, per acre one can expect:
o 3 oz., 2 dr. of red meat
About 1,050 BTU.
o 1 oz., 14 dr. of fish
250 BTU
o 3 oz., 11 dr. of eggs
219 BTU
o 4 3/4 jills of milk
1,414 BTU
o 1 tsp. of butter
132 BTU
o 1 lbs., 4 oz. of cereal products
7,143 BTU
o 6 lbs., 1 oz. of potatoes
34,643 BTU
o 7 oz., 14 dr. of peas, beans, or lentils
2,083 BTU
o 3 lbs., 10 oz. of apples (or other fruits)
3,452 BTU
Which works out to 50,386 BTU/day. Cut in half, that's 25,193 BTU a
day--or over twice what a man working a hard day needs. Seems to me,
then, that one could possibly go to as many as 3 or even 4 men per
acre.
> No, you do it. You'll get a better understanding of the numbers if
> you research and add the numbers yourself.
Interestingly enough, I have.
> Any farmers here in the group want to quote a few yields to Robert?
My figures come from government agricultural agencies and university
reports (with a single pro-organic site for a single stat).
> Remember, you fed a lot of your acre worth of food to the cow to
> produce the milk, Robert.
There's not one cow and one acre. There's a lot of acres and a few
cows. Maybe only one--I didn;t work that part out. The point is that
a cow must ingest x amount of energy to produce y amount of milk each
day, and that, averaged out over enough acres, one can get about a
pint of milk per day from an acre of land, and get a lot of other
foodstuffs as well.
Remember, we're just discussing the amount of energy one can extract
per unit area of land--nothing more or less. Or at least I'm not.
Even adding in some incredible inefficiencies, it's really not that
bad. Lots of work, sure. But so's my current line of work:-)
> Add in all the numbers you plan to get from your acre.
Sigh--it's not just one acre. I'm averaging across dozens of acres to
demonstrate the average yield per.
> The UN and the US Army stated during the Serbia problems that any
> increase in population beyond 20% per annum would cause the host
> area to become refugees themselves.
The population of England ca. 900 was 1 million. 8,000 more would be
not even a 1% increase...
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
`We're ten parsecs from Regina, we've got a full tank of LH-two, a half
pack of cigarettes, I've dimmed the lights, and we're wearing sunglasses.'
`Let's jump.' --Leslie Bates
Zebee Johnstone
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net> <ru...@4dv.net> wrote:
>
>Using Google, which is far, far better, I found
><http://www.nass.usda.gov/nv/as1001.htm>. Scrolling towards the end,
>I find a record high potato crop. In Nevada, they produced 22 1/2
>tons/acre; other figures there work out to 19 tons/acre as record
>highs and 18 1/2 tons/acre as last year's yield. That makes me think
>that my (actually, Mr. Little's) 12-18 tons/acre is fairly sound.
>
Difficulty is... what's different, then and now?
Way back in the mists of time, my family owned a wheat block. We used
mdoern fertiliser and weedkiller, we ploughed with machines, we reaped
with machines... But most importantly we *sowed* with machines.
Meaning we could get closepacked rows of wheat, and a very high seed
to plant ratio. If you have skilled ploughmen you can plough with
horses as well as you can with machines, but they have to be skilled,
it ain't easy even with a machine. The sowing is the trick, I doubt
you will get the same yield from broadcast as you will with a decent
sower, if only because you can't reliably make rows broadcast, which
means weedcontrol is hard.
I think to make a better comparison you would have to look for
figures from close to the time.
A quick google gets: http://www.hyw.com/Books/History/Agricult.htm
"Farming was a matter of numbers. While most peasant farmers may have
been illiterate, they knew how to count. They knew that wheat would
yield 250 to 300 liters of grain per acre (modern famring methods, on
the same land, yield over 1,500 liters of grain per acre.) Barley would
bring 700-720 liters per acre. The higher yield for barley was partially
the nature of the plant, plus the fact that you put 72 liters of seed
into each acre of wheat and 144 liters per acre of barley. Oats yielded
360-400 liters an acre, for 108 liters of seed. Peas, an important diet
suppllement and protien source, gave 300-340 liters per acre, for 108
liters of seed. Flax and hemp was also grown, to provide rawmaterial
for linen and rope."
So... I dunno your modern figures are really useful.
Something in the back of my mind says that Coke(?) started an
agricultural revolution in the late 1700s, with not only machines but
with whole new ideas about fertilisation and irrigation. A quick google
gets http://www.essaybank.co.uk/free_coursework/1857.html which says
things like
"New farming techniques consisted of improvements in crop rotation, soil
fertilisation, and selective breeding allied with the development of new
machinery. Four names are commonly associated with these innovations;
Jethro Tull (1674-1741) is best remembered for the invention of the seed
drill which planted in rows rather than broadcasting, thus allowing hoeing
between the rows. [...] Improved methods of manuring also improved crop
yields. "
(useful info from a cheater's site... dear me!)
Now, some of the things that made the agrarian revolution, our Pennsic
people know about. Selective breeding for example, although that takes
a few years! They might know they need a seed drill, but hands up those
who know what one looks like!
They might know that you need to fertilise the soil, but what with?
The locals are already using manure, what else[1] and how? Quick now,
and no using of reference sources!
Silfren
[1] "And now a word from the Country Party... Superphospate bounty!"
An old Naked Vicar Show joke, which won't make sense to anyone not a)
australian and b) over 35. Superphosphate is birdshit to its friends,
but it's not that easy to find in England in the concentrations requred.
So, without using any reference materials, what did Coke use?
Greycat Sharpclaw
Newman) wrote:
>David Friedman <dd...@best.com> wrote in message news:<ddfr-EFD949.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net>...
>> As best I recall, it was to England a thousand years back. One relevant
>> consideration was that there were people there with whom we could trade.
>> As some posters pointed out, the parking lot represented a fortune in
>> metal and glass.
>
>If the time-travellers get the parking lot, then after the short term
>selling of scrap as treasure, in the medium term they can sell
>cobbled-together radios as Force Multipliers From Hell to people who
>have big enough empires, armies, or commercial enterprises that it
>pays them to support thousands of artisans in order to increase
>efficiency by 20-50%.
>
>In the longer term, the time travellers might get to where they can
>make vacuum tube radios from scratch, which I (perhaps
>optimistically?) think is both within the realm of possibilities for
>8000 SCAers, and is all by itself enough of a force multiplier in a
>1002 AD context that it'd sustain a community of a few thousand
>artisans and a few thousand hangers on.
The biggest problem with manufacturing radios, as I see it, would be
the batteries. Many Scadians know how to make batteries, true, but
we'd have problems getting the raw materials, and in making the
batteries light enough to be carried by already over-burdened troops.
And other forms of electric generation would be even more cumbersome,
and not practical for an army.
I might see a *static* communication as possible, say castle to castle
to spread alarms quickly, but supplying an army in the field soes not
seem practical.
------
Emrys Cador
Barony of Settmour Swamp
East Kingdom
Remove "nospam" in the address to reply
Anthony J. Bryant
> I might see a *static* communication as possible, say castle to castle
> to spread alarms quickly, but supplying an army in the field soes not
> seem practical.
>
Heck, it took the British until the 18th century to come up with the idea for relay towers and a sort of
semaphore system (to guard the coast). We could do that easily. We don't need so much the technology as the
insight that the intervening centuries have given us (e.g., canned food, iron rations, semaphore signals,
advanced cryptography, etc.).
Effingham
Zebee Johnstone
Anthony J. Bryant <ajbr...@indiana.edu> wrote:
>
>Heck, it took the British until the 18th century to come up with the idea for relay towers and a sort of
>semaphore system (to guard the coast). We could do that easily. We don't need so much the technology as the
>insight that the intervening centuries have given us (e.g., canned food, iron rations, semaphore signals,
>advanced cryptography, etc.).
>
And the mindset to use them.
Note that the first thing thought of was modern tech. "but of course
radio and batteries and electricity and petrol are easy!".
They already knew about basic signalling - beacons were lit to tell
of the Armarda. What they didn't know was the idea of a code of
signals that can tell arbitrary things.
For example... invent the naval flag code early.
What medical knowledge is useful? Remember that Harvey and the idea of
the circulation of the blood is post period. Don't get too hung up on
making penicillin unless you know how Florey did it with bedpans.
Sorry, most bread molds won't cut it :) But we do know about
cleanliness, that's got to be big for success as a quack. No
reference materials... quick, who knows how to synthesise ether?
Anesthesia is a big thing if you can do it!
Silfren
--
Work to ride, ride to work!
NSW Ride To Work day Wed 23rd October
- part of Motorcycle Awareness week
At least one part of the working day should be fun!
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> Quick, who knows how to synthesise ether? Anesthesia is a big thing
> if you can do it!
Well, it's not either, but saccharomyces plus sugar yields a fairly
useful anaesthetic (an-everything-ic, really)...
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
I have sustained a continual bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have
not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion,
otherwise the garrison are to be put to the sword if the fort is taken.
I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves
proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender nor retreat.
--William B. Travis
Lady PDC
>They might know that you need to fertilise the soil, but what with?
>The locals are already using manure, what else[1] and how? Quick now,
>and no using of reference sources!
>
>Silfren
Crushed eggshells & ground bone are two that I remember from when I researched
what they used in period several years ago.
Constance
John McCallum
news:3D8484B6...@sympatico.ca...
volumes of books, mostly text books on old ways of doing things.
If you could make printing presses bibles and classical texts would be worth
a lot of money in those days.
Zebee Johnstone
John McCallum <john...@tpg.com.au> wrote:
>One thing people are fogeting is that SCA people tend to carry around large
>volumes of books, mostly text books on old ways of doing things.
Carry around? What's in your pocket right now?
What's in your tent at Pennsic?
How many books on agriculture that give *details*?
Silfren
Richard Lewis
>The biggest problem with manufacturing radios, as I see it, would be
>the batteries. Many Scadians know how to make batteries, true, but
>we'd have problems getting the raw materials, and in making the
>batteries light enough to be carried by already over-burdened troops.
>And other forms of electric generation would be even more cumbersome,
>and not practical for an army.
>I might see a *static* communication as possible, say castle to castle
>to spread alarms quickly, but supplying an army in the field soes not
>seem practical.
Small, lightweight radio receivers are easy, though....and a
nation-wide system of spark-gap transmitters is easy as well.
Receivers can be made from a small shim of blued steel and a paperclip
as any ex-military folks here can tell you. Making a standard
receiver for military use is just a matter of making a small box and
adjusting the units....and training one person in their use.
ral
Richard Lewis
>Are you still uncertain regarding the veracity of my figures?
Not at all in terms of record modern yields, Robert. Never have been.
You seem to be stuck on record yields and modern yields vs common
yields and organic yields, though.
Common yields today, most farmers will average 8-12 tons and that's
with the absolute best of modern techniques and equipment. Do away
with fertilizers and irrigation and you're talking a lot less than
modern yields. Non-hybridized seeding alone will cut 30% of your
yield.
If you're up to it, try researching Irish yields before and after the
Great Famine and those will more closely approximate your possible
yields. The time I did, I was seeing 4-6 tons per acre yields.
See, the prob is that you are thinking "if I take a plot of land and
plant it in 993, I will get just as many tons per acre as today's
farmers do". It isn't possible.
Modern techniques, chemicals, hybridized seeds etc account for more
than 50% of the yield we have today. Back then, you won't have it.
>> No, it remains that you can't grow enough food on one acre to keep
>> you alive because what you can grow on an acre isn't going to have
>> the calories necessary to keep you alive.
>As I think I've shown above, a truly incredible amount of food can be
>produced on a single acre. A baked potato has about 456 BTU and
>weighs about a pound, maybe. That means that one acre will produce
>20,536,060 BTU! Assuming a standard working 11,900 BTU a day diet
>(4,348,406 a year), that's enough energy to keep 4 1/2 men alive.
>Of course, a more varied diet is necessary, so we grow less productive
>crops, and aim for 2 men per acre. None of this is rocket science.
I'm beginning to assume that it *is* rocket science*, Robert.
As I've said, I challenge you to go to your local market and buy 60
pounds of potatoes and eat them in a week. If you do that, I think
you'll get the point.
Unless you fry them at every meal to add fat calories, you will slowly
starve by eating potatoes.
>Which works out to 50,386 BTU/day. Cut in half, that's 25,193 BTU a
>day--or over twice what a man working a hard day needs. Seems to me,
>then, that one could possibly go to as many as 3 or even 4 men per
>acre.
Twice? If you didn't know, you are probably eating 2500 cals a day
most days on just what you're doing now. Stress burns cals at an
enormous rate....that's why modern military diets are 4,000 cals a
day.
If you think a primitive farmer can get by on less than 3,000 cals a
day, like I said, I challenge you to do it.
>My figures come from government agricultural agencies and university
>reports (with a single pro-organic site for a single stat).
Reinforcing flawed data with other data makes the original data less
flawed?
You can't raise a cow on less than 2 acres for an entire year. You
can drop the meat and milk and butter from your diet. Add in one pig
and two goats and you're closer to correct.
You can't raise 12 or more tons of potatoes on an organic
farm....subtract about half of your numbers and you'll be more
correct. Hell, subtract them all....you don't have potatoes. No corn
and no beans, either. (Beans btw are a terrific survival food....high
in cals and nourishing) Any seeds you can get are going to be
non-hybridized versions....figure on 50% modern yields at best.
You're on Salisbury Plain....you don't have running water. Subtract
your fish and pretty much all your irrigation. Apple trees are also
rare....subtract your four pounds of apples.
What are you left with? A diet of stewed lentils, the ocassional
porkchop, peas, onions, herbs of all sorts, the ocassional chicken and
egg etc. Weird....pretty much covers all contemporary accounts of
peasant fare....and it wasn't all grown on one acre.
>> Remember, you fed a lot of your acre worth of food to the cow to
>> produce the milk, Robert.
>There's not one cow and one acre. There's a lot of acres and a few
>cows. Maybe only one--I didn;t work that part out. The point is that
>a cow must ingest x amount of energy to produce y amount of milk each
>day, and that, averaged out over enough acres, one can get about a
>pint of milk per day from an acre of land, and get a lot of other
>foodstuffs as well.
If you make it several acres and few cows etc, doesn't that disprove
the "one acre per man" theory?
You plan for milk from a cow not grown on your acre, meat from it, a
year's silage etc but it's not all on one acre? What exactly are we
arguing then?
>Remember, we're just discussing the amount of energy one can extract
>per unit area of land--nothing more or less. Or at least I'm not.
>Even adding in some incredible inefficiencies, it's really not that
>bad. Lots of work, sure. But so's my current line of work:-)
That's my point, Robert. Non-farmers and government officials can
look at an acre and say "this amount of food will come from it" but
farmers inevitably laugh. They know that if those numbers all came
from that acre in one year, the acre would be barren for the next
twenty years. Figure on 50% of those numbers per year and you're
closer to realistic.
>Sigh--it's not just one acre. I'm averaging across dozens of acres to
>demonstrate the average yield per.
Come on Robert....I'm arguing a man can't live off one acre and you
start being realistic and tossing facts into it. Stop that! ;)
>> The UN and the US Army stated during the Serbia problems that any
>> increase in population beyond 20% per annum would cause the host
>> area to become refugees themselves.
>The population of England ca. 900 was 1 million. 8,000 more would be
>not even a 1% increase...
8,000 represents a minimum of 3,000-4,000 *LOCAL* families to support
those 8,000 without everyone starving the first year. England's pop
has nothing to do with it. Were there even 3,000 families living on
Salisbury Plain at that time? If not, you're talking about disrupting
300 square miles of agriculture to feed you all.
ral
Richard Lewis
>Richard (glad you're enjoying this topic:)seems to head the
>'failure' camp. Where do we go from here?
lol Berry! :)))))
I'm not suggesting failure at all! Far from it! I'm just saying that
it takes a lot more work and a world of thought to succeed than most
folks want to think.
I retired from the military in 97 where one of my jobs happened to be
the research of and control of refugee problems in wartime. Refugee
lines and the resultant destruction of the infrastructure, if anyone
didn't know, are the number one cause of military defeats on the
strategic scale. Destroy a country's ability to feed its population
and they lose plain and simple.
By dropping even 8,000 folks into an area that has a hard time
supplying its own needs on a year to year scale, you will easily
destroy the infrastructure for dozens of miles around. You can look
at it roughly as "if you have 100 units of food and 100 people....and
drop 100 more people into the area, 100 people are still going to
starve."
Smaller-scale with say one or two people....chances are that both of
them would survive. Larger numbers simply means larger numbers of
dead.
It can be done....but just not on the scale that most folks here seem
to think.
Btw, why did you say 3,000 cals a day was laughable?
ral
w...@buckeye.cb.lucent.com
>>The locals are already using manure, what else[1] and how? Quick now,
>>and no using of reference sources!
>
>what they used in period several years ago.
Marl and I can identify it too!
Thomas
Julie
The thing that no one, it seems, has touched on yet is what do we do
*after* the initial crunch is over? Yes, there are going to be problems
in the short-term. I will not argue that, because it's true. However,
there will (hopefully) be a middle- and long-term. No one seems to have
discussed them in this thread (there were a few scattered comments in
the old one). I don't expect anyone to answer all the questions I'm
raising here, but I'd like to open the floor to discussing this aspect
of the "Great Thought Experiment" as well.
Let's assume for the sake of argument, that five years down the road you
have between one quarter and one third of the original Pennsictown
population left actually in Pennsictown and the surrounding area, with
the rest lost either by desertion or death. So you have 2,000 - 4,000
people, who (also for sake of argument) have worked out their internal
differences enough that they can actually get something done as a group.
Also (once more for sake of argument) they have been able to
communicate enough with the majority of the leaders of the surrounding
towns to ensure peaceful co-existence. The initial crunch has somehow
passed, and now it's time to start planning for the long haul. What do
you see us doing?
Do we hunker down like the other villages around us and set up a mostly
agriculture-based community, with the best tradespeople among us plying
their trades? Do we exist as a barter town, bartering our (hopefully
more useful) modern trades or modern equipment and subsist off the towns
around us? Do we send out "ambassadors" to the surrounding large towns
and trade our knowledge (as some have suggested) for food and support?
Do we work to produce period techniques and technology or re-invent the
modern ones we know? Are we still on the Plain we landed in, or have we
moved (as Duke Cariadoc suggested) to the coast?
What about shelter? Most people at Pennsic live in tents, which is fine
for the short term, but we are probably going to want something more
permanent once we settle down. How are we going to get timber to build
all those houses, and does anyone know how to build a house properly?
(I'm sure there are some people.) Do we aim for having one house per
family, or do we conserve wood (and therefore be able to use it for
other things, or save on transportation costs) by having multiple-family
homes? Do we build a church (or other form of temple), or do we leave
ourselves at the SCA standard of "no public religious worship at an
event"? And if we don't have a church, how will the locals see us?
Heck, how will they view our Protestants, or Jews, or Pagans?
Beyond subsistence, let's talk children! Do we inter-marry between
ourselves, or start marrying the locals (perhaps even for diplomatic
purposes)? Do we accept locals into Pennsictown, or do we slowly
trickle out into the surrounding populace?
What about government? Have we set one up (I think it will somehow be
inevitable)? What form will it take, that of the locals (mostly a
feudal aristocracy), or democratic (not just "nobles" voting on things)?
And if democratic, how will this be received by people surrounding us?
What will be criteria for rule? I can only assume that if we're not a
martial society, we will want to pick other methods than a Crown
Tourney. How and to what extent will we deal with other villages and
towns, and their lords?
And further long-term: how will we maintain our solidarity, and do we
want to? If there is a lot of inter-mixing going on, how long will it
take (if ever) for us to become assimilated into the surrounding
cultures? What about our children and grandchildren? Do we pass on
modern knowledge that will probably be of no use (computers, or even
modern physics that we can't demonstrate without modern equipment)? How
do we pass on knowledge at all? Yes, I know we have books, but we won't
have much paper once it runs out unless someone wants to be in charge of
making it, and even then, it won't be nearly as much as we're used to.
Perhaps our bards can help out here by preserving oral knowledge.
Just questions to think about, and I'm sure others have more. What do
you think?
Katherine Ashwoode,
mka: Julie
Berry Williams
have thought that obvious! I know of one person who deliberately limits his
diet to just over half that (1700-1800), and is doing research which seems
to indicate that you'll live longer this way. 3000 calories is just plain
decadent, we could - and would - survive on much less.
I've never said it would be easy, or comfortable, or without casualties.
And I agree, surviving until the first harvest would be brutal, which is why
I agree with Cariadoc, we should run to the sea, it will sustain us until we
have those infrastructures in place. You and Robert are arguing extremes,
when I feel truth would be somewhere in the middle. We would bring enough
knowlege of modern farm techniques to *dramatically* increase yields over
the norms of the day. Someone mentioned a seed drill - yes, I believe we
would have neat, tidy rows of crops in an era when tilling was non-existant
and broadcast (scattering on the surface) was the norm for planting. Yes, I
also believe that, initially, we couldn't come close to the modern yields
Robert is quoting (although I am truly impressed with your research,
Robert:). The depth of knowlege existing at any given Pennsic (most any
given SCA event!) is amazing. As best I can tell, at least one third of the
participants are able-bodied fighters. There is a large corp of archers.
There are a huge number of people like yourself, current or former military.
Membership runs from energetic college kids to multiple phD's, with a wide
range of diciplines. The significant element to all of this is *not* the
specific disiplines, it is the reality that most of these people DO! Most
of the populace will see a problem, and attack it with action. Of course
there will be failures, but we (the SCA) are not a group to sit around and
cry about it, we'll get back up and keep plugging. This is what will put us
above most everyone else, and it's also one of our significant problems.
Because so many of us are 'doers', we're going to have a hard time agreeing
how to 'do'. I'm not sure how this would work out, but prefer to think that
it would, out of pure, un-empirical faith.
Oh, for the record, I'm an under-educated field Archaeologist working in the
North American Southeast on primarily prehistoric sites, with an interest in
historic North American funery (all of it). I'm also an Army brat, a cop's
kid, and a preachers son (you tell me why I'm not incarcerated!!:) Not the
most impressive credentials (by miles), but I'm used to looking at things
from the perspective of "why did someone do 'this' with 'that', and what is
it's corelation to how they were living (surviving)?"
Alain/Bj
"Richard Lewis" <red...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:am726g$2n5$1...@slb4.atl.mindspring.net...
Richard Lewis
>To answer the 3000 calorie question first - with your credentials I would
>have thought that obvious! I know of one person who deliberately limits his
>diet to just over half that (1700-1800), and is doing research which seems
>to indicate that you'll live longer this way. 3000 calories is just plain
>decadent, we could - and would - survive on much less.
Maybe it's my background with the numbers and the manpower involved in
achieving those numbers, but I just don't understand, Alain.
Lower calory diets are pretty danged common if you want to lose
weight....and lose weight is what you tend to do when you're burning
more calories than you consume.
It's easy to get by on 1700 calories a day if you lead a sedentary
life with little to no physical activity, but it takes calories to do
work and without them, you don't work for long.
For example, hauling or hand-pumping water for two hours will burn
approx 750 calories for the majority of the folks here. Hoeing for
the same period is another 850. One hour with a wheelbarrow is
another 450. You just passed 2,000 cals doing just those three
things.
Can we all agree that those three things will be necessary each and
every day during the growing season?
Feeding one pig and two goats is another
200....sewing/embroidery/general light craft work is another 150 cals
per hour....baking a single loaf of bread is another
200....bathing/brushing your teeth/shaving (men of course) is another
200....building a fire in a fireplace is another 100....chopping and
carrying the fuel to build that one fire is another 200 etc.
Just one day of general work and you already burned more than 1,000
more.
Can we all agree that those few chores will be necessary each and
every day? If we can, can we also agree that someone eating only
2,000 cals a day will lose on average 1/4 of a pound a day just doing
those basic chores? That's just over 90 pounds of weightloss in a
year, btw.
So yes, Alain, we can easily get by on lower amounts of calories but
not if we plan to do much of anything. The person you quoted as
eating 1,700 calories a day will be ohhhh about 120 pounds lighter at
the end of the year just by doing those basic chores stated above.
All the numbers are off the top of my head....if anyone wants to check
them, I welcome it.
And yeppers, Alain, I am enjoying the heck out of this discussion! I
might lurk for months at a time, but the odd thread here and there
makes this place worthwhile :)
You don't even want to get me started on the sociological aspects of
it all lol
All the best!
ral
Mike Andrews
: What medical knowledge is useful? Remember that Harvey and the idea of
: the circulation of the blood is post period. Don't get too hung up on
: making penicillin unless you know how Florey did it with bedpans.
: Sorry, most bread molds won't cut it :) But we do know about
: cleanliness, that's got to be big for success as a quack. No
: reference materials...
: quick, who knows how to synthesise ether?
Ethanol and sulfuric acid, IIRC. But I don't have many of those
in my head. $FIANCEE does, but she's a biochemist. I'm not all
that sure how to remove byproducts and incomplete reaction
products, either. I _do_ know it's hideously flammable.
: Anesthesia is a big thing if you can do it!
It's an _enormous_ thing.
To synthesize chloroform ... Oh, yes! Bleach and acetone and ice
more or less. Don't try this at home.
--
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software
engineer.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
Doug Houston
"Zebee Johnstone" <ze...@zip.com.au> wrote in
> They might know they need a seed drill, but hands up those
> who know what one looks like!
>
We have some very intelligent people in the SCA. We also have skilled
craftsmen. It would not take very long to go from the principle what a seed
drill does, to making some equivalent device that does the same thing,
albeit in some different way, even if we had no idea what it looks like.
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> > Are you still uncertain regarding the veracity of my figures?
>
> Not at all in terms of record modern yields, Robert.
That's good to hear.
> You seem to be stuck on record yields and modern yields vs common
> yields and organic yields, though.
Well, that's mostly because each year gets better and better. Over
the last dozen years (1990-2001), the potato crop has gone from a low
of 293 cwt/acre in 1990 to a high of 381 cwt/acre (in 2000; 2001 saw a
slight decrease). The average production was 337 cwt/acre (16 tons,
1700 lbs/acre) and the median 341 cwt/acre (17 tons, 100 lbs.).
> Common yields today, most farmers will average 8-12 tons and that's
> with the absolute best of modern techniques and equipment.
Not according to
<http://www.usda.gov/nass/pubs/trackrec/track02d.htm#potatoes>--average
of nearly 17 tons/acre. Or which crop are you referring to?
> Do away with fertilizers and irrigation and you're talking a lot
> less than modern yields. Non-hybridized seeding alone will cut 30%
> of your yield.
All I was talking about was that food for 8,000 is trivial,
considering how much food can be ripped from the ground. I believe
that the mediaeval standard was about an acre and a third per man--but
I could be wrong. However, looking at the modern numbers, where it's
anywhere from half to a quarter acre per man, that sounds decent.
I'm not arguing that a mediaeval farmer will get modern yields, but
rather that feeding 8,000 is not quite the impossible deal I think
you're making it out to be.
Also, I was countering your original `farming is hard' post, which is
slightly off-topic, I know, but I like to correct misinformation.
> Modern techniques, chemicals, hybridized seeds &c. account for more
> than 50% of the yield we have today. Back then, you won't have it.
I'll believe that.
> > That means that one acre will produce 20,536,060 BTU! Assuming a
> > standard working 11,900 BTU a day diet (4,348,406 a year), that's
> > enough energy to keep 4 1/2 men alive.
> >
> > Of course, a more varied diet is necessary, so we grow less
> > productive crops, and aim for 2 men per acre. None of this is
> > rocket science.
>
> I'm beginning to assume that it *is* rocket science*, Robert.
I'm beginning to suspect the same thing.
> As I've said, I challenge you to go to your local market and buy 60
> pounds of potatoes and eat them in a week.
As I've continued to write--including in the quoted bit above--one
grows less productive crops as well, and feed less per acre, but with
more nutrients.
> Unless you fry them at every meal to add fat calories, you will
> slowly starve by eating potatoes.
Slowly die, maybe, as I doubt they've all the nec. nutrients. But it
is _doable_: three potatos for breakfast, three for lunch and 2 1/2
for dinner.
> > Which works out to 50,386 BTU/day. Cut in half, that's 25,193 BTU
> > a day--or over twice what a man working a hard day needs. Seems
> > to me, then, that one could possibly go to as many as 3 or even 4
> > men per acre.
>
> Twice? If you didn't know, you are probably eating 2500 cals a day
> most days on just what you're doing now.
No--I generally eat 1,200-2,000 a day. And I've still a gut.
Prob. 'cause I've gone into starvation mode. Doesn't feel bad,
though, so I really don't mind it.
> If you think a primitive farmer can get by on less than 3,000 cals a
> day, like I said, I challenge you to do it.
Ummm...25,193 BTU/day works out to 6,349 kcal (which is the food
calorie). So, figure two men @ 12,596 BTU/day (or 3,174 kcal).
> You can't raise a cow on less than 2 acres for an entire year.
Never proposed it. What I propose is that, given some land, one can
keep a cow on one part and grow things on other parts and come up with
a truly astounding amount of food. Averaged out over all the land,
one is producing a certain amount of milk per acre, a certain amount
of meat per acre, a certain amount of grain per acre &c.
> Hell, subtract them all....you don't have potatoes.
No? Turning to the Pennsic 993 topic, are there no potatoes at
Pennsic? They do grow on their own. It'll take more than a few years
to get 'em going, but...
Actually, considering the energy/acre contained in potatoes as opposed
to mediaeval crops, I imagine that their introduction would prove
quite revolutionary.
> No corn and no beans, either.
None of those in viable form at Pennsic? No-one has dry beans? I'm
not certain how viable a fresh ear of corn is--is it plantable?
> Any seeds you can get are going to be non-hybridized
> versions...figure on 50% modern yields at best.
What;s the hybridisation process involve? Can it be done with
technique alone? I.e., can we do it, given a year or two (or twelve)?
This raises the interesting question of how much modern farming relies
on technology and how much on technique. The seed drill might be
difficult to reproduce initially, chemical fertilisers will be
well-nigh impossible--but modern crop-rotation methods are easily
reproducable.
Modern apple are grafted on pear stock, I believe. I'm not familiar
with the process, but I imagine that alone could provide us with a
significant amount more apples than the surroundings. Yet another
advantage moderns thrown back would have, given time.
Returning to modern farming:
> If you make it several acres and a few cows etc, doesn't that
> disprove the `one acre per man' theory?
Half an acre per man (or less). And a dozen acres for two dozen men
works out to exactly half an acre per.
> You plan for milk from a cow not grown on your acre, meat from it, a
> year's silage etc but it's not all on one acre?
Milk from a fractional cow, yes.
> What exactly are we arguing then?
That half an acre, using modern technology and techniques, can easily
feed a grown man.
> Non-farmers and government officials can look at an acre and say
> `this amount of food will come from it' but farmers inevitably
> laugh. They know that if those numbers all came from that acre in
> one year, the acre would be barren for the next twenty years.
Crop-rotation is a known science. But as a boy I recall that we used
the same land for our vegetable garden year after year. Our house was
built on an old strawberry farm, and strawberries grew in the corners
years after year. Apple trees are not rotated from one year to the
next (well, I assume that they're not). I see corn grown in the same
fields every year, and it's packed in pretty tightly.
Back to the SCA Throwback:
> 8,000 represents a minimum of 3,000-4,000 *LOCAL* families to
> support those 8,000 without everyone starving the first year.
> England's pop has nothing to do with it. Were there even 3,000
> families living on Salisbury Plain at that time?
If so, they're squashed now...
> If not, you're talking about disrupting 300 square miles of
> agriculture to feed you all.
Actually, at modern yields we're looking at 2,000-3,000 acres (3 1/8
to 6 1/4 sq. miles). At mediaeval yields we're looking at some 10,667
acres (17 sq. miles) of farmland. Not really all that bad.
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
Ah, the 20th century, when the flight from reason crash-landed into
the slaughterhouse. --James Ostrowski
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> Yes, I also believe that, initially, we couldn't come close to the
> modern yields Robert is quoting (although I am truly impressed with
> your research, Robert:).
Just to clarify--most of my figure-quoting has been to demonstrate the
modern farming produces a lot of food, and that even using less
refined techniques & techniques a good deal is reasonable.
But I cannot take credit for the research--a few minutes with Google
can find government crop statistics, standard `calorie' values for
various foods &c. I converted all the various units into something
sensible using the units program from the Free Software Foundation
(which, by the way, drives a nail into the coffin of the
`standard-is-too-hard' arguments). The original quoted figures were
those of a fellow on a mailing list I'm on.
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
As convenient as it is for information to come to us, libraries do have a
valuable side effect: they force all of the smart people to come together
in one place where they can interact with one another.
--Neal Stephenson
Berry Williams
distilled 99%(roughly), is more or less ether, and should work just fine for
anesthesia. Do one of you more knowlegable folks see a problem with this?
Alain/Bj
"Mike Andrews" <mi...@mikea.ath.cx> wrote in message
news:am7jt1$t37$2...@puck.litech.org...
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> For example, hauling or hand-pumping water for two hours will burn
> the same period is another 3,400. One hour with a wheelbarrow is
> another 1,800. You just passed 8,000 BTUs doing just those three
> things.
>
> Can we all agree that those three things will be necessary each and
> every day during the growing season?
Actually, I don't know. I'm not a farmer, and my only experience
growing things has been with a home vegetable garden, which I know is
_not_ the same thing at all. What of farming is annual
(e.g. planting) and what is every day (weeding, perhaps)? What sort
of maintenance is involved with growing food?
I really don't know, which is why I'm asking. What are the energy
requirements of a farmer?
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
One could spend *all day* customising the title bar. Believe me. I speak
from experience. --Matt Welsh
Berry Williams
where it is. No one in 992ad could care less about vast tracks of the areas
in the Middle East that will become oil fields. We know what coal is worth,
and where it's richest on the British Isles. We know how many diamonds are
lurking in South Africa. We know about the entirety of the Americas, what's
there, what to expect, and how to exploit it. We know what democracy is,
have an exceptional grasp of its concept, and how to teach it. Democracy a
valuable commodity? 80% of the population is Not nobility......
Berry Williams
We're making too many assumptions. Average farm, or peasant life in the
middle ages _was_ rough. 14-16 hour days of hard labor. For approximately
16 weeks out of the year! Using period farming techniques, you bust your
ass for planting and harvest, but the workload the rest of the time is
significantly less. Because a) we know about more modern farming b) we're
21st century work-a-holics c) we have a much larger agenda than simple
farming, we're going to be busier. Yes, we're going to fill much of that
extra time, but quite a bit of it will be much more sedentary. I suspect
that the average period farmer lived on fewer calories, put on weight during
the winter/spring, and shed it during summer/fall. Keep in mind the average
life expectancy is 35, (a figure that didn't change in China until the
communist revolution.) In other words, no, I don't think that we would need
3000 calories a day, *year round*. I've only ever seen figures that high
attributed to athletes and infantrymen.
Another significant point here is, we know things about preserving food that
the people of the time haven't even guessed at. This knowlege should be
worth a fair amount in calculating usable food, because we're not going to
be loosing anything close to the same amount to spoilage.
I am interested in the sociological aspects of this, but don't know how much
'real' science we can apply to that.
Alain/Bj
"Richard Lewis" <red...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:am7hv7$cie$1...@slb7.atl.mindspring.net...
Mike Andrews
: Um, I'm by no means a chemist, but I want to remember that grain alcohol, ie
: distilled 99%(roughly), is more or less ether, and should work just fine for
: anesthesia. Do one of you more knowlegable folks see a problem with this?
Damn straight you're not. There's a _HUGE_ problem with it,
to wit:
Ethanol ((CH3 CH2)2 O) is not diethyl ether (CH3 CH2 OH).
Diethyl ether is made by reacting ethanol (known in period) with
sulfuric acid (also known in period, as were most of the mineral
acids) at a temperature of about 130C.
And it's damn dangerous. Don't try it.
--
There was an actual St. Chad. He was an early English abbot, whose claim to
fame was that he was elected bishop of York but his election was nullified
by the archbishop of Canterbury. In other words, we have the perfect patron
of disputed elections. -- Arval d'Espas Nord, in rec.org.sca
Chris CII
<ru...@4dv.net> a écrit dans le message de news:
m3r8fsi...@latakia.dyndns.org... quoting red...@mindspring.com
(Richard Lewis)
> All I was talking about was that food for 8,000 is trivial,
> considering how much food can be ripped from the ground. I believe
> that the mediaeval standard was about an acre and a third per man--but
> I could be wrong. However, looking at the modern numbers, where it's
> anywhere from half to a quarter acre per man, that sounds decent.
Can someone expound on those figures, what were medieval yields ?
These are the crucial figures for the first few years until the improved
methods can be put to use.
> I'm not arguing that a mediaeval farmer will get modern yields, but
> rather that feeding 8,000 is not quite the impossible deal I think
> you're making it out to be.
Here we need another figure, what is the overhead a farmer can make. For
that you need the yields of land, and the workload per acre. If the overhead
is low you will indeed have to call upon a great stretch of land to feed the
8000 persons, if it is high you will be able to nourish them quite easily. I
think it is quite high, else big towns couldn't exist without mobilising
great stretches of farmland.
> Ummm...25,193 BTU/day works out to 6,349 kcal (which is the food
> calorie). So, figure two men @ 12,596 BTU/day (or 3,174 kcal).
Let's say 3000 kcal (around 12000 kJ) are a little low for hard-working
populations, but with 16 000 kJ you are should to be Ok, so we are rather on
a 1,5 man/acre.
> No? Turning to the Pennsic 993 topic, are there no potatoes at
> Pennsic? They do grow on their own. It'll take more than a few years
> to get 'em going, but...
However this is a valid objection, the mass of potatoes which will be saved
for planting will be so low as to need a few years before yielding enough
crop to eat, so a little substraction is on the order.
> Actually, considering the energy/acre contained in potatoes as opposed
> to mediaeval crops, I imagine that their introduction would prove
> quite revolutionary.
Very true for later on. There are two problems, survival and development. If
survival is good in the first years development will be quick, else ...
> > No corn and no beans, either.
>
> None of those in viable form at Pennsic? No-one has dry beans? I'm
> not certain how viable a fresh ear of corn is--is it plantable?
Sorry, a fresh ear of corn is underripe, this is why it is edible. Sowable
corn is hard as popcorn.
> > Any seeds you can get are going to be non-hybridized
> > versions...figure on 50% modern yields at best.
>
> What;s the hybridisation process involve? Can it be done with
> technique alone? I.e., can we do it, given a year or two (or twelve)?
In less than twenty years it can be done, but then again you will be in the
development phase.
> Modern apple are grafted on pear stock, I believe. I'm not familiar
> with the process, but I imagine that alone could provide us with a
> significant amount more apples than the surroundings. Yet another
> advantage moderns thrown back would have, given time.
Sorry, modern edible apples are grafted on crab-apple stock, which is a
technique that could be used if there are modern trees sent back. Otherwise
there will be need to re-develop the modern apple varieties.
> Crop-rotation is a known science. But as a boy I recall that we used
> the same land for our vegetable garden year after year. Our house was
> built on an old strawberry farm, and strawberries grew in the corners
> years after year. Apple trees are not rotated from one year to the
> next (well, I assume that they're not). I see corn grown in the same
> fields every year, and it's packed in pretty tightly.
Sorry to contradict, but strawberries are known to drain the earth and need
to be displaced every 3 to 5 years or their yield drops dramatically. A
vegetable garden is not comparable to a field because it is very much more
labour intensive and uses techniques which can't be scaled up to fields
(except in some regions of China or Japan). And corn can grow every year in
the same place if you fertilise it well, else you should really rotate crops
on a three year period in order not to overtax your land.
> Back to the SCA Throwback:
>
> > 8,000 represents a minimum of 3,000-4,000 *LOCAL* families to
> > support those 8,000 without everyone starving the first year.
> > England's pop has nothing to do with it. Were there even 3,000
> > families living on Salisbury Plain at that time?
That's the crux of the problem. How many people extra can a farmer feed ?
And then how far must one go to get this extra food.
> > If not, you're talking about disrupting 300 square miles of
> > agriculture to feed you all.
>
> Actually, at modern yields we're looking at 2,000-3,000 acres (3 1/8
> to 6 1/4 sq. miles). At mediaeval yields we're looking at some 10,667
> acres (17 sq. miles) of farmland. Not really all that bad.
Disrupting 17 sq. miles of agricultural land is not the solution. You have
to get the food from a far greater space in order not to disrupt the economy
but to trade. In fact this situation is not very different from the roman
colonisation, settling a fort and it's surrounding town in the middle of
nowhere. The Pennsic settlement is nothing more than a new town of 8000
souls. Are there any big towns around the Salisbury plain, and if yes do
these have other farmland around ? Or else you are not disrupting the
agriculture, but the townships, because all the gaudy new things the Pennsic
people will be able to trade might earn them all the food that went to the
local towns.
> --
> Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
> Ah, the 20th century, when the flight from reason crash-landed into
> the slaughterhouse. --James Ostrowski
Salutations, Greetings,
Guiraud Belissen, Chāteau du Ciel, Drachenwald,
Chris CII, Rennes, France
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> Do we hunker down like the other villages around us and set up a
> mostly agriculture-based community, with the best tradespeople among
> us plying their trades?
Nah, that'd be a waste of our talents. With talents and abilities
beyond those of most, we'd hopefully manage to utilitise those talents
and abilities...
> Do we work to produce period techniques and technology or re-invent
> the modern ones we know?
I hope we try to re-invent modern technology. Much of this is
surprisingly doable--on another mailing list I'm on, I've heard of
Vietnamese blacksmiths producing guns on a forge. Not very good ones,
sure--but they were good enough to shoot.
> Do we build a church (or other form of temple), or do we leave
> ourselves at the SCA standard of `no public religious worship at an
> event'?
Well, it'd not be the SCA anymore.
I'd just go to the local church, myself. The English Church of 993
was in communion with Rome which was in communion with Constantinople,
which is good enough for me.
> Yes, I know we have books, but we won't have much paper once it runs
> out unless someone wants to be in charge of making it, and even
> then, it won't be nearly as much as we're used to.
If people want it, there's money to be made producing it. I imagine
that there are some folks in the SCA who know how to produce paper...
And of course the great goal would be to sponsor expeditions to the
New World.
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own
good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of
theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. --John Stuart Mill
Chris CII
"Julie" <j.go...@sympatico.ca> a écrit dans le message de news:
3D8726A7...@sympatico.ca...
> > Where do we go from here?
> Let's assume for the sake of argument, that five years down the road you
> have between one quarter and one third of the original Pennsictown
> population left actually in Pennsictown and the surrounding area, with
> the rest lost either by desertion or death. So you have 2,000 - 4,000
> people, who (also for sake of argument) have worked out their internal
> differences enough that they can actually get something done as a group.
> Also (once more for sake of argument) they have been able to
> communicate enough with the majority of the leaders of the surrounding
> towns to ensure peaceful co-existence. The initial crunch has somehow
> passed, and now it's time to start planning for the long haul. What do
> you see us doing?
>
> Do we hunker down like the other villages around us and set up a mostly
> agriculture-based community, with the best tradespeople among us plying
> their trades? Do we exist as a barter town, bartering our (hopefully
> more useful) modern trades or modern equipment and subsist off the towns
> around us? Do we send out "ambassadors" to the surrounding large towns
> and trade our knowledge (as some have suggested) for food and support?
This is a question which can't be answered by science, but only by reading
about the individual decisions and taking from there. However, from what I
read here on the Rialto I'd say all of these simultaneously.
First, you postulate that we would have 2 to 4000 people left, with the rest
lost to desertion or death. I see it rather like this :
Out of 8000 we would have a few hundred deaths, a big fraction headed out
towards the sea, under the leadership of a few, a big fraction settled on
Pennsictown, hoarding the slowly dwindling high-tech goods, a small but
significant fraction dispersed in the estates of the various nobles, working
either as highly qualified artisans or cunning and crafty advisers, for
wages which will help the Pennsictowners from starvation, and a big
scriptorium leading to dissemination of knowledge and techniques working
hand in hand with the church, not out of religious fervor, but because
church is the largest single political force, and the Pennsictowners will
need all the good-will they can get because of all the non-catholic
population which must be shown under the less evil light possible.
With a little work the fractions would still be in generally good terms with
one-another and cooperating in order to survive.
> Do we work to produce period techniques and technology or re-invent the
> modern ones we know? Are we still on the Plain we landed in, or have we
> moved (as Duke Cariadoc suggested) to the coast?
On that question I hope we would re-invent selectively in order to have a
sustaineble development plan.
> What about shelter? Most people at Pennsic live in tents, which is fine
> for the short term, but we are probably going to want something more
> permanent once we settle down. How are we going to get timber to build
> all those houses, and does anyone know how to build a house properly?
> (I'm sure there are some people.) Do we aim for having one house per
> family, or do we conserve wood (and therefore be able to use it for
> other things, or save on transportation costs) by having multiple-family
> homes?
Knowing the SCA people as the individualists they are on the average, I'd
say a lot of single family homes, and a few collective housings based on
elective affinity, not all built with much timber, there are many techniques
to build depending on what is available at hand, from bricks to wattle and
daub, turf, stone, and large ger-like structures.
>Do we build a church (or other form of temple), or do we leave
> ourselves at the SCA standard of "no public religious worship at an
> event"? And if we don't have a church, how will the locals see us?
> Heck, how will they view our Protestants, or Jews, or Pagans?
Here I think a few religious edifices would very quickly be built, but
probably, in standing with GP&D 6 and sheer common sense when dealing with a
monopolistic catholic church, discreetly out of the way.
Once again let's note that Non-christian would have a better time than
modern christian, except if these could be eloquent enough to sway the local
bishops to make a new brand of english church.
> Beyond subsistence, let's talk children! Do we inter-marry between
> ourselves, or start marrying the locals (perhaps even for diplomatic
> purposes)? Do we accept locals into Pennsictown, or do we slowly
> trickle out into the surrounding populace?
There again with 8000 people I think all these options will be
simultaneously used, but with a majority of inter-marrying, because of the
linguistic and mind-set problem. However I think the community would not be
exclusive and there would be people going native, and natives adopted in the
group. However I do not think marriage as diplomatic chip would be used,
except for furthering personal goals, once again, modern people are much
more individualistic and are less inclined to yield to community needs.
> What about government? Have we set one up (I think it will somehow be
> inevitable)? What form will it take, that of the locals (mostly a
> feudal aristocracy), or democratic (not just "nobles" voting on things)?
> And if democratic, how will this be received by people surrounding us?
> What will be criteria for rule? I can only assume that if we're not a
> martial society, we will want to pick other methods than a Crown
> Tourney. How and to what extent will we deal with other villages and
> towns, and their lords?
Here again we can only deal with pure speculation, but I think the
governement will be very technocratic at first, out of necessity, and then
some form of constitutional feodality will be enforced, in keeping with :
1) SCA traditions, not so much crown tourneys but peer circles, courts,
orders of precedence et al...
2) English feodality around us, local nobles will rather talk to someone who
has rank comparable to their own
3) The democratic bend most of our contemporaries have.
As to the relations to the locals, we have a very strong fighting force
which will be able to wrest a peace, uneasy perhaps, but without a full war.
> And further long-term: how will we maintain our solidarity, and do we
> want to? If there is a lot of inter-mixing going on, how long will it
> take (if ever) for us to become assimilated into the surrounding
> cultures? What about our children and grandchildren?
Here again just from the top of my head, I think in less than fifty years
there will be a mutual assimilation of the cultures, and once all the
original transplants are dead Pennsictown will be just another barony.
> Do we pass on
> modern knowledge that will probably be of no use (computers, or even
> modern physics that we can't demonstrate without modern equipment)?
Modern knowledge is surprisingly easy to pass on. Charles Babbage made his
difference engine with a quite low tech setting, and Blaise Pascal's
calculator was made in the 18th century. What we will lack is technology,
not science. It will be a few score years before we are able once again to
burn a Pentium processor, if we get to it at all, but getting back to a 1930
technology is quite easy with all the knowledge we have.
> How
> do we pass on knowledge at all? Yes, I know we have books, but we won't
> have much paper once it runs out unless someone wants to be in charge of
> making it, and even then, it won't be nearly as much as we're used to.
> Perhaps our bards can help out here by preserving oral knowledge.
Papermaking is a quite easy task, even if it is costly. In five years from
the stabilisation point there will be movable type printing going on, why,
Gutenberg's bible is period ;-)
> Just questions to think about, and I'm sure others have more. What do
> you think?
All these are just musings and are just as good or bad as any other view.
None of these have any pretention to be in any way true. YMMV and so on...
>
> Katherine Ashwoode,
> mka: Julie
--
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> Sorry, modern edible apples are grafted on crab-apple stock
Well, the apple trees my father planted at our house for each of us
were on pear stock, and that wasn't that long ago...
> Sorry to contradict, but strawberries are known to drain the earth
> and need to be displaced every 3 to 5 years or their yield drops
> dramatically.
Well, we grew them every year for 11 years. Actually, they grew
themselves:-)
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
The average size of text documents doesn't double every 18 months
except for MS Word users. --David Schultz
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> Once again let's note that non-Christian would have a better time
> than modern Christian, except if these could be eloquent enough to
> sway the local bishops to make a new brand of English church.
Don't know why--England was quite definitely Christian (well, as
Christian as it ever got) at that point in time. It's the
non-Christians who'd have a rough time of it. I'm not certain that
religious tolerance would be a concept which translates particularly
well.
> Here again just from the top of my head, I think in less than fifty
> years there will be a mutual assimilation of the cultures, and once
> all the original transplants are dead Pennsictown will be just
> another barony.
Yup--but the polities of that time will be quite different than in the
original timeline. Modern technology would turn the world upside
down. Be pretty cool, too.
> Modern knowledge is surprisingly easy to pass on. Charles Babbage
> made his difference engine with a quite low tech setting, and Blaise
> Pascal's calculator was made in the 18th century. What we will lack
> is technology, not science. It will be a few score years before we
> are able once again to burn a Pentium processor, if we get to it at
> all, but getting back to a 1930 technology is quite easy with all
> the knowledge we have.
Yup. And getting from '30s era technology to now is only another 70
years...
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had
to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realised
that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
finding mistakes in my own programs.
--Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
lady sylvre
an inhalant, tho--supports flame just as well as true ether does, tho not
quite as explosively.
honoria
gaspasser for 27 years...
Berry Williams <berry...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:XjKh9.4109$LG4.1...@eagle.america.net...
Chris CII
<ru...@4dv.net> a écrit dans le message de news:
m3ptvcf...@latakia.dyndns.org...
> "Chris CII" <Chri...@CompuServe.com> writes:
> >
> > Once again let's note that non-Christian would have a better time
> > than modern Christian, except if these could be eloquent enough to
> > sway the local bishops to make a new brand of English church.
>
> Don't know why--England was quite definitely Christian (well, as
> Christian as it ever got) at that point in time. It's the
> non-Christians who'd have a rough time of it. I'm not certain that
> religious tolerance would be a concept which translates particularly
> well.
Yes england was totally Christian, catholic christian. I don't know very
well about England ca. 1000 but in Languedoc ca. 1200 the persecutions were
more directed against heretics than against pagans. The rationale was that
pagans had never seen the light and could be converted, but heretics had
refused the light and thus were damned. At some points jews and muslims were
less targeted by persecutions than the various heretics be they Valdenses,
Cathars, Bogomiles or others.
Then again, given our knowledge of rhetorics and theology we could sway a
lot of the bishops in order to bring catholicism to a doctrinal corpus more
agreeable to modern people, and so cut out the teeth of religious
persecutions. I think there would be some very interesting theological
debates upon some fine points of doctrine.
> > Here again just from the top of my head, I think in less than fifty
> > years there will be a mutual assimilation of the cultures, and once
> > all the original transplants are dead Pennsictown will be just
> > another barony.
>
> Yup--but the polities of that time will be quite different than in the
> original timeline. Modern technology would turn the world upside
> down. Be pretty cool, too.
Quite true, but I'd rather say that it would be less technology than
philosophy that would turn the world upside down, see the high crusade of
Poul Anderson.
> > Modern knowledge is surprisingly easy to pass on. Charles Babbage
> > made his difference engine with a quite low tech setting, and Blaise
> > Pascal's calculator was made in the 18th century. What we will lack
> > is technology, not science. It will be a few score years before we
> > are able once again to burn a Pentium processor, if we get to it at
> > all, but getting back to a 1930 technology is quite easy with all
> > the knowledge we have.
>
> Yup. And getting from '30s era technology to now is only another 70
> years...
Perhaps a little more in that the world would not be uniformly ready and the
base of technologically aware people would be far less than was in our
world, so it would take a comparatively long stabilisation time to bring the
tech knowledge to enough people to have the infrastructures to build all the
factories needed to make the high-tech tools needed to build high-tech
gimmicks.
> --
> Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
> As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
> wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had
> to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realised
> that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
> finding mistakes in my own programs.
> --Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
--
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> Yes england was totally Christian, Catholic Christian.
Well, Christian, period. The Great Schism had not yet occurred, and
it was simply Christians, pagans and heretics. Lots of Arians still
running about, IIRC, esp. in Europe.
> Then again, given our knowledge of rhetorics and theology we could
> sway a lot of the bishops in order to bring Catholicism to a
> doctrinal corpus more agreeable to modern people, and so cut out the
> teeth of religious persecutions.
Well, I'm a modern person and the 10th century Church is imminently
agreeable to me...
> > > What we will lack is technology, not science. It will be a few
> > > score years before we are able once again to burn a Pentium
> > > processor, if we get to it at all, but getting back to a 1930
> > > technology is quite easy with all the knowledge we have.
> >
> > Yup. And getting from '30s era technology to now is only another
> > 70 years...
>
> Perhaps a little more in that the world would not be uniformly ready
> and the base of technologically aware people would be far less than
> was in our world, so it would take a comparatively long
> stabilisation time to bring the tech knowledge to enough people to
> have the infrastructures to build all the factories needed to make
> the high-tech tools needed to build high-tech gimmicks.
Granted, getting the infrastructure into place will be quite
difficult. One of the nice things about the modern era is that one is
able to command, at a whim, resources from across the globe and turn
them into, e.g., a car. And there would be some difficulties even
getting to '30s era tech without the distribution networks then
current. Would we re-invent railroads? I'm not certain if they'd be
what's needed.
What does worry me is that, just as the rise of industrialisation
caused a lot of havoc (which we still must deal with: note all the
socialists still running about), how much more would be caused by
such a tremendous leap forward?
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
In France, they're having trouble translating a lot of Internet terms
into French. In France the law is you have to use French words. For
example, there are no French words for surfing the Web, there aren't any
French words for chat session, and there aren't any French words for
hacker. Of course, a lot of other words don't translate to French
either: military victory, deodorant... --Jay Leno
Brian in Utah
winter to spread into your fields along with the straw you on the floors, if
that method was used in period. To top it off, in the process of "cleaning"
the containment facilities and handling of human waste, you could use a
composting style and use it for fertilizer. And, to top that one off,
composting of plant matter in large quantities.
Something else no one really thinks too much on, when plant matter
decomposes, if done correctly, produces a good amount of heat with no bad
smells or harmful gasses. From what I understand, most farmers would house
their animals in a lower floor of their homes to help keep their animals
safe as well as using the heat from their bodies in the "barn" below the
house to help stay warm. Add to this a careful composting and a basic
knowledge of insulating practices from today and you could live quite cosy
through a hard winter. Look into strawbale construction houses.
Gilbert
"Lady PDC" <lad...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020917021501...@mb-fs.aol.com...
> >
> >They might know that you need to fertilise the soil, but what with?
> >The locals are already using manure, what else[1] and how? Quick now,
> >and no using of reference sources!
> >
> >Silfren
>
> Crushed eggshells & ground bone are two that I remember from when I
researched
> what they used in period several years ago.
>
> Constance
Berry Williams
you use it inhaled?
Alain
"lady sylvre" <ad...@visi.com> wrote in message
news:JuNh9.12126$jX3.5...@ruti.visi.com...
marilyn traber
Chickens will happily live on scratch [bugs, plant bits and other
'graze'] and will also eat table scraps. They don't like large
chunks of meat, but like cooked veggies and grains, or even
peelings and preparation detritus that we can't eat. Eggs are a
decent source of protein, and a small amount of carb [.6 grams
per whole egg, IIRC.] Rabbits will also live nicely hutched and
fed on frondy things [wilted worts, seeds, certain peelings] and
are also a nice source of protein. Pigs will eat what humans eat,
and thrive on leftovers. Pigs would happily eat most of your
weekly weight of potatos, and in turn produce fat, meat and
leather/bone/squeel. Certain birds look for shelter and are
self-feeding. Building a 'dovecote' for doves pigeons or other
songbirds gives you a self-sufficient source of protein. Many
song birds eat nasty flying insects and would make life nicer all
around. Potherbs can be planted in margins and flavor your food.
mmmm, potatoes, onions and herbs roasted with chicken. yumm.
Monoculture is a way to die fast. Domesticating critters will
keep you alive.
margali
and why yes, I do happen to live on a tiny farm. And suffered
through years of 4H and brownies/girl scouts.
Richard Lewis
Alain and Robert,
I didn't even get onto the seasonal stuff....just the everyday stuff.
The water, you need it for you and for your animals....if you have to
irrigate, you can multiply the numbers many times. The hoeing is
necessary for a lot of plants (peas and beans especially) so that's
going to be a given during the entire growing season. The wheelbarrow
work....it's going to be roughly the same if you're moving logs for
firewood, picking apples from the nearby tree etc. It all averages
out.
The seasonal stuff....you might only plant and harvest for three
months out of a year but you "plant fenceposts" and "harvest rocks and
sod" all year round until you get your sodhouse built (approx 40,000
calories btw), your field cleared, your rock walls built etc.
You might not do all the fieldwork *all* the time....but you only have
a max of 1,000 calories left to burn after your everyday chores.
Btw, I haven't hand-plowed but I have filled sandbags for eight hours
straight (antibiotics for two weeks and light duty until the popped
blisters healed), and I have hoed and shoveled four hours straight
(blisters on top of blisters and a bad back for a week), and I have
shucked corn (half bushel or so until I finally gave up). I was late
twenties to early thirties during those times, in the best of health,
and was smithing and woodworking probably four hours a day so I had no
lack of calluses. I know how those chores did me....I just can't see
any superhuman SCA infantryman doing any better than I.
I'm sorry but I stand by my estimates of 3,000 calories a day as a
minimum.
ral
Richard Lewis
>Julie <j.go...@sympatico.ca> writes:
>>
>> Do we hunker down like the other villages around us and set up a
>> mostly agriculture-based community, with the best tradespeople among
>> us plying their trades?
>Nah, that'd be a waste of our talents. With talents and abilities
>beyond those of most, we'd hopefully manage to utilitise those talents
>and abilities...
I totally agree. In my opinion, our best bet lies in subdivinding
into smaller groups of artisans and traveling as far and as fast as we
can. We don't disrupt the local infrastructure nearly as much, we're
able to sell our skills to support ourselves, and we have the ability
to advance society by hundreds of years on just what each group knows
and can teach.
Medicine and dentistry....with a representative group of 8,000 from
*any walk of life*, you will have access to dozens of medicines that
don't exist in period. You have far more surgical experience just
from watching ER than the most educated "doctor" of the period does.
You can diagnose and treat most illnesses that are still considered
"witchcraft" at that time.
Engineering and mechanical technology....you can rebuild just about
any period machine or tool in ways they haven't dreamed of. Weapons
technology alone among anyone that's ever watched tv is going to be
far beyond the contemporary skills. Simple blackpowder weapons will
be all of a week to begin producing etc. Gunpowder and other
explosives....
Farming....the plow, the harrow, metal tools, crop-rotation,
fertilizers, selective breeding, irrigation, food preservation, basic
nutrition, knowledge of edible/useful plants beyond what anyone else
knows or suspects.
Radio....very simple to do and still in the realm of "magic" even in
its most basic and primitive form.
Exploration....we know what a good ship has to be. We know where to
go. We know what to look for when we get there.
There's a million things we can teach to make mankind better off if we
can survive the first year and in my opinion, the best way to do that
is to separate quickly.
ral
Richard Lewis
>I am interested in the sociological aspects of this, but don't know how much
>'real' science we can apply to that.
>Alain/Bj
Well, the most basic tenets of society state that to be a society you
have to fit two rules....one, that you group together through
commonalities, and two, that you have an outside "enemy" to strive
against.
Number one is a given....we're the SCA. Number two is easy for the
first year....we're all trying to survive. Picking a leader is easy,
setting goals is easy, working together the first year is easy.
You'll have to devise a method for societal advancement and stick to
it....that means everyone in the group must see that by working or by
accomplishing that they become higher in the society than before.
"Belts" and "chains" and other elite groups and awards of devices of
rank will have to be on merit and not on politics. Screw that one up
the slightest bit and you end up with a lot of pissed-off people (is
that any different than now?).
Once the main goal of surviving is accomplished after the first or
second year, you have to pick another "enemy" or your group will
assume one of its own accord and that means civil war. Without a
stated goal (the enemy), your group will subdivide among
sub-commonalities....the catholics vs the protestants etc....and
everyone will hate each other.
If your two groups (now) can both survive that schism, you'll both be
faced with the same goal of finding an "enemy" yet again or you'll
subdivide between races and the entire thing starts over.
You can figure on running your society as a military hierarchy the
first few years....it will become one no matter what you do. Specify
small groups that are responsible for certain tasks, reward those
groups for accomplishment, advance in rank etc. Running it as a
military unit (the most successful form of "society"), you might live
long enough to establish a representative democracy after about ten to
fifteen years.
Just my opinion.
ral
Gmt8801
>can survive the first year and in my opinion, the best way to do that
>is to separate quickly.
>
>ral
I'm a little surprised at the assumptions of this conversation, specifically
that all our modern technology is a "good" thing, especially coming from a
group of SCAdians. Why would we want to hasten the advent of modern technology
upon the world, bringing about all the ills of the 20th century prematurely,
only culminating in the early arrival of such things as global warming, world
wars and the atomic bomb.
I hope that if our time-traveling brothers from Pennsic made it to the
Salisbury Plain, they would have the good sense to let the people of the 10th
century live their "backward" 10th century lives, and keep their knowledge of
modern technology to themselves.
Gregory of St. Albans
A confirmed Luddite
PWAM1
parents, siblings, neighbors, home, dog. They haven't quite all died in one
fell swoop, but it would be pretty close.
I don't really know too much about the climate in England. But what could you
reasonably plant in August? I know around here you would be daft to try
planting most things at that time of year. It is too hot and dry to start
seeds easily and the upcoming cold/frost would reduce your chances for the
plants to grow long enough to produce seed.
Margaret
Julie
Gmt8801 wrote:
> I'm a little surprised at the assumptions of this conversation, specifically
> that all our modern technology is a "good" thing, especially coming from a
> group of SCAdians. Why would we want to hasten the advent of modern technology
> upon the world, bringing about all the ills of the 20th century prematurely,
> only culminating in the early arrival of such things as global warming, world
> wars and the atomic bomb.
> I hope that if our time-traveling brothers from Pennsic made it to the
> Salisbury Plain, they would have the good sense to let the people of the 10th
> century live their "backward" 10th century lives, and keep their knowledge of
> modern technology to themselves.
I'm not against modern technology. It's done a lot of great things too
(improved standard of living, life expectancy above 70 years, very low
infant mortality rate, etc.). My problem with the idea of imposing 20th
century ideas and technology on 10th century people is that I don't
think they are ready for it. A lot of factors went into the Scientific
Revolution of the 16th-17th century, almost none of which are present in
the 10th century. By the 16th century, people were moving past the idea
that they needed to rely on the Classics (Greece and Rome) as a base for
their new ideas. In the 10th century, the idea of relying on the
Classics hadn't even *started* yet. The debate between Christian and
"Pagan" (ie: Classical) thoughts would be a huge deal in the early Renaissance.
Also, by the 16th century, there was enough surplus to support full-time
scholars and writers who were not monastic. These people had developed
a reputable profession. Such was not the case in the 10th century. The
nobles who could afford to have leisure time viewed writing as a monk's
job, not a lord's.
Further, in the 16th century, there was a widespread readership for
information. The printing press had a huge impact, and had by that time
moved beyond printing only Bibles and religious texts. In the 10th
century, not only were people still focused on religious reading, there
were very few who could read at all.
These are just a few things that make me feel that the 10th century
would not be receptive to an influx of 20th (or even 17th) century
technology or ideas. Sure, landlords might see the benefits and try to
use it against their enemies (or use the good ones for themselves), but
I doubt that you would begin to have a scientific flowering like you do
in the Scientific Revolution or even the Renaissance. There are just
too many social institutions that were not in place yet.
Please note: the above points are about England and western Europe
specifically. I'm not talking about the Byzantine or other Eastern empires.
Katherine Ashwoode
mka: Julie
Berry Williams
Alain
"marilyn traber" <mar...@99main.com> wrote in message
news:3D87BEF1...@99main.com...
Derek Lyons
>Chickens will happily live on scratch [bugs, plant bits and other
>'graze'] and will also eat table scraps.
Certainly. But they *won't* resemble (in size, weight, or
configuration) the birds available at your SuperMegaMart. They'll be
much smaller overall, particularly in the breast.
D.
Derek Lyons
>Now, for grins and giggles, let us not forget - we know what's valuable, and
>where it is. No one in 992ad could care less about vast tracks of the areas
>in the Middle East that will become oil fields. We know what coal is worth,
>and where it's richest on the British Isles. We know how many diamonds are
>lurking in South Africa. We know about the entirety of the Americas, what's
>there, what to expect, and how to exploit it.
Let us not also forget to consider how much of it will be unavailable
without significant infrastructure.
D.
Derek Lyons
>Medicine and dentistry....with a representative group of 8,000 from
>*any walk of life*, you will have access to dozens of medicines that
>don't exist in period.
Um... You *are in period*. Any supplies you took to Pennsic will
soon be exhausted with no easy way to replace them.
>You have far more surgical experience just from watching ER than
>the most educated "doctor" of the period does.
ROTFLMAO.
>You can diagnose and treat most illnesses that are still considered
>"witchcraft" at that time.
Oh? How will you treat TB? Mumps? Chicken Pox? Or half a dozen other
common maladies that you won't have the drugs to treat.
>Weapons technology alone among anyone that's ever watched tv is
>going to be far beyond the contemporary skills.
ROTFLMAO.
>Radio....very simple to do and still in the realm of "magic" even in
>its most basic and primitive form.
Not simple to do reliably. Radio's are quite technologically advanced
items. (I'm begging to think that nobody here has actually studied
19th century technology , or has any clue as to the vast amount of
groundwork done then. Groundwork that is today dismissed in an hour
of teaching.)
>Exploration....we know what a good ship has to be.
We do? But we lack the experience in design and construction.
>We know where to go.
Well enough to navigate there? Well enough to avoid the rocks and
shoals?
>We know what to look for when we get there.
We do? Well enough to find them in a completely trackless wilderness?
D.
w...@buckeye.cb.lucent.com
>any period machine or tool in ways they haven't dreamed of. Weapons
>technology alone among anyone that's ever watched tv is going to be
>far beyond the contemporary skills. Simple blackpowder weapons will
>be all of a week to begin producing etc. Gunpowder and other
>explosives....
Bah; the *spinning wheel* with or without flyer, the horizontal loom with
reed and hedles will blast through society freeing up an almost unimaginable
number of person hours!
BTW I can build a *simple* BP weapon in an afternoon; I can produce saltpeter
from old manure in a week or so but *sulfur* in goodly ammounts is going to
be a real pain to come up with in 993 England, of course knowing how to
corn powder is a big help.
OTOH who is going to feed me while I do all this?
>knowledge of edible/useful plants beyond what anyone else
>knows or suspects.
I'd bet that they knew a *lot* more of the local stuff that was edible then
we do!
>Exploration....we know what a good ship has to be. We know where to
>go. We know what to look for when we get there.
Knowing what makes a good ship and being able to make one with the tools
at hand are different things.
>There's a million things we can teach to make mankind better off if we
>can survive the first year and in my opinion, the best way to do that
>is to separate quickly.
The germ theory of medicine could revolutionize medicine.
Thomas
--
Best Regards,
W.Thomas Powers
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> I'm a little surprised at the assumptions of this conversation,
> specifically that all our modern technology is a `good' thing,
> especially coming from a group of SCAdians.
We live longer, we eat better, we command resources which make the
mightiest king of old look a pauper. Sounds pretty dashed good to me.
> Why would we want to hasten the advent of modern technology upon the
> world, bringing about all the ills of the 20th century prematurely,
> only culminating in the early arrival of such things as global
> warming, world wars and the atomic bomb.
Personally, I rather like the idea of reinstating the Roman-era
vineyards in the southern parts of England. Just what the Romans were
doing to have caused a peak in global temperature during their empire
nobody has yet explained to me though. I put it down to all those
SUV-chariots... --Tanuki
As for world wars, they'll happen sooner or later anyway. Might as
well be on the winning side.
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of
one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that
oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the
beginning if it is to be stopped at all. --H. L. Mencken
w...@buckeye.cb.lucent.com
> made his difference engine with a quite low tech setting, and Blaise
> Pascal's calculator was made in the 18th century. What we will lack
> is technology, not science. It will be a few score years before we
> are able once again to burn a Pentium processor, if we get to it at
> all, but getting back to a 1930 technology is quite easy with all
> the knowledge we have.
Yup just get that chrome from Cuba and the nickel from Canada and refine it
and we can make 1930's alloys! course you will need a massive infra structure
to support that technology as well as the transportation difficulties, (look
at how few wains there were used in long distance transport, ships and pack
trains were what were used even centuries later... wains need good roads you
know.)
Chris CII
> What does worry me is that, just as the rise of industrialisation
> caused a lot of havoc (which we still must deal with: note all the
> socialists still running about), how much more would be caused by
> such a tremendous leap forward?
Yes but once again with the many people on that plain who are
environmentally-conscious (sp?) they could selectively recreate technology
in a sustainable development pattern, and give an entirely new twist to the
whole technological tree and skip a lot of failures.
This is just what we are asking third world counties to do with the Kyoto
protocol etc...
> --
> Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
Sorry, but I just find this .sig mildly offensive ;-)
Gmt8801
>We live longer, we eat better, we command resources which make the
>mightiest king of old look a pauper. Sounds pretty dashed good to me.
>
Who lives longer and eats better? Maybe the small minority of us in the US,
but you'd have a hard time convincing the hundreds of thousands dying of
starvation in Ruwanda that modern technology has made their lives any better.
People are dying of starvation now in a much grander scale than they ever did
in the 10th century. Modern medicine has, of course, lowered the infant
mortality rate and allowed a lucky few who benefit from it to live healthy and
productive lives well into their 80's. But for every one it has helped there
is probably two others that are suffering a slow death of the modern diseases
of atherosclerosis, stroke, and alzheimers, wasting away in nursing homes.
Would you rather die an honorable death with a sword in your hand at 35, or die
indignantly with a tube in every orifice over a period of 3 weeks at 75? I
think our 10th century ancestors would recoil in horror the way most of us die
now.
Greg the Luddite
CMNewell
Andrews) wrote:
>Zebee Johnstone <ze...@zip.com.au> wrote:
>
>: What medical knowledge is useful? Remember that Harvey and the idea of
>: the circulation of the blood is post period. Don't get too hung up on
>: making penicillin unless you know how Florey did it with bedpans.
>: Sorry, most bread molds won't cut it :) But we do know about
>: cleanliness, that's got to be big for success as a quack. No
>: reference materials...
>
>: quick, who knows how to synthesise ether?
>
>Ethanol and sulfuric acid, IIRC. But I don't have many of those
>in my head. $FIANCEE does, but she's a biochemist. I'm not all
>that sure how to remove byproducts and incomplete reaction
>products, either. I _do_ know it's hideously flammable.
>
>: Anesthesia is a big thing if you can do it!
>
>It's an _enormous_ thing.
>
>To synthesize chloroform ... Oh, yes! Bleach and acetone and ice
>more or less. Don't try this at home.
There are a number of narcotic plants that would be useful. Opium
poppies come to mind.
CMNewell, DVM
The Chuck of Eq
self-proclaimed vet
Surgeon General of the Bogbash Party
"You can be perverse, a horse cannot." --TvG
CMNewell
wrote:
>Oh? How will you treat TB? Mumps? Chicken Pox? Or half a dozen other
>common maladies that you won't have the drugs to treat.
>
TB isn't all that amenable to treatment today.
As for mumps and chicken pox, both are viral in etiology, and we have
precious few decnt antiviral treaments as well.
OTOH, vaccination could be a real breakthrough, eh?
Cowpox ought to be pretty available for use.
As someone has already pointed out, the germ theory alone would be a
significant advance.
If a couple of the transported 21st century types were an MD and a
DVM who practiced in rural/underdeveloped areas, I bet they'd be quite
useful folks.
Richard Grabowski
DANGEROUS things people are talking about. The formulas are reversed,
ethanol is CH3CH2OH (the -OH group on the end makes the ethyl group an
alcohol, and two ethyl groups joined by oxygen in the ether functional group
[-O-] is diethyl ether) and is the alcohol you consume in whiskey, etc., but
considerably diluted (pure grain alcohol is 360 proof, so the high test
whiskeys are only about 20% alcohol, and you can imagine what pure ethanol
can do). As you know, whiskey etc. will numb the pain if you get really
intoxicated, but it is far from gaseous anesthetics. Would you want your
teeth drilled with a few shots of tequila in you? You can't use it to
inhale as an anesthetic any more than you can get drunk sniffing a gin
martini all evening. But pure grain alcohol is very dangerous and if you
injest too much, you will stop breathing. Diethyl ether, also known as
chloroform, is far more volatile (means it evaporates really fast) than
ethanol and will alleviate pain if carefully inhaled, but you can stop
breathing from this, as well. This is the stuff you see on the old spy
movies that the evildoer pours onto a rag then holds it over the good guys
face to knock him out. In small concentrations (shorter duration of
exposure), you get anesthesia, in larger concentrations you get
unconsciousness, and in slightly higher concentrations, you die. Also,
flammable is not the word for diethyl ether; more like explosive. This is
not something anyone should try to make on their own and definitely not
anything you should expose your body to.
Even in a properly equipped lab, I've been concerned working with the stuff
(ether and similar chemicals), but in the middle ages, I don't know I'd
trust some blockhead to supply the correct acids or other supplies needed
for basic medical chemistry. I mean, the science of the mid 1700s wasn't
all that fantastic, but if you're talking the chemistry of a few centuries
prior, you're talking alchemy. Alchemy in, say, 1100 was nothing more than
mixing powders of rocks together with bat dung or some other such magic
ingredient to make gold.
Even the best attempts by those from this time period would barely result in
the most rudimentary "lab" as those with some science or medical knowledge
are used to having some basic starting materials and laboratory grade
chemicals, and not used to having to make them from scratch. In whatever
century the group ended up in, you'd have wooden cups and rocks to work
with.
And once you would be close to developing something for medical care, you'd
kill quite a few people through trial and error.
Sorry to go off on this tangent, but I had to post to keep people from
trying these things.
Take care,
Rich
"Mike Andrews" <mi...@mikea.ath.cx> wrote in message
news:am82k5$42q$3...@puck.litech.org...
> Berry Williams <berry...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> : Um, I'm by no means a chemist, but I want to remember that grain
alcohol, ie
> : distilled 99%(roughly), is more or less ether, and should work just fine
for
> : anesthesia. Do one of you more knowlegable folks see a problem with
this?
>
> Damn straight you're not. There's a _HUGE_ problem with it,
> to wit:
>
> Ethanol ((CH3 CH2)2 O) is not diethyl ether (CH3 CH2 OH).
>
> Diethyl ether is made by reacting ethanol (known in period) with
> sulfuric acid (also known in period, as were most of the mineral
> acids) at a temperature of about 130C.
>
> And it's damn dangerous. Don't try it.
>
> --
> There was an actual St. Chad. He was an early English abbot, whose claim
to
> fame was that he was elected bishop of York but his election was nullified
> by the archbishop of Canterbury. In other words, we have the perfect
patron
> of disputed elections. -- Arval d'Espas Nord, in rec.org.sca
Bronwynmgn
<berry...@yahoo.com> writes:
>3000 calories is just plain
>decadent, we could - and would - survive on much less.
You are thinking in modern terms, central heating and cushy desk jobs and
machines to do all the hard work for us.
Put yourself in a place where the average HIGH temperature in the SUMMER is in
the 60-70 degree range, with no central heating. You are going to burn a lot
more calories just staying warm than you do now.
Take away all the machines that do heavy work for you. You are going to be
scrubbing and pounding your laundry by hand. Grinding and chooping your food
with a knife and a mortar and pestle. Carrying more stuff. Walking much,
much, more. Digging a foundation? Do it with a shovel. Plowing? Yeah, the
horse or the ox pulls the plow, but you still have to walk along with it, dig
it into the ground, steer it, and at the beginning and end of the day, take
care of the animals as well. You will be burning an awful lot more calories
than you do now, even if you spend an hour in the gym everyday.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that if you work out the caloric amounts
for the food specified in the Benedictine rule for monks, you come out at
something like 3000-4000 caloreis per day. A lot of monks may not have done
heavy work - but they also had no heat except in the warming room, where they
had strictly limited privileges of only so much time per day.
Brangwayna Morgan
Julie
Gmt8801 wrote:
> Would you rather die an honorable death with a sword in your hand at 35, or die
> indignantly with a tube in every orifice over a period of 3 weeks at 75?
Or die in childbirth because there was no knowledge of proper
sanitation? Or of an infection because there are no antibiotics? Or of
starvation because of five successive bad harvests? Or at five years
old (or three, or seven), because your body can't deal with some disease
that's easily treatable today? Or a long, slow death of pneumonia at
age 21?
I'd like to wait until I'm 75, thanks.
(And, quite frankly, of the many people who died in the 10th century,
what percentage died "an honorable death with a sword in [their] hand"?)
Katherine Ashwoode,
mka: Julie
McLean1382
>Salisbury Plain, they would have the good sense to let the people of the 10th
>century live their "backward" 10th century lives, and keep their knowledge of
>modern technology to themselves.
>
>Gregory of St. Albans
>A confirmed Luddite
>
>
they expired from avoidable Cholera, Smallpox, Sepsis, etc. So it seems
unsatisfactory on an ethical basis.
In the short term, most of the technology you'd transfer would involve moving
them up to about the early 19th c. Umbrellas, printing presses, frigates,
playing cards, hurricane lamps, less leaky shoes, woodcuts and woodstoves are
all things that would make life more pleasant without being out of the reach of
10th c. craftsmen, once he had a prototype.
A full fledged industrial revolution would take a lot longer because of the
time it would take to build infrastructure. Ironically, it would probably still
happen soon enough that the Middle Ages would be over by the early 12th c.
Galleron
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> Pure grain alcohol is 360 proof, so the high test whiskeys are only
> about 20% alcohol.
Dunno what proof system they use over there, but here in the US it's
simply twice the percentage of alcohol, e.g. 100% ethanol is 200
proof. Or at least that's what I've been taught
> As you know, whiskey etc. will numb the pain if you get really
> intoxicated, but it is far from gaseous anesthetics. Would you want
> your teeth drilled with a few shots of tequila in you?
Well, considering that I've had them drilled with no anaesthetic, I
don't see why not. I imagine that anaestetic doses of alcohol are not
the `mildly tipsy' sort, but more along the lines of `very nearly dead
drunk.'
> But pure grain alcohol is very dangerous and if you injest too much,
> you will stop breathing.
Very dilute ethanol has much the same problem. There are those every
year who die from drinking 4% solutions thereof...
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
With weapons, we are citizens. Without them, we are subjects.
Richard Lewis
>>Engineering and mechanical technology....you can rebuild just about
>>any period machine or tool in ways they haven't dreamed of. Weapons
>>technology alone among anyone that's ever watched tv is going to be
>>far beyond the contemporary skills. Simple blackpowder weapons will
>>be all of a week to begin producing etc. Gunpowder and other
>>explosives....
>Bah; the *spinning wheel* with or without flyer, the horizontal loom with
>reed and hedles will blast through society freeing up an almost unimaginable
>number of person hours!
"Freeing up person hours...." assumes that there is a limited market
for cloth. Cheaper and faster manufacturing of consumables simply
means cheaper and faster manufacturing, not free hours.
>BTW I can build a *simple* BP weapon in an afternoon; I can produce saltpeter
>from old manure in a week or so but *sulfur* in goodly ammounts is going to
>be a real pain to come up with in 993 England, of course knowing how to
>corn powder is a big help.
You can because you have access to steel tubes etc. Anytime you feel
up to it, I'll bring you a ton of steel and see how long it takes you
to start up a production system for them.
>OTOH who is going to feed me while I do all this?
>>knowledge of edible/useful plants beyond what anyone else
>>knows or suspects.
>I'd bet that they knew a *lot* more of the local stuff that was edible then
>we do!
They knew about aspirin? They knew about digitalis? They knew about
anesthesias in the form of opium and mandrake etc? Well, they knew
about them at one time but at this period in time, they hadn't used
them for most of two hundred years and wouldn't again for another two
hundred.
Something as simple as oil of cloves would be seen as a miracle
medicine once you found it and started producing it.
>>Exploration....we know what a good ship has to be. We know where to
>>go. We know what to look for when we get there.
>Knowing what makes a good ship and being able to make one with the tools
>at hand are different things.
In what way did period tools change in the next two hundred years?
Did the adz not exist? The drill brace? The saw?
>>There's a million things we can teach to make mankind better off if we
>>can survive the first year and in my opinion, the best way to do that
>>is to separate quickly.
>The germ theory of medicine could revolutionize medicine.
>Thomas
>--
>Best Regards,
>W.Thomas Powers
As always....
ral
Richard Lewis
el...@hurricane.net (Derek Lyons) wrote:
>red...@mindspring.com (Richard Lewis) wrote:
>>Medicine and dentistry....with a representative group of 8,000 from
>>*any walk of life*, you will have access to dozens of medicines that
>>don't exist in period.
>Um... You *are in period*. Any supplies you took to Pennsic will
>soon be exhausted with no easy way to replace them.
Aspirin first off. I know how and from what it's made. I guess you
should be glad I'm in your group since you seem not to. Digitalis,
nitro glycerine (used as a medicine), anesthesias, I *do* know how to
make penicillin...
I guess that's the difference between one person who learns them as a
matter of survival and someone who dresses up on weekends to fight
with rattan weapons.
Some of us take learning seriously....we don't play at it.
>>You have far more surgical experience just from watching ER than
>>the most educated "doctor" of the period does.
>ROTFLMAO.
I guess I should have stated that as "anyone with an IQ of 60 or more
knows how to clean a wound and stitch it, or knows how to set a bone,
or knows not to bleed a person if they have appendicitis. I'm
assuming you aren't in that group?
>>You can diagnose and treat most illnesses that are still considered
>>"witchcraft" at that time.
>Oh? How will you treat TB? Mumps? Chicken Pox? Or half a dozen other
>common maladies that you won't have the drugs to treat.
We'll build a Revco store in the town square and the drugs will
magically appear on the shelves as some idiots think they do now.
What, didn't you know that? And you call yourself educated.
>>Weapons technology alone among anyone that's ever watched tv is
>>going to be far beyond the contemporary skills.
>ROTFLMAO.
Longbows and bodkin points....those are beyond you, too?
Which is better, the snaphaunce or the flintlock? What three
materials make up black powder?
>>Radio....very simple to do and still in the realm of "magic" even in
>>its most basic and primitive form.
>Not simple to do reliably. Radio's are quite technologically advanced
>items. (I'm begging to think that nobody here has actually studied
>19th century technology , or has any clue as to the vast amount of
>groundwork done then. Groundwork that is today dismissed in an hour
>of teaching.)
Yes, simple to do reliably. Pick up an electronics 101 textbook
before spouting off, bro.
Every flash of lightning puts out massive amounts of radio
waves....that is the basis for the "spark gap transmitter". A simple
receiver (if your car stereos ever go bad) is no more than a shim of
blued (and rusted) steel with an adjustable gap. Morse-type code is
what....all of an hour to design?
>>Exploration....we know what a good ship has to be.
>We do? But we lack the experience in design and construction.
Well, I should have phrased that as "some of us do"....some of us
can't even understand the longbow and bodkin point.
>>We know where to go.
>Well enough to navigate there? Well enough to avoid the rocks and
>shoals?
I'm beginning to think I'm arguing with a thirteen year old here.
>>We know what to look for when we get there.
>We do? Well enough to find them in a completely trackless wilderness?
Yeppers, that proves it.
ral
>D.
Anthony J. Bryant
> Which is better, the snaphaunce or the flintlock?
I prefer cased-cartridge breech-loaders. <G>
> What three
> materials make up black powder?
>
Aw, c'mon. Anyone who's ever watched the original Star Trek knows that.
<G>
BTW, heck, all we have to do is start with a compass. <G>
Effingham
Martin Hungerford
> day, like I said, I challenge you to do it.
Looking for info here. This figure of 3000 calories/day seems very high.
Memory tells me that a standard meal in Bangladseh in the late 70's (when I
was there) was 1 shere of boiled, polished rice. That's about eqivalent to
a kilo (2.2 lbs). On that there would be a minute quantity of flavouring,
usually chili. That was it.
Does this add up to 3000 calories?
Iago
Robin Carroll-Mann
Lewis) wrote:
>Something as simple as oil of cloves would be seen as a miracle
>medicine once you found it and started producing it.
Getting cloves in 10th c. Britain would be a miracle accomplishment.
Brighid ni Chiarain (mka Robin Carroll-Mann)
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
To email me, remove the fish
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
>
> Looking for info here. This figure of 11,905 BTUs/day seems very
> high. Memory tells me that a standard meal in Bangladseh in the
> late 70's (when I was there) was 1 shere of boiled, polished rice.
> minute quantity of flavouring, usually chili. That was it.
>
Well, looking at quantities of rice, I find that 4 oz. of rice has
about 1,468 BTU. So 1 shere would be 12,040 BTU. Sounds about right
to me.
--
Robert Uhl <ru...@4dv.net>
Post proelium, praemium.
After the battle, the reward.
Richard Lewis
2.2 pounds of raw brown rice will be approx 3,600 cals. The same
amount of white will be about 3,400 cals.
ral
>Iago
Richard Lewis
>Richard Lewis wrote:
>> Which is better, the snaphaunce or the flintlock?
>I prefer cased-cartridge breech-loaders. <G>
lol
>> What three
>> materials make up black powder?
>>
>Aw, c'mon. Anyone who's ever watched the original Star Trek knows that.
><G>
Exactly, Eff!
>BTW, heck, all we have to do is start with a compass. <G>
Or a simple disk of wood and a dowel....
It's amazing the stuff you could get working with 8,000 pretty decent
minds to begin with.
>Effingham
ral