The Warcrafter

[TheUnicorn]

He actually put a hell of a lot of thought into this. To note;

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He told us about luxuries being down, but what we're shown is that there's no significant change. And then there's the fact that even in WWII with all the rationing Britain still had condoms (which weren't even rationed).

EDIT:However have a like for actually addressing the issue people keep raising.

 

[Kalaong]

He told us about luxuries being down, but what we're shown is that there's no significant change. And then there's the fact that even in WWII with all the rationing Britain still had condoms (which weren't even rationed).

EDIT:However have a like for actually addressing the issue people keep raising.

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I just read your link;

EDIT:Here's a bit about condoms during WWII

Today I'm Researching: Condoms in WWII • Mackenzie Kincaid

Writing sex scenes set in World War II? Here's just the ridiculously long post you needed, with information on 1940s condom technology, period-accurate lubrication, pro stations, and the Army's war against VD. You're welcome.

www.mackenziekincaid.com

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And I noticed three things;
First, there was a hell of a lot of sex shaming involved. There are loads of propaganda pieces on that page that boil down to, "Stay away from the diseased whores you stupid pricks."
Second, the condoms were manufactured and issued to soldiers as part of their kit, because the brass was pretty sure that no matter how much the horndogs were humiliated, they were going to screw around. "If you insist on playing Russian roulette with syphilis, use these, morons!"
Third, the war only lasted six years, and America was only involved for the last four.

In comparison, RHJunior's setting would be trying to supply an entire nation, few of which are active government employees(who probably get issued condoms anyway for the above reason) and have been dealing with Endbringers since 1992; Leviathan's first attack was in 1996. The story begins in 2011, so the world's been getting Kaiju'd for nineteen years - an entire generation, long enough for a propaganda campaign to imprint pretty firmly.
I actually wonder if he read that exact article in advance, because it seems to me to be a pretty fair extrapolation.

 

[wkz]

And as for the "rare earths for smartphones but not electric cars" element? My dad's 2012 Prius hybrid just threw a shoe; a 20-grand car that can no longer break 60 MPH because the single most expensive component - the five thousand dollar lithium-ion battery - failed. The average lithium-ion smartphone battery costs three bucks. And it's actually one of the least expensive components of a $200-250 device. If lithium went up a digit in price, that just means the phone costs $230-280 instead. While that seven-year-old hybrid now costs sixty-five grand.

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Wow. My honest condolences, sucks to be him.

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Bayleaf must have paid a **** of a pretty penny for the Prius he bought in this fic then? Since you can reasonably argue that the batteries in that car is a) more expensive than the entire car, and b) better served dug out of "that crap" to be reused/retooled into other devices...

It must have been a steal then, if he bought that car for cheap, but with the full intent to scrap it.

(Also, i would like to ask: Why is your dad's Prius restricted by speed when the batteries died, instead of suffering in performance greatly at lower speeds?

I thought the electric half of a Prius can't support the vehicle past 70km/h, because the electric motors just doesn't have the oomph to do so at high speeds? Aka at that point it's 100% the fuel engine pushing the vehicle at max gear, thus saving fuel through efficient output... edit: Armsmaster must be a hybrid lover, RH, put it in!

****, the entire electric system half is meant to support the vehicle at lower speeds instead, right? Is the electrics somehow creating drag when the batteries bought the farm?

Honest question, as an owner I'd like to know. Please PM me)

 

[Kalaong]

Wow. My honest condolences, sucks to be him.

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Bayleaf must have paid a **** of a pretty penny for the Prius he bought in this fic then? Since you can reasonably argue that the batteries in that car is a) more expensive than the entire car, and b) better served dug out of "that crap" to be reused/retooled into other devices...

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That's pretty much what happened, isn't it? Bayleaf wanted the parts.

Adrian had solved the problem of transportation and cargo this time by finding someone with a used truck and throwing a wad of money at him. It was fortunate indeed that he already had plans for the thing, because it was an actual, run down God-as-his-witness 1998 Prius electric hybrid truck, one of the last gasps of the environmentalist movement. It had been one last attempt by the Green party to bend the automotive industry over their knee, and was a dismal failure in every regard. It was less fuel efficient than a Humvee, its batteries alone made it an environmental hazard to rival a 1960s Volkswagon, and it had less horsepower than a Pinto.

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(Also, i would like to ask: Why is your dad's Prius restricted by speed then, instead of suffering in performance greatly at lower speeds?

I thought the electric half of a Prius can't support the vehicle past 70km/h, because it just doesn't have the oomph to do so at high speeds? (aka at that point it's 100% the fuel engine pushing the vehicle at max gear, thus saving fuel through efficient output)

****, the entire electric system half is meant to support the vehicle at lower speeds instead, right? Is the electrics somehow creating drag when the batteries bought the farm?

Honest question, as an owner I'd like to know. Please PM me)

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All I know is that with the battery shot, acceleration is all but gone. It takes a few minutes of steady driving to reach sixty and can't go faster than that. Does yours have that "battery screen" where it shows the engine and battery driving the wheels, and the engine and brakes charging the battery? That screen says the battery just plain doesn't charge anymore.

 

[wkz]

All I know is that with the battery shot, acceleration is all but gone. It takes a few minutes of steady driving to reach sixty and can't go faster than that. Does yours have that "battery screen" where it shows the engine and battery driving the wheels, and the engine and brakes charging the battery? That screen says the battery just plain doesn't charge anymore.

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That makes sense with what I know, that the electric system is boosting performance at low speeds. Without it I expect acceleration to be terrible.

And in rare cases you should see from the "battery screen" how it takes electricity directly from the generator to feed the electric motors too (but doing so wastes fuel i believe, compared with normal operations of either charging the batteries or having it discharge)

But to reach only sixty and stay there without being able to go faster... I feel like I need to advice you to ask your dad to check the fuel half of the vehicle, since something bad must have gone wrong there too.

Edit: PS: I actually though Bayleaf's plan is to put a gnomish lightning generator into the thing, thus turning it into a full electric that requires no recharge, and an awesome self-destruct mode

 

[TheUnicorn]

And I noticed three things;
First, there was a hell of a lot of sex shaming involved. There are loads of propaganda pieces on that page that boil down to, "Stay away from the diseased whores you stupid pricks."

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Very true, and despite all that they still had condoms.

Second, the condoms were manufactured and issued to soldiers as part of their kit, because the brass was pretty sure that no matter how much the horndogs were humiliated, they were going to screw around. "If you insist on playing Russian roulette with syphilis, use these, morons!"

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You seem to have missed the fact that they were also avialable for sale (a package of 3 for 1$), and that even in england there were no restrictions on the number which could be purchased.

Third, the war only lasted six years, and America was only involved for the last four.

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Point. However that's countered by the lack of synthetics and the fact that england didn't have access to south America, Florida, or other regions where rubber trees could be grown.

EDIT:Heck, with modern hydroponics wilkweed farming might be cheaper than rubber trees as a source of latex, it's just they can't compete with the development cost of existing rubber supplies.

 

[Kalaong]

But to reach only sixty and stay there without being able to go faster... I feel like I need to advice you to ask your dad to check the fuel half of the vehicle, since something bad must have gone wrong there too.

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That's the problem with any kind of hybrid tech. That whole "brakes and slopes charge the battery" trick is a neat idea in theory, but in practice, all the extra parts means just that much more can go wrong.

Point. However that's countered by the lack of synthetics and the fact that england didn't have access to south America, Florida, or other regions where rubber trees could be grown.

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Really? Nazi submarines interfering with transatlantic transport is a lot less disruptive than Godzilla showing up every three months to reduce a random city and everything in it to scrap, one of them certain to be a major deepwater port every fifteen.

Also, where did England get their rubber during the war?

 

[TheUnicorn]

Nazi submarines interfering with transatlantic transport is a lot less disruptive than Godzilla showing up every three months to reduce a random city and everything in it to scrap, one of them certain to be a major deepwater port every fifteen.

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No argument, my point is that there are local sources and with the long time they'd be used instead of the cheaper current sources.

Also, where did England get their rubber during the war?

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South America or Africa I'd guess.

 

[Kalaong]

No argument, my point is that there are local sources and with the long time they'd be used instead of the cheaper current sources.

South America or Africa I'd guess.

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...odd thought. I just checked Google Maps, and there's no direct overland road or train between Panama and Columbia even today. The Darién Gap is effectively a solid barrier between South and Central America. Without ocean shipping, they might as well be on opposite sides of the planet.

 

[mn--]

Hell, paper mills are impossible if anything the size of an oil refinery can't remain intact. Their source, logging, will get murderhoboed all the time.

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... and that's one profession with plenty of ad-hoc melee weapons around, stereotypically... also potentially significant threats from wildlife.

Sure, modern mechanized logging means 99.some % of the output is produced by machine... but those can get stuck, jam on a stump, whatever, and then you need to break out the old-fashioned tools anyway to get the workflow fixed. And while you're doing that a bear steals your lunch.

So yeah, would be interesting to see how that works in the Wormverse...

If wagyu beef can be imported, then other luxury goods can be. If it can't then it can't.

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Which brings to mind again the sheer stupidity of many "luxury goods". As in those where all the benefit is in the social status of being able to get them...

I've had high end luxury beef once. It tasted like particularly lazy moose. North America has moose, they're even larger than our moose on average. (If not for my current health issues I'd be hunting rather than sitting here typing...) Moose can be grown on a farm too.

 

[TheUnicorn]

...odd thought. I just checked Google Maps, and there's no direct overland road or train between Panama and Columbia even today. The Darién Gap is effectively a solid barrier between South and Central America. Without ocean shipping, they might as well be on opposite sides of the planet.

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I'd debate the issue, but I realized this is a distraction from the original point, which is not that the US could keep making condoms if completly cut off from ocean trade, but that if it was cut off there'd be massive effects on society which we don't see in the story.

 

[ir_fane]

Building new infrastructure networks is what you do when you're relatively prosperous, and relatively at peace... Not when your country is in crisis.

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Not to jab at the overall argument, but do you not know how much of the US road system was built as a specific response to a financial crisis? The great depression?
Or the number of factories built during major wars?

Building new infrastructure is a common response to national crises.

 

[Hazard]

Besides, it's about petroleum BYPRODUCTS, not petrol. It doesn't become a choice between condoms and cars. It becomes a choice between condoms and surgical gloves. Or condoms and IV bags. Or condoms and a dozen other vital medical resources. Or a thousand more NONmedical products made with petroleum byproducts. (Expect a mass resurgence in wax paper for wrapping food, for example.)

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Organic chemistry is well understood enough that you can basically turn any quantity of mineral oil into whatever oil based product you want. It might not be very efficient and as such not necessarily cost effective, but it's possible. All that the petrochemical industry will be interested in is what they're getting out of the distillation columns, because that determines what other processes they need to gear for to meet the demand for everything that is asked for.

Hell, we saw the exact same thing happen to freaking Twinkies when Hostess declared bankruptcy in 2013. Even saner minds assumed that they would be harder to purchase until the brand changed hands, while idiots assumed they would be gone forever. Cue twelve-packs of preservative-laced snack cakes going for hundreds of dollars on Ebay.

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The instant any product decreases in supply, demand effectively increases. Given just enough decrease, it's an upward spiral until what's left is snapped up the instant it becomes available.

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And like any economic bubble where demand (grossly) exceeds supply, it collapses. Either because supply meets current demand, after which current demand collapses along with excess supply capacity as the investment doesn't pay back, or because alternatives are found. Or because people stop paying the excessively large cost and invest in other things.

More evidence most people are barely at the "put paper in pump get gas out" level of economic education; each and every one of those hundred-kilotonnage cargo ships that are scrapped in said frag harbors is an $70-million-plus INVESTMENT with an expected productive lifespan of around thirty years. They have destinations planned months if not years in advance, adapting to whatever conditions they encounter. Every time one is lost at sea it's a ridiculous blow to the owner; losing two or three in a row would utterly bankrupt even the largest shipping concerns, similar to how cheetahs have to catch prey at least every other sprint or they just drop dead. Losing every ship in a harbor would hammer the entire industry. And this has happened to multiple harbors.

After the third or even second Leviathan attack, most international shippers would just take their ball and go home.

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Or would've started putting to see smaller ships in larger numbers that might be more responsive to such emergencies, or put emergency response measures in place demanding that ships in an Endbringer attack flee immediately with minimal crew at most, either upriver, or into the seas. Hell, tsunamis are nasty, but they become much less nasty the further out to sea you are.


Oh, and regarding condoms? Prior to latex condoms it wasn't unknown for condoms to be made from linen, leather or animal intestines. It wasn't as good as latex condoms are, especially when it comes to preventing STDs, but it generally worked well enough to decrease the odds of pregnancy.

 

[Graviator]

I want to drop in my two cents here, but I think the Alternate History forum would appreciate it more.

 

[Kalaong]

I want to drop in my two cents here, but I think the Alternate History forum would appreciate it more.

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Link your other post then, please?

 

[Graviator]

Return to the Age of Sail What if?

The year is 1990 and the Empire of Atlantis finally gets fed up with all the noise from the...

forums.sufficientvelocity.com

 

[RHJunior]

As to paper:

Hemp.

You get 4 times the amount of paper from the same acreage, and it can be regrown annually. And it's higher quality paper, too-- doesn't need all the nasty chemical additives that currently make paper factories among the most horrendous polluters out there.

Plus it can be used to produce cloth, rope, soap, oil.... the seeds can be ground for highly nutritious flour, and the oil is high-nutrient too. Plus all the medicinal uses of the THC.

(We are currently denied all these things due to the War on Some Drugs--- and because politicians are cretinous morons who can't tell the difference between marijuana and industrial hemp.)

And seeing as I indicated in the story that marijuana has been legalized in Earth Bet...

 

[RHJunior]

Not to jab at the overall argument, but do you not know how much of the US road system was built as a specific response to a financial crisis? The great depression?
Or the number of factories built during major wars?

Building new infrastructure is a common response to national crises.

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Yes, we all know about the "roads to nowhere." Those dismal projects were started as welfare programs during the FDR administration, and did diddly to the power of squat for the Depression except take strong backs out of the workplace and tax dollars out of needy pockets for make-work projects.

However, the interstate highway system was built (or well, started-- it was completed more or less in 1992) during the Eisenhower administration, a time of relative safety and prosperity-- Cold War to the contrary, nobody was getting blowed up every week so it counts.

(edit) And while many factories were built, many more were simply repurposed, along with their transport and distribution systems.

 

[Kalaong]

Hemp.

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Don't forget it's one of the best nitrogen-fixing crops - it doesn't just have the nodules, its deep roots create deep topsoil.

 

[RHJunior]

I just read your link;

And I noticed three things;
First, there was a hell of a lot of sex shaming involved. There are loads of propaganda pieces on that page that boil down to, "Stay away from the diseased whores you stupid pricks."
Second, the condoms were manufactured and issued to soldiers as part of their kit, because the brass was pretty sure that no matter how much the horndogs were humiliated, they were going to screw around. "If you insist on playing Russian roulette with syphilis, use these, morons!"

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There's also the cost in antibiotics. I did point out that, with antibiotic shortages, doctors would start getting pretty pissed at having to hand out precious supplies of penicillin to people who couldn't keep their pants on.

Though that does now make me wonder about those herds of cattle they allegedly dose up with antibiotics and hormones... meat, milk and meat byproducts are kind of important too, and ranchers and dairy farmers aren't about to just let their herds lie down and die... what would the viable course be to take? hmmm.

 

[Kalaong]

There's also the cost in antibiotics. I did point out that, with antibiotic shortages, doctors would start getting pretty pissed at having to hand out precious supplies of penicillin to people who couldn't keep their pants on.

Though that does now make me wonder about those herds of cattle they allegedly dose up with antibiotics and hormones... meat, milk and meat byproducts are kind of important too, and ranchers and dairy farmers aren't about to just let their herds lie down and die... what would the viable course be to take? hmmm.

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It's the "more expensive, not gone" thing all over again. Get rid of the battery farm stuff and things like veal and the need for antibiotics decreases drastically. Hell, the animals themselves are healthier and easier to raise free-range than the big industrial farms. You'd have to abandon the giant factory farms and use more of what pop culture actually expect farms to be, but this could be considered a feature, not a bug.

 

[geogio13]

As to paper:

Hemp.

You get 4 times the amount of paper from the same acreage, and it can be regrown annually. And it's higher quality paper, too-- doesn't need all the nasty chemical additives that currently make paper factories among the most horrendous polluters out there.

Plus it can be used to produce cloth, rope, soap, oil.... the seeds can be ground for highly nutritious flour, and the oil is high-nutrient too. Plus all the medicinal uses of the THC.

(We are currently denied all these things due to the War on Some Drugs--- and because politicians are cretinous morons who can't tell the difference between marijuana and industrial hemp.)

And seeing as I indicated in the story that marijuana has been legalized in Earth Bet...

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You must admit that such is the intention of the lumber industry.

 

[Kalaong]

You must admit that such is the intention of the lumber industry.

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And Hearst and the DEA... loads of jerks who run the world hate hemp.

"BAH! They cut all our funding. They'll shut me down if I don't find a new chemical to demonize. Let's see. What are people scared of for no good reason?"
Booth, Martin. Cannabis: A History. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2004. Web.

 

[Fencer]

And this, boys and girls, is why world building is a bitch and a half! The butterfly effect rears its head left right and center in ways that no one can possibly look at from every angle and in the end there are too many factors that feed into things to state absolutely what would or would not happen!

Because of this world building is often limited to the blatantly obvious or is mostly ignored with the broad strokes being borrowed from different historical periods!

Less sarcastically if the author wants to promote a wait for marriage mentality I frankly could not give a rats ass. I've got an Uncle who warned my Mom (at my Dad's funeral or shortly thereafter) that masturbation is a sin.

I love the man. And at the time I think I barely came past his waist, but I'd have done my damndest to knock him on his ass for being an insensitive piece of shit if had I heard and understood what he was saying at the time.

An author coming up with some flimsy in universe justification for more old school social norms? It's barely worth a raised eyebrow as far as I'm concerned.

Taylor calling Danny Daddy was weirder by far. Nothing that cutesy and immature should ever be uttered by the Empress of escalation.

 

[RHJunior]

An author coming up with some flimsy in universe justification for more old school social norms? It's barely worth a raised eyebrow as far as I'm concerned.

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I find it fulfills my cynical worldview that certain people react to the idea of there no longer being cheap and plentiful prophylactics with a nigh-religious outrage.

Taylor calling Danny Daddy was weirder by far. Nothing that cutesy and immature should ever be uttered by the Empress of escalation.

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She's a sixteen year old girl who has just been 1)stuffed in a locker full of filth 2)had it revealed to her face that her tormentor is a Protectorate HERO 3)undergone a prolonged bout of incredible agony as her body was mutated by a broken Shard 4)woken up in a hospital shaking off morphine. If anyone had a right to a moment of "I want my mommy/Daddy" vulnerability, she did.