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Contraindicated, as it tends to undermine (literally) the ability to put more stuff above ground.
It is also sensitive to flooding, and even with aggressive counter-global-warming measures in place (for which we can legit thank Alexander IV, grudgingly, if we feel like it)... Well, New York does get hit with storm surges now and then, and it's just plain not that high above sea level.
Yeah. 12000 per square kilometer means, well, about one person per eighty square meters of physical land.
That's impossible if you're trying to sustain everyone off the agricultural products of that land, obviously. But when you imagine it as living space where most people live and work in multi-story buildings, it's not that out of line.
Probably being upgraded as well, along with the rest of the Vic military; without the FCNY being bound by treaty to pacifism, you cant necessarily just rely on dumb bombardment systems to murder civilians anymore, since you can bet the FCNY's priorities are going to include air/missile defense and counterbattery systems.
True, though sheer volume of fire is actual a credible counter to that. A missile capable of shooting down a Grad rocket is much more expensive than the Grad rocket is.
Unless mass-producible laser systems can be rapidly spread out to cover the entire zone in need of protection, New York still has a problem, and even for a rich city-state deploying those is going to take a while. Whatever they have on rapid order, it can't be enough to shoot down everything, because if they could have deployed a system that could do that fast enough, they would have already done it.
Now, don't get me wrong, the Vicks will still want to uptech, get some more capable Russian bombardment weapons (HIMARS-ski type stuff) and salt that in among the crude 20th century weaponry, but that's going to be there more to make sure the FCNY military would be incapable of counterattack and that the city would be assuredly paralyzed, by hitting the key targets with superior weapons in the middle of the crude mass bombardment.
Or at least I expect things to stay that way unless Victoria starts having to make hard choices about whether it can afford the gunners to man all those batteries, which is a valid concern since that probably represents one of their few significant supplies of reasonably experienced artillerymen.
Strategic bombardment systems are not all that applicable to the tactical engagements of a civil war.
They may have grabbed (some) of the soldiers, but they definitely left the equipment. Of course, the crews have probably been replaced by now.
Probably being upgraded as well, along with the rest of the Vic military; without the FCNY being bound by treaty to pacifism, you cant necessarily just rely on dumb bombardment systems to murder civilians anymore, since you can bet the FCNY's priorities are going to include air/missile defense and counterbattery systems.
They're going to need space for infrastructure shit like desalination plants, power production and the like, but its quite possible for a city like FCNY to accomodate that many people without going Megacity One, as long as they are importing food.
not impossible, but even so it wouldn't be enough to feed the whole town.
It might even be that acknowledging they'll be fully depends on food imports anyway they just don't bother in favor of instead making more apartments.
Funny enough, I imagine working from home through internet is more common there, as it means they'd need less space for offices and it would allow for more homes instead.
Funny enough, I imagine working from home through internet is more common there, as it means they'd need less space for offices and it would allow for more homes instead.
Given the population density, I'm pretty sure commuter traffic is mostly handled by mass transit in most areas of the Free City. It kind of has to be. They only have eighty square meters of land surface per person, and if much of that population is in cars, then the cars would be stacked up bumper to bumper on all the land they can pave.
Which isn't to say they don't have cars and parking; they assuredly do. Just that those can't be a primary form of transportation for most of the population, regardless of whether they telework or not.
I don't think we have much knowledge on the internal economic policy of the city beyond that trade and business make up most of the economy, but I would guess at minimum that the city places massive tax burdens or other financial sticks to keep the amount of vehicles low.
Given that we seem to be running on the idea of space as a premium and that the government would absolutely have to take direct action on it, they might even have a total quota of private vehicles that can't be exceeded - just to throw an idea at the wall. Like if you're gonna be owning a car in this city, you need to wait for extra space to clear up or buy out someone else's space from them.
Which of course would pretty much ensure that only wealthy folks own cars and everyone else takes the bus/subway, but right now I can't think of a way that doesn't happen with things the way they are.
I don't think we have much knowledge on the internal economic policy of the city beyond that trade and business make up most of the economy, but I would guess at minimum that the city places massive tax burdens or other financial sticks to keep the amount of vehicles low.
They won't need to, if it's that hard to find a place to park and if the mass transit and telecommuting infrastructure are good enough.
American cities tend to heavily subsidize private ownership of cars by imposing statutory requirements that a certain amount of parking be made available. Take away the subsidy, in a place where land prices are extremely high, and the parking goes away. And then a lot of people just don't buy cars, and sell off the cars they have.
Which of course would pretty much ensure that only wealthy folks own cars and everyone else takes the bus/subway, but right now I can't think of a way that doesn't happen with things the way they are.
A sizeable fraction of the island city-state's cars are probably taxis of some kind, with the caveat that I consider systems like Uber to basically be poorly regulated taxi services.
They won't need to, if it's that hard to find a place to park and if the mass transit and telecommuting infrastructure are good enough.
American cities tend to heavily subsidize private ownership of cars by imposing statutory requirements that a certain amount of parking be made available. Take away the subsidy, in a place where land prices are extremely high, and the parking goes away. And then a lot of people just don't buy cars, and sell off the cars they have.
A sizeable fraction of the island city-state's cars are probably taxis of some kind, with the caveat that I consider systems like Uber to basically be poorly regulated taxi services.
That's a good point. It does make the city builder nerd inside me salivate at the idea of a mostly car less city.
Think of the transit systems. The walking spaces you could get away with without needing to worry about car traffic/parking.
Though ,sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the cities infrastructure had to be slap-dashed together to deal with their own refugee crisis a few decades back.
That's a good point. It does make the city builder nerd inside me salivate at the idea of a mostly car less city.
Think of the transit systems. The walking spaces you could get away with without needing to worry about car traffic/parking.
Though ,sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the cities infrastructure had to be slap-dashed together to deal with their own refugee crisis a few decades back.
It absolutely would have been. This isn't going to be an intricately planned city, it probably just has a shitload of bus routes and people-pushers on the subways to cram people into the cars and so on.
It absolutely would have been. This isn't going to be an intricately planned city, it probably just has a shitload of bus routes and people-pushers on the subways to cram people into the cars and so on.
Considering this is still America still I imagine those people pushers use riot shields to smush the people into the tin can that they optimistically call a subway car.
Completely unrelated to the current discussion that's going on.
I have been rereading this guest recently. particularly the battle scenes and i've got to say.
As an artilleryman it always films my heart with joy to see the artillery get some screen time it deserves. When it comes to fiction with modern warfare in them. There sometimes is a noticeable lack of artillery. With us getting sidelined by other "flashier" parts of the military.
So thanks for that. @PoptartProdigy
ps. In my completely 100% unbiased opinion. Light rocket artillery is best artillery.
if you like/know either Mass effect or dragonball maybe try and go catch up on his other two quests too. They're both of similar quality, if of very different types (one is a more conventional ck2 quest with control of a polity, the other is focused on a single main character and a somewhat unusual system for combat skills and so on)
Ok one final question. In FCNY advantages what exactly does this mean "
Fortified: When everything you have rests in one place, you make it safe. The City's islands are protected by water and comprehensive coastal defenses, and the bridges are all rigged to blow at a word. The mainland is protected by defenses more comprehensive than the Maginot Line."
Was this retconnned? The way your describing the NYPD it seems they don't even have Artillery? I can't describe any coastal defensive that consist of nothing but passive defenses with no artillery or missile units comprehensive. There is no amount of Anti Tank Spikes and spotlights you can put on a beach and feel comfortable calling that "a comprehensive Coastal Defense" without some actual guns. The maginot line but with no big guns or even heavy machine guns and only bunkers of rifleman cannot be a more comprehensive version of the Maginot. That's objectively less comprehensive.
Then we have encountered a disagreement in terms. They don't have guns and will not come to have had guns. They will almost certainly acquire guns in the near future.
Yes it is human instinct when not having a gun is to acquire one especially when your neighbor most distinct characteristic is that they don't have have any sanity at all, and likely has repeatedly in the past secretly tried to use cultist human sacrifice rituals to Resurrect Confederate generals.
Then we have encountered a disagreement in terms. They don't have guns and will not come to have had guns. They will almost certainly acquire guns in the near future.
What exactly does a comprehensive Coastal Defense without any armaments even entail? What does the land defenses being more comprehensive than the maginot mean in this context? I cannot even imagine what a armamentless defense network would look like and be any way shape or form comparable to the Maginot? For the love of God do they they even have rifles?
Over four years ago, I wrote a sidestory called "Hell Hath No Fury" about the fate of a group of Victorian nurses at the end of the Erie Campaign. I had some vague ideas about following those characters into the aftermath of the campaign and as part of that I did a great deal of thinking about Victorian nurses and what life might have been like for them. The story never materialized, but I've been picking at the lore on and off ever since. It's about as complete as it's ever going to be, so here.
Have a thing.
World Building – Victorian Nurses
Let's start with what little we already know, specifically that Victorians 'recruit' nurses locally and treat them similar to comfort women. This is established in canon, and all of the assumptions below build and flow from this.
We know Vics like to travel light, so they are unlikely to want to drag relatively unwilling (and supposedly 'fragile') women for hundreds of miles and feed them the entire way. To minimize hassle and logistical strain, they would likely only recruit nurses at or near the location they plan to fight at. In the case of Detroit, this was presumably Toledo, Buffalo, and the surrounding areas.
If we assume they are recruiting from whoever is around, they likely consider nursing to be an unskilled profession: nurses are caretakers, not medical professionals. The criteria they likely look for, in reverse order of relevance, is medical experience, physical attractiveness (for reasons more complex than just the obvious, see below), caretaking experience (preferably male siblings), and loyalty/obedience. At the end of the day, however, they'll likely 'recruit' just about anyone they can get their hands on if they can't find enough 'qualified' candidates.
Obedience is likely the primary thing the Victorians would want for a number of reasons. First, medical supplies are rare and valuable (we'll get into this more in a moment). Big factions like the Commonwealth might have the resources to make their own, but towns and city-states generally don't. Victorians are not ignorant of this and will likely want to be careful of people stealing their meds and vanishing into the night. Second, Victorian xenophobia will almost certainly predispose them toward being untrusting of the locals, and even Vics aren't dumb enough to let potential resistance fighters watch over their wounded. For this reason, it seems reasonable they would gravitate toward women who seem to fit the Victorian ideal (a noble savage, as it were) or who might be easily cowed by threats of force. Teaching the locals their place is all well and good, but they are getting these women to do a job and they need them suitable for it sooner rather than later. Victorian faith in their own authoritarian tactics likely makes this a secondary concern to just putting bodies in bonnets if they are shorthanded, but while they likely believe they can force obedience if they need to (especially the obedience of 'weak-willed' women), they'd just rather not go through the hassle if they don't have to.
Medical experience is the least valuable because as mentioned earlier Victorians likely consider nurses caregivers, not medical personnel. Doctors probably are considered skilled and would be universally male (a woman's place is in the home, not stressing their pretty heads with medical textbooks). If they require a nurse's assistance it's to hand them things and hold lights, not participate. Nurses' opinions are not sought and would be very unwelcome if given.
Victorians weirdly seem to believe in modern medicine (kinda, they're at least good a biological warfare and avoiding its consequences) but almost certainly lack the globalization, tech base, and educational system to replicate 21st century medical advancement (which is what you get for killing all the teachers and dismantling universities, jackasses). Medical supplies are probably rare (relatively speaking, they can still import from Russia) and highly trained professionals like surgeons even more so. Doctors might be one of the last truly educated jobs the Vics have, and even those probably work more on an apprentice system than a conventional medical program. Or they study abroad, though someone with that degree of wealth and freedom would likely end up as a personal physician to the Victorian elite. Home-grown Victorian physicians aren't running around bleeding people: they understand the basic concepts of medicine and surgery but will stumble over advanced concepts like identifying subtle radiation poisoning.
Another factor making medicine rare is that, similar to military supplies, it usually cannot be looted until after the battle is mostly won. In this respect it is even worse than fuel or munitions because most of the people the Victorians fight have less access to medical supplies than Victoria itself does, and medicine tends to be quite fragile compared to a box of bullets. This means that Victorians must bring any medical supplies they expect to use along with them as they travel.
As mentioned above, Victorians believe in traveling light: supply chains are an unforgivable weakness by their doctrine. They also likely place very little value on the lives of their soldiers, as death just means going on to one's eternal reward for being a good little crusader. This means they likely take the minimum amount of medical supplies they think will be required, and these supplies will be carefully rationed. This meshes well with their limited number of truly skilled medical professionals like surgeons: limited ability to grant advanced care is partially negated by a greatly limited number of individuals receiving that care.
Med-evac is probably somewhat primitive on the battlefield. Vics don't like to mechanize their infantry, don't normally employ helicopters, and believe their enemies would shoot medical transports on sight (after all, it's what they do). A handful of trucks or other transports might be arranged to carry wounded to a hospital when possible, but depending on the situation or terrain the wounded are likely to be stuck until the fighting dies down. The most severely injured probably won't make it to a hospital, again lifting the load on Victorian field surgeons.
Since wounded have limited evacuation options and moving them likely won't be anyone's priority, most treatment will probably be done by field medics: apply tourniquet, reset bone, bandage wound, and hope there's nothing internal. "Hospitals" are probably just recovery areas for 90% of cases, a place to keep wounded out of the way where their wounds won't get infected (more on that in a moment). Combat medics would likely be full combatants who also happen to have basic first aid training and would be universally male. Women are too 'precious' and 'fragile' to be exposed to the dirty business that is war, and having to care for them when they inevitably broke down in hysterics would distract Victorian troops from their duties. Besides, think of what those Orcs would do if they got their hands on them!
Anesthetics are rare and valuable even by the normal standards of medicine, due to near universal demand and limited ability to produce them. Because they are MEN!, most Victorian wounded would likely be expected to just tough their way through their injuries when feasible. Local or regional anesthetics would be the next option, with general anesthesia used only if absolutely necessary. General anesthesia is complex enough even under ideal circumstances that there is a dedicated real-world career for it. That branch of education is likely not something that would occur to most Victorians, especially when considering what non-combatant personnel they need to take into the field, so we can probably expect Victorian general anesthesia to be extremely rare in the field and very unreliable when attempted.
Hygiene may also be a factor in certain engagements, because as mentioned Victorians travel light and don't consider medical care to be a priority. Even Victorians aren't backwards enough to not know that wounds need to be kept clean, but the things you need to keep wounds clean don't grow on trees. Even something as simple as soap and water for washing hands may not be easily available: water is a pain in the ass to haul so Victorians likely only travel with a small amount and are expected to forage the rest from streams, wells, etc. Similarly, why bring soap when you can just take some from the locals when you need it? Which is all well and good, but if there's no convenient water source near wherever the hospital got placed they will rapidly run short, and unless told to do so very few soldiers are going to think to grab soap or rubbing alcohol during the post-battle looting (assuming it didn't get blown up or torched in the fighting). With the wounded languishing in dirt and mud for hours or more due to poor recovery mechanisms, infection might be a serious concern.
As hospitals are recovery areas more than treatment centers, nurses are likely envisioned as comfort women in a very literal sense. Their purpose, beyond changing bandages and bedpans, is to be a smiling face for any Victorian boys who were gallantly wounded fighting against the Marxist hordes. Morphine is rare and valuable: it's much cheaper to send some pretty girls to dote on the wounded than it is to drug them so they aren't actually in pain anymore. This is another reason why they would look for 'noble savages' when convenient to do so: nurses work much better as morale boosters if they act the part and give suffering wounded 'a slice of home'. Actual medical treatment would probably be more effective, but a real man can just tough it through the pain without any of those sissy drugs. Can't shame yourself by crying or complaining in front of the attractive women!
The above is not to say terror and abuse don't happen: these are Victorians we're talking about. It just takes a slightly different form.
For starters, Victorian field hospitals are likely butcher shops when the fighting is intense. Surgeons can only afford to spend their valuable time on patients that are important enough to warrant it and who actually have a good chance of pulling through. Those not wounded enough to die in the field but too wounded to be worth trying to save would be left to die in the hospital, but odds are no one is putting them out of their misery. Having the CMC shoot them would likely be a mercy but wouldn't be good for morale, and drugs are too precious to waste on euthanizing the dying. Far better to make them 'wait their turn' until they tragically die, and naturally nurses will be required to attend to these mutilated men to perpetuate the illusion of care. Giving a dying man something pretty to look at before they go is the sort of romantic nonsense the Victorians would eat up, and anyway, they're women. It's not like they have anything better to do.
Amputations with minimal anesthetic and other low-tech medical procedures are also likely common, because they can be done quickly with a minimal level of advanced education needed. The average Victorian nurse likely sees an entire horror convention's worth of blood and gore on a daily basis, complete with constant screams and the odors of blood, vomit, ruptured bowel, and more. This would be hell even if they were amongst friends, which these women very much are not. They are not Victorians, however much they are supposed to pretend to be, and the CMC isn't going to forget that.
The Inquisition doesn't trust actual Victorian soldiers or even their officers, nurses recruited from the locals are tolerated at best. Things like insubordination or attitude will likely result in a private 'interview' so the offender can be 'corrected' in traditional Victorian fashion, but if medicine goes missing or a spy is suspected the CMC will gleefully take the opportunity to make an example out of someone. It doesn't even need to be the correct someone: as outsiders nurses make excellent scapegoats to cover internal corruption or failure. The supply sergeant isn't selling morphine on the Black Market and the colonel didn't die because the head surgeon is bad at his job, it's the nurse's fault! The CMC loves terror tactics and nurses are considered expendable, so it wouldn't take much for them to make an example out of a nurse to keep the others in line.
Florence Nightingale seems like she would be a greatly idolized figure for Victorians. She comes from the right era for Retroculture to embrace her, and even when she was alive the media was fetishizing her as a gentle angel caring for her heroic charges. Of course, the real Florence Nightingale was a battleaxe who would have hated the Victorians and especially their nursing system, but since when have 'historical facts' ever stopped Victorians? They likely would have dismissed the accounts of the real Florence Nightingale as feminist lies and latched directly onto the nonsensical propaganda of the era, carrying the legend forward as the template for their own kidnapped nurses to emulate with predictable results.
The Florence Nightingale Effect is a real thing: people tend to latch on to sources of stability and comfort when they are injured and/or stressed, and the reverse is equally true. Victorians are still human beings, and human beings don't do well when forced to participate in frenzied wave attacks or recuperate in meatgrinder hospitals, especially if they're doing both under the watch of political officers who do not approve of anything resembling cowardice or disloyalty. The expected image and behavior of Vic nurses is specifically designed to make them beacons of positivity in the hell of war, so it is unsurprising that traumatized Victorian soldiers with no culturally acceptable outlet for their trauma frequently latch onto their caretakers. As twisted as it is, a number of these nurses may end up reciprocating. A wounded man is much less threatening than the Vics they're probably used to (hello, Stockholm Syndrome), and Vics do consider themselves to be good Christians. Being engaged to a wounded Victorian soldier would give a nurse an excuse to rebuff other advances in a way the Victorian narrative would be inclined to respect. It's not immunity by any stretch, but some protection is better than none.
Even if they don't reciprocate their patient's affections, "no" isn't something women get to say in Victorian culture. A nurse breaking a heroically injured soldier's heart by rejecting him after she "strung him along" by doing the job the Victorians forced her to do at gunpoint would end extremely poorly. Injured soldiers almost always have friends, and Victorian culture is very clear that women who act like whores (by Victoria's definition of whore) get treated like whores. It gets even worse if multiple individuals are interested in (AKA: feel entitled to) the same nurse. In the Victorian view, these incidents only arise because the woman is a temptress playing with the innocent men's feelings (women being inherently sinful), so of course she gets the blame and the extremely unpleasant consequences. Worse still, once word gets around that a certain nurse is an "acceptable target", she's fair game for everyone. If her duties suffer because of this she'll get all the blame, because as far as the Victorians are concerned this is a young woman unable to keep her hands off those strapping Victorian men, not a victim of serial rape. Suicide is likely common once this death spiral of abuse begins and is another area where nurses have an advantage over Victoria's usual victims…for a very limited definition of 'advantage'. Their positions give them far more access to means of ending their lives (cables, bedding, sharp objects, drugs, etc) than a prisoner or civilian might have. To preserve patient morale Inquisitors likely cover up these deaths as 'reassignments'. Nurses are very, very aware that 'reassigned' is code for 'was killed', but Inquisitors like to leave it ambiguous as to if a nurse killed herself or was killed by the Inquisition for some unknown crime (which can include attempting to kill yourself). Paranoia is a powerful tool, and one they are deliberately trained to wield.
There is real world precedent for the practice of deliberately paring nurses off with injured soldiers. During WW2 a number of British nurses were explicitly given exceptions from the usual rules regarding fraternization with patients because the individuals they were caring for were considered so disfigured by their injuries that it was believed no other woman would want to marry them. Considering how much Victoria adores 'family', they'd love the idea of passing their disfigured 'heroes' onto foreign women who can't say no rather than having their good daughters get married off to a mutilated former soldier.
Though they may not realize it at first (Victoria likely doesn't go about announcing how its 'nursing program' works), Victorian nurses are never going home. Vics like to travel light when heading to war, but the same doesn't apply when it comes to bringing the spoils back home. Their delightful tradition of war brides proves they are more than willing invest the resources in transporting said brides home, and because of the whole Florence Nightingale narrative discussed above nurses are going to fall into this category more than anyone else. This isn't a snarling war trophy being dragged home to be taught her place (for her own good, of course), this is LOVE! There almost no chance of a nurse rejecting a Victorian proposal (either because of the Nightingale Effect/Stockholm Syndrome, because they didn't dare say no, or because some of the guy's friends took her aside for few hours and gave her 'a change of heart'), which is all the proof the Victorians need that their beliefs are 100% true. One way or another nurses aren't going to be dropped off at home when their work is done: they're going back to Victoria so they can be "rewarded" for their service with the greatest joy a woman can know: being a good Christian housewife for a good Christian soldier. </sarcasm>
Naturally, this happy ending is almost never actually happy. PTSD is not something any amount of affection or desperation can cure, and more importantly it probably isn't something Victorians acknowledge exists. "Shell shock" and "combat fatigue" are just words used by pansy liberals to excuse cowardice! No true son of Victoria would suffer such an ailment…and if they did they'd likely get an Inquisitor coming along to 'encourage' them very soon. This works exactly as it did in historical conflicts: traumatized men come home without a socially acceptable way to process their trauma so they take it out on their families. Beating wives and children is not only okay but 100% expected in Victoria, and if a war hero drinks himself into a stupor every night in the privacy of his home that's no one's business but the Inquisitions (who could probably care less as long as it doesn't cause problems for the rest of the community). Their lovely new brides are unlikely to be any help: they have PTSD of their own to work through, which certainly won't get better while they are trapped with xenophobic extremists just looking for an excuse to blame all their troubles on the foreign girl who seduced young Tommy and is surely to blame for his sudden change in behavior.
This is not to say that there aren't a few happy stories amongst the misery, though the definition of "happy" might vary.
Nurses are not the passive, ineffectual actors Victorians imagine them to be. Most will escape if they can and are often in a good position to help others escape as well. Though it is balanced on a razor's edge they do enjoy better treatment than others exposed to Victorian "hospitality" and are sometimes assigned to treat individuals recovering from said hospitality (whether that be someone undergoing 'interrogation' or a lady prisoner that the boys got a bit rough with). In these cases recovery usually just means another round of suffering, so nurses will occasionally make sure the patient does not recover, quietly putting them out of their misery to spare them weeks of continued torment before their inevitable demise. Escapes or aiding other captives ends very poorly for nurses if they get caught, but the same can be said of prisoners throughout history. There will always be those who resist, regardless of risk or consequence.
For those who survive to be taken back to Victoria and are married off instead of being funneled into their slave industry, not every union is a miserable one filled with abuse. Victorian culture is monstrous, designed to make and enable monsters, but Victorians are ultimately human beings. For all that their culture encourages such acts, they are not inherently raping, murderous monsters. Their misplaced affection is not always doomed to spiral into abuse, and former nurses will sometimes genuinely reciprocate this affection. It doesn't even need to be love: most benevolent soldier/nurse relationships are closer to two desperate PTSD survivors clinging to each other for mutual support and survival rather than anything traditionally romantic.
Former nurses are often valuable contacts for resistance movements. They were not raised in Victorian culture and have little love for their enslavers, though considering their precarious position most aren't willing to risk what little they have to try and strike back. Former nurses are painfully aware that, like the Heavenly Father they serve, the Inquisition loves to test the Faithful. Some do seek out or get recruited into various movements despite the risk and can be extremely helpful. They have news of the outside world, news that hasn't been filtered through the usual Victorian channels. They have experience working directly under the nose of the Inquisition, and some may even have skills that a traditional Victorian woman would never have been allowed to learn.
Nurses would almost certainly fall into the category of "war bride" by the extremely broad definition of Victoria's forced peace treaty with the CFC, but most of them probably won't be repatriated.
Victoria is currently desperate for manpower, so they aren't going to drag their feet on repatriation. They ultimately care nothing for these women (particularly those taken by solders rather than sold for profit) and have no resources or time to waste on minor points of pride. There will be no denials, delays, or hiding kidnapped women in cellars: the Inquisition will round up as many captured women as they can as fast as they can (perhaps only sparing those who "belong" to extremely connected and powerful officials) and will throw them at the CFC to get this done as quickly as their shattered transportation infrastructure will allow. Normally this would be simple due to Victoria's extensive slave trade: they'd just throw the latest batch of unsold slaves back onto train cars and be done with it. Victoria wouldn't want to waste time scouring the countryside for "brides" taken by soldiers (a category that would include most nurses), so those women would have little chance of repatriation.
Things aren't normal, however. Between the Erie Campaign and the Civil War the Victorian military likely hasn't had the time and manpower to spare on slave-collecting raids in the past two years. Their existing "stock" is probably running low, and if it is Victoria might have to go through the effort of sweeping up female captives who were married off to soldiers to make up the difference. Releasing the unwilling wives of soldiers also doesn't cost anything beyond the extra time and effort needed to round them up, whereas releasing slaves deprives Victoria of revenue they badly need right now. As such, while most of the "war brides" that will be turned over to the CFC will likely be women captured for the slave trade there will probably also be a number of women who were brides in the more traditional sense…including some former nurses.
Repatriated war brides, regardless of type, are unlikely to be going home any time soon. Most are remnants of victorious Victorian campaigns, which aren't known for leaving a lot behind. Those whose communities remain probably aren't going to be able to travel to them. Victorian war brides were stolen from across North America, some from as far away as California. With things in their current state traveling across the country is difficult and dangerous, even along major trade routes, and the repatriated war brides can't exactly afford to book passage with a ship or caravan. Even most refugees arrived with what little they could carry, but war brides have nothing but the clothes on their backs and the crushing weight of years of abuse. The CFC's social programs will at least ensure they have food and shelter, but the CFC can't handle its existing refugee crisis much less help dozens upon dozens of traumatized women overcome years of abuse and Victorian programming. They will be strangers in a strange land, and the only people who will likely be able to relate and understand what they've gone through will be their fellow former captives.
The main point of Victoria Falls is throwing off the abusive yoke of Victoria and then pulling together the traumatized, broken remnants of North America so everyone can start to rebuild. It is rather fitting that, perhaps, Victoria's many former captives might find themselves on a similar path as they begin rebuilding the lives Victoria attempted to take from them.
What exactly does a comprehensive Coastal Defense without any armaments even entail? What does the land defenses being more comprehensive than the maginot mean in this context? I cannot even imagine what a armamentless defense network would look like and be any way shape or form comparable to the Maginot? For the love of God do they they even have rifles?
Recontextualize everything according to the following assumption: if FCNY is surprised by a war, there is no winning it, but they are wealthy enough that they can have a credible emergency mobilization plan in place should that be required.
So the defensive works are along the same lines as all their other defense material; fully complete, but without weapons. They have rifles, of course, their definitely-not-an-army-reserve is the NYPD, but one does not win a war with rifles alone, not even the Victorians. So you'd see massive bunker complexes with the vellum-thin veneer of being customs offices. The city would have the rapid armament of these complexes as the first order of business in their mobilization plan; their foreign hardware reserves are likely configured such that the heavy machine guns, ATGMs, mines, and artillery pieces — necessary to convert their bunkers from merely superlative fighting positions for light infantry to the most daunting fortress in human history — arrive first, within two months of the word go. All of this, of course, at truly extravagant and ongoing cost and with the knowing risk of these foreign reserves being appropriated should the host country turn sour or decide they need those weapons. While the crash militarization is at this point still ongoing, you imagine this defensive line is already fully staffed and equipped.
But while the treaty was in place, it would of course have been staffed by the NYPD's extravagantly-sized Immigration And Customs Unit, who would have rifles, but the heavier equipment would have been absent.
And if that disqualifies the word, "comprehensive," to you, then the miscommunication is now clear and the reality of things communicated.
Over four years ago, I wrote a sidestory called "Hell Hath No Fury" about the fate of a group of Victorian nurses at the end of the Erie Campaign. I had some vague ideas about following those characters into the aftermath of the campaign and as part of that I did a great deal of thinking about Victorian nurses and what life might have been like for them. The story never materialized, but I've been picking at the lore on and off ever since. It's about as complete as it's ever going to be, so here.
Have a thing.
World Building – Victorian Nurses
Let's start with what little we already know, specifically that Victorians 'recruit' nurses locally and treat them similar to comfort women. This is established in canon, and all of the assumptions below build and flow from this.
We know Vics like to travel light, so they are unlikely to want to drag relatively unwilling (and supposedly 'fragile') women for hundreds of miles and feed them the entire way. To minimize hassle and logistical strain, they would likely only recruit nurses at or near the location they plan to fight at. In the case of Detroit, this was presumably Toledo, Buffalo, and the surrounding areas.
If we assume they are recruiting from whoever is around, they likely consider nursing to be an unskilled profession: nurses are caretakers, not medical professionals. The criteria they likely look for, in reverse order of relevance, is medical experience, physical attractiveness (for reasons more complex than just the obvious, see below), caretaking experience (preferably male siblings), and loyalty/obedience. At the end of the day, however, they'll likely 'recruit' just about anyone they can get their hands on if they can't find enough 'qualified' candidates.
Obedience is likely the primary thing the Victorians would want for a number of reasons. First, medical supplies are rare and valuable (we'll get into this more in a moment). Big factions like the Commonwealth might have the resources to make their own, but towns and city-states generally don't. Victorians are not ignorant of this and will likely want to be careful of people stealing their meds and vanishing into the night. Second, Victorian xenophobia will almost certainly predispose them toward being untrusting of the locals, and even Vics aren't dumb enough to let potential resistance fighters watch over their wounded. For this reason, it seems reasonable they would gravitate toward women who seem to fit the Victorian ideal (a noble savage, as it were) or who might be easily cowed by threats of force. Teaching the locals their place is all well and good, but they are getting these women to do a job and they need them suitable for it sooner rather than later. Victorian faith in their own authoritarian tactics likely makes this a secondary concern to just putting bodies in bonnets if they are shorthanded, but while they likely believe they can force obedience if they need to (especially the obedience of 'weak-willed' women), they'd just rather not go through the hassle if they don't have to.
Medical experience is the least valuable because as mentioned earlier Victorians likely consider nurses caregivers, not medical personnel. Doctors probably are considered skilled and would be universally male (a woman's place is in the home, not stressing their pretty heads with medical textbooks). If they require a nurse's assistance it's to hand them things and hold lights, not participate. Nurses' opinions are not sought and would be very unwelcome if given.
Victorians weirdly seem to believe in modern medicine (kinda, they're at least good a biological warfare and avoiding its consequences) but almost certainly lack the globalization, tech base, and educational system to replicate 21st century medical advancement (which is what you get for killing all the teachers and dismantling universities, jackasses). Medical supplies are probably rare (relatively speaking, they can still import from Russia) and highly trained professionals like surgeons even more so. Doctors might be one of the last truly educated jobs the Vics have, and even those probably work more on an apprentice system than a conventional medical program. Or they study abroad, though someone with that degree of wealth and freedom would likely end up as a personal physician to the Victorian elite. Home-grown Victorian physicians aren't running around bleeding people: they understand the basic concepts of medicine and surgery but will stumble over advanced concepts like identifying subtle radiation poisoning.
Another factor making medicine rare is that, similar to military supplies, it usually cannot be looted until after the battle is mostly won. In this respect it is even worse than fuel or munitions because most of the people the Victorians fight have less access to medical supplies than Victoria itself does, and medicine tends to be quite fragile compared to a box of bullets. This means that Victorians must bring any medical supplies they expect to use along with them as they travel.
As mentioned above, Victorians believe in traveling light: supply chains are an unforgivable weakness by their doctrine. They also likely place very little value on the lives of their soldiers, as death just means going on to one's eternal reward for being a good little crusader. This means they likely take the minimum amount of medical supplies they think will be required, and these supplies will be carefully rationed. This meshes well with their limited number of truly skilled medical professionals like surgeons: limited ability to grant advanced care is partially negated by a greatly limited number of individuals receiving that care.
Med-evac is probably somewhat primitive on the battlefield. Vics don't like to mechanize their infantry, don't normally employ helicopters, and believe their enemies would shoot medical transports on sight (after all, it's what they do). A handful of trucks or other transports might be arranged to carry wounded to a hospital when possible, but depending on the situation or terrain the wounded are likely to be stuck until the fighting dies down. The most severely injured probably won't make it to a hospital, again lifting the load on Victorian field surgeons.
Since wounded have limited evacuation options and moving them likely won't be anyone's priority, most treatment will probably be done by field medics: apply tourniquet, reset bone, bandage wound, and hope there's nothing internal. "Hospitals" are probably just recovery areas for 90% of cases, a place to keep wounded out of the way where their wounds won't get infected (more on that in a moment). Combat medics would likely be full combatants who also happen to have basic first aid training and would be universally male. Women are too 'precious' and 'fragile' to be exposed to the dirty business that is war, and having to care for them when they inevitably broke down in hysterics would distract Victorian troops from their duties. Besides, think of what those Orcs would do if they got their hands on them!
Anesthetics are rare and valuable even by the normal standards of medicine, due to near universal demand and limited ability to produce them. Because they are MEN!, most Victorian wounded would likely be expected to just tough their way through their injuries when feasible. Local or regional anesthetics would be the next option, with general anesthesia used only if absolutely necessary. General anesthesia is complex enough even under ideal circumstances that there is a dedicated real-world career for it. That branch of education is likely not something that would occur to most Victorians, especially when considering what non-combatant personnel they need to take into the field, so we can probably expect Victorian general anesthesia to be extremely rare in the field and very unreliable when attempted.
Hygiene may also be a factor in certain engagements, because as mentioned Victorians travel light and don't consider medical care to be a priority. Even Victorians aren't backwards enough to not know that wounds need to be kept clean, but the things you need to keep wounds clean don't grow on trees. Even something as simple as soap and water for washing hands may not be easily available: water is a pain in the ass to haul so Victorians likely only travel with a small amount and are expected to forage the rest from streams, wells, etc. Similarly, why bring soap when you can just take some from the locals when you need it? Which is all well and good, but if there's no convenient water source near wherever the hospital got placed they will rapidly run short, and unless told to do so very few soldiers are going to think to grab soap or rubbing alcohol during the post-battle looting (assuming it didn't get blown up or torched in the fighting). With the wounded languishing in dirt and mud for hours or more due to poor recovery mechanisms, infection might be a serious concern.
As hospitals are recovery areas more than treatment centers, nurses are likely envisioned as comfort women in a very literal sense. Their purpose, beyond changing bandages and bedpans, is to be a smiling face for any Victorian boys who were gallantly wounded fighting against the Marxist hordes. Morphine is rare and valuable: it's much cheaper to send some pretty girls to dote on the wounded than it is to drug them so they aren't actually in pain anymore. This is another reason why they would look for 'noble savages' when convenient to do so: nurses work much better as morale boosters if they act the part and give suffering wounded 'a slice of home'. Actual medical treatment would probably be more effective, but a real man can just tough it through the pain without any of those sissy drugs. Can't shame yourself by crying or complaining in front of the attractive women!
The above is not to say terror and abuse don't happen: these are Victorians we're talking about. It just takes a slightly different form.
For starters, Victorian field hospitals are likely butcher shops when the fighting is intense. Surgeons can only afford to spend their valuable time on patients that are important enough to warrant it and who actually have a good chance of pulling through. Those not wounded enough to die in the field but too wounded to be worth trying to save would be left to die in the hospital, but odds are no one is putting them out of their misery. Having the CMC shoot them would likely be a mercy but wouldn't be good for morale, and drugs are too precious to waste on euthanizing the dying. Far better to make them 'wait their turn' until they tragically die, and naturally nurses will be required to attend to these mutilated men to perpetuate the illusion of care. Giving a dying man something pretty to look at before they go is the sort of romantic nonsense the Victorians would eat up, and anyway, they're women. It's not like they have anything better to do.
Amputations with minimal anesthetic and other low-tech medical procedures are also likely common, because they can be done quickly with a minimal level of advanced education needed. The average Victorian nurse likely sees an entire horror convention's worth of blood and gore on a daily basis, complete with constant screams and the odors of blood, vomit, ruptured bowel, and more. This would be hell even if they were amongst friends, which these women very much are not. They are not Victorians, however much they are supposed to pretend to be, and the CMC isn't going to forget that.
The Inquisition doesn't trust actual Victorian soldiers or even their officers, nurses recruited from the locals are tolerated at best. Things like insubordination or attitude will likely result in a private 'interview' so the offender can be 'corrected' in traditional Victorian fashion, but if medicine goes missing or a spy is suspected the CMC will gleefully take the opportunity to make an example out of someone. It doesn't even need to be the correct someone: as outsiders nurses make excellent scapegoats to cover internal corruption or failure. The supply sergeant isn't selling morphine on the Black Market and the colonel didn't die because the head surgeon is bad at his job, it's the nurse's fault! The CMC loves terror tactics and nurses are considered expendable, so it wouldn't take much for them to make an example out of a nurse to keep the others in line.
Florence Nightingale seems like she would be a greatly idolized figure for Victorians. She comes from the right era for Retroculture to embrace her, and even when she was alive the media was fetishizing her as a gentle angel caring for her heroic charges. Of course, the real Florence Nightingale was a battleaxe who would have hated the Victorians and especially their nursing system, but since when have 'historical facts' ever stopped Victorians? They likely would have dismissed the accounts of the real Florence Nightingale as feminist lies and latched directly onto the nonsensical propaganda of the era, carrying the legend forward as the template for their own kidnapped nurses to emulate with predictable results.
The Florence Nightingale Effect is a real thing: people tend to latch on to sources of stability and comfort when they are injured and/or stressed, and the reverse is equally true. Victorians are still human beings, and human beings don't do well when forced to participate in frenzied wave attacks or recuperate in meatgrinder hospitals, especially if they're doing both under the watch of political officers who do not approve of anything resembling cowardice or disloyalty. The expected image and behavior of Vic nurses is specifically designed to make them beacons of positivity in the hell of war, so it is unsurprising that traumatized Victorian soldiers with no culturally acceptable outlet for their trauma frequently latch onto their caretakers. As twisted as it is, a number of these nurses may end up reciprocating. A wounded man is much less threatening than the Vics they're probably used to (hello, Stockholm Syndrome), and Vics do consider themselves to be good Christians. Being engaged to a wounded Victorian soldier would give a nurse an excuse to rebuff other advances in a way the Victorian narrative would be inclined to respect. It's not immunity by any stretch, but some protection is better than none.
Even if they don't reciprocate their patient's affections, "no" isn't something women get to say in Victorian culture. A nurse breaking a heroically injured soldier's heart by rejecting him after she "strung him along" by doing the job the Victorians forced her to do at gunpoint would end extremely poorly. Injured soldiers almost always have friends, and Victorian culture is very clear that women who act like whores (by Victoria's definition of whore) get treated like whores. It gets even worse if multiple individuals are interested in (AKA: feel entitled to) the same nurse. In the Victorian view, these incidents only arise because the woman is a temptress playing with the innocent men's feelings (women being inherently sinful), so of course she gets the blame and the extremely unpleasant consequences. Worse still, once word gets around that a certain nurse is an "acceptable target", she's fair game for everyone. If her duties suffer because of this she'll get all the blame, because as far as the Victorians are concerned this is a young woman unable to keep her hands off those strapping Victorian men, not a victim of serial rape. Suicide is likely common once this death spiral of abuse begins and is another area where nurses have an advantage over Victoria's usual victims…for a very limited definition of 'advantage'. Their positions give them far more access to means of ending their lives (cables, bedding, sharp objects, drugs, etc) than a prisoner or civilian might have. To preserve patient morale Inquisitors likely cover up these deaths as 'reassignments'. Nurses are very, very aware that 'reassigned' is code for 'was killed', but Inquisitors like to leave it ambiguous as to if a nurse killed herself or was killed by the Inquisition for some unknown crime (which can include attempting to kill yourself). Paranoia is a powerful tool, and one they are deliberately trained to wield.
There is real world precedent for the practice of deliberately paring nurses off with injured soldiers. During WW2 a number of British nurses were explicitly given exceptions from the usual rules regarding fraternization with patients because the individuals they were caring for were considered so disfigured by their injuries that it was believed no other woman would want to marry them. Considering how much Victoria adores 'family', they'd love the idea of passing their disfigured 'heroes' onto foreign women who can't say no rather than having their good daughters get married off to a mutilated former soldier.
Though they may not realize it at first (Victoria likely doesn't go about announcing how its 'nursing program' works), Victorian nurses are never going home. Vics like to travel light when heading to war, but the same doesn't apply when it comes to bringing the spoils back home. Their delightful tradition of war brides proves they are more than willing invest the resources in transporting said brides home, and because of the whole Florence Nightingale narrative discussed above nurses are going to fall into this category more than anyone else. This isn't a snarling war trophy being dragged home to be taught her place (for her own good, of course), this is LOVE! There almost no chance of a nurse rejecting a Victorian proposal (either because of the Nightingale Effect/Stockholm Syndrome, because they didn't dare say no, or because some of the guy's friends took her aside for few hours and gave her 'a change of heart'), which is all the proof the Victorians need that their beliefs are 100% true. One way or another nurses aren't going to be dropped off at home when their work is done: they're going back to Victoria so they can be "rewarded" for their service with the greatest joy a woman can know: being a good Christian housewife for a good Christian soldier. </sarcasm>
Naturally, this happy ending is almost never actually happy. PTSD is not something any amount of affection or desperation can cure, and more importantly it probably isn't something Victorians acknowledge exists. "Shell shock" and "combat fatigue" are just words used by pansy liberals to excuse cowardice! No true son of Victoria would suffer such an ailment…and if they did they'd likely get an Inquisitor coming along to 'encourage' them very soon. This works exactly as it did in historical conflicts: traumatized men come home without a socially acceptable way to process their trauma so they take it out on their families. Beating wives and children is not only okay but 100% expected in Victoria, and if a war hero drinks himself into a stupor every night in the privacy of his home that's no one's business but the Inquisitions (who could probably care less as long as it doesn't cause problems for the rest of the community). Their lovely new brides are unlikely to be any help: they have PTSD of their own to work through, which certainly won't get better while they are trapped with xenophobic extremists just looking for an excuse to blame all their troubles on the foreign girl who seduced young Tommy and is surely to blame for his sudden change in behavior.
This is not to say that there aren't a few happy stories amongst the misery, though the definition of "happy" might vary.
Nurses are not the passive, ineffectual actors Victorians imagine them to be. Most will escape if they can and are often in a good position to help others escape as well. Though it is balanced on a razor's edge they do enjoy better treatment than others exposed to Victorian "hospitality" and are sometimes assigned to treat individuals recovering from said hospitality (whether that be someone undergoing 'interrogation' or a lady prisoner that the boys got a bit rough with). In these cases recovery usually just means another round of suffering, so nurses will occasionally make sure the patient does not recover, quietly putting them out of their misery to spare them weeks of continued torment before their inevitable demise. Escapes or aiding other captives ends very poorly for nurses if they get caught, but the same can be said of prisoners throughout history. There will always be those who resist, regardless of risk or consequence.
For those who survive to be taken back to Victoria and are married off instead of being funneled into their slave industry, not every union is a miserable one filled with abuse. Victorian culture is monstrous, designed to make and enable monsters, but Victorians are ultimately human beings. For all that their culture encourages such acts, they are not inherently raping, murderous monsters. Their misplaced affection is not always doomed to spiral into abuse, and former nurses will sometimes genuinely reciprocate this affection. It doesn't even need to be love: most benevolent soldier/nurse relationships are closer to two desperate PTSD survivors clinging to each other for mutual support and survival rather than anything traditionally romantic.
Former nurses are often valuable contacts for resistance movements. They were not raised in Victorian culture and have little love for their enslavers, though considering their precarious position most aren't willing to risk what little they have to try and strike back. Former nurses are painfully aware that, like the Heavenly Father they serve, the Inquisition loves to test the Faithful. Some do seek out or get recruited into various movements despite the risk and can be extremely helpful. They have news of the outside world, news that hasn't been filtered through the usual Victorian channels. They have experience working directly under the nose of the Inquisition, and some may even have skills that a traditional Victorian woman would never have been allowed to learn.
Nurses would almost certainly fall into the category of "war bride" by the extremely broad definition of Victoria's forced peace treaty with the CFC, but most of them probably won't be repatriated.
Victoria is currently desperate for manpower, so they aren't going to drag their feet on repatriation. They ultimately care nothing for these women (particularly those taken by solders rather than sold for profit) and have no resources or time to waste on minor points of pride. There will be no denials, delays, or hiding kidnapped women in cellars: the Inquisition will round up as many captured women as they can as fast as they can (perhaps only sparing those who "belong" to extremely connected and powerful officials) and will throw them at the CFC to get this done as quickly as their shattered transportation infrastructure will allow. Normally this would be simple due to Victoria's extensive slave trade: they'd just throw the latest batch of unsold slaves back onto train cars and be done with it. Victoria wouldn't want to waste time scouring the countryside for "brides" taken by soldiers (a category that would include most nurses), so those women would have little chance of repatriation.
Things aren't normal, however. Between the Erie Campaign and the Civil War the Victorian military likely hasn't had the time and manpower to spare on slave-collecting raids in the past two years. Their existing "stock" is probably running low, and if it is Victoria might have to go through the effort of sweeping up female captives who were married off to soldiers to make up the difference. Releasing the unwilling wives of soldiers also doesn't cost anything beyond the extra time and effort needed to round them up, whereas releasing slaves deprives Victoria of revenue they badly need right now. As such, while most of the "war brides" that will be turned over to the CFC will likely be women captured for the slave trade there will probably also be a number of women who were brides in the more traditional sense…including some former nurses.
Repatriated war brides, regardless of type, are unlikely to be going home any time soon. Most are remnants of victorious Victorian campaigns, which aren't known for leaving a lot behind. Those whose communities remain probably aren't going to be able to travel to them. Victorian war brides were stolen from across North America, some from as far away as California. With things in their current state traveling across the country is difficult and dangerous, even along major trade routes, and the repatriated war brides can't exactly afford to book passage with a ship or caravan. Even most refugees arrived with what little they could carry, but war brides have nothing but the clothes on their backs and the crushing weight of years of abuse. The CFC's social programs will at least ensure they have food and shelter, but the CFC can't handle its existing refugee crisis much less help dozens upon dozens of traumatized women overcome years of abuse and Victorian programming. They will be strangers in a strange land, and the only people who will likely be able to relate and understand what they've gone through will be their fellow former captives.
The main point of Victoria Falls is throwing off the abusive yoke of Victoria and then pulling together the traumatized, broken remnants of North America so everyone can start to rebuild. It is rather fitting that, perhaps, Victoria's many former captives might find themselves on a similar path as they begin rebuilding the lives Victoria attempted to take from them.
Anesthetics are rare and valuable even by the normal standards of medicine, due to near universal demand and limited ability to produce them. Because they are MEN!, most Victorian wounded would likely be expected to just tough their way through their injuries when feasible. Local or regional anesthetics would be the next option, with general anesthesia used only if absolutely necessary. General anesthesia is complex enough even under ideal circumstances that there is a dedicated real-world career for it. That branch of education is likely not something that would occur to most Victorians, especially when considering what non-combatant personnel they need to take into the field, so we can probably expect Victorian general anesthesia to be extremely rare in the field and very unreliable when attempted.
General anesthetics seem, or such is my impression, to be easier to make with a primitive chemical industry.
If the Vicks are relying on Russian local and regional anesthetic injections (fairly likely), then that would be their go-to.
If they have to make their own, they may simply be doing general anesthesia badly, with some doctors de facto gravitating towards anesthesiology as a profession whether or not it is formally trained and winding up working in the places where not wanting patients to die on the table is most relevant.
...
In societies where formal education breaks down or never existed, the boundaries between professions tend to be a bit blurrier.
As an example, "swordsmith" isn't actually a truly separate profession from "blacksmith" in traditional Iron Age societies; anyone who can make a sword can also make agricultural tools or gate hinges or whatever.
There were definitely a relative handful of blacksmiths who specialized in making swords for the elite rather than being 'general practitioners' of the craft of ironworking, and the term "swordsmith" is a sort of after-the-fact construction to describe them. But formal barriers between the sword-making smiths and the other smiths would be low or even nonexistent, with the caveat that if you wanted a good sword you went to a smith who'd made a lot of swords before and who had good reviews.
In the same general sense you might see a situation where every 'surgeon' is expected to know a little anesthesiology, not enough by our standards but a little, and where if you want a good surgical team you make sure to have at least one 'surgeon' or 'surgeon's assistant' who actually makes that a priority.
Nice piece of writing.
I do have some disagreements from the perspective of someone with experience of Third World inpatient care, and t
1)The Vics will have a priority recruitment pool : women with families.
Might be parents and siblings, might be a husband and children. Hostages to the good behavior of the "nurses" would be a paramount requirement, given just how easy it is to murder medical patients in a setting with shitty forensics.
Single unattached women would be rejected as candidates, whenever possible.
At least as medical carers. Comfort women, different matter. Strongly disagree about the pharmaceutical availability.
Basic drugs are neither expensive nor hard to produce or transport. Just take a look at the WHO Essential Medicines list
For example, Ketamine, which does double duty as a veterinary and human anesthetic, was invented with 1960s pharma gear and used in the Vietnam War, is administered IV or IM, and costs literally pennies per dose. Less than a bullet. In the Third World, its safe enough to be used as an intraoperative anesthetic administered by push syringe.
Providing a ten thousand man Victorian division with enough ketamine to deal with a 25% operative casualty rate would require roughly 10mg dose per adult to achieve 12-25 mins of sedation.
For 2500 people, 40mg per person will achieve 50-100 minutes of anesthesia.
Thats in total 1kg(ONE KILOGRAM) of ketamine.
Yeah.
Furthermore, there are those godawful light Cessna knockoffs that the Vics operated in their literal hundreds, which can land on grass strips and dirt. A Cessna 172 can carry the pilot and 3 passengers for 700 nautical miles. That means that from Buffalo NY's airfield, one of those things could reach any spot in the Eastern US short of the southernmost Deep South.
Take a navigator and replace the other passengers with 100kg of pharmaceuticals.
A 12-plane squadron will deliver a literal ton of drugs in one day in one round trip. Perfect for when a deployed division drinks from a cholera-infected water source and people begin to get very sick very quickly.
And thats not counting anything that came down the river to "friendly" towns and cities.
Besides, I suspect that the Vic army was rife with drugs anyway.
Fuck the propaganda of the elite Vic trooper. Sure they were fit, but there's limits. You dont have a minimally mechanized force march up and down Disunited America for 6-9 months of the year without pharmaceutical help, from painkillers to stimulants.
Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Finland, the US and the UK all mass-issued methamphetamines during WW2.
There's less destructive stuff these days like modafinil, but frankly meth is cheap to make, and I can see the Vics being cheap.
As for painkillers, have you seen how small standard doses of strong chronic analgesics like oxycontin are?
10mg of oxy every 12 hours means that 1g (ONE GRAM) is sufficient oral chronic pain analgesia for a single adult for 50 days.
1 kilogram would supply a thousand men for that time. 10 kilograms an entire Vic division.
At least until they begin to develop some tolerance, then you have to up the dosage.
And most of this is going to come from Victoria's domestic pharmaceutical industry.
Even a 200k army is only <1% of a population of 30 million ish
Would already be, if they had anyone rich enough to sell it to. FCNY is right there, but they dont trade.
I would not be surprised if their secret police supply some of their agents with what we'd think of as illicit drugs as a trade good.
I think its been previously mentioned that one of the Vics principal legit exports to the rest of the disunited US is pharmaceuticals.
Captive market, and their troops will find excuses to murder any growing competitors.
And it probably makes them more than a little mad when charities in NYC and California wait until the Vics go home for the winter and then supply drugs for cheap or free to undercut them.
Which is probably why some people keep doing it.
So Victoria has a pop 30 million ish, man this war have been really bad for them as they have at least lost half a mil to fighting and who knows how many more fleeing the nation
