Anomalous technology
Apr. 1st, 2025 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrThis was sparked by watching a remastered copy of and old BBS civil defense videos. Basically about what to do before and after a nuclear attack.
It got me thinking about the stuff I read back in the 70s and 80s about building fallout shelters, and other "how to survive getting nuked" stuff.
So I considered survivors of an attack, and what they might maintain in the generations after (assuming moderate collapse of civilization here).
Now, deliberately built fallout shelters are useful for other things as well. Storm shelters, "panic room" type refuges, etc. And the food and water stockpiles are a good idea for pretty much any sort of disaster. So, those could survive thru generations.
Other things, like improvised air filtering and air circulation are a bit harder to maintain, but far from impossible. and they are again useful for other situations (bad or long lasting dust storms, or persistent smoke from wildfires for example.
It's even possible to build radiation detectors with some pretty low tec. And radios are harder, but given some knowledge & resources, they could persist for a long time. Crystal sets are very simple, and you can use chips or transistors from "dead" electronics as the crystal. Transmitters are harder, but still a lot more doable than you might think.
So you could have a "primitive" looking society with lots of hidden and fairly sturdy shelters, bigger stockpiles than you might expect and some unexpected emergency communications. Won't that set the cat among the canaries for "more advanced" raiders.
This also reminded me of a bit that used to come up on the Traveller SFRPG mailing list.
Sure, the planet is primitive, but it does have a spaceport (even if it's just a cleared hunk of land and somebody with a radio).
If it gets many visitors, odds are somebody will have put up some sort of satellite network. In Traveller, you can literally toss some cheap stock satellites out an airlock and they'll self position and organize into a network.
This means comms. Even if only for the convenience of off-worlders visiting and prospecting. Not that much harder to have the satellites do weather monitoring and the like.
Receivers are common, and cheap (think android cell phone). So natives *will* manage to get them. Maybe at first, just so they can get weather info and contact other villages in an emergency.
Some bright boy (either an off-worlder or perhaps an "enlightened" native in government) will bring in receivers for "school by satellite) like India and other places have. This too will help.
But even at this point to your typical off-worlder, the place will look the same on the surface.
*Under* the surface, things are different.
Picture Bwana and his friends who've hired a "native guide for a safari. Or to help them explore for minerals.
They'll be impressed by how well the guide knows the country and what keen eye for the weather he has. He'll be snickering to himself when he checks the weather photos and GPS, as well as aerial shots of the terrain ahead. No need to worry the off worlders with details they don't need to know.
:ikewise imported weapons (in small numbers at first) and imported vehicles. In some ways like the third world here, in other ways different because the tech level was higher when things started getting introduced.
This sort of thing can make for fun stories or fun gaming sessions.
It got me thinking about the stuff I read back in the 70s and 80s about building fallout shelters, and other "how to survive getting nuked" stuff.
So I considered survivors of an attack, and what they might maintain in the generations after (assuming moderate collapse of civilization here).
Now, deliberately built fallout shelters are useful for other things as well. Storm shelters, "panic room" type refuges, etc. And the food and water stockpiles are a good idea for pretty much any sort of disaster. So, those could survive thru generations.
Other things, like improvised air filtering and air circulation are a bit harder to maintain, but far from impossible. and they are again useful for other situations (bad or long lasting dust storms, or persistent smoke from wildfires for example.
It's even possible to build radiation detectors with some pretty low tec. And radios are harder, but given some knowledge & resources, they could persist for a long time. Crystal sets are very simple, and you can use chips or transistors from "dead" electronics as the crystal. Transmitters are harder, but still a lot more doable than you might think.
So you could have a "primitive" looking society with lots of hidden and fairly sturdy shelters, bigger stockpiles than you might expect and some unexpected emergency communications. Won't that set the cat among the canaries for "more advanced" raiders.
This also reminded me of a bit that used to come up on the Traveller SFRPG mailing list.
Sure, the planet is primitive, but it does have a spaceport (even if it's just a cleared hunk of land and somebody with a radio).
If it gets many visitors, odds are somebody will have put up some sort of satellite network. In Traveller, you can literally toss some cheap stock satellites out an airlock and they'll self position and organize into a network.
This means comms. Even if only for the convenience of off-worlders visiting and prospecting. Not that much harder to have the satellites do weather monitoring and the like.
Receivers are common, and cheap (think android cell phone). So natives *will* manage to get them. Maybe at first, just so they can get weather info and contact other villages in an emergency.
Some bright boy (either an off-worlder or perhaps an "enlightened" native in government) will bring in receivers for "school by satellite) like India and other places have. This too will help.
But even at this point to your typical off-worlder, the place will look the same on the surface.
*Under* the surface, things are different.
Picture Bwana and his friends who've hired a "native guide for a safari. Or to help them explore for minerals.
They'll be impressed by how well the guide knows the country and what keen eye for the weather he has. He'll be snickering to himself when he checks the weather photos and GPS, as well as aerial shots of the terrain ahead. No need to worry the off worlders with details they don't need to know.
:ikewise imported weapons (in small numbers at first) and imported vehicles. In some ways like the third world here, in other ways different because the tech level was higher when things started getting introduced.
This sort of thing can make for fun stories or fun gaming sessions.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-02 02:39 pm (UTC)Dean Ing's book _Pulling Through_ has instructions on both an air filter made from rolls of toilet paper (with pump) and plans and templates for a homemade radiation detector. (At least, early editions had these. They're probably online, anyway. Just look for Kearney Fallout Meter.) The last third of the book (the first two thirds are a novel) is about nuclear war survival.
This was originally published in 1983, but nearly everything in it is still valid.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-02 05:34 pm (UTC)I also have a number of magazines he had a survivalist column in. Many of those *are* the origin of the "how to" chapters in the book.
It's one of the resources I was thinking of. As well as the early military manuals and Civil defense books.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-02 05:55 pm (UTC)Standard fittings for furnace filters will work fine. I'd have the air entry chimney have a long vertical shaft with the air intake above the bottom and a trap to let you shovel out accumulated dust from the bottom (said trap to be *outside* the inner shelter, thank you very much).