low tech force multiplier

LOW TECH FORCE MULTIPLIER

Large Marge, bless her pea picking heart, clued me into a novel she enjoyed. Alas, I thought it sucked monkey scrotum, but the painful experience did inspire this article, so it was still time well spent, even if in Want To Throw The Electric Device Against The Wall frustration. The book had Cops and EMP in the title, and it was a long slog through self-congratulatory masturbation, how super wonderful cops were. Thin Blue Line, selfless sacrifice ( because in California, they probably “only” make $70k a year ), consummate professional, blah, blah, friggity blah.

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At first I'm reading it, waiting for something to happen. I think it was in 45% before someone related to the group even got killed. I mean, I LOVE books that take their time, focus on character, tell a story instead of just blow crap up ( hell, we don't even get the literary equivalent of gratuitous nudity anymore, just mindless video game action ). But this guy was only talking about how great the police were. It got a bit old, waiting on doom because a trophy ceremony was in progress. But I keep reading, thinking something exciting is going to happen.

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A little bit of action ensues, foreigners killing natives to loot and plunder. Of course, even THEN, we take time out on a combat mission to take fingerprints! Because, that will prove who killed the neighbors. Because cops are so perfect they NEVER cheat, like planting drugs. At this point I was vomiting to one side of the recliner, the dog was trying to lick it up, I'm looking for blood to see if I have to get to the hospital, and I'm wondering, why did he just tell us no one can be a prisoner, from lack of food, and they gather evidence to add on to one murder with several more? What the actual crap?

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Are you going to execute him twice after you catch him? Are you guys SOOOooooo overstocked with food and personnel that you have time for this happy horse crap? You just said you couldn't spare food to feed prisoners. And that isn't even the worst of it. This is after making me read 80% of a book where almost nothing at all happens. I barely edge past 90% and I simply cannot read it anymore. There just cannot be a satisfactory ending to this drivel, except for me to shut down the power on my book.

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You know who DIDN'T have their power shut down? The idiots in this story. Super Rich Dude stocked the crap out of everything, hires all the cops because cops are perfect at everything, like combat ( as long as it takes place between taking fingerprints ), and conveniently has everything they need to continue Business As Usual. So they get to keep riding around and talking on the radio. And taking fingerprints at crime scenes. Look, I know I suck writing fiction. This guy is a better fiction writer than I am. He is also a complete douche when it comes to wargaming the apocalypse.

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Except, you know, being a cop, he should be perfect at that, also. Where's the dog, I think I might hurl again. Sweet Baby Jesus on a unicycle! When our modern world takes a puke, there isn't enough storage space, or benefactor funding, to keep Business As Usual alive past a very short period. Why do you think I dwell on substituting as many items as possible with primitive tech? It isn't because that does a BETTER job at performing in place of modern tools. It is because it performs LONGER.

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Any level of technology requires an infrastructure. For a simple ( well, NOW it is relatively simple, to the point a dollar store flashlight has one ) computer chip, you must have a fabricating plant, process the raw materials, have municipal water for each plant, have roads for each, rail, all the infrastructure for those roads, the vehicle manufacturing, the ship building, dock facilities, K-12 and then college education for workers, workers homes, groceries for the workers and all the transportation THAT entails, clothing for workers.

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An entire entertainment industry for them, a military occupation of the middle east for the oil, a military industrial complex to support that military. A central bank and centralized government to support that military, necessitating tax collectors and a domestic economy to provide them jobs outside the computer chip industry, dams and turbines and generating plants to electrify the workers homes. Finally, you get a computer chip that costs a dime, all because you have billions in infrastructure cost that allows that.

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And to get that scale of manufacturing, and to pay for all the infrastructure, you start putting microchips in everything besides just flashlights, and pretty soon you have chips in the chip factory and chips in the cars the workers drive to the factory and chips to coordinate delivering chips and asphalt and to build the road paving machines and anything and everything. In the meantime, some goat herder in Afghanistan dips a branch in some hemp oil or rubs some tree sap on it, and has light from a torch.

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That is your High Tech and that is why I fear it so. Not because it isn't great but because it is so vulnerable to disruption. That doesn't stop me from stockpiling LED flashlights, or the rechargeable batteries with their solar charger. Nothing else comes close to the return per dollar as LED illumination. I don't reject high tech, as much as I reject a complete and total reliance on it. I try to minimize my exposure to vulnerability. And yes, I realize my 100 year old design for ammunition fired from a seventy year old gun design is just as vulnerable to disruption as ten year old design lighting. But the difference in end products and their infrastructure is big.

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A finished product, stockpiled, is not as likely to be disrupted expect by theft, as the infrastructure that produced that finished product. Under laboratory conditions, my post-apocalypse lighting stockpile can last several decades. If instead I chose a kerosene lamp, I would be relying on salvaging and current production, or taking food away from people to grow oil for the lamps. The lesser evil is higher tech. Ammunition is high tech, insofar as the technology infrastructure cannot be maintained or duplicated. But it is also a military necessity to a certain point.

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My choice of bolt actions is the only way to compensate for that vulnerability. And because of the economics of scale, ammunition is affordable enough to get a lifetime supply of it. IF you don't piss it away. With the above stockpiled items, the trick is to eliminate the needed infrastructure. Which is easy enough. But other things are NOT possible. You'll still need to maintain an infrastructure for motor vehicles and long distance communications, for instance. Bicycles are impossible to maintain because of the synthetic ( or even natural ) rubber for the tires and tubes.

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Stockpiling is possible though, and eliminates the infrastructure. Not so much the automobile. Mechanics and parts are exponentially more complicated, and it is nearly impossible to store enough fuel to make the effort worth it. This isn't about eliminating complexity, but rather reducing it as much as possible. And of course budget comes into play, because sometimes you cannot afford to duplicate all the neat high tech toys you think you need. Every FLIR scope or NVD I don't need, in duplicate, is more ammunition I can stock. Continued tomorrow.

( .Y. )

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