How long does tech last after The End?

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

And notice the difference between knowledge and praxis. Books can tell you all about the crucible method of making steel or of generating microwaves. Actually doing it requires that you hold your mouth right.

[Toadmaster]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

Absolutely knowledge would be lost, you won't be dealing with a 21st century community, but it won't be stone age either, stone age tech actually requires skills that have been long lost by most. Sure you could make arrowheads from glass shards, but can you make an arrow? a bow? If you do manage to make these can you actualy fire it and hit a target? A sling is very simple to make in actual materials but takes a lot of skill to make it right and use it. The knowledge is out there but the odds of finding somebody who can is probably lower than finding someone who can reload ammo and maintain a modern weapon.

 

I'm not saying all communities will maintain some semblence of modern life simply the ones that survive 40 years will or most won't be there 40 years after. Morrow Project assumed a tech level similar to the US in the 1870's, that seems pretty reasonable to me.

 

The idea that you need a critical mass for a community to maintain the equipment and the educational system to continue the knowledge sounds quite reasonable to me, I'm not disagreeing, but there have to be some assumptions for a campaign and one of those is that the community was lucky enough to combine the knowledge base, with the population to feed those who have devoted their lives to learning technical knowledge (medicine, power generation etc). Any other assumption means you have no community to game in.

 

Thats all I was trying to say. Successful communities will maintain the essential tech needed for life and moderate comfort, these are things that will be important to survivors and will be the priorities. Many communities will not have that "critical mass" of knowledge, population and will to survive, those communities will be absorbed by those that do or they will die out when the supplies run out.

[megaplayboy]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

Well, I think one key thing would be: did any libraries survive? If so, it's quite possible for a moderate-sized survivor community(100-500 people) to maintain some level of tech, just by consulting various manuals available in your average public library. Additionally, if you have some tradesmen(plumbers, mechanics, factory workers, carpenters, electricians), engineers, doctors and farmers available, you could have pockets of fairly sophisticated tech around. If it was a nuke or asteroid, maybe not so much, but if we're talking zombie plague, superbug, economic crash, em pulse et al, there'd still be most of the standing infrastructure to salvage. It also depends on what percentage of the pre-End population is still around. .01% probably means you lose almost all 20th century tech, but 2% might be sufficient to keep quite a bit, and 10% might mean only minor setbacks to the tech curve.

[cyst13]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

Toadmaster,

 

I buy everything in your last post. Even if more advanced communities absorb the less advanced, though, there will still be a window of time before the absorption takes place. I think that window will provide an ideal space for drama. I hadn't earlier considered this, but the time of King Arthur was a small window between the retreat of Rome and the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons. Socio-political transition points make for excellent story opportunities.

[CorPse]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

Toadmaster,

 

I buy everything in your last post. Even if more advanced communities absorb the less advanced, though, there will still be a window of time before the absorption takes place. I think that window will provide an ideal space for drama. I hadn't earlier considered this, but the time of King Arthur was a small window between the retreat of Rome and the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons. Socio-political transition points make for excellent story opportunities.

 

The book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, discusses how monasteries provided a home for a lot of books/knowledge that might have been "lost" otherwise after Rome fell.

 

Might be an interesting plot seed to have some group that for whatever reason (religious, etc.) has made keeping the light burning, so to speak, it's mission.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

How about a whole adventure based around a monastery preserving, say, a blueprint of a lost technology?

[CorPse]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

How about a whole adventure based around a monastery preserving' date=' say, a blueprint of a lost technology?[/quote']

 

Exactly...

 

You could even build a whole campaign around a group of people that do this. You've instantly got the potential for a cohesive (or cohesive enough ) group of PCs with an ongoing mission that will put them in harm's way. Sounds like a cool game to me.

[Spence]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

And once you get electricity back, you begin to get communications back.

 

Of course, Fighter jets are pretty much useless junk after 40-50 years, if they haven't been maintained. Ironically, an older, less complicated prop fighter might be easier to restore. Don't know about most military ground vehicles, but their ammo would likely be unusable. Everyone would have to cast their own bullets, too.

 

Finally something I can speak to

 

Fighter jets would have much much less than 40-50 years. At least current tech ones. It's a two edged sword. If you let a jet sit unused for long periods, it needs a LOT of maintenance to restore it to actual flight status. Gaskets and seals dry, harden and crack. Not to mention fuel leaks galore.

 

On the other hand flight hours really eat into an engines hours. Not to mention the airframe.

 

Add in the "pilot" will have next to no practice flight time, he/she will be pretty rough on the same airframe. A Hornets life is approximately 6000 hours. And that is with care and a full supply tail. An engine may have a life of years but it gets pulled and rebuilt every few hundred hours.

 

But the thing that will kill the aircraft, its control actuators, other hydraulics and the power plant is simple things like gaskets and specialized lubricants that simply cannot be manufactured without a large chemical manufacturing base.

 

All in all it takes many man hours of maintenance for each single flight hour.

 

In the end. Small light aircraft with old fashioned engines that can be worked on by "shade tree mechanics" could possibly be maintained, but jets? That is a real far reach.

[CorPse]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

Finally something I can speak to

 

Fighter jets would have much much less than 40-50 years. At least current tech ones. It's a two edged sword. If you let a jet sit unused for long periods, it needs a LOT of maintenance to restore it to actual flight status. Gaskets and seals dry, harden and crack. Not to mention fuel leaks galore.

 

On the other hand flight hours really eat into an engines hours. Not to mention the airframe.

 

Add in the "pilot" will have next to no practice flight time, he/she will be pretty rough on the same airframe. A Hornets life is approximately 6000 hours. And that is with care and a full supply tail. An engine may have a life of years but it gets pulled and rebuilt every few hundred hours.

 

But the thing that will kill the aircraft, its control actuators, other hydraulics and the power plant is simple things like gaskets and specialized lubricants that simply cannot be manufactured without a large chemical manufacturing base.

 

All in all it takes many man hours of maintenance for each single flight hour.

 

In the end. Small light aircraft with old fashioned engines that can be worked on by "shade tree mechanics" could possibly be maintained, but jets? That is a real far reach.

 

Hmmm... given your proximity to Seattle... I'm wondering if you did some time at Boeing. But then, based on other posts, I've often thought of you as ex-military. (It'll probably be none of the above.)

 

My only counter-argument to your point above is something I learned watching the Battlefield Earth movie—that jets can sit around for a long time and then be used to fight off an alien invasion.

 

I also learned that BE, even on video, was a phenomenal waste of time.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

Finally something I can speak to

 

Fighter jets would have much much less than 40-50 years. At least current tech ones. It's a two edged sword. If you let a jet sit unused for long periods, it needs a LOT of maintenance to restore it to actual flight status. Gaskets and seals dry, harden and crack. Not to mention fuel leaks galore.

 

On the other hand flight hours really eat into an engines hours. Not to mention the airframe.

 

Add in the "pilot" will have next to no practice flight time, he/she will be pretty rough on the same airframe. A Hornets life is approximately 6000 hours. And that is with care and a full supply tail. An engine may have a life of years but it gets pulled and rebuilt every few hundred hours.

 

But the thing that will kill the aircraft, its control actuators, other hydraulics and the power plant is simple things like gaskets and specialized lubricants that simply cannot be manufactured without a large chemical manufacturing base.

 

All in all it takes many man hours of maintenance for each single flight hour.

 

In the end. Small light aircraft with old fashioned engines that can be worked on by "shade tree mechanics" could possibly be maintained, but jets? That is a real far reach.

 

With the right facilities, how feasible would it be to go all Water J. Williams/ "Hardwired" and rip out the old jet motors to use on homegrown vectored thrust hovercraft?

 

Just cause that'd be so damn cool....

 

(For that matter, I can see the whole homemade carbon/epoxy airframe thing working too, with a good shop)

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

My only counter-argument to your point above is something I learned watching the Battlefield Earth movie—that jets can sit around for a long time and then be used to fight off an alien invasion.

 

I also learned that BE, even on video, was a phenomenal waste of time.

 

Further to that line of argument is that cavemen need less-than-minimal training to successfully operate said jet fighters in combat

[CorPse]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

Further to that line of argument is that cavemen need less-than-minimal training to successfully operate said jet fighters in combat

 

Guess those were those "point and click" jets.

 

[Spence]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

Hmmm... given your proximity to Seattle... I'm wondering if you did some time at Boeing. But then, based on other posts, I've often thought of you as ex-military. (It'll probably be none of the above.)

 

My only counter-argument to your point above is something I learned watching the Battlefield Earth movie—that jets can sit around for a long time and then be used to fight off an alien invasion.

 

I also learned that BE, even on video, was a phenomenal waste of time.

 

Nope, not Boeing. I did a little Army time before 23 years in the Navy in aviation maintenance. Mostly O Level with a sprinkling of I Level.

 

I wouldn't use Battlefield Earth as a guide to anything. If I recall the movie correctly, they jumped into the fighters and they started right up. Which is bogus. Most fighters, especially when BE was made, needed external power and high pressure air to fire up. In fact they need hot pressurized air which is fed into the compression section of the engine.

 

A jet turbine engine can be summed up with the old saying Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow.

 

When running the intake sucks in air, the air and injected fuel is compressed (Squeeze) and then ignited (Bang) and the result is what exits the jet exhaust but not before spinning the aft end of the turbine. This in turn is what drives the intake blades to continue the cycle.

 

The big problem in this is initial start. While large aircraft (passenger/cargo/patrol/etc) have auxiliary power units which are generally mini-jet turbine engines that can be started with battery and a electrical starter to wind them up and initiate compression/burn. Once up to speed the APU usually drives a generator and compressors that supply the start air and electrical power needed to bring at least one engine up to speed. That engine usually has a generator and once up to stable speed can provide air and power for the rest of the engines.

 

Fighter and attack jets are different. The size and weight of an APU that can start a high performance engine is just too big and would reduce the warfighting systems and weapons. So they use ground support gear, huffers (as we called them) to supply start air and power carts (or cables built into the line) to provide engine start. You need not only well maintained high performance engines and high capacity electrical generators, but technicians trained int he proper start procedures. If the jet has more than on engine like most naval aircraft, things ae more complicated because they usually have a required start sequence so the proper systems get power in the right order.

 

I can't remember if Harriers need more than external electrical for start, but all of the ones I ever saw launch used the same huffers and power carts as everything else. But considering their mission profile for the Marines, I want to believe they have to have a self contained start system. But I don't know.

 

With the right facilities, how feasible would it be to go all Water J. Williams/ "Hardwired" and rip out the old jet motors to use on homegrown vectored thrust hovercraft?

 

Just cause that'd be so damn cool....

 

(For that matter, I can see the whole homemade carbon/epoxy airframe thing working too, with a good shop)

 

Not a modern fighters engine. Most of them are bigger and weigh more than a small car. Remember your average modern fighter has to give over almost 80% of its volume just for engines, flight control system (hydraulics etc) and fuel, bare essentials to stay in the air and maneuver. Navigation, communications, radar/fire control and climate control for the pilot take up a goodly chunk of the rest. There is a reason why many weapons are loaded externally and external fuel tanks have become essential.

 

Once in the air unless it refuels in air you will only get 3-5 hours flight time. Any excess maneuvering like combat or an amateur pilot will cut that in half optimistically, with a more drastic cut probable. Which is why air refueling tankers have become so critical a part in modern air combat.

 

Plucking up an old full sized jet engine and slapping it into a homemade anything is about as feasible as slapping that old submarines nuclear reactor into something.

 

 

 

I'm just saying.

 

Now that doesn't mean you can't just make it so in your campaign. It is a game afterall.

[CorPse]

Re: How long does tech last after The End?

 

Great post Spence!