What If: United States Is Transported Back in Time to 1776?

[Iosef Cross]

3. Conquest!

*Edit
To put 3 in more prospective I'm guessing since your talking about pure nomadic tribes at this point we will give the tribes lavish gifts and buy everyone's friendship via small scale projects. People are still fighting over water rights at this point in history so something like a Seawater distillation plant will be worth a hundred times it's weight in gold.

But as already mentioned our contact must be strickly limited because we have modern day plagues to devastate them and they have ye-old fashion plagues to devastate us.

Actually no. There were several surviving African kingdoms at this point, some of which were at war with the Europeans. Wene wa Kongo, Mwene Mutapa, Lunda, Luba, Bachwezi etc. These kingdoms consisted largely of permanent farming settlements, and in the case of Mwene Mutapa, walled cities. There were concrete power systems that the USA could negotiate with.

Well, even the European powers of the day did not care much about these countries. The modern USA would be like a giang among insignificant ants.

France was the most powerful country in the world in 1776, and France at the time was a country with 27 million inhabitants, it's largest city, Paris, had 550,000 inhabitants and 85% of the population lived in the countryside while 40% of the population wasn't able to purchase 2,500 calories of food daily. Only about 40% of the population was literate.

Compare the tax revenues (of the central government) in terms of silver among the great powers in 1775 AD:

Qing China - 1,229 tons
France - 1,612 tons
Spain - 618 tons
Netherlands - 350 tons
Ottoman empire - 263 tons
England - 1,370 tons
Russia - 492 tons

source: "Rock, Scissors, Paper." Working paper, Departament of Economic History at London School of Economics" (http://www2.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/w ... /WP152.pdf)

Now compare with the tax revenues of the USA today converted to modern silver prices, at 2 trillion dollars the budget of the central government of the United States would be about 2,000,000 tons of silver or over 1,000 times the silver budget of France. The combined budgets of all major powers in 1775 would be around 10,000 tons of silver, or 0.5% of the American budget.

[Iosef Cross]

Some interesting facts:

The world's population in 1775 ad was around 800 million, the USA had 3 million at the time, substituting for the Modern USA the world's population would increase to 1.1 billion, an increase of 40%.

There are more literate people in the USA today than in the world in 1775.

USA 2010 versus France 1775:

Population:
USA: 310 million
France: 27 million

Metal production:
USA: 100 million tons of steel
France: 140 thousand tons of pig iron

Size of the largest cities (urban population of the continuous build up area):
USA: New York, 18 million, Los Angeles, 12 million, Chicago, 9 million.
France: Paris, 0.5 million, Lyon, 0.1 million, Marseille, 0.1 million

The total urban population of the world in 1775 was around 40-50 million. The total urban population of the USA today is 250 million.

The USA today versus 18th century world would be like the difference between the Galatic Empire and the United Federation of Planets.

[Iosef Cross]

On the oil shortage: The most acute problem of the USA transplated into the 18th century would be oil. That would be resolved as even the private oil companies would have the resources to simply occupy any lands which we know today that have oil reserves while the 18th century people would be unable to do anything. Also, the USA has plenty of coal to provide basic power, there is also nuclear, wind and hydroeletric sources of power.

While the reduction of oil supply would be a huge negative hit on the US economy it's impact would lower it's size relative to the rest of the world from like 98.5% of the world's GDP to 98.4% of the world's GDP.

[Irbis]

While the reduction of oil supply would be a huge negative hit on the US economy it's impact would lower it's size relative to the rest of the world from like 98.5% of the world's GDP to 98.4% of the world's GDP.

Try 48.4% if not lower. USA in this scenario would suffer the mother of all collapses, simply feeding population would be a big challenge. That PC you have on your desk? Ooops, memory chips were made in Singapore, co-processors in Germany, LCD panels in China, better be prepared to watch prices soar as parts become worth more than gold and old landfills are scoured for any good parts that might still work.

That car in your backyard? Platinum for catalyst come from Russia, electronics onward from Singapore, windows from Mexico, rubber for tires from Africa. Now, multiply that by every branch of industry that suddenly found itself without just one tiny, small, shitty part without which it cannot function, part you might have plans for but have no machines to produce it in, or simply money and/or workers to restart production, and...

In 5 years, computer industry collapsed entirely, newly produced cars resemble Ford T, all airplanes are grounded from lack of parts save for a fraction of carefully cannibalized ones, and lifestyle resembles 1900 more than 2010. Above complete with drugs replacing gone forms of entertainment and diseases (that would be trivially easy to combat with modern medicine) ravaging the population as pharmaceutical industry ground to a halt, too. Sure, USA would still be a superpower, but currently alive generation would never see their old lifestyle again, possibly not even their grandchildren.

[Mr Bean]

Irbis you over-state the doom and gloom scenario by a great deal. Would the US economy collapse? That goes without saying yes it would. Feeding the population however would be easy, we are a net-exporter and our infrastructure came through intact. Crashing planting programs can see us past the first year even if the military is handing out MRE's before people can start planting their own vegetable gardens and we move out of the city. Second, we don't go from the 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee to the Model T. There are literally dozens of steps between and something like a Willy's Jeep is easily producible out of US resources. Not to mention we have hundreds of millions of Cars in the US, we have a full decade before we start getting break-down assuming we shoot every mechanic and burn down the production plants. And if you've been to places like Cuba or Sudan it's quite possible to keep a car running for over forty years if you have some mechanical know how and don't mind mickey mouse repairs. I've seen running cars with 700,000 miles on their original engine

Yes the computer industry would suffer massive parts shortages but again it's not like we are burning down the best buys. We have a large surplus of parts on hands that can again easily last us twenty years. Advancement might come to halt but again we get the full US and all its bits which is enough to limp along for the century it will take to gear back up to the 50s. The only area were we will be up shit creek is Rare earth items which means lithium batteries are done for for the foreseeable future which means laptops last as long as their batteries do. But we do have two domestic HD plants I know about so we won't be losing data, we have the ability to produce local magnetic storage.

Point is we have a good decade were we can limp along and things will stay some what the same in your day to day life. You won't be eating the same things but you will be still eating. No oranges out of season for example and lots of rationing.

But hey we get to build Atomic trains so it's not all bad.

[Sea Skimmer]

The US has the largest single rare earth metal mine on earth that used to supply most of the world demand, it just hasn't been operating because China undercut the price. Work is going on as we speak to reopen it. Big mines also exist in Canada.... which we'd know the location of and yet back in 1776 the supplies are completely untapped! The most pressing problem is the US ends up with 50% of its oil cut off, but that isn't the end of the country. All the more so since the US can quickly push into Mexico and other countries which have large shallow oil reserves that will be 100% untapped and start sucking those dry. The oil construction industry is one part of the US industrial base that still works well. Lack of tankers would be annoying for a while though, limiting ability to suck up oil outside of Mexico and Canada which can be done via pipeline. Also coal-oil works. The US doesn't do it now because its illegal to do it unless it produces less Co2 then normal oil production.

[Molyneux]

As far as I can see, the biggest bummer with this scenario, even more than the lack of resources?

Smallpox is back. So is rinderpest. Two of the greatest victories of humanity, undone - though at least it shouldn't be too hard to get vaccination going again, maybe get other countries to learn to vaccinate their populations as well. If I'm not mistaken, my parents are vaccinated for smallpox, but I don't believe I am - so our older population would have some measure of protection to begin with.

[Sea Skimmer]

The smallpox vaccine losses effectiveness over time; this wasn't such a big deal when smallpox was still around because exposure would stimulate the body into maintaining its immunity. But basically the US would need a strict quarantine for 2-3 years while all the old vaccines are mass produced and distributed. This kind of quarantine should not be very hard to implement because the rest of the world has low mobility, and due to differences of clothing is incredibly easy to identify. The biggest risk would be in the first week or so, before word is well circulated to impose a deadly force based quarantine of the entire nation.

[TimothyC]

The smallpox vaccine losses effectiveness over time; this wasn't such a big deal when smallpox was still around because exposure would stimulate the body into maintaining its immunity. But basically the US would need a strict quarantine for 2-3 years while all the old vaccines are mass produced and distributed. This kind of quarantine should not be very hard to implement because the rest of the world has low mobility, and due to differences of clothing is incredibly easy to identify. The biggest risk would be in the first week or so, before word is well circulated to impose a deadly force based quarantine of the entire nation.

You'd want that quarantine going both ways. You really, really wouldn't want to unleash HIV on the rest of the world.

[Reichenfaust]

Over on alternatehistory.com, we have done so many different stories on this topic.

It is known as the "irritating cliche called Ameriwank"....

[Luke Skywalker]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but many pre-vaccine people had developed, at least partially, an immunity to smallpox, correct? Would this immunity have faded in just a few generations? If it is genetic, I'd imagine that it would take far longer, meaning that we would Not Die long enough to mass produce vaccinations.

It is possible that, eventually, this event could promote positive change in the States, at least in some areas. If oil companies collapse, we may need to speed up our transition to alternative energy sources, although this could be a stretch. It could go the other way, if we can quickly take advantage of the vastly greater quantity of oil deposits two centuries prior.

Are the Founding Fathers still around in this scenario? It would be entertaining to have Glenn Beck interview his hero, Thomas Paine.

I'd just love to see a [well written] fanfiction on this. Reading about redcoats fighting modern infantry with machine guns and tanks is a decent [and unproductive] stress reliever.

[PeZook]

Any epidemic, smallpox included, would be stymied by the fact modern people enjoy vastly higher standards of hygiene than people who lived in 1776 ; Also, imposing a quarantine would be easy enough, what with the rest of the world using slow-ass sailing ships. We also enjoy the advantages of education (ie. people knowing the symptoms and transmissin vectors) and highly developed response systems.

Overall, there is a good chance the modern US can avoid a smallpox pandemic long enough to reinstitute routine variolation.