SD.Net in The Sea Of Time

[Academia Nut]

Yeah, actually now that I think about it, the best response to your plan is that if its going to take us five years to get set up for this transatlantic expedition to keep us from all killing each other over the lack of females, then obviously your plan requires us to have the patience to not kill each other right away. You're basically advocating conquest because we don't have time, and then saying that we need time to get ready. If we haven't all killed each other over the limited breeding pool within five years, we can probably figure out ways of solving the problem that don't require us to abandon our entire infrastructure base and try and knock over the New Kingdom, the most xenophobic of the Ancient Egyptian periods as they had already gone through a period of foreign occupation and hated it.

Now, we're probably going to have to use the Eagle to pick up women simply because the hardest hit areas disease wise are likely to be around where we first land because that will be where the pathogens start to mutate and lose all semblance of their modern subtlety amongst a population utterly unprepared for them. I suppose the advantage that the Eurasian women from semi-urbanized areas might have over the Native American women would be that they would be easier to impress with shiny things with little functional value, such as the jewellery that can be looted from all of the abandoned houses on the island. Still, just cruising the coastlines in our awesome boats and picking up chicks with our bling will probably be a lot saner than conquest. Especially since it encourages people to go out and learn skills so they can get to the women rather than having to kick them out at gunpoint, the survivors potentially hating us forever while remembering the formula for gunpowder and other such "basics" that could really bite us in the ass later.

[Darth Wong]

The hardest-hit areas would be where the most resistant women would be found after a few years, since they would be the survivors. If we go farther afield, we just run the risk of bringing back women who will get horribly sick and die on our island.

Assuming the hypothesis is correct, of course. We don't actually know how they will react to our diseases. We know that the natives were decimated by smallpox when the Europeans came, but let's be realistic here: we would be decimated by smallpox ourselves if we were exposed to it without modern treatment.

It would be hideously and ironically funny if a bunch of modern people traipsed off to Europe full of confidence in modern immune systems and acquired horrible diseases while they were there. After all, we have all grown up in ridiculously clean environments compared to primitive times. with easy access to powerful medicines. I am not at all convinced that our self-assessment of our kick-ass immune systems is accurate.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yeah, actually now that I think about it, the best response to your plan is that if its going to take us five years to get set up for this transatlantic expedition to keep us from all killing each other over the lack of females, then obviously your plan requires us to have the patience to not kill each other right away. You're basically advocating conquest because we don't have time, and then saying that we need time to get ready. If we haven't all killed each other over the limited breeding pool within five years, we can probably figure out ways of solving the problem that don't require us to abandon our entire infrastructure base and try and knock over the New Kingdom, the most xenophobic of the Ancient Egyptian periods as they had already gone through a period of foreign occupation and hated it.

Now, we're probably going to have to use the Eagle to pick up women simply because the hardest hit areas disease wise are likely to be around where we first land because that will be where the pathogens start to mutate and lose all semblance of their modern subtlety amongst a population utterly unprepared for them. I suppose the advantage that the Eurasian women from semi-urbanized areas might have over the Native American women would be that they would be easier to impress with shiny things with little functional value, such as the jewellery that can be looted from all of the abandoned houses on the island. Still, just cruising the coastlines in our awesome boats and picking up chicks with our bling will probably be a lot saner than conquest. Especially since it encourages people to go out and learn skills so they can get to the women rather than having to kick them out at gunpoint, the survivors potentially hating us forever while remembering the formula for gunpowder and other such "basics" that could really bite us in the ass later.

Well, I intended for the eviction of Group C--the 2,700 or so dregs at the bottom of the pack, the AYVB and so on--to begin immediately and during the five year period we'd just have the A and B groups on the island. I apologize for not making that clear, as it would certainly be impossible to get the necessary prep time with the C Group still on the island.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

1) By the time we could even think of attempting something so foolish as an attempt to conquer the world with zero infrastructure, we would know what kind of impact we would have on the natives. And to put it bluntly, if it's as bad as you say, we would be able to take the surviving women even more easily by that point, because the rest would be in no shape to resist us. It's a hell of a lot easier than trying to accomplish the exact same thing in Europe while simultaneously trying to carve out a beach head, establish a settlement, and compete with the locals for resources. And if you're right about the lethality of modern germs, we'll cause almost as much chaos over there as we would cause here anyway.

Where do we find these women? They don't need to resist us, they can just melt away into the impregnable forests... The Indians regularly massacred large and well-armed bodies of men in the 1600s, Mike, there were just always more colonists than Indians, so the Americas were colonized by force of numbers. We would actually be at a disadvantage in north America, whereas in the open plains of Egypt we could chop apart an army of 30,000 without casualties. The completely uncleared and utterly uncivilized nature of 1,250 BC North America means it would be almost impossible for us to have any kind of contact with the natives.

2) "Accomplish something"? This seems like a case of you having a grandiose fantasy of conquering the world like a nautical version of Alexander the Great. Anything you want to do in Europe, you could do more safely and easily on this side of the Atlantic, and we would have access to an entire city of modern stuff, albeit only partly usable. Even if you're completely right about us wiping out 90% of the natives, so what? We can breed with the survivors. Problem solved, and with a lot less risk than your "sail the world and become kings" idea.

How do you propose to contact the survivors to breed with them in such numbers? And what does the city matter if we can't maintain most of the things in it, because we don't have the population base for mining ore and coal and other necessary industrial precursors?

T
So? We grab some females from the mainland. We have to do that in Europe too, in case you forgot. However, we would have to do it against much heavier resistance, after sailing an ocean and fighting wars. Precisely how have you made things easier with this plan?

Because civilized societies who have cleared the land have created geographic conditions which favour organized bodies of men with rifles. Random tribes of hunter-gatherers have the advantage, however, in the extremely dense climax forest of the prehistoric North American east coast.

That's ridiculous. North America is not a tiny island. Even 90% local fatalities from disease would not cause the place to actually run out of people.

Again, how do you propose to contact with them, let alone take their women, when they have no fixed dwellings and can change location in a forest literally the size of half the continent, at will? Especially since with 90% of the population dead they won't have to adhere to the old tribal boundaries? How do you propose to even find them? It would be safer to sail around the world on the Eagle with zero preparation than it would be to try and walk from New York City to Buffalo in those conditions. And with the already light population largely exterminated, you could do so without encountering a single human.

[Academia Nut]

Presuming that the survivors are within easy access of a coastline. Some cultures when first introduced to Westerners thought that they were ghosts because of the general paleness. Now, while we're a rather polyglot lot, there's probably going to be a lot of rather pale people about meet and greets, so we could very well get a bad reputation as bringers of death. Also, the high mortality rates also don't account for displacement as people try and get the hell out of dodge or dying off because they live in a hunter-gatherer situation and need a certain minimum number of people in their tribes to prevent starvation or predation by other tribes. We could cause half the local population to die and the rest to stay where they are, we could cause a 90% mortality rate and near completely depopulate the East Coast, which would be rather sparsely populated to begin with (although the ease of fishing would probably also make it relatively dense for North America).

Still, this sort of debate is really hard to actually pin down as to what would actually happen (unless anyone has access to some insanely good epidemic models and hasn't piped up yet), so beyond a certain point a lot of our planning would be 'wait and see'. A tour of the temperate portions of the Atlantic once we know how to sail in blue water might be a good idea simply to know what sort of resources and problems we might have to deal with. Avoid the tropics though because of the huge disease problems.

[Darth Wong]

Where do we find these women? They don't need to resist us, they can just melt away into the impregnable forests... The Indians regularly massacred large and well-armed bodies of men in the 1600s, Mike, there were just always more colonists than Indians, so the Americas were colonized by force of numbers.

We're dealing with 1600s-era natives now? Look, we wouldn't wander deep into the forests and away from the coast anyway, but you seem to be making a point of envisioning this as a series of pitched battles, and that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for tribes that we can get on our side, to bring us the women that they normally take as war booty from each other. Why the hell would we want to get into battles?

We would actually be at a disadvantage in north America, whereas in the open plains of Egypt we could chop apart an army of 30,000 without casualties. The completely uncleared and utterly uncivilized nature of 1,250 BC North America means it would be almost impossible for us to have any kind of contact with the natives.

See, this is what I'm talking about again: you are envisioning this as a series of pitched battles, a la Alexander the Great.

How do you propose to contact the survivors to breed with them in such numbers? And what does the city matter if we can't maintain most of the things in it, because we don't have the population base for mining ore and coal and other necessary industrial precursors?

We have shitloads of refined materials already, just sitting there in the city. We can make windmills to create electricity. We can burn wood for heat.

Because civilized societies who have cleared the land have created geographic conditions which favour organized bodies of men with rifles. Random tribes of hunter-gatherers have the advantage, however, in the extremely dense climax forest of the prehistoric North American east coast.

Again with the battles. I would seek war booty without battles, by allying with local tribes and trading with them so that they will bring us women. Unless I seriously miss my guess here, it is quite typical of tribal combat in primitive societies to result in the taking of women anyway. Bribe them and they would trade captive women for our goods. Let them do the fighting, while we stay above it. I would have no interest in involving myself in a battle if I don't have to.

That's ridiculous. North America is not a tiny island. Even 90% local fatalities from disease would not cause the place to actually run out of people.

Again, how do you propose to contact with them, let alone take their women, when they have no fixed dwellings and can change location in a forest literally the size of half the continent, at will? Especially since with 90% of the population dead they won't have to adhere to the old tribal boundaries? How do you propose to even find them? It would be safer to sail around the world on the Eagle with zero preparation than it would be to try and walk from New York City to Buffalo in those conditions. And with the already light population largely exterminated, you could do so without encountering a single human.

Once again, there's still no real evidence that 90% of them would be dead from mere contact with us. There's a hypothesis, which seems a lot more like an assumption, but I must point out again that if we are reasonably healthy at time of contact, we would not be carrying the world's most vicious modern diseases. Moreover, they will not all react to us the same way. You make it sound as if they will all have a meeting and agree to give us the silent treatment. As long as some tribes are willing to negotiate with us, we have a foothold. And no, we would have no interest in walking for hundreds of kilometres through mainland forest.

[Junghalli]

Again, if we're going to get women from the more developed parts of the world why not just buy a few thousand female slaves? I'm not getting the necessity or real utility of this glorious campaign of conquest. What does it gain us that we couldn't obtain through trade more easily and safely and without giving the locals the impression that we're a bunch of violent thieves? To be perfectly honest it seems more like macho "we're dropped into the ancient world with gunz, let's go conquer shit!" dick-waving than anything that serves any real productive purpose.

Also, dumping 2700 "rejects" on the mainland to face greater hardship without giving a convincing reason beyond "fuck 'em, we're better off without them" does not strike me as something that would be good for group cohesion and morale. How exactly are we deciding who is a "dreg" here?

[Darth Wong]

Again, if we're going to get women from the more developed parts of the world why not just buy a few thousand female slaves? I'm not getting the necessity or real utility of this glorious campaign of conquest. What does it gain us that we couldn't obtain through trade more easily and safely and without giving the locals the impression that we're a bunch of violent thieves? To be perfectly honest it seems more like macho "we're dropped into the ancient world with gunz, let's go conquer shit!" dick-waving than anything that serves any real productive purpose.

Also, dumping 2700 "rejects" on the mainland to face greater hardship without giving a convincing reason beyond "fuck 'em, we're better off without them" does not strike me as something that would be good for group cohesion and morale. How exactly are we deciding who is a "dreg" here?

I would also ask why she expects all of the adults on the board to go along with this plan of ditching everyone we consider "dead weight" and assuming they'll all die, especially when we're talking about a large majority of the people here. That is pretty fucking cold. Damned near Nazi-level ruthless, if you ask me.

[Academia Nut]

From the sounds of it, a 'dreg' is anyone with a penis who doesn't have military experience, solid engineering background, or blue collar experience with resource extraction, sailing, farming, etc. Of course, figuring out who lives and who dies (because that's really what it is) while wading through the lies and such people would throw out to avoid getting shifted off the island into the wilderness would be a rather 'interesting' exercise. And all of this is presuming that the guys who are pointing the guns are stone hearted storm troopers and not just average guys. The first person to strongly push for mass displacement of our population is likely to get ignored for sounding insane, get assassinated for acting insane, or trigger a civil war between those that agree and those that think they're insane.

EDIT: Incidentally, I just remembered that the guys most likely to agree that the "useless members should be shipped off" are most likely to be the most useless members themselves, because we all know what spectacular examples of breeding most neo-Nazis types are. Meanwhile the guys most likely to seize power in the opening days are more likely to be the ones most gut level repelled by the idea.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Look.

Do you know what the population of the world is in 1,250 BC, guys?

80 - 100 million.

And a lot of that is concentrated in a very few areas: Egypt, Mesopotamia/eastern Mediterranean, Shang China, India.

Easily 90% of the world's surface contains the other 50% of the population.. So we have 40 - 50 million people covering the 120 million square kilometers of the Earth which aren't either the arctic poles or major civilized areas. In short the average population of North America is most likely one person per every three square kilometers.... Before the diseases hit.

Yes, we could trade with the Indians, but 3,000 women would be the entire breeding population of native women of ages 15 - 40 in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, pretty much.

And as for the charge of eugenics, I just see the situation as so utterly hopeless that surviving long enough to cause any kind of material improvement in the lives of other bronze age societies, by directed development or trade alike, would be the best we can hope for.. So naturally I'm inclined to drastic measures precisely because I'm deeply pessimistic about our odds of surviving.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Note that I was the one who originally proposed just going around buying female slaves and manumitting them, but now I'm just trying to offer viable strategies in response to Alyrium's objections to the feasability of that proposal, okay? If I was actually there I'd come down on the side of trying to rescue as many women from total shitholes as possible and bring them back to be civilized, under my own influence. But it seemed like Aly had a fairly ironclad argument that this would not work, so I was just throwing out suggestions in response to that. If anyone can refute his assertions from his background as a biologist that all the women we bring back would die and our breeding population is only 300 strong, then all of my proposals are rendered gladly irrelevant in a stroke, except for the first, which is to go farther afield to trade for women already in conditions of slavery.

Aly's proposals are frankly far more nazi than mine, and I was trying to find ways to avoid them... Because I didn't have the scientific knowledge to refute his claims. If you don't like my proposals, well, I don't like them either, but Aly insists that we'd all be dropping dead of disease, and have to run an insane eugenics dictatorship. In light of that my proposals are attempts at mitigation, because I lack the expertise to refute Alyrium's claims. If you have an issue with where this discussion has gone, take it up with him. I just conceded to his superiour knowledge of biology the point, and then went to planning based on his assertions.

[Darth Wong]

Yes, we could trade with the Indians, but 3,000 women would be the entire breeding population of native women of ages 15 - 40 in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, pretty much.

So not all of us get mates. That is still far less likely to create chaos than your eugenics plan. What the hell makes you think everyone will meekly go along with it? You would merely attempt to precipitate a civil war for no good reason.

And as for the charge of eugenics, I just see the situation as so utterly hopeless that surviving long enough to cause any kind of material improvement in the lives of other bronze age societies, by directed development or trade alike, would be the best we can hope for.. So naturally I'm inclined to drastic measures precisely because I'm deeply pessimistic about our odds of surviving.

I would say that you're inclined to drastic measures as a personality trait, and I very much doubt that any significant group of people would go along with it.

[Darth Wong]

Aly's proposals are frankly far more nazi than mine, and I was trying to find ways to avoid them... Because I didn't have the scientific knowledge to refute his claims. If you don't like my proposals, well, I don't like them either, but Aly insists that we'd all be dropping dead of disease, and have to run an insane eugenics dictatorship. In light of that my proposals are attempts at mitigation, because I lack the expertise to refute Alyrium's claims. If you have an issue with where this discussion has gone, take it up with him. I just conceded to his superiour knowledge of biology the point, and then went to planning based on his assertions.

He has biology training, but he also has a long history of acting as if he has thoroughly researched things which he hasn't bothered to research, and then trying to bluff it over with the fact that he has a scientific background. Yes, there are some really virulent diseases out there now. But why should we assume that we're carrying all of them into this scenario? Viruses aren't magic; if they're not being carried by someone, then guess what: they don't exist in that environment. And not to belabour a point, but it's not as if we have super-immune systems ourselves. A lot of these diseases would kill us without medical treatment just as easily as they kill the natives.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Well, it is a fair point, Mike. Look, I'll tell you what I know about the situation, and stay out of the "we should do this" part, because I'm clearly never, ever fit out to be making political and strategic decisions and I know that... God help the world if I ever get involved in politics and I'm rather relieved I harbour no real ambitions beyond being a mother because I'd probably end up a horrible person if I got actual major authority over anything larger than a small town or single ship or something of that size.

Anyway, this, then, is what I know:

-- give me several years to train a crew and gain experience with the ship, and I can sail the Eagle anywhere in the world.

-- we can easily go whaling without much risk, and both the oil and the meat will be useful for us.

-- trading has historically been conducted with little in the way of language knowledge so that won't be a serious hindrance.

-- I am pretty good with late 18th century industrial revolution technology history, so in terms of our industry I can probably be of use there in explaining and outlining the strategies our ancestors used to maximize production.

[Darth Wong]

Well, it is a fair point, Mike. Look, I'll tell you what I know about the situation, and stay out of the "we should do this" part, because I'm clearly never, ever fit out to be making political and strategic decisions and I know that... God help the world if I ever get involved in politics and I'm rather relieved I harbour no real ambitions beyond being a mother because I'd probably end up a horrible person if I got actual major authority over anything larger than a small town or single ship or something of that size.

Anyway, this, then, is what I know:

-- give me several years to train a crew and gain experience with the ship, and I can sail the Eagle anywhere in the world.

-- we can easily go whaling without much risk, and both the oil and the meat will be useful for us.

-- trading has historically been conducted with little in the way of language knowledge so that won't be a serious hindrance.

-- I am pretty good with late 18th century industrial revolution technology history, so in terms of our industry I can probably be of use there in explaining and outlining the strategies our ancestors used to maximize production.

I don't see why the vast majority of the population would accept that somebody should be allowed to take away a vital asset from the community on a permanent basis. If you're not coming back and not giving back to the community, why the hell would everyone say "OK, take our best ship?"

[Alyrium Denryle]

Our effective population size, assuming random mating and decidedly non-fisherian sex ratios is 389 . Under conditions of sexual monogamy (increasing the variance in mating success) which high status males may impose, it becomes something like 200, with a starting inbreeding coefficient of .00137 (we are all related to 6th cousin) that will increase recursively, and rapidly. By the second generation 1.6% of our offspring's genes will be identical by descent. It will get worse with polygyny which is a more likely result of this anarchy.

That means lots and lots of recessive lethals. The low population also means a lot of fixation due to drift. Inbreeding depression alone will kill the population eventually, and I know that no one on this board would accept managed inbreeding. Split the population up into subunits, and aggressively inbreed them. Jack up the relatedness coefficients for a couple generations (they will be .1 for the offspring after the first round of mating with a 10 person group)and ruthlessly cleanse all recessive lethals through selection. Then outcross them. Re-organize your mating groups. Lather, rinse, repeat. If done right you will be able to kill all recessive lethals and recessive "very bads" from the population while not damaging genetic variability at other loci.

No one will accept that. What will happen is Big Men will monopolize access to females and inbreeding will accrue in the population, as the Big Man positions will practically be hereditary.

The only alternative is to send males out to obtain new females and even out a sex ratio that is 36:1. The social problems alone will cause problems with a sex ratio that skewed

Our diseases will kill native women. There will not be enough left within reasonably easy reach after our strains of the flu (to say nothing of other stuff) kill them to put a dent in our demographic problem. We need to get most of our females from a larger population. We also need to get them in such a way that we can keep them isolated from our main population. Their disease strains will kill us to.

The logical choice is to send people to more densely populated areas across the atlantic (once we have that capacity). They go, raid or purchase females, then come back. Not to Nantucket. But to a settler colony nearby. After a generation of random mating HWE will be established, and the population guarded against both sets of disease strains... Hybrid Vigor! (tm). Healthy individuals can then be used to genetically innoculate the rest of the population.

Conquering the old world=Not viable.

Obtaining females (however we do it) from the old world and doing the integration correctly=viable.

There's a hypothesis, which seems a lot more like an assumption, but I must point out again that if we are reasonably healthy at time of contact, we would not be carrying the world's most vicious modern diseases.

Remember influenza has evolved to be virulent and infectious, even lethal, in our populations over the course of the past few thousand years and our immune systems have been doing the Red Queen thing for just as long. A disease which is trivial for us will be utterly devastating for them. Particularly when we do not have the capacity to treat these illnesses anymore, and we will soon run out of those supplies that do exist on island. I can make asparin, but that will be a poor substitute for large supplies of Tamiflu.

I cannot give you a precise death count. But considering a lack of immune defenses against what to them will be Superflu, a body already racked by other pathogens (their own), lack of food, and possibly bad weather... You are looking at very high mortality.

And not to belabour a point, but it's not as if we have super-immune systems ourselves. A lot of these diseases would kill us without medical treatment just as easily as they kill the natives.

Our immune systems are also not going to be at their best against the diseases the locals carry due to mutation and drift. Just saying...

Yes, there are some really virulent diseases out there now. But why should we assume that we're carrying all of them into this scenario?

We dont have to. We need someone carrying influenza.

Because civilized societies who have cleared the land have created geographic conditions which favour organized bodies of men with rifles. Random tribes of hunter-gatherers have the advantage, however, in the extremely dense climax forest of the prehistoric North American east coast.

marina is right in this. We could never find them in order to engage them and take their women. Even if we did, many those women would be dead from disease and we would suffer very high casualties in the doing. The risk would not be justified by the gain. The only positive side for trying to do this in larger numbers is that it will even out the sex ratio by attrition.

Now, avoiding conflict may work, but I doubt they will be willing to trade with us after half(just throwing out a number) their population dies. They might worship us actually...

Also, dumping 2700 "rejects" on the mainland to face greater hardship without giving a convincing reason beyond "fuck 'em, we're better off without them" does not strike me as something that would be good for group cohesion and morale. How exactly are we deciding who is a "dreg" here?

I dont factor in to the sex ratio? I am useful and can do a lot of useful things in exchange for protection?

[Junghalli]

I find it amusing that this "go take our guns and conquer Egypt", if you look at it from the point of view of the Egyptians, is totally like something out of a bad 50s sci fi movie. Evil technologically advanced aliens will come to their country and take it over, then demand a tribute of women to use as breeding stock, which they need because their race is dying because it's almost all composed of males! How awesome is that?

Hey, wouldn't Nantucket have a bunch of medical supplies and shit we could use, along with medical textbooks? I also suspect that just as a matter of statistics somewhere in our several thousand strong membership there are some people with some medical experience too. As long as we can keep the medical supplies from being ruined from lack of refrigeration (might be a good idea to make restoring/keeping power to the hospital a high immediate priority upon arrival) I don't see why we'll necessarily be straight back to pre-antibiotics/vaccines medicine. And all the problems that apply to trying to bring back slave women from Egypt will apply to the "conquer Egypt" plan anyway, except it'll be worse because we (or rather you, as I suspect I'd probably be trying to make a living hunting squirrels after you dumped me with the rest of the "useless" people) will be living surrounded by a people with exotic diseases and poor medicine instead of isolated on an island with others like you save whoever you let in.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I don't see why the vast majority of the population would accept that somebody should be allowed to take away a vital asset from the community on a permanent basis. If you're not coming back and not giving back to the community, why the hell would everyone say "OK, take our best ship?"

Oh, heh. I meant, pretty much anything the community needs done with her could be done. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I meant that in the sense that "with five years of hard training and a coterie of the best navigators on the board, we can really handle a tall ship damned fine and go trade with anyone we need to." I fully expect that a couple members of the mess would show up in my chartroom pointing guns in my face if I didn't play by the rules, so I'd never think of doing otherwise.

[Alyrium Denryle]

He has biology training, but he also has a long history of acting as if he has thoroughly researched things which he hasn't bothered to research, and then trying to bluff it over with the fact that he has a scientific background.

Here are the equations.

Inbreeding coefficient

F(t)=1/Ne(1+F(t-2)/2)+(1-1/Ne)F(t-1)

where Fsub t is the inbreeding coefficient at time t, Ne is effective population size.

Initial assumptions are random mating, and an inbreeding coefficient at F(t-2) at .00137 which is relatedness of 6th cousins which most people within a region (like a continent) are. May be a bit lower because we are globalized, but that is the best I could figure out.

Now for effective population size with unevan sex ratios.

Ne=4Nm*Nf/Nm+Nf

Nf=#females
Nm-#males.

given 3600 males, 100 females.

[Darth Wong]

I'm not talking about the inbreeding. I'm talking about the notion that we would necessarily kill 90% of the population by contact.

PS. There is actually some historical precedent we should look to. What is the typical mortality rate for isolated tribes discovered in Brazil and Peru (where most of the world's remaining isolated tribes are) when they first contact modern people?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Hey, wouldn't Nantucket have a bunch of medical supplies and shit we could use, along with medical textbooks? I also suspect that just as a matter of statistics somewhere in our several thousand strong membership there are some people with some medical experience too. As long as we can keep the medical supplies from being ruined from lack of refrigeration (might be a good idea to make restoring/keeping power to the hospital a high immediate priority upon arrival) I don't see why we'll necessarily be straight back to pre-antibiotics/vaccines medicine. And all the problems that apply to trying to bring back slave women from Egypt will apply to the "conquer Egypt" plan anyway, except it'll be worse because we (or rather you, as I suspect I'd probably be trying to make a living hunting squirrels after you dumped me with the rest of the "useless" people) will be living surrounded by a people with exotic diseases and poor medicine instead of isolated on an island with others like you save whoever you let in.

They are urban(ish). Better immune systems from that and exposure to domestic animals which are the sources for most of our diseases. Plus a shit ton of slave girls (purchased, again) can be quarantined with their mates. You just need to set aside more people than you need...

As for the medical training. While there would be medical supplies, they would be very very limited, subject to hording, and the feudal system we develop would not be good for their fair and equitable distribution. And yes, there would eventually be a feudal system.

PS. There is actually some historical precedent we should look to. What is the typical mortality rate for isolated tribes discovered in Brazil and Peru (where most of the world's remaining isolated tribes are) when they first contact modern people?

Not sure. I am actually not aware of the data there, though most of the stuff in the early period of European exploration was small pox. Let me get back to you.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'm not talking about the inbreeding. I'm talking about the notion that we would necessarily kill 90% of the population by contact.

PS. There is actually some historical precedent we should look to. What is the typical mortality rate for isolated tribes discovered in Brazil and Peru (where most of the world's remaining isolated tribes are) when they first contact modern people?

Between 1900 - 1967, something close to 100 tribes in Brazil alone went extinct as a result of contact with main Brazilian civilization. I'm not sure how long the process took, however.

The Nukak people in Colombia were contacted in 2003, and by 2006, 65% of their population was dead... That's all I remember off the top of my head, though. I'd have to do some more research to provide more coherent statistics.

[PeZook]

You know, since we need five years to prepare for a transatlantic trip anyway, we could simply adopt the following strategy:

1. Get things ordered on the island, make sure we have enough food to survive the winter.

2. Make contact with the natives. May happen anyway during number 1 if any come over, but we'll need to go to the mainland for wood anyway. I'm sure if we start chopping wood in their territorry, they'll come over to meet us anyway.

3. Engage in trade, hash out a deal so that we can chop wood, etc. Meanwhile, keep training a crew for the Eagle

4. See what happens to the locals. If they die out, proceed with Demographic Rescue Plan A (purchasing women in Egypt).

5. If they won't die out, we can do no. 4 anyway, but we'll have an additional source of females on the mainland. Better yet, we won't have to kidnap them: as I wrote before, wooing native women to go and marry our "warriors" will be pretty easy. Then there's the plan to trade for captured women.

Worst scenario is if we kill Egypt with superflu, and disease found there kills our expedition, too. Then we're fucked.

[Junghalli]

OK, some ideas:

The disease exchange between Native Americans and Europeans was pretty one-sided. European diseases devestated the Native American populations but the reverse did not happen (syphilis is the only big disease that I know of that crossed from the Americas to Europe, and while it was nasty enough it was hardly a cataclysmic catastrophe for Europe, and I remember something about there being doubts it even came that way but I can't be bothered to look it up now). The reason for this was Eurasians had way more opportunity to get diseases from their domestic animals than Native Americans had. The same should be true here, so if we want to minimize our chance of getting nasty diseases I strongly recommend we trade primarily with the Preclassical Maya and other early American civilizations not the Eurasian civilizations across the Atlantic. That way the disease exchange should be pretty one-sided in our favor just as it was for the Europeans in America. So Mayan hotties, not Egyptian ones guys.

I must point out here what an absolutely horrible shit I feel like citing "the disease exchange will be one sided so we'll only indirectly be responsible for the deaths of huge numbers of people but nothing bad will happen to us" as a good thing. Really, the fact we may advance the timetable of human technological and social advancement tremendously and spare the world millenia of barbarism is the only reason I'm not counseling that the most ethical thing we could do is gather up a bunch of firearms, swim out into the sea out of sight of any land to minimize the chance of any locals finding out bodies, and take turns shooting each other with the last guy pulling a Hemmingway on himself (not that I'd expect such a suggestion to be accepted in any case, human survival instinct being as strong as it is).

This gets into my second point, which is that we really should make at least some effort to prevent our diseases crossing over to the 'temps (I'm borrowing the term from Axis of Time, fits well enough). Leaving aside the issue that we really do have an ethical responsibility to at least try to not cause mass deaths I see it as an issue of our own morale. Like I said, I feel like a horrible shit just planning around this in the abstract, and I think it would prey on the psyches of at least some of our members that we are indirectly causing mass deaths. I know I'd go to my grave feeling horror and shame at the deaths we probably caused just by showing up. That's not good for morale. It may not be such a big deal back on the island but the crews assigned to the Eagle and the traders we send out may be another story. I have this vision of being a crewman on that ship visiting some coastal town in Peru or something, walking around, seeing the sights and the people, and knowing that I am very likely spreading death on everything I touch and breathe, spreading death through the town as I walk around. That would be absolutely horrible and I wouldn't be too surprised if guilt-induced suicides and other psychological problems start becoming a significant problem for these crews, especially if they end up visiting these places again as the plagues sweep through them and knowing they caused all the death and suffering they're witnessing. It gets even more grotesque if you consider we're going there to acquire women; just imagine your wife telling you that her entire family died in the terrible plague that happened the year the pale wizards came and knowing that it may have been you who brought that plague to her community, and if it wasn't you it was some other SD-netter.

I'm not sure exactly what precautions could be taken - vaccinations of the crews and traders, if feasible, might help, since I'm guessing it means they probably won't be carrying those common modern diseases. Strict health checks of crews would also be good. Restricting exchange as much as feasible wouldn't be a bad idea, and things like having the people wear gloves and masks may also be a good idea. Even if these measures are futile and probably silly I think just for our own morale it might be good to make the people think we are taking precautions, that we aren't just accepting that we'll cause a terrible die-off just by having contact with these people and shrugging it off. Who knows, if we're real careful maybe we can keep the diseases from passing until we develop the capacity for mass vaccinations, but that's probably a pipe dream.

Our "population imports" might not be such a big deal since we can simply collect orders of magnitude more than we need and let the balance die off, and it's not like the people back home would know what happens to them when they go off on the big ship. That'd be pretty brutal on whoever is supposed to handle them until then though, unless we can find some utter sociopaths among our number to do the job, not to mention generally being totally horrible from an ethics viewpoint. On the plus side, if we can preserve enough vaccines for a couple of thousand people we could probably vaccinate them against a bunch of diseases we might have.

Also, I'd imagine compared to the first Europeans that showed up in the Americas OTL we'd probably be a fairly healthy, disease-free lot, which I'd think would by itself help.

[Ford Prefect]

I would also ask why she expects all of the adults on the board to go along with this plan of ditching everyone we consider "dead weight" and assuming they'll all die, especially when we're talking about a large majority of the people here. That is pretty fucking cold. Damned near Nazi-level ruthless, if you ask me.

It's not just cold, it seems logistically impossible. How do you even begin to convince a group which outnumbers you nine to one to just ... go off and starve?