Re: Occupation forces

On 19 Jun 98 at 13:30, Thomas Barclay wrote:

> Richard spake thusly upon matters weighty: 
> > Mineral resouces is unlikely. If industry can use up the ores 
> > available in asteroid belts in their home systems then I would be 
> > very suprised, there is an astouding amount out there.
> 
> Maybe some rare minerals that only exist closer in to the suns or
> something of the sort?

Yup, a cheesy reason, but it's good enough for our purposes ;)

> > Food. Perhaps. I think of the core systems, earth inparticular, as 
> > not self sufficient in food anymore due to high population, and 
> > reliant on imported food.
> 
> You'd think that, wouldn't you. That's what the Malthusians have
> been trying to tell us about Earth for ever. In principle, it makes
> sense that earth has an abiotic carrying capacity like any
> environment. Only it seems that consistently the rate of growth of
> agricultural production has outpaced the rate of growth of
> population. Population growth may curb due to environmental
> pressures before food production does. And we haven't even begun to
> harvest the huge potential of the seas. Or stations in Earth orbit
> could produce food too. 
> 
> But if you like this as a justification, just tailor the universe to
> fit - it just doesn't seem to be borne out to date....

Well, what has happened so far is: Humanity had access to waaay more 
food than we needed, then improvements in medicine and birth 
mortality in general has caused us to get a lot closer to a problem 
situation, staved off by industrial farming methods. As a whole, the 
population gain rate of the world shows no signs of slowing, other 
than in developed countries. But I guess that can be used as an 
indicator of the rate slowing dramatically for currently third world 
countries once they get to the same level of devopment.

Stations in earth orbit producing food for a significant proportion 
of the world population? Food growth at that scale needs room, lots 
of it. The stations would have to be BIG. If a planet with 
roughly 50 million square miles surface area is running out of 
places to grow food, think of the scale of orbital station this 
needs.

> > Somewhere to live. If an enemy colony has millions of inhabitants, 
> > they are probably not spread out all over the whole surface. Put
your 
> > colonists somewhere else. Or, try and ship enough to massively 
> > outnumber them. As a side thought, if you are shipping that many 
> > people there, use the empty ships return journey to deport the 
> > locals. (OK, diplomatic can of worms here.)
> 
> One of the interesting books was David Drake's Patriots because it
> addressed the problem of a sparsely populated world having colonies
> of non-friendly extraplanetary groups (refugees, whatever) just show
> up and try to plonk down whole cities in the thinly populated areas
> - which is a viable way to start to take over a planet - squatter
> style.  

It depends if the attempts at rival colonies are contested strongly. 
But I can see political situations meaning that it could go either 
way.

> > I am in agreement. A lot of the counter discussion has cast the 
> > colonists in the 'fanatic resistance' mould. People do have a 
> > tendency to 'accept their lot' unless they are severely mistreated.
> 
> It boils down to image, PR, and effort. In some wars, threatened
> populii have been whipped into a defensive whirlwind by PR. In
> others, they've just let the aggressor come in and take over with
> little resistance. One might say it has a lot to do with the skills,
> strategies, and luck of the aggressor, and of the defender. 

Agreed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Slattery	     richard@mgkc.demon.co.uk
Why only twelve? 
     Samuel Goldwyn, while filming The Last Supper, [attributed]
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