Military:Population

The BBC has a thingy with a graphic about the size of the army, which is going to be reduced to 82,000, smaller than it was ... well, basically ever. Cromwell's was smaller. It says the regular army numbered around 124,000 men during the First Boer War in 1880-81.

"The British army is due to be reduced to 82,000 by 2020, prompting claims it will be the smallest it has been since the 19th Century. But if Britain had a small army then, how did it control an empire?"

It says "The most remarkable thing is that they often had no technical advantages and we managed it by spending only 2.5% of GDP on defence, which is not much higher than we have today." And it says there's always someone saying they're overstretched. "In recent years the newspapers have been full of articles in which senior military figures, or retired grandees, argued the armed forces were 'overstretched'. But this is nothing new". Mostly the article is about the Empire, with references to Carry On films suggesting it isn't taking itself too seriously. But with the comparisons to now, I was left with the impression the article is saying: hey, no worries, we used to rule the world with that much army! Is plenty!

... you know what it left out completely? Army as a proportion of the population.

Around 1850, the last time the British army was near the proposed size (including the TA), the British population was around 21 million (I found an animation. There's more useful forms, I just had other things to do.) World population was somewhere between 1,000,000,000 and 2,000,000,000 (says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population ). Now? British population is around 61 million ( says google ) and World population is over 6 billion: more than three times bigger.

That means proportionately it's a teensy tiny bit smaller than it ever has been before.

Articles that leave out the actual important facts kind of annoy me.

The British Army: Getting Much Smaller. Especially compared to how many humans there are now.

Maybe we can fight less people now! :-)



I think Britain's position in the world, military capability, how many ships, how much army, all those things, it has changed rapidly and really really a lot. I don't know how aware of that people are. Is a bit interesting.

(no subject)

Note to self: Reading the Skippy List while anywhere near writing a military themed fic... back away from the keyboard now.

human colony

So I was thinking about starting a colony on another planet
as you do
and trying to plan out what you'd need.

I went looking on the internet for other people's plans, but I think I lack the keywords. I found some very sketch outline stuff about colonies on planets that were not terraformed. I was thinking something more like Stargate where you could go live somewhere that looked kind of like Vancouver. Big, green, lots of trees. So your basic air and water are covered. But nothing much more complicated than trees, so everything humans would use you'd have to bring with you.

I read a Stargate Atlantis fic where the things you need list started with 'olive trees'. And trying to poke the GURPS rules to make sufficient food for a spaceship come out I found a lot of places saying potato and beans are good to eat. And personally I like eggs and mushrooms so I'd take enough to make sure breakfast was sorted. But basing my plans on things I personally eat will come up against that thing where I'm pretty sure I don't eat all the things that are good for humans. I hear green is a good food group.

So
If you were planning a colony to go to another planet
one way trip
no resupply
take people and supplies and expect to look after yourselves forever after
how would you find out what you'd need?
and what would you take with you?

(The empty planet scenario makes me twitchy in ways connected with the word colonies. On Earth it was never, ever empty. On Earth the story about going to empty places and making them good was a cover for some really foul stuff. Telling stories about the empty planets out there waiting to be colonised gets into some really awkward narratives. But, it's space. Space is big. It might be empty. And if there's any life, it seems to spend a whole lot of time inventing trees. We could go find somewhere in the middle of its tree phase. It's all logically possible. Just... sort of squirmy.)

(Also, intruding on the ecological development of another planet is logically an ethical Thing. But I'm just going to hop over the terraforming phase because it takes forever and doesn't seem to lead to people on the internet talking about how you make a functioning community full of people. People are where all the stories live.)