It is a horrible situation but if you want an example of what the frontlines of WW3 in Poland would look like then the East of Ukraine in the Donbas region would be an example.
I beg to differ. Neither Donbas nor Syria have endured the total collapse of their surrounding infrastructure. In fact, in both cases, major neighbors - and one might say: war-faring parties - have ensured that supplies from outside keep the population alive, both during ongoing fighting as well as during periods of calm. This is nothing like Europe during the Twilight War, especially Poland and other frontline states. It just makes the world of a difference, if a regional or super power participates in a war or if it rolls over a country twice or more and then decides to nuke it in several iterations of exchange. By 2000, Poland will look like Hiroshima and Dresden in 1945, but without the limitless supplies of Allied occupation.
The hardest part to grasp in TW2000 is the civilian population.
The book does a so so job of sharing that information. As a GM you kind of have to extrapolate that.
Yes it is and yes it does (not), so yes we will have to.
I've dipped my toe into historical demography, though it's been quite some time ago. There are four major factors in the culling of the world's population in T2K4, which are mentioned:
- Nuclear exchange.
- Collapses of food chains.
- The record cold temperatures of the winter of '98-'99; though only for cities.
- Virulent, of which epidemics typhoid fever, cholera, bubonic plague are especially mentioned.
The total loss of population world-wide is given as "nearly" 50 percent. Below, I will argue, why this is misleading, where to expect the largest losses and what the overall structure of losses will look like. For the understanding of this post, it is important to remember the following facts about T2K4:
- We don't know the scope of the war beyond Europe and a short look at Israel. It is likely that major engagements were fought outside Europe and the North Atlantic as well as numerous smaller actions took place, but we're generally uninformed about this. Obviously, major action outside of Europe might have major consequences on all I'm going to state now.
- What we know about the timeline of the actual war years is almost exclusively sorted by years. FL made the—I'd like to add: "wise"—decision, not to be too specific on dates, figures and the general quantity of things. Exact numbers are for experts and draw critique more than they sell books.
- We're left largely in the dark on the Peace Dividend, European Integration and other historical developments of the European political landscape for the 1990s. So we have to draw analogies from what happened in our history to figure out what might have happened in the T2K4 1990s. As a classical historian, I like analogies, we work with them all the time. However, they give us more counterfactual history disguised as the real thing than what historians of contemporary decades are used to work with.
So, for starters, let's pretend that the 1990s of T2K4 went more or less as did the decade we knew, until the Soviets decided to kill us all (and themselves in the process). Then, let's get a couple of things straight that are important to understand the state of the world in T2K4:
- The downfall of human globalized society happened some time ago, when looking at calendars or determining how long people can survive in situations of complete collapse.
- The downfall of human globalized society happened quite recently, though, when looking at the span of a single life, which is important for measuring the actual loss of knowledge on how to do things.
Furthermore, the war started in 1997 and the game starts after the fall of Kalisz in April 2000. So, it's a lifer altering event for every human being and it will determine the history of its world for generations, but almost everybody will remember "before the war" quite clearly. To put it into perspective: Once the next Covid-winter is over, in early 2023, we'll have had to deal with that pandemic as long as Poland had to endure Word War Three.
European population will have suffered dramatically from the war, long before the nuclear exchange, since the start of major hostilities along the full North-South axis of the continent will lead to a refugee crisis of unknown proportion: historical Europe by 1998 had a population of approximately 500 million, without the USSR. That's about 100 million more than in 1945, but warfare has become much more deadly and swift, without as much resilience in infrastructure and supplies, since globalization is much more pronounced by 1997.
Once the nukes start flying, supply chains aren't broken, they're obliterated and won't come back without major efforts on the European continent. Cities will be empty, long before the winter of '98-'99 hits. That is due to the simple fact that cities cannot be sustained and only skeleton populations will be able to be kept, in order to staff remnants of infrastructure such as hospitals, rail-yards, airports, maritime and riverine ports as well as safeguarding and staffing civil and military institutions. The majority of the remnant population will be living in refugee camps, where they are not in the way of military operations, can be supplied and put to work on every plot of land now used for farming. The lucky refugees might have made it to Southern and South-Western Europe, in Spain, Italy, Portugal or Southern France, but those countries cannot feed all of Europe. Those living under the sway of Soviet occupational forces might not be allowed to flee for as long as Western refugees and Scandinavian refugees will not be able to leave the Scandinavian peninsula.
This means that large parts of each countries' population will be living in the hinterland for 15-30 months, once the game begins. Actually, moving towards the front might be a smart choice, not only for able-bodied people, who join armies to fight, in order to move up in the food chain, but also for those that are unfit or unwilling to fight, but hope to find a job in the massive trains of the warring armies. At some point, each and every maintenance battalion will be staffed by more civilians than soldiers, and so will every logistics, supply and any other rear-echelon unit.
After the coldest winter "in living memory", refugee camps will be sites of burial. Once supplying the refugee camps fails, unrests will follow. Putting them down will be a mix of diplomacy, force and abandonment. As we know firsthand today, certain epidemics don't hit hardest
after the cold of winter, but during. Historically, 1997 sees the first human infection with an avian influenza A H5N1, while 1998 sees a hybrid of human, bird and swine flu viruses detected in pigs. Typhoid fever and cholera are almost natural inhabitants of refugee camps and the bubonic plague, while long eradicated in Europe, could be reintroduced by ships from the USA or Southeast Asia, like India, as well as Madagascar.
But what will kill Europe more than the war, the nukes and the epidemics (or more likely: pandemics) is famine. Historically, in 1998, the European countries of today's EU 27 (so without the UK, but including most of Eastern Europe, some of Scandinavia and most of the rest) imports close to 100 million tons of agricultural products. Europe is far from self-sufficient, even while being more productive in agricultural means than ever before. Once nukes fly, domestic production will cease to exist on a large scale, with massive crop failure and mass-deaths of livestock. While emergency programs might be implemented, where every patch of arable land will be turned over into fields, this is extremely inefficient, hardly industrialized and mechanized work and producing far below, what Europe needs. And this is before the great freeze. Which bring me to this:
Remember the nuclear war was about a year ago from the time of the start of the game. the actual war was much earlier in 98, when naval forces knocked out trade and supply lines. This is the actual fall of the society. look how just covid caused so many supply shortages.. imagine the entirety of the shipping infrastructure was obliterated. No aircraft moving in and out of warzones ect...
The year preceding 2000 was the great freeze when many in Europe froze to death.
Actually, this is off by a year each approximately. The war started in 1997 with the US president fulfilling his campaign promises right away and the USSR reacting soon(ish) by invading Poland. The great freeze is over by at least a year, once Operation Reset finally fails at Kalisz. The bottom line is this: Supply chains will be strained from the very first day of fighting at the latest. The collapse of these chains will happen, once the nukes fly, at the latest. Though it is conceivable that the start of the second round of fighting, in 1998, will already make re-building strategic food reserves for all countries in Europe very, very hard. So, if the supply chains die in 1998, this gives Europe what, one and a half years, maybe even two years to die in waves of famine. Politicians might try to avoid it, they might start importing grain through ports in Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal etc., but these countries will just become targets because of it. The USSR might loose grain production in Ukraine and other parts, due to nuclear attacks, but it could in theory try to supply through Asia, which makes an escalation of the war across the world very likely.
1000000 people in the area of 10km will self destruct real fast as resources dry up. If you cant trade for it you kill for it.
Actually, even 10,000 people in a radius of 10 km will self-destruct almost immediately, once supplies run out. More so, in an environment, where state control is compromised, but weapons are plenty.
So, what population can Europe support without the marvels of modern agriculture technology and large parts of its strategic grain reserves and even its soil tainted? Well, we'd have to look at historical population numbers before the onset of the industrial and agricultural revolutions, meaning around 1800. Historical demography is a tough discipline, but Western Europe had about 120 million (give or take a couple of million) people in 1800 and Eastern Europe, without the lands of the USSR, had around 30-35 million people living there. Reminder: Before the Twilight War, we were at 500 million people, now the maximum of sustainable population is likely less than a third, quite likely only a quarter or so, since large parts of prime arable land will be tainted, machinery demolished and the necessary labor force dead, displaced or fighting.