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wd40's Remarks on the Future History
(See also Future History - Further Thoughts )
Subject: Swarm Cycle Future History Please let me know what changes you request.
Excerpts Concerning the Human Disapora, with a Note on the Siege of Earth!
(c) Enclyopedia Galactica, Demeter, 2350
Summary
Approximately 600 million humans, constituting about 10% of the homeworld's population, were evacuated prior to the Sa'arm's arrival in the home system. The national backgrounds of the evacuees, specifically the dominance of those from the United States of America (" America "), were critical in determining the future expansion, and the social and political development, of the human race.
Initial assumptions that as much as 30% of the homeworld's population might be evacuated were dashed due to delays both in terraforming of suitable planetary refuges, and in production and manning of really large population transports. This was true even though the Sa'arm did not reach the home system until approximately twelve years after large scale evacuations commenced. The initial 30% evacuation assumption was also vitiated by the disappointing later results of CAP testing outside the developed nations, which showed that a much smaller proportion than anticipated of the undeveloped nations' populations were suitable as "volunteers".
This was particularly true of the oldest, and largest, nation of " China" which constituted approximately 20-25% of the homeworld's population. This discovery was especially puzzling in that a different and far smaller group of "ethnic" Chinese, called, "overseas Chinese" produced a dramatically greater proportion of volunteers. The "overseas" Chinese, including subordinate ethnic groups (see Formosans), produced about half as many "volunteers" as the "mainland Chinese" from a population base which was only 5% of the size of the "mainland Chinese". If the "overseas Chinese" counted as a single nationality, their proportion of evacuees would have been exceeded only by America , Israel and Australia .
The major reasons why the nation of China produced a surprisingly low proportion of eligible volunteers are believed to be its level of development and insularity. First, about 2/3 of its population was effectively pre-industrial. Only about 30-40% of the rest had education, skills AND income comparable to those of developed nations and, of that group, the proportion of eligible volunteers was comparable to that of developed nations such as Korea and Italy . Additionally the population of the nation of China was very, very, insular by comparison with other countries, and this definitely contributed to low CAP scores. The "overseas" Chinese, by contrast, were exceptionally cosmopolitan and adaptive due to centuries of living as minorities in lands dominated by other ethnic groups, and this was reflected by their exceptionally high number of eligible volunteers.
The sheer numbers of Chinese overall, though, meant that their evacuees formed the second largest national grouping after the Americans with the nations of India, Japan and Mexico (Siege of Earth footnote) ranking next. Including the "overseas Chinese", Chinese was the second most widely spoken language after English.
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Statistics and Notes:
America
!180 million evacuees of 300 million population. Approximately 30% of the evacuees were American which, together with the remarkable assimilative capabilities of American culture made their culture quite dominant in the Diaspora. 39 million of the American evacuees were adult males (23 million "volunteers" and 16 million "concubines"), 85 million were adult females (8 million volunteers and 77 million concubines) and 56 million were minors under the age of fourteen, evenly divided between males and females. The proportion of female volunteers was significantly higher among Americans than in any other nationality. Also noteworthy was that almost all American children were evacuated, though this proportion was at least equaled and probably exceeded by the much smaller nations of Israel and Singapore .
Singapore
!Approximately 75% of the population of the small island nation of Singapore was evacuated prior to the Sa'arm attack, which was easily the highest proportion of evacuees of any homeworld nation. This was due both to its small size and that the great majority of Singapore 's population were "overseas" Chinese. Its government and people devoted themselves single-mindedly to securing evacuation and they succeeded. There is some evidence that ALL of Singapore 's children were evacuated.
Israel
!The small nation of Israel is notable for several reasons. Its population had the greatest proportion of eligible volunteers on the planet such that 80-90% of its population, including concubines, qualified for evacuation. But only half accepted -- the rest insisted on staying to defend their homeland and its sacred city of Jerusalem despite the certainty of defeat and death. And almost all the children were evacuated.
Mexico
!The importance of the nation of Mexico in the Diaspora is almost entirely due to events which occurred after the Sa'arm arrived in the home system. Approximately eleven million of 110 million Mexicans were evacuated prior to the Siege of Earth, which was within the 5-10% range of normal for most nations. What made Mexico important was that another thirteen million Mexicans were removed during the final evacuation of the planet at the end of the siege, constituting 65% of the twenty million survivors. The disproportionate number of Mexican survivors was due to the Mexican central highlands constituting the final "redoubt" on the North American continent, and because the survivors of other nationalities gave the Mexicans precedence due to their incredible valor during the Battle for North America . See Siege of Earth, Battle for North America, and Flag of Chapultepec . Ten of the thirteen million Mexican survivors were under the age of 25, including all of the few children except those killed during the final evacuation.
Anglosphere
!American dominance in the Diaspora was not due solely to their constituting 30% of all evacuees and the assimilative powers of their culture. America had been colonized from the island nation of Great Britain , which had founded other successful colonies and whose culture significantly influenced that of the second most populous nation of India . All those nations together formed a grouping called the "Anglosphere". Approximately forty million evacuees were either British in nationality or of ethnic "white", English-speaking nationalities which had been British colonies or possessions ( Canada , Australia , Ireland , New Zealand ). Almost all of the fifty million Indian evacuees spoke English and were somewhat assimilated by British culture due to India having been a British possession for a hundred years. These ninety million English-speaking evacuees from the Anglosphere, together with the 180 million Americans, constituted 45% of all evacuees. A disproportionate number of volunteers from other nationalities also spoke English so it was inevitable that English would become the de facto human Diaspora language. This too made American culture dominant.
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Evacuation and Preparation for the Sa'arm
There were significant early problems in persuading humans to undergo CAP testing, or accept concubine status. Brutal arbitrary initial extraction methods had much to do with this. There were even armed attacks on extraction teams, particularly in well-armed America which, while they were portrayed as done by criminals, religious extremists and sociopaths, were really due to public outrage by citizens who believed they were protecting their families. The adverse public relations consequences of this were such that disinformation techniques were employed.
The AI's and High Command also noted that volunteers, driven by evolutionary psychology, rarely selected concubines over the age of 40 years unless they were spouses, despite publicity about nanotech rejuvenation and body sculpting of concubines as well as volunteers. Males in particular almost always selected only "nubile" females -- those in the 14-25 year-old age groups -- unless they were personally acquainted with the older females chosen as concubines. This was deemed a waste of useful people and genes. High Command was also concerned that evacuation of a disproportionate amount of military-age concubines would impair the homeworld's ability to slow down the Sa'arm advance.
These problems were overcome, after two years, by extending limited nanotech rejuvenation to all persons undergoing CAP testing. All those over the age of 20-25 would receive injections of nanotechs which would, over a period of several weeks (depending on their pre-rejuvenation age), reduce the apparent biological age of their muscles and cells to about age 20-25, cure almost all diseases, etc. Those with excessive weight problems would have their metabolisms adjusted to deal with it. Given proper exercise, almost all persons under the age of about 55 could be rejuvenated to appear as they did at the age of 20-25. This also gave them the higher energy levels, and libidos, of youth.
And the nanotechs of course provided the AI's with real-time surveillance of all persons containing the nanotechs, though the AI's could not communicate back as they could with fully augmented volunteers. This dramatically reduced security threats, enhanced safety and gave the evacuation more favorable publicity. It also allowed them to regulate human fertility and better evaluate prospective volunteers.
Older females in particular greeted this offer with enthusiasm. Those who doubted the Sa'arm threat still leaped at the chance to be young again. Sexual activity overall sky-rocketed while those eligible to be volunteers were delighted at having a far wider selection of attractive, sexually experienced, concubines. It also created some odd age-pairings between males and females, as those who were really 50 years old could appear to be 20, and the difference could not be determined save by examination of dentify cards and whatnot.
Fleet High Command and the AI's formed a plan, successful as it turned out, to use the homeworld as a "fortress" upon which the Sa'arm advance would either be broken or at least delayed enough so that colonies formed by the human Diaspora would have the time to expand and develop enough to eventually defeat the Sa'arm. This required that the homeworld be completely militarized and stocked to withstand a long siege.
It was also decided that, as much of the homeworld lacked the density of suitable industrial infrastructure and particularly the skilled, socially cohesive, population capable of operating it and adapting advanced Confederation technology to permit defense, that the defense would have to focus on "redoubts" where such infrastructure and population were available. This meant Europe, North America, Japan , Korea , Manchuria and coastal China plus a few other, much smaller areas. Essentially most of the human race was written off.
But there was a conflict between the needs of evacuation and the needs of homeworld militarization and stocking, particularly in that much initial effort was required to create and develop initially unproductive colonies. This conflict was resolved by daring and sacrificial counterattacks, to slow down and divert the Sa'arm advance, made by hastily retrained homeworld military forces using converted alien spacecraft and the early production of purpose-built human warships. The Sa'arm did not reach the home system until twelve years after large-scale evacuations began.
These large evacuations resulted in significant homeworld population movements, notably to America as it was emptied by evacuation. The most notable was that the entire unevacuated population of Australia (@ 55% of its population) moved to America . Australia was deemed indefensible as its population and industrial infrastructure density were too low, while its people all spoke English and were so culturally similar to Americans that they could function as such. Much of the English-speaking population of South America moved north for the same reason, and at least thirty million who didn't moved to Mexico or Chile .
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Siege of Earth
The Siege of Earth was THE decisive event of the Sa'arm War. The human defense, particularly in the Battle for North America, so attrited and exhausted the Sa'arm that the nascent human Diaspora colonies had time to expand, industrialize and deploy large enough fleets to hold off the Sa'arm when the latter recommenced their advance.
The defense, as explained above, was based on securely holding the most industrialized and populated areas and contesting much of the rest so as to get the Sa'arm to commit the maximum possible numbers of ground forces, while the Diaspora fleet operating from outer system bases (notably the moons of Saturn) both attrited the Sa'arm fleet and supplied the homeworld defense forces with technological knowledge, intelligence, and key components.
Approximately 60-70% of the homeworld population died in the first year of the nine-year siege. At the end of that year the redoubts constituted the entire continent of North America plus its islands, the European continent west of the Vistula River and the Carpathian Mountains extending to the Black Sea, Anatolia and the Levant, all Mediterranean Sea islands, the Korean peninsula and Japanese isles, and the South American nation of Chile. Organized resistance also continued in southern Asia (India-Pakistan) and the South American nation of Brazil . Many island areas were not attacked at all, such as New Zealand .
At the end of the second year the redoubts of North America, much of Europe ( Italy , Switzerland , the British isles and western Europe west of the Rhine), Japan and Chile remained.
At the end of the third year only the redoubts of North America, Chile and two parts of Europe held out ( Spain and the British isles ). Approximately ten million Japanese and Koreans were evacuated to North America .
At the end of the fourth year, only the North America redoubt stood. Approximately ten million Europeans were evacuated to North America. 99% of all humans surviving on the planet resided in North America.
The Battle for North America then started, and lasted approximately five years. This was the decisive engagement of the Siege in which the Sa'arm were really broken. The Sa'arm finally accomplished a widespread landing in the little developed, and quite unpopulated, Arctic areas of Canada and slowly forced their way south.
Fleet High Command decided in advance to evacuate the greatest possible number of survivors, at any cost, when the redoubt area and population base dropped so low that the end was coming quickly, and husbanded the necessary resources for the operation. This was hotly disputed by the AI's, who preferred either not to use those resources at all, or to instead use them to inflict the maximum losses on the Sa'arm in a surprise attack when their ground forces were geographically concentrated to overcome the last redoubt in central Mexico. High Command successfully argued that human morale factors were now predominant. The AI's conceded that they were unfamiliar with those.
Fleet suffered unbelievable losses in the evacuation, arguably exceeding the value of the twenty million extracted population. This was most notable when more than a hundred thousand naval personnel and several million tons of warships were sacrificed just to secure the Flag of Chapultepec alone (the 2020 battle flag, not the 1847 flag).
The Flag has great totemic significance even today, and is located on the grounds of the Military Academy in Mexico . While the homeworld's biosphere was restored at titanic expense after the Sa'arm were defeated, North America was not repopulated and remains a shrine whose few ruins surviving the Sa'arm occupation are being overgrown. Only the Military Academy and necessary park maintenance facilities were built there.
Hindsight shows that Fleet High Command was correct in placing an overriding value on morale factors in deciding to evacuate the Mexican Redoubt. The survivors' stories were well-documented and remain stirring. Every facet of the subsequent war effort was enhanced, from production to cohesion to individual sacrifice.
A special and successful effort was also made to preserve Mexican culture. The Mexican survivors themselves, plus prior Mexican evacuees, were so much sought after as mates that they today form a disproportionate amount of the gene pool relative to their initial numbers. Plus a wholly disproportionate amount of the ground forces.
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American Dominance
Americans quickly became dominant in any colony where they formed more than 15-20% of the population due to their bottom-up recreation of political, economic and social infrastructures. The AI's had not anticipated this. It is now clear that this dominance was rooted in the Americans' frontier heritage plus peculiarly American attitudes. Those start with the unique role of the American people in American nationalism -- that the people (as an entity) felt they alone constituted the nation. This was quite contrary to other countries' nationalism where the "people" were considered one of many domestic factions, and often an illegitimate one ("the rabble"). This distinction arose because the American people had deemed America 's sovereign power to reside in themselves, while most other nations began their national consciousness with a hereditary monarch expressing the sovereign power. Other peoples identified themselves with their nations. Americans instead identified the nation with themselves, feeling they collectively were the nation.
Many distinctive American traits grew from these feelings - exaggerated self-reliance and individualism, disdain for elites, self-confidence, etc. The American people did not hesitate to act on their own, as individuals or in spontaneously formed groups, to address issues as those arise. They simply did not suffer in silence or wait for anyone else (including their own governments) to help them. The unique vitality, power and independence of American local governments compared to those of other countries arose from the fact that sovereignty and power resided in the American people collectively and flowed from the bottom up.
This resulted in the American evacuees insisting, based on their frontier cultural heritage, on re-creating their political, economic and social institutions in their new colonies, and this could not be stopped when AI lack of foresight and neglect created vital administrative and social needs for those colonies which the Americans' recreated institutions met. This alone guaranteed conflict with the disorganized top-down administrative structure the AI's envisaged based on their experience with other sapient races. Some human nationalities might have developed, after evacuation, in the directions the AI's intended, but not Americans.
What really gave the AI's problems, though, was that these same attitudes also made Americans so crucial in stopping the Sa'arm. This started with their cultural tradition, arising with the dawn of classic Western Civilization, of free citizens who, together, comprised their "polis" and defended it with their individual lives as the expression of their corporate selves. This tradition lay closer to the surface in America than elsewhere in the West due to a combination of deeper traits in Americans - self-reliance, individualism, etc.
The Sa'arm threat absolutely riveted the American evacuees' attention, but in terms of wanting to fight the threat instead of running from it as evacuees of most other nations did. Here there was a critical difference among the different nationalities "concubines". A high proportion of the American concubines did want to confront the Sa'arm, if only to protect their children, and were not willing to wait for the AI's or understaffed colonial governments to tell them how to do it. So they started organizing on their own and, in particular, cooperated in non-military ways to support the war effort, through productive economic activity and instruction of their children.
Another reason the AI's had for letting the American evacuees re-create their familiar institutions was sheer economic productivity. Americans had very high spontaneous social trust amongst each other relative to other nationalities, and particularly so after recreating their trusted political, economic and social environments. Colonies dominated by Americans quickly formed the major basis of Diaspora economic and military production. And, as noted, the 30% of evacuees who were Americans quickly assimilated the 15% from the rest of the Anglosphere. That combined 45% then went on to assimilate most of the rest. Today the only significant "ethnic" groups are Americans, Chinese, Mexicans, Japanese and Jews (most of the latter now reside on Earth and refuse invasive nanotechnology -- those are not allowed to leave the homeworld).
The AI's therefore let the Americans come to dominate the Diaspora, and hoped that they could thereafter control the human race through injected nanotechs. The outcome of the latter remains unclear, but there is no doubt whatever that the decision to let the Americans dominate was crucial to defeating the Sa'arm.
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