Regarding case 1, with a pandemic leaving 50% of the population dead but no major infrastructure damage, I think you can make much stronger claims about there not being ‘civilization collapse’ meaning near-total failure of industrial food, water, and power systems. Indeed, collapse so defined from that stimulus seems nonsensical to me for rich quantitative reasons.
If there were a pandemic heading toward 50% population fatality, I think that it is likely that workers would not show up to critical industries and there would be a collapse of industrial civilization. I looked into whether the military could replace those workers, and it did not look feasible. Whether there would be further collapse of large-scale cooperation is less certain. If that cooperation is maintained, I agree it would be possible to have agricultural productivity similar to preindustrial Europe. However, it would mean a very rapid scale up of hand/​animal farming equipment, and hand powered wells, carts that could be drawn by animals, etc (which ALLFED is planning on investigating). Some people say that modern crop varieties would actually do worse than traditional crop varieties if there were no artificial fertilizers and pesticides. If that were true or if scaling of tools were difficult, then we could have much worse agricultural productivity than preindustrial Europe.
Loss of rapid communication would likely imply fragmentation of large countries, if it is true that empires can only be maintained with I think a ~14 day communication radius. Furthermore, it is possible that cooperation outside of 100 person groups is lost, particularly because of fear of the disease. In this case, I think it is likely with current preparation to only be able to do hunting and gathering. In addition, the hunting and gathering population density could be much less than historic, because the overshoot in population density could mean that plants and animals that are good to eat could be driven to extinction by desperate humans.
Though it is possible that current food storage could be protected well, it is not clear to me that there would be a strong defense advantage. The desperate attackers would have weapons as well. If we go significantly above the carrying capacity and food is distributed fairly equally, then everyone would starve.
I would like to see these sorts of bio-catastrophes discussed in more detail. On my naive understanding, the threat of engineered pandemics seems likely to usher in an age of disruption and surveillance and to completely undermine current liberal democratic norms
My thought would be that getting the level of international coordination required would be extremely hard. (I am speaking from a position of ignorance here)
Maybe there could be groups of countries that agree to coordinate on this, and isolate themselves physically from countries outside their own groups?
I guess there might be ways to deliver disease through the air or wild (wild animals), or just sneaking into a country. The solution to that is domes. :P
If there were a pandemic heading toward 50% population fatality, I think that it is likely that workers would not show up to critical industries and there would be a collapse of industrial civilization. I looked into whether the military could replace those workers, and it did not look feasible. Whether there would be further collapse of large-scale cooperation is less certain. If that cooperation is maintained, I agree it would be possible to have agricultural productivity similar to preindustrial Europe. However, it would mean a very rapid scale up of hand/​animal farming equipment, and hand powered wells, carts that could be drawn by animals, etc (which ALLFED is planning on investigating). Some people say that modern crop varieties would actually do worse than traditional crop varieties if there were no artificial fertilizers and pesticides. If that were true or if scaling of tools were difficult, then we could have much worse agricultural productivity than preindustrial Europe.
Loss of rapid communication would likely imply fragmentation of large countries, if it is true that empires can only be maintained with I think a ~14 day communication radius. Furthermore, it is possible that cooperation outside of 100 person groups is lost, particularly because of fear of the disease. In this case, I think it is likely with current preparation to only be able to do hunting and gathering. In addition, the hunting and gathering population density could be much less than historic, because the overshoot in population density could mean that plants and animals that are good to eat could be driven to extinction by desperate humans.
Though it is possible that current food storage could be protected well, it is not clear to me that there would be a strong defense advantage. The desperate attackers would have weapons as well. If we go significantly above the carrying capacity and food is distributed fairly equally, then everyone would starve.
I would like to see these sorts of bio-catastrophes discussed in more detail. On my naive understanding, the threat of engineered pandemics seems likely to usher in an age of disruption and surveillance and to completely undermine current liberal democratic norms
You don’t think regulating the sale and use of the technologies necessary to engineer diseases would be enough?
My thought would be that getting the level of international coordination required would be extremely hard. (I am speaking from a position of ignorance here)
Maybe there could be groups of countries that agree to coordinate on this, and isolate themselves physically from countries outside their own groups?
I guess there might be ways to deliver disease through the air or wild (wild animals), or just sneaking into a country. The solution to that is domes. :P
At this point, that would be at least as easy a task as removing the 400 million firearms in private American hands.
IOW, good luck with that.
https://​​carnegieendowment.org/​​2018/​​04/​​17/​​new-killer-pathogens-countering-coming-bioweapons-threat-pub-76009