[HN Gopher] Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part II: Foraging
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Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part II: Foraging
Author : burlesona
Score : 60 points
Date : 2022-07-30 18:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (acoup.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog)
| venk12 wrote:
| This seems like so much more effort than war in modern times.
| Wonder what future generations 100 to 200 years from now would
| think and write about our current happenings.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Modern war requires even more effort. Hundreds of thousands of
| Russians and Ukrainians are consuming much more than a Roman
| legion or a Spanish army in the Netherlands. They need a
| constant stream of fuel and bullets and shells and more food
| than just bread. It's just that trucks and trains and
| oceangoing ships make logistics possible at this scale.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| I believe he does discuss that briefly in part 1.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Some of it is pretty specific, but decisions like:
|
| * Heavy or light foraging?
|
| * Forage with smaller groups of cavalry or large groups of
| infantry?
|
| * Terrorize the people in the countryside or try to stay on their
| relative good side?
|
| * Do you have handmills?
|
| * When is your campaign going to happen?
|
| seem like the type of choices that could intuitively be included
| in a board game (although some of the content bumps it out of
| comfortable family game night fare) or even maybe hacked into a
| pen and paper RPG (I say hacked in because usually players aren't
| in charge of huge armies anyway, so we're already pretty far
| from, like, standard d&d).
|
| It would be neat to play a game about logistics with tactics as
| an afterthought, for once.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| The last post got a lot of feedback since we all love math, but
| this is also quite interesting. I didn't realize that quartering
| troops was such a common practice as I had imagined more armies
| acting like the Romans setting up their own camps - however it
| seems common based on the authors writing. He mentions a few
| times how this probably impacted the writing of the American 3rd
| amendment - no quartering troops in civilian homes
| arrosenberg wrote:
| The third amendment was a response to the British quartering
| troops in American houses. This was often done as punishment or
| harassment, and the soldiers were often not well behaved.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Edit: From my reading of history, none of this is unique to
| the British American Colonial experience. Forms of it are
| ongoing in occupied countries.
|
| And frankly, I believe we would've seen similar levels of
| civilian violence and sexual violence in American occupations
| of other countries had Americans not generally fed and housed
| their own and therefore avoided that kind of close contact
| and dependence.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Probably, I wasn't implying it was specific to Britain,
| just that the 3rd Amendment (like most of the Constitution)
| was a direct response to abuses incurred from the Crown in
| (their) recent history.
| paleotrope wrote:
| Well, imo, the US Constitution is very suitable for any
| human society.
| burlesona wrote:
| I love "the tyranny of the Wagon Equation," what a great way to
| put it. I'd never thought through this before, but it provides a
| lot of context on the way wars unfolded throughout history.
| amluto wrote:
| It would have been fun to see the exponential behavior unfold.
| Want to supply one soldier for one week? No big deal. Want to
| supply one soldier for n weeks without resupply? Better have a
| _huge_ amount of resources dedicated to just supply.
|
| Except I suspect the wagon equation is actually worse than the
| rocket equation. Rockets can have _large_ fuel tanks, and
| rockets can throw away their stages en route. But if you like
| your army to continue to exist, you can't throw away your wagon
| drivers, etc. So you have worse than exponential behavior --
| eventually any food-carrying resource runs out of the ability
| to carry its own food, and it can't go farther even with
| exponential blowup.
|
| I suppose that, if setting up supply caches is in the cards,
| then the rocket equation might emerge again. If one person can
| carry enough for a 10-day round trip, then they could walk 4
| days, deposit 2 days of food, and walk home. Repeat five times
| and there's a full resupply at the cache. Now the person can
| deplete the cache by visiting it, filling their pack, walking
| four more days, caching two days of food, and walking all the
| way home. So they can go on a 4n-day one-way trip by doing ~5^n
| advance supply trips.
|
| At least once you boost a rocket to escape velocity, it keeps
| going!
| Someone wrote:
| > eventually any food-carrying resource runs out of the
| ability to carry its own food, and it can't go farther even
| with exponential blowup.
|
| That problem is called the _"travelers across the desert
| problem"_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep_problem)
|
| I would think it can reach arbitrarily far, but can't think
| of an easy proof, or find one.
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