Re: Antarctic Cities

On Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:17:14 -0400, John Schilling wrote
(in article <rhipa359rn7o18rprc8fgmov3o2g05tl4j@xxxxxxx>):

On Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:42:33 +0000 (UTC), nospam@xxxxxxxxxx (Paul Ciszek)
wrote:


In article <f85156$ojg$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
James Nicoll <jdnicoll@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <TMhpi.3903$Da.3788@trnddc07>,
Logan Kearsley <chrono.surfer@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Say you want to build an independent, self-sufficient city in
Antarctica.With greenhouses for food production.

Cities are not generally noted for being self-sufficient
and nations that eschew trade with the outside world are generally
poor.

And nations that cannot grow their own food are periodically fucked.

Examples? There have been plenty of famines in history, of course,
but typically in nations which have until that point grown their own
food. Nations based on the, "we'll make other stuff and sell it to
buy food" strategy, I can't think of any offhand which have suffered
for it.

Besieged cities, perhaps, but nobody really expects a lone city to
grow its own food. And if an entire nation is effectively besieged,
it's probably fucked for reasons that go way beyond its agricultural
policies.




Japan, 1945.

The fire-raids and the nuclear raids were spectacular, and allowed for a
face-saving out, but what killed the Empire of Japan was the submarine
blockade which cut off outside supplies of, well, _everything_. Including
food.

After the war, at the war crimes trials, the British government wanted to
hang Donitz and Raeder for the war crime of unrestricted submarine warfare.
That plan was scuppered when Admiral Ernest J. King, USN, and noted
Anglophobe, pointed out that what Donitz and Raeder _tried_ to do to Britain,
he, Lockwood, and Nimitz _succeeded_ in doing to Japan.

Donitz & Raeder got 10 years and were out in under five.

Hong Kong and Singapore, 1942. In both cases, they were city-states on small
islands near to the mainland of Asia, packed full of people and which could
not grow food... indeed, they didn't even have sufficient water. In both
cases, the Japanese army achieved victory by the simple method of capturing
the main water reservoirs, and then turning off the tap. (No, it is _NOT_
true that the coast defence guns at Singapore could not be turned to fire
inland; they were, in fact, heavily used to do just that, particularly in the
fight to try to keep the reservoir. They just failed to keep the Japanese
army away, that's all.)


--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

.