Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
Let's say we have a low tech country invaded by a demonic army. Eventually the demon lord is driven off by a Small Band of Heroes, but in the meantime there is vast death (~50% of the population) and destruction (very few places untouched, many razed).
How long would it take to recover and rebuild? What would the recovery look like?
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It depends on what the demonic army did, on the psychology of the populace, and whether any social order remains.
Fifty percent mortality is
enormous. The closest thing I can think of to that in real life was the Black Death of the 14th Century, which probably killed at least 30% of Europe, and some estimates run close to 50%. It left deep psychological scars and transformed society permanently. Depending on what you consider to be the point of 'recovered', the Black Death recovery time was probably 50-100 years. For certain nit-picky definitions, the answer would be 'not yet as of 2019'.
Since it was a demonic army, much depends on whether they left any magical/other parting gifts. Is the soil still arable? The water supply reliable?
If it's still possible to grow food, then the issue is social order. Does the king (or whatever) still rule? Is there something recognizable as currency? Did the invasion disproportionately kill some groups over others?
If for some reason the demons murdered way more women then men, for ex, recovery will be enormously delayed because of low fertility. If they killed the young men disproportionately, which is likely in an armed invasion, fertility will recover quickly, but labor will be desperately short, which will screw up transportation and farming and everything else. OTOH, if there's enough social order for it to matter, wages will rise, benefiting some groups.
If there's enough social order to bring in a crop and transport it to market in that first year, recovery will begin and I'm guessing probably 50-150 years, depending on the details and what other countries do. If things are so broken down that that first crop fails/can't be delivered, starvation and plague follow, and the recovery doesn't start because the disaster isn't over.
There's a non-trivial chance the former social order collapses entirely, and what rises in its place is quite different. The realm may break apart and recover as separate states, it might be absorbed into neighboring realms. A monarchy might become a theocracy or a republic, or vice versa.
But I would guess the absolute minimum for recovery, depending on your definition of 'recovered', would be 50 years. It might take much less for society to start to function again, but populations would need time to recover and 'recovered' would take a while.