Recovery time from a demonic invasion

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

Assuming the Demons didn't destroy anything built by rare magics or technologies or any great constructions that were made across generations. Infrastructure would return within a few years. One of the benefits of being low tech is that resources to build roads and buildings aren't usually expensive or hard to obtain. If the demons raised forests or dried rivers, or had other massive ecological impacts that recovery would slow.

Decent roads are incredibly labour-intensive to build at low tech levels. Any roads but the very best (e.g. Roman roads) take a lot of maintenance that may not be available post-invasion, slowing recovery as the man-power to keep up good roads delays the re-establishment of trade and slows the repopulation of towns.

If the population drop was uniform then populations usually double each generation. If it was the oldest 50% the population would return in a few years. If it was the youngest 50% it could take dozens of years to recover. If the invasion wasn't fully resolved and people still lived in fear of demon attacks birth rates would be suppressed until confidence in the future resumed.

That's a reasonably rapid growth rate for a human population (2.8% per annum). If the post-invasion climate is good, and there isn't a labour shortage in the countryside this is reasonable. If for some reason the climate is bad, the land no longer fertile, and/or limited labour (and losing most of the young men means there will be somewhat of a shortage), growth will be slower. My guess is that the first decade or so won't see much increase, and of course what there is will all be children and unable to add to output for that decade and a bit more.

The recovery would be a deceptively dark time. It would create avenues for opportunists to take advantage of people. It would be a chance for those in power to re-write the rules to better suit their liking.

On the other hand, it would be a time of full employment and high demand for labour. Wages would rise, and having land or even stores of gold would provide less power than it once did.

It would be exhausting for those at the bottom who are being asked to rebuild their life and support the nation while grieving those they lost. With 50% of the population wiped out there would be masses of orphaned children in the best circumstances, all of them raised without the guidance of adults doing everything they needed to to survive.

They'd get the same guidance as before, just not as much of it. They'd be put to work as much as possible, and would learn by doing and imitating the adults they were working with. That's how most children learned in pre-industrial times anyway.

The energy needed to rebuild a kingdom would strangle art and culture and innovation.

Or would cause people to celebrate what they had all the harder. PTSD would certainly be a thing though. On the other hand, it was already a thing in many, even most, pre-industrial societies, just not recognised - they were incredibly violent by our standards.