Antarctic Space Nazis Across the Multiverse

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I have a weirder idea. If the gates are permanently open, a cable car line suspended from balloons is possible. You have to take firm measures to keep the weight on the line constant, but the easy way to do that is water ballast tanks on the cars.

They are and they aren't. A person walking through some of the gates, like the Exernsteine ones, will be transported automatically, either to the World Tree or instantly to the demiplane wirh Wahr Wewelsburg, depending on where they walk. Moving matter that isn't being carried through requires a deliberate and conscious decision by a person with some level of occult knowledge, though not really much effort as long as it fits through. For some gates, such a deliberate opening is the only way and, for others, a ritual may be rewuired merely to open them. When no one is presently going through a gate, the gate is not really open, in that air doesn't seem to flow through unattended gates.

Actual ritual magicians can do stuff like open the gates much wider (temporarily, unless this is done as a major enchantment with some vast mystical power source) and even temporarily change where they lead or the route through the World Tree, though experimentation with the limits of such things should be confined to gates that aren't crucial to your civilization.

I suspect it may be possible to suspend such a line, but the fact that the arrangment of branches can change is a problem. Nothing that the ASNs can do while on the World Tree or in the non-world around it will give them permanent control over the strange topography there and they've had to adapt to its idiosyncacies rather than doing as man does in natural environments and adapt the environment to them.

So if you do this, expect to have to move the line from time to time.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Further materials that will be needed, and ways of getting them:

Copper has all sorts of important uses, but is fairly easy to mine and smelt.

Zinc is more of a problem. You can make brass without extracting metallic zinc, by including its ore in the melt along with fluxes, but you need metallic zinc for hot-dip corrosion-proofing and extracting that needs industrial electrochemistry.

Aluminium also needs electrochemistry, and lots of pure carbon and Fluorite.

I've not yet made any explicit decisions about most of these, except that any raw materials found in Earth's Rhineland, Saxony and Westphalia will probably be somewhere within 300 km of the first settlement in Germania Hyperborea, with most stuff found anywhere on Earth's Germany and the Benelux countries probably existing somewhere not much further than 500 km from it. If they're lucky, something might be found quite locally, of course, especially if it's something Westphalia and the Rhineland has in abundance. That being said, let's make at least few decisions.

About 350 km southeast from the first settlement in Germania Hyperborea is a rough analogue of the Erzgebirgen, with deposits of copper, tin, arsenic, iron, tungsten, lead, silver, nickel, zinc, cobalt, bismuth and uranium, plus iron and manganese oxides. It's actually closer to another gate they have access to in Germania Hyperborea that leads to a more easterly region, at just under 300 km from it, but as the ASNs didn't settle around the more easterly gate in any numbers, at least at first, it's not necessarily certain that that gate would become associated with the mining industry.

The TL2 locals around the first ASN settlement had some limited trade routes with various TL2-3 societies around the analogue Ore Mountains, where there has been tin and copper mining for at least a millenia and probably longer. Pretty much all the societies ASNs have encountered have old and established trade links with some society that eventually reaches these mountains, as they appear to be the primary source of tin for most of them, going back as long as any native source can attest. There are other major tin sources for local societies both south and west of the ASNs, but they are well over a thousand km away in both cases, with the 'closer' source being located on miserable islands with unfriendly natives.

If they'd planned to trade for tin from the west, the ASNs probably should have avoided having every tribe and kingdom for a thousand kilometers westward regard them as demonic anathema and sworn enemies of their gods. Sometimes the traditional SS way of making friends and influencing people can be less effective than a foreign policy that isn't founded in massacres, slave-taking and the casual desecration of cherished religious and cultural centres. Granted, some of the locals were not entirely blameless, as even Nazis can legitimately disapprove of head-hunting.

All of the minerals I mentioned above also exist somewhere in Jötunheim, all of them accessible within 300 km of one of their gates there, but whether the ASNs are lucky enough to have a major and easily worked source conveniently located within walking distance of a gate I haven't decided. Well, actually, there are multiple sources of both organic and inorganic carbon close to gates there, such as coal, peat, dolomites and limestone, but I don't have a clue about the extraction methods used to get pure carbon from these.

There are plentiful deposits of Fluorite near several iron mines used by TL2-3 societies about 500 km south of the initial ASN settlement in Germania Hyperborea. Ironically, this could justify both the settlement of Treckbaueren insterested in growing tobacco somewhere in that area and a greater acceptance of allied tribes providing auxiliary and irregular cavalry, if anyone is going to set up a settlement that far away that will be transporting things overland for great distances. On the other hand, perhaps there are more convenient Jötunheim sources, at least for the limited amounts they need at first.

Originally Posted by johndallman

So let's look at how to bootstrap electric power generation. A decision to take right at the start is the AC frequency you're going to use, followed by the standard voltages you want. There seems no reason not to stay with the German standard of 220V 50Hz, and that greatly simplifies taking electrical equipment across.

For the Last Redoubt, you clearly want hydro-electric power for cleanness, and some kits of small-scale turbines and generators can be produced in Germany that will break down into 400lb loads. There may well be an annoying amount of cable splicing required by the need to carry cable in fairly small reels, and the required copper will have to be diverted from SS industrial plant in Poland, since its use was strictly controlled by the Ministry of War Production.

That all sounds reasonable. Note that while Elemental Furnaces are ideal for the Wahr Wewelsburg and the idyllic countryside around it in the magical demiplane of the Last Redoubt, none of ASN initial planning and preparations for their otherworldly colonies could be based on it, as the magical theory behind it was not an ASN invention and the invention took them by surprise when their allies in Svartálfrheim revealed it. In any event, the Elemental Furnace cannot have been invented unti Year 10 at the earliest, with Year 15-20 more likely, and the ASNs didn't develop the ability to make their own until around Year 20-25.

And, of course, Elemental Furnaces are not easy to make in any kind of industrial numbers. Each one made in Svartálfrheim is a work of art by a skilled magician and master craftsmen and while ASN engineers can standardize the mechanical parts and benefit from economies of scale in making parts for many furnaces, that doesn't translate into churning out Elemental Furnaces from massive assembly-lines.

The vital magical elements that makes it an Elemental Furnace instead of just a steam engine cannot be made any faster than a powerful mage can bind individual elementals, which is made much harder if he must work with machine-made parts rather than having the assistence of occult-aware artists and craftsmen for whom the creation of the furnace is a quasi-mystical labour. So, essentially, while you can mass-manufacture every part and then have them enchanted when a suitably powerful magi can get to it, at some point the savings in mundane materials and labour stop being worth it, as they simply translate into more work for the magician, and the time of powerful magicians will be a scarce resource almost anywhere.

What this means is that Elemental Furnaces are neat and they are used in important roles where either operational necessity or SS leadership eccentricity, such as environmental concerns, makes their unique traits desirable, but for most industrial uses, they are never going to be competative with technological methods of power generation, not while coal is so plentiful.

Originally Posted by johndallman

For your industrial areas, an initial hydro plant is still a good idea because it's relatively easy to get working to provide some power on site. But you're going to need to build coal-fired power stations quite soon. That needs lots of steel fabrication, lots of copper, lots of bricks and cement (Oh, cement! That's a problem), and building large turbines and generators.

The industrial sites need the relatively abundant power possible with coal plants as the first priority. The Lords of the Last Waste must be fed, after all. The first thing the future ASNs did in 1943, when Jötunheim had been discovered, was start planning for coal power plants there, which would ideally be brought online as close to settlement as possible.

At any rate, there would hopefully have been some electrical power generation on the Neue Ruhr site as soon as the start of 1944, even if that required bringing a special generator design over in custom pieces, whether that was a minituarized hydro plant, some kind of advanced steam engine designed with TL6-7 concepts or some version of a TL7 diesel generator (not ideal, as that would require constant supplies of diesel from 1944-1945 Germany during the preparation process, which wastes available tonnage which could go on anything other than a consumable resource, but perhaps the only truly small generator they had ready for modification). The outpost there needed power during the research and preparation phase, after all. Can't expect engineers, technicians and surveyors to work in the dark, without TL7 instrumentation and tools.

Edit: As for cement, do large deposits of volcanic tuff (i.e. trass) help? Those can be found between 220 km to 250 km southwest of the Exernsteine gate on Germania Hyperborea.

Jötunheim has lots of tuff and volcanic ash within 50 km, and the amounts get bigger and bigger until you reach active volcanism that is taking place within 250 km of the first and main gate, but it's not identical to the pozzolana that the Romans used in such vast quantities. Still, the ash does contain volcanic glass, just mostly at 25%-40% rather than over 50% concentration. If you go near the active volcanoes, you get better porous glass concentrations. There is plenty of limestone in Jötunheim, including easily accessible sources near the primary gate.

[Icelander]

From near the Exernsteine gate in Germania Hyperborea, where the first settlement of the ASNs on that world rises, a river runs west for about 220 km before joining a much bigger river, which eventually runs to the great ocean in the west.

While the world of Germania Hyperborea is not an exact mirror of Earth, the area around the ASN settlement is close enough to proto-historic Westphalia and the Rhinelands for me to use maps of the analogues on Earths and just arbitrarily change stuff the further we get away from the Exernsteine, which exists in some fashion on Earth, the Last Redoubt demiplane and Germania Hyperborea.

So, unless otherwise specified, the terrain of the ASN lands more or less matches maps of Earth within a few hundred kilometers of the Exernsteine, so mostly Westphalia and the Rhinelands at first, with changes being more visible the further away we go. The ASN capital of their Germania Hyperborea lands is located more or less where Paderborn is in Westphalia.

The river that runs west from the outskirts of the first ASN settlements is an analogue of the Lippe and like that river, is navigable and sufficient for TL2 transportation, but inadequate for industrial transportation. In the real world, it was more economical to dig canals parallel to it than try to somehow modify the course of the river to make it compatible with the kind of river transport TL5+ industry needed, but until TL5, the Lippe served decently enough to move smaller loads by boat.

Unfortunately for the ASNs, the westward course of the river doesn't take them anywhere terribly interesting. Yes, there are vast coalfields located not too far way from the river, but they aren't in walking distance from it, the way the gate to Jötunheim makes the coalfields there exist only an hour's walk between worlds from the ASN main settlement on Germania Hyperborea (which settlement really needs a name, something grandiose and völkisch).

No, the most interesting thing about the Lippe-analogue is the way it joins the Rhine-analogue about 220 km away from the main ASN settlement. Because that river, in Germania Hyperborea, as on Earth, is navigable along a very long stretch and near it, there are natural resources ranging from iron and fluorite mines that exist quite far to the south (over 350 km of river between them and the joining with the Lippe-analogue), to massive coal fields that are close to the area where it joins the Lippe-analogue. Not to mention the sources of volcanic tuff in between and even areas where wine and tobacco cultivation is quite practical.

Am I correct in assuming that the ASNs would create an outlying settlement around where Wesel is on Earth, at the confluence of the analogues for Rhine and Wesel? And that the navigable Rhine-analogue bringing many raw resources and the relatively more economical transport costs to the main settlement (and Jötunheim gates) along the 220 km over the Lippe-analogue would combine to make it a natural center of industry as soon as the ASNs had advanced the local TL to the point that having any industry further away than a walk from a gate makes sense?

How early in their history would it be reasonable to assume the ASNs could contemplate digging 220 km of canal? How long would this take?

How high would their population base have to be for that kind of megaproject?

Edit: Assuming that 5,000 untiring TL1-3 Kadavergehorsamer labourers are available for digging duties from Year 2 onwards (and that they could add another 5,000 such labourers per year to the canal project), how much of their TL6-7 population would they need to dedicate to a canal project? Basically, how many people working on it need to be TL6+ engineers, technicians and educated experts, as opposed to lower TL workers who dig?

Hmmm... this sounds relevant:

In 1825, the Industrial Revolution reaches America. In upstate New York, Americans dig by hand one of the biggest construction projects in the Western world in 4000 years. This man-made, nearly 600km river cuts through the wilderness to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the middle of America. There isn't a single qualified engineer on the project, or in the entire country.

And how many man-hours are we talking per km of canal useful for hauling coal and other industrial applications?

I guess it depends heavily on how much they can make in the way of explosives, at this early stage.

[Icelander]

What are reasonable power to weight ratios for steam engines that can be built fairly early in ASN development?

How small can you make a steam engine without suffering massive inefficiency issues?

What is a reasonable standard size for industrial use?

What about portable steam engines, where they are designed to be constructed in one location, broken into pieces that are easy to move at low TLs and then assembled at the location where they are supposed to be used?

What kind of power to weight ratio can you get from a 400 lbs. steam engine?

We are assuming that the ASNs have TL7 knowledge of the engineering principles involved, but are working with mostly TL3-4 infrastructure and work force, at least when it comes to any kind of mass manufacture at early stages.

And what about early Svartálfrheim designs? They would be designed from translated copies of TL6 technical manuals, by engineers who were TL4 (but greedily gobbling up TL5-6 concepts) and working with TL4 technicians, in a society trying to reach TL4 on a wide scale, but with infrastructure that is mostly TL3.

The way I view the mature technology of the Elemental Furnaces are self-contained closed-cycle devices where the explosive interaction between the elementals in the furnace/'boiler' (actually trap for the bound elementals) creates energy that can perform mechanical work. There is no need for massive condensers, just connecting rod and flywheel, as the perfected version of the Elemental Furnace doesn't went any steam, it's all re-used by the bound elementals. The furnaces need maintainence, but not fuel, as such.

There will be some minimal size for the containment unit capable of holding a useful elemental, as well as a maximum size of elemental capable of being bound. I might base these limits on typical boiler sizes used at TL4 to TL6, but I might also declare that craftsmen and magicians from both cultures have discovered that certain dramatically interesting sizes work best.

The flywheels and gearing will be far better in the ASN designed variations, but the elemental binding will be something the Svartàlfrheim allies do far better. Mature Elemental Furnaces, probably perfected at some point between Year 35 to Year 45, will represent a fusion of the best ASN engineering and the best Svartàlfrheim magical craftsmanship. They'd count as TL5^ technology, but the flywheels and gearing they are attached to will be TL6-7 in construction, with TL7 engineering integrating the magically produced mechanical power into whatever system it is being used to power.

For uses where power to weight ratios are not as crucial, the tried-and-true TL4^ versions are far more reliable and call for less maintenence, magical and mechanical. By Year 51, you can probably get a small civilian model Elemental Furnance (TL4^) that weighs less than a ton and can power a small family farm, for a sum within the means of a very rich farmer, amortized over a lifetime. Of course, unless he either has the cash on hand or qualifies for a huge loan, he'll just buy a fossil fuel generator that will cost less for more power and take decades or even generations to use up enough coal to match the price of the Elemental Furnace.

[Icelander]

If I use the stats from Pyramid, a TL4^ Elemental Furnace would get about 0.022 kW/kg for a typical example, at whatever size I decide works out as most efficient.

If that's already assuming TL4 connection rod and flywheels, I can estimate that better materials and construction for the machinery that converts the mechanical work of the furnace into useful power would reach 0.03 kW/kg. If that's a theoretical maximum for TL4^, more typical examples might be 0.005-0.015 kW/kg. As the skill of the craftsmen and the power of the mage might vary considerably, I suppose that Elemental Furnaces (TL4^) exist in a fairly wide price range and have different theoretical max power as well as different levels of efficiency in translating that power to something useful, but will tend to range from 0.005-0.03 kW/kg.

The modern Svartálfrheim models used for industry on that world by Year 51 will be Elemental Furnaces (TL5^) that use fairly well engineered connecting rods and flywheels, but with less advanced materials than ASNs would use for something so valuable. They'd generally get 0.03-0.05 kW/kg and be available for sale to civilians, but so expensive that only senior SS men, successful farmers cum neo-feudal 'Junker' landowners and Neue Ruhr industrialists could consider the purchase.

Elemental Furnaces (TL5^) combined with TL7 engineering for the machinery translating the theoretical maximum to useful work will be capable of at least 0.06 kW/kg, with designs that push the safety envelope, and require much more maintenance than lower-powered civilian types, possibly getting equivalent performance to real-world Zeppelin engines (which is awesome, when you consider that you don't have to carry fuel).

I imagine that TL6^ steam engine designs are in the early development phase by Year 51, but those would not be Elemental Furnaces per se, but rather advanced real-world steam engine designs that make use of bound elementals, without necessarily being fairly low-pressure closed-cycle furnaces. I further imagine that given how magic and technology do not play nicely together, this field of research is about as safe as testing explosives in a fireworks factory.

[johndallman]

For the equipment which had to be specially built in Germany, here's a possible cover story.

"Accidentally" hint that it has to be transported by submarine. The 400lb weight limit is quite optimistic for manhandling through a submarine hatch, and there are various reasons why the SS might be staging a secret submarine operation, apart from getting away from the remains of the Reich.

[Icelander]

One of the most remarkable things about the otherworldly colonies of the Antarctic Space Nazi is the miraculous demiplane that seems to have sprung into existence as a physical manifestation of the most fervent and feverish völkisch fantasies on behalf of the SS inner circle.

It appears as idealized Westphalian countryside around the otherworldly mirror of the castle of Wewelsburg (somehow not only existing there in another world, but existing in the finished form that the SS never managed to complete). Its extent is as far as the Exernsteine to the north and a great Irminsul to the south-east, for about a 30 km radius from the apparent center, by the date of settlement in 1945.

This includes the area where Nazis (and many others, but not Mommsen) considered the Battle of Teutoburg Forest to have taken place, but not the currently accepted site, at Kalkriese, which is further north in Saxony. It would, however, no doubt please the ASNs to know that there are still serious historians today who argue for a different location for the battle, including at least one, Peter Oppitz, who places it smack-dab in the middle of the ASNs capital.

The Antarctic Space Nazis dubbed their otherworldly Last Redoubt das Zentrum der neuen Welt and the magical-mirror of the castle the Wahr Wewelsburg. The Reichsführer-SS and the Reichsbauernführer of the Antarctic Space Nazis promulgated and enforced a doctrine where SS men and other citizens of favored status in das Neues Reich der Schwarzen Sonne would come into an Erbhof in this new world upon reaching the age of majority, a family farm ranging from 7.5 hectares of good farmland for some ordinary citizens to up to 100 hectares or more for senior SS figures.

The demiplane is illuminated by the strange rays of the Black Sun, Santur, and outside the rich farmland, idyllic meadows, beautiful hills and mountain springs teaming with fish, there is simply mysterious wilderness in increasingly thick fog. Anyone who walks too far from the Wahr Wewelsburg will get lost in a thick forest and usually turn up approaching the settlements around the castle from another direction.

Natural laws here are deeply strange and seem to follow mythic truths rather than mundane physics. Through some mysterious means, the usable land available grows slowly and new land ready for crops turns up every planting season, with the misty forests around receding slowly. About half the land thus revealed will be rich farmland, the rest various other terrain that suits an idealised Westphalia.

The farmland is truly excellent farmland, not only boasting rich soil and ideal weather for classic Westphalian crops, but also enjoying what amounts to Bless Plants magical effects for every harvest, as the result of SS ceremonies carried out on various significant dates. Even with only TL2 farming methods, it would feed a family on only one hectare and the ASN did not have to go all the way back to TL2 farming, even if they had to accept that tractors and other TL7 farming methods would not be practical for the first generation or two.

For the first year of settlement, the ASNs ate better than most people in wartime Germany ate for the entire war and the food production has grown vastly since then. In the Year 51 of settlement, the Zentrum der neuen Welt demiplane can still produce enough food to feed the entire four million strong population of das Neues Reich der Schwarzen Sonne, both slave and free. Which does not mean that Germania Hyperborea does not produce food, because they do (and could be self-sufficient if they tried), but simply that the ASNs have achieved a very nice food surplus which enables them to live in considerable luxury and trade all sorts of foodstuffs with lower TL neighbours.

By the the Year 51, the settlements on this rarefied realm extend in a circle about hundred kilometers in radius around Wahr Wewelsburg and therefore actually includes pretty much all locations proposed for the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. The most desirable arable land in the demiplane has so far grown fast enough to barely keep pace with the population growth of the Deutschblütig citizens (as the descendants of the original settlers are called) of the Neue Reich, but ASN population growth has been more or less exponential, whereas the growth of arable land on the demiplane does not seem to be, at least not to the same degree.

It's becoming increasingly clear that new Erbhof grants are now including more marginal land as 'farmland' to make up the minimal size of 7.5 hectares and by the time all the Deutschblütig children alive today reach the age of majority, there will not be enough prime farmland for even half of them. How this will be solved is a major political issue in ASN society.

Compounding the problem is that only a quarter of adult Deutschblütig citizens actually live on the demiplane and that most of the land there is practically speaking controlled by SS men who descend from the original farmers there. Many of those citizens who live in Germania Hyperborea and Jötunheim have leased out their land, going around the intent of the Erbhof legislation, to family members or neighbours who work it as part of their own lands. This is creating a class of SS farming magnates even at the center of ASN power, which runs directly counter to the intentions of the SS leadership for a strong soldier-peasantry.

Worse, the SS itself has made it clear that they do not consider even Deutschblütig citizens who are not SS members worthy of living around their cultic center of Wahr Wewelsburg, which means that in practical terms, the only Wehrbauern living there are members of the SS. Ordinary ASN citizens who want to farm lease their Erbhof land out to an SS member and use the proceeds to set up farming operations on Germania Hyperborea, where it is true that the yield is not as good, but they can get much more land and either have a lot of slaves or, as is increasingly becoming more popular, just hire one of the many locals who belong to allied tribes and are willing to work for the ASNs for what are much higher wages than the average farmer makes at TL2.

There is still a problem with how the ASN public perceives the SS, as the average SS man personally owns an Erbhof of 75 hectares, which is ten times the size of the Erbhof of an ordinary citizen, and most of them control much more land than that. At minimum, a husband and wife will combine their lands and often one of several brothers will function effectively as a manager for the rest. As families tend to be large and as the most senior SS men will tend to have many direct descendants who have reached the age of majority, this means that there are among the leadership of the SS men who control 'family farms' that employ thousands of people and have crop yields enough to feed tens of thousands.

Most of the actual farmers on das Zentrum der neuen Welt are ASN citizens descended from 'Aryan' slaves, who are working farms owned by SS 'Junkers', who might or might not also work at the farm. In the last twenty years, the increased industrialization of the ASN society has allowed much larger farms to be managed by fewer people and the 'average' farm on das Zentrum der neuen Welt is around 500-1,000 hectares and about 50-100 people live on each farm, with less than a third being slaves. Such a farm will also employ some 200+ workers who do not live on the farm, but walk in every day from their homes on Jötunheim and Germania Superior.

Even this is deceptive, as it is typical for four or five 'average' farms owned by SS men to be run as more or less one unit, as the owners are all closely related and some siblings will spend more of their time home as estate managers and others will spend a greater proportion of time away on military service or holding a political post in the ASN government.

As it is so easy to travel to the das Zentrum der neuen Welt through the gates from the primary settlements on Germania Superior and Jötunheim, hundreds of thousands of people live there and walk or ride to work on SS owned farms through the gates, which are growing ever more numerous in das Zentrum der neuen Welt, though most of them open somewhere near the first settlements on Germania Superior and Jötunheim. This heavy foot traffic takes care of the logistics of getting food out of das Zentrum der neuen Welt to the other settlemements and moving manufactured goods, fuel and other necessities there.

Before the easier availability of power and mechanized agricultural implements to the ASNs allowed them to start to re-invent the farming revolution that Germany experienced in the early 20th century (albeit greener and cleaner), there were twice as many free farm workers and three times as many slaves on each farm, with 200+ people living on each 'farm', which means that the farms had already become the equivalent of noble family estates only a generation after the first settlement.

Successful farmers on Germania Hyperborea usually complain that the SS farms are badly undermanned and yield much less than they theoretically could, due to the romantic fancies of SS leaders and their unwillingness to have their perfect cult center spoilt. They never complain loudly, however.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

OK, let's talk about ammunition manufacture in general at first. The ASN are in a different position from a modern hand-loader, or a post-apocalypse survivor, in that they need to manufacture ammunition. While they will undoubtedly recycle all the cases and bullets that they can manage, they need to be able to use guns on a large scale without fatally depleting their stocks and becoming vulnerable.

Would my initial WAG of a period where they tried to use black powder weapons as much as possible be plausible?

That is, would the savings in ammunition manufacture make up for having to make a lot of new weapons, albeit ones that would not have to handle as much pressure as the Karabiner 98k?

I'm thinking that making smoothbore barrels designed for low-pressure black powder rounds is orders of magnitude easier at the first stages, because you don't need the very good TL6+ steel that you need for modern rifled barrels, you can use pretty much any grade of iron to start with.

Even rifled black powder barrels don't require the same quality of steel, which seems beneficial at that stage in the ASN history where they cannot make steel of the same quality they are used to without very expensive and volume-limited custom work. TL2-3 miners, smelters and smiths might be able to learn enough to get you iron that you can make into rifled barrels that can tolerate black powder pressures and velocities, but not smokeless powder.

Does it seem plausible that they'd have an early pattern of muzzle-loading 'trade muskets' that could be used for shot or ball and perhaps even upgraded to percussion caps later on, even conceivably upgraded to breech-loading and some shallow rifling, when the local TL in Svartálfrheim gets high enough?

I'm thinking a design that looks pretty much like a Dreyse needle gun, though the earliest versions wouldn't have a needle, just a flint, and would be muzzleloading smoothbores. Later upgrades, once primers and percussion caps become more common and affordable, could be rebuilt to be breech-loading and to have rifling in the barrel. Obviously, make the needles stronger, and make any changes necessary to make mass-manufacture at your current TL easier.

Or maybe that kind of rebuild is so extensive that it's better to just make new rifles. Which would make the TL4 trade muskets and the TL5 Dreyse-inspired rifles separate designs, which may actually be superior from an operational security point of view.

And single-shot black powder shotguns in 12G seem like a no-brainer for the early days, as they are so very simple, but so very useful. After all, a length of 12G tubing can actually serve for a black powder shotgun barrel and it is very much cheaper to make than TL6+ rifle barrel from truly good steel. It would be best if they could be breech-loading and able to fire both brass and hard paper cartridges.

Such shotguns would also remain useful in the Year 51 and there would be little reason to upgrade their design in any significant fashion, except to make them a little nicer in finish, maybe add automatic ejectors and manufacture some doubles and triples for those who like that sort of thing.

By the time the ASNs could make mass-manufacturing copies of Mauser 1871/84 rifles in decent numbers, would they automatically also have an ammunition industry that was turning out sufficient smokeless powder ammo for all their needs? Or might it make sense to adopt a repeating black powder rifle for citizen militia units, even if you have clearly established some kind of TL5+ industrial base?

I suppose another way to ask that question is, do forumites think the ASNs will spend at least a full generation at more than TL3-4 in terms of industrial infrastructure, but less than full TL6+ industry, i.e. ca TL5 in terms of what they can mass-manufacture, even if they still have a lot of their TL7 knowledge and can manufacture some limited TL6-7 items for their most important military units?

[adm]

Prior to WW 2, it would not be uncommon for 7.5 Hectare (18.5 acre) lots to be worked with livestock, in most of the world. Even today, outside of Europe or North America, livestock is still often used for small lots.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by adm

Prior to WW 2, it would not be uncommon for 7.5 Hectare (18.5 acre) lots to be worked with livestock, in most of the world. Even today, outside of Europe or North America, livestock is still often used for small lots.

Absolutely and the romantic völkisch 'back to the land' Blut and Boden faction among the leadership of the original Antarctic Space Nazis intended for large families of good German Wehrbauern ('peasant-soldiers' or 'farmer-warriors'), their Hausfrauen and lots of promising Nazi children to work such farms by their own sweat and with good German livestock.

As it turned out, however, TL6-7 people really don't want to do all that low-tech farmwork if they don't have to and, as there were lots of local slaves and later, new citizens that did not belong to what was effectively a new aristocracy, so they mostly didn't. Especially given how many industrial projects needed their services, so they could easily get permissions to install local-born managers on their farms or even lease them out to SS men running huge estates.

Even in the Year 51 if the Antarctic Space Nazi settlement, farming around Wahr Wewelsburg is done using draft horses. It's just that there are a lot of powered agricultural tools around and most of the people working in the fields are farm workers who don't actually own them, but are working for a rich SS man who does.

It's possible to operate an ASN farm in Year 51 using no animals, but given the strict regulations about fossil fuels in the ideal countryside around Wahr Wewelsburg and the cost of the magitech clean alternatives, well, there aren't many people using tractors, not when labour (from anyone not Deutschblütig) is so very cheap.

A lot of stuff gets done using powered machinery, of course, but it tends to be powered by stationary Elemental Furnaces, which are too expensive for tractors. Instead, there are draft horses and all the TL7 technical know-how and smaller gadgets that can make the work easier.