How rapidly could you rebuild civilization?

[Vynticator]

Assuming you had a very limited number of scientists or (bio)engineers and a very small number of technologically advanced items from TL10 society, how quickly could you advance a TL3 Earth? Assume you are travelling one-way from the more advanced society to the primitive world, but have advanced notice.

Which technologies would you focus on first? What would you bring from the future-tech world? You can rely on abundant slave labour in this scenario. Your goal is more towards military advancement and domination.

[munin]

Originally Posted by Vynticator

… how quickly could you advance a TL3 Earth? …

Basic gives some quick guidelines for this in Building Up Local Technology (p. B513). It divides tech up into four major fields and suggests two years per field -- so TL3 to TL10 would require 56 years. However it assumes ample labor and materials, and that you can't go straight from TL3 to TL10, you need to go through each intervening TL -- and know the appropriate skills for your starting TL and each TL you go through. A TL10 team might be able to get around this with Chip Slots (UT216) to load up the appropriate skills when needed.

Most of the things you'd want to bring would require power, which won't be really sustainable until you reach TL5. A 100-lb semi-portable fusion reactor (UT20) will last 20 years, which would just reach TL5 by the rules above.

After that, I'd definitely want to bring computers (possibly implanted), a portable robofac or robotic minifac, medical gear, communications, transportation, weapons/defenses. Depends on what you mean by "… a very small number of technologically advanced items… " (backpack, car trunk, spaceship?).

[Not]

Once you've identified the handful of people you need, you could probably also bring down civilization by abducting them, though the collapse might take time. I believe that project is underway on our world right now.

[Anthony]

It sort of depends on the type of advanced materials you can rely on from your home. Basically, you have two challenges: building up a competent labor force, and building the tools to build the tools.

Neither process will remotely resemble advancing through intermediate tech levels; it's mostly just a question of how fast you can grow GDP.

[Curmudgeon]

Canonically 2 years per field per TL, but that's being exceedingly easy on you.

Isaac Asimov took the idea up in one of his columns when he was explaining why the "travel to the future and bring back a wonder weapon that will turn the war against a space invader around" was not a very good idea. IIRC, the reference he used was bringing a 1980s era air-to-air missile back to WWII. The only way to recognize that it's not actual alien technology is the US Corps of Signals emblem stamped into it. The faults with it is that it uses ceramics that WWII US tech can't reproduce and will only launch when the aircraft has reached a speed that US WWII aircraft can't achieve.

To take a simpler case, I could theoretically get a 32-lber cannon upgraded to a towed TL7 105mm howitzer. All I actually need to do is: put an equilibrator spring under the barrel to keep it balanced as I elevate it, install a rack and pinion quadrant and a geared elevating handwheel so it can elevate close to 90 degrees, install trunnions on the axle to keep it parallel to the horizon, install axle locks to keep the trunnions steady when traveling, install a traversing system and handwheel to allow the barrel 45 degrees of traverse, create a panoramic telescope for traversing, an elbow telescope for close range elevating, a quadrant level for precise elevating, a hydropneumatic respirator-recuperator recoil system to absorb some of the recoil along with a sliding mechanism, install a precisely machined breech block, fire lock and trigger fork to enable the device to be breech-loaded, put it all on a metal carriage with spades so that with the reduced recoil we can use the earth itself to hold it steady, add a rotating lunette to hook it up to a vehicle, add a set of semi-fixed metal shields for detachment protection, come up with a steel alloy that will withstand the forces involved in firing and come up with a method for boring out the barrel.

Once I've gotten that far, all I need to develop is an adjustable, levelable tripod for the transit that I need to invent to put the guns in parallel, so they can fire as a unit; come up with a system for lighting up the transit, aiming posts telescopes and elevating and traversing mechanisms for use at night while minimizing the enemy's ability to see those same lights; create accurate maps for the areas where I'm going to fight; create a map co-ordinate system that will mesh when I need to fight in area where the corners of four maps meet; create a set of tabular firing tables that provide me with the corrections needed for non-standard firing conditions; create fuze setting devices; create a device or set of devices for calculating how the corrections given by the observer change the bearing, elevation and fuze setting for the guns and ammo; invent smokeless powder; invent the explosive primer, invent the metal cartridge, invent a combination mechanical time and proximity fuze; invent the boat shaped projectile; invent the various explosive and chemical fillers for the shells; create vulcanized rubber for the howitzers' tires, create an internal combustion engine, four wheel drive and blackout drive lighting system for the trucks, create a field telephone and switchboard system for communication between the command post and guns; create a radio transceiver for communication between the observer and the command post; create ear defenders to preserve the hearing of the gunners; create a periscope for the use of the observer; create meteorological instruments and a weather balloon for the metrological section, microphones and sound recorders for the sound ranging troop, a full panoply of survey instruments for the survey trop, a printing press for creating the forms needed for calculations and records, acetate and acrylic plastics for map templates, overlays and calculating tools, graphite pencils, grease pencils, Omnichrom(R) pencils, erasers, pencil sharpeners and mechanical hoists for transferring ammunition from the carriers to the guns.

At that point I've done my conversion and just need to bring my support, supply and personal equipment including personal weapon up to par; develop a training program for the layers, technicians, drivers and communicators who'll actually be using this; and develop the overall approach I'll be taking toward military organization, equipage, customs and traditions.

Probably not doable in 24 years, which is the best time offered canonically. (You'll likely have to advance all four fields to advance your military 1 TL.)

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Vynticator

Assuming you had a very limited number of scientists or (bio)engineers and a very small number of technologically advanced items from TL10 society, how quickly could you advance a TL3 Earth? Assume you are travelling one-way from the more advanced society to the primitive world, but have advanced notice.

Which technologies would you focus on first? What would you bring from the future-tech world? You can rely on abundant slave labour in this scenario. Your goal is more towards military advancement and domination.

With TL 10 and time to plan, it probably makes more sense to bring the most capable autofac I can fit into my limits, optimized for working with the kind of raw materials I can get out of the TL3 slaves, a bunch of trace elements/techs the autofac won't be able to handle right away, and the best uplift experts I can get.

[Figleaf23]

Under the circumstances described, I wouldn't try to advance the existing society. I would dominate a territory at TL3 and use its people to supply, sustain and expand an inner, elite TL10 colonial society consisting of my personnel raising cadres of TL3 children adopted into it.

[Kamickalo]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

Under the circumstances described, I wouldn't try to advance the existing society. I would dominate a territory at TL3 and use its people to supply, sustain and expand an inner, elite TL10 colonial society consisting of my personnel raising cadres of TL3 children adopted into it.

This. You'd have to make it a power play, or I don't think it would work. I imagine that most TL3 societies would be superstitiously opposed to most of the technologies you could present to them. 'Witchcraft' or whatever you want to call it.

[starslayer]

TL10 allows the use of a minifac and microfac, which are damned near magical devices (though not supremely unrealistic).

Useage of such should allow you to build any number of technological devices from TL3 through to TL10, so you could rapid step the locals through technological development.

With that said: I would second Figleaf's suggestion:

Use your minifac/microfac to make an unseigeable fortress.

Declare your TL 10 bio-engineered immortal selves to be gods (not that much of a stretch to anything up to and including TL8, your people are immune to all non-engineered diseases, live forever, and are all beautiful through bio-engineering, superior genetics, and cybernetics/bio-implants; your technology can make you effectively invincible to period weapons without being bulky or obvious, and your use of energy weapons will look a lot more like godlike smiting then an evolution of throwing rocks)

Select a 'chosen people' (whoever you like really) to become your scions, give them gear from whatever TL you like up to TL 8 (don't go beyond that because TL9 weapons and equipment will actually pose a threat to your otherwise unseigeable fortress and casual wear body armour), or go the stargate route and give them TL 10 gear that is largely nerfed in favor or being more stylized for whatever sort of patheon you are establishing for yourselves.

Of course your chosen people are really only there to pillage raw materials, and oversee the construction of new unseigeable resource gathering locations (not sure what those resources might be for a TL10 soceity, it may be nothing if it turns out preditions of the 'carbon age' are true, in which case you can just rely on the chosen people to terrorize the locals and prevent any sort of large scale uprising against you- assuming that we maintain the current direction for resources nessesities, you will need platinum, gold, complex hydrocarbons [oil], tungston, titanium and aluminum)

Stage two is to begin a large scale breeding program of your own people (why bother with the locals unless they have some desireable genetic traits, but that's what genetic copying is for)- if external wombs are too expensive you can use your 'chosen' people as breeders- quite frankly by TL10 gender is kind of irrelivant, so you can just 'surrogate' any of your chosen members with the children. Once there born you can snatch them back and put them into intensive training systems and sleep learning so that by the time they are 18 they are fully skilled in multiple catagories, being from your already augmented TL10 genetic stock, and having whatever other augments you've chosen to integrate they will all be beautiful, tough, effectively immortal 'gods' of there own right, and ready to rapidly take over all opperations within one generation.

Then you can erridicate all the locals, or just ignore them while you completely populate the planet and turn it to whatever goals you have.

So basically it should take ~10 years to establish your defencive position and identify yourselves as 'gods', ~25 years to establish a 'chosen' people (they really don't need much more then a quite TL10 memetic indoctrination), 18 more to have those chosen people birth the next generation of your people. 18 years to have your next generation trained up and ready to go. That 61 year period while your getting your 'chosen' and the next generation ready should be adaquate to get some serious resource harvesting going.

Once you have all the resources you need, and a huge populaition base, then it comes to the question- do we wipe out the locals, enslave them, or just ignore them?

Wiping them out takes about a year with a bio-engineered plague, there are virtually no survivors, and those will not be able to survive long once you deploy the flying robots with thermal optics on 'kill any locals' mode.
Enslaving them should only take about 5 years with a bio-engineered system that inflicts slave mentality on them.
Just ignoring them won't make much of a difference, they will know to stay away from the 'gods playgrounds', and quite frankly your not going to have much need to take anything from there TL3 primarily lumber based societies, you don't even have any need for the iron which is the most complex thing they need for there own technology.

So, total planetary domminance if you are already TL10 and can bring along a few minifacs and the right stuff for TL10 bio-tech inside of 70 years.

Man this is very much making me look forward to playing my new TL+2 robot gadgeteer in my local game with Kal.

[Michael Cule]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Isaac Asimov took the idea up in one of his columns when he was explaining why the "travel to the future and bring back a wonder weapon that will turn the war against a space invader around" was not a very good idea. IIRC, the reference he used was bringing a 1980s era air-to-air missile back to WWII. The only way to recognize that it's not actual alien technology is the US Corps of Signals emblem stamped into it. The faults with it is that it uses ceramics that WWII US tech can't reproduce and will only launch when the aircraft has reached a speed that US WWII aircraft can't achieve.

Actually, I believe that's John W. Campbell but let it pass... (Sorry, aging pedants R Us.)

But I think the answer of how to do this is 'first catch yourself a Professor of the History of Materials Science and a Professor of the History of Technology with a specialisation in the history of machine tools'. After you've got those two on side, everything else is detail.

(One of the great secrets of leadership is delegation....)