UT, war, and logistics

[Dustin]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

Also the feel of it should be that margins are thin at the best of times for operations in a non-hospitable location. That implies that transport costs are high but not impossible but prioritization is necessary. If you can convert biomass at the location that means that even less of your stores that you dragged out there have to be consumed and that increases the margin for survival. Hmmm Pyrrhic victories where one side wins the battle but starves on the way home.

I can see this as a really interesting scenario or one-time event, but it seems quite a stretch for this to be standard operating procedure, esp when we're already positing nano-disassembly/reassembly levels of tech. There just isn't enough biomass in enemy soldiers and your own fallen to make this viable IMHO. Captured food stores alone are likely to dwarf that.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

The planet in question might still have a closed system (due to an inability or lack of interest in terraforming and agriculture) or even be dependent on external sources for some portion of its food supply. The planet could be a mining colony, or could be inhabited solely as a strategically-located military base, for example. Both would be valid military targets, neither would likely maintain any local food production in excess of actual need.

Limited food supplies are a lot different than none, though.

And if this is how 'closed systems' work in setting, running any sort of base on one implies extensive food supplies. Re-use might let you get, say, twice as far on the same food. But you still need lots of food to feed in to the downward spiral, which means lots of food that can be requisitioned.

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

One of the things I don't have a handy answer for is just how difficult it is for swarms to deal with biologicals. If the source is someplace with left handed amino acids then can they take those apart and make them right handed? Is there a point where the process takes so long that it isn't worth it? An assumption inherent in this is that it is fairly easy for a swarm to render a compatible biomass and more difficult the further from the 'designed norm' that a biomass is. That assumption may be wrong. If the swarm tech is good enough to just rip individual atoms out and put them together in a brute force manner then complex biologicals that would not be compatible are no problem. I suspect though that for a long time such a swarm would be programmed to use the body as a chemical factory and make the best use of cellular processes that exist in it.

Pretty sure the isomerization chemistry/biochemistry is downright trivial there. It's something our physiology hasn't retained the ability to do for itself, but not something that would pose a problem for the sort of tech you seem to have in mind.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

What is the motivation for fighting on a planet that has no local food supplies? If there's any population there, they'll necessarily have some source of food. If there's nobody there but enemy troops, why bother invading?

This would assume that the enemy have compatible diets and even compatible biology - you could still posit a strategically important or mineral rich planet occupied by an enemy population that has neither, but could be re-processed into something useful.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

This would assume that the enemy have compatible diets and even compatible biology - you could still posit a strategically important or mineral rich planet occupied by an enemy population that has neither, but could be re-processed into something useful.

If you can reprocess their bodies, you can almost certainly also reprocess their rations...

[Joseph Paul]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Have you run the maths on it?

What do you thlnk the math for this might look like?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

Cannibal nano or other swarms may be useful for this by rendering the biomass of friends and foes alike to a range of field rations and even packaging them by converting inorganic materials for that purpose.

Discuss.

Conservation of energy.

What powers the nanos? Photosynthesis? If they are running on the chemical energy in the corpses then they will be about as useful for producing food as decay organism are. If they aren't, why not run them on something inoffensive, such as air and water?

[Joseph Paul]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Pretty sure the isomerization chemistry/biochemistry is downright trivial there. It's something our physiology hasn't retained the ability to do for itself, but not something that would pose a problem for the sort of tech you seem to have in mind.

The sort of tech *I* have in mind can certainly be just good enough to make this doable with out opening a bigger can of worms. Coming up with reasons for it to not be a mature technology would be the hard part. Perhaps analogies to the development of other technologies would be apt. "Yes modern prop planes can go nearly 600 MPH. But they couldn't do that until after WWII. Your swarm tech is about a 1943 equivalent."

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

If everything from poop, used engine oil, dirt and dead people all go into the same organic material reprocessing unit, that may not apply. They may simply consider a corpse (ally or enemy) garbage, and food is reprocessed garbage.

Waste has been used as fertilizer for ages including human waste. However for some reason humans have always had a reverence for corpses.

I really don't think you can have a military structure that casually crosses taboos. If anything it would be the reverse; the military is more ritualistic then most parts of life and except with technology more old-fashioned in thinking. No matter how practical it is, if the personal perceive it as a casual insult it will be bad for morale.

Using enemy corpses is another matter-if one's society does not have a tradition of respect for enemies. I would think it more likely to use corpses to provide trophies.

[jason taylor]

A possibility is that there will be a high-tech substitute for reverence for corpses, an obvious idea being to use tokens of some sort like a dataholder which acts as a more elaborate dog-tag. In that way the hypothetical future society will not be crossing traditional reverence for the dead but adapting it to it's needs.

[jason taylor]

Of course their could be a non-casual cannibalism analogous to Parsee funerals or even more analogous to Fremen giving water back to the tribe. What there is unlikely to be is lack of traditional reverence for the dead.

Suppose there is some way whereby each soldier keeps a journal on a dataholder. When he dies his corpse is recycled with due ceremony but the dataholder is sent with as many copies as appropriate to the appropriate receiver; say one copy for the regimental headquarters, one for his family or tribe or whatever. There could be a saying something like. "My body for my comrade's but my soul lives forever." There could even be a kind of militaristic ancestor veneration that grows up with this that is emphasized by the ability to electronically record a given soldier.