-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Walter Bright wrote: > Jérôme M. Berger wrote: >> Since we're on the subject, I suppose you all have read the 1632 >> series by Eric Flint and others. > > Natch! In the "1632" novel, a small American town gets transported to middle Europe in the middle of the 30 years war when small skirmishes, let alone full blown battles, routinely killed several times the population of the town.
The story is all about how they survive. Despite their vastly superior weapons and knowledge, it's not so easy. Sure they can kick the cr*p out of any army they engage, at least so long as their ammo lasts, but they are *vastly* outnumbered and military might won't feed them or prevent them from being outflanked. Moreover, most of their technical knowledge proves to be either too theoretical to use directly or to need some tools or resources that they can't make out of what's available to them now. In addition to fiction, the rest of the series includes several very interesting technical essays about the problems involved in bringing technical advances to the 17th century: what can be done immediately out of the available industrial base and how does that industrial base need to be improved for other technological advances. A must read if you are interested in this kind of things (which from the discussion here, you seem to be). Jerome - -- mailto:jeber...@free.fr http://jeberger.free.fr Jabber: jeber...@jabber.fr -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAknPIjMACgkQd0kWM4JG3k8cWQCfQUNvHchyYiIp4b+K9ZTFp0Yh GzsAniFkw1/bUoZ+k38YRXVpMvXsYxGX =Nmpq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----