Oncoming Technology in the Wide Green World, Relic tech for Barrayar.

by RGmolpus

Summary:

Examples of (to us) old technology that is just appearing in the Wide Green World.

This sort of tech was also in use on Barrayar before the rediscovery.

Notes:

I'm posting these links to provide background knowledge for anyone writing in the Barrayar/Wide Green World universes. The things I'm citing provide useful background details to make stories better - more detailed - homier.

Much of this will apply the the Five Gods universe; use it if you want!

I'll add chapters as new topics are discovered. Don't know where this will go; except onwards.

Feel free to use what I've found; please cite the original authors when you write your stories.

Chapter 1: Tools, Tech, and War

Summary:

Technology and War.

https://youtu.be/fFaPenHxKgo - Ancient power-hammers and the city that put steel in the world.

Description of the water powered hammers and early steel development.

https://youtu.be/2VTEfC_ZGqk - Railways are much older than trains

https://youtu.be/aC4PZRFvZb4 - FLATBOATS OF THE OHIO RIVER VALLEY 1941 EDUCATIONAL FILM 31290 HD

https://youtu.be/NfCFG1gQIKc - Flatboat History Lesson 1 (This flatboat seems close to the Fetch, Boss Blue's flatboat.)

https://youtu.be/ixgWAuEYLE0 - Flatboat Slideshow (Slideshow for a lecture, no audio. (Good illustrations of different river craft of the 1800 - 1900's)

https://youtu.be/Q3jJ1uj5A_g - An Indiana Flatboat Trip. Good description of the real-life 'Cave on the River' that Crane operated.

For warfare on Barrayar - the age of horse cavalry from Piotr's youth - see this series on the Napoleonic Wars:

https://youtu.be/DRUx61plsz4 - Napoleon's First Victory: Siege of Toulon 1793 (1st Episode)

Chapter 2: Foodstuffs the firsters/Standard crops for the wide Green world.

Summary:

What was available for everyone to eat?

Foodstuffs the firsters on Barrayar probably brought:

https://melissaknorris.com/podcast/how-much-to-plant-for-a-years-worth-of-food/ - How Much to Plant Per Person for a Year’s Worth of Food

Truck/farm gardens would have been the first planted, to supplement the stored food the Firsters brought with them. the ships that brought them would have aquaculture/hydroponics bays, to supply food for the trip - or maybe one ship was dedicated to that, with shuttles distributing to the other ships in the fleet. that would have supplied the early colonists, but growing their own would have been an important goal.

I'd add peppers, of all varieties. They are high in vitamins and minerals, and provide a lot of flavor. A single bell pepper plant can produce 10 - 15 fruit, the same with the smaller, hotter peppers/chilies.

Herbs and spices would also be grown - peppercorn, mace/nutmeg, masala herbs, bay laurel, sage - look at the spice aisle for the range of spices that would need to be grown somewhere on Barrayar.

Maybe on the South Coast or Continent, to be close to the environment of India/the Eastern Indian ocean?

A single woman, with help from kids, could maintain and harvest from a farmhouse garden. Extra help would be needed during the preserving/canning process, that's what neighbors are for! Planting the garden would be a whole family operation, for just a few days every year.

Grain crops, like wheat, oats, barley, quinoa, and such would have been planted in massive quantities once enough land was cleared to grow sufficient harvests. Remember that storing such grains is a massive undertaking; the quantities are huge, as are the processing plants needed.

Rice would have been a late addition, it need a LOT of clean water, and that would have been limited until huge quantities of land would have been terraformed. We know that Barrayaran water contains a variety of pathogens; eliminating them would have been a chore.

I expect they brought a variety of trees, for wood, fruit, firewood, and construction. Trees take twenty years to grow to useful size (in general), so the Firsters would have planted a LOT of them on arrival once fields for food crops were cleared and planted.

If you're willing to tolerate Facebook, there are a variety of vids about 'Azerbaijani Women Cooking'. Those give a feel what life in the countryside would have been like for most of the Firsters, and the Farmers and Lakewalkers in the Wide Green World.

Check Country Life Vlog 's channel on YouTube; i think that's where the facebook vids are originally from.

Country Life Vlog

(Editorial note: Azerbaijani food is a mix of Turkish and Russian cuisines; so it's probably close to what the Russian contingent still makes in their communities. English/French/European cooking is known to most readers; but Russian/Greek dishes are novel.)

(Editorial comment: Fawn should have been snagged immediately at the two Lakewalker camps she stayed at - to help tend the communal gardens! Once she announced that she'd been pulling weed since she was old enough to know what to pull, and what pests to squash - Some woman would have drafted her in an instant! Same for cooking, especially at Dag's camp; extra hands during meal preparation is always appreciated. A wise Tent leader wouldn't waste an available pair of hands if they were available!)

[Addition 1-/19/2025] Fawn should have been carrying a small bundle of seeds, from farm stocks, to plant a new house garden whenever she managed to settle for a winter. The Malice might have sucked them dry in the first attack; but when she and Dag left after being married she'd have drawn seeds from the family stock with Mama and Papa's approval.

She should have swapped seeds when staying at any Lakewalker camp; they would/should have welcomed the additional genetic diversity.

(For that matter, the Patrol would have been happy to have a non-skilled person on every patrol, to act as 'Cookie'; traveling ahead of every Patrol to set up the next day's camp and have a meal ready. The Cowboys of the Olde West knew what they were doing when on cattle drives! Cookie needn't be a highly skilled/strongly skilled Lakewalker; no groundsense really needed. Training as a cook, and able to drive a large wagon/four-in-hand (multiple horses at once) would be required skills.)

 

??Would it be possible to train dogs to detect the presence of Malices or Mudmen? Mudmen certainly, as they would have smelled 'Off' to any sensitive nose; the same with Malices. Maybe this is something common past Eastgate?

Chapter 3: Medicine, chemistry, and metalurgy - old and new

Summary:

A summary of technology for both Barrayar pre-rediscovery and the Wide Green World.

It's probably inexact; I'd appreciate comments /additions from the Doctors, Nurses, and Engineers who read this.

Re-enactor (SCA members!) comments would be welcomed!)

Medicine on Barrayar before the rediscovery, and in the Wide Green world, a summary.

Barrayar and the Wide Green world (Sharing Knife) had similar medical technology during the years we see them. Barrayar began with high levels of medical technology and practice; it lost most of the technology, and many of the practices after the year of fire. In the WGW, pre-oops! seems to have been a technologically advanced society, with advanced medicine as a given.

Post 'Oops' for both societies meant that highly advanced medicine evaporated, and medical practice dropped to very low level; with some skills and techniques known, but not practical.

Knowledge of anatomy would have remained high - for Barrayar, the texts would have been preserved, something similar would have happened in the WGW.

In both cases, the constant demand for fresh meat, and the mainly rural population, meant that almost everyone had watched (or helped!) in the butchering of animals. This gives a knowledge of basic mammalian anatomy.

Pharmacology took a large hit in both environments; the detailed knowledge and equipment to make many drugs would have ended; both societies had to rebuild the chemical profession from the ground up; having to make the tools of the trade and source the raw materials needed.

The WGW had many plants known as the source of medicines; in good quantities and easily available. Digitalis (from foxglove) was known, and the techniques of concentrating and purifying it gives a baseline for all pharmacology. Drugs for anesthesia, de-worming, wound care, and the like are in ready supply; all are a major source of cash for Lakewalker camps. We can presume that there are Farmer pharmacists, who make their own concoctions; not as pure or stable as the Lakewaker potions, but still very serviceable.

Barrayar had expected to receive constant shipments of drugs and medical equipment from Earth, or nearby systems; when the wormhole closed they were left to create their own supplies. Assuming that the firsters had a large seed bank available, they could have started farms (on terraformed soil) for all manner of medicinal plants. For the first few years, stocks of Nexus based pharmaceuticals would have been available; providing a cushion.

When those stockpiles supplies ran out; the colonists would have had to fall back on what could be natively produced - each region producing what it could - and trading with other regions.

(I say region, not district; local climate and the amount of available land controls what can be grown.)

The methods of processing of the raw plants (both of Terran origin and native to Barrayar) would have been redeveloped or rediscovered based on the knowledge saved in the Colony. Chemical Engineering would have been slowly redeveloped; the techniques and tools needed had to be fabricated and spread. Chemistry textbooks would have been widespread, and the initial colony population would have included a notable number of people with graduate-level chemistry training.There would have been a trail of training, from the beginning years of the colony, to the current day, of fully trained (to the doctorate level) chemists.

Surgical skills were missing for both societies; the WGW had healers who used Groundsence manipulation for all types of maladies - much was lost when the civilization fell. Arkady was writing new texts based on his experiences; spreading them to other camps and healer; receiving their own records and reports. No one seems to have created a formal set of medical texts (I don't think Dag has thought to write one.... not his thing).

Barrayar had full libraries for medical training; presumably they would initially have been stored electronically; we hope those texts were printed into hard copy for use when electricity ended. ink on paper is pleasingly resilient.

Scriptoriums must have existed; to create duplicates of the texts that were available. The colonists knew about the Gutenberg press; that would have been one of the first technologies recreated; Printer's Devils reappeared! Each district had medical staff present; with fully functioning hospitals

Chemistry and Metallurgy:

Barrayar would have preserved a knowledge of aniline dyes; the production of commercial quantities would have been an easy accomplishment after the closure of the wormhole. Several medically useful drugs (sulfa drugs) have synthesis close to those for Aniline dyes - so it's probable the colony never lost many important drugs during the years of isolation.

The WGW would have lost a huge knowledge base when it's precursor civilization was destroyed. It seems certain that many industrial products were made with the use of 'Magic' - Groundsense - duplicating those methods would have been impossible. We don't know how much was known, in scientific terms, about chemistry and pharmacology; but there doesn't seem to be any major production of industrial chemicals.

Textual evidence suggests that the production of clear plate glass is new, and the production of steel in industrial quantities is also new. Cast iron is common, with casting of several feet on a side being possible (Cast iron stoves are made in pieces; each side and the top are individually cast).

Cast iron pillow blocks, axle fittings, and other wagon parts seem to be new on the market; resulting in the production of wagons that last longer, are sturdier, and can carry more cargo, up to the draft capacity of horses and oxen to pull the loads.

LMB stated in one of her posts on the Lois List that Barrayar was at the cusp of producing steam engines, presumably with iron (not steel) rails. Electrical power generation, distribution, and industrial use was returning. Municipal power plants were under construction; but most large buildings (Commercial structures, Government offices, and Count's estates) would have private power plants.

(One room in the basements of Vorkosigan House may still have the old lighting plant, fed with steam from the house boiler....Oh, what Miles and Ivan might have done with that amazing machine!)

Chapter 4: Chapter 3A - Relics on Barrayar

Summary:

A discursion about Barrayaran history

(This has bothered me for quite some time, it's something that I feel some readers and writers forget...)

Barrayar has an unusual history. It started as a high-technology colony, with all the modern amenities - Nuclear Power, Electricity, Aviation, railroads/Monorails, Petrol engines, battery banks to store electricity, solar power, wind power, modern plastics, great medicine (with all the toys), and much more.

Then the wormhole closed and they couldn't get supplies - or all the people they were supposed to get.

They did have the technology and industrial base to be self-supporting. They knew the resources on the planet, they knew what was available in the asteroid belt and nearby planets/moons/

The population was -barely- above the limit to establish a long-term viable colony, without the dangers of inbreeding.

So, as long as nothing really catastrophic happened, they could wait it out for the greater Nexus to find them again.

Ah, the plans of mice and men oft go awry.

The local mother Nature decided to be mean. A solar flare - perhaps a succession of them - hit Barrayar, causing a Carrington Event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event).

The colonists would have watched in horror as all their fancy electronic and computer gear went 'Poof!'. Electric transmission lines turning red, falling to the ground would have been common. the power plants themselves would have gone into emergency shutdown; the electric transmission yards would have been circuses of electric arcs and flames.

All the fancy electric cars and trucks - dead as a doornail.

More than half of the technology destroyed in a few moments.

Some things would have been safe; everything in deep mines, or built to military specs - mostly safe. Planes in the air would have been safe, as would most spacecraft away form the atmosphere. Stations away from the solar flares path - safe.

But, the Colony as a whole - busted!

HOWEVER. (and this is a BIIG However)

Barrayar kept it's complement of fully trained Engineers: Chemical, Mechanical, electrical, Geophysical, Aerospace, Civil, - all the specialties. Plenty of PhD.s at hand, all available to begin rebuilding the Techbase from ground zero.

And they wouldn't have been at Ground Zero - they had a LOT of tech to help bootstrap them after the Year of Fire.

They'd have had to knowledge to build iron furnaces, to be able to smelt ore to bloom iron - and then met blooms to ingogs for wroght iron - and reverberatoy furnages to make steel.

the Chemical Engineers woul dhave been teaching BA level chemical Engineering, to train people to make dyestuffs, medicines, GUNPOWDER/Smokeless powder.

Do you know how easy it is to make guncotten? they did. Multiple simple - tho dirty - methods for sulphuric and nitric acids?

With those two, a LOT of other chemicals would be simple (not easy, ghod no, not easy!).

The Wide Green World would not have the advantage of that inherited knowledge, the same goes for Chalionverse. No history of the Table of the elements, no theory of acids and bases. Dalton and Lavousier have never been. Less that ten pure elements would be known; Faraday knew more good chemistry that the people of Chalion knew!

But they are learning...

Chapter 5: Thoughts about the Chalionverse

Summary:

Now to turn our attention to the Chalionverse, especially now that we have a deep look into it from the Penric novels...

The world of the Five Gods, known informally as the Chalionverse, is a duplicate of the Sharing Knife world.

There's very little high-tech in play (The Sharing Knife universe is ahead with the commercial production of steel, glass, and pharmaceuticals.), stone is the main building material, advanced rigging for sails has just barely been invented (sailing into the wind via tacking doesn't seem to exist), No advanced grades or commercial scale production of iron or steel. Sorcerer and Shamanistic magic is still a mystery to most in it's use and abilities. The advantage of having a Sorcerer making a weekly pass thru an army barracks to kill all the fleas, ticks, and bedbugs is not understood, not the use of sorcerers to sanitize the paddocks and corrals containing livestock of the insects that commonly infest such places is a novelty.

The Societies are on the verge of a change; with the invention of large scale printing beginning. Penric's 'text burning' technique for making metal printing plates will allow mass production of texts at low costs - within the limits of finding a Sorcerer Scribe to make the plates. this method is not as flexible as Gutenberg's individual type slug technique, but the longevity of the etched plates allows for multiple-hundred print tuns of a selected text, with the wide distribution of the texts inevitable.

From what we see thru Penric's eyes, Sorcerers are a rare commodity in the world - less than a hundred with a skilled demon (able to talk with it's human carrier) across the countries he knows. the Church and civil administration seems to prefer to eliminate demons when they are found, when they are still limited to animals, or when they are freshly transferred to a human host, than concentrating on cherishing and encouraging their developing. The collective countries of the old Cedonian empire have the unity of a common religion, and the advantage that the competing Religion is very compatible, reducing much social and political tension between realms.

The Five Gods pantheon has a highly developed bureaucracy for managing Demonic investment; much more complex and detailed than the known population of demonic investment would seemingly require. Textual evidence suggests that there was a catastrophe several hundred years past; perhaps a great war, that eliminated most of the magically enhanced across the land. Both Shamanic and Sorcerous magic was almost eliminated; and only recently has there been a common effort to rebuild a population of Magic-skilled individuals.

Penric is a the center of one such increase; he's tamed what could be called a hedge-sorcerer (Alitexa), adopted another (Otta), and now, accidentally taken a part in the creation of a new Sorcerer - (Kittio). He directed the training of at least one Sorcerer, Dubro, with strong suggestions that he's encouraged the Clergy to try and save, not destroy, possible candidates as they are found. The Bastard seems to be encouraging (thru the limited eyes of the Saint Pef) as he's allowed informed commoners to keep their Demon at allow training, increasing the supply of magic-using initiates.

The existence of a Shamanic training center - a University - in the Weald, that focuses of the rediscovery of what a Shaman can do; and the intentional training and creation of same, is additional evidence that magic use is returning to the world. The Church seems to be very tolerant of this independent spiritual college; there seems to be no conflict in play between the Shamanic lodges and the Five Gods clergy over specific Dogmas and principles.

The Chalionverse has developed Universities; we may assume that included colleges on 'Natural Philosophy' - the beginnings of Physics, Chemistry, and Mechanical Engineering. A school for Mathematics has to exist; they'd be approaching the Calculus, awaiting some young scholar to spend a Winterfair stuck in the county for a long session...

Gear trains and pulley systems are known and understood, so we can assume that what Archimedes knew is being taught. They have rolled sheet metal - for Penric's metal plates he uses to engrave his texts; and winepresses have been turned into printing presses. This indicates an active knowledge of Mechanical Engineering.

Cartography seems to be weak; Roads are not well marked or recorded; General Arisdaya needs to push this...Th Golden Genearl would have found his conquests sped up with good maps of the lands between countries...

If Ship Captains are beginning to learn how to tack and sail against the wind; then they are developing better methods of ships rigging. this will increase naval trade enormously. Some smaller kingdom will be finding it's coffers expanding fast as more trade passed across it's quays.