Pyramidal societies and demographic weights

[Cikomyr2]

I recently started a Fallout-themed game. We made up our own Vault, and we set it in a territory unexplored by the lore (recently annexed Quebec).

I was trying to think of a logical world that would exist 80 years after the apocalypse, to make it as close as the original Fallout as possible, and i remembered the list of towns/societies encountered in the original Fallout:

- Shandy Sands (small rural community, close to a raider clan)
- Junktown (a local scavenger town, probably the regional capital of other Shandy-like towns)
- the Hub, probably the closest thing the game had to a "wasteland capital". The currency is backed by the traders of this town, i would probably be the "trading hub" of a few Junktown-like towns.
- the Boneyard, kind of a Junktown grade town but with much higher geared NPCs and monsters than Junktown, maybe because of the proximity to the Cathedral.

If i wanted to design a world that makes "sense", then id need to establish what kind of ratios? How many shandy sands is there for every junktown/Boneyards?

[sktarq]

Well I generally think to start with food questions.

How many extra people can a single food production family support?
Now food production could be part of scavenging if the canned goods route is going to be a major factor but it has also been 80 years and I could see it being a boon but not a realy regular part of food production to rely on it.
Food production also would include those that interact with the wilds in terms of gathering, hunting, fishing, etc.
and of course farmers of various types.
now in many preindustrial societies you may well need 3-10 farming families to support 1 non farming family. And those will have to include all your craftsmen, defenders, governance, entertainment, divines, as well as traders. And in this case would also have to support those who raid them. Fundamentally the raiders are parasites living on the same food base as those they attack. And if they attack to often there are no more victims to be had and they starve too. In the postapocalypse world you may want a higher ratio of non farming families. say 1:1 for example supported by the remaining tech to give mechanical advantage but if land quality (and thus farm yields) are bad then 1:2 even with supporting tech is DAMN good and 1:3 is still very good. And once you figure out how many food families make up the basis for a Shandy Sands like settlement you have starting idea of your non farming population. Or total population support number lets call it.

So why is that important?

Your Shandy sands type settlements will need to have some people for local support (craftsmen, repair people, doctors, defenders, scavengers, a social support person (priest medicine man, psy ops regular, fruedian nincompoop etc), judge, guy running the bar, guy running the general store, etc etc). So once you subtract those people from the "non food families" you have how many people in other larger towns that shandy sands can support. Call it your external population support number

Take the target population of all those larger towns, the raiders who also live off them, traveling traders, and probably some extra to account for wastage as well as growth and divide by your external population support number and you have how many Shandy Sands you need.

[Cikomyr2]

Well, it is "important" because my players recently managed to achieve a big change to the local region with their actions, and i want the next session to be about playing 5 years later, seeing the consequences of their action.

In this case, there used to be an automated Robco facility housing a respectable population. They didnt had access to the entite facility, but managed to scavenge some tech junks in some warehouses and low-security locations, and there was some Mr Handy programmed in a "farming demonstration" that have kept going since the apocalypse, and they have been feeding themselves with it. But i also established they traded their surplus of junk for food and medication, so the robco facility was a net importer of food.

The players managed to optimize the robots' software with Vault Tech hydroponic drivers, and they managed to bamboozle/hack the facility to open it up fully to its resident. One of the player even stayed behind to join this community, teaching them how to maintain the machinery.

So in basically a week, the factory turned from a scavenger town to a booming food production and one or the last source of high tech industrial production in the Wasteland. Since the players did NOT pay attention to hide their Vault inhabitant status, stories of Vault 624 have spread across the wasteland.

The reason i asked about the potential prevalence and distribution of populations, is that im genuinely wondering what would be the societal impact of this sudden food surplus and tech availability.

[sktarq]

(*facepalm* I apparently forgot rule 114 of the internet: never use rhetorical questions or leave an ambiguous "this" in a sentence)

In terms of what the results would be from this sudden food boost would be dependent on how mobile people are.

If people are highly mobile or even if there are just regular nomads coming through more settle down and what happens below is mitigated as the population grows to basically have the additional population that needs to be supported. Now most of those people will head to where food will be most reliable and lowest cost...aka near the now working hydroponics facilities. So you now have a mass of excess people living in that space.

If the overall region is basically closed to any mass migration then other events will likely happen
First the price of food will drop. This will be a boon for those who have to buy food (which would include day labor, and all the above mentioned people who need to be sustained) and they will become functionally richer as less income goes to buying food.
It will an issue for those who produce food (hunting and fishing less effected, food scavengers somewhat less, and farmers most as it the most direct competition) as they can not trade any surplus food for as much in the way of goods, caps, or services. This will in time drive some of those already on the edge over it and they will abandon farming as they see non farmers being able to support themselves better than they can farming. There may be some of this in coming of age children who are determining if starting their own farm is worth it and even steady farmers looking for a better shot (but those with more steady even if reduced incomes would likely be effectively replaced by less fortunate farmers "moving up" with the ex farmers tech/good land enhancing their (remaining farmer) production. Thus you will have a group of people moving towards urban areas. and the area with the highest food surpluses being the most attractive (as the food distribution would would need added costs to cover their services) so you have a general growth in every urban area with solid growth in the Shandy Sands like towns (as people look for non food work but still try to maintain "home", social networks etc) and the town with the hydroponics. Now how much of this will be a person or two leaving most farming families or entire families quitting farming and moving is kinda up to you.

So in either case you will have a major urbanization particularly at the local with the improved food source. So a bunch of people. Some were the already marginal who figured it would better to be marginal where food is cheap..some pushed off their land by competition and some pulled by being willing to take a risk on a new life where there is "opportunity"...aka food...so desperation and/or risk tolerant people.

Now what do such people get up to? What do the people with the most influence over the new food distribution want? They could be a formidable fighting force pretty quickly IMO. Then after clearing/cooping raiders they would be in the position to take an actual position of regional power...may have to deal with the powerful high XP village first but may be able to buy them off too. But they could also be set to building a "better" settlement to attract yet more high skill people. Wall or canal building is a labor intensive process. Or such a crew could be sent to try to refit other old settlement tech/libraries etc...just think how many opportunities that exist in fallout that can not be used because it would take too many people or just too much time. . . well now they have that so they can build a jury rig system that feeds into some remaining part of prewar tech.