A reader emailed a while back, asking why violence didn’t accompany the collapse of the Roman Empire, and if violence should tend to accompany a societal shift toward K-selection. Violence is a part of the fabric of K-selection, though it may not be swift, and unavoidable.
There is the webpage for a travel show called Rick Steve’s Europe. The show offered a pleasant 30 minute long mini-vacation to the hill towns of Italy. Some date back to earlier periods of K-selection, and others were built following the collapse of Rome, to avoid being sacked my marauding invaders. It is a living example of how r/K selection is everywhere you look.
There are clips from the show at the bottom of the page containing striking images right out of Tolkien, with fortified Medieval towns perched on hilltops surrounded by steep rocky cliffs, with one thin bridge leading in from a neighboring ridge, or a single narrow stairway leading up to a massive doorway in an enormous wall. Many look like isolated city-islands on a sea of wilderness around them.
From the script:
Many of this region’s hill towns date back to Etruscan times — well before ancient Rome. Others date to the fall of Rome. When Rome fell, Europe was engulfed in chaos. People naturally grabbed for the high ground to escape the marauding barbarians that characterized those Dark Ages. Over time, these towns were fortified and eventually functioned as independent city states.
Where there were not sufficient walls or geography to offer protection, residents simply constructed above-ground vaults to secure themselves during the anarchy:
San Gimignano’s claim to touristic fame is its striking towers. Of the original sixty or so, about a dozen survive. Before there were effective walls, rich people fortified their own homes with towers like these. They provided a handy refuge when ruffians and rival city states were sacking the town. Prickly skylines like San Gimignano’s were the norm in medieval Tuscany.
When resources are so free that even the barbarians can be fat and happy without triggering shortage, people don’t build hill towns, or add towers to their cities to flee into when the marauders come. Only the forward-thinkers like Vault-co are prepping their fortifications then. Once K-selection begins however, the people who think ahead, focus on threats, and structure their lives around them are the ones who survive as the savages run wild.
Once these people self-sort out of the population, notice how they tend to view their own entity as in competitive struggle against those around them, and this produces a drive toward independence and away from seeking subservience to a greater nation state in return for increased r-selected safety and security:
San Marino — all 24 square miles of it — is unique in that it’s still an independent country. While novel today, tiny two-bit dukedoms like this were once the norm.
Contrast that with the push toward unified governing structures, from a border-less European Union to the ominous “One World Government” which rabbits always seem so enamored with. Inherent to the shift toward rabbitism is a desire to sacrifice freedom and competitiveness of your own in-group for any illusion of safety – and the control of everyone uniformly – even if it be oppressive.
There are a few lessons in this show. First, if building a new house in a place where goblins will run wild, I would use concrete and eliminate all first floor windows, replacing them with security cameras and large screen TV’s inside to function as picture windows. Combined with well reinforced doors, you would get the views (and sounds if you wire in mics), and even have night vision at night, but without the threat of violent intrusions. With walled rooftop access atop a second story, this would offer the same advantage of having the high-ground opposite an approaching adversary as you see in the show. I agree with Vault-co, that such security measures should be combined with the security of a vault with a hidden entrance underneath.
Second, to succeed in K-selection you don’t necessarily have to kill everyone else. You and your descendants merely have to survive the violence that erupts better than the people around you.
Obviously the rabbits will have their hands full, and their type will not be long for that type of world, when it arrives.
Apocalypse cometh™
[…] By Anonymous Conservative […]
Have you been tracking the reports on a possible mino ice age in the 2030s? There’s another thing to throw into the calculations.
This is pretty typical of an American frontier fortification:
If it was a true outpost, there would be no openings on the ground floor stoneworks — there would be a well dug in the middle of it, and it would be used like root cellar storage. All of the living area on the second floor, with access being via ladder and a winch for carrying up cargo. To button it up, you raise the winch and bring up the ladder. There are murder holes along the balcony, so that you can either shoot down, dump boiling oil, or use it to extinguish any fires they sit to try to smoke you out or crack the masonry (which is why there is a well in the middle.)
I’ve thought about this one a lot, and if I were to build a bug out retreat (I’m too deep in the sprawl right now to make one that is worth reaching on foot) that is what I would build. Add in a cistern on the roof and a solar pump to feed it from a well, and you have a well fortified position from anyone that doesn’t have ordinance or air support.
It also serves quite well as the keep for a motte and bailey setup, if you can expand your (k)group. Add in a good aerial at the top, and you have a decent retreat.
A good image of the San Gimignano towers ( only the image, not the page it came from)
Thanks for the observation. Just yesterday I was looking at online real estate page containing houses and apartments in Medellin and Cali. Back during the period, La Violencia, the wealthy favored large apartment in high rise buildings. These still are the prevalent structures but more and more, you see the wealthy now migrating into Single Family Homes. I had merely assumed it was
“fashion”. It is easier to park in your garage and carry your groceries in the house and not mess with a parking garage and an elevator. You can have a yard and a pool, a dog, etc. But this article shows it as something else, especially in a place that such a short time ago, fear ruled the streets, kidnapping was rampant.
Older buildings are considered a “bad investment” by Colombians and they are very realistic about things like this. And often, 10 years old is considered an older building. But I couldn’t help but noticing how these great older large apartments, often the size of comparable single family homes, more than 5000 sq feet, go unsold.
So now the “thing” is to buy a single family home in upper Poblado in Medellin or out in Cuidad Jardin in Cali. The buy them in things called “condominios” or “parcelaciones”, a gate enclave with 24 hour security (usually 1 guy) manning an automatic gate. Even in these things, often the home has a pretty serious wall or highish fence around them. And if not inside an enclave, with a publicly accessible street in front, the homes will always be walled, seriously walled. But this is major change from “back in the day”, 1990-2005. A lot of the houses in these two areas of Medellin and Cali have been built since 2000. So there is an assumption now that the public routes, the thoroughfares are now safe. And spiffy new cars are the thing now. Your hot wife wears distinctively hot, fashionable attire, has a new crossover SUV with digital monitors for the kids in the back seats. You are not so worried, now you just protect property, don’t worry you might be killed, robbed, kidnapped like back in the days.
But back then in La Violencia, you got up in your tower, with your armed guards controlling the entrances, in the more populated areas of the city. You dressed down, like everyone else. You drove an older used car. You kept your family close to you, both for yours and their protection. You trusted no one, never.
And now those former family fortresses, 6000-8000 sq foot apartments, high up in fortified apartment buildings sit unsold.
So how quick even the most famous of violent places can forget, change, get lax, with a lull in violence and a new abundance that can allow for expanded state presence, more cops, more security, more Americanisms.