Feral Historian

What if we rebuilt the wasteland according to a plan, or series of Five Year Plans? There are clear advantages, but there are serious limitations too. This is, I think, a fair take on the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 01:04 Soviet Industrialization Model 03:03 Eine Kleine Marx 03:39 The Recovery Plan 04:56 Fallout Willamette 13:24 Labor Theory of Value 15:21 Dealing with Diminishing Returns

When you grow up with something like Star Trek, watching it mature and grow with you, there’s a connection to it you can’t get from binging it decades later. But lately that old friend has been a chore to hang with. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian And while I’m waving the collection plate, I wrote a book. 🔹 Ninti’s Gate kindle | https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CYXH9BWD 🔹 Ninti’s Gate paperback | https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/nintis-gate-matthias-pierce/1145141248?ean=2940185774984 00:00 Intro 02:50 The Road to Reboots 04:34 “Star Trek Has Always Been Woke” 06:20 Closing Thoughts

Recovery comes slowly to the post-atomic wasteland, and this isn’t surprising if we consider the social-property relations of that environment. From generations of peasant farmers to the Fall of Shady Sands, a look at Fallout through the lens of economics can give us some insight into how that world works. The New Vegas intro clips are from 4K remastered cinematic by Witchunter’s Fallout Lab, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZxGLhrefAs New Vegas game footage is from Oxhorn’s video on the Crimson Caravan company, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQvDOUldJEI&t=2260s because I gave up trying to get New Vegas to run on an ultrawide monitor with ENB. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 01:25 Self-Reinforcing 03:53 Not the BoS 04:45 Atom Cats 05:43 Ghoul Meat and Charge Cards 07:25 Progress is Weird 08:50 The NCR 14:15 War Never Changes

Both series share similar origins as new sci-fi franchises in the mid-90s. But while Babylon 5 completed its run and became a beloved classic, Space Above and Beyond is an unfinished might-have-been. Here I take a brief look at some of the reasons why, and why only one of them is ripe for a reboot. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 02:30 Babylon 5 04:46 Above and Beyond 06:50 Parallels and Reboots

Operation Bloodstone was an American plan to use the post-war labor battalions as a cover for a guerrilla army intended to be used in the Soviet Union after a series of nuclear strikes. It’s a strange tale, and it’s an important piece in the development of clandestine and proxy warfare. A note on sources: This series is more a narrative account than an academic presentation so I’ve been a bit lax in citing sources, some of which are documents I no longer have copies of. There are several books written on this subject, and while I have not kept up on the most recent scholarship (part of going feral is not being part of academic discourse) I do want to comment on two of the early accounts. “Blowback”, by Christopher Simpson, offers a solid framework covering this and many other aspects of the US absorption of German intelligence and scientific experts. It’s outdated and a lot of new documents have become available, but it’s a good starting point for the macro-level events. “Operation World War III” by Anthony Cave Brown often misrepresents its sources so I don’t recommend the book, but it does point you to a lot of documentation, some of which can now be found online without having to visit archives. The bomb production numbers come from a transcript of a telephone conversation between General Hull and Colonel Seaman in August of 1945. The NY Times article on the League of Young Germans is in the October 15th 1952 paper. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 00:54 Plan Totality and Atomic Guerrillas 04:07 Vlasov and Others 07:55 Conclusion

While I’ve been aware of 40K for decades, I only recently started looking into it in depth. And while it is the grim and brutal, though sometimes goofy world I’d expected, it strikes me as something more. In the future it depicts there me be “only war” but I don’t think it’s hopeless war. Some historical comparisons reveal that there’s a light in the grim darkness. To my knowledge, all artwork used here is copyright Games Workshop unless otherwise specified. If I used fan art without attribution, I apologize. 🔹 Patreon | https://www.patreon.com/FeralHistorian Oh, I wrote a book. 🔹 Ninti's Gate paperback | https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/nintis-gate-matthias-pierce/1145141248?ean=9780996241212 🔹 Ninti's Gate kindle | https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CYXH9BWD 00:00 Intro 00:31 Background 03:41 Space Marines 05:06 Sort of Satire 06:36 Long Quote 07:45 End Quote, New Clarity

The Western faded in popularity around the same time that science fiction was really becoming mainstream. I think because they fill the same cultural niche. Between the taming of the frontier, the progress of technology, and the peculiar dynamic between America and Japan, westerns and science fiction seem almost inextricably linked. I’ll do a dedicated Cowboy Bebop video in the future. There’s some details worth diving into. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 01:10 All Out of Frontier 02:35 Outland to Borderlands 04:00 More Than Nostalgia 04:55 Cowboys and Samurai 05:47 Cowboy Bebop 08:20 Composite Culture 09:28 A New Story

Mostly seen as just a sci-fi cop show, Alien Nation raised some fascinating questions that could have made it must-see science fiction had they been explored instead of gradually dropped. There are seeds of greatness in the series, but plenty of missteps as well. Many of the series clips look like old VHS rips, but I bought the DVDs for this one. Sadly this is as good as it gets for this show. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 01:07 Interesting Questions 04:08 Engineered Biology 07:37 The Romance Subplot 08:50 Parting Thought

The Forever War is a great piece of post-Vietnam social critique, not least in its depiction of a society that deserves to lose the war that it’s chosen to fight. Here I talk about the story through that lens, meandering toward a point in the usual Feral Historian manner. Also I wanted to get this one out because I’m going to make some Forever War comparisons in an upcoming video. Most of the B-Roll is from the Forever War comic adaptation, both the original black and white version and the later color release. Also threw in some clips from Starship Troopers : Traitor of Mars just to mix up the visuals a bit because there's already too much of me sitting on a rock. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 00:53 The Draft 03:25 It’s so Army… 06:54 No Civilization 09:35 War’s Over. My Bad 13:14 Parting Thoughts

Some films from the ‘80s seem strange today, but this one was strange at the time. It’s not for everyone, but I recommend giving it a look on its own merits as well as a Cold War artifact. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian

War is Hell, but movies about war are awesome. What began as an examination of the influence of popular perception of war and fictional depictions reinforcing each other took a turn as I went off-script and, looking back, this is the introduction to what I really want to say on this subject. Think of this one as a sort of thesis statement with the in-depth study to follow. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 01:35 Nam and Aliens 02:40 To the Next War 04:40 Going Off-Script 06:30 A Terrible Love of War 07:28 Life Imitating Art 09:22 Wars are Built on Stories

Atop a windy mountain, let’s take a look at the many iterations of I Am Legend and how the protagonist changes from a self-reliant average guy to a highly credentialed agent of the State and at the same time becomes increasingly incapable of seeing his own errors as each subsequent film adaptation strays further away from the point of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel. This is the janky YouTube-approved edit. The superior version is over at Rumble. Here’s a link to the unproduced Mark Protosevich script I mention near the end. I_Am_Legend.pdf (thescriptsavant.com) 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 01:20 I Am Legend 1954 03:00 Last Man on Earth 1964 08:30 Omega Man 1971 12:44 I Am Legend 2007 18:09 Here and Now

Whether they’re the greatest evil in the wasteland or the last hope for rebuilding America, the Enclave is one of the most interesting factions in the Fallout franchise. And amongst their ranks, Colonel Augustus Autumn is a fan favorite, considered by many to be the leader that the Enclave needs. But can the Enclave ever achieve its stated goal of rebuilding America when it was largely responsible for America being destroyed in the first place? I also want to acknowledge the fine modding work of ColonelMustard and Otellino for their exceptional Enclave mods, Atlas Summit and America Rising, respectively. I shamelessly used them for some b-roll as well as pilfering a couple Fallout 3 clips from sources I don’t even recall. I’d intended to play through and record my own FO3 clips, but it turns out that game takes a lot longer than I remembered. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 01:19 Some Real History 03:29 Managerial Class and Crisis 04:45 Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Enclave 08:02 Colonel Autumn 09:04 Least Bad Option? 11:15 Anti-America 13:38 Savagery, Tyranny, or Revolution

Some straight historical content outside of the usual pop-culture framework, this one covers the recruitment of the German General Reinhard Gehlen as an American intelligence asset after WWII and how it shaped American policy in the Cold War.

While we can classify significantly different regimes as “communist” based on their key similarities, we don’t have the same taxonomy for “fascism” as a political category. The term is either used so broadly it becomes meaningless, or defined so narrowly that it’s only relevant to Mussolini’s Italian Fascism. I argue that we can identify three key factors that, when all are present together, result in a system we can define as “fascist” in a sense that’s both historically based and general enough to be useful for analysis. In addition to laying out a simple model defining fascism, this video also dives into some history of Fascism and National Socialism, mixed with the kind of sci-fi analysis you’ve come to expect here. To all those who’ve been asking for longer videos, enjoy and be careful what you wish for. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 00:35 Palp, Dolf, and Communists 04:05 Old Republic vs Weimar Republic 04:55 Party and State 08:57 Three-Point “Fascist Minimum” 09:24 “Third Way” Economics 15:12 Totalitarianism 19:19 Unifying Myth 22:53 Umberto Eco 24:46 Franco 26:25 Closing Miscellany

Dredd (2012) has gone from box office disappointment to cult hit, being both a solid action movie and a character study of the Law itself. Rigid and uncompromising, whether Dredd is heroic or oppressive depends very much on the circumstances. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 00:52 Not a Synopsis 02:41 Anderson 04:15 Dredd 05:01 Law 07:02 Reading Minds 08:20 Jumbled Observations and Musing 10:05 Closing Thoughts

Cyberpunk as a genre is a great critique of modern capitalism, but it’s also a caricature that often makes some collectivist assumptions. CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077, the story of V and Johnny Silverhand, gives us a starting point for examining questions about post-capitalism, the inexorable growth of collectivism, and whatever other topics this meanders into. 🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian 00:00 Intro 01:30 What is Capitalism? 03:08 Power Disparities 04:34 The “Punk” 05:45 Socialism 07:45 Post-Capitalism 09:12 The EIC 10:45 V and Collectivist Fatalism 12:45 More Post-Capitalism 15:15 Muh Roads

Taking a look at Psychohistory as misrepresented in Apple tv’s “Foundation” raises some interesting points about how we look at history in general, namely the “Great Man” and “Historical Forces” perspectives. There’s a lot of meandering in this one, going from plot critique to Cliodynamics to I don’t even remember what. But there’s a point to it all, even if it is a bit esoteric. Pairs well with a Zima. As of this week there’s a Feral Historian Patreon page in addition to ko-fi, so if anyone wants to support the channel there are options. At the moment there’s no bonus content or perks, but things are being looked at. ko-fi.com/feralhistorian patreon.com/FeralHistorian 00:00 Intro 01:08 Quick Background 02:20 Character Changes 04:15 Psychohistory Fumble 05:05 Two Approaches 06:45 Back to Psychohistory 10:05 Mule 11:15 Hari’s Ghost and Solomon Asch 13:06 Probability. What is History For? 14:50 Missing the Point

Let’s take a look at technocratic authoritarianism through the lens of several fictional works. In this case, Orwell’s 1984 and Zamyatin’s We from the critical side, and H.G. Wells’ Things To Come as a counterpoint. 00:00 Intro 01:16 We and 1984 05:15 Things to Come 05:55 Taylor and Gastev 08:10 Technocracy and Things to Come 12:20 Industrialization 13:46 Walls, Hope, and Hubris 17:30 Concluding Thoughts If you have any interest in supporting the channel, there's a tip jar over at Ko-Fi. 🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian

The Sparrow is an interesting and compelling, but deeply flawed book. Telling the story of a Jesuit mission to Rakhat, an inhabited world in the Alpha Centauri system, it’s an echo of the experience of Jesuit missionaries in North America during the colonial era. But it’s also the author’s first novel, and it shows in one key aspect of the narrative. 00:00 Intro 01:45 Meandering Summarizing 05:00 The Runa and Jana’ata (with new illustrations) 08:40 Where the Book Fails 13:00 Final Thoughts

Cerberus : Humanity’s Bastards The Mass Effect series wades into the Space Nazi arena with Cerberus. Either a militant humanist foundation or a bunch of sub-sapient evil drones, depending on which point in the story you look, Cerberus gives us an interesting take on the post-WWII cultural mythology by switching our perspective on them as the series progresses. 00:00 Intro 00:38 Background 02:04 Resurrection 03:30 Shepherd’s Quest 04:41 Paragon/Renegade 05:45 Shepherd Regrets Nothing 06:20 B-List Bad Guys 08:04 Shift of Perspective 10:11 Parting Thoughts

Ascension, the story of a starship launched in the 1960s, was originally announced as a new series in 2014, then hastily recut into a mini-series, and is now almost entirely forgotten. While it made many serious mistakes, it wasn't without potential. 00:00 Intro 00:24 Summary 03:56 Problems 05:57 Alternate Ascension

Kevin Costner's adaptation of David Brin's "The Postman" is one of those rare cases where the movie tells the core story better than the book. It's not a faithful adaptation by any means, but it focuses on what matters. 00:00 Intro 00:56 Bethlehem and the Holnists 01:43 Postal Scam 02:48 Myth Made Real 03:42 Holnist Breakdown 07:07 Apocalypse Appeal 08:16 Thug That Got Lucky 10:46 Final Fight and Conclusions

Mad Max is generally remembered for its archetypal character. But the film also suggests the truth we all know deep down. That laws are based primarily on faith, and when enough people stop believing, law ceases to exist.

Arguably the pinnacle of the mythologized fascism of '80s pop-culture, GI Joe's faceless but inclusive enemy embodies all the elements of the "Nazi Echo" and (at least in the comic book series) explores them with surprising depth.