How much of Humanity needs to return to the stars?

Note that Nimue mused at one point that at its peak, the TF navy had 2.6 billion military personnel, half of whom were women. Since that's 2.5x more people than the entire population of Safehold, and even that incredibly large military force lost to the Gbaba, it's going to take more than just the Safehold system to provide enough warm bodies to man the fleet of the Safehold Federation (SF) as it heads for Earth and vengeance.

A couple of secret colony fleets aren't a bad idea just in case, but OWL has the records of the Gbaba's technology, and they don't actively innovate now that they've achieved a level of technology sufficient to snuff out any intelligent life that enters their sphere of control. So the SF will know when their weapons and ships are better than those with which the TF nearly fought the Gbaba to a standstill. Give them another generation or two for further improvements and innovations, plus quite a bit of automation, and Safehold (and her daughter colonies) could build a fleet of sufficient size and power to obliterate the Gbaba.

It's going to be awfully hard for generation after generation of Safeholdian TLs to watch planes, shuttles, and starships fly overhead and still cling to the myths of the Writ, especially when it becomes so easy to demonstrate that Langhorne and the archangels were merely people who wanted to ensure that the Gbaba never detected humanity by keeping the human race shackled by the Proscriptions forever. TL parents will see their children eclipsed by kids who are given NEATs at birth and who can learn year's worth of information practically overnight. Children who are given life extension treatments, and who live for three centuries without knowing sickness, while the TLs and their children grow old, sick, and die.

Deep resentment will build among the TL's children, until with each generation a large percentage of them abandon their parent's false beliefs to join the SF and enjoy the benefits of high technology.

Eventually the TLs will dwindle away and die out, and the last vestige of Langhorne's madness will be wiped from the universe forever.

They will be eventually forced to accept technology, because when they will bring first antibiotics, painkillers and antiseptic things, population growth will skyrocket even without advancement in other technologies. And when we have more people, we need more food, goods and space to live. So they will need to adapt or they will extinct, because those who will accept technology will have everything.

McGuiness wrote:Note that Nimue mused at one point that at its peak, the TF navy had 2.6 billion military personnel, half of whom were women. Since that's 2.5x more people than the entire population of Safehold, and even that incredibly large military force lost to the Gbaba, it's going to take more than just the Safehold system to provide enough warm bodies to man the fleet of the Safehold Federation (SF) as it heads for Earth and vengeance.

Beating the Gbaba is going to take brains not brute force.
Step 1 is to build qualitatively much better ships than the Gbaba (which the Terran Navy was able to do - but maybe better still).
Step 2 is to map all the Gbaba infrastructure and merchant routes(importantly without being detected Stealth technology).
Step 3 set up a forward operating base on the opposite side of the Gbaba. (Step 2 informs this).
Step 4 Hit all their manufacturing infrastructure and mothballed fleets at once (Shock and Awe). (If insufficient resources, start from a point opposite the location of Safehold with a priority on space ship manufacturing).
Step 5, if you want to get brutal, take out civilian targets at random starting with core systems.
Step 6, repeat Step 4 periodically whilst destroying fleets in transit (including merchant ships). Delay as long as possible the identification of the attackers including getting them to attack unoccupied (which you have previously mined to cause maximum casualties) systems.

This is classic asymmetric warfare, a guerrilla campaign written large. You want your opposition to be playing defense at all times in an information vacuum whist thinking they have valid information. (Some of the other points of Terrestrial warfare come unstuck because you don't get to play silly games with allies pretending to support both sides (and getting kick backs form both etc.)

I agree with most of what's being said here about how the people of Safehold will be forced to adapt. But think of how many anti-modernity movements we have on earth at this moment with a religious flavor. It's going to be a bumpy ride on Safehold.

Don