Salt

As I've been reading How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War,

Cover via Amazon

I've learned how the details of a campaign that seem small to us on the side lines can be vitally important to those fighting. Take salt in the Civil War.

The CSA estimated that it needed a cup and half of salt per soldier in the army per month. Through out the war there was an ongoing struggle over salt and its production and distribution. You might wonder why this would be so or why each soldier would need a cup and a half a month which seems a huge amount of salt. At the time food and meat in particular was preserved with salt so the salt ration would have been vitally important to each army.

Contrast this to Mel Gibson's Mad Max movies where individuals are shown fighting over gasoline. Although I can understand a global war beginning over gasoline or other energy supplies, it's less understandable that after that war individuals would fight for gasoline. Instead they would fight for water, food and shelter.

Like most science fiction readers, I'm left to ponder what things we would need to continue. What items our culture would fight for.