I am currently trying to resolve a problem of heavy anachronism in the story/world I am "building".
I will start of by giving a small summary of the story/world, and why there is an anachronism. (Also, I am terribly sorry for the lack of detail here. The problem is that I myself am not sure of the details yet.)
Basically, the setting is about two nations on a same continent. These nations have been at war since their dawn of existence. I yet have to find a good reason. Maybe it originally was one nation that was split. I am not sure.
The state of things are alternating between real warfare and periods of extreme tension, "cold wars". The nations should be equally matched, otherwise one could simply overpower the other and there would not be a reason for two nations to exist.
My story itself follows the life of the main character, and how they are affected by the consequences of that war — orphaned, struggling to survive and fit in with society — without being directly involved in the war. The character is born shortly before the start of another "cold war" period.
I now have two main issues within that story/world, and both deal with anachronisms.
I want a bigger part of one of the nations to be quite developed, at least up to our standard, if not more. Planes, technology such as smartphones, skyscrapers in the bigger cities (only a few though, for reasons of aesthetics), and especially: huge advances in the medical field.
Example: Easy & fast disease recognition, at least.
The whole world should not be too advanced either, I believe that the period we currently are in would describe it best.
Now, here comes the anachronism: I imagined the small secluded village the main character grows up in like a very medieval looking village.
Small buildings made out of stone and wood, and so on. Same with the life in the village. A priest is playing an important role, most villagers are sustaining their lifestyle by farming, etc.
But there should still be a school, and I want that one to date of a period of around ~1800.
The real problem is the contrast between this "old-ish" village and the rest of the "modern" cities, society, etc. I don't think that seclusion alone is enough of a reason to justify this difference, and neither is the existing time-difference (The developed cities and parts of the country only appear around 10 years after the destruction of the village), which is just way too short.
Summary of the first problem: I can't find any reasons that would justify the huge difference between the village I dreamed up and the developed rest of the country.
Here comes the bigger issue, that is also stated in the title. For my story, modern warfare is way too "boring", and simply not fit — bio-weapons, mass-destruction weapons, even combat planes — all that simply cannot exist.
Preferably, I would like the warfare to be similar to European warfare in the "modern period": 17th-19th century. Inaccurate firearms such as muskets; close-quarters weapons still have their use; bayonets and spears are something I'd like to be useful in my story.
And here is the problem. I just simply cannot have a modern and developed society with long dated warfare, that does not make sense. With advances in consumer technology, warfare technology advances as well, mainly because consumer technology often comes from warfare technology, and not the other way around.
I thought about using some kind of excuse like "The two nations have a pact prohibiting them from developing their weapons as to not increase the casualties an further", which just seems stupid, however, and is nothing more than an "ass-pull".
Summary of the second, most important problem: I want my society to be quite modern, with modern technologies, all the while keeping the warfare dated. The biggest part of the story is set in a period of cold war, meaning that the last real warfare takes place about 10 years before the story. But, again, that is way too short of a time to justify my problems. Also, the farthest I can go with compromise's as of right now is having a WWI warfare technology and a ~1980 society.
As you can see, there is quite a bit of anachronism here. And I just cannot seem to find a solution to this.
If you think any detail of my story could be helpful in potentially resolving this issue, I will gladly add it here. I just do not know of anything that could be helpful here right now, which is why I haven't written it down.
Help is greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot!
(I did already ask that question in writers SE, but was told that here would be a better fit)