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| What's your Apocalypse plan? | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 21 2010, 02:23 PM (12,800 Views) | |
| Holben | Apr 1 2011, 08:01 AM Post #526 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Common Era is better than Anno Domini. Generally. We are english, y'know.
I'd rather count it from the Big Bang or whatever, but all the people that have come before have excluded that possibility. I don't know what to do with my genes. |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| lamna | Apr 1 2011, 11:38 AM Post #527 |
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No the main reason is because it works, and there is no reason to fix it. Or we could just use the Juche Calendar. |
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Living Fossils Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural 34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur. [flash=500,450] Video Magic! [/flash] | |
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| T.Neo | Apr 1 2011, 02:18 PM Post #528 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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To be honest if you look at the AD/BC thing from a historical rather than a religious point of view, it makes a lot more sense. It's like how our days of the week are named after Roman and Norse gods; would you propose a renaming of the weekdays to more secular names?
We can't nearly pinpoint the date of the big bang precisely, so the point is moot.
Juche? Pfffff...
The Philippines? Aren't they just a collection of islands? When did they become a superpower? Only Germany? No France or Italy or Poland? So presumably any hint of the EU or any European alliance thing has disentegrated? Where is China? Russia's totally under Ukraine's control, right? Or they decided to bugger off and angered the Ukrainian supremacists? What's the state of spaceflight technology? Reusable, heavy lifters to Earth Orbit? Fission or Fusion powered interplanetary transports? Lunar honeymoon trips? What's the US like? Is it a total third world slum, or is it just... fragmenting politically? Is it attacked from the outside somewhat, or is it falling in on itself? Is it important at all in international affairs? A world map would really be interesting... I know the full map would be rather large, maybe you can downsize it a bit. Just something to roughly illustrate the world layout. The southern Africa map makes sense; the orange area- what I presume is the Volkstaat controlled area- correlates to the areas of South Africa (not really sure about Namibia, but probably holds true there as well- more or less) where Afrikaans is the dominant language. Did the Volkstaat people convince Afrikaans-speaking coloured people to join their cause? That would be pretty interesting, but bantu heritage could leave these people vulnerable to the Ukrainian virus, though this might be a good thing if the Volkstaat nutters manage to place the blame on the British or anyone else they'd want to make into scapegoats. Edited by T.Neo, Apr 1 2011, 02:36 PM.
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| A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork. | |
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| Holben | Apr 1 2011, 02:25 PM Post #529 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Taking it from 13.75 billion would be satisfactory. Norse and Greek, Roman and Babylonian mythologies are no longer practised (TMK). So your point is silly. If you really need me to expand on that, controversy. Importance of accuracy. Blah blah religion blah blah blah. |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| T.Neo | Apr 1 2011, 02:42 PM Post #530 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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No it wouldn't. I wouldn't even base intervals of hundreds of thousands of years on that. The uncertainty is 110 million years!
And your point is? They were thousands of years ago, which is coincidentally also when many modern religious references started out. And besides, what's stopping me from converting to Norse, Greek, Roman or Babylonian? How dare you insult Zeus, etc, etc. |
| A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork. | |
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| Holben | Apr 1 2011, 02:46 PM Post #531 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Well if the alternative is basing it on a person/thing which may or may not hjave existed, may or may not have been more than one person/thing and even those who believe in it/him aren't sure with a discrepancy of several years it's not too much to ask. If you didn't see my point... No. These newfangled religions are younger than all but the Norse. Bar Hinudism. Go ahead. It's not an insult, but an observation. |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| lamna | Apr 1 2011, 02:57 PM Post #532 |
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Well they we just need to wipe out Christianity then we can carry on using the proper way.
So is Japan, and Britain. Never stopped either of us. And it has a population of 94 million right now, and that's without the large chunks of Indonesia and Malaysia they get. They are also not a superpower, there are no superpowers just great powers like there were a century ago. France went though a period of anarchy for about 20 years, and that did not work very well at all and now it's...imagine North Korea, but feudal and devoutly catholic.
Space flight is fairly easy, cheap and quick. The whole idea for the world was explore a far future world where humanity does not eventually unite. I've not decided how hard it should be. The call of giant fighting robots is hard to resist. I just cut out a few of the more important regions, though I left out Asia, too big to cover. Here is North America, as you can see the USA has fallen apart a bit, mostly due to internal factors. The bits annexed by Cuba, the UK, Quebec, Mexico and Iberoamerica were taking advantage of the situation/responding to the locals requests. ![]() Here is Europe, Italy also fell apart due to civil war. The North is very hostile to the rest, and to Germany. ![]() And here is Philippines, minus Guam and some other pacific islands. As America fell a lot of it's colonies preferred to go with the Philippines when they could no-longer be shackled to a corpse rather than get brought up by a German corporation, annexed by another Asian nation or try to go it alone.
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Living Fossils Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural 34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur. [flash=500,450] Video Magic! [/flash] | |
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| T.Neo | Apr 1 2011, 03:58 PM Post #533 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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I am sorry about how much you hate Christianity, but we have a system and it works, and it is far, far, far, majorly inexorably uncountably better than a system that is absurd, useless, confuddled, and imprecise by more than 100 million years.
I'm sure you'll be saying that when you have a thunderbolt sticking out of your back.
Fair enough, it's just that... so far, only superpowers have engaged in manned spaceflight. Then again, obviously by this time, spaceflight is an order of magnitude easier. Wasn't the British Empire the closest thing to a superpower for its day? In 1922 the British Empire held sway over around a quarter of both Earth's land area and population at the time... What would be the largest power here? Iberoamerica?
That's hilarious... so much for Must be a pretty bad waste, after all, France is a nice big country.
Well, if it is really quick (periods of time on the order of less than 12-15 days to Mars), you've got some serious super-duper propulsion. A torchship- fusion ship with exhaust velocities maybe 2-3% of lightspeed, that can accelerate at 1 G for days on end. Now that is serious super duper ultra manic technology right there. But you can easily get to Mars in 20, 30 days with far less... uber, propulsion, and that would have far less effect on other technology (though it'd mean that you'd likely have cheap-ish fusion energy, which removes any pressure to use coal or oil to make electricity). Then again, you could even do 30 days to Mars with near-current-tech fission-electric propulsion, and while spaceflight times from Earth to pretty much anywhere within the asteroid belt of 30-90 days aren't exactly "quick" by modern intercontinental standards, they'd set the stage for an interplanetary environment where travel times are a lot more like those in the Age of Sail. But it depends on time of year; when the target is close by, travel time is quick. When it's on the other side of the Sun... well, you have a choice of fly now and fly for longer, or wait now and fly for a shorter time. Anyway, anywhere within the Earth-Moon system can be reached in a day or even less if you have good enough propulsion technology (even a marginal improvement over 1960s Apollo can get you to Luna in a day).
You do realise that sadly, real spaceflight, even futuristic, easy, cheap and fast spaceflight, is about as far from Gundam as Pluto is from Trafalgar square? ![]() That doesn't mean you can have fighting robots though... they would be pretty cool to see in a scenario like this.
This idea really interests me. Most of the time I envision nations cooperating and forming alliances, but not dissolving Star-Trek world-government style (think more and more alliances like the EU, where individual nations still exist within a larger framework), and (at least developed) nations not going and killing eachother (that often). But the idea of a more... dynamic future geopoliticalkick is very interesting, because really, all the hippie peace-and-love we-abolished-nations-and-instilled-world-government stuff is getting boring. The only way you'll have any attempt at a real World Government, is when some moron wants to make every last person on Earth his subject... and we all know how that'd turn out. What happens to Libya? |
| A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork. | |
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| lamna | Apr 1 2011, 04:27 PM Post #534 |
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Yeah it was close, but not quite there. And Iberoamerica and the UK are about even. I don't know exactly how fast, and how easy I'll make space travel. Going to the stars has to be possible, but difficult though.
Not really, or at least not in the Universal Century. They are fairly hard in SF, when you are not talking about mecha that punch square cube law in it's stupid spoilsport face. You have to rotate if you want artificial gravity, it's easy to fall to earth if you are not careful you need to use these to get into space in the first place etc. And I'm fairly sure it should have fighting robots, they give you a lot more flexibly in story telling. They can be both tanks and fighters when they need to be, and civilian "power loaders" Libya, I've not really thought about it. Probably becomes a monarchy again and is within the Turkish-sphere of influence.
Once that's happened there is not much more interesting that can happen, unless you add aliens/independent humans and FTL. You need at least 3 factions for some intrigue.
Or when four successive alien invasions, plus splinter human conflicts caused by them make the UN grow a pair and start to sort out humanity, but then get more or less wiped out so one man (or woman) can seize power and become Emperor. But that's another tale entirely. |
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Living Fossils Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural 34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur. [flash=500,450] Video Magic! [/flash] | |
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| Kamidio | Apr 1 2011, 05:10 PM Post #535 |
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The Game Master of the SSU:NC
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Do you even know what the hell a Jurassic Park scenario is? It's being trapped on a island with plenty of pissed off prehistoric wildlife and barely anyweapons, and very hard to reach transport. No nukes, no planes, no choppers, no asteroids, nothing but 2-3 handguns and 1 hunting rifle at best. And land dinosaurs? All dinosaurs are land lubbers, ya excuse for an armchair scientist. |
SSU:NC - Finding a new home. Quotes WAA
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| T.Neo | Apr 1 2011, 07:10 PM Post #536 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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Well, if you are going to the stars, you will already have pretty advanced interplanetary transport. And I mean, pretty advanced- you'll have been doing it for at least more than half a century, if not longer. I would say, no interstellar travel before 2100, and you'd probably want to wait till maybe... 2200, 2250, for an acceptably fast ride to somewhere like Tau Ceti. Beyond 10 light years though, these timescales become... slow. And if you are spending too much time in space you are going to have huge technological problems. You could stumble upon some sort of FTL- Heim Theory allows for it, but is fringe science. Don't ask me how it works, all I know is that it allows for some sort of... gravitation thruster... and also a way to translate into parallel universe dimension thingies which are a half, a third, a fourth the size of this one, etc. Translate into the fourth dimension (you apparently have to gear up and down through them), and you only have to travel a fourth the distance you would in normal space. You can do this to achieve effective FTL without actually going faster than light in a local sense (in fact, you could be going a good deal below it). Of course, you still have to accelerate up to speed to go anywhere, and the whole thing would probably take a good deal of infrastructure (like magnets and whatnot) to make it work. There are papers on it out there, and even disregarding it's scientific status, it might be a good idea to base a science fiction drive mechanism on.
Flying human-shaped robots that use their arms and legs to change orientation. Nuff said... An object in orbit can actually stay in an orbit for eternity if nothing forces it out of orbit; in a low Earth orbit there is continual atmospheric drag, but this is hardly "it's easy to fall to Earth if you're not careful". Mind you, if you're a real idiot and you lower your perigee enough, you're gonna reenter. But should not be the mistake of a spacecraft operator...
Tanks and fighters? But the humanoid shape is pretty crappy as a flying vehicle, and doesn't have the protection of a tank... I've always thought of humanoid platforms in battle to be a sort of 'amplified infantry'. Far more fragile than a tank, or even an armoured fighting vehicle, but far more mobile, and able to carry more weapons and protection than the man on the ground. Try to make a mech into a tank, and you lose the mobility, make it huge, and you not only lose the mobility, but you're a sitting duck that's easy to destroy, and the whole system becomes bloody expensive. Both District 9 and Avatar came close to what such a platform might be like, though I'd imagine it would sit in between the two. Both of them had duel roles as well, though the Avatar version had the silly handheld cannon.
Well... that is also a variation of someone trying to make every last person on Earth their subject... but in different circumstances and with a different outcome.
Yes. Completely unrealistic because real animals should act like, well... real animals, and not monsters on drugs.
Wrong. There are several species of aquatic dinosaurs. Granted, they do come onto land to breed and rest and whatnot, but they're essentially aquatic and they spend most of their time in the water. |
| A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork. | |
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| Kamidio | Apr 1 2011, 07:59 PM Post #537 |
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The Game Master of the SSU:NC
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Because zombie, infection, robots and aliens aren't. Remember, the animals in Jurassic Park are pissed off. Last I checked there were some amphibious ones, but no purely aquatic ones.
I don't see anything in there about aquatic dinosaurs. Also I just found out that there are literally over 9000 species of dinosaur.
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SSU:NC - Finding a new home. Quotes WAA
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| lamna | Apr 2 2011, 05:51 AM Post #538 |
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The ones I'm imagining are like the Avatar and District 9 ones, but also able to do space combat, which is what I meant by fighters. And I don't need FTL to get a generation/sleeper ship out to the stars. |
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Living Fossils Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural 34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur. [flash=500,450] Video Magic! [/flash] | |
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| SIngemeister | Apr 2 2011, 07:41 AM Post #539 |
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Hive Tyrant of the Essee Swarm
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No, just lots of boardgames. |
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My Deviantart RRRAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!!!!! | |
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| T.Neo | Apr 2 2011, 10:22 AM Post #540 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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Big difference between 'pissed off' and 'completely unrealistic'.
They're about as amphibious as seals; considering that a good deal of their lifestyle goes on in the water, they certainly qualify as 'partially aquatic'.
A humanoid space fighter is pretty much bullshit, the limbs are a total waste of mass and complexity and they won't do anything useful, the best you could do there is remove the limbs, attach the weapons directly to the cabin, and attach a decent propulsion/manuvering system. And you can go further by removing the cabin and pilot, and controlling the thing remotely (since most operations in this case, will be within ~10 000 kilometers of larger support vessels). From a certain point of view, space combat may not be as 'cool' as one would hope, but then again... fighter jets aren't as cool as airborne battleships...
You'll wish you did when you try to maintain and operate a spacecraft well for over 50 years. You have it better when you have an active crew to maintain and fix things, but you also have problems trying to get the society aboard a generation ship to work for an extended period of time... the best would probably be a sleeper ship with an active crew in rotation between activity and stasis, but this... depends on whether you know how to do stasis. Though if you have very large populations- 10 000 or more, the stasis architecture could become problematic and massive, in which case having a generation ship would be a good idea. But the thing would be extremely big. |
| A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork. | |
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