Possible Suggestions for Early Lore

[Erik Tiber]

Hello, I've read through the History of Man page and I had a few questions and suggestions. Most have to do with the lore with regards to non-western countries, the populations and casualties, etc. They're mostly nitpicks.

 

Through certain peculiarities of Human psychology and physiology, life on Industrialized Earth became more and more unpleasant as technology visited more and more horrors onto Mankind. The expected lifespan of the average Human doubled due to the ungodly advances scientists had been making in the fields of biology and medical science. However, the breeding behavior of the average Human stubbornly refused to change. Humanity did not take into account the longer life-spans of the average person, nor the subsequent population explosion's effect on Earth's fragile ecological system.

According to projections from both the UN and the US Census Bureau, the population of the Earth will likely plateau about 10 billion in the year 2100. (Obviously stagnant population won't do for your purposes, but please bear with me here) It has been demonstrated that as a nation develops, its fertility rate falls. This results in aging and shrinking western populations. Economically, the EU is on a downward trend in terms of its share of world GDP, while the US is apparently stable for now.

We've just discussed the Malthusian trap in my American Economic History class. Although Malthus' theories held true for 99% of human history, recently, the fertility rate has started to decline as the standard of living has increased, resulting in the aging and shrinking populations of the EU and Japan. The US is aging and its population growth would be negative were it not for immigration. UN and US Census Bureau estimates show that the world population will likely reach 10 billion somewhere between 2080-2100, and that at its fastest, it would probably just increase linearly.

 

The Industrial Revolution proved a curse. Humankind began to rapidly overpopulate and environmentally devastate their already beleaguered home. The most popular of the unfortunate distribution philosophies created a dire situation. The vast majority of Human-kind had no access to the resources while a small elite in developed countries remained wealthy, overfed and wasteful. Despite this massive disadvantage, the population of the underprivileged grew, blatantly in the face of pressures like disease, starvation and an ever-deteriorating environment. In short-order, the impoverished “fringe” population grew until they greatly outnumbered the elite of the “developed world” by more than a factor of ten. Threatened with complete and total collapse, many developing nations gathered their rage, and what little resources they had left to face the distant Western Powers.

The population of the first world is currently 1.5 billion, give or take (although you may be using a different measurement). In order for them to be outnumbered by a factor of ten, there would need to be 16 billion people on Earth. Assuming you count the developed world as having 1 billion, then we would need a world population of 11 billion, almost half a century ahead of almost all predictions out there.

The tight-knit alliances of the West stood as a stubborn bulwark against the masses for a time, but the resulting planet-wide wars and limited nuclear exchanges eventually proved more gruesome and destructive than the careless industrialization and overpopulation of the past ages had ever been. When the nuclear fires finally cleared, the nation-states of Africa, along with many in Asia and the Mid-East were no more. However, the vast majority of the Western Nations persevered, battered but for the most part intact.

More and more countries in Africa are stabilizing. Many nations in Asia are reaching middle-income status. However, I am very interested in the premise of a cold war between the Developed World and the Developing World.

However, given that Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia became enough of a wasteland that new states did not form for the better part of a century, I think the devastation may be overplayed. IIRC, A nuclear war between the US and USSR, involving the nuking of Europe, East Asia, and North America was predicted to kill about a third to a half of the world's population, when you factor in all the famine, chaos, and unrest caused by the war. Following the collapse of Somalia, it was only several years before a stable government formed in Somaliland, and since then regional governments have formed in Puntland and other places. Since lore writers include military personnel, you guys certainly know Afghanistan's situation better than me, and whether it is an appropriate analogue to post-nuclear Africa and Eurasia within the lore.

There was not a single member of the Human species not affected by this global catastrophe, as billions died in a horrific torrent of nuclear fire, massive conventional battles and crippling terrorism campaigns.

I'd like to mention that, in general, conventional warfare rarely leads to mass depopulation in the modern age, and the casualties of terrorism campaigns are statistically insignificant when we're talking about global populations. A conflict as intense as the second world war killed "only" ~5% of the world population, which while horrific, is not enough to kill billions. The details of these limited nuclear exchanges would affect their impact. Who are the participants here? If there are two main power blocs (Presumably the Americas, Europe, Oceania, Japan, and South Korea vs the rest of Eurasia and Africa, please clarify this if possible), then why wouldn't a limited nuclear exchange escalate into a full-scale strategic exchange between the two sides?

Also, the fact that these wastelands cover all of Africa implies the nuclear weapons were deployed throughout the African continent. I find this strange, because the primary combatants would likely be in Eurasia and the Americas, not Africa. The largest non-western economies would be in Asia, making them the much larger target.

The plight of those in the wastelands did not go unnoticed. In a number of peacekeeping missions, the nation-states of the European Union sent large military task-groups to secure vital, populated areas and drive the criminals away. In this devastated land, many brave European soldiers gave their lives to protect the innocents being plagued upon by the marauding horde of miscreants. The Lands of Northern Syria were even secured to a degree where a provisional government could be set up, stable enough to effectively govern it's people. These efforts received as many resources as could be spared, for in this age where Humanity looked to be fading away every life was precious.

This implies that there has been little governance over the entire continent for quite some time. This somewhat strains my suspension of disbelief, given how such power vacuums have ended up in the past. It is somewhat doubtful that you'd see civilization collapse so thoroughly that not a single government survive, especially seeing as the vast majority of this Anti-Western coalition's production and nuclear weapons would almost certainly be in Asia, if China and India were part of this coalition.

This is somewhat unfortunate given the fact that the Africans and Middle Easterners only ever form a new government when the Europeans go and establish it for them.

 

By this age, 1/6th of Humanity, had made their way off of Earth and away from the other largely uninhabitable worlds of the Sol system. Heading off to Biesel in Tau Ceti and Gaia in Alpha Centauri. However, hundreds of thousands still remained in the ungoverned, wild wastelands that now composed the majority of Earth's surface. While this number had initially been in the hundreds of millions, decades of violence, disease and starvation had taken their toll. By this age it is guessed that Humanity numbered only slightly more than two billion.

This implies that humanity was able to grow from two billion to the tens of billions. However, given this is the future, and there would presumably be a higher standard of living, this does not seem to make quite as much sense. Agricultural output has advanced exponentially, and in the future, with genetically engineered plants and the possibility of massive arcologies, it is likely that humanity's capacity for food production would increase. The death of the vast majority of the Earth's population due to disease and starvation in a world which is more technologically advanced seems somewhat off to me. This, combined with the (relatively) extremely high population growth rates, seemed to contradict with the idea that this was a futuristic world.

Obviously this is not in-my-face info that bugs me regularly during role-play, you guys are the designated lore-writers, and there are likely other users who disagree with me. I just wanted to bring up some potential issues, for you to consider (or not) at your leisure. The reason they bugged me is I really like the premise of the setting as well as many of the primary aspects, it is simply many of the details which have bothered me.

The only primary aspect that bothered me was the marginalization of all the non-American, non-European countries, what with the EU pulling an economic 180, the East Asians pulling an economic 180 in the opposite direction, and the annihilation of most non-western civilization.

Having raised these issues, the only suggestions I feel comfortable making are possibly using more reasonable population growth, less population fluctuation, and less annihilation of Africa and Asia. I don't feel comfortable making any suggestions regarding later lore, as that isn't what was bothering me.

I don't mean any disrespect by any of this, though I may have been a bit brusque at times. I have only the utmost respect for the lore team and don't want to be bossy or anything. I'd like to know what other people think about these aspects of the back story.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Guest

[Frances]

I've never paid much attention to the lore until now, but this is quickly starting to become my favorite post on the forums.

I think this raises some very interesting issues.

Additionally, something that's always irked me about the "Earth being destroyed" scenario is that I find it highly unbelievable that we'd respond to having destroyed important parts of civilization and turning Earth into a wasteland with nearly immediate, thriving colonization programs establishing futuristic and highly developed settlements in a completely new system. It's like you're basically playing Fallout, but suddenly space programs suddenly rebuilt all of civilization very far away in space.

If we look at a few colonization scenarios (both what happened irl with the colonization of the Americas, and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri as a very good parallel example), colonization has always been an advanced, coordinated push brought on by overpopulation, a yearning for new resources, and will not thrive as a desperate attempt for survival. (I'm basically saying, if we have the resources and technology to actually establish colonies in other solar systems, there's no reason why people would completely abandon all of Earth. It's easier to survive in whatever areas remained untouched by devastation than it is to send a bunch of shuttles into space, especially if the world pop has decreased dramatically.)

[incognitojesus]

I like this guy. This guy put a lot of thought into this post.

[Gamegod12]

Well, I like you.

I'm honestly trying to get into the whole lore scene myself, and it's going no where near as well as what you've done so far xD

And I brought up the same questions, just in my head, never really brought them out.

(Also I love Earth, and would never see it abandoned. (Fuck Biesel))

[Erik Tiber]

I've never paid much attention to the lore until now, but this is quickly starting to become my favorite post on the forums.

I think this raises some very interesting issues.

Additionally, something that's always irked me about the "Earth being destroyed" scenario is that I find it highly unbelievable that we'd respond to having destroyed important parts of civilization and turning Earth into a wasteland with nearly immediate, thriving colonization programs establishing futuristic and highly developed settlements in a completely new system. It's like you're basically playing Fallout, but suddenly space programs suddenly rebuilt all of civilization very far away in space.

Personally, I thought that all the devastation might be in place so that you could fit in the high human growth rate. The population gets killed off semi-regularly, and this, combined with the (relatively) high populations of the main Solar Union worlds, lead me to believe that this was the case.

I've done similar things before when I was working for one world-building project where I somehow had to work out how the world would be destroyed.

If we look at a few colonization scenarios (both what happened irl with the colonization of the Americas, and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri as a very good parallel example), colonization has always been an advanced, coordinated push brought on by overpopulation, a yearning for new resources, and will not thrive as a desperate attempt for survival. (I'm basically saying, if we have the resources and technology to actually establish colonies in other solar systems, there's no reason why people would completely abandon all of Earth. It's easier to survive in whatever areas remained untouched by devastation than it is to send a bunch of shuttles into space, especially if the world pop has decreased dramatically.)

Oh this is nice to hear, certainly. Sending people into space is highly expensive, of course. I'd expect there to be huge orbital infrastructure and a bunch of space elevators in place to facilitate this emigration from Earth.

Population growth can be somewhat arbitrarily set. What with population growth basically turning linear in the highest UN estimates, you could really have almost any population you want, as long as you avoid huge mega-casualties. This should also make it seem much more plausible and down-to-earth.

Having more diverse influences within the Union of Sol forces should also make the setting more memorable. One of my favorite little details is how Sol Common is a mixture of informal English with elements of Mandarin. That's what actually got me interested in the lore in the first place.

I like this guy. This guy put a lot of thought into this post.

Well, I like you.

I'm honestly trying to get into the whole lore scene myself, and it's going no where near as well as what you've done so far xD

And I brought up the same questions, just in my head, never really brought them out.

(Also I love Earth, and would never see it abandoned. (Fuck Biesel))

 

These ideas aren't completely original. Many of them are based on a story I read.

I wanted to be somewhat cautious because this lore reminds me a lot of another story, which is actually one of my favorite sci-fi settings. In the background, there is a sort of cold war between the the Coalition (the west) and he Alliance for Equitable Global Resource Distribution (the developing world), simply known as The Eastern Alliance. The Western population loses support for the cold war, and when things reach a flash-point and the Alliance launches their ICBM's, the leaders of the Coalition attempt to surrender. Top military commanders then attempt a military coup in order to follow through with a nuclear counter strike, but they fail. Half the coalition space-force sides with the civilian government and fights the coup forces alongside alliance vessels, and the coup forces scatter, eventually leaving behind some holdouts along the frontier. Surprisingly, the Eastern Alliance isn't totalitarian, and the Western countries retain their independence, though with (temporary) arms controls and mild limits to their imports.

Here's a link to one of the most relevant and definitive posts. http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/tales-of-the-war-against-the-soulless.260482/#post-10924497

I'm mainly telling you about it so that I don't take credit for their ideas or cause any misconceptions here. I also want people to know if I'm going too far and just trying to make this a copy of the "War Against the Soulless" setting.

I have heard that I have a tendency to be thorough with this sort of thing, so thanks for the compliments.

[Dea Tacita]

I work far too many hours to make a massive response to this as I originally planned.

Simply put, this is a very...very...very... small piece of our lore with nearly nihl impact on what occurs in the individual rounds. While accuracy to 'real' scientific information and theories is a very awesome thing, it also is capable of smothering creativity like no other. I can see your points 100% (for the most part) but ultimately, changing these things would do little but satisfy your desire for 'correctness' and waste time that our lore-team could be using for other, more productive things. Like getting the wiki up.

Also, Earth is NOT abandoned in our lore. It's not depopulated by people leaving. It's still -somewhat- inhabitable and is the administrative center of the Union of Sol

If Erik wants to discuss the lore on Skype with me (stellarsilence1) I'm open for that and I'll attempt to address his concerns in an appropriate way.

[Erik Tiber]

I work far too many hours to make a massive response to this as I originally planned.

I know that feel.

Simply put, this is a very...very...very... small piece of our lore with nearly nihl impact on what occurs in the individual rounds. While accuracy to 'real' scientific information and theories is a very awesome thing, it also is capable of smothering creativity like no other.

I am aware of this. That's the exact reason why I wanted to suggest changes to this part of the lore, because it could be changed without needing to change half a dozen other pages.

I personally have found that putting in certain limits can make you be more creative, if done correctly. On the other hand, placing far too many limits upon your creativity results in "No FTL, no space colonies, no space empires, not much war". Obviously that would suit nobody. However, and this is likely personal preference, I appreciate the challenge that these constraints can present. They can also give me a skeleton for my story, and give me some direction.

 

I can see your points 100% (for the most part) but ultimately, changing these things would do little but satisfy your desire for 'correctness' and waste time that our lore-team could be using for other, more productive things. Like getting the wiki up.

I would say that it would largely satisfy my desire for correctness, as I've gotten better about suspending my disbelief. It rarely affects anything, like you said.

However, I completely understand that the lore team is busy and this would be extremely low on their priority list, if it were even on there at all given the... considerable number of points. It would be unreasonable of me to expect otherwise. I can certainly imagine how very useful this organized wiki will be, given the trouble I had finding all the bits of lore.

Also, Earth is NOT abandoned in our lore. It's not depopulated by people leaving. It's still -somewhat- inhabitable and is the administrative center of the Union of Sol

If Erik wants to discuss the lore on Skype with me (stellarsilence01) I'm open for that and I'll attempt to address his concerns in an appropriate way.

No thank you, I'm fine. I hope this post doesn't count as talking about it, in that sense.

I don't want to come off as dismissive, I appreciate you giving me your own perspective, and informing me of the problems with implementing these.

I will drop the subject, if you would like.

Edited September 6, 2014 by Guest

[Gamegod12]

I work far too many hours to make a massive response to this as I originally planned.

Simply put, this is a very...very...very... small piece of our lore with nearly nihl impact on what occurs in the individual rounds. While accuracy to 'real' scientific information and theories is a very awesome thing, it also is capable of smothering creativity like no other. I can see your points 100% (for the most part) but ultimately, changing these things would do little but satisfy your desire for 'correctness' and waste time that our lore-team could be using for other, more productive things. Like getting the wiki up.

Also, Earth is NOT abandoned in our lore. It's not depopulated by people leaving. It's still -somewhat- inhabitable and is the administrative center of the Union of Sol

If Erik wants to discuss the lore on Skype with me (stellarsilence1) I'm open for that and I'll attempt to address his concerns in an appropriate way.

 

Dea, it's not something that has to be done here and now, it's just so you could say, put it on a "to fix" list or something like that, if errors are there, I say fix them.

[Rusty Shackleford]

I see all of the issues you raise. I agree with all of them. They're the same nitpicks I had from the beginning. So let me again promise, as I've promised countless times, that at some point I'm going to go through and fix some stuffs in this thing. Make it much more scientifically accurate. Because fuck yeah, science.

[Erik Tiber]

I see all of the issues you raise. I agree with all of them. They're the same nitpicks I had from the beginning. So let me again promise, as I've promised countless times, that at some point I'm going to go through and fix some stuffs in this thing. Make it much more scientifically accurate. Because fuck yeah, science.

Oh, that's great to hear. I'm glad to see that people are aware of these issues.

I'm still new here, so I didn't know if these had been brought up before, or anything like that.

Extremely late edit:

Simply put, this is a very...very...very... small piece of our lore with nearly nihl impact on what occurs in the individual rounds. While

Dea, it's not something that has to be done here and now, it's just so you could say, put it on a "to fix" list or something like that, if errors are there, I say fix them.

This is entirely what I was intending.

[Tablespoon]

I think there's value in having a believable backstory, even if it means changing the particulars of the early parts of our lore. Overall I have to agree with this post; the lore seems overly Euro (and to a lesser sense, American) -centric and I reasonably don't see massive population growths in the developed world.

[Chaznoodles]

I like this. Effort was put into finding all of this out. I say we replace the 'incorrect' parts of our current lore with this!

[Gollee]

Modification is ongoing.