There were no specific mechanics given in the new Alien Module. However, from Agent of the Imperium novel:
T4 Only: Selean Federation Background
- Thread starter ManOfGrey
- Start date
There were no specific mechanics given in the new Alien Module. However, from Agent of the Imperium novel:
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Getting in a cold berth won't save you.
Psionic effects work through black globes, only stasis globes can prevent psionics. I also doubt if normal psi shielding would effect the new wave since it is a higher dimension effect...
Psionic effects work through black globes, only stasis globes can prevent psionics. I also doubt if normal psi shielding would effect the new wave since it is a higher dimension effect...
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
If you want to find out more about the original intent behind the wave you have to read Dave Nilsen's interview here on these boards - this is what he had to say about the effect of the wave:
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
It would also depend on how broad the wave is, which has implications for local duration and if you can jump over it.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
So that description essentially amounts to "affects biology" but doesn't include technology/robotics/computers.
Ecology goes nuts, but technology remains largely unaffected.
Under such conditions, the "hibernate it out" option via low berths becomes viable, assuming the society resorts to a temporary(?) technocracy where the high tech/high skilled are dispatched to "skip" the Empress Wave by jumping over it, waiting for it to pass and then return ... while everything else (and everyone) that can/wants to be saved via Low Lottery attempts to "ride it out" in Low Berths setup near (or in) their homes.
Basically you "hibernate" the world through the Empress Wave and use the technocracy to attempt to "reboot" the environment, population and society after the Empress Wave has passed through that part of space. You basically need worlds to "hit pause" for a few years(!) in order to go offline prior to the wave and then acceptably "restart" in a sustainable "boot up" kind of way after the wave has passed, dealing with the fallout and after effects in a reliable way with sufficient margin to handle the inevitable challenges that will crop up.
As we've discovered for ourselves since 2020 ... most populations and economies don't take well to being "shutdown by fiat" even as a public health and safety response to known and predictable incoming threats that are best avoided by taking extreme measures, even temporarily. I would expect responses to the kind of workaround solutions needed to prepare for and deal with the Empress Wave would be similarly fraught with conflict and instability, both in advance of arrival and after its passing. I mean, you can't just upend people's lives like that and NOT get some kind of pushback from those people, even when you're trying to save them.
So from that perspective, the inevitable societal upheavals are going to be the hardest part of any such measures, presumably with larger populations being increasingly problematic and fraught (from a political/technocratic point of view).
Ironically, it might be the lower population Non-industrial worlds that could "get off easiest" from any kind of forced hibernation move by the populace/governing powers, since with fewer people to lose the pressure to band together and "pull through this thing" could potentially be greater (and thus easier) in the way that it can sometimes be easier to organize a small town into unity against an outside threat than it is to organize a major metropolis against the same outside threat. Also, such lower population worlds might be "quicker to reboot" than the high population industrialized worlds, simply due to having less people to process and thus being "faster" to go offline and bring back online after the Empress Wave has washed over them, simply due to the sheer numbers involved on major industrialized worlds.
I didn't know that those in cryo sleep were immune to the effects. I thought folks had to jump past it in Jump Space as the wave passed by.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
They are not immune if they are in cold berths - you could hide inside a black/white/silver globe and still be affected. Only a stasis globe would protect you.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Immunity via low berths is not the aim.
Being able to "manage the insanity" after decanting from low berths is the objective.
If even 1% of a entire world's population all go homicidal/crazy together at the same time, that can potentially be too many people to deal with (especially since some of that 1% would be in public service positions). Raise that up to even 5% and you're looking at the implosion of society writ large. How about 10%? Or what about 20% of everyone in the world going crazy? If that all happens all at once in a relatively short time frame, social cohesion is going to collapse under the strain (the only question is, how quickly?).
The advantage of the "hibernate by low berths" scheme is that you can "reboot" the world population is slow enough stages to manage the inevitable infections of the crazy (and deal with the mass casualties of not everyone surviving the low berth resuscitation process). It allows for there to be enough TIME spent to make sure the recovery after the Empress Wave hits is handled with as much care and attention as will be needed, given the resources available to the society for public services such as mental health care (which will be in extremely high demand!) after the wave passes through any particular system.
You basically want to "jump past" a part of the wavefront (so as to "skip it" yourself) ... hang out for about the next 4 weeks ... and then jump back. Could be done with TL=9 Jump-1 so long as there are sufficient staterooms, life support reserves and fuel fraction aboard for the ~6 week round trip (1 week out, 4 week hold, 1 week back). Whoever gets to "skip" the wavefront then has the awesome responsibility of needing to pick up all the pieces that have gotten dropped on the floor (and smashed) back home when they return.
The whole thing starts behaving a lot like a "recolonize your homeworld" kind of operation, with the ecosystem wanting to go haywire after the Empress Wave passed through.
Of course, the Empress Wave is just a prima facie stupid idea, in my not so humble opinion.
It's just writers who haven't got any better ideas deciding to "stomp on the sandcastle" for inadequately good reasons because they couldn't figure out a better plot device for achieving the same goal(s).
Deus ex Psionica
daryen
SOC-14 1K
That doesn't make sense.
While in a black globe, you are still active, conscious, thinking, *awake*.
While in a low berth, you are in stasis. You are not conscious. You have no active brain waves. For all intents, you are effectively dead.
So, I would say that being in a low berth is more like being in a stasis globe (whatever that is) than a black globe. That's the whole point: To temporarily make yourself not exist. Ergo freeze everyone. And if you do combine active psionic shielding, that should help, too. (I.e. don't just freeze and don't just shield. Use both freezing and shielding at the same time.)
Also remember you get several swings at this pitch. Do the best you can with what you have on the first worlds, then keep trying things and ramping up as you go along. Keep trying; you'll eventually get a better approach, and you have nine years to get to Regina, 15 to get to Rhylanor, and 23 to get to Mora. (The years refer to the time delay once entering the Spinward Marches map.)
Regardless, as Spinward Flow states, it still allows for the work around of controlling society and you deal with the aftermath. You can then handle the problem cases and put everyone else back to work. For animals, just put down the crazy half and rebuild with the other half. For plants, as it doesn't sound like they become either mobile or carnivorous, that can be sorted out later. The 50% unaffected rate, along with the fact that a significant portion of the affected recover, that means it is recoverable as long as you can manage it. Freezing everyone means you can manage it. Especially as the recovery expands exponentially as the recovered are put to work.
As for society dealing with this, this isn't a years and years thing. It's like a year or so. You need to put everyone to sleep for a month (which is manageable), then spend the rest of the year bringing everyone back out and rebooting society. This is the one big advantage of having a super-fast Wave: it's over quickly and then the recovery begins. The important part is just to keep things under control so you can immediately enter recovery.
That said, human nature means there will be many that resist or fight against things. Some worlds will be completely lost. Some worlds will refuse to participate. Some worlds will be self-sabotaged. Many worlds will mostly succeed. The Regency will be a mess working through this. But many of the worlds would be able to work through this just fine. By the time the wave is getting around to Rhylanor and Mora and Glisten (and Tobia), there will be far fewer nay-sayers simply because of the accumulated evidence. Jewel, Regina, and Aramis subsectors are likely screwed, but those in the rimward portion of the sector should have much higher success rates.
And you wanna know who should handle this in spades? The Darrians. Their society is *built* to handle emergency like this. They will work together to build their freezing chambers, then immediately turn around and jump on in. The Sword Worlder populace on Entrope and Cunnonic could be an issue, and Zamine's instability could be an issue, but most of the other worlds (like Darrian, Mire, Jacent, Yelim) would likely implement the plan fairly directly. And they have a better lead time, as it takes 19 years to get to Entrope and 26 years to get to Mire and Darrian. Plus, the Darrians have very advanced psionic shielding. I would imagine they should be able to have a decent chance to create active high-powered industrial psionic shielding that should work well enough. They have 22 years to figure that out to protect their secret base.
The Zhodani are probably still screwed, but they were already screwed in 1248. Oddly enough, their recovery would probably be pretty similar to what happens in 1248. The Vargr are toast. They get dropped to the ground, then have to rebuild. The survivors would probably do OK, though, and recover faster than most human societies. The Sword Worlds would probably get hammered. They would need to rely on help from the Regency and Darrians, and I don't know if they would be ready to do that. I imagine resistance and terrorism on the Regency occupied worlds would radically hamper efforts. The best hope would be for Narsil and Anduril accepting Darrian help. (Pretty dicey odds.) The Aslan are a crapshoot. It's probably more hit-n-miss than the Regency, but not nearly as bad as the Vargr.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
The original intent behind the wave was not to rofl stomp the setting, it was actually going to help rebuild a society in the post Star Viking era that may have followed on from TNE.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Cold sleep is not stasis. You are not dead while in cold sleep. Cold sleep is hibernation, your brain is still alive just not conscious and is metabolically slowed down. Psionics still affects people in cold berths.
If you don't know what a stasis globe is you need to get T5 - in fact trying to write anything canonical for the OTU setting requires you to know the technologies of T5.
The psionic effect of the wave comes from higher dimensions into ours, which is why normal psi shielding is pointless too - don't you think the Zhodani would have tried psi shields? And guess who makes the best psi shields - the Zhodani.
The Zhodani are the race best suited to cope with a psionic attack - anything you postulate the Darrians could have done the Zhodani could have done it first. They probably did, but it failed.
My money is still on the retconned wave being dealt with via a certain T5 technology.
If you don't know what a stasis globe is you need to get T5 - in fact trying to write anything canonical for the OTU setting requires you to know the technologies of T5.
The psionic effect of the wave comes from higher dimensions into ours, which is why normal psi shielding is pointless too - don't you think the Zhodani would have tried psi shields? And guess who makes the best psi shields - the Zhodani.
The Zhodani are the race best suited to cope with a psionic attack - anything you postulate the Darrians could have done the Zhodani could have done it first. They probably did, but it failed.
My money is still on the retconned wave being dealt with via a certain T5 technology.
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mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
And I agree all of this is way off topic - I second the request to get it moved to its own thread. If possible.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Bringing new meaning to the phrase Zhodani Sleeper Agents ...
I personally prefer the notion of "suspended" (as in, suspended animation).
Point being that "nobody's home" for the Empress Wave to interact with while suspended.
Best example I can give for the kind of difference we're talking about here is ... playing with (candle) fire.
If you hold your finger in place over a candle flame, the thermal energy that the candle flame is outputting will have TIME to interact with your flesh, heat it up and BURN you. However, if you flick your finger through the candle flame "fast enough" then the thermal transfer time is so limited that your flesh doesn't burn. The candle is the same in both instances, but how the heat of the candle affects you (burn vs just fine) depends on how long your flesh is exposed to the effects of the heat of the candle.
Everybody with me so far?
The suspended animation experience of the low berth does something similar with respect to the effects of the Empress Wave on biologics (is my operating assumption) akin to changing the "flick through candle flame" speed outlined above. For someone in suspended animation in a low berth, "time slows down" to a near stop, such that for most intents and purposes sophonts in low berths stop aging. I'm not sure if there was ever a definitive metabolic ratio established (age 1 day every 10 years), but for the purposes of our discussion it's doing to be "dead slow" compared to normal living.
If you're NOT inside of a low berth, the Empress Wave is 2 weeks of rising strength followed by 2 weeks of waning strength as it washes through a particular system. If your metabolism is operating at "normal" real time speed, that's 1 month of exposure with a ramp up and ramp down during that time frame.
However, if you ARE inside of an operational low berth in suspended animation, from your subjective time frame the Empress Wave "washes through" in less than 1 minute of subjectively experienced time (and possibly even as little as 1 second of subjectively experience time) due to your state of suspended animation. The wave doesn't speed up (per se), but instead you have been SLOWED DOWN to such an extent that from your subjective aging time frame the wave passes in a proverbial "no time at all" rather than over the course of a whole month of experienced real time. That then is effectively akin to the difference between holding your finger over a candle flame for a month (badly burned!) versus flicking your finger through a candle flame in less than 1 second (no meaningful damage taken).
There may still be some side effects on low berthed "survivors" of the Empress Wave ... such as some might awaken with psionic powers activated they never had before ... but I wouldn't expect "burnout" or overload into insanity conditions to be at all routine results. Kind of like how it's easier to overload the power supply on an electronic device that is plugged into the grid when a lightning surge happens ... but it's a lot harder to overload and blow the electronics in an electronic device that is UNPLUGGED, "air gapped" and turned off when the lightning surge happens. It CAN still happen in the event of a "direct hit" from a lightning strike popping the electronics directly, but most of the electronics in the same "building" that aren't hit directly ought to be fine if adequate precautions are taken.
In this case, suspended animation in a low berth is the functional equivalent to "unplug and air gap" from a power grid source in the lightning strike example ... or as the functional equivalent to flicking your finger through a candle flame example due to the downshift in metabolic rate and mental functions. Being in a low berth ought to provide a significant amount of protection against the effects of the Empress Wave. It wouldn't be "total protection" in all cases ... there would still be SOME losses (different from resuscitation losses) of minds/people to the Empress Wave passing through, but a lot LESS than would have happened without low berths, I'm thinking.
So the "shelter in place in low berths" strategy ISN'T PERFECT ... but it's better than nothing and offers a greater chance for survival/reboot of society AND is forgiving in terms of a variety of alternative outcomes because it offers a chance at securing TIME and RESOURCES needed to withstand the effects of the Empress Wave with a decent chance of making it to the other side of the wave relatively unaltered (statistically speaking). Also, in a "worst case scenario" a necessary Rescue™ for a world can come from outside (another star system) capable of lending resources and aid to help kick start the recovery process (and world economy) after the wave has passed through. That kind of resilience in the face of potential future adversity could easily mean the difference between success and failure of entire populations and world governments.
So, you're in the "plants have their own consciousness" camp then? Since they "go insane" as well? And, I guess, are "awake"?
Spinwards idea is noble, but incarcerating an entire population, that's a real trick. You'll have to put the non-compliant "behind the walls" so they don't go about looting everything for the 1-2 months folks are away while the rest sleep.
The idea, though, of "rebooting" a society. Like repopulating a city after the Neutron Bombs hit. Perfectly preserved infrastructure, but no peoples.
But that's basically a zombie apocalypse scenario, perhaps minus the fires and looting.
How do you bring folks back? Who do you bring back first? Bring back the infrastructure folks first, to get the lights and power on? Then the farmers to reboot the food production, then the truckers to start delivering food? But then you need to have the folks that support the farmers.
Is this done one nation at a time? All at once? That could get sticky depending on international relations on a particular world.
It's kind of like that Star Trek episode when Scotty had the Klingons trapped in the transporter and just want to hit the erase button.
Pretty scary.
Do you interpret this as 1/3rd of 2B, or 1/3rd of 1B? 60% collapse vs 85%?
daryen
SOC-14 1K
I go with 1/3rd of 2B.
But that illustrates why I say even if it stops nothing else, the frozen population stops the destruction. That's the entire point (if it doesn't protect against the Wave).
And, if freezing doesn't stop things, figure out how to scan those still in the freezer. If they're clean, let them out immediately. If they're not, then wait to unlock them. Then you don't have to prioritize beyond those who survived the Thanos snap, and those who didn't.
Getting back to that 1/3rd of 2B. (Or worse, 1/3 of 1B.) That's all the damage from the uncontrolled after-effects of the Wave. If you control for it, then a full half of society should be unaffected. And much of the other half should recover. The point is to lock things down as much as possible to allow for the determination of who is what before opening things back up. If you have a cooperative society, you have a significantly better chance of success. If you don't, then whatever happens, happens. Like I said, anyone that lives by "you aren't the boss of me!" is going to get squashed. Those that work to protect society get a much better chance.
And, back to the Darrians, the reason I think they fare better than the Zhodani is because they are predominately non-psionic. That means their leadership is no more susceptible to the Wave than the citizenry. The Zhodani, on the other hand, have their leadership very highly susceptible to the Wave, and their brainwashed subjects are not conditioned to cope without their brainwashing *and* they are more susceptible to psionic influence. (Even in the milder 1248 version, it wasn't the Wave that directly crushed the non-psions. It was all of the psionic messages pushed out by the affected telepaths that really screwed things up.) The Zhodani are built to be hammered by this; the Darrians are built to survive it.
But that illustrates why I say even if it stops nothing else, the frozen population stops the destruction. That's the entire point (if it doesn't protect against the Wave).
And, if freezing doesn't stop things, figure out how to scan those still in the freezer. If they're clean, let them out immediately. If they're not, then wait to unlock them. Then you don't have to prioritize beyond those who survived the Thanos snap, and those who didn't.
Getting back to that 1/3rd of 2B. (Or worse, 1/3 of 1B.) That's all the damage from the uncontrolled after-effects of the Wave. If you control for it, then a full half of society should be unaffected. And much of the other half should recover. The point is to lock things down as much as possible to allow for the determination of who is what before opening things back up. If you have a cooperative society, you have a significantly better chance of success. If you don't, then whatever happens, happens. Like I said, anyone that lives by "you aren't the boss of me!" is going to get squashed. Those that work to protect society get a much better chance.
And, back to the Darrians, the reason I think they fare better than the Zhodani is because they are predominately non-psionic. That means their leadership is no more susceptible to the Wave than the citizenry. The Zhodani, on the other hand, have their leadership very highly susceptible to the Wave, and their brainwashed subjects are not conditioned to cope without their brainwashing *and* they are more susceptible to psionic influence. (Even in the milder 1248 version, it wasn't the Wave that directly crushed the non-psions. It was all of the psionic messages pushed out by the affected telepaths that really screwed things up.) The Zhodani are built to be hammered by this; the Darrians are built to survive it.
Remembering that Marc considers MT Period DGP pubs for MT canonical for the OTU when not controverted by later, you're partially wrong. Some low berths are metabolic reduction/induced hibernation, others ARE cryogenic. And some are (GAH!) just a long lasting fast drug and a soporific, with monitoring... (See the Traveller's Digest article on low berths.) 2 of the 3 require continued power... one can be set to remain cold on batteries long enough for the ship to drop below the cryo temp. Oh, and a 4th type might be available on a handful of worlds... an actual stasis field. (I don't remember the TL for that.)
Also note: actual mammalian hibernation (in the technical term sense) is not a sleep state. It is in fact associated with neural shutdown/slowdown according to several studies...
Frontiers | Neuronal Activity in the Hibernating Brain
Hibernation is a natural phenomenon in many species which helps them to survive under extreme ambient conditions, such as cold temperatures and reduced avail...
www.frontiersin.org
So, if hibernating via induced hybernation in LB, one's chances of being affected should, logically, be reduced.
If in a Cryostasis berth, there should be almost or actually no chance.
If in a fast drug "low berth". there should be nearly or full chance.
If in a full stasis berth, you're in a cutoff bubble of spacetime that's stretched along the time axis... again, should be almost no chance.
I'm one of those for whom The whole Empress Wave is a turn-off. In either flavor. And the Virus was a turn-off, too. Hard times and another 100 years would have done much the same without the psionic cyber k'kree. OTOH, due to loving the CT adventure Signal GK, the virus was a "Oh, that explains that throwaway reference in JTAS and Signal GK's aftereffects... It was... not fun in play. I thought it was a nifty idea until the dice hit the table, then it was just a hassle...
The Empress Wave is the same for me.
It potentially stops the chaotic, random violent destruction. It doesn't necessarily stop the societal destruction.
Because make no mistake, the society IS destroyed when they all check in to the Motel 6 Below. It's on hold.
Livestock is not tended, maintenance is not done, everything is unkept, and the society can't just "go back to work" when they wake in the aftermath. Plus the MASSIVE economic impact. I bet some folks are kept in cryo for several months after the "recovery". And we don't know who survive the cryo process. Probably 12% population loss just to the cryo process (not all of them can be revived by Med-2, I reckon).
And if the EW affects those in sleep, that's even worse.
So, maybe it will stop the destruction of some of the societies. Others it may well be enough of a shock to push them in to failure simply as a response to the stress.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Deus ex Psionica
It's just really silly, when you get down to it ... which is a huge turn off for me as well. It just feels like an author "cheating" their audience in order to get their way.
The Virus was, in its own way, even worse ... because the whole Virus thing requires believing that ANY electronic circuits in existence can overwrite their molecular structure using the software the chips are running, not just merely the original silicon the Cymbeline originally inhabited. It's a bit like saying that all the marionettes in the world can learn to pull their own strings (because that's nightmare fuel) and that's what brought down civilization. It just doesn't make enough sense to be plausible/believable.
Well ... they did ... until The Plot™ (such as it was) needed them to have an UNLIMITED ability to alter the computers of all tech levels seemingly without restriction.
I mean, one of the first and most obvious responses to such a threat to civilization would be to rely on less "fungible" computing technology which isn't susceptible to Virus manipulation/habitation than silicon based computing systems. Oh, except that the Virus "figured out" how to jump that gap too and reprogram its way through ANY computational system (because ... "cheating").
I always wanted to see if the Virus could "infect" a mechanical Difference Engine style of low tech computer ... or one that relies on fluidics to perform computations ... or any of a wide variety of other computing methods. My presupposition was always that the Virus ought to be limited to a specific category of computer technologies that it could exploit (which shouldn't be all of them), and once the "dividing lines" of safe versus vulnerable computing tech became known that computer engineering would shift accordingly and the Virus would wind up being isolated and essentially driven to extinction through a lack of "available habitat" for it to continue to grow into and take over.
But no ... it just got a "free pass" to infect basically every computer of any type at all and destroyed civilizations rather indiscriminately just so the author(s) could stomp on the sandcastle some more. It just felt unnecessary and gratuitous, in addition to giving the Virus a degree of unwarranted Plot Armor of conspicuous thickness and impervious insanity. Yet another really major turn off for me as well.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
More like plants are "alive" and their cell processes can be disrupted, mucking up their cyclical responses to environmental conditions and stimuli.
I never implied that such a thing would be EASY to accomplish ... nor that it would be guaranteed to work/be successful in every instance.
Resistance to collective action, in the context of the Empress Wave (as described in setting), would be a pretty severe problem for governments and societies to deal with. There's always going to be SOMEONE who doesn't want to cooperate, and in large populations that can add up to being a distinctly large quantity of people. Hoo-mans can get really ornery and stubborn about doing anything BUT what is best for them.
Repeating ... NOT EASY.
If there is a well executed PLAN that is overwhelmingly accepted and cooperated with ... that's better ... but still isn't a guarantee that nothing with ever go wrong anywhere.
But a hibernate/reboot response may be easier to accomplish than a "burn it all down before building it all back up from scratch" approach (also known as the Do Nothing To Prepare "plan that is not a plan") that will no doubt be attempted more than once by populations unwilling to risk even temporary disruptions to their way of life in advance of the arrival of the Empress Wave.
The logistics challenge would be nightmarishly fiendish, where saying "the daemonology is in the details" barely begins to scratch the surface of what would be a monumental challenge.
Just the planning alone ought to take most of a decade (if not longer) to set up and approve for worlds that have above Non-industrial population codes (basically 7+). The one advantage the planners would have is a relatively accurate date expectation on the arrival of the Empress Wave, so if you're going to do anything at all you need to have all of your plans formulated and in motion BEFORE that deadline date.
As for "world planning" that kind of depends on the Government type (balkanized may or may not cooperate with each other for a unified world response to the threat). Religious Dictatorships could potentially be uniquely challenged (before, during and after the crisis) for a huge variety of reasons, including that necessary responses to safeguard against the Empress Wave stand in contraction to "acceptable" practices (so you can have a cultural rejection of possible solutions).
Even a technocracy wouldn't be immune to the stresses, strains and challenges that responding (appropriately) to such an emergency could pose. Democracies could potentially be paralyzed by demagogues (who tend to crop up during a crisis no one wants to have to deal with), while corporations may be unwilling to lose/risk short term profits in order to hedge for long term gains after a recovery. And some governments may be too weak or command insufficient respect to marshal their populations in favor of any specific preparation actions at all.
There would be no One Size Fits All™ solution for planetary governments to copy.
There could be examples of success for them to attempt to emulate, but circumstances and situations will be different.
And even if your advance planning is perfect ... there are no guarantees that it will be executed perfectly.
In other words, the Referee is going to need more dice ... a lot more dice ...
Exactly.
Just like with a population "lockdown" it doesn't prevent the problems that can occur, but it buys you time to be able to deal with whatever problems MAY occur.
Battle Plan vs Enemy Contact
Round 1
FIGHT!
Oh make no mistake, the event would place a tremendous strain on societies ... before, during and after.
The only question is, how well does each world "weather" the storm?
If multiple crises can occur, it's better/safer to handle them sequentially over time ... rather than in parallel all at once, all at the same time. The sequential option may not be successful in all cases, but it ought to be more likely to succeed than a lot of the alternatives in which disasters are allowed to compound upon each other and push societies beyond the breaking point.
I think, fundamentally, whatever is done, is done to save lives, not "society". I don't think there's a society that can actually survive this kind of catastrophe. The new society might be a vestige of the old, but, make no mistake, it's a reset, and with a reset will come a lot of change.
But, thinking it more, it's probably the "only" solution. The spacelift solution is beyond impractical.
Why?
There's no place to go! Simply, you need to ripple entire populations in deep space for the 1-2 months it takes to do the jump and everything else. They can't "island hop" to another world. Because by they time they get their, it's already been hit and is in the the throes of disaster.
When the population returns, the idea of pacifying those that did not make the trip, it's like a sick video game. Again, the zombie apocalypse. Plot a beachhead, "kill everything and everyone", then start your landing. It's just beyond unthinkable.
(I should note, I'm not a big fan of zombie movies.)
But, thinking it more, it's probably the "only" solution. The spacelift solution is beyond impractical.
Why?
There's no place to go! Simply, you need to ripple entire populations in deep space for the 1-2 months it takes to do the jump and everything else. They can't "island hop" to another world. Because by they time they get their, it's already been hit and is in the the throes of disaster.
When the population returns, the idea of pacifying those that did not make the trip, it's like a sick video game. Again, the zombie apocalypse. Plot a beachhead, "kill everything and everyone", then start your landing. It's just beyond unthinkable.
(I should note, I'm not a big fan of zombie movies.)
