The Maghiz

[Ishmael]

So the Maghiz is a huge darrian triggered superflare. Something we have no records of Sol ever pulling off. The records include ice core samples and other paleontological records either. We do have records of massive die-offs in the form of coal deposits among other signs, but no record of any solar flare being part of any extinction event on earth. Not even for the big 5 and the description of the Maghiz puts it as worse than anything earth has EVER experienced.
A 'G' star is generally too stable, although a freak occurrence may be possible.
But a 'M' dwarf is known to have let loose with a superflare. Perhaps the experimentaion that triggered the Maghiz was on the companion star instead?

GJ 3685A is a red dwarf that let loose a massive flare
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/galex-053105.html
Although it wouldn't be as canon OTU described it, Darryen's system has a M1 D star in it.
GJ 3685A is M4 D, isn't it?

Canon description sounds like a massive CME actually hit the surface!
The following is from the Traveller wiki entry...

These flares generated a huge electromagnetic pulse that blew all electronic components on Darrian. About three weeks later the physical wave front of expanding gas reached Darrian. When it hit, the last of superheated gases struck like a blowtorch, temporarily raising local temperatures to 250° and higher. The Maghiz destroyed whole areas of Darrian, scalding basins, evaporating shallow seas, burning forests and grasslands, and destroying populated areas. Fortunately, the flares lasted only three days. At the end of those three days, the surviving 20 percent of Darrian's population came out and began rebuilding.

WTF!
80% kill of all the population?
And the remaining 20% could start rebuilding without worry of follow-on effects such as, I dunno, ecosystem collapse? Climate collapse?
unless the flare was a super-secret anti-darrian homing flare, that'd imply 80% kill of all vertebrates and even 80% of all life
That's far worse than Permian-Triassic event when 70% of all vertebrates died over a period of years/decades/centuries?
Only this happened in the space of 3 days!
And 3 weeks for the CME to hit after the initial pulse? shouldn't that be 1-5 days
And of course, the proton storm would be traveling at a big percentage of 'c' considering the energies the would be required for the carnage described...ozone damage and radiation in less than 15 minutes after the first visual indications.
And the pulse can be felt out to 6 parsecs?
WTF?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is closer to what I expected but bigger with most of the die-off happening over time as ecosystems crashed after ripped open ozone layers, UV deaths and climate changes crippled the world's carrying capacity just as badly as the initial pulse crippled technology.
http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/SSTA.pdf

Clearly, canon fails massively
AUUUURRRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!
This has to be pure fantasy!

 

[rancke]

So the Maghiz is a huge Darrian triggered superflare. Something we have no records of Sol ever pulling off. The records include ice core samples and other paleontological records either. We do have records of massive die-offs in the form of coal deposits among other signs, but no record of any solar flare being part of any extinction event on Earth.

Earth never had a TL16 civilization mucking about with its sun either.

A 'G' star is generally too stable, although a freak occurrence may be possible.

But a 'M' dwarf is known to have let loose with a superflare. Perhaps the experimentaion that triggered the Maghiz was on the companion star instead?

Why bother? TL 16 effects are pseudo-scientific goobledegook anyway.

80% kill of all the population?

And the remaining 20% could start rebuilding without worry of follow-on effects such as, I dunno, ecosystem collapse? Climate collapse?

Who said that? We've no description at all of how long the rebuilding took or what happened along the way.

unless the flare was a super-secret anti-darrian homing flare, that'd imply 80% kill of all vertebrates and even 80% of all life.

That's far worse than Permian-Triassic event when 70% of all vertebrates died over a period of years/decades/centuries?

Only this happened in the space of 3 days!

Why is that a problem?

I find it much more of a problem that some undersea (and under-ice?) cities apparently survived and yet the scientific knowledge was somehow lost.

And 3 weeks for the CME to hit after the initial pulse? shouldn't that be 1-5 days?

I've no idea. If you're right, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be retconned, on the principle that it's better to get it right, but neither do I see how it would make the slightest difference to the game setting if it wasn't.

And of course, the proton storm would be traveling at a big percentage of 'c' considering the energies the would be required for the carnage described...ozone damage and radiation in less than 15 minutes after the first visual indications.
And the pulse can be felt out to 6 parsecs?
WTF?

Yeah, that's the one that I have the biggest problem with too. Anything that can fry electronics at a parsec's distance would have boiled Darrian like a grape in a microwave oven. Anything that leave 20% of the biosphere alive on Darrian will be unable to affect anything at one parsec's distance, let alone six.

Clearly, canon fails massively.

True. OTOH, it doesn't really matter, does it? All that matters to the storyline is that Darrian civilization fell hard enough to stay down for 7-8 centuries.

Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer it if the story was retconned into something that actually worked, but it's not going to ruin any adventure I'm going to run on Darrian in the future for me if it isn't.


Hans

 

[jatay3]

All we have is what is "recorded as being recorded". If something like that really took place, records would be a might iffy.

 

[Ishmael]

I've no idea. If you're right, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be retconned, on the principle that it's better to get it right, but neither do I see how it would make the slightest difference to the game setting if it wasn't.

True. OTOH, it doesn't really matter, does it? All that matters to the storyline is that Darrian civilization fell hard enough to stay down for 7-8 centuries.

Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer it if the story was retconned into something that actually worked, but it's not going to ruin any adventure I'm going to run on Darrian in the future for me if it isn't.

Then it must be retconned on the principle that it should at least make an attempt to get it right. As you've said, it doesn't matter for 'present-day' adventures, yet to fail to correct at least the worst of the errors will only continue to show that the canon is blatantly wrong in some areas, which in turn sacrifices consistency of the overall setting. As I said in the other thread, canon is often inaccurate or incomplete and any errors should be repaired lest ALL canon statements fall under suspicion of being inaccurate or incomplete. And that Traveller wiki description is ludicrously inaccurate.

Either science matters, or else it doesn't.
If it doesn't, then Traveller is simply a high fantasy where the magic comes from machines instead of wizards.

As described by the Traveller wiki, the Maghiz event is far far worse than any extinction event earth has EVER seen and frankly, ALL darrians would end up dead and the surviving simple life-forms will have to start over in evolution to higher life-forms. Not that darrian civilization come just come out and rebuild like after a simple earthquake. It'd probably take longer than 7-8 centuries to get tech back...... because the darrian race would be gone.

If anything should be retconned, it should be that stupid wiki description be removed and a reasonable one put in its place.

If you feel that description is fine, please provide references that can support your position.

And even at tech 16, please explain how any civilization can control the amount of energy that can have any noticeable effect on a sun. At least with the flare coming from the M4 D companion, we have actual photos of such a monster flare and thus know that its possible. For a G1 star, one similar to our own, we have NO records of such a thing, even from paleontology.

 

[far-trader]

...And even at tech 16, please explain how any civilization can control the amount of energy that can have any noticeable effect on a sun.

I think it hard to imagine just what might be possible at TL16

Off the cuff, lets say something like dropping a heavily shielded jump drive into the star, set to Jump at a certain altitude (or depth). Or some artificial Gravity device primed to create some fluctuation. Or...

 

[far-trader]

...As described by the Traveller wiki, the Maghiz event is far far worse than any extinction event earth has EVER seen and frankly, ALL darrians would end up dead and the surviving simple life-forms will have to start over in evolution to higher life-forms. Not that darrian civilization come just come out and rebuild like after a simple earthquake. It'd probably take longer than 7-8 centuries to get tech back...... because the darrian race would be gone.

Maybe some of the cities were shielded. Hans mentioned deep sea cities surviving. And possibly these were not known to be centers of knowledge and expertise. Maybe they were fringers who were looking to escape all that high tech danger the surface Darrians were playing with, warning them it would lead to ruin.

Is there a description of how long the effect took to impact the far flung colonies? If it was anything faster than the speed of light that implies a not Maghiz cause*. Either failing infrastructure for lack of homeworld support. Or raids on the less defensible colonies with much of the space fleet wiped out or otherwise engaged. Or who knows.

If it was supposed to be the Maghiz directly... well yeah, that just wouldn't seem plausible.

* unless... the idea of a jump drive causing it might have spun off flares through jump space to nearby stars causing them to flare off as well, that'd be kinda cool, a chain flare propagated through jump space, and might fit with the 6 parsec range mentioned, worth pondering maybe

 

[Whipsnade]

Ish,

You're entirely correct. The Maghiz event as described in Darrian Alien Module is codswallop. What began as a nice idea in the JTAS article, was nearly wholly ruined when presented as an expanded in AM:8.

So, what are we to do? Well, the same thing Traveller has done for over 30 years now: Keep the results by twisting the perceptions.

The Aslan discovered jump drive and then they didn't. That's a big change which was also no real change. IRIS was a sooper-dooper intelligence agency who verified the bona fides of prospective emperors and then IRIS was a bunch of intel weenies playing a con. Again, a big change that was also no real change. These twists in perception occur throughout the game's history. GDW employed them all the time so we can too.

In the case of the Maghiz, you need to examine the initial idea and then play with the details to produce a more plausible story. That's something you've already begun to do by looking at Tarnis' dwarf companion. It's also something others have been doing since AM:8 was first released and the suspender-snapping, DGP-written, story of the Maghiz came on the scene.

Here's how I twisted the story IMTU:

It's only been three of four generations since the Terrans arrived. While there's been an explosion in scientific theory and prototypes, applying all this new found knowledge to daily Darrian life on the homeworld has not been uniform. In some cases it hasn't been attempted or even wanted.

Because the Terrans already know what works and what doesn't between TL4 and TL13, there's little if anything in the way of "left over" technical infrastructure from early tech levels and there's little if any understanding of the technologies between TL4 and TL13. For example, Darrian has no telephone poles or even cell towers because, thanks to the knowledge brought by the Terrans, they've been able to jump directly from heliographs and experiments with electricity to personal satellite phones. Another example would be transportation. Darrian has no extensive interstate/autobahn road networks, no extensive urban, interurban, and inter-basin rail networks, no scattered airfields, none of those leftovers because transportation essentially went from the native early TL4 steam engine to the Rule of Man's mature TL13 gravitic-based vehicles with no stops in between.

Technology across Darrian is thinly applied, unevenly applied, and lacks any true foundation. Grav cities float by villages that still plow communal fields with draft animals. Prospective starship crewmen arrive at training schools having never seen a flush toilet. A rural hut may have solar panels on the roof and a tri-d player in the main room, but it's occupants still pump water by hand. There is a vast gulf on Darrian between bleeding edge and commonplace. Researchers are developing AI while entire regions may have literacy rates under fifty percent.

Advanced technology is a thin veneer on any world or any society, but on Darrian it's far thinner than most because of the way the technology was developed. More accurately, the veneer is microscopic because of the way the technology in question wasn't developed. All technological societies are hothouse flowers which depend greatly on certain conditions to flourish and Darrian is a hothouse flower even among other hothouse flowers.

As tiny and precarious as the technological footprint on Darrain may be, the Darrian presence in space is tinier and more precarious still. It's a matter of numbers mainly. The vast bulk of the population hasn't caught up with the almost inconceivable changes of the last few generations, so all technological activities which requires personnel with any basic skills or training at all are vying with each other. Most people aren't going to risk death in interstellar exploration when they can earn better money with no risk working in a air/raft factory.

The average Darrian presence on the worlds that will become the Confederation is most likely numbered in the thousands with Mire perhaps having close to ten thousand. The number of personnel manning Darrian's exploration fleet most likely number a few thousand too.

Then the Maghiz occurs. Canon has it triggered by the unwitting interference between two projects studying Tarnis. One project involved a shielded probe moving through the upper reaches of the star leaving a trail of tungsten vapor behind for cooling purposes. Another projected two intersecting meson beams into the star to measure the interference caused. When the beams encountered the tungsten vapor, the feces hit the rotary ventilation device.

(Your suggestion of the dwarf flaring is a good one. Because dwarfs do flare naturally, it should be easier to trigger a flare in them. I never thought of it and really don't see any pressing need to change the story IMTU primarily because we don't know what "mesons" are and what "mesons" do. I'm happy with the beams and tungsten vapor somehow triggering a far huger response much like how a tiny trickle of current can trigger a larger response in a transistor. Your mileage obviously varies and it should too.)

I saw the Maghiz as two events. First, there's a "flash bulb" effect lasting a few minutes of tens of minutes. Think of the event in Niven's "Inconstant Moon" but lasting for a shorter period of time. That surely screwed things up for an entire hemisphere and would have meant the world was in chaos when the gas sheets thrown off by the flare arrived weeks later.

Those sheets didn't "blowtorch" the planet. They did however screw with the van Allen belts, ozone layers, and other similar physical attributes. They also produced a number of Tunguska-like bolide events, events which we now know are far more commonplace than earlier believed. There's evidence of one over North America which helped lead to the extinction of megafauna and there's evidence for others in North Africa and Southeast Asia too.

Roughly 80% of the humans on Darrian died over the next decade or so and not in the weeks AM:8 states. Many of those deaths can be attributed to the Darrians' reliance on a whisker thin technological infrastructure. The fact that all regions of the world experienced the disaster at roughly the same time also meant that no region could come to the aid of another. With every community facing disaster while thrown back on local resources, more communities failed to survive at all.

Damage to the planet's ecology was extensive, but nothing like a Permian extinction event. Physically the planet itself was a pretty nasty place for decades, if not centuries, as it slowly "healed". That meant that Darrian could no longer support the tiny research colonies it had planted. It also meant that evacuating those colonies back to Darrian was a good idea either.

Mire and Zamine got most of the few refugees. More still were simply left on the worlds in question, given what little aid could be found, and told to make do for the foreseeable future. There was no "Empress Wave Lite" radiating out from Darrian and smoking each colony world in turn. The reason why the colonies fell back to near barbarism was that the colonies weren't truly colonies at all. They weren't self sufficient and have never meant be to self sufficient. While the few jump capable ships the Darrians' still possessed still worked, all efforts were bent towards creating self sufficiency on those and those efforts succeeded somewhat.

As for Darrian itself, it was essentially hammered physically and psychologically. Psychologically is the key here. Eight out of every ten people had died over a decade or so and those still living, if they weren't a little crazy, were definitely suffering from shock and survivor's guilt.

The nature of the technological infrastructure on Darrian proved to be another handicap. There was literally nothing to fall back on, either physically or intellectually, before you reached TL4 or 5. Darrian couldn't halt her "TL slide" at 12 or 10 or even 8 from it's peak of 16/17 because those TLs had never truly existed on Darrian. Darrian had simply leaped over them all and paid them no attention. So, Darrian was going to have to fall back to TL4/5 and then work it's way back up. The subpolar cities and the university found there could help some, but, once the environment stabilized and food production was no longer chancy, Darrian was going to have to advanced technologically the old fashioned way.

Mire eventually beat Darrian back to the stars because, unlike Darrian, Mire was able to lead a more settled existence sooner after the Maghiz and thus support the thinkers and tinkerers technological progress requires.

So, that's my usual long winded take on the Maghiz IMTU.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Starviking]

Wooo! That's very good. I'm not so keen on the large tech variance on the pre-Maghiz Darryen, but the lack of Tech History and the long fall to TL-4 is marvellous!

 

[Ishmael]

Mr.Whipsnade's version is certainly more reasonable than canon, that's for certain.

Due to creative differences, I would have done it in a slightly different manner, though.
I would not have subscribed to his ideas about the tech distribution on the world because I feel 'tech level' is a measure of the world's local manufacturing capacity and to have high tech, there would have to be a rather extensive infrastructure and materials sector to support it along with the necessary labor. The agricultural sector would have less laborers to supply the required greater amount of food and thus it would have higher tech as well.
That's not to say there wouldn't be pockets of populations with a wide range of tech products in use.. I just feel it would not be as extreme as some of the examples he gave for that.

I would focus on the idea that the M1 D companion would flare fairly often, much as our Sol does, and there may even be evidence that it had given off a superflare some time in the past. I would say that the research done by the darrians would have focused first on prediction of solar flares and then on the control of such flares analogous to the Traveller postulated weather control on worlds. Because flares seem to be caused by the reconnection of magnetic lines of force, that is where the bulk of the research was aimed at. This might be in the form of Tesla-type technology or something along the lines of HAARP(?). Another aspect might have been the relationship between the magnetic fields of both suns and how lines of forces might be connected between them and the worlds in between when orbits were lined up.

Earlier lower powered experiments in solar weather control appeared to have some success, so higher powered experiments were attempted.
They failed catastrophically and resulted in a super flare which only grazed the main world.

First, the UV, x-ray and gamma ray burst knocked out all electronics with powerful EMP effects.
Also,

A gamma-ray burst in the Milky Way, if close enough to Earth and beamed towards it, could have significant effects on the biosphere. The absorption of radiation in the atmosphere would cause photodissociation of nitrogen, generating nitric oxide that would act as a catalyst to destroy ozone.[74] According to a 2004 study, a GRB at a distance of about a kiloparsec could destroy up to half of Earth's ozone layer; the direct UV irradiation from the burst combined with additional solar UV radiation passing through the diminished ozone layer could then have potentially significant impacts on the food chain and potentially trigger a mass extinction.[2][75] The authors estimate that one such burst is expected per billion years, and hypothesize that the Ordovician-Silurian extinction event could have been the result of such a burst, although there is no current evidence to support this idea.

( I have no idea if a superflare can give off a powerful enough gamma ray burst so near to the world that it would have any effect as described, however )

The proton storm arrives 30 minutes later initiates a massive geomagnetic storm and bombards the world with ionizing radiation.
Technology continues to crash and burn ( often literally )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_proton_event

a few days later, the CME hits causing another massive geomagnetic storm that effective destroys the remaining technology and infrastructure.

When the ejection reaches the Earth as an ICME (Interplanetary CME), it may disrupt the Earth's magnetosphere, compressing it on the day side and extending the night-side magnetic tail. When the magnetosphere reconnects on the nightside, it creates trillions of watts of power which is directed back toward the Earth's upper atmosphere. This process can cause particularly strong aurora also known as the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis (in the Northern Hemisphere), and the Southern Lights, or aurora australis (in the Southern Hemisphere). CME events, along with solar flares, can disrupt radio transmissions, cause power outages (blackouts), and cause damage to satellites and electrical transmission lines.

Climate changes due to global warming begin to manifest themselves quickly and the food chain is toppled.

Kump, Pavlov and Arthur (2005) have proposed that during the Permian-Triassic extinction event the warming also upset the oceanic balance between photosynthesising plankton and deep-water sulfate-reducing bacteria, causing massive emissions of hydrogen sulfide which poisoned life on both land and sea and severely weakened the ozone layer, exposing much of the life that still remained to fatal levels of UV radiation.[44][45][46]

Civilization does not recover and falls back to tech 1. The population dies off from disease, and scarce food supplies.
It takes a century or more to recover as the remnants of the world's population struggles in a post-holocaust similar to "Road Warrior"
But they do climb back and everything is all better again eventually.

Some groups which were isolated allow inbreeding ( first cousin marriages ) which allow for recessive genes to manifest themselves as becoming somewhat more common, giving us 'blue darrians'.
A level of folklore grows up around their existence equating them with magic use ( psionics)


I'll work out how this might effect other worlds that the darrians colonized later.

oh..and the star trigger is a lie
The superflare that nearly destroyed them was not deliberately triggered and they don't know how to recreated the conditions that were present in that experiment... and no, they're not really too anxious to have another try at it.

 

[far-trader]

...( I have no idea if a superflare can give off a powerful enough gamma ray burst so near to the world that it would have any effect as described, however )

The scenario rings a bell and I seem to recall the event mentioned as capable of producing such a gamma ray burst was a supernova creation of a black hole. So probably no.

And said gamma ray burst would be a pretty tight beam so the systems would have to be lined up* to affect all the worlds if you were hoping to use it for that as well.

* and maybe they are, I've never really looked at the details of, nor sweated over, this whole Maghiz thing

 

[Ishmael]

I dunno
maybe the burst of gamma rays from the companions superflare just happened to be aimed at the main world.
Perhaps the inner worlds were in an astronomical conjunction that allowed for there magnetic fields to interact such that the flare was aimed directly at the main world when said magnetic lines of force broke apart and reconnected triggering the flare.....

I see absolutely no way for the maghiz event to affect any other world except to be detected.
maybe...maybe causing damage to a sensor that might have been looking directly at it.

A modern solar flare recorded Dec. 5, 2006, by the X-ray Imager onboard
NOAA's GOES-13 satellite. The flare was so intense, it actually damaged the instrument
that took the picture. Researchers believe Carrington's flare was much more energetic
than this one.

a superflare as postulated would be far more powerful than even Carrington's Flare ( which was more powerful than the 5Dec06 flare mentioned).

 

[Ishmael]

now I'm just being silly

of course their is a super-science, 'Doc' Smith explanation

The superflare was triggered by an ancient in the continuation of their final war ( which isn't over yet, even today ).
This ancient aligned magnetic fields and triggered the flare with the connected lines of force acting as a wave guide to channel the entire flare into a monstrous machine deep underground, like the krell machines, to power it for an attack against Yaskoydray's pocket universe or some other of Yaskoydray's assets hidden away in jump-space.
The humans were just in the way. Collateral damage really. We can get more if we need them again.
Luckily for them, some survived. They better not get in the way again.

The shock wave propagated through the jump space where it was fired and affected each star within the 'blast radius.
Each star is multidimensional and events that effect each star's extra-dimensional presence is felt throughout all dimensions that the star exists in.

Puny humans, who are no more than ants under the feet of giants will know nothing of this and won't even begin to comprehend it all until they reach tech level 34 or so.... if they survive that long.

 

[Whipsnade]

Mr.Whipsnade's version is certainly more reasonable than canon, that's for certain.

Ishmael,

It's more reasonable, but it's only a start and it really only works IMTU.

Due to creative differences, I would have done it in a slightly different manner, though.

As well you should. Your take is more "science-heavy" than mine thanks to you experience in that subject.

I would not have subscribed to his ideas about the tech distribution on the world...

I think that's where my life experience gives me the edge. I've worked in what can be viewed as "tech uplift" programs worldwide for over twenty years now.

... because I feel 'tech level' is a measure...

Just what "tech level" is in the OTU setting, as opposed to the game's rules, is something that has never been fully explained to anyone's satisfaction. I will point out that, just because Darrian researchers were fooling around with TL16/17 devices and concepts, it doesn't necessarily follow that all of Darrian was living at TL 17, 16, or even 15.

Looking at our own world, I cannot believe that the whole of Darrain or even a significant minority, was uplifted in only three generations from TL4 to TL15/16 across the entire spectrum of daily human existence. While it only illustrates a four TL jump, roughly TL3 to TL7, Africa is a good example of this because of the time involved.

If I destroyed all aircraft in sub-Saharan Africa, infra-continental trade would drop drastically. There are no where near enough roads and rails to pick up the slack. Kenya, for example, has fewer paved roads now than it had at independence. If I go further and destroy the fuel sources for trucks and trains, infra-continental trade in Africa would cease almost entirely. There's nothing to fall back on and Africa's rivers and coastlines, the usual routes for pre-industrial long distance trade, are uniquely ill suited for travel.

Mexico is another example using another technology. If I somehow knocked out the cell phone system, close to 80% of Mexico would lose their only method of personal communication. Before the advent of cell phones, Mexico was not "wired" like the US, Europe, and other advanced nations and the effort to "wire" Mexico was a hard slog. In the capital alone you faced await of over a year to get a landline and in the outlying regions that wait was much longer. Cell phones allowed Mexico to "leapfrog" over the need for wires. However, because Mexico bypassed that need, those wires aren't available if something goes wrong.

Despite trillions in aid, Africa hasn't been able to fully apply technology uplifts to every aspect of African life across the entire continent. We see bushmen with plastic sandals, baseball caps, and nylon knapsacks still living as hunter-gatherers for example. There simply hasn't been enough time to get the job done. In the case of Mexico, that nation leaped over a TL or two with regards to personal communications. While skipping wires allowed he population to get personal phones faster, skipping wires also means Mexico is facing huge problems in supplying the broadband access business, industry, government, and schools need.

When we look at Darrian, we see an entire planet, not just a single continent, being uplifted with far less money, and leaping over eleven TLs in the space of only three generations.

That's why I believe Darrian's TL is very thin and very fragile. There hasn't been enough time to spread ever aspect of the technology to every aspect of Darrian life in every region of the planet and Darrian has skipped over too many intermediate technologies to give it's current technology level a robust basis in the face of catastrophe.

When the systems fail, the technological "ground state" for Darrian is still TL4 with a few higher tech bell and whistles thrown in.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Ishmael]

Just what "tech level" is in the OTU setting, as opposed to the game's rules, is something that has never been fully explained to anyone's satisfaction. I will point out that, just because Darrian researchers were fooling around with TL16/17 devices and concepts, it doesn't necessarily follow that all of Darrian was living at TL 17, 16, or even 15.

I understand your position and saw how your model appeared to be similar in many ways with modern day Africa. And I understand that a given tech of 16 does not mean everyone has access to tech 16 for their daily lives, however....

I chose to view the tech level as related to manufacturing ability because that is how I use it most when world building and determining a world's industrial output via modified forms of World Tamer's, or the tables from TCS for that. I'm sure you noticed that some of my word choices and phrasing carried over from World Tamer's.
I took the position that the industrial tech level must have a minimum level of infrastructure to sustain itself and grow without being forced to rely on imports.
Anyways, that's the reason I used tech level as I did.

Besides, I think you know me well enough by now to know I am more than willing to toss canon aside when I feel its proper.

But yes, the fall back tech level will be 3 or 4 for post-Maghiz although struggles with a wildly out of balance ecosystem and climate that will make food production very challenging. I think this would cause further degradation of the tech base as less resources would be allocated to maintain/repair what level of tech infrastructure remains in favor food production. I would expect a huge number of deaths to pile up from starvation and possibly warfare over the remaining decent spoils.

I think the best source of materials will be scavenging from the fallen society instead of a traditional materials sector and such a post-holocaust setting, reminiscent of The Road Warrior, might be a fun setting to play in. Good thing the Imperium has lots of Mn V stars that can flare up, eh? I'm certain the OTU history has a fair number of such events in the records. Close companions are good candidates for such flares too.
I just get the feeling that many people don't quite grasp how rough rebuilding such a world would be.
Food will be extremely hard to come by after the food webs have collapse.

And if life is still too easy, there's a few follow-on effects I know of to make things harder.

 

[Whipsnade]

I chose to view the tech level as related to manufacturing ability...

Ishmael,

I think we're differing in degree and not kind, and by minute degrees at that.

I'm suggesting that Darrian immediately prior to the Maghiz could manufacture TL16/17 items. I'm also suggesting that Darrian immediately prior to the Maghiz wasn't manufacturing TL16/17 items as everyday consumer goods.

And I think a close reading of both the JTAS article and AM:8 supports that.

Darrian was advancing, experimenting, investigating, or whatever other verb you want to use TL16/17. Darrian may not have been living at TL16/17 and the way tech level in World Builder's Handbook is broken down into subsections and then modified upwards or downwards certainly gives us precedent for that.

The term "manufacturing everyday consumer goods" is the key descriptor of technology level in my wooly-headed Traveller universe. Tech level IMTU is simply a measure of relative wealth and/or poverty. The OTU and MTU setting has no blanket "Prime Directive" so anyone can buy anything provided they have the cash and, given the prevalence of free traders, for everyone looking to buy there are plenty looking to sell. The Oogas of Booga-3 don't really live at TL0 complete with fur bikinis and fishbone pocket combs. Rather that benighted planet lacks the ability to manufacture everyday consumer goods above TL0.

So, Bob Ooga, the well known Booga-3 fur trader, will live in a prefab hut he's adding onto over the years, tote an off-world rifle that uses brass he reloads himself, and during his trapping trips will talk daily with Mrs. Ooga and all the little Oogas on a radio he charges with a folding solar panel. Everything he truly needs will be an off-world import while everything he merely wants will be something he, Mrs. Ooga, or is immediate neighbors have handcrafted for themselves.

I took the position that the industrial tech level must have a minimum level of infrastructure to sustain itself and grow without being forced to rely on imports.

Prior to the Maghiz, Darrian's capabilities in TL16/17 were most certainly sustainable without imports and those capabilities were growing. All I'm suggesting is that those capabilities were not firmly rooted and that nearly all of the capabilities associated with the nine or so tech levels between 4 and the Rule of Man maximum of 13 didn't exist at all.

Regardless of just how technologically capable Darrian was immediately prior to the Maghiz, I cannot set aside my disbelief that even a simple majority of the people on Darrian were living at TL16/17, let alone TL10, 12, or 14. What's more, I refuse to believe that the majority of their daily activities occurred at those tech levels either.

There was far too much work to do and far too little time in which to do it. Three generations isn't enough time. Darrian, in my humble opinion, had a very thin veneer of high technology applied over a base of mid to low technology. Given time, that veneer would have grown in breadth and depth, but the Maghiz prevented that.

Besides, I think you know me well enough by now to know I am more than willing to toss canon aside when I feel its proper.

And that's very much to your credit.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Peter Schutze]

>Food will be extremely hard to come by after the food webs have collapse.

actually food would be the first to recover.

look at earth .... china now relies on potato for 10-15% of its carbohydrates. Corn has spread all over the world and edible crops from every corner of the world are commercially farmed somewhere in Australia (and North America)

having been part of a worldwide agricultural web means theres going to be far more potential candidates for every agricultural niche .... really wet probably means rice, really dry might mean wheat

A big difference to even the 1700s etc when the fairly recently introduced potato crop failed .... previously not much grew easily in that boggy irish ground

 

[Ishmael]

I have looked at earth....

The closest historical event that matches what canon has to say about the Maghiz is the Permian-Triassic extinction event.
Food will be scarce and difficult to come by as food webs collapse and the climate changes.

As written in the wiki, darrians have no chance because the total collapse was so swift.
Even if the event is stretched out to make darrian survival possible, it'd still be very touch and go.
I've softened it considerably to give them a chance to recover within the multi-century time-frame.

The pulse effect being felt by worlds up to 6 parsecs away is not going to happen in the real universe,
For that to occur, daryen the world is toast...literally.

 

[Whipsnade]

actually food would be the first to recover.

Peter,

Growing food is one thing.

Distributing food is something else entirely.

With the collapse of Darrian's TL13(1) transportation network and the complete lack of any "leftover" transportation capabilities beyond TL4, you can neither move the food to the survivors or the survivors to the food.

When neither the mountain or Muhammad can visit the other, the feces definitely hits the rotary ventilation device.


Regards,
Bill

1 - I keep mentioning TL13 because, IIRC, that was the general maximum TL of the Rule of Man and thus the general maximum TL that the Itzin Fleet would have brought to Darrian. Darrian most certainly did advance beyond TL13, but I believe TL13 was the most widespread high-tech level in use, albeit used rather "thinly".

 

[Whipsnade]

The pulse effect being felt by worlds up to 6 parsecs away is not going to happen in the real universe...

.


Ishmael,

Agreed. I've written that off as a bit of "common knowledge" in the OTU. You know, those things everyone knows are true but are really completely false?

Canon is littered with similar examples, so we've precedents.

For that to occur, daryen the world is toast...literally.

Again, agreed. The Darrian colonies can fall back and/or fail without some suspender snapping energy pulse slagging them. Loren Wiseman once remarked that "DGP never quit their day jobs" and the account of the Maghiz written up in AM:8 is further proof of that.


Regards,
Bill

 

[rancke]

First a caveat. Even though this is an IMTU discussion, my basic interest is in seeing how these fascinating ideas can be made to fit the OTU. If you want a justification for that, I try to keep MTU as close to the OTU as feasible, so in this case the OTU is MTU (or is it vice versa?).

I'm suggesting that Darrian immediately prior to the Maghiz could manufacture TL16/17 items. I'm also suggesting that Darrian immediately prior to the Maghiz wasn't manufacturing TL16/17 items as everyday consumer goods.

Unfortunately, we don't have a working definition of just what TL means. Instead, we have two or three mutually incompatible and/or internally inconsistent definitions, none of them being the one I consider the only really useful one. So there's no real prospect of us "proving" anything to each other by the logical analysis of tech levels and just what they mean.

That said, I'll give you my definition of TL: It's the level of technology employed by a sizable majority of the people living on the world. Whether this is because they manufacture it or buy it does not matter. It's a logical, self-consistent definition and what's more, it's useful for GMs, because they can get a sense of what visiting PCs can buy, get repaired, encounter in the hands of opponents, etc. And it leaves room for special circumstances, like the upper classes importing grav vehicles and advanced medical technology and whatnots not available to the unwashed masses.

Darrian was advancing, experimenting, investigating, or whatever other verb you want to use TL16/17. Darrian may not have been living at TL16/17 and the way tech level in World Builder's Handbook is broken down into subsections and then modified upwards or downwards certainly gives us precedent for that.

Yes, but the precedent it gives is that there's a limit to how advanced novelty TL can be over high common TL (Unless imported, i.e. what a world makes for itself can't be more than X levels above high common). IIRC it's two levels. And that's in a milieu where most worlds import their technological knowledge. The Darrians researched their way from TL12 to 16.

So if the Darrians were edging into TL17, the very least the high common TL could be is mature 14.

Regardless of just how technologically capable Darrian was immediately prior to the Maghiz, I cannot set aside my disbelief that even a simple majority of the people on Darrian were living at TL16/17, let alone TL10, 12, or 14. What's more, I refuse to believe that the majority of their daily activities occurred at those tech levels either.

There was far too much work to do and far too little time in which to do it. Three generations isn't enough time. Darrian, in my humble opinion, had a very thin veneer of high technology applied over a base of mid to low technology. Given time, that veneer would have grown in breadth and depth, but the Maghiz prevented that.

I think your picture of Darrian a century after the Itzins (Itzini?) arrived is very plausible, with one rather crucial exception: The level of the high technology would be 12, not 16. It's hard enough to believe that the Old Darrians (I use the term to denote the hybrid civilization created by the Itzini and the Ancient Darrians merging) could go from TL12 to TL16 in four centuries (-1400 to -1025). I refuse to believe they could go from TL3 to TL16 in one century.

In the OTU, the Old Darrians went from matching the Solomani tech in -1400 to TL 16 in 375 years (somewhat less than that, actually, since I don't believe they hit TL16 one day and began experimenting with their sun the next; besides, they're already building TL17 prototypes).

I think that should be time enough to get everybody integrated into the civilization. There may be great disparities in technology on Earth today, but Earth hasn't been unified under a single government for four centuries.


Hans