Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl
The only problem with the farming town is that it would be impossible to wall in the farmland. If you are working on a TL 4 infrastructure, the highest level sustainable with such a small population, with TL 9 artifacts, you would need around one acre of cultivated land per person for maximum variety of diet (which is the sustainable level required for a non-Western diet). Careful management can increase carrying capacity to ten people per acre at TL4, but it requires massive inputs of manure, more than could be produced by a community of 100 people. You would probably also require an additional four acres per capita of coppiced woodlands to generate sufficient lumber and firewood, as well as mushrooms, for your people if they are facing an Ice Age environment.
The problem with a SALT facility is the power requirement. If you are pure vegetarian, you need a minimum of 2 GJ per day per capita to safely grow the plants to support the people. If you are omnivorous, you need a minimum of 20 GJ per day per capita to safely grow the plants that feed the animals that support the people. In the former case, you need a constant 4 MW of electricity for 100 people. In the latter case, you need a constant 40 MW of electricity for 100 people.
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TL 4 is not part of the equation, it is more what survives from the TL 8 or 9 starts. Regarding mainstreet there is a note somewhere about the availability of the NPK fertilizer bases. Main Street has TL 6 or 7 chemistry remember. I also assumed an almost continual cycling of the soil for the control of blights etc. Walls are an essential part of the setting, but may be open or slanted enough to let light in. I reduced the staple crop production by 40% in my calculations to reflect the cramped conditions. Remember one of the components was TL8+ high yielding potatoes.
Kings port had the assumption of freely available dead and dried standing timber harvested by machine. Even at 2 hectares per annum they will have only knocked over 80 hectares in the assumed 40 years/two short generations. I assumed a climate with similarities to the most northern and now uninhabited Scottish islands.
Regarding Salt
2 gigajoules per day equals 23.148kw*, and I was assuming a TL fission power plant was maybe 500-1000 mws. Out of interest can you source the giga joules requirement please, I am curious.
My assumption was the equivalent of 3000w of lighting per m2 (using 50% efficiency energy to light transfer and adding 30% improvement for using a reduced spectrum). That equals 100kw per person for the vegetable component, the animals where on an algae based diet. The improvement in those numbers for TL 9 is not factored in. That's as far as I went on that calculation as the back of the envelope level of detail resulted in 5000 people worth of food. Reduce the efficiency by a factor of 10 and you can still support 500 people.
These are back of the envelope calculations that are aiming for plausible (a subjective term I know). Hopefully leaning towards realistic.
*unless there is something else you are factoring in?
Edit
Working on the sub canopy farming. I'm assuming no IR means no fire or thermal ovens.