New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Did Gore follow up on a few leads from Clinton-era antiterrorism efforts, leading to some quite new standards in airline cockpit door locks that haven't really made the news aside from a senator or two complaining about the increased regulatory burden?

What happened was that a minor Saudi official, who in our world saw it as strictly an American problem, noticed certain things that suggested trouble. As in this scenario, he felt the Saudis needed any and all American goodwill, as oil prices plunged, he passed his data on to the FBI and CIA. Ben Ladin's crew were caught in July. In our world, we had some hints about 9/11, but in this world, the extra data from the Saudi official tied up several loose threads that couldn't have been tied in any other way.

So no Afgan or Iraqi wars, the oil price plunge made them irrelevant and the Middle East a backwater by 2010.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

A non-spacecraft alternate method (Stargate is the ur-example, but it could also be parachronics) is discovered (probably via remains of Alien Space Bats) to travel to other planets/timelines/worlds in time for the Space Race to be scrapped.

Personally I always get stuck focusing on trying to think how the popular media changes: how much Star Trek/Wars/gate influences how modern people (at least in the US) see things.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

China has still grown well, but far more slowly. The recent announcement that term limits were gone and that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping]Xi Jinping[/url] was effectively leader for life, didn't happen in this China.

You might want to fix that link.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

You might want to fix that link.

Agreed. But I can't fix it from my phone so it needs to wait a day or two.

Revision! The repairman was here today and I can fix this today, and did so.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea, powerful aliens have simply announced that the Solar System is going to be rendered uninhabitable. They have absolutely proved this. Normally we, as a species incapable of starflight, would be left behind just another sad loss in evolutions games. However, the fairies were real and they seem to have evolved on Earth. So it is assumed we're worth study.

Earth's peoples will be moved to other inhabitable worlds. Certain groups will be moved to their own worlds by themselves, India and China. Simply as a matter of population. The other planets will receive equal shares of the remaining population. The people of Earth to decide who goes to which of the five other planets.

Basically, there are two ways to work this. First is playing diplomats seeking the best neighbors. To survive, Germany is going to be on a planet with around 915 million non-Germans. Who do you think the Germans would want for neighbors? Who would they seek to avoid? The USA and Russia would be glad not to be neighbors, or so Americans would think. Maybe Russia sees the USA as an easy mark? South Korea wouldn't want anything to do with North Korea, and yet they pity the miseries of their kinfolk.

The diplomatic conference would be a fascinating game.

Finding out about the "Fairies" would be a major thing too. This world starts out with as little credence given to the existence of fairies as ours does. Now the reality of fairies is what save humanity. Questions must be answered.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this idea, powerful aliens have simply announced that the Solar System is going to be rendered uninhabitable. They have absolutely proved this. Normally we, as a species incapable of starflight, would be left behind just another sad loss in evolutions games. However, the fairies were real and they seem to have evolved on Earth. So it is assumed we're worth study.

Earth's peoples will be moved to other inhabitable worlds. Certain groups will be moved to their own worlds by themselves, India and China. Simply as a matter of population. The other planets will receive equal shares of the remaining population. The people of Earth to decide who goes to which of the five other planets.

Basically, there are two ways to work this. First is playing diplomats seeking the best neighbors. To survive, Germany is going to be on a planet with around 915 million non-Germans. Who do you think the Germans would want for neighbors? Who would they seek to avoid? The USA and Russia would be glad not to be neighbors, or so Americans would think. Maybe Russia sees the USA as an easy mark? South Korea wouldn't want anything to do with North Korea, and yet they pity the miseries of their kinfolk.

The diplomatic conference would be a fascinating game.

Finding out about the "Fairies" would be a major thing too. This world starts out with as little credence given to the existence of fairies as ours does. Now the reality of fairies is what save humanity. Questions must be answered.

Someone on a writers how to book said they had written a story where aliens had found out that the core of the galaxy had exploded ages ago and the wave of the explosion would reach Earth soon. They dropped by to try to evacuate Earth.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Earth's peoples will be moved to other inhabitable worlds. Certain groups will be moved to their own worlds by themselves, India and China. Simply as a matter of population. The other planets will receive equal shares of the remaining population. The people of Earth to decide who goes to which of the five other planets.

Does it even matter? If the aliens are planning to dump a billion people randomly into uncharted wilderness, most of them are going to die, and by the time the neighbors matter to the survivors, none of them are going to have much continuity with the current governments of Earth and their policies. If they are going to provide more infrastructure and information than that, then the thing to be aiming for is the places with the best of that infrastructure or the best resources, exactly who gets the less desirable parts of the best world on offer isn't terribly important.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Does it even matter? If the aliens are planning to dump a billion people randomly into uncharted wilderness, most of them are going to die, and by the time the neighbors matter to the survivors, none of them are going to have much continuity with the current governments of Earth and their policies. If they are going to provide more infrastructure and information than that, then the thing to be aiming for is the places with the best of that infrastructure or the best resources, exactly who gets the less desirable parts of the best world on offer isn't terribly important.

It's not important to them.

If the US Navy is doing a rush job cleanup after a hurricane in a Third World country it does not care in the slightest about the petty differences between the natives (the word is unfashionable anymore but the sentiment remains and under the circumstances can't help but do so) because that gets in the way of efficiency. The petty differences between the natives sure as heck matter to them because they always have. Likewise if aliens come to evacuate us whether out of benevolent reasons or blue and orange morality they won't care about the difference between country A and country B but countries A and B will.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Likewise if aliens come to evacuate us whether out of benevolent reasons or blue and orange morality they won't care about the difference between country A and country B but countries A and B will.

My point though is if countries A and B have no agency here there's nothing to negotiate over - the aliens are going to pick them up and drop them at random no matter what deals they have with each other. And if they do have some sort of control over where they go, there are factors a whole lot more important to selecting a destination than who else is going to the same planet.

[AlexanderHowl]

In general though, an alien civilization has no reason to save humanity and every reason not to save humanity. The cost to relocate nearly eight billion sapient with enough species for an ecosystem large enough to support them would be beyond comprehension. Allowing humanity to die out and then claiming the Sol System for themselves after the smoke clears would cost an alien civilization nothing.

Even if an alien civilization was compassionate enough and wealthy enough to save humanity, human biology is probably incompatible with the biology of the life of every other planet in the galaxy, meaning that the alien civilization would have to terraform planets for humanity. Now, an alien civilization might split the difference and just create an ark for the life of the Earth, and they would include a small population of humans in the ark. After the cataclysm, the aliens could reseed the Earth with the life from the ark.