10-25-2018, 04:51 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Hidden Realms
Basically, where in this setting would you go to hide a community or simply be ignored. Space options preferred. But any options are welcomed.
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10-25-2018, 05:15 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Hidden Realms
Beneath the polar ice caps, maybe (not necessarily the ones on Earth)?
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10-26-2018, 02:21 AM | #3 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Hidden Realms
There are plenty of places in the Kuiper Belt. Pick one that's out of the ecliptic plane, and not near line-of-sight to some interesting astronomical object, and you'll be forgotten about if you stay quiet.
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10-26-2018, 09:12 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Ipswich, UK
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Re: Hidden Realms
In space any uninteresting object out of the ecliptic plane seems a good starting point. If you keep radio quiet and a low thermal signature hopefully your base won't be noticed.
A base suspended from a hot hydrogen balloon floating in the atmosphere of a giant planet. IIRC Neptune has a relatively quiet atmosphere. Venus is fairly deserted but any base has to deal with the extreme environment. Paradoxically, I think that the Earth may be your best bet. On the abyssal plain on the floor of the ocean away from a hydrothermal vent. Even in the Transhuman Space era, Earth's ocean floor is among the least known planetary environments in the system. As I see it, the biggest problem in keeping a base secret is resupplying it. Every time a base is visited the chance of detection increases enormously. I like the Earth ocean floor base for this reason as detecting a submarine is more difficult than detecting a spacecraft. There are sonar detection nets, but AFAIK these are concentrated on the continental shelves and strategically important choke points. There is also a lot of ocean traffic among which to hide yours. My $0.02 on the question.
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10-26-2018, 02:09 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Hidden Realms
Buried underneath a major city. Seriously everything in the TS setting is so imaged and monitored that building anywhere remote (never mind *in space*) is going to stand out to every intelligence service in the world and a couple hundred amateurs/conspiracy hunters who post funny looking wilderness projects or spaceflight trajectories to the net. And then do robotic flybys next decade for a documentary on your deaths and/or what you are up to. Trying for an isolated location is just calling attention to yourself.
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10-26-2018, 02:17 PM | #6 | ||
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Hidden Realms
Quote:
Quote:
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10-26-2018, 02:19 PM | #7 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Hidden Realms
Quote:
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10-27-2018, 03:37 PM | #8 |
Computer Scientist
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
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Re: Hidden Realms
This is not such a good investment in secrecy as the volatile Helium-3 market keeps people looking for exactly such a thing as they already have established at Saturn for mining its atmosphere.
Last edited by jeff_wilson; 10-28-2018 at 07:31 PM. |
10-28-2018, 02:33 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Denver, Colorado
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Re: Hidden Realms
I wouldn't put it in space, either. Canonically, the setting already has Isolate communities on Earth, and that seems a solid projection of current trends.
According to this story, which provides some good evidence, within the next generation or two, North America will have huge expanses of territory that are even less populated than they are, now. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/...l-communities/ . So, figure that by 2100, some ratio higher than 90 percent of the U.S.population lives in urban centers or (most likely) suburban communities, with most of the rest in rural counties immediately adjacent. That means large urban/suburban areas, surrounded by a narrow band of agricultural or resource extraction communities, with vast areas of miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles, between them. Call it an East Coast megalopolis with support communities that may go as far as the foothills of the Appalachians;and a West Coast megalopolis with farmlands west of the Sierra/Cascade ranges. I think there could also be a Gulf Coast urban corridor with hinterlands that reach inwards no more than about 100 miles (further along the rivers, not so much in the forests and bayous) from wherever the coast winds up after the oceans rise; and a Front Range Urban Corridor that stretches from Cheyenne Wyoming to Pueblo, Colorado. I'd also see a big blob at Dallas-Fort Worth, too. Add in a number of blobs in the upper Midwest -- Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Milwaukee to Chicago, a renovated and smaller Detroit, and Cleveland to Pittsburgh (not sure about that one...) -- plus some splotches around other large cities in the Mississippi basin and the Ohio River valley. Still, that leaves huge expanses of land largely empty of people and returning to wilderness. Find a spot in a holler in Appalachia, or a forest in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, or a marsh inland of the rising waters of the Gulf, or anywhere in the Snake River valley. Heck, just squat in a decently-preserved ghost town just about anywhere; there's lots. Stay away from the rural areas that still have populations (resort areas, retiree centers, or places with uniquely valuable resources), and most people would have no reason to even come looking.
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10-28-2018, 04:32 PM | #10 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Hidden Realms
Good idea tshiggins. Heck, the cover could be the idea of preserving a historic community intact. Hiding out in plain sight is, as Poe reminds us, is a powerful strategy.
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