Hidden Realms

[Astromancer]

Basically, where in this setting would you go to hide a community or simply be ignored. Space options preferred. But any options are welcomed.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Basically, where in this setting would you go to hide a community or simply be ignored. Space options preferred. But any options are welcomed.

Beneath the polar ice caps, maybe (not necessarily the ones on Earth)?

[johndallman]

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.

[CardinalBiggles]

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.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Basically, where in this setting would you go to hide a community or simply be ignored. Space options preferred. But any options are welcomed.

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.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by CardinalBiggles

A base suspended from a hot hydrogen balloon floating in the atmosphere of a giant planet. IIRC Neptune has a relatively quiet atmosphere.

That has the kind of drama a secret base is associated with.

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.

Would that suggest that a base near an uninteresting but well known and boring facility would be better hidden than deeply isolated bases? People might ask about trips to lonely bleak desolations. No one will ask why you went to the refueling station.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by malloyd

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.

A hidden base below the sewers? It makes sense. And no one would be curious about supplies going to a city.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by CardinalBiggles

A base suspended from a hot hydrogen balloon floating in the atmosphere of a giant planet. IIRC Neptune has a relatively quiet atmosphere.

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.

[tshiggins]

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.

[Astromancer]

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.