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Old 11-11-2016, 12:55 PM   #31
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Roads Not Taken

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Yeah, that was sort of my point. You have to be willfully blind to not to better than TL 3 epidemiology with TL 8 analytics.

Well, meat production is fairly optional, though biotech crops are obviously out so you're probably capped at TL 7.
Willfully blind describes most people most of the time. It seems like some people here are arguing that how everything played out in the real world is the only time, way, and order it could have.

Transgenic crops are mostly out without modern microscopic tech. But there are mutagens and methods of forcing hybridization with chemicals that wouldn't otherwise cross. That is how triticale is forced to reproduce.
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Old 11-11-2016, 01:04 PM   #32
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Certainly, a very low-TL medical tech timeline that's otherwise TL 8 would be weird, and like I said, probably fatalistic. "Yes, we know there's little specks that grow in wounds and make people die, but what's a human life compared to the efficient running of an server farm or a sufficiently high-velocity NTR?"

Here's a different one: Gunpowder could conceivably be developed somewhat earlier. Lacking the needed metallurgy, grenades and rockets would be the other option.
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Old 11-11-2016, 01:06 PM   #33
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Noticing bacteria exist and proceeding to draw the conclusion that they're responsible for disease aren't the same thing. At least marginal awareness of microbiology is pretty unavoidable by that point, yes. Becoming aware of some human cellular biology is probably also an inevitable result.

TL3 medicine has an extremely marginal grasp of epidemiology. Which actually might be a point of incompatibility with TL8 - you very likely can't get there without the conceptual technology to do better than that.

And of course you can't have TL8 agriculture as we know it without considerably better than TL3 animal medical technology.
It's not especially plausible for any TL subset to entirely lag behind the default by more than a couple of levels. Even when you take someone like the Vilani, who never developed antibiotics because they had no native contagious diseases to speak of because they had no compatible wildlife and good sanitation and dealt with planets that did have human compatible infectious diseases with planetary quarantined or burnoffs, they still were up to snuff when it came to treatment of physical injury and aging.
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Old 11-11-2016, 02:05 PM   #34
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Default Re: Roads Not Taken

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Originally Posted by PTTG View Post
Certainly, a very low-TL medical tech timeline that's otherwise TL 8 would be weird, and like I said, probably fatalistic. "Yes, we know there's little specks that grow in wounds and make people die, but what's a human life compared to the efficient running of an server farm or a sufficiently high-velocity NTR?"

Here's a different one: Gunpowder could conceivably be developed somewhat earlier. Lacking the needed metallurgy, grenades and rockets would be the other option.
Leaving aside the military options, mining and civil engineering get a huge boost with earlier gunpowder.
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Old 11-11-2016, 03:49 PM   #35
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Another favourite of mine to do with gunpowder weapons is the Whitworth rifle. It was rejected by a committee that could have selected it for standard issue to the British army. It later saw service as a "sniper" rifle of sorts and arguably could have changed some aspects of british colonialism.
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Old 11-11-2016, 04:01 PM   #36
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Another favourite of mine to do with gunpowder weapons is the Whitworth rifle. It was rejected by a committee that could have selected it for standard issue to the British army.
It apparently cost about four times as much as the then standard rifle. It's kind of hard to get a weapon like that adopted as standard.
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Old 11-11-2016, 04:02 PM   #37
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Taking away nitrate based explosives could be interesting. You would probably eventually get compressed air guns, fuel air explosives and steam cannon, but you would prolong late medieval warfare for a while, and keep swords a relevant backup weapon for a long time.Could give you some nice airships and crossbows adventures.
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Old 11-11-2016, 04:13 PM   #38
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Taking away nitrate based explosives could be interesting.
Difficult to do at any time past the agricultural revolution; if you've got fertilizer, you've got nitrates (fertilizer factories are in the category of 'things that blow up spontaneously every so often').
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Old 11-11-2016, 04:18 PM   #39
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It apparently cost about four times as much as the then standard rifle. It's kind of hard to get a weapon like that adopted as standard.
True, but the quoted reason for not choosing it was it didn't fire a large enough bullet. (From memory)
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Old 11-11-2016, 04:20 PM   #40
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Leaving aside the military options, mining and civil engineering get a huge boost with earlier gunpowder.
Cheap being the most important aspect of explosives used for those endeavors.
That's what made dynamite such a wonderful invention.
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