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Old 07-02-2022, 01:55 PM   #141
Willy
 
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by maximara View Post

Hitler came to power through a bunch of backroom deals by people who thought they could control him. He then proceeded to get President Hindenburg at age 86 to set up things to where the democratic government would end. Something Hindenburg gave the go ahead for on his literal deathbed.
Quite true, thanks to *** like von Papen, who all feared the SPD would form th gouvernment and bring an left democratic party into gouvernment. This person choose the only person who could save them, it was clear from the beginning, that they made a deal with the devil. By the way all the folks still living after WWII were either directly called innocent for this or if judged guilty and convicted, set free by german judges like von Papen. A lot of them just got the "Persilschein" aka a truly innocent upstanding citicen, who never did something wrong.

Von Papen and the guys he led really underestimated Hitler, because they thought he would play by their rules, which demagogues never do. To quote von Papen "I have the confidence of Hindenburg! In two months, we'll have pushed Hitler so far into the corner that he'll squeal." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_von_Papen

Last edited by Willy; 07-02-2022 at 01:56 PM. Reason: added quote spelling error
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Old 07-02-2022, 05:23 PM   #142
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

So, to recap, it seems like the fictional premise here is no fossil fuels, no fission fuels, and that they all run out fairly quickly but not instantly over the course of a decade or two. Is that about right, OP? And are new metal ores gone too, or are they just harder to extract due to higher energy costs?

(This is possibly not likely in the real world. As previously mentioned, the World3 simulation lumps all non-renewable resources together as a single variable, leading to the bizarre apparent prediction of oil, coal and uranium all running out at the same time, whereas in fact it's just an artifact of them using a very simplified model. I don't know whether the updated versions fix this or not. And even in the World3 simulation, "non-renewable resources" aren't down to zero after the big drop, only much scarcer/harder to extract (and the depletion slows down a lot after that point, so it stays at roughly that level). But "no fossils, no fissiles" is the premise the OP specified, and it's interesting to play with).

To be honest, a lot of things might be plausible with this premise, including KarlKost's earlier nightmare scenario (where agriculture is somehow caught completely unprepared, leading to mass starvation, leading to raiding, cannibalism and a return to the Stone Age) and the kind of advanced all-organic utopia promised by optimistic sustainability experts. So a GM could do whatever suits es taste.

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Perhaps looking at it through a more localized (hyper-localized) lens might help. Don't think of The US, but rather Boulder, CO. Or think about Appalachia. Or perhaps the Mississippi delta. It isn't crazy to think that some form of regional stability could form in any of those (or many other) locations. Those nation states are MUCH smaller than the US, but any collection of them that has reached stability could feasibly begin working together to mutual benefit.
This seems sensible. And a GM could, in fact, have several of the plausible scenarios happen in different parts of the game world. This wouldn't be implausible given that the starting conditions would be very different in different places.
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Old 07-02-2022, 08:19 PM   #143
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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...

To be honest, a lot of things might be plausible with this premise, including KarlKost's earlier nightmare scenario (where agriculture is somehow caught completely unprepared, leading to mass starvation, leading to raiding, cannibalism and a return to the Stone Age) and the kind of advanced all-organic utopia promised by optimistic sustainability experts. So a GM could do whatever suits es taste.

....
This two extremes seems like a good start for a setting. Some all organic utopia is surrounded by cannibal stone age savages... Zardoz more or less.
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Old 07-03-2022, 12:21 AM   #144
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by Inky View Post
So, to recap, it seems like the fictional premise here is no fossil fuels, no fission fuels, and that they all run out fairly quickly but not instantly over the course of a decade or two. Is that about right, OP? And are new metal ores gone too, or are they just harder to extract due to higher energy costs?

(This is possibly not likely in the real world. As previously mentioned, the World3 simulation lumps all non-renewable resources together as a single variable, leading to the bizarre apparent prediction of oil, coal and uranium all running out at the same time, whereas in fact it's just an artifact of them using a very simplified model. I don't know whether the updated versions fix this or not. And even in the World3 simulation, "non-renewable resources" aren't down to zero after the big drop, only much scarcer/harder to extract (and the depletion slows down a lot after that point, so it stays at roughly that level). But "no fossils, no fissiles" is the premise the OP specified, and it's interesting to play with).

To be honest, a lot of things might be plausible with this premise, including KarlKost's earlier nightmare scenario (where agriculture is somehow caught completely unprepared, leading to mass starvation, leading to raiding, cannibalism and a return to the Stone Age) and the kind of advanced all-organic utopia promised by optimistic sustainability experts. So a GM could do whatever suits es taste.



This seems sensible. And a GM could, in fact, have several of the plausible scenarios happen in different parts of the game world. This wouldn't be implausible given that the starting conditions would be very different in different places.
If it takes a few decades, the "impending doom" might not even come after all; we may have build spacial solar painels beaming the energy to Earth, we could be mining asteroids and such such.

If it were to disappear tomorrow like magic thou, then all bets are off.
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Old 07-03-2022, 09:06 AM   #145
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

If planners believe the Club of Rome predictions and political leaders realize they would have to pay for a failure to plan, then much could be done. This may seem odd, but in our world political leaders normally have a long enough time frame that they assume that someone else can take the blame. Thus they can totally ignore on coming threats that would cost political capital to deal with.

This scenario, because it's obvious and unavoidable, would require mature planning and disciplined sacrifices. The same clear and obvious qualities would cancel out the forces demanding the problem be ignored. If the problem weren't as obvious, like most real world problems, political expediency would force people to ignore the problem until it was far to late to do anything useful or sane about it.

We aren't used to scenarios like the one proposed. Most recent history and present politics is like my second case.
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Old 07-03-2022, 09:41 AM   #146
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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If planners believe the Club of Rome predictions and political leaders realize they would have to pay for a failure to plan, then much could be done. This may seem odd, but in our world political leaders normally have a long enough time frame that they assume that someone else can take the blame. Thus they can totally ignore on coming threats that would cost political capital to deal with.

This scenario, because it's obvious and unavoidable, would require mature planning and disciplined sacrifices. The same clear and obvious qualities would cancel out the forces demanding the problem be ignored. If the problem weren't as obvious, like most real world problems, political expediency would force people to ignore the problem until it was far to late to do anything useful or sane about it.

We aren't used to scenarios like the one proposed. Most recent history and present politics is like my second case.
If you want long time horizons, you want things to be treated as capital assets whose value can go up or down, and for which decreases in value are felt by individual decision makers as leaving them worse off. Changes in future value are reflected in changes in present net worth; net worth is the discounted value of a string of future gains and losses.

Of course, the discounting itself reflects a degree of underestimation of future costs, though it may be a rational one, in that there is more time to plan for future costs than for present ones. But if you want to minimize discounting, historically interest rates (the other side of discounting) have been higher in times of risk; you want to limit avoidable risks, and in particular, to have as much security of tenure of assets as possible.

It also helps if inflation is avoided or minimized. If the unit of account itself has an unstable value it's just that much harder to estimate future costs, and especially to have an emotional basis for judging how tolerable they are.
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Old 07-03-2022, 11:19 AM   #147
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by Inky View Post
So, to recap, it seems like the fictional premise here is no fossil fuels, no fission fuels, and that they all run out fairly quickly but not instantly over the course of a decade or two. Is that about right, OP? And are new metal ores gone too, or are they just harder to extract due to higher energy costs?

(This is possibly not likely in the real world. As previously mentioned, the World3 simulation lumps all non-renewable resources together as a single variable, leading to the bizarre apparent prediction of oil, coal and uranium all running out at the same time, whereas in fact it's just an artifact of them using a very simplified model. I don't know whether the updated versions fix this or not. And even in the World3 simulation, "non-renewable resources" aren't down to zero after the big drop, only much scarcer/harder to extract (and the depletion slows down a lot after that point, so it stays at roughly that level). But "no fossils, no fissiles" is the premise the OP specified, and it's interesting to play with).
With that premise you are basically set on a path to TL4-TL5 at best. The 2030-2040 window IMHO is just not enough time for renewables to be self sustainable. You still need something for lubrication and with fossil fuel oil off the table at best you have algae oil or animal fats as a substitute.

For a more realistic look at the future The Crisis of the 21st Century, The Four Trends of the 21st Century, and Wars of the 2020s and 30s.
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Old 07-03-2022, 07:30 PM   #148
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

Hadn't even thought of oil used for lubrication. There are some attempts being made at using vegetable oils for that, but, once again, it's a question of how much there is to go round for all these different purposes. (Algae oil would make that easier, since you wouldn't have the problem of not enough land to grow it on, but large-scale production of algae oil seems to be presenting a lot of technical difficulties at the moment. If a GM wanted to have their setting higher TL they could say that a breakthrough was made with that, giving their setting slightly more oil to use).

The expression the OP originally used was
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Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec View Post
<snip>
Recoverable fissile and fossil fuels are depleted to insignificance (but other metals can be scavenged from the infrastructure).
</snip>
It might make a lot of difference what "insignificance" meant. Insignificant for the purposes of energy generation (either in power stations or in car engines), presumably. But is it so little that it's "insignificant" compared to the amounts needed to lubricate industrial machinery? Is it "insignificant" compared to the amounts needed as feedstock for the chemical industry? As I mentioned before, the World3 simulation only predicts a lot less of the "non-renewable resources", not none, so even in a setting based on that, you could get away with allowing small amounts if you wanted a higher TL. If you want a setting that's operating on a mostly pre-industrial level, on the other hand, make it zero oil and gas (though I'm not sure how realistic that is, short of magic - but then, coal and uranium running out at the same time as those wasn't realistic either) and be tight-fisted with your estimates of how much renewable energy the US, say, could hope to produce. (They might even produce less than now, since the increased expense of manufacturing and agriculture would get in the way of producing solar panels and biofuels as well as anything else).
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Old 07-03-2022, 08:53 PM   #149
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

If any TL5+ items that are currently mass-produced in factories are still around in this setting, you might expect them to be more expensive, either because they're now hand-made or, if still factory-made, because the energy costs of running the factory and the costs of the raw materials have got higher.
But a quick glance at the Low-Tech and High-Tech equipment lists in GCS seems to show that the listed GURPS$ prices don't, in fact, change with TL (for items that appear in both, such as blankets, boots, 5-gallon containers, etc.).
I don't have Low-Tech or High-Tech handy.
Is the increase in Starting Wealth with higher TLs supposed to cover items getting cheaper with mass production and other advances in production technology/resource obtaining, rather than needing to alter the prices in GURPS$ listed for particular items?
If so, possibly you'd need to pick a TL for this setting to be equivalent to for purposes of Starting Wealth.
TL4 ($2,000) or TL5 ($5,000), or somewhere in between, seems likely off-hand, unless the setting is a long way towards the optimistic end of how much electricity, other fuels, raw materials and equipment they'd have to spare - TL4 is the last TL before large-scale mass production, but it seems likely that they'd keep at least some advances that allowed more efficient production even with much less energy to play with.
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Old 07-03-2022, 09:08 PM   #150
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

On one note, there's a bunch of post apocaliptic stories, most of which involves nukes. There's also the AI ones, and lately zombis became a popular cause; I even read one related to vampires, and the (awful) movies of Vampires x Werewolves sort of had such a similar end.

But I dont record some "economic-post-apocalipse" stories - except the boring old malthusian ones about how capitalism is the big-evil that destroys environment and consumes every natural resource.

I'd like a cool "economic-apocalipse". Current geopolitics are giving great ideas for those - for example, russian fertilizers evaporate, economic crisis over the entire world, Brazil and US shut down exportation of food to keep internal prices low, China gets on the brink of destruction fearing mass famine, and in desperation invades Taiwan, US dont declare full war but fully blockades all trade to China - boom, all global logistically chains utterly broken, mas global famines, a starving middle east turns into a massive war field as countries fight for scraps... And things just keep getting worse and worse, until finally social cohesion finally break everywhere, governments start shooting their own citizens in a desperate attempt to "keep order", including in the US, and an endless succession of civil wars just simply destroy the last bits of civilization remaining... And however is left alive are now just bunches of groups of raiders fighting each other for "territory".

Maybe that's not as glamourous as having nukes or zombies thou
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