Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I didn't say fifty miles of planetary crust would be vaporized. I said it wouldn't protect you. Not the same thing at all. And I also specified that a "botched stellar engineering project" was the source of the radiation. I know physics isn't my long suit. However I did try to get it right.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I had a similar idea where benefactor aliens export humans to an artificial habitat -- essentially allowing humans to rebuild their societies on the (insert cool Big Dumb Object here).

Then there's the actual rescue process. Aliens show up to explain that a phenomenon that doesn't match our know physics is going to destroy Earth. What method do they use to explain the problem? Do they try to teach us first where our physics is wrong (which requires accelerators of much higher energy level than what we currently have), or do they try emotional, or even manipulative means in order to save humanity?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

It should be possible to tone down the radiation so that it will wreck the biosphere but not actually boil off the oceans. So yeah you can survive in a bunker but with nearly all the animal and plant life killed off, your atmosphere is ruined and there's no food chain.

I think though the problem is that if the aliens have 80 years to work with and the tech to lift 1940s human population off the Earth, they should be able to run a megaproject to shield the planet anyway.

Maybe they have excellent wormhole tech and everything else is TL9. The disaster is going to strike in less than 1 year's time. The aliens can erect multiple large wormholes to a human-habitable safe planet. Everyone can get out, they have to be willing and able to travel to a wormhole and walk (or drive) through.

Of course, many millions of people simply won't want to go. Some governments will actively prevent people from leaving or reaching wormholes which are activated in their territory.

Actually this is probably a bigger story than the Return To Earth.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The Mandate: Instead of a faux Rome in space, a faux Chinese Empire in space. NeoConfucian legalism and bioroids instead of eunuchs.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

There's a sci fi trilogy or longer series with Earth ruled by a brutal racist Chinese empire. Those seeking FTL drives are hunted rebels.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The idea of the peoples of 1940s Earth scattered on the Ringworld and striving to rebuild their lives is grand. Placing Stalin and Mao to far away to harm the West would both give the West security and lock their nations in misery.

I could see great migrations of peoples seeking peace and security.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

If they're really lazy (or simply desperately short on time), create a menace who'll attack the humans in some horribly destructive way., but not actually kill anyone. Then show up to "save" the day. But then you tell the humans that an even bigger menace is going to show up, so the humans need to evacuate.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Ringworlds possess millions of times the area of Earth, so humans would be very spread out (around 1 person per million square kilometers). Humanity would go extinct within a century just because it would be impossible to find anyone to breed with.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Well they'd go extinct if the aliens decided to make human population density uniform across an entire Ringworld, but they might decide to apply a less extreme version of 'scattered'.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Agreed! They'd scatter the nations and communities. The people who make up these communities would be more clumped together. England might be twelve thousand miles from Wales. Nations might be on different sides of the great oceans or maybe even on one of the island maps of worlds.