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Old 09-01-2018, 01:26 AM   #16
Seneschal
 
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Default Re: [Sci-fi] Plausible scenarios for the evacuation of Earth at TL10-11

Hmm, hmm, bummer. I'm starting to develop an appreciation for the way EP did it (rampant AI kill almost everyone, then mysteriously disappear; the surviving 10% are stuck in space, with an Earth infested by orphaned killer-bots).

So, basically, lifting anything close to 10 billion people is a no-no if the setting is to remain anywhere near hard SF. And I postulated that the event cannot be a massive die-off. And, as has been pointed out, any degree of livability remaining on Earth will trump a mass migration into space. And, the argument that a significant percentage, perhaps even a majority, would refuse to leave on purely sentimental grounds, short of the planet literally exploding, is quite convincing

I'll have to adjust the scale a bit - the problems seem to crop up when there is a sudden and imminent (within 10-20 years) threat, and any orbital lifting or space habitation/colonization effort has to meet hundreds of times the demand it was built to support.

Perhaps if I set up a much more gradual crisis, like environmental collapse due to climate change unfolding over 100 years, it would give the setting more time to contemplate and develop the technologies needed. Pressure to relocate somewhere without hurricanes that erase cities from maps could build up over time. It could culminate in one of those nightmare-scenarios, like a massive methane release, that would briefly make conditions on Earth undesirable enough that aerostats, O'Neill cylinders, and domes on the Moon start looking downright peachy. What started as scientific outposts or luxurious refuges for the elite end up housing much of humanity for a while, many of them as bodiless infugees, with billions still hunkering down on the surface.
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