Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Willy

(SNIP)

By the way I really have to read this book series, I always wanted but forgot the title. In which edition was the comment from the author, or had he wrote a book how and why I wrote this series like Eddings did.

It's pretty good, although I wound up liking the Emberverse series, better.

Here's the information about the series. I bought the paperbacks as soon as they appeared in the locally owned bookstore, Tattered Cover:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nantucket_series
http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=5723

I loaned out the trilogy to someone who never returned it, and I haven't yet replaced it, but IIRC, Stirling's comments appeared in the afterword to the last book, On the Oceans of Eternity.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

My 3e, Revised on p.185 lists Balloons as TL4 technology rather than a TL6. Perhaps another case of somebody starting TL5 in 1800 in ther heads.

It also had Zeppelins as a TL5 thing. though I suppose that could have been a literal 1900/1901 distinction.

Classic had issues with where it placed things in TL.

Vehicles put manned balloons along with Helicopter drivetrain, tracked drivetrain, liquid fuel rocket, helium airships, weapon bays (in aircraft), radar, sonar, bombsight, airlock, steam turbine, and diesel engine in TL6 not TL5

Classic: Steamtech p. 90-91 put Zeppelin at TL(5+1), effectively TL6, not TL5. It used the real life Luftschiff Zeppelin 3 (launched 1906)

4e puts Zeppelin in TL6 wich agrees with Classic: Steamtech but not the basic set revised.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

What I was saying is that there arent people in Yrth who were banestormed from much higher TLs (like there's no one from our TL8 or above) because that would end up "ruining" the setting, turning it into at least a "steampunk-magic" in no time

Oh there have been people banestormed from much higher TLs: Niall of Fordham (Banestorm 117) comes from 1993 (Revised as TL8 in 2000). They just have to keep hidden less the Ministry of Serendipity comes a calling and wipes their memories.

If something on par with the original Banestorm happened and a few TL8 towns or worse military bases from Merlin-1 showed up Yrth would be in a world of hurt.

[maximara]

Some other examples of real life TL6, given as TL(5+1) in Classic, that appeared before 1901:

1850s: Electropathic Belt
1853: Acetylsalicylic Acid invented
1889: Wireless Field Telephone invented but production doesn't become cheap until c 1910
1892: Dewar vacuum Flask
1893: The Kinetophone (Speaking Mutoscope) sound-film method is said to have been demonstrated at the Chicago World's Fair
1894: Earliest date for The Dickson Experimental Sound Film (the first movie to record sound and moving image in synchronization aka Speaking Mutoscope) — TL6

[Astromancer]

The key in the original idea of this thread was that the Club of Rome's predictions were basically correct. This world wouldn't suggest a sudden collapse like Karl was talking about.

There would be famines, mainly in nations that didn't have productive preindustrial agriculture. But in the areas of the planet with good agricultural land farming would evolve.

Although there would be violence in this scenario, it would be more like the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Because our history books skip from the old developed Mediterranean cities to the relatively undeveloped and primitive north, we have a skewed view of Rome's collapse.

This scenario has more threat from apathy than mob violence.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by maximara

4e puts Zeppelin in TL6 wich agrees with Classic: Steamtech but not the basic set revised.

4e doesn't have to agree with any earlier edition. It's allowed to change them.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

4e doesn't have to agree with any earlier edition. It's allowed to change them.

True but the fact Zeppelin got moved from TL5 to TL(5+1) showed even where things fell in Classic TLwise varied.

I think the reason the Kinetophone (Speaking Mutoscope) isn't mentioned as a real late 19th century technology is the authors/editors didn't know. Side note this particular version of sound movie picture was abandoned in 1914 when the Edison's West Orange complex burned and all the master were destroyed.

It is also one of the few real world examples of TL(5+1) as it used mechanical means so common to TL5 to sync picture and sound. Its TL6 counterpart is Lauste's 1907 sound on film method which used the electrical means that would be common at that TL.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by maximara

I think the reason the Kinetophone (Speaking Mutoscope) isn't mentioned as a real late 19th century technology is the authors/editors didn't know. .

I'd bet the author did know but didn't have room for _everything_.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Inky

This may be true. I was just meaning that there have been advances in methods of growing crops even without agrochemicals since the days of, say, four-field crop rotation, which was itself a big advance in its day.

One subtle effect is that even if there [haven't] been actual advances in methods, the modern craftsmen are just better trained. Techniques used by a few masters at TL3, who made it work through gut feeling, are now in every textbook as procedural algorithms that anybody can apply and get to work.
Yes often because it's now understood, but even if it isn't enough people have worked on it and shared their results to have refined it into such an procedure. Apply that to stuff that would have been known by a dozen *different* sets of masters, and the modern journeyman is better than any of them.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I'd bet the author did know but didn't have room for _everything_.

Given the historical Mutoscope came out in 1894 which is after the Kinetoscope's first public demonstration in 1893 I don't think they did know.

Kinetophone takes up less space than "Speaking Mutoscope" and there are three lines of extra space on page 58's second column so there was room.

Here is how it could have been set up on page 58:

'Invented by Edison in 1894, the Kinetophone may be found at penny arcades, wall-mounted or sitting on a stand.' Rest of text remains the same with "Kinetophone" replacing "Mutoscope". Boom, the key piece of information provided. Heck, with three lines one could squeeze in something else on page 58 if one so wished.

As for page 7 Piltdown Man isn't a 'real. historical invention or device' and could have been removed to make room for "Kinetophone" 1894 between "Formaldehyde" and "Cinematograph".

Going back to the OPs "Recoverable fissile and fossil fuels are depleted to insignificance (but other metals can be scavenged from the infrastructure)", there is one major flaw with the that part of the premise.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says "recoverable coal reserves would last about 470 years, and recoverable reserves at producing mines would last about 25 years".

Now one could argue that pollution gets so bad that even though one still has coal that burning it is a bad idea but if pollution is that bad humanity is basically toast.