New Reality Seeds

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It's not that they don't spy on those worlds. They're just far more careful.

A number of the high-tech worlds are secret or heavily restricted, like Reich-5, Shikaku-Mon, and Caliph. The Lenin world where electric cars were discovered has uneven technological development, so was kind of perfect to steal technology.

But yeah, there's enough high-tech worlds for Infinity to spy on that fusion power would likely have been acquired. And it would have been a big priority for Infinity - definitely would have presented it to "the people of Homeline" as reason to support Infinity.

High-tech worlds also are more likely to have diverged far enough that there's no matching inventor on Homeline, so no having to pay royalties to them.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by fchase8

Could Homeline have fusion power? It would seem next on the tech list, but the worlds that have it are dangerous - Shikaku-Mon, Reich-5, Caliph. Maybe Bonaparte-5?

Originally Posted by fchase8

But yeah, there's enough high-tech worlds for Infinity to spy on that fusion power would likely have been acquired. And it would have been a big priority for Infinity - definitely would have presented it to "the people of Homeline" as reason to support Infinity.

This in canonical and presented in several places in the book. look at pages 9, 13, 23, 36, 40, and 84 (but mostly 23). Fusion power isn't just available, it has had wide ranging economic effects.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by ericthered

This in canonical and presented in several places in the book. look at pages 9, 13, 23, 36, 40, and 84 (but mostly 23). Fusion power isn't just available, it has had wide ranging economic effects.

Good call - I guess I just didn't notice because fusion power isn't one of the wild things among the many, many wild things of GURPS Infinity Earths.

[chaotic-nipple]

Originally Posted by fchase8

Doesn't all that oil imported from other worlds contribute to climate change on Homeline?

In my headcanon, all the coal-, oil-, and natural gas-fired powerplants on Homeline use specially designed conveyers to vent their exhaust into uninhabited parallels. Combined with all newly built vehicles being electric, CO2 emissions are essentially zero.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by chaotic-nipple

In my headcanon, all the coal-, oil-, and natural gas-fired powerplants on Homeline use specially designed conveyers to vent their exhaust into uninhabited parallels. Combined with all newly built vehicles being electric, CO2 emissions are essentially zero.

The problem there is conveyers aren't gates, they're vehicles. If you've already captured all the CO2 into a dense enough form to be economically transported, it seems to me like you've done half the work of doing something more useful with it than just dumping it. Pressurizing your oil wells on those same uninhabited parallels you got the oil from if nothing else. More economically viable carbon capture technologies are an interesting idea for a potentially valuable target to be stolen from other advanced timelines.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by chaotic-nipple

In my headcanon, all the coal-, oil-, and natural gas-fired powerplants on Homeline use specially designed conveyers to vent their exhaust into uninhabited parallels.

The Fascinating Parachronic Disasters table (p. B532) suggests that this will have side effects.

[arcanus]

Originally Posted by fchase8

Doesn't all that oil imported from other worlds contribute to climate change on Homeline?

Lenin 2 and similar enviro collapse hellworlds would have shaken UNIC and HL governments to the core, seeing Armageddon playing out in real life stops the can being kicked to future generations. Plus HL has alternate revenue streams to replace or clean up climate damaging industries.

Oil is largely purchased on an abundant Worldline for sale on other Worldlines, oil used for industry would probably be manufactured off-world.

Originally Posted by chaotic-nipple

In my headcanon, all the coal-, oil-, and natural gas-fired powerplants on Homeline use specially designed conveyers to vent their exhaust into uninhabited parallels. Combined with all newly built vehicles being electric, CO2 emissions are essentially zero.

Originally Posted by malloyd

The problem there is conveyers aren't gates, they're vehicles. If you've already captured all the CO2 into a dense enough form to be economically transported, it seems to me like you've done half the work of doing something more useful with it than just dumping it. Pressurizing your oil wells on those same uninhabited parallels you got the oil from if nothing else. More economically viable carbon capture technologies are an interesting idea for a potentially valuable target to be stolen from other advanced timelines.

Clean energy would be an area that reaches TL8+1 or 9 soonest because of fear, the acquisition of carbon capture, compression and storage tech would be lucrative and probably easy to acquire (steal/copy) than weapon tech.

However it’s an interesting thought around Nexus Oversight and Paralabs experimenting with artificial gates to vent emissions, although if you can off-site the exhausts you can probably off-world the power plants with a perpetually open gate that solves the emission issue.

Of course as John Dallman says it could create other problems.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by arcanus

Lenin 2 and similar enviro collapse hellworlds would have shaken UNIC and HL governments to the core, seeing Armageddon playing out in real life stops the can being kicked to future generations. Plus HL has alternate revenue streams to replace or clean up climate damaging industries.

Oil is largely purchased on an abundant Worldline for sale on other Worldlines, oil used for industry would probably be manufactured off-world.

Clean energy would be an area that reaches TL8+1 or 9 soonest because of fear, the acquisition of carbon capture, compression and storage tech would be lucrative and probably easy to acquire (steal/copy) than weapon tech.

However it’s an interesting thought around Nexus Oversight and Paralabs experimenting with artificial gates to vent emissions, although if you can off-site the exhausts you can probably off-world the power plants with a perpetually open gate that solves the emission issue.

Of course as John Dallman says it could create other problems.

Yes, perhaps the oil brought to Homeline is use for plastics and the like - like how oil is mostly used on GURPS Transhuman Space.

If parachronics are possible, then pretty much anything is - certainly advanced environmental science. Infinity could put some sort of super-cleaning doohickey at factories and other industrial sites. Lenin-3 electric cars means they don't have to be put on cars.

And industries we don't immediately think of as polluting could also move off-world. Livestock, fishing, even farming, could move off-world, saving Homeline from everything from overtaxed water tables to the methane from cow farts.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

This Q4 low Mana parallel is going through a rather pulpy version to the 1930s. Complete with trips to the moon (the UK, France, Germany, Russia, and the USA have moonbases, the Empires of Brazil and Japan are planning on building their own), supertech, and masked mystery men and women. They also have the more "normal" stuff of the 1930s (although the USA is notably less racist, sexist, and homophobic, than Homeline was in the 1970s, no one knows why).

However this parallel Earth is being invaded by aliens. Unlike a conventional pulp alien invasion, these aliens are only TL3! They're still a threat to this TL6^ Earth because they have Magic!

Basically, a pulp 1930s being invaded by a Sword and Sorcery/ Planetary Romance world. Sure the invaders have Wizards and scraps of Barsoom-style super technology, but 1930s Earth is no walk in the park. But do let Conan and Red Sonja run into Doc Savage and the Shadow,

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by fchase8

Homeline does likely use more nuclear power (presumably no Fukushima disaster there, either). And there are electric cars, thanks to the design 'imported' (i.e., stolen) from I think Lenin-3.

Parachronic tech doesn't help that much with fission power. It solves the waste problem by dumping it on some useless timeline, but the accident dangers are still there, as are the social or political objections.

How hard would it be to store power in some form just long enough to it to be transposed to Homeline? Conveyors full of capacitors or hydrogen or something.

Can you build a really big one-use projector or conveyor around the reactor building to get it off Homeline in an emergency?

On the other hand, one of the way to address this is to move the more energy-intensive industrial processes to another timeline where accidents are a more a financial loss and less of a danger to the public. (Metal refining, concrete production, fertilizers, etc.)