Re: Terra during the Long Night

> From: Hans Rancke-Madsen [email removed]
> Subject: (3413) Re: Terra during the Long Night
>
> I find it hard to dispute your arguments, because I find them very
> plausible. But the key here is that we are not looking at Terra at
> the beginning of The Long Night and trying to extrapolate what
> might happen. We're looking at Terra before and after The Long
> Night and trying to interpolate why things _didn't_ go the way
> you suggest. So the answer here is that it could, but obviously
> it didn't.

  I'm not totally convinced about that because our data is sadly lacking.
Almost all we have are two datapoints: UN-something have become a defacto
EarthGov before/during the Interstellar Wars and Terra is probably united
when the Dawn comes.

  It would be as if shown two pictures of Europe 1800 years apart, one over
the Roman Empire year 200 and one over the (potential) EEC year 2000.
A deduction from that might be that the changes in 1800 years are that
the focus of the political entity has gone northwards, the different regions
(called 'nations') have become more independent, the name have changed, and
the government has changed. The two latter probably happened at the same time
with the change in government leading to the change of name.

  I think it is very possible, keeping in mind that a lot of things can
happen during 1800 years, for a planet to begin as one entity, balcanize in
several periods, fight some wars and unite again.

  S&A talks about the Dusk and mentions that the Old Earth Union, which
apparently included Terra and some worlds probably not further from Terra
than 10 or 15 parsecs, failed during one point in the Night, that all
habitations in the Solar System except for Luna were abandoned at some
time during the night and that the Terran Mercantile Community existed at one
point during the night. It still leaves half-a-millenium sized holes in the
history.

  When discussing Terran participation in Interstellar communities during
the Long Night it is interesting to note that one of the prerequisites for
something like this to form in the first part of a Night is jump-1 access
to other worlds. Terra has only 4 neighbours on jump-2 distance and none on
jump-1. Had there been just one less neighbour on jump-2, Terra would have got
the Hard Times classification of "Isolated" which would have made matters
worse.

> True, lack of ressources allows the weirdos, the sickos and the
> powermongers free play. But a sufficiency of ressources gives
> the sane people a chance. Only a chance, granted, but apparently
> Terra lucked out during the Long Night. The solution would be a
> controlled populations _and_an_absence_of_rivals_.

  My guess as to the effective TL of Terra during the Long Night is 9, since
this is the lowest that supports jumptech. This is a fall of 4 units from
the C level they had at the end of the wars. Imagine the depression that can
make a TL go down 4 units. It is like going from today to before the Wright
brothers.

> >  Also note the large number of *ethnically homogenous* worlds all over
> >Charted Space hailing from *ethnically homogenous* fleets of low-sleep
> >ships from Terra launched during the Long Night or shortly before.
>
> What fleets? The ships that colonized Old Islands Subsector were launched
> prior to the invention of the jump drive. As for the ethnical homogenous-
> ness of a lot of worlds I refer to my library data piece about National
> Reemergence for a plausible (well, I think it's plausible) explanation.

  Going from S&A, there are two periods of mass emmigration from Terra.
The first is where big groups of various small nationalities go and colonize
because they fear that EarthGov and the situation on Terra will effectively
annihilate their cultures (through dissolution and absobtion). This occur
around the Fall of Night.

  The second wave, not stated explicitely, occur around -400 Imperial and it
is now those who will eventually become the Sworldworlders leave. This is at
the absolute depths of the night. This isn't commented upon, but it has a
mark on the timeline.

  BTW: You mention your library data entry, and I remember it mentioning a
planet called Funftreich. It made me wonder were the Fourth Reich were. My bet
would be on Terra, during the Night.

> >PS: I'll try to give pre-Night Terra the 'Hard Times UWP treatement' and
> >we'll see what the result is:)
>
> That could be interesting ;-) But don't forget that there are
> no Lucan the Nutter involved in the fall of the Long Night.

  That is why I didn't include any warzone, intense warzone and black
(nukem-til-they-glow) warzone DM's in the analysis of Terra:)

>       Hans Rancke

- -bertil-
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