NationStates Map/Roleplay

[FiahOwl]

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[vh]

this sounds like a ksp backstory for why there are so many asteroids

[FiahOwl]

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[atomic7732]

"It appears that the state of Universalis is particularly irradiated compared to the other worlds in our planetary system. It is not so extremely irradiated such that life cannot survive, nor was it likely to ever have been, but the levels of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation from our planet are 300 times higher than the radiation detected by probes that have passed by Saunver or Vulcan, and additionally, are in stark contrast to our natural satellites. The Soleani Department of Space Exploration and Defense has proposed that the highly-intelligent species recently [in the past few decades, several unidentified satellites of non-Universalis orgins were discovered shortly after the first spaceflight was achieved, so probably around 578-580] discovered on Saunver may be to blame.

In this theory,  elaborated upon by top scientists in Nausikkak, the radiation is explained to have come from an act, or experiment, by the Saunveri species, upon this world, in which in excess of several thousands of nuclear weapons were detonated, likely dating back to ~150,000 to 200,000 years ago, accelerating the process of evolution. This project's initiation led to the formation of the current state of life on Universalis, including the sentience of both humans and saguans, and extreme genetic variation within these species."

- In an official statement from the Soleani Department of Space Exploration and Defense, 615

(just an idea, but I quite like it)

<Darvince> universalis has some positively weird genes
<Darvince> like
<Darvince> green hair
<Darvince> and weird fetus distributions
<Darvince> although i guess they'd say our blue eyes and red hair is weird
<Kalassak> green hair though
<Darvince> yes like wut
<Kalassak> i get the feeling universalis is on a post-apocalyptic irradiated world
<Darvince> also there should be no truly white people
<Darvince> except maybe kallisto
<Darvince> well if you get that feeling
<Darvince> then we can arrange that
<Kalassak> kol
<Kalassak> nah
<osmotischen2> transparent skin
<osmotischen2> yeeee
<Darvince> saunave came over and nuked the shit out of it
<Darvince> and then left
<Darvince> just to see what would happen
<Kalassak> and then saguans
<Kalassak> happened
<Darvince> and humans happened
<Kalassak> hmm yes

[Bla]

Radiation, for the most part, causes neutral or harmful mutations rather than beneficial ones. The levels have to be sufficiently low for evolution's selection to have the positive ones be favored and the negative ones filtered out.
I think it's a very unrealistic explanation that high radiation levels should give rise to species like saguans or humans so I'd suggest for it not to be canon. If humans were a result of high radiation levels they'd have a lot more defects and other features than if they evolved by adapting to environments over millions of years. And even more that another civilization happens to evolve on another planet in the same solar system around the same time as Universalis.

[atomic7732]

Radiation, for the most part, causes neutral or harmful mutations rather than beneficial ones.

Is that... how evolution works?

I mean I can see that most mutations might be harmful and neutral, but it would have to be in all cases imo, not just radiation-caused.

[FiahOwl]

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[atomic7732]

- I think short-term nuclear weapons are more likely to cause radiation poisoning, nuclear winter and death which pretty much makes the future look bleak

this was hundreds of thousands of years ago

- what would be the point of detonating thousands of nuclear weapons on another planet? It'd be extreeeemely expensive to maneuver them into a collision course let alone properly adjust it to hit specific regions of sagua and Lysteriok

its an experiment

[Bla]

Radiation, for the most part, causes neutral or harmful mutations rather than beneficial ones.

Is that... how evolution works?

I mean I can see that most mutations might be harmful and neutral, but it would have to be in all cases imo, not just radiation-caused.

Yes, it is in all cases, radiation isn't any different than the other causes of mutations. My point still stands.

[atomic7732]

but with a mutation rate much higher beneficial mutations like sentient species occur much quicker than they normally would - it's not counter-intuitive

[Bla]

but with a mutation rate much higher beneficial mutations like sentient species occur much quicker than they normally would - it's not counter-intuitive

A too high mutation rate leads to accumulating bad mutations. The mutation rate needs to be sufficiently low for natural selection to filter out the damaging mutations. So even though good ones will occur more often, bad ones will also be more frequent, and the length of each generation stays the same, so the same selective forces has the same amount of time to handle many more variations, good or bad.

It really all depends on the numbers. There is an optimal point for evolution to work - too high mutation rates means accumulating errors and too low means low ability to adapt. From how you wrote your post it sounds very much like it would be too high if it's 300 times what it is even outside the atmospheres of two other planets, unless it passed by within their atmospheres, in which case I'd need to know the radiation levels there, as it could simply be 1/300 Earth and there'd be no problem obviously.
Astronauts would already face serious health risks due to radiation alone in space if they had no space suit.

[atomic7732]

idunno i imagine you could measure it some way and the details could be figured out

[Bla]

Think the ozone layer protecting early life on Earth against UV rays from space causing higher mutation rates, etc.

Some oxygen was stimulated by incoming ultraviolet radiation to form ozone, which collected in a layer near the upper part of the atmosphere. The ozone layer absorbed, and still absorbs, a significant amount of the ultraviolet radiation that once had passed through the atmosphere. It allowed cells to colonize the surface of the ocean and eventually the land: without the ozone layer, ultraviolet radiation bombarding land and sea would have caused unsustainable levels of mutation in exposed cells.[89][43]:219–220

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Earth#Oxygen_revolution
Ozone absorbs about 97-99% of UV rays which corresponds to about just 30-100 times less radiation - that order of magnitude already causes unsustainably high mutation rates at the surface.

I'm just saying I'm rejecting the idea because I think it's unrealistic the radiation will positively affect the evolution of life on the planet, because I think it's very unlikely to have advanced life, even civilizations, develop on 2 planets in the same solar system independently (I assume Universalis has a history of life billions of years old), and I don't like the idea of the other civ nuking Universalis with life on it. I'm not really interested in spending my time calculating on it, I think a more probable and realistic history is to have life evolve on Universalis similarly to on Earth and have no other civilizations in the solar system, so that is how I'd suggest for history to be.

[Darvince]

saunver is much hotter so everything goes faster, it may have evidence of one or two past intelligent species that lived on it

[Bla]

It "may have" makes it sound like we're exploring a fictive world that exists independently of us, but we're writing it, so it'll only show evidence of it if we choose that it should.

It's probably unlikely for life to evolve on a planet already, so I'd say we should keep at least advanced life to having only evolved on Universalis, and then the life from there/today's civilizations may have colonized other planets - but still having Universalis as its origin. If another planet has life comparable to single-celled organisms or something I don't mind that much, but I'd say no to advanced and intelligent life.

[atomic7732]

so boring

i at least want an advanced civilization that creates some tension and apprehension and catalyzes space technology on universalis (or scares us into submission)

that would be a fun universalian debate: to go to space, or to not go to space?

space is already conquered by another species (that'd be another speculation that we can decide: whether they've explored the solar system or not)... what do they (not) want with universalis? and have it like maybe they're observing us or something

[Darvince]

just because our solar system only has one planet with life, doesn't mean that others can't have multiple planets with complex life. in fact, i don't think that any stage of life evolving and advancing is particularly rare except perhaps achieving sentience, although there are several sentient species on earth (humans, elephants, dolphins). in fact i'd say that having multiple planets with multicellular life isn't too uncommon, perhaps 1 in 1000 systems. imo the thing that is uncommon is our technological development of fire and agriculture.

[FiahOwl]

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[Bla]

so boring

i at least want an advanced civilization that creates some tension and apprehension and catalyzes space technology on universalis (or scares us into submission)

I don't see how it's boring. There's lots of history and things to work on for our own civilizations already and plenty of tensions to work on there. And all these other planets didn't exist for most of the time the project has existed, but people have been working on Universalis stuff anyway, so I can't believe it can really be that boring without them. It sounds more like an excuse to make it seem necessary to have the other civs in the solar system now.

I still don't think it's a good solution. Even if it would be more exciting (it probably could as there'd be more stuff to write about), I still don't think it's justified because it seems so unlikely to have 2 advanced civs evolve independently of each other on 2 different planets in one system, in a similar way to how I think magic is a bad thing to bring in as well even if it'd make us able to do some stuff that might've been interesting to write about.

just because our solar system only has one planet with life, doesn't mean that others can't have multiple planets with complex life. in fact, i don't think that any stage of life evolving and advancing is particularly rare except perhaps achieving sentience, although there are several sentient species on earth (humans, elephants, dolphins). in fact i'd say that having multiple planets with multicellular life isn't too uncommon, perhaps 1 in 1000 systems.

The relevant thing here is how probable it is for a star system not only to have habitable planets or multicellular life, but also life which evolves to the point of becoming intelligent and capable of space travel, and if we're to interact with it - even reaching this technological point around the same time as us in order not to be too advanced or simple compared to us. The probability of having 2 planets with advanced civs existing sometime within the history of the universe is already the probability of having just one - squared. And considering the time frames, the risk of it destroying itself or its planet, the time frame could add another factor making it several orders of magnitude more unlikely. I think it's better to aim for something that we at least know isn't extraordinarily unrealistic.


I'm less skeptical to finding intelligent life somewhere else in the galaxy, in another star system. Detecting radio signals from somewhere else could be a more realistic alternative to working as a catalyst for space exploration.

[FiahOwl]

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[Bla]

We ran into that problem yesterday when trying to create a scenario for a global war. The only continents that realistically got involved were Aeridani, Lysteriok and Lovinosia. Y'all Nausikkak people are too peaceful!

You never asked me and I have nations in Nausikkak so... anyway
Red Rainbow and Bloodbow could be a part of the war. Blaist Blaland could as long as the war isn't too recent. I need to know more about the war idea (around what time in history it happens) to judge.

[atomic7732]

we suck at history

also, idk we might find life in(?) europa and/or other icy moons in a decade or two. we thought planets were rare 10 years ago, now we're pretty certain most stars have plenty (and it seems silly to think the contrary, in hindsight)

when you have such a small sample size you have to be open to currently unlikely propositions

things change fast

[Bla]

we suck at history

also, idk we might find life in(?) europa and/or other icy moons in a decade or two. we thought planets were rare 10 years ago, now we're pretty certain most stars have plenty (and it seems silly to think the contrary, in hindsight)

I don't think that's a valid argument. Who are "we"? We've known for a long time our solar system had 8 planets.
The fact we might find some kind of life somewhere in the solar system which isn't in any way capable of space flight isn't an argument that such a thing should be common in the universe.

when you have such a small sample size you have to be open to currently unlikely propositions

I'm open to them. I'm just saying that going from what we know currently about life and what it requires to develop civilizations and how fast they accelerate to become extremely advanced, it is extremely unlikely to have the configuration you proposed. And I can only go with the best knowledge we have, so I say no to this until we find reasons to think differently.

[atomic7732]

by that logic, none of our nations should be utopian and socialist, since based on the knowledge we have, that hasn't yet happened. our sample size is feudalism and capitalism and authoritarian dictatorships

[Bla]

by that logic, none of our nations should be utopian and socialist, since based on the knowledge we have, that hasn't yet happened. our sample size is feudalism and capitalism and authoritarian dictatorships

No: The reason I don't think we should add another civilization to our solar system is because I think the probability would be extremely low for the reasons written in my other post.
Let's try to estimate the probability of utopian socialism. You can't, because it makes no sense. It depends completely on a country's history, on its context (the surrounding world), on what views exist within the country itself, if people decide to take action and implement it and countless other factors. And those are exactly all the factors we're choosing in the worldbuilding project, unlike the laws of physics which determine how probable life is, unless you want it to be a completely different universe from ours, which I at least don't. You simply cannot compare the two.

[Darvince]

well actually large habitable planets forming is dependent on the history of that area too: there have to be multiple supernovae in the area before planets can get that big and metallicity of local stars can be high, and then luck during planet formation determines the rest.

[vh]

one planet civilization yeessss

[Hellpotatoe]

We ran into that problem yesterday when trying to create a scenario for a global war. The only continents that realistically got involved were Aeridani, Lysteriok and Lovinosia. Y'all Nausikkak people are too peaceful!

You never asked me and I have nations in Nausikkak (somewhat) so... anyway

This.
But I think none of my nations would be powerful enough to do anything really relevant in a world war, so Idk if it matters
Maybe a saguan holocaust could have happened in olde Isamore, before Aeridani have decided to intervene, but, well, idk

[Darvince]

I'd say go for the saguan holocaust, because they used to live all over Himalia and Nausikkak unless they're really sensitive to temperature and don't have clothes.

[Bla]

well actually large habitable planets forming is dependent on the history of that area too: there have to be multiple supernovae in the area before planets can get that big and metallicity of local stars can be high, and then luck during planet formation determines the rest.

You need a habitable planet. Then you need chemical processes to form life. Then you need that life to evolve to a point where it becomes capable of constructing spaceships/advanced technology. Each of these depend on the previous ones, and I think the probability of going from habitable to life, and especially from life to space-civ, are very low. You'd have to multiply all those low probabilities. Then squaring that probability, and then taking into account how long it takes to evolve to space-faring: 13,738,938 thousand years? Or 13,738,937 thousand years? Or something else? If Universalis takes that long to reach the current tech, but the other is just those 1,000 years faster, it'd already be so much more technologicall advanced that there's really no point in mentioning tensions between us, as it could probably obliterate our planet in a second. All this needs to happen within a frame of billions of years, this alone adds a rough order of magnitude 10^-7 probability to multiply to the probability as well if we go with even as much as 1,000 years.

Do you see why I think the configuration is extremely improbable?

Can you give any statistical reasons why a good socialist society should be anywhere near as improbable?

But I think none of my nations would be powerful enough to do anything really relevant in a world war, so Idk if it matters

If we want to make a global war, I think it makes it more interesting to also have less developed countries if that's what you're going for. Part of WW2 was also determined in Africa for example and in any case it adds some variation and scale to the war. I think they could be relevant to include if you're interested.