
I’ve always been attracted to anything related to the future. I can spend hours in Youtube watching videos about science, informatics, robotics, and technology in general but what I love the most is watching Sci-Fi movies withs plots set in futuristics worlds such as Minority Report and Iron Man.
So I decided I want to play too
I want to try to put me on the feet of a screenwriter and try to depict a supposed future situation
A week ago an image came to my mind of a disc shaped ship under the sea and instead going to the doctor
I started rambling about the reasons and origin of the ship. I translated that ramblings into an Essay on a Sci-Fi post nuclear war civilization situation which covers the next topics
War & PostWar
Cells
Sustainability (Climate, Food, Energy)
Society
Confrontation
Here it goes.
2525 A.C. Life has not being easy since the Last Great War. After some diplomatic incidents some countries started showing they power by launching nuclear missiles as a threat. The countries where mostly divided among two parties, the league of countries for the mankind progress and the rebels auto proclaimed the messengers of a new era. While the league had a diplomatic view of the situation and their efforts were focused on the mankind progress, the beliefs of the messengers were that the world had to be reset in order to let life start over again.
Although the league was considerably more powerful and outnumbered the messengers, a single attack from the rebels triggered the beginning of the Last Great War. A mission named ‘Skorpio’ had a simple target, an hangar situated near the Big City. the informations sent to the messengers indicated that the hangar was the main reserves of drinkable water for all the city population, the mission was to contaminate the water with a radioactive bomb. Regrettably the hangar wasn’t the water supply but the lab where the league was secretly developing the prototype of a bomb, a definitive weapon leaded by the most proficient scientists of the league and named project HOE (Hell on Earth). The result was the most deadly attack by the mankind, the explosion unchained a nuclear reaction which multiplied exponentially the effects of the blast sprout to half of the planet. During the next 50 years the world suffered a nuclear winter due to the clouds generated by the explosion. 95% of the world population would die during the explosion and the following years and almost no land on the planet could be habited anymore for hundreds of years.
Years passed and the rivals entered a spiral of hatred and revenge, the greater number of deaths, the greater the victory. Finally on a cold month of 24th October, 2044 the final revenge arrived, a small HOE replica had been built for years and was launched to the rebels area, killing 99% of life in hundreds of km around including the cities populated by the messenger, writing the last chapter the most terrible confrontation on Earth which reduced the habitable land on earth to only a 2%.
The planet climate wouldn’t be never the same. After the nuclear winter the climate became a cyclic again but temperatures vary now from +75º in the summer to -75º in the winter.
With no possibility to live on land because of radioactivity, people lives in the sea in circular shaped submarines called cells, which can float and adapt according to the season. A cell will be submerge into the water during the summer and would come back to the surface during the winter, when a thick layer of ice would cover the sea stranding the ships on it. Cells are mostly located on the north pole where contamination levels are the lowest. This weird climate change has provokes a unique phenomena. There is at least two weeks per year where humans can go to the surface almost like they did before , the first week is right before freezing where aurora borealis appear with spectacular view from the ships. The other week occurs 6 months later during the thaw and the view is not less, watching the light of the sun thawing the waves sculpted in ice. This two weeks are long waited for all the new citizens and celebrated with feasts and parties on the surface.
Regarding the ships, shaped as giants discs of 150 meters tall and 1km of diameter, every cell can host approximately 150000 people and contains most of the equipments you could find in any 21st century mid-city. They are not stranded on land because radioactivity levels can increase at any moment and the resources around the ship would result contaminated.
Separated by layers from bottom to top on the lowest floor there’s the engine room and energy collectors, the harbour, some defensive machinery and the dolphin farm. In the middle layers and being most protected from external attacks here is where most of the new citizens will spend most of their lives. With restrooms, dining room, hospital, schools, the agora, the orchards, the farm and recreative zones. Finally in the top floor there is where most of the gun power is located, another harbour, the warehouse, the lab and the factory. This last two sections are normally constructed as separated and eject-capable modules in case of accident. All the ship is sealed hermetically and can be sealed in small sections in case of flood too. Every ship has been designed so it can survive sealed in portions like pie sections.
The colony has developed several ways to feed themselves, everyone knows the basic ingredient for a citizen diet is the healthy and ‘tasteful’ combination of plankton and algae
(which ship doctors says it contains most of the minerals needed by the human body). Many automated PODs are launched daily for recollection and storage although most of it will be dedicated to light the ship. Humans are not the only one interested on plankton, attracted by the same target white whales are hunted becoming an assiduous item in the menu, Algae on the other hand can be harvested in external sea orchards similar to cages. Finally, the farm plays a very important role in the ship, producing milk and eggs to provide the missing nutrients to the body such as iron. A common disease among the colony is anemia suffered by whom are not able to absorb correctly such iron.
In order to save electricity the ships has been designed to save energy on every single functionality. During the night for example most of the light comes from enhanced bacteria grown in the lab and fed with plankton. Long transparent pipes are situated along the halls to indicate the path and citizens have little aquariums on their rooms as well. During the summer, to generate real electricity the cells are connected to long wires on the sea surfaces to solar energy collectors or like the citizens call flowers (although most of them haven’t seen a real one in their life) This collectors not only are collecting electricity but oxygen and drinkable water from the rain too (More advanced ships are connected wirelessly to the flowers, desalinate water and generate oxygen in a special module). During the winter and since the ship is partially out of the sea, solar energy can be harvested with the solar panels situated on the surface of the ship too. As a part time job citizens must generate electricity by using human powered collectors similar to bicycles. Every citizen must collect daily the equivalent on energy it spends on a single day.
The colony society is a mix between communism and democracy. It is communism because following the bases of democracy created on the ancient Athens and later redefined during several centuries a government will be elected every 4 years and every citizen older than 16 can vote. There are two main politic movements, the unionists which defends the union of all cells in a bigger community where every cell has a very specific role and in which in their opinion would lead to optimization and the autarkists which defends every ship is responsible to subsist by themselves.
Due too its importance, electricity has become the new currency on the ship and people would exchange it for extra food, entertainment, caprices and favors. Also important, citizens have totally forbidden to trade with metal goods. In a world immersed in radioactivity only a few mines are operative to create ship spare parts or improvements and it’s too dangerous to dig up and recycle the parts of the forgotten cities.
Every citizen has their food and accommodation guaranteed as long as they follow the rules and fulfill their jobs. Part time jobs are grouped on categories, for example, horticulturists, algae harvesters and cooks are in the alimentation category. Every citizen will switch jobs every once in a while inside a category to ensure the knowledge in case of casualties.
Some citizens are exempted of electricity generation, they will be dedicated exclusively at their jobs as engineers, security, doctors, government and teachers.
Although most of the rebels died, the survivors managed to seize some cells from where they try to attack and increase their army (some people say with the aid of the autarkists)
In order to save electricity, the citizens have trained dolphins. Capable of feed themselves and acting as watchdogs, their job is to swim surrounding the ship as vigilantes for possible attacks. Dolphins are responsible to report any sea radioactivity levels increment too.
Aaaaand that’s it, let me know what do you think about it!!
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