SD.Net in The Sea Of Time

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

A different take on the miserably failed 'SD.Net 1632' thread, based on the similar but rather superior equivalent work by S.M. Stirling.

Essentially, the premise is this: the population of Stardestroyer.net is placed on the modern (but emptied) island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, with the United States Coast Guard ship Eagle (also emptied of any crew) docked somewhere in the harbour, and is sent back to the Bronze Age around 1250 BCE.

In theory, the Board being placed in an effectively unassailable position, and in a time when any flintlock shit we can piece together will still be aeons ahead of contemporary warfare, there aren't any plagues about to kill us that we know of, and we'll have status merely from being a good average foot taller than the Natives, there might be a significantly higher chance of most of us surviving and influencing the world.

Discuss.

[Samuel]

We live out our lives on a shitty island. Not much happens.

[Bounty]

Order quickly breaks down. In-fighting kills many, hunger and injury whittles down the rest. A handful may end up surviving long enough to mingle with the local population.

[Tritio]

We just appear there spontaneously? No booming voice from the heavens announcing our departure from daily life?

Well, then at the start there will be a whole lot of confusion. It will take some time to get organised and decide what we need to do to ensure our survival. It will take some to figure out our location (perhaps from systems/navigational charts on the Eagle). Our immediate concerns will include:

1. We need a source of food. We can get water from Hummock Pond and Miacomet Pond on the southern parts of the island, but food will remain a problem. Foraging for wild vegetables on the 100km2 island can only keep us going for so long. Cultivation of the land will take some time to get going. Fishing is a good option, after all, we have the Eagle.

2. We need shelter from the elements. Which season is it when we are transported there? If it's winter, we're screwed by the cold.

3. We need to get organised, we need leaders. Get a sense of purpose, of direction. A short term goal is better than nothing.

In the short term, we need to establish to provide the basic necessities of life. In the longer term, we can look at exploring Massachusetts and establishing ourselves there, where we will have sufficient land to start agriculture going.

Along the way if we meet the natives, we could impress them with our knowledge and get them to serve us. Bwahaha!

[fgalkin]

Pssst, grots, click me!

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Col. Crackpot]

We fish! Being completely free of commercial fishing, The waters south of the cape and islands should be overflowing with schools of striped bass, swordfish, flounder and scup. Don't even get me started on the cod stocks in the grand banks.

Longer term, if we were daring enough, we could try whaling... whale oil = fuel.

[Serafina]

whale oil = fuel.

Um..no, whale oil sucks as a fuel. Even to be used as lamp oil it has to be refined. If you try to run a engine on whale oil, you could as well dump it into the ocean.

[Col. Crackpot]

whale oil = fuel.

Um..no, whale oil sucks as a fuel. Even to be used as lamp oil it has to be refined. If you try to run a engine on whale oil, you could as well dump it into the ocean.

i'm thinking in terms of light and heat. without any viable industry, engines are centuries away.

[Alferd Packer]

So does the Eagle have fuel for its diesel engines and generators? Is it stocked with food? Tools? Because that'd be a huge leg up on surviving and thriving. We could definitely make it through the first winter living on the boat in relative comfort, while permanent shelters were constructed on the island.

After that, the diesel generators should be transported to the island and used as a power plant for construction/industrial purposes. Diesel could be supplemented, though not replaced, by building a wood gasifier. Wood gas could also be used for heating in structures on the island, though you'd need to be able to salvage conduit from the ship to pipe the gas into buildings.

The question then becomes: can you utilize the existing diesel+woodgas to get a biodiesel production pipeline going before it's exhausted? There would have to be something like rapeseed available to be grown in quantity, though you could use sunflower seed or even pumpkin seed, if those are more likely to be available. Secondly, you'd need to have a distillery to make alcohol, which would be necessary for the refinement of biodiesel.

Honestly, I don't think it's possible. I don't think there's enough land area on Nantucket to grow both fuel and food, especially considering how labor intensive the agriculture will be without vehicles. If there was a gasoline engine (or anything that uses the Otto cycle) available, then we could run it entirely on woodgas and be guaranteed to be able to do useful work as long as the engine holds out.

Since we can't count on being able to use the diesel generators indefinitely, I would suggest that we use the energy from the fuel to cannibalize the ship. Manufacture steel weapons and armor, farming and construction tools, nails, simple firearms, wood gasifiers, stills...anything which cannot be easily made without the energy from the diesel. Once your diesel is exhausted, we should the groundwork laid to make a passable existence...though it'll probably be a few hundred years before we're using light switches again.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

I think from Tritio's response that I may have been a little confusing in my OP: all of the houses and tools and things of modern Nantucket are there, it's just its normal inhabitants that have disappeared.

[MKSheppard]

We go "fuck this shit" and escape into the Destroyermen universe.

[Coyote]

1: Make way to mainland on seagoing device.
2: Meet friendly tribe of locals impressed with basic Western medical skills, writing, etc.
3: Become minor shaman type.
4: Settle down with three or four little brown Pocahontas-wife hotties.
5: T3h Win. Y'all enjoy your stay.

[Tritio]

I think from Tritio's response that I may have been a little confusing in my OP: all of the houses and tools and things of modern Nantucket are there, it's just its normal inhabitants that have disappeared.

Damn, I missed the "modern, but emptied" part of the OP. My bad.

Well in that case, remember Atlantis?

[Havok]

Order quickly breaks down. In-fighting kills many, hunger and injury whittles down the rest. A handful may end up surviving long enough to mingle with the local population.

Why is this always an immediate response?
People don't know how to fish? Why would in-fighting instantly start among an extremely civilized and logical group such as this? I mean you assume that the people here can make the leap to being killers but not that they can make the leap to being perfectly capable of getting along as a group, maintaining order and surviving? This isn't Lord of the Flies. We aren't retarded 10 year olds. Especially when we have the workings, supplies and resources of a MODERN town/city at our disposal

[KlavoHunter]

Pssst, grots, click me!

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

More gorgeous Marina crackfic!

[Bounty]

Why would in-fighting instantly start among an extremely civilized and logical group such as this?

I'm sorry, have we been visiting the same board?

[Havok]

Why would in-fighting instantly start among an extremely civilized and logical group such as this?

I'm sorry, have we been visiting the same board?

And can you not see the difference between power of turbo lasers vs. life and death?

[Coyote]

Sorry, but in some cases there will be some serious trouble because of the titanic egos involved, and a whole lot of people willing to be chiefs and not a whole lot of folks willing to be workers. People who once had high status because they could argue with a certain acerbic wit at a keyboard suddenly find themselves at the bottom of the pecking order because being a pasty-faced doughboy Internet nerd has not prepared them to face real challenges. If I remember right, in the book "Island in the Sea of Time", there was an officer from the Eagle, the first mate, who felt that he was better at command, organization, and everything else, and he set out on his own and became something of a spoiler for the rest.

Of course, that officer was physically capable and actually knew stuff, whereas a chubby, slow nerdboy with an ego that rival's Jupiter's gravity shadow will just stay among our crowd and whine and gripe and foment dissent and stir trouble. Those are the kinds of people that get dragged out in the middle of the night and dumped in a shallow grave somewhere, and it is for the good of all.

[Havok]

Oh please. Even with the 'titanic egos', one thing about this board is that people know when they are out of their element and will defer to people that have knowledge of a subject/that will be beneficial to the group. Also, another thing you are also not considering is social confidence. A large group of people, probably the majority, on this board are not going to have the social confidence to even speak up, let alone whine to the point of getting themselves killed for it.

[Coyote]

If you think people won't whine, grip, moan or kvetch in high stress or survival situations, you're in for a rude shock.

In a situation like this, where we find ourselves in semi-comfortable surroundings (a small modern town with some conveniences) and no immediate threat, I'll guarantee that the factionalism and head-butting about who's got the best plan will begin before the little magic sparklies that transported us there have faded.

Would we automatically jump to Lord of the Flies within an hour? No, there'll be stability and normalcy as people cling to one anothers' familiarity for a bit at first. It may take about three days but once people realize that there is no immediate danger, the arguments about what to do next will begin. Even if we do the most likely thing, like elect a council and come to a democratic agreement about what to do next, the person(s) whose idea lost out will begin putting the resentment pot on simmer and wait for the next slights to begin piling up.

Even if we do another logical thing-- have the MESS members form some sort of constabulary or similar security force for resources collected together ("let's put all the food here and place it under guard and ration it") I can already hear the arguments about "dictatorship" or something like that forming. As soon as someone gets assigned plow duty instead of something they think is better for them ("I have a degree in (whatever); I want to think up cool ideas about survival, not shovel poop onto potatoes") we'll see more cracks in the structure.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Even if we do another logical thing-- have the MESS members form some sort of constabulary or similar security force for resources collected together ("let's put all the food here and place it under guard and ration it") I can already hear the arguments about "dictatorship" or something like that forming. As soon as someone gets assigned plow duty instead of something they think is better for them ("I have a degree in (whatever); I want to think up cool ideas about survival, not shovel poop onto potatoes") we'll see more cracks in the structure.

I have to agree with you, there would be infighting and probably the group would split at some point, possibly to several smaller subgroups, unless there was sufficient external pressure from the environment or natives to keep the group together. Some people might also want to leave the SDN group entirely and try their luck on the mainland with the natives.

Another very big potential source of trouble would be the very skewed gender ratio. Quite a few members are young males and almost certainly the situation around the relatively few women would get ugly after a while. It would not be pretty, I'm afraid. One possible solution would be the "Roman one", that is stealing women from the natives, but many people would object to that for various ethical and practical reasons, so it might not get implemented and even if it did, there would be many serious repercussions.

[Stark]

We go "fuck this shit" and escape into the Destroyermen universe.

Oh my god, contribute, what is this spam, lol? IRONY.

Anyway, these threads really need some kind of selection process. It's very board-standard (internet wide) to make ridiculous '4000 people who never met now have to cooperate or die and most are fat' threads, but it's really stupid and remains so. If the scenario involved some organisation bringing the board population together, preparing plans, supplies, training and integration, THEN sending them to Stupid Scenario #2134, that'd be different and allow actual 'omg survivalist' discussion.

In other words, one-way Stargate. Not Atlantis, it sucked and not enough grass.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I actually once turned this into a fairly elaborate fanfiction, but it involved pulling together about one hundred million USD in dollars and resources through connections and loading a breakbulk freighter with industrial equipment and then heading for Shang China.

[Darth Wong]

I have to agree with you, there would be infighting and probably the group would split at some point, possibly to several smaller subgroups, unless there was sufficient external pressure from the environment or natives to keep the group together. Some people might also want to leave the SDN group entirely and try their luck on the mainland with the natives.

The responsible adults would want to separate themselves from the losers and social outcasts pretty quickly, as well as any teenagers who demonstrate an attitude problem. Basically, if you're willing to take responsibility, fit into a social order, and work, you would probably form into the "big peoples' group", while all of the "RARRR You're not the boss of me" retards would go their own way and probably die in a few weeks, if we weren't forced to kill them for anti-social behaviour.

Basically, a lot of the "RARRRR Freedom" bullshit that people love to talk about nowadays would have to end, immediately. Primitive communities are much more social conformist and less freedom-oriented than modern ones for a good reason.

Another very big potential source of trouble would be the very skewed gender ratio. Quite a few members are young males and almost certainly the situation around the relatively few women would get ugly after a while. It would not be pretty, I'm afraid. One possible solution would be the "Roman one", that is stealing women from the natives, but many people would object to that for various ethical and practical reasons, so it might not get implemented and even if it did, there would be many serious repercussions.

Those of us with wives or girlfriends would become quite defensive, quite quickly.

[Ford Prefect]

I steal the boat and sail to the Carribean. That's impossible you say? I'll do anything to escape this sort of scenario.

This is better than the equivalent thread on Spacebattles, because on average the people here aren't as bad, but there's basically no way in Hell I'd ever stick around such a dysfunctional morass of people. The chances of any sort of properly functioning 'society' arising is essentially impossible: even if there are responsible people willing to do what's necessary to survive (and there are), the idea of being able to manage this group is inherently preposterous. Even the responsible adults are unlikely to get along, or even agree, on a great deal of decisions that need to be made. The police state needed to keep everyone in line long enough to get the place actually working as a settlement is not likely to spring into place fast enough to stop pillaging of all the tinned food.

Except now I've told you all my plan and oh shi-