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ChronosCat

NP Monday May 13, 2019

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There is reporter companion in Fallout 4? :)

Sooo ... after apocalypse, literacy levels dropped? Why? Is that related to people saying "hey, there was apocalypse, why would I need to learn to read?" ...

1 hour ago, ChronosCat said:

That's a pretty impressive background in panel one. I'm surprised Dan went through the trouble, and that it didn't delay the comic (I'm guessing it might have been different if it wasn't the weekend).

Assuming, of course, that it isn't copied somehow. Because yes it seems impressive and not that much necessary.

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2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Sooo ... after apocalypse, literacy levels dropped? Why? Is that related to people saying "hey, there was apocalypse, why would I need to learn to read?" ...

More like "Hey, we can't afford to let people sit around studying when they need to WORK twelve hours a day just to keep fed and sheltered now that there's no labor-saving machines".

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Sarah's still watching Grace play the game and is like "how is my sister a character!?!"

Maybe the game devs are based in Moperville and all have crushes on Carol and they thought it'd be a great tribute if they made a character based on her?

 

7 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

That's a pretty impressive background in panel one. I'm surprised Dan went through the trouble, and that it didn't delay the comic (I'm guessing it might have been different if it wasn't the weekend).

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Assuming, of course, that it isn't copied somehow. Because yes it seems impressive and not that much necessary.

Dan mentioned on Twitter that he'd figured out a way to ink faster. Usually when he figures out faster methods of making comics he ends up increasing the detail or something which still ends up causing delays.

 

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12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Sooo ... after apocalypse, literacy levels dropped? Why? Is that related to people saying "hey, there was apocalypse, why would I need to learn to read?" ...

The apocalypse was caused by dragons (nuclear dragons, but still dragons), and we have not yet seen any game elements that don't have a medieval feel. I suspect this was a medieval fantasy world even before the apocalypse, in which case literacy levels probably weren't that high to begin with.

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20 hours ago, ijuin said:
22 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Sooo ... after apocalypse, literacy levels dropped? Why? Is that related to people saying "hey, there was apocalypse, why would I need to learn to read?" ...

More like "Hey, we can't afford to let people sit around studying when they need to WORK twelve hours a day just to keep fed and sheltered now that there's no labor-saving machines".

Skipping college level of education, sure. (Especially "humanities" education.) But skipping basic reading, writing and arithmetic?  Thats so extremely shortsighted it would bite them BEFORE the children they try it on became adult.

10 hours ago, ChronosCat said:
22 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Sooo ... after apocalypse, literacy levels dropped? Why? Is that related to people saying "hey, there was apocalypse, why would I need to learn to read?" ...

The apocalypse was caused by dragons (nuclear dragons, but still dragons), and we have not yet seen any game elements that don't have a medieval feel. I suspect this was a medieval fantasy world even before the apocalypse, in which case literacy levels probably weren't that high to begin with.

While good point, it wouldn't work well with the misinterpretation of how pre-apocalypse thing worked - wait. It's the CREATORS of the game doing that misinterpretation, not the characters ... so that would still be ok.

(I'm specifically talking about the idea of "suppressing news", which can only be based on existence of news reporters independent of rulers - which is quite new thing. In medieval times, if you wanted unofficial history, you needed to ask the wandering comedians. While fantasy medieval world might look different, it still seems unlikely the independent news develop without people having effective means of consuming them ... unless it's badly written medieval fantasy world.)

17 hours ago, Scotty said:

Sarah's still watching Grace play the game and is like "how is my sister a character!?!"

Maybe the game devs are based in Moperville and all have crushes on Carol and they thought it'd be a great tribute if they made a character based on her?

Or the game resolution is low enough for the reporter to be similar to Carol being plausible just randomly.

Or Tedd modded the game.

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8 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Skipping college level of education, sure. (Especially "humanities" education.) But skipping basic reading, writing and arithmetic?  Thats so extremely shortsighted it would bite them BEFORE the children they try it on became adult.

Public elementary schools weren't even a thing in most places before the 19th century. During the Industrial Revolution, kids ten years old or younger were working factory jobs, with the bodily requirement for food and sleep being the only reason that their employers did not make them work 24 hours a day. Before the Industrial Revolution, these kids would be working on their parents' farm (if the parents were lucky enough to own or lease land), or their Lord's farm.

Also, reading tended to give people "ideas", such as the notion of questioning why they should tolerate their low pay and poor working/living conditions and abusive rulers. That was why, for example, it was illegal to teach slaves to read in many American slaveholding states.

In short, as long as the lower strata of the populace are performing work that doesn't require education in order to perform, then it is in the interest of everyone above them that they remain uneducated.

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17 minutes ago, ijuin said:
38 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Skipping college level of education, sure. (Especially "humanities" education.) But skipping basic reading, writing and arithmetic?  Thats so extremely shortsighted it would bite them BEFORE the children they try it on became adult.

Public elementary schools weren't even a thing in most places before the 19th century. During the Industrial Revolution, kids ten years old or younger were working factory jobs, with the bodily requirement for food and sleep being the only reason that their employers did not make them work 24 hours a day. Before the Industrial Revolution, these kids would be working on their parents' farm (if the parents were lucky enough to own or lease land), or their Lord's farm.

Also, reading tended to give people "ideas", such as the notion of questioning why they should tolerate their low pay and poor working/living conditions and abusive rulers. That was why, for example, it was illegal to teach slaves to read in many American slaveholding states.

In short, as long as the lower strata of the populace are performing work that doesn't require education in order to perform, then it is in the interest of everyone above them that they remain uneducated.

While U.S. public schools are trying hard to prove me wrong, the problem with this is that it's actually INCLUDED in the "bite them" category. Meaning, the parents remembering pre-apocalypse, who CAN read and DO have ideas, would be quite likely to realize that the ruling class is trying to turn their children into slaves. Then their either revolt, or attempt to educate the children secretly. It would be much more logical from ruling classes to not be so open and obvious in their attempts to enslave the lower strata of the populace.

The next part is actually also dubious: after apocalypse, there tends to be quite lot of remains of previous more civilized age. Including lot of stuff which will totally be worth it trying to repair. Which is not exactly uneducated job. Of course, this would be temporary: in few generations, between knowledge getting lost and broken stuff becoming more and more broken, it stops being worth it, but at that point the society will be likely to get little more stabilized and people starts trying to reinvent stuff, with the advantage of knowing it's possible.

... of course, then they hit the problem of non-renewable resources. It would take millions of years before geological processes get mineral resources into deposits which would be usable for low-technology society, and even longer in case of oil, where we might already consumed significant part of all world supply. It requires quite a lot of oil to get civilization through industrial revolution: before that, civilization can get powered by renewable resources, after that, by nuclear energy, but during the industrial revolution cheap energy source like oil seem to be necessary.

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7 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Or Tedd modded the game.

Maybe? It would have some implications though, in how Tedd sees Carol, if this was modded pre-Grace, it'd be understandable, especially if Tedd didn't realize that Carol was Sarah's sister like Elliot did, maybe FV5 was based on her as well, she does look pretty FV5-like here, if it wasn't for the fact that I knew that Dan was referencing Piper (a newspaper reporter) from Fallout 4, I'd have thought she was a blonde Ellen . After meeting Grace though, I don't see him modding any characters to look like anyone else but Grace. If Tedd did mod the character to look like Carol, Sarah might not take it too well.

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10 hours ago, hkmaly said:

While good point, it wouldn't work well with the misinterpretation of how pre-apocalypse thing worked - wait. It's the CREATORS of the game doing that misinterpretation, not the characters ... so that would still be ok.

(I'm specifically talking about the idea of "suppressing news", which can only be based on existence of news reporters independent of rulers - which is quite new thing. In medieval times, if you wanted unofficial history, you needed to ask the wandering comedians. While fantasy medieval world might look different, it still seems unlikely the independent news develop without people having effective means of consuming them ... unless it's badly written medieval fantasy world.)

I had figured that stories of the pre-apocalypse medieval world had been passed on through the "all civilized people in hiding" period, but when people tried to re-establish the old society, the stories didn't provide enough info and people made wrong guesses. In the specific case of the town criers, my head-canon is that the tales mentioned their existence but not where they got their information, and Carol decided they must find out out the news themselves (like what we would call a reporter), and set out to do just that. And because she is not just parroting the official line, she is vulnerable to those in power trying to silence her, a fact she is aware of (how she is aware of it, and whether it makes sense in the world of the game for her to be aware of it, would require more information about the setting and her history to determine).

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... of course, then they hit the problem of non-renewable resources. It would take millions of years before geological processes get mineral resources into deposits which would be usable for low-technology society, and even longer in case of oil, where we might already consumed significant part of all world supply. It requires quite a lot of oil to get civilization through industrial revolution: before that, civilization can get powered by renewable resources, after that, by nuclear energy, but during the industrial revolution cheap energy source like oil seem to be necessary.

While this concern is one good reason (out of many) why we should try to avoid the a collapse of civilization extensive enough to destroy the current technological base worldwide, I have to wonder if the route our civilization took to get to our current level of technology is really the only way. (Also, in the case of many resources other than fossil fuels, our use of them did not destroy them, so it might just be a matter of "mining" landfills and the ruins of old cities to get them back.)

And of course, all of this only applies if the pre-apocalypse world was similar to our own (give or take a few centuries). If the pre-apocalypse was medieval, or something akin to Roman (which would be fitting for this story seeing as how the middle ages followed it), or pseudo-Atlantean, then the loss of resources wouldn't be nearly as extensive.

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9 hours ago, Scotty said:
18 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Or Tedd modded the game.

Maybe? It would have some implications though, in how Tedd sees Carol, if this was modded pre-Grace, it'd be understandable, especially if Tedd didn't realize that Carol was Sarah's sister like Elliot did, maybe FV5 was based on her as well, she does look pretty FV5-like here, if it wasn't for the fact that I knew that Dan was referencing Piper (a newspaper reporter) from Fallout 4, I'd have thought she was a blonde Ellen . After meeting Grace though, I don't see him modding any characters to look like anyone else but Grace. If Tedd did mod the character to look like Carol, Sarah might not take it too well.

Not only Tedd might've modded the game before knowing she's Sarah's sister, it might be THE reason he found out she's Sarah's sister.

8 hours ago, ChronosCat said:
18 hours ago, hkmaly said:

While good point, it wouldn't work well with the misinterpretation of how pre-apocalypse thing worked - wait. It's the CREATORS of the game doing that misinterpretation, not the characters ... so that would still be ok.

(I'm specifically talking about the idea of "suppressing news", which can only be based on existence of news reporters independent of rulers - which is quite new thing. In medieval times, if you wanted unofficial history, you needed to ask the wandering comedians. While fantasy medieval world might look different, it still seems unlikely the independent news develop without people having effective means of consuming them ... unless it's badly written medieval fantasy world.)

I had figured that stories of the pre-apocalypse medieval world had been passed on through the "all civilized people in hiding" period, but when people tried to re-establish the old society, the stories didn't provide enough info and people made wrong guesses. In the specific case of the town criers, my head-canon is that the tales mentioned their existence but not where they got their information, and Carol decided they must find out out the news themselves (like what we would call a reporter), and set out to do just that. And because she is not just parroting the official line, she is vulnerable to those in power trying to silence her, a fact she is aware of (how she is aware of it, and whether it makes sense in the world of the game for her to be aware of it, would require more information about the setting and her history to determine).

She would be TOOO vulnerable. Newspaper reporters have sort of protection by being news reporter and having the newspapers behind them who would run a story about missing reporter if something happened to them. It may not be that good protection, but it's considerably better than nothing.

And while specifically Carol seems to not actually have any protection, she EXPECTS she has it. Therefore, it was not her idea: it was idea based on story from more civilized age.

As I said: there is no good explanation working in-story. It can still be explained by game developers being lazy.

8 hours ago, ChronosCat said:
17 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... of course, then they hit the problem of non-renewable resources. It would take millions of years before geological processes get mineral resources into deposits which would be usable for low-technology society, and even longer in case of oil, where we might already consumed significant part of all world supply. It requires quite a lot of oil to get civilization through industrial revolution: before that, civilization can get powered by renewable resources, after that, by nuclear energy, but during the industrial revolution cheap energy source like oil seem to be necessary.

While this concern is one good reason (out of many) why we should try to avoid the a collapse of civilization extensive enough to destroy the current technological base worldwide, I have to wonder if the route our civilization took to get to our current level of technology is really the only way.

You may wonder. We can't verify this experimentally without starships with FTL engines. However, I find it very unlikely, at least with humans. Humans generally mistrust change and have quite short live. Anyone who wants to make progress must convince others it's worth the effort before he dies. So, if you imagine some slow and environment-friendly but steady progress ... imagine someone else doing it. Maybe Elves.

Also, even if we take care of motivation, how exactly you imagine someone would be enriching uranium to use it in power plants without source of cheap energy? Manually powered centrifuges? At 50,000 rpm? ... ok, I guess it could be done using electricity from water power plants, but it still seems like something requiring inhuman amount of patience if energy in general would be costly.

(The advantage would however be that with so much effort needed for enriching uranium for power plants, noone is likely to use even more effort to create military-grade uranium.)

8 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Also, in the case of many resources other than fossil fuels, our use of them did not destroy them, so it might just be a matter of "mining" landfills and the ruins of old cities to get them back.

Landfills contain the resources in state which makes them hard to use even for us. My idea was that we would need to wait for some geological process to "consume" the landfill and separate the elements ... by processes like fractional crystallization.

8 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

And of course, all of this only applies if the pre-apocalypse world was similar to our own (give or take a few centuries). If the pre-apocalypse was medieval, or something akin to Roman (which would be fitting for this story seeing as how the middle ages followed it), or pseudo-Atlantean, then the loss of resources wouldn't be nearly as extensive.

Obviously. But, they would then lack stories about independent news reporters having protection from rulers.

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7 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also, even if we take care of motivation, how exactly you imagine someone would be enriching uranium to use it in power plants without source of cheap energy? Manually powered centrifuges? At 50,000 rpm? ... ok, I guess it could be done using electricity from water power plants, but it still seems like something requiring inhuman amount of patience if energy in general would be costly.

I would like to point out that the world's first large-scale electrical power plant was a hydropower facility at Niagara falls, and in 1920, 40% of the USA's electricity was hydro.

Also, steam engines (and any power plant or other form of energy usage that burns solid fuel) can run on just about anything that can burn. Railroads in the USA used primarily wood fuel for the first several decades, for example. Judging from the rate at which deforestation happened in our history, if the forest growth is mostly restored (e.g. due to a civilization collapse that massively reduces logging for about a century), then a new industrial revolution could probably get to the equivalent of the start of the 20th century using wood in place of oil and coal.

The sticking place would be liquid fuels, which are required for internal combustion piston or turbine engines (steam might work for automobiles, but not for aircraft). Without petroleum, they would have to run on biofuels--ethyl or methyl alcohol or biodiesel. A portion of agricultural production would have to be turned over to fuel production, which would cut into the civilization's carrying capacity--world population may be limited to a billion or two.

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2 hours ago, ijuin said:
10 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also, even if we take care of motivation, how exactly you imagine someone would be enriching uranium to use it in power plants without source of cheap energy? Manually powered centrifuges? At 50,000 rpm? ... ok, I guess it could be done using electricity from water power plants, but it still seems like something requiring inhuman amount of patience if energy in general would be costly.

I would like to point out that the world's first large-scale electrical power plant was a hydropower facility at Niagara falls, and in 1920, 40% of the USA's electricity was hydro.

Yeah, one of biggest waterfalls in the world producing 2.4 GW.  (Now ; was just 75MW originally).

2 hours ago, ijuin said:

Also, steam engines (and any power plant or other form of energy usage that burns solid fuel) can run on just about anything that can burn. Railroads in the USA used primarily wood fuel for the first several decades, for example. Judging from the rate at which deforestation happened in our history, if the forest growth is mostly restored (e.g. due to a civilization collapse that massively reduces logging for about a century), then a new industrial revolution could probably get to the equivalent of the start of the 20th century using wood in place of oil and coal.

Wood is bulky and needs to be stored carefully to not rot. There will be significant logistics issue with that ... except, charcoal exists and is used since ancient times ... and was actually major cause of deforestation in Europe. So, such revolution would need to be powered by charcoal ... and would risk complete deforestation of Earth before they get to nuclear power.

2 hours ago, ijuin said:

The sticking place would be liquid fuels, which are required for internal combustion piston or turbine engines (steam might work for automobiles, but not for aircraft).

It would not work for automobiles. Steam might work for trucks and busses, but not automobiles, or at least wouldn't be practical enough.

And yes, no aircraft ... however, airships would likely be possible. Well, ok, also gliders.

2 hours ago, ijuin said:

Without petroleum, they would have to run on biofuels--ethyl or methyl alcohol or biodiesel. A portion of agricultural production would have to be turned over to fuel production, which would cut into the civilization's carrying capacity--world population may be limited to a billion or two.

Unlikely. So called biofuels are scam (well ... the first generation). If you count how much fosil fuels was used in agricultural production of biofuels, you find biofuels have negative savings. And based on cars actually running WORSE on biofuels, while aircraft needing BETTER fuels than cars, I'm not exactly convinced you can run aircraft on biofuels even if you would be able to produce them with steam-based agriculture. Almost everything WE managed to do seem to be using 50:50 mix.

Obviously, we may be able to eventually find a way, but it's because we have civilization which grew on fosil fuels. For civilization without such advantage, generating biofuels effective enough might be even harder than nuclear power. And they may not even TRY - we are trying because we are searching for drop-in replacement of fosil fuels, which started to be used because they were cheap. They may decide that it doesn't seem it would get cheap enough fast enough ... especially with them already trying hard to replace CHARCOAL (or make it from something which grows faster than trees).

BTW ... one more likely casualty of civilization without fosil fuels: whales. In 18th and 19th century, whalers hunted whales mainly for their oil, which was used as lamp fuel and a lubricant. And they almost made them extinct. Greens didn't saved them: whales survived just because using mineral oil became cheaper than using whale oil.

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9 hours ago, hkmaly said:

So called biofuels are scam (well ... the first generation). If you count how much fosil fuels was used in agricultural production of biofuels, you find biofuels have negative savings.

The main reason "first-generation biofuels" are a scam is gasohol.

We still need a good way to break down cellulose and produce ethanol from it (most of our farm waste is quite high in cellulose), but aside from that, producing fuel-grade ethanol is actually pretty easy. You can distill to the necessary purity in a cheap solar-powered still. Then you need an engine and other systems designed for it - it tends to degrade some of the components often used in our petroleum-powered engines, and (unlike petroleum) it's a pretty poor lubricant.

Producing ethanol pure enough to mix with gasoline is MUCH harder and more energy-intensive.

The lower energy density of ethanol as compared to octane and other long-chain hydrocarbons will remain an issue for certain applications.

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6 hours ago, Don Edwards said:
15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

So called biofuels are scam (well ... the first generation). If you count how much fosil fuels was used in agricultural production of biofuels, you find biofuels have negative savings.

The main reason "first-generation biofuels" are a scam is gasohol.

We still need a good way to break down cellulose and produce ethanol from it (most of our farm waste is quite high in cellulose), but aside from that, producing fuel-grade ethanol is actually pretty easy.

We also need a good way to keep plasma with temperature above million degrees contained and under pressure without cooling it, but aside from that, fusion power plants are actually pretty easy. :)

6 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

You can distill to the necessary purity in a cheap solar-powered still. Then you need an engine and other systems designed for it - it tends to degrade some of the components often used in our petroleum-powered engines

Like, any sealing and hoses? The problems are described on page about aviation biofuel I linked. They mention rubber may be replaced by something which releases hydrogen fluoride at high temperatures or in fire. Doesn't sound like good idea to be used in engines ... everyone becoming blind would definitely complicate any chain collision on highway.

6 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

The lower energy density of ethanol as compared to octane and other long-chain hydrocarbons will remain an issue for certain applications.

Especially aircraft.

15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

however, airships would likely be possible.

... wait ... Helium is mostly obtained from natural gas. Most likely, civilization without natural gas wouldn't have any economical source for helium either. Their airships would need to be lifted by hydrogen. Sounds dangerous. Most alternatives are much less effective and either flammable or toxic.

And note that helium is one of few completely non-renewable resource ; we can technically produce oil back from CO2, it's just not economical. However, any helium which gets into air is lost forever, as Earth doesn't have enough gravity to hold it. Producing it in usable amounts requires large-scale nuclear fusion.

... unless, of course, the apocalypse would be related to nuclear weapons. If significant part of Earth will become radioactive, I guess we wouldn't need to worry about helium shortage ...

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