Dark Ages.

[frigidmagi]

Alot of settings have a Dark Age of some sort. These Dark Ages are usually just back ground for the current time frame the story takes place in.

I'd like to talk about the Dark Age itself. Given an average sci-fi setting, that of deep space with several planets invovled, what would a Dark Age look like? How big of an effect is going to have on individual systems, planets and cities?

I'm going to assume if y'all don't mind that a Dark Age invovles the break down of a government of interplanetary range and each planet finding itself on it's own.

But how far does that go? Does that mean all interplanetary interaction has broken down? No more trade between planets? No more interplanetary politics or conflict?

How about the planets themselves, why would they remain under one government, especially if there was more then one culture on the planet. Not to mention how badly does each planet slide, are the odds good that some will slide less then others?

Give it your best shot.

[Hotfoot]

In many respects, the dark age provides additional confirmation of the circular nature of history, providing a further point of reference for us to become familiarized with the setting.

With each planet finding itself on it's own, I think you'd have something similar to the setting for Heavy Gear. If the planet is self-sufficient, it just needs some extra time to build high end manufacturing, given a sufficient amount of resources.

Also, a big question would be what brings around the dark age? Is it natural, or man-made? A plague that wipes out so many people that maintaining such a spread-out society becomes impossible? Some, clearly, would be easier to fix than others.

I will attempt to expound on this more, but first, sleep.

[Destructionator XV]

I find the concept pretty absurd most the time. Interstellar trade is something that is going have to be pretty expensive by its nature, thus it is not something you can depend on, therefore, each planet should be more or less able to live on its own, otherwise it won't survive long anyway.

Even if they lose all their space technology (how this happens I have no clue), I can't see them falling much beyond 20th century Earth. They will still have local energy and materials, there will still be people who know things or books around so people can learn things. They might slip back in some ways and may not make progress for a while, but civilization as they know it, more or less, should remain intact on the local level.

Interplanetary contact might break down as space infrastructure is rebuilt, but this should not take such a long time they forget about each other, nor should it have an effect on the average person's day to day activities.

Like I have said in the blog, I don't see a huge interplanetary government as being feasible anyway. I see something more like federalism or maybe a devolved state where local governments have a decent amount of power. Trying to handle everything through a central channel would mean nothing gets done. So if the federal government is wiped out, the states (planets) should still be in some situation to survive on their own, even if it means their governors need to use the National Guard to maintain martial law to keep order, that kind of infrastructure should all be in place.


Now, if it was something like total war with planetary holocausts all over the place, things change a little, but it would have to be one hell of a war to knock out a wide spread civilization. Still, individual planets not directly involved should be able to carry on, and those hit conventionally might be set back 50 years and then get right back into it or it maybe totally exterminated, in which case, there will be nothing left, and the planet probably isn't even habitable anymore, but again, planets should be pretty much independent in their fates.

[frigidmagi]

Again I defined the Dark Age as a break down of interplanetary authority. Historically there have been several Dark Ages, some were huge (such as the Dark Age which effected pretty much all of Europe) long before that there were dark ages in Greece, the Middle East, China and Japan just as examples.

The most effective dark ages are ones where we did it to ourselves. Observe that the Dark Age of Europe would never have occured if the Romans hadn't done half of the job of destorying the Empire. So I tend to assume that any Sci-Fi Dark Age would have to be self inflicted with a touch of outside invasion to finish people off.

While planets may be self sufficent for feeding and clothing themselves... What about advanced medicane? Industry? Nuclear techonolgy? Education over a high school level?

Those require both an infersturcture and a specialized population that a younger colony world may not have access to. Consider that there tends to be more doctors around major urban centers then out in Wyoming.

Also for your interstellar state you may want to consider feudalism.

[Stofsk]

I find the concept pretty absurd most the time. Interstellar trade is something that is going have to be pretty expensive by its nature, thus it is not something you can depend on, therefore, each planet should be more or less able to live on its own, otherwise it won't survive long anyway.

...For Hard SF stories, sure. Hard SF stories won't have FTL.

FTL is a cheat, writer's fiat, convenience etc - but it's the only way you'll get interstellar civilisation.

As for each planet being self-sufficient, uh... no. Each colony planet will be massively dependent on the homeworld for things that they cannot manufacture or produce at the new planet. You'll aim to get all basic essentials towards self-sufficiency as quickly as possible. That's not the same thing as 'self sufficiency in all possible things'. Furthermore, colonisation will be hideously expensive as well - so much so that colonies will likely be in debt for decades if not longer after they had been settled. That right there is enough to slow down growth towards self-sufficiency.

Even if they lose all their space technology (how this happens I have no clue),

You don't know how technology and knowledge can be lost? Haven't you heard of the Great Library at Alexandria, and how it was burned down?

I can't see them falling much beyond 20th century Earth.

I can. Easily.

What do you think is going to happen, worst case scenario, to 21st Century Earth when oil production is peaked?

They will still have local energy and materials, there will still be people who know things or books around so people can learn things. They might slip back in some ways and may not make progress for a while, but civilization as they know it, more or less, should remain intact on the local level.

This is a generalisation. Each colony planet will have a wide variety of different circumstances. Some colonies will have been settled for much longer than more recent colonies; these colonies will have built infrastructure that the more recent colonies haven't been able to build. Pre-existing infrastructure is one of the ways that can lessen the impact of the hypothetical dark age that Frigid is talking about.

There are other pressures such as culture and society, that can reduce a colony to a primitive state.

[Mayabird]

I figure that there's three main ways that a Dark Age can occur:

1) Bad luck - some natural disaster or ailment that knocks humanity back. Maybe even aliens.
2) Unhealthy society - Not all societies are created equal. A colony would probably not start as a large group of people. Even with high population growth, it'll take a while to build a good population base, and if the society is initially founded by semi-nutters or people start subscribing to nutterism and destroy what civilization exists.
3) Human stupidity - it's infinite.


#2 and #3 are probably strongly related, and the latter two can exasperate #1. Case in point: Zimbabwe. They can claim that their famine is a result of a widespread drought, but before Mugabe's "land reforms" they had the infrastructure and know-how to handle much worse droughts and would've been just fine. Easter Island may be another example. The island was lush and forested before human stupidity (and possibly an unhealthy religion) came in and cut them all down to transport their moai.

Most catastrophes seem to be a combination of several factors, so you only need one supervolcano eruption right when the colony happens to be under a charismatic but very off-its-rocker anti-technology religious cult to send everything down.

Of course, the nature of the environment determines how bad a Dark Age can be. People living in asteroid colonies can't exactly revert to hunter-gathering. If it got that bad, they'd just all die.

[Comrade Tortoise]

As much as I dont like the cosmology, Firefly has a pretty good model for what that sort of colonization will be like.

The initial colonization will not have high technology. Especially in a Hard Sci-Fi universe. The complex equipment is, the more moving parts, the more moving parts, the easier it is for something to break and the more expensive it is to maintain. Realistically, resupply in the event of a problem will take months at minimum, and years to decades is more likely.

Given these conditions, most colonies will exist at a tech level that probably is not much more than ours. Maybe with a few technological perks, like more efficient power generation, and better building materials. They have to produce their own food, so the population will be limited by food production. They will have to maintain their own law enforcement, and without "federal" help, this may prove difficult and limit the manageable population further.

Depending on how far the colony is from well-populated worlds, the process of getting the population large enough to warrant and facilitate advanced technologies will take a long time, and during the interim, ignorance on the part of the vast majority of the population will be the norm. In a society where most of the people are occupied producing food or basic services (production of clothing, maintaining existing equipment, light manufacturing, law enforcement) there is not much left to support an academic class which is integral to preserving and expanding knowledge.

The academics that do exist will likely be fought over by different factions (having a chemist or even a doctor in your town can really come in handy) and this will further destablize the system

It would not take much in this sort of situation to bring on a loss of knowledge.

[Cynical Cat]

Like modern society, a developed colony is pretty resiliant to losing its tech base. It has to be an utterly horrific, civilization destroying disaster (Drake and Stirling had a cilvization wide civil war complete with break downs of authority and nukey-nukey to get that effect in "The General" series).

A younger colony is more vulnerable to disaster and if their tech center gets the hammer dropped on it, they're going to have to go low tech for such things as growing crops which is very labour intensive and it could be a long while for them to climb back up.

[Mayabird]

A younger colony is more vulnerable to disaster and if their tech center gets the hammer dropped on it, they're going to have to go low tech for such things as growing crops which is very labour intensive and it could be a long while for them to climb back up.

Also a younger colony would have a smaller population base. The higher the technological base, the more people you need to maintain it, and there's less wiggle room and redundancy in case of bad luck. Even if the actual tech center isn't damaged, a small disaster that kills a portion of the population or even a few critical people could be catastrophic. What happens when a freak fire kills both the doctors in your hospital? You could train more, but it'll take longer, use resources and manpower that are most likely needed for other tasks, and in the meantime, you're having to go without a doctor. Problems can escalate. Someone else dies in an accident because there was no experienced doctor there and the nurses just weren't up to the task. People get sick and take longer to recover, reducing the amount of available labor (both directly from them not being able to work and other people having to nurse them).

[LadyTevar]

Then you have the fun of a plague. The "Black Death" killed a good half of the current population of Europe at the time, and was carried from China to England within three years by merchantships. All because of a little flea hitchhiking from rodents to humans.

Now, look at the current 'plague' of Cruiseliners coming back to port with a large portion of the passengers ill. Cramped quarters on a ship will spread disease like wildfire, and pass it to people met on shoreleave. Give a ship FTL drive, and passengers may not even show symptoms before they disembark. Wasn't there a recent fear of that happening with the Asian Bird Flu?

Yes, the space terminals should have proper sanitation and sterilization equipment to prevent that. Yet look at the upswing in hospital deaths from 'superbugs', and you'll see that sanitation and sterilization can only do so much.

Thus, if you want a good 'Dark Ages', a plague that is easily spread and kills a good percentage of those infected is a viable option.