- A Diffrent View
- A Type V Dilema
- Battle of Vegas
- Call of the Anarchy Zones
- Central Gulf Part One
- Clean Slate
- Dead Ex
- Domain of a Thousand Corridors
- Interm Setting Ideas (Don't worry, the Anachy Zones are comming...)
- Kappa Hunt
- Not Quite Jane Goodall
- Obsession
- Radiation Hazard
- Redux
- Rough Drafts
- Ruby Ridge
- Seen the Rest? Now try NEST!
- Short Ones
- Tech Singualrity
- The (Abridged) Zone Survival Guide
- The Director's Office.
- The Truth
- Type Four
- Vegas Preview
Mass Transit
Submitted by Chainsaw Aardvark on Tue, 2007-02-27 01:36.
Settings
Its 2060, and flying cars are still only a dream. Hovercraft based on either the rubber skirt plenum chamber or the Ekranoplane Wing in Ground effect model are fairly common conveyances - but wheels are still the kings of the road.
What has dramatically changed is the style and the power source. Aside from splitting apart heavy elements, hydrocarbons are one of the densest forms of energy conveniently available. With the shut down of the oil supply for most purposes, batteries and fuel cells were implanted instead. Since these systems are rather bulkier, the large car has returned. Most vehicles have tail fins and a distinctly late 1950's appearance on the outside. Within of course, they are all the latest technology - some are quite capable of interfacing with the sphere, finding directions, and driving themselves with no human input.
Electric turbo-props and maglev trains are the most common means of long distance travel. Oil based jet fuel is carefully hoarded by governments to keep their high performance fighters and bombers at the ready. Alternative power combat aircraft do exist as well, but neither plasma arc jets nor less energetic liquid fuels (such as ethanol) provide the necessary performance. "Missile boat" craft in the mold of the F-89 Scorpion or MiG-25 Foxbat that don't need high speed or acceleration are becoming more common.
Arcologies and the sphere have made travel far less necessary. This has led to a downturn in the economy due to the reduced need of vehicles, and the lack of a big city real estate market for centralized office space. (The diners and other facilities that cater to the downtown lunch rush have suffered as well.)
Post Invasion
The good news is, that electric cars have fewer moving parts, and can be charged from just about any source of power. Unfortunately, most of these vehicles were reduced to scrap by malignant eddy currents unleashed by EMP weapons during the invasion. In this case, its not just the computer or power steering that was damaged, but the entire drive train and power system. While durable, larger cars also lack the off-road maneuverability of smaller unit.
Older military models with multi-fuel engines (Biodesiel and alcohol) are quite literally worth killing for. Most cities are too clogged with dead cars and rubble to make lesser transit reasonable, and outside the towns, electricity is non-existent. Furthermore, even light vehicle coil-guns (such as the 4cm GE/Colt model found on many APCS) can destroy alien units at 800 meters. A 15cm tank gun can eliminate targets out to the horizon, and beyond in artillery mode. However, tanks present their own field repair difficulties.
A few trains still run - and are considered the premier way to get through dangerous territory. Flying is fairly safe in human populated areas, but alien laser towers sweep the sky clean above citizen settlements. Most large sea-going vessels are nuclear powered. However, since fusion continues to elude the human race, 5 years on most ships are nonoperational. (The average US Civilian power plant is refueled every 13 months or so.) There are a few complexes remaining capable of refueling such vessels - the contested central gulf naval base and the Kola peninsula submarine pen - for certain.
The aliens do have their own ekranoplanes, but no traditional navy, and so submarines continue to lurk about completely unabated.
» add new comment | by Chainsaw Aardvark | 350 reads
If you need a tow, press one, If the dead have risen...
Submitted by Chainsaw Aardvark on Fri, 2007-03-02 01:18.
Well, given the paucity of magnetic levitation bullet trains in the USA at the moment, we can rather safely hypothesize that any new system will have all the latest safety systems when built. Automated track maintenance systems are probably sent out quite often - 200mph is no time for an emergency. Aside from that, there might be armed guards. However, there are probably no surviving facilities capable of building new trains, much less ones with integrated armament.
One of those "pick you poison" moments really. Is it any better to be stuck with 300 people at 200 mph on a train than with 4 others in a 60 mph car? I can defiantly see games centered around PCs being hired as train guards, or desperately trying to fix the broken mechanism.
I wasn't thinking much about tall ships to be honest. How many people would have that knowledge either today, or half a century from now? Getting stuck out in the ocean is probably worse than being locked in a mall and I should allow for that possibility. Then again, the weather is warmer, the storms worse, and there are fewer places to go. One of these days, I'm going to officially point out many port cites are inundated rather than simply mention warming in passing.
Mostly, I though it would be best to limit transportation - isolation is a key part of horror.
A further aside, is that nuclear fueling stations would be a point of contention. The citizens probably don't know much about nuclear power, but wouldn't approve of something that produces such long-lived waste. City states would go to war over such a facility - indeed that is the story between New Birmingham and Central Gulf. CG was always underfunded because it was just a cover for the construction of the LOSTSEC (Lone Star Sea Combat) facility. NB wants whatever is in there, and spies and pirates from as far as Russia want to do something about it as well. (Ever read "On the Beach"? A nuclear submarine as the last bastion in the apocalypse.)
Admittedly, I'm not cleared to handle anything radioactive, but I was under the impression that the US used PWR plants precisely because they were a spin off of the tech needed for nuclear ships. If Admiral Rickover hadn't insisted on a nuclear navy, we could have used a better design in our plants. Technically, by 2060 they would be using pebel bed reactors or something like that - but those don't have the same chance of meltdown and urgency for those who want an interesting story.
There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.
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Scream like crazy!
Submitted by Gentleman John on Fri, 2007-03-02 03:13.
Train games would be interestin. Obvious inspriation would be Firefly or the old Strontium Dog story "The Bad Boys".
However, yes. Isolation is one of the keys to horror. If you can't get away from the horror, then it becomes more terrifying. However, there is nothing to stop the horror getting to you on the transport when you can't get off. And a becalmed sailinbg vessel is about as isolated as it gets - even with the shore only a mile away! trust me.
And Rickover is to blame for the current dominance of PWRs. At the time, they were the only reactor type with a high enough power density to pack into a metal tube full of seamen. However, I believe that there is currently a new generation of PBMRs coming into develop ment that use direct cycle gas turbines. They are bigger than PWRs (as the power denisty is lower), but on a CVN, that should not be too much of a proble, Those things are big enough.
On the Beach ... Read it a long time ago. It is a depressing moment when the crew reach the source of the signals in America and discover it is merely a Coke bottle tapping against the key of a radio set.
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Planes & Trains & Automobiles
A few questions that spring to mind.
Trains are supposedly the best (and presumably safest) way of getting through dangerous territor. However, considering that trains run on fixed routes and are easily derailed (the last weekend in Cumbria proves the point), this suggests that the trains are probably closer to the armoured trains of the Boer War and the following conflicts than they are to the trains we know today. So, what changes have there been to the trains?
As for ships: why not sail or rotors? These technologies have bee around for a while and are reliable. Nuclear power, on the other hand, has been abandoned since the 1970s for civilian vessels. Mind you, while civil plants do need refuelling every year or so, the reactors employed in military vessels need refuelling much less often. According to public-domain information, the Nimitz refuelled after over 20 years of service, while the Ford-Class carriers are expected to go a bit longer. The real problems with naval reactors involve the reliability of their support systems, which mean they need maintenance on a very regular basis. Of course, assuming an increase in reliability over the years, this need might decrease. Still, you do need special facilities to maintain naval nuclear plants due to "inherent design features", as you do point out.