Frankingun wrote:What about the Earth's magnetic field? I'm thinking that if a primitive dynamo can't make electricity, then there goes the magnetic field. And life on earth....
I haven't seen it, wife saw part of it and wasn't terribly impressed. From all accounts the writers are from a part of the country where people don't own guns, are ignorant of alternatives and prone to projection.
But seriously, have any of you people ever heard of 'fiction'? From the descriptions, it's clearly not hard science fiction. But that's not the only kind of science fiction, anyway. Even going a little further out, it's not unheard of to have fantasy in science fiction clothing. Each genre has certain rules, and you all clearly do not understand them.
As for the collapse- that part is actually the most plausible. Certainly alternate technologies exist and are available- they were in use before we became dependent on electricity and electronics, and would still be there after - but gearing down your entire technological infrastructure is not something you want to do AFTER everything you depend on is taken away (and you're busy fending off waves of starving barbarians that outnumber you). For sure billions would die- domestically, the cities would empty. One way or another, and that's 80% of our population. And yes the Third World would show the least effects, they're closer to subsistence to begin with.
Maybe we're just jaded, but your villainy is not particularly impressive. -Ennesby
If you know what you're doing, you're not learning anything. -Unknown
Sanity is the process by which you continually adjust your beliefs so they are predictively sound. -esr
evan price wrote:Half the trouble with pre-industrial revolution world is that they didn't KNOW the things we have now were possible or could be made. With all the knowledge of 15 year ago, there's no excuse for not having a more advanced society.
Haven't seen it, but that was what I thought as well. That's the biggest problem I have with all shows like that, they assume that people will just sit down and not do anything to improve their own situation, unless Government does it for them. There's lots of people that still knows how to farm, build things with their hands and can come up with all kinds of solutions to improve their lives, even without electricity. I have friends that spend weeks every winter without power in their houses because of power outages. It hardly slows them down, because they're prepared for it.
"Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid."
John Wayne
evan price wrote:Half the trouble with pre-industrial revolution world is that they didn't KNOW the things we have now were possible or could be made. With all the knowledge of 15 year ago, there's no excuse for not having a more advanced society.
Haven't seen it, but that was what I thought as well. That's the biggest problem I have with all shows like that, they assume that people will just sit down and not do anything to improve their own situation, unless Government does it for them.
You seem to underestimate just how many people really are like that. The self-fulfilling prophesy... has self-fulfilled.
There's lots of people that still knows how to farm, build things with their hands and can come up with all kinds of solutions to improve their lives, even without electricity. I have friends that spend weeks every winter without power in their houses because of power outages. It hardly slows them down, because they're prepared for it.
Demographics. I know there are people like that, because I married one. But I also know how the numbers balance.
Maybe we're just jaded, but your villainy is not particularly impressive. -Ennesby
If you know what you're doing, you're not learning anything. -Unknown
Sanity is the process by which you continually adjust your beliefs so they are predictively sound. -esr
Greg wrote:
But seriously, have any of you people ever heard of 'fiction'?
Yes, it's silly made up stuff and not nearly as interesting as a technical manual of some kind
Why didn't they just ask the physics department of their local university to come up with a realistic premise for electricity no longer working on a macro scale ? or maybe even a bright 12 year old who has read a few popular science books ?
All my life I been in the dog house
I guess that just where I belong
That just the way the dice roll
Do my dog house song
Greg wrote:
But seriously, have any of you people ever heard of 'fiction'?
Yes, it's silly made up stuff and not nearly as interesting as a technical manual of some kind
I like that.
Why didn't they just ask the physics department of their local university to come up with a realistic premise for electricity no longer working on a macro scale ? or maybe even a bright 12 year old who has read a few popular science books ?
Having taken some physics and chemistry, I'm not sure there is a good one. You'd either have to seriously change some physical laws in a way that would break *everything* (like people previously in the thread suggest), have some kind of 'sufficiently advanced technology' (i.e. indistinguishable from magic), or just accept that this is really fantasy not science fiction.
Has anyone here read Empire of the East?
Maybe we're just jaded, but your villainy is not particularly impressive. -Ennesby
If you know what you're doing, you're not learning anything. -Unknown
Sanity is the process by which you continually adjust your beliefs so they are predictively sound. -esr
I didn't watch it, and won't. I'm not about to waste my time and mental file space on something that asinine.
RE zombies:
I'll accept the idea of a virus that destroys the higher level brain areas in a human brain, leaving only the "reptilian" brain portions. Sort of a reptilian human that walks around killing, eating, sleeping, etc. No higher level thought process.
But "animated walking dead", complete with parts falling off as they rot, is simply ridiculous. Violates the very fundamentals of cellular biology.
"Life is a bitch. Shit happens. Adapt, improvise, and overcome. Acknowledge it, and move on."
Termite wrote:
RE zombies:
I'll accept the idea of a virus that destroys the higher level brain areas in a human brain, leaving only the "reptilian" brain portions. Sort of a reptilian human that walks around killing, eating, sleeping, etc. No higher level thought process.
We have a couple different varieties of those already. One subspecies local to NJ is famed for its uncanny orange skin.
Maybe we're just jaded, but your villainy is not particularly impressive. -Ennesby
If you know what you're doing, you're not learning anything. -Unknown
Sanity is the process by which you continually adjust your beliefs so they are predictively sound. -esr
CByrneIV wrote:
A very important note...No matter what you choose to do, it must be INTERNALLY consistent. Your universe has rules, even if they are not the rules we understand, and it has to follow them. If for some reason it appears not to, then you have to have a plausible explanation why; even if that explanation is "the aliens were pretending it was the other way, but that didn't work so they stopped pretending and now it works this way"; so long as it's internally consistent, you don't break immersion.
When you break the universe, in an internally inconsistent way, you instantly break all immersion and relation that your audience has to that universe; particularly if you do it because you wrote yourself into a corner, or because it's plot convenient.
Witness "lost".
This bears repeating again and again.
You can do nearly anything and still have a good story, so long as whatever you do is internally consistent. But it HAS to be internally consistent.
Maybe we're just jaded, but your villainy is not particularly impressive. -Ennesby
If you know what you're doing, you're not learning anything. -Unknown
Sanity is the process by which you continually adjust your beliefs so they are predictively sound. -esr
Termite wrote:I didn't watch it, and won't. I'm not about to waste my time and mental file space on something that asinine.
RE zombies:
I'll accept the idea of a virus that destroys the higher level brain areas in a human brain, leaving only the "reptilian" brain portions. Sort of a reptilian human that walks around killing, eating, sleeping, etc. No higher level thought process.
But "animated walking dead", complete with parts falling off as they rot, is simply ridiculous. Violates the very fundamentals of cellular biology.
A lot of zombie fiction doesn't specify it as a virus, leaving it up to aliens/act of god/nanomachines/whatever. Every setting that got specific is either ridiculously corny on purpose (The Resident Evil series of games), just plain stupid (the Resident Evil series of movies), or waaaay too far up its own ass (The Zombie Survival Guide).
