[extropy-chat] Re: Hybrids

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Mike Lorrey wrote:

> Nuclear submarines surviving may preserve a lot of engineering
> technology, but one look at the Russian navy yards shows hundreds of
> such hulks rusting away a decade after they were parked.

But Mike -- there is no incentive/justification for keeping them
functioning.  In a post ELE that would not be the case.

> The surviving crews would have to fight for food on land, likely use their nuclear
> threat to extort supplies from survivors on land, and use the nuclear
> reactor to generate power for a seaside community they choose as a base
> of operations.

Hmmm...  I would not think of the nuclear power as a threat but
as an essential element towards providing the energy (and light)
necessary to sustain food production.  Also -- nuclear power
is perhaps not an essential component -- it is difficult to
imagine that many ELE's would destroy all hydroelectric energy
production capacity.  Diminish it yes -- probably by a reduction
in rainfall resulting from less evaporation from the oceans --
but the infrastructure would probably remain in place.

> This carrot and stick approach would guarantee their
> survival, but would result in a warlord structured society akin to
> Afghanistan. Those with technical talent will gradually become court
> slaves to feudal constabularies when the isotopes run out.

The phrase "when the isotopes run out" suggests that there would
be a loss of the knowledge that breeder reactors are feasible.
Obviously the ability to produce more fuel than one consumes would
be a significant benefit within power structures -- so I doubt
a scenario of declining energy resources would develop.

> In fact, nuclear plants would likely become the center of the new
> civilization (provided they build some capability of running
> independent of the grid, as most require some input power to operate
> for some reason).

The above discussion suggests that there would possibly be three
potential civilization cores -- those centered around nuclear
vessels, those centered around nuclear power reactors and those
centered around hydroelectric power centers.  Now which would become
dominant would tend to revolve around how fast the climate recovers
to normal rain patterns and how fast reactor based nodes shift
into producing their own fuel resources.  So long as one gets
local civilizations into the 100-1000 year longevity framework
it seems likely that much previous knowledge could be recreated.

Robert