The Ablation Cascade - What WAS It? [Lore, Spoilers, and Questions]

[Prozac]

So in the Blue Bottle Universe (that's not actually a term I've seen used, but I needed a phrase for it and so I'm coining this, shorthand: Blue Universe / BBUniverse) of NEO Scavenger and Ostranauts, the Earth has experienced a cataclysmic event that could - at least according to FEMA, and other sources such as the inglorious "Waffle House Scale", be categorized as "apocalyptic".

This event essentially forced humanity into three separate tiers:
> Those living in one of several mega-cities, Judge Dredd style
> Those surviving in the harsh abandoned world outside of mega-cities
> Those living in the Solar System society of space that arose as a consequence of Earth's lost

So what happened to Earth? We know very little. We know an eldritch entity from another dimension may have been involved, whether directly or indirectly (the more plausible answer), we know top secret military bases were involved including that of the likes of Greywater, we know a man in Michigan dedicated his entire life both pre and post apocalypse to finding answers, and had once published a website known as the New Earth Ostracon, the contents of which site is now likely lost as it seems unlikely the old internet was archived or preserved through the cataclysm.

But what ACTUALLY happened? What concrete evidence do we have? Well, according to Ostranauts - something called an "Ablation Cascade". What the hell is that? Who knows - the only other two things that come to mind are the terms "synaptic cascade" and Half Life's "resonance cascade". However. we live in a magical time period where we have access to something none of our forebears ever really did - (almost) all of human knowledge right at our finger tips - the INTERNET. So with that great power in our possession... let's just do the normie thing and ask Google.

>>>[one Google result later]<<<

So, at least for Google, there's not much information on what an Ablation Cascade is. It turns out that it is a scientific term and not just quasi-science mumbo-jumbo created for the lore, but it's something that hasn't garnered a ton of interest or information written on it and because of that, unfortunately, our most informative source must come from the infamous Wikipedia. *sigh*. Beggars can't be choosers I guess, let's dive in:

Ok so, according to Wikipedia Ablation Cascade is a correct name but isn't the most common name for this phenomena, it's commonly called "Kessler Syndrome" and was theorized by an American astronaut who worked for NASA during the cold war, Donald J. Kessler.

Mr. Kessler theorized a scenario in which: "the density of objects in low Earth orbit due to space pollution is numerous enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions." Kessler would further go on to state that "modeling results had concluded that the debris environment was already unstable (even during his Cold War era when compared to say, today, or a future where space faring is common and lots of debris would be around), such that any attempt to achieve a growth-free small debris environment by eliminating sources of past debris will likely fail because fragments from future collisions will be generated faster than atmospheric drag will remove them".

Now, maybe your smart and 100% understood in all facets exactly what that meant, but if you're not smart and you are like me, you're asking, "ok, Prozac, what the ♥♥♥♥ does that even mean?" So, imagine Low Earth Orbit just absolutely cluttered with ♥♥♥♥. Debris from cast off satellites, space stations, literal trash that was shot into orbit (yes we do occasionally do that as a species), et cetera. Now imagine that, for some mathematical reason we cannot work out in our brain without the help of an army of mathematicians and people who know precisely how Earth's atmosphere works, one of those pieces of debris crashed into another piece of debris. Then that piece of debris crashed into another one, and then that one crashed into another one, and then THAT one crashed into another one, and then THAT ONE CRASHED INTO ANOTHER ONE and so on and so forth you get the picture.

Not only is this domino effect of collisions not good, but each successive crash is also steadily increasing the speed of the objects until... uh oh... there are a ♥♥♥♥ ton of daggers falling onto earth each of them going faster than a speeding bullet. Just imagine you walk outside one day and random explosions start happening around you. Suddenly, your neighborhouse just EVAPORATES and knocks you to the ground. You get up, and you hear another explosion from a few blocks away, then suddenly the entire city is getting blown up. You figure out it's something coming from the sky doing this but it's objects moving at such a speed you cant quite make out what they are. Yeah that'd be pretty terrifying.

But wait... is that it? Is that what caused Earth to go haywire? In the lore nobody from the other planets/moons/asteroids ever visits Earth either because they don't want to or presumably cannot (maybe it's low orbit still just absolutely cluttered with so much trash a ship feasibly cannot get through?)

But again, wait? What about the Merga Wraith? What about the entity looking at our universe and licking it's lips? Surely there's something more at play here? Surely there's more to what meets the eye? Maybe the Ablation Cascade that happened in the Blue Bottle Universe (again, coining this, right here and now) isn't the same thing as what Mr. Kessler envisioned might happen?

P.S. I did not intend for this to get this long, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I guess both congratulations and thank you if you decided to read through the entirety of my lunatic ramblings.

[coreywaite]

I love this! I won't speculate as to "why" it happened but this is almost certainly "what" happened. Makes you wonder what kind of thing can get in and out of Earth at this point. Certainly not ships but perhaps signals? Data? Much to consider.

[Joe the Tech]

The "Ablation Cascade" could refer to Earth falling victim to Kessler Syndrome, but why wouldn't the lore just call it that? The lore is accurate as far as real physics and physicists are concerned. My (only half-serious and suggested for academic discussion) theory is that it has to do with a catastrophic fusion reactor failure, as the fusion reactors have ablation surfaces that need to be replaced semi-regularly.

[Prozac]

Originally posted by coreywaite:

I love this! I won't speculate as to "why" it happened but this is almost certainly "what" happened. Makes you wonder what kind of thing can get in and out of Earth at this point. Certainly not ships but perhaps signals? Data? Much to consider.

Well, funny you mention wondering what can get in and out of Earth.

While scavenging a ship I picked up a PDA, and one of the PDA's had information on Jade Rabbit - Luna's (Earth's moon) largest settlement of about 800,000 people.

So I'll try to keep the history short but this settlement was apparently originally started as a research station and possible springboard for Earth-Mars missions by the government of the People's Republic of China. Something happened, the details aren't clear, but a political party/organization known as "Xinhua" overthrew the Chinese Communist Party and when that happened most of the CCP's members fled to Pakistan - however the upper echelon of the party fled to the lunar colony (and thus it's still under control of the remnants of the CCP to this day).

Now - the reason that this is relevant is because somehow, Jade Rabbit (the settlement on Luna) claims to still remain in contact with the remnants of Xinhua controlled China on Earth, making Jade Rabbit the primary source of information for news about how Earth is doing or at the very least, how the remnants of China on Earth is doing.

So we know that somehow, someway, data transfer that is at least complicated enough to allow communication between Earth and those in space (the distance for possible communications being unknown) is indeed possible. There is a way to communicate with the remnants of post-cataclysm Earth or, at the very least - get a small glimpse into what is going on there.

The problem comes due to the fact that those in control of Jade Rabbit refuse to tell anyone HOW they are in communication with the Xinhua remnants on Earth. Because they are refusing to tell people how they're communicating most people either take the information Jade Rabbit releases about Earth as, best case scenario heresay to be taken with a grain of salt, worst case scenario complete and absolute fabrication of information.

So assuming Jade Rabbit isn't just lying here's what we know:
> Communication with Earth IS possible
> It is just extremely difficult to the point where only the closest settlement to Earth has been able to manage it

Speculation: Going further off what we known about Kessler Syndrome/Ablation Cascade, at least the IRL version of it, it is very possible that the Earth's orbit is absolutely completely cluttered with debris - a lot of that debris possibly being electronic in nature and malfunctioning. The huge web of debris electronics is creating enough information white noise, or something similar, to essentially build a sort of invisible "shield" around Earth via extremely amounts of data pollution in the atmosphere.

I know this is sounding crazy but here me out. We know that both noise and radio pollution is a real thing.

Even today as a species we still primarily use radio waves to communicate. We've come a long way and have advanced greatly since the first radio's but we still communicate by sending electronic impulses out that can then be picked up by specialized equipment.

So imagine you're on Luna. You cobble together a message, maybe it's voice, maybe it's text, maybe it's straight binary/code, and you try to broadcast it towards Earth. The people on Earth cannot properly get it even if they had all the necessary equipment to receive the broadcast. This is because of the pure amount of crap in the atmosphere, and old and malfunctioning electronics essentially creating a giant blanket of stale electronic noise/nonsense broadcast - a giant field of electronic white noise.

This would make communicating via traditional methods very difficult if not impossible, trying to pull/find the garbled transmission sent out might be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

That's just one idea but it's complete speculation based off the limited amounts of information we have.

[Shenji]

There is a hard sci-fi Japanese novel called Planetes, which described a near future space life just before the ablation cascade, a junk scavenging spaceship, space stations, space combats and a lot of junks. Ostranauts always reminds me this novel.
(Though you may know some Japanese writers have a pretty weird behavior to put a huge lot of amazing hand drawn pictures in their novels but I still enjoyed my reading)

[Prozac]

Originally posted by Joe the Tech:

The "Ablation Cascade" could refer to Earth falling victim to Kessler Syndrome, but why wouldn't the lore just call it that? The lore is accurate as far as real physics and physicists are concerned. My (only half-serious and suggested for academic discussion) theory is that it has to do with a catastrophic fusion reactor failure, as the fusion reactors have ablation surfaces that need to be replaced semi-regularly.

That makes sense in certain ways I just don't under one thing: if that was the case what could possibly be keeping people from establishing regular communication with Earth - if not visiting Earth?

Originally posted by Shenji:

There is a hard sci-fi Japanese novel called Planetes, which described a near future space life just before the ablation cascade, a junk scavenging spaceship, space stations, space combats and a lot of junks. Ostranauts always reminds me this novel.
(Though you may know some Japanese writers have a pretty weird behavior to put a huge lot of amazing hand drawn pictures in their novels but I still enjoyed my reading)

Hey thanks for the recommendation I will have to check it out.

[Joe the Tech]

Originally posted by Prozac:

That makes sense in certain ways I just don't under one thing: if that was the case what could possibly be keeping people from establishing regular communication with Earth - if not visiting Earth?

Honestly, I had a whole theory written up about it only to realize that it all hinged on Earth using D-T fusion, but in Ostranauts they use D2O-He3 fusion, which is aneutronic and doesn't horribly irradiate stuff. So, basically, disregard what I said. It was just for the sake of argument anyways.

[iamarobot]

Originally posted by Prozac:

That makes sense in certain ways I just don't under one thing: if that was the case what could possibly be keeping people from establishing regular communication with Earth - if not visiting Earth?

After some digging through the Ostranauts wiki, my main theory centres on the BB-verse's form of FTL communication: Quantum entanglement. Essentially, in the future, scientists have discovered a way to manipulate entangled particles for instantaneous information transfer, however at extremely low bandwidths (500KB/s or ~200wpm). Anyway, this technology is monopolised by Xinhua tech giant Zhuangzi Phenomenology [ostranauts.wiki.gg]. You see where I'm going here? Now, this idea is dulled slightly by the fact that Jade Rabbit, the lunar colony that supposedly has access to this secretive link to Earth's surface is controlled by the CCP, which had been ousted from Earth by Xinhua. But just play along with me here.

If this is the case, this form of communication would completely circumvent the,

Originally posted by Prozac:

old and malfunctioning electronics essentially creating a giant blanket of stale electronic noise/nonsense broadcast - a giant field of electronic white noise.

and allow for Jade Rabbit to become the only method of communicating with Old Earth. For the question of 'why not just go down there yourself?', this is answered in two parts.

1.

Originally posted by Joe the Tech:

Honestly, I had a whole theory written up about it only to realize that it all hinged on Earth using D-T fusion, but in Ostranauts they use D2O-He3 fusion, which is aneutronic and doesn't horribly irradiate stuff. So, basically, disregard what I said. It was just for the sake of argument anyways.

You're completely on the mark. In-game, fusion reactors (despite them realistically being safe) are extremely hazardous to crews if damaged/misused. Hence, the creation of ChymAdd [ostranauts.wiki.gg], an advanced anti-radiation drug as well as mentions of reactor rooms being "...heavily shielded to protect the crew from radiation." [ostranauts.wiki.gg] During the Ablation Cascade, it's more than likely that hundreds, possibly thousands of fusion-capable ships were in orbit, which were breached and leaked, ionising vast parts of Earth's orbital real-estate (Another reason why conventional signal transmission would be impossible from space). This irradiation would then make it near-impossible to bring crews safely in and out, let alone fragile radiation-sensitive electrical equipment (there's a reason why computers on the ISS look like they'd survive a nuke).

2.
The other reason is a problem of integrity. In-game, there is a micrometeoroid event (rock particles <1 gram) which can devastate your vessel. Now, imagine instead of microscopic chunks of rock, it's large metal shrapnel, paint chips, corpses, equipment, starships and abandoned orbital infrastructure (space stations/elevators) flying around Earth, untrackable and unavoidable for decades to come. This environment is almost virtually impossible to traverse safely.

Finally, as an extra, think about the world Ostranauts is set in. A dystopian, neo-liberal corporatocracy ruled by über-corporations whose sole purpose is exponential profit. When trade with Earth became unprofitable [ostranauts.wiki.gg], they easily severed ties with their home planet to ensure survival.


Notes:
I've never played NEO Scavenger, so hopefully there's nothing that conflicts with my argument there. Sidenote, I love your writing style, Prozac! You should write professionally :)

[madpraxis]

....I gotta say that is probably one of the most complicated, most long winded ways to describe what an ablation cascade/kessler syndrome is.... Yet still, even after you looked it up, you got it wrong? (Not you post above me, you actually nailed the problems with Kessler Syndrom on the head, hah. Hell, you nailed everything damn good actually).

tl;dr version:
Space, in orbit of Earth. Now, imagine a bunch of shotguns firing pellets in orbit. So many shotguns that the pellets start bouncing off each other. So, lots of things whizzing around that are pretty unstoppable without using your face in some way, which means anything up there gets ripped apart and IT starts whizzing around in bits in orbit. Things that don't go fast enough to escape orbit get caught, and things slow enough/angled enough to go towards Earth either skip off and re-enter orbit or burn up/sort of burn up and hit what most things falling from the sky hit: Nothing, cause Earth is an ocean planet so it either hits ocean or some dry land where nothing is, cause even though ocean planet means water even our landmasses are pretty damn empty when it comes to it.

longer version:
So, lots of garbage running in circles above Earth. Complete chaos. You can't tell what is going to be where, and when, and there is just enough crap flying around that it keeps making more and smaller crap that is going off at it's own random angles. Now, it's fast enough to be dangerous, has speed low enough it gets caught in orbit yet high enough to keep a long term orbit, and there is enough of it that it keeps bouncing off each other and what remains making more junk that fits all these things.

Nothing is hitting Earth, like, at all. That is literally not part of Kessler Syndrom/Ablation Cascade. Now, there MAY be things that get knocked out that are large enough to survive de-orbit, but a lot of that would burn up or burn off enough of itself to fit 'Not a bloody problem' category, not to mention EARTH IS BIG so the chances of what was left hitting anything other then nothing is rather small. Now, the speeds involved are NOT fast enough to punch through with any level of 'danger', since space is large and even de-orbit speeds aren't THAT fast plus the angle of travel would have to actually point *towards* Earth. Not to mention that if its shallow enough of an angle, and the speeds just aren't fast enough, if its small junk it's just as likely to skip right off and back into orbit at a slower speed.... And, again, slow speeds = burn up, not matter the angles, if it manages to actually *point* towards Earth.

Now, as far as I know and recall, the NEO world was rather dependent on a number of 'fancy' things from not on Earth. So, chaos, confusion, blah blah... But that wasn't the biggest problem, see? It was EVERYTHING ElSE that was going on at that time that contributed to the NEO world being what it was. What were those things? I can't even recall, it's been so long since I messed with NEO Scavanger, but if I recall correctly its vaguely hinted at a number of vague things were going on at the exact same time.

[SoosGjr]

The NewCal history entry mentions that they tried to go back to Earth in 2059, but they were shot down by automated defenses without communication and just assumed that the US was compromised and declared independence.

They might want to go back, possibly even could, but probably they would need to bring a big enough armada to get through Earth's defenses, if it's still active.

[iamarobot]

Originally posted by SoosGjr:

The NewCal history entry mentions that they tried to go back to Earth in 2059, but they were shot down by automated defenses without communication and just assumed that the US was compromised and declared independence.

They might want to go back, possibly even could, but probably they would need to bring a big enough armada to get through Earth's defenses, if it's still active.

I completely forgot about that lore entry! That probably threw a wrench in my theory, but it's interesting nonetheless that Old Earth was hostile. My gut instinct is to say that since society collapsed, the weapon systems may've gone haywire or were operated by rogue forces.

[iamarobot]

Also, the New Earth Ostracon blog tells a reddit story of a pair of spacers descending into Earth's atmosphere before dying suddenly. I'm not sure if this would still be canonical (being posted ~v0.6), but it would be more precedent for craft crossing the debris field unharmed.

[Prozac]

Originally posted by madpraxis:

....I gotta say that is probably one of the most complicated, most long winded ways to describe what an ablation cascade/kessler syndrome is.... Yet still, even after you looked it up, you got it wrong? (Not you post above me, you actually nailed the problems with Kessler Syndrom on the head, hah. Hell, you nailed everything damn good actually).

tl;dr version:
Space, in orbit of Earth. Now, imagine a bunch of shotguns firing pellets in orbit. So many shotguns that the pellets start bouncing off each other. So, lots of things whizzing around that are pretty unstoppable without using your face in some way, which means anything up there gets ripped apart and IT starts whizzing around in bits in orbit. Things that don't go fast enough to escape orbit get caught, and things slow enough/angled enough to go towards Earth either skip off and re-enter orbit or burn up/sort of burn up and hit what most things falling from the sky hit: Nothing, cause Earth is an ocean planet so it either hits ocean or some dry land where nothing is, cause even though ocean planet means water even our landmasses are pretty damn empty when it comes to it.

longer version:
So, lots of garbage running in circles above Earth. Complete chaos. You can't tell what is going to be where, and when, and there is just enough crap flying around that it keeps making more and smaller crap that is going off at it's own random angles. Now, it's fast enough to be dangerous, has speed low enough it gets caught in orbit yet high enough to keep a long term orbit, and there is enough of it that it keeps bouncing off each other and what remains making more junk that fits all these things.

Nothing is hitting Earth, like, at all. That is literally not part of Kessler Syndrom/Ablation Cascade. Now, there MAY be things that get knocked out that are large enough to survive de-orbit, but a lot of that would burn up or burn off enough of itself to fit 'Not a bloody problem' category, not to mention EARTH IS BIG so the chances of what was left hitting anything other then nothing is rather small. Now, the speeds involved are NOT fast enough to punch through with any level of 'danger', since space is large and even de-orbit speeds aren't THAT fast plus the angle of travel would have to actually point *towards* Earth. Not to mention that if its shallow enough of an angle, and the speeds just aren't fast enough, if its small junk it's just as likely to skip right off and back into orbit at a slower speed.... And, again, slow speeds = burn up, not matter the angles, if it manages to actually *point* towards Earth.

Now, as far as I know and recall, the NEO world was rather dependent on a number of 'fancy' things from not on Earth. So, chaos, confusion, blah blah... But that wasn't the biggest problem, see? It was EVERYTHING ElSE that was going on at that time that contributed to the NEO world being what it was. What were those things? I can't even recall, it's been so long since I messed with NEO Scavanger, but if I recall correctly its vaguely hinted at a number of vague things were going on at the exact same time.

Yeah, that would make NO sense as to why the Earth is the way it is in NEO. Futhermore, Donald J. Kessler himself described a scenario in which this could be potentially damaging to Earth due to debris too large to fully burn up in orbit slamming into the Earth at high speeds, THAT is where I got that from. The relative speeds needed would come about as a result of objects from outside of the debris belt increasing the domino effect, objects that are already travelling at a high VREL (relative velocity). I decided to include that scenario here as a viable and likely explanation for why Earth is the way that it is.

Second, I flat said in the post that I was approaching the topic as a layman with no background in physics (quote = Now, maybe your smart and 100% understood in all facets exactly what that meant, but if you're not smart and you are like me, you're asking), so coming in and figuratively pushing up your glasses towards me is more obnoxious than anything. (quote - "you looked it up and you STILL got it wrong"). Absolutely unnecessary passive aggressiveness.

[iamarobot]

Originally posted by madpraxis:

...Nothing is hitting Earth, like, at all. That is literally not part of Kessler Syndrom/Ablation Cascade. Now, there MAY be things that get knocked out that are large enough to survive de-orbit, but a lot of that would burn up or burn off enough of itself to fit 'Not a bloody problem' category...

While I agree that in real life, Kessler syndrome would be more like a cage than a never-ending meteor shower, Blue Bottle does state that meteorites hit the surface, as seen in this presentation from PAX East 2020

...Unknown numbers perished in the fallout, as worldwide networks collapsed, and meteorites ravaged the surface.

[khulkhuum]

Originally posted by iamarobot:

Originally posted by madpraxis:

...Nothing is hitting Earth, like, at all. That is literally not part of Kessler Syndrom/Ablation Cascade. Now, there MAY be things that get knocked out that are large enough to survive de-orbit, but a lot of that would burn up or burn off enough of itself to fit 'Not a bloody problem' category...

While I agree that in real life, Kessler syndrome would be more like a cage than a never-ending meteor shower, Blue Bottle does state that meteorites hit the surface, as seen in this presentation from PAX East 2020

...Unknown numbers perished in the fallout, as worldwide networks collapsed, and meteorites ravaged the surface.

I would love to put my two cents into the matter saying that no matter how rough the situation might have been initially, i don't believe we're talking about an infinite amount of debris in the orbit.

Picture this (an imaginative example): At the time of the Catastrophe there were let's say 10000 vessels around the orbit and for whatever reason all of those 10000 vessels turn into debris. Taking into account the size of some ships in Ostranauts, as well as some space stations, we can assume there would be a variety of sizes for all chunks of debris (and also types). So let's say at the start we have: A LOT of BIG chunks (able to level a couple buildings if hitting Earth). A LOT of MEDIUM chunks (able to level a building at most if hitting Earth). A LOT of SMALL chunks (able to make a small crater and minor damage if hitting Earth, but most likely burning in the atmosphere). A LOT of MINISCULE chunks (completely burning in the atmosphere if losing orbit).

Over time (especially with the increasing amount of collisions), there are several things happening:
1. Any type of chunk is thrown off the orbit and onto Earth. This decreases the overall amount of debris in orbit, even if by a very little amount.
2. BIG, MEDIUM and SMALL collide with each other, breaking into smaller chunks still in orbit. The bigger the chunk, the bigger it is as a target for all the other debris hitting it, so it's more likely that those BIG get dissected into smaller parts faster than MEDIUM, and those faster than SMALL.

As the time passes we can assume there would be less and less of BIG and MEDIUM chunks in orbit, meaning less and less of that type of falling debris. This means initially the fallout and destruction by the falling debris could have been massive, but after some time (be it a month, a year or 10 years) survivors on Earth would only see SMALL chunks being destroyed in the atmosphere and very rarely MEDIUM. Additionally, the amount of MINISCULE debris would be in such amounts that it would hinder any ships trying to get to or out of Earth (as described by other people here).

tl;dr
BIG and MEDIUM chunks of debris shattered into smaller parts over time due to increasing amount of collisions. This means less and less fallen debris big enough to make serious damage, but also A LOT more MINISCULE debris in the orbit.

[iamarobot]

Agreed. This would therefore reduce the planet-side risk over time (seeing as there's no meteorites falling on your head in NEO), while also increasing ship-side risk seeing as even paint flakes can rip holes through ships (see ISS paint chip impact) which would support the idea that travel to Earth is near-impossible.