Earth evacuation viability

[KrZ]

One fundamental aspect that explains Starfield universe/story is that humans were forced to evacuate planet earth due to impending environmental catastrophe. And they managed to do so within 50 years if I recall correctly, which is a phenomenal feat.

So, do you think that such a project could be achieved in the real world? If we had no other choice, could humanity -in today's social climate- work together as a cohesive unit and effectively achieve space colonisation on a mass scale within a 50 or 100 year time frame?

[Azunai]

FTL travel is fantasy. If earth becomes uninhabitable, it's game over for us. No other habitable planets are within our reach.

[fauxpas]

Originally posted by St3amfails:

Originally posted by Jᴧgᴧ:

Nope, absolutely zero chance of evacuating the planet. Even evacuating a viable DNA pool of humans (50 males, 50 females, 0 gender neutrals) to another planet to start over isn't possible. Those 100 people would take hundreds of years to repopulate enough to even start manufacturing space travel all over again from a new settlement.

We've been given a planet, we're destroying that planet. It's almost at the tipping point per science gathered over the last 50 years, data going back hundreds of thousands of years. IF by some amazing chance we manage not to destroy ourselves, we'd need ~500+ years to get the technology together to either kickstart Mars' electromagnetic shield and reconstitute it's atmosphere, or ~1000+ years to get travel fast & large enough such that 20+ generations of humans traveling on a ship could make it to the nearest viable galaxy.

Just isn't going to happen, unfortunately. We like to romance the idea, but the reality of it is a moot point.

just lol that you think going to another galaxy is even a thing.
Do you have any idea how many stars and planets exist in this one? The odds of reaching further than 1 percent of this galaxy at any point are crazy low, but another one entirely? just why? even if the physics magically allowed it

As much as it irks me people use galaxy interchangeably with solar system.

[Jᴧgᴧ]

Originally posted by St3amfails:

just lol that you think going to another galaxy is even a thing.
Do you have any idea how many stars and planets exist in this one? The odds of reaching further than 1 percent of this galaxy at any point are crazy low, but another one entirely? just why? even if the physics magically allowed it

My bad, meant star system. Editing!

[indigo]

Originally posted by Jᴧgᴧ:

Originally posted by KrZ:

One fundamental aspect that explains Starfield universe/story is that humans were forced to evacuate planet earth due to impending environmental catastrophe. And they managed to do so within 50 years if I recall correctly, which is a phenomenal feat.

So, do you think that such a project could be achieved in the real world? If we had no other choice, could humanity -in today's social climate- work together as a cohesive unit and effectively achieve space colonisation on a mass scale within a 50 or 100 year time frame?

Nope, absolutely zero chance of evacuating the planet. Even evacuating a viable DNA pool of humans (50 males, 50 females, 0 gender neutrals) to another planet to start over isn't possible. Those 100 people would take hundreds of years to repopulate enough to even start manufacturing space travel all over again from a new settlement.

100 people could breed another 100 people over the course of 18 years (assuming basic decency survives into space and we retain an aversion to kiddy-diddling), it also reduces the viable gene pool with each successive generation, as this colony of 100 would become inbred to the point of no longer being genetically viable in 4 generations. By gen 5, the effects would start to become more obvious and fertility rates would plummet. By generation 7, you'd have a colony with a collective IQ of carrot, and they'd all be sterile, giving said colony a maximum sustainable lifespan of 90 years.

Just look at how screwed up Queen Victoria's bloodline was due to inbreeding if you have doubts.

[Scyris]

Originally posted by SylenThunder:

Not to mention that we likely don't have anywhere near the resources to build even a quarter of the ships that would be necessary.

Well yes there is that too, pretty sure the grav drives alone are going to be hard to make, I doubt they are made with super common materials on earth. There is also the fact if the ship is too big it couldn't take off out of the atomsphere due to the gravity, thats why the colony ships were made out in space. As they were so massive they'd not be able to get off the planet.

[Jᴧgᴧ]

Originally posted by indigo:

100 people could breed another 100 people over the course of 18 years (assuming basic decency survives into space and we retain an aversion to kiddy-diddling), it also reduces the viable gene pool with each successive generation, as this colony of 100 would become inbred to the point of no longer being genetically viable in 4 generations. By gen 5, the effects would start to become more obvious and fertility rates would plummet. By generation 7, you'd have a colony with a collective IQ of carrot, and they'd all be sterile, giving said colony a maximum sustainable lifespan of 90 years.

Just look at how screwed up Queen Victoria's bloodline was due to inbreeding if you have doubts.

Quite possibly true. I simply used the number 100, as it's been defined in other articles/papers as "the minimum viable gene pool for avoiding immediate issues". I fully expect women would need to get pregnant by multiple different men over the course of their lives to even TRY and keep the gene pool viable - still might not work. The number might be closer to 500 or even 1000 to avoid long-term genetic degredation, in which case the size of the ship and it's supporting systems would need to scale up also, further increasing the time needed.

[EzRyder]

Originally posted by KrZ:

One fundamental aspect that explains Starfield universe/story is that humans were forced to evacuate planet earth due to impending environmental catastrophe. And they managed to do so within 50 years if I recall correctly, which is a phenomenal feat.

So, do you think that such a project could be achieved in the real world? If we had no other choice, could humanity -in today's social climate- work together as a cohesive unit and effectively achieve space colonisation on a mass scale within a 50 or 100 year time frame?

no not at all, thats why this is Sci-Fi
currently we can Barely get an Un-Manned spacecraft to our own solar system planets and we dont have a livable planet to go too, even IF we could get there - non starter

[BEEP!]

If all human life was going to die then yes the vast majority of humans would work together and the ones that don't agree will simply die on earth just look at WW2 that's a pretty good example of a lot of people that hate each other working together for a common goal.

And yea humans don't like to work together on much but life & death is another story there's a reason why after humans got off earth and settled they went back to doing wars again lol.

[Baphled]

Realistically, no. We're currently rapidly approaching a climate crisis, and we don't seem to be able to work together to even slow that down. If someone raised the issue of the Earth losing it's atmosphere in X years, people would spend those X years fighting about it.



If we pretend enough people were altruistic to start the process immediately, and they had the technology available in this game, they could evacuate a significant portion of the population that time.

This is where the United Colonies comes into play. It would require absolute authoritarian control over everything (which isn't great). They would need to create manufacturing facilities for large passenger ships, and the manufacture of those parts for that process, and the collection of resources. They would need to eliminate most other non-essential occupations. They would need to control the production and distribution of food and build up a massive reserve of supplies to feed the people once they arrive at their destination. They would need to ensure all the basic provisions people need are still available during this phase. They would need to determine what to bring and what to leave behind (historical and religious artifacts for example).

While they're getting everything ready for the exodus, they need to scout viable worlds. In theory they already have some of this done and have ships available for this task. But it would take a long time to jump around and scan planets to find some good ones.

Then they need to start establishing settlements, providing shelter for the people who are going to arrive. They would probably start moving people over slowly, having the first waves of people bring a lot of the construction materials for the shelters. Getting all the necessary facilities in place, such as medical centers and distribution centers.

Actually moving people would take a long time, but it's mostly in the loading/unloading and take off/ landing. Thanks to the grav drive, the jump is practically instant. So ships can keep shuttling people one group after another.

There would also be a large population of people that just wouldn't go along with it. Some countries would resist, and some of the population would call it all a hoax or believe this was some kind of end times and they should embrace it. So you'd never get 100% of the people, but you could certainly get quite a lot saved.

[Scyris]

Originally posted by 1080puktra:

If all human life was going to die then yes the vast majority of humans would work together and the ones that don't agree will simply die on earth just look at WW2 that's a pretty good example of a lot of people that hate each other working together for a common goal.

And yea humans don't like to work together on much but life & death is another story there's a reason why after humans got off earth and settled they went back to doing wars again lol.

I dunno, I doubt even a possible extinction event will get humanity to unite, To many greedy people out there.

[Don_Salvatore]

One thing is leaving the earth.
Another is this fantasy world where all of old earth leaves "together".

It's a testament to the intellectual and creative bankruptcy of Bethesda, that they thought this was believable.

I am sure the Chinese and Russians would nuke the earth out of orbit before leaving under a US banner.

And remember folks. It all happened in 50 years.
We have had 150 years of warnings about the effect of greenhouse gases and we still have autocrats and half the US population nit believing it while driving a car through 2 meters of water.

Bethesda. When capitalism kills creativity.

[[GCC] Excellero]

pfff never
maybe they would cherry pick the richest, the smartest and whoever has power and everyone not fit in that category would die with the planet

[Don_Salvatore]

Originally posted by GCC Excellero:

pfff never
maybe they would cherry pick the richest, the smartest and whoever has power and everyone not fit in that category would die with the planet

Earth's nations banded together to coordinate a massive evacuation effort, which spurred the first colonization expedition to Alpha Centauri in 2156 and the formation of the United Colonies in 2159.

https://starfield.fandom.com/wiki/Earth

[kgmi]

Can someone who does math, do the math how long it would take to evac everyone with how many ships by the time this scenario takes place in this game ?

I recon all of us posting here would be left to our fate, which is a shame because the new colonies are so boring because all of us high quality trolls have been left behind to die

[mikeboydus]

Originally posted by KrZ:

One fundamental aspect that explains Starfield universe/story is that humans were forced to evacuate planet earth due to impending environmental catastrophe. And they managed to do so within 50 years if I recall correctly, which is a phenomenal feat.

So, do you think that such a project could be achieved in the real world? If we had no other choice, could humanity -in today's social climate- work together as a cohesive unit and effectively achieve space colonisation on a mass scale within a 50 or 100 year time frame?

In the real world, the earth would not evacuate over loss of the magnetosphere.

It would take centuries if not millenia before earth became like Mars and yes Mars has no magnetosphere.

Earth would still have oceans, ice caps, and an atmosphere. The atmosphere would thin, the oceans would shrink, but there is no bleeping way loss of the magnetosphere would turn the earth into a lifeless featureless ball of dirt.

That aspect of Starfield is incredibly stupid.

Lastly, any civilization with the technology to build relativistic vehicles could use one said vehicle to kickstart a planet's magnetosphere. Earth would be required to evacuate for that, because the RKV impact would be magnitudes more powerful than the asteroid that ended the dinosaurs. I doubt they would go far, massive orbital colonies at the Lagrange points would be the easiest way to manage the temporary evacuation.