Speculation: what happened to the ocean?

[Stormspark]

Ok, they say there was a nuclear war sometime in the backstory, and that the oceans "dried up". Except this is physically impossible. Water evaporating doesn't make it just go away, if it turns into vapor it collects in the atmosphere. And all the oceans drying up would create a MASSIVE amount of water vapor in the atmosphere and turn the planet into (all intents and purposes) Venus.

The only natural phenomenon that could cause this is extreme temperature increases caused by our sun turning into a red giant. Nuclear weapons could not possibly evaporate the oceans, someone did the math and found it would take *trillions* of the most powerful nukes we have to even make a dent in ocean levels. And temperatures high enough to evaporate large quantities of ocean would make the planet completely uninhabitable (we're talking Venus-type environment here). Meaning if the oceans were really all gone, the surface temperature would be somewhere around 350C.

There is one possibility though...nuclear winter caused by a nuclear war (throwing huge amounts of dust into the stratosphere), would cause global temperatures to plummet down to the levels they were during the last ice age 18000 years ago. This would cause the poles to freeze and start to collect more ice and cause glaciers to form. The more water that is locked away in ice at the poles and in glaciers, the lower the ocean levels are. And indeed, during the last ice age ocean levels were lower than they are now (causing there to be land bridges that no longer exist today). So, just as global warming will cause ocean levels to rise, global cooling will cause them to drop. That's the only thing I can think of that remotely makes sense. But while that would cause oceans to recede from the coasts, it wouldn't cause there to be no oceans as far as the eye can see.

[Charlie Kelly]

Początkowo opublikowane przez RageMojo:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Sparhawk122:

The Mad Max movies never made sense due to asinine aspects of the movie like the ocean being gone. As said for the ocean to actually evaporate like that, this imply that the atmosphere had gone which would make the planet uninhabitable. And yes, nukes may go off. But radiation doesn't hang around forever and eventually ♥♥♥♥ will grow back.

The ocean is not gone. It is just a 150 meters lower than today. It was already a desert before the water level fell. Google pictures of the Australian outback. Also Radiation lasts thousands of years. The area around chernobyl will not be habitable for another 20,000 years and that is with human clean up intervention.

Fun Fact: Most of the scientists working in and around the Chernobyl plant died from stress related illnesses because of the 1000 ton concrete disc that could fall on top of them if a bird shat on it.

[Sparhawk122]

Początkowo opublikowane przez RageMojo:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Sparhawk122:

The Mad Max movies never made sense due to asinine aspects of the movie like the ocean being gone. As said for the ocean to actually evaporate like that, this imply that the atmosphere had gone which would make the planet uninhabitable. And yes, nukes may go off. But radiation doesn't hang around forever and eventually ♥♥♥♥ will grow back.

The ocean is not gone. It is just a 150 meters lower than today. It was already a desert before the water level fell. Google pictures of the Australian outback. Also Radiation lasts thousands of years. The area around chernobyl will not be habitable for another 20,000 years and that is with human clean up intervention.

Which makes no sense. Even if numerous nukes were to go off. And I don't need to google it, I live in Australia and on field exercises travel north to south all the time via Alice Springs and so forth.

[Aahzmandias]

It's complete BS.

The last thing that could happen is evaporationg all water without large clouds blocking all sunlight like on the Venus.

A bad fiction from a brainless author. He should have sticked to the australian inland desert, and uninhabitable coast lines.

[kevin1957]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Saerydoth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Australia#/media/File:Eastern_South_Australia_Satellite_Photo.jpg <-- This area is probably where the game is set (it's definitely on the south coast of Australia).

Look at the southern part of that area (this is a RL satellite photo - the white areas are salt flats that are dried up lakes). See the delta where the ocean goes quite a ways up into the continent? A small ocean level drop would cause that delta to recede quite a bit, and that whole area would resemble a dry ocean bed. The acutal ocean is definitely still there, it's just probably another 20-50 miles south of where it is in real life now. But that area would be impassable canyons and such (because the ocean floor is far from flat). So the characters have no way to traverse it to get to the actual ocean. Going by air would be the only way, but there don't seem to really be any aircraft any longer.

ive been in a minibus from sydney to perth it takes 3 days 2 nights non stop.the area you refer to is flat.you come out of the flinders ranges,itself an ancient reef,you see it in front of you for miles,it grassy shrubland.at the tip pt augusta then the other side of the plain then hit the nullabor.for a day the road is straight no trees very quite.oh only bore water.i forgot,the water is called spencer gulf.nullabor is shrub desert.north of spencer gulf is lake ayre.mostly dry salt flats but sometimes floods will fill it.first colonists and explorers thought their must be an inland ocean because the rivers in nsw on other side of great divide run west,inland.

[Toilet Paper Rolls Royce]

Just found this thread, so forgive my resurrecting it after four months, but:

I suppose the nukes could have generated a powerful enough electromagnetic field that, per Heim Theory, the water on the planet could have been forced along some dimensional vector faster than light to some other location in the universe. Or maybe someone somehow opened up a Dirac Sea in the middle of the ocean and the water drained out.

As far as @Mr_KhronicKoala420's dismissal of "it's FICTION," it's important for any work of fiction—especially scifi—to maintain internally consistent logic, EVEN THOUGH it's a work of fiction. Otherwise, it's just bad writing, and the suspension of disbelief snaps like a cheap, dried-out condom.

So, if you're going to make a game or movie that takes place in this universe as a possible future, you AT LEAST have to abide by the laws of physics as we know them. Otherwise, you open the door for Literally Anything happening—like, suddenly Max's car explodes into a bunch of doves because a wizard ran up and kissed it.

[Pablo]

THE WATER JUST ♥♥♥♥♥♥ OFF!

[Wezilla]

More like asteroid crash in the ocean and boil sea water to dried up that how I see...

[Sparhawk122]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Wezilla:

More like asteroid crash in the ocean and boil sea water to dried up that how I see...

The one that killed off the dinosaurs didn't do that. And that one was massive. Anything bigger then that would kill off the atmosphere of the planet and have it uninhabitable for human life. Nukes also dissipating the ocean would make no sense. If nukes did that there would be no atmosphere left and the planet would just be another floating planet devoid of life.

It was story writing for when people knew no better. And now that people get a better education and better understand nukes, asteroids and our universe. We realize how asinine the Mad Max universe is.

[Wezilla]

Ice Age to make water again :)

[Stormspark]

The only thing that could make ocean levels drop is global cooling. Global cooling caused by nuclear winter could cause more water to be locked up as ice at the poles, thus lowering the ocean level.

Global warming would cause ocean levels to rise. And boiling the oceans would require average temperatures to be around 450c. That's what Venus is like. Water cannot just go away. It has to go somewhere. Water vapor is still water and will not remain vapor without very high temperatures.

[Doc_Scranton]

What about a massive eatrhquake in some ocean depths, that opens up a trench that syphons the water into the earths core. The water then just evaporates, solidifying the magma and trapping it (the Water) turning the world into a steam driven mass. The Icecaps would not be capable of replenishing what is now lost, leaving a barely sustainable planet, but a survivable one.
I'm kind of a SciFi enthusiast, so please don't wikipedia me with facts. It's just a game with a story it follows.

[rcole_sooner]

All the water went to the Kevin Costner movie/game.

:P

[Charlie Kelly]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Doc_Scranton:

What about a massive eatrhquake in some ocean depths, that opens up a trench that syphons the water into the earths core. The water then just evaporates, solidifying the magma and trapping it (the Water) turning the world into a steam driven mass. The Icecaps would not be capable of replenishing what is now lost, leaving a barely sustainable planet, but a survivable one.
I'm kind of a SciFi enthusiast, so please don't wikipedia me with facts. It's just a game with a story it follows.

That can't happen, Earth isn't hollow.

[Doc_Scranton]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Charlie Kelly:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Doc_Scranton:

What about a massive eatrhquake in some ocean depths, that opens up a trench that syphons the water into the earths core. The water then just evaporates, solidifying the magma and trapping it (the Water) turning the world into a steam driven mass. The Icecaps would not be capable of replenishing what is now lost, leaving a barely sustainable planet, but a survivable one.
I'm kind of a SciFi enthusiast, so please don't wikipedia me with facts. It's just a game with a story it follows.

That can't happen, Earth isn't hollow.

But if the core cooled rapidly by an apocalyptic earthquake of biblical proportions, causing a shrinking of the core and the depletion of the oceans: Therefore rendering a rise in global temperatures at a rapid rate? Then I'm screwed with this scenario!
Maybe giant water voles came from space, drank up all the oceans and ♥♥♥♥ sand as a deposit?

[Sir Dookface McFerretballs]

Everybody drank it all... That is why they are so crazy.