A Deeper Look At Disaster

So, let's develop what Ken Hite calls a "worked example" of a particular post-Disaster setting on a generation ship, using Table 3: Disaster Strikes The Ark! to generate the disaster.

We start by rolling a D3. And, I rolled a "3". So, we will do 3 rolls on Table 3:

• The first roll is 18: Population crash due to disease.
• The second roll is 5: Catastrophic computer network failure.
• The third roll is 2: Radiation events harm ship and/or crew.

This one seems pretty straightforward. Our narrative goes a little something like this:

Ship year 2432. Ship Day 300. Hour 20:49. First Officer's Log. [Captain is ill.] Ship records prove our journey proceeded uneventfully for the first hundred years. Now, suddenly, everything has changed. The crew has become ill. A hyperbug, some novel form of influenza. 

At first we thought it was no problem. The crew knew what to do. We sealed the habitats off, and made sure the atmospheric systems for the habitats were isolated from the crew sections of the Ship. 

But that wasn't enough. The hyperbug took down more and more of the crew. Our antivirals couldn't keep up with it. Lethality has already reached to 75% of crew.

Suddenly, little problems have become very big. The Ship was built quickly. That is as true of the network architecture as it is of the hull and drives. In truth, the network was always a palimpsest. Code had been layered on code; patch on top of patch. System maintenance became an esoteric artform. And then the hyperbug came along and killed off all of our data artists. 

When the network went down, everything went dark. And then weightless. For about 3 hours. Then subsystems started turning themselves back on, and attempting to self-regulate. That was a few months ago. For a while, it seemed like we might get things back on track.

But then the radiation poisoning set in. You see, when the ramjet went down, the EM funnel - which served as the Ship's EM and particle shield - that also went down. The crew took the worst of it, but many habitats were hit as well. Most of the crew have no more than a few weeks left to live. 

We are trying to get as many systems as possible back up and running. We're cobbling together a new network for the ship. Yes, its another palimpsest - albeit on a much thinner and more fragile parchment. The Ship will have to function on full automatic for another 700 years or so. By then, we should be at our destination.

OGL MECHANICS

The post-disaster Ark:

• Technology +0: Exploring the system (the Ark's systems are much more fragile and improvised than at launch)
• Environment +3: Some garden worlds (all 50 miles across) - some were damaged by systems failures and radiation
• Resources 0: Sustainable (Dome habitats remain self-sufficient)
• ASPECTS:
• The Ship is on autopilot - where's the crew?
• The design flaws are more visible now
• Worlds without end - at least a couple hundred are left

Table 3: Disaster Strikes the Ark!

After leaving their home system for the great interstellar deeps, generation ships often experience disaster. Sometimes multiple disasters. The following table is intended to inspire disasters on YOUR generation ship.

You can easily generate Aspects from these disasters.

Please feel free to post additional disaster ideas in the comments.

Table 3: Disaster Strikes the Ark!

Role a D30, 1D3 times to determine what disaster(s) strike the Ark:

1. Collision with near-C velocity particles damages ship
2. Radiation events harm ship and/or crew
3. Crew mutiny damages ship and/or leaves too few crew to maintain ship
4. Civil war and/or armed conflict among supercargo/crew factions
5. Catastrophic computer network failure
6. Runaway AIs take over sections of the ship
7. Runaway AIs repurpose parts of the ship, maintenance drones, or  crew/supercargo
8. Runaway maintenance drones damage ship
9. Runaway maintenance drones attack crew and/or supercargo
10. Loss of reserve crew from hibernation system failure
11. Seemingly random systems failures (drive systems, airlocks, migration controls, environmental management, navigation, dedicated/expert systems. etc.)
12. Runaway pests (space rats, space roaches, fungi, bacteria, etc.) disrupt agricultural systems
13. Automated hydroponic systems fail, increasing crew/habitat conflicts over food
14. Runaway hydroponic systems flood vital ship levels or habitats
15. Population explosion due to failure of regulatory technologies
16. Population explosion due to rejection of cultural norms regulating reproduction
17. Population crash due to mutation
18. Population crash due to disease
19. Mutations wreak havoc with human populations and/or animal populations
20. Mutations wreak havoc on plant life and/or agricultural system
21. Runaway nanotech devastates/reformats/transforms ship technology and systems
22. Runaway nanotech devastates/reformats/transforms living systems on ship (animals, plants, humans)
23. Inter-habitat/crew area industry damages ship ecology
24. Inter-habitat/crew area trade creates political and economic conflicts among supercargo and crew (wars for territory/resources, access to ship systems/resources, slavery, etc.)
25. Alien invasion threatens supercargo and crew
26. Alien invasion from energy beings destabilizes ship reactors
27. Alien AIs attempt to take over the ship
28. Inexplicable horrors from the Planes Beyond invade the ship
29. Humans in FTL ships threaten supercargo and crew
30. Biological contamination from interstellar clouds

The Ark At Launch

Consider a generation ship at launch. A ship in pristine condition - perhaps a little too clean, and with a nimbus of loose parts around it. Most likely in Earth orbit, to facilitate mass evacuations. Maybe tied to a beanstalk, or at least in close proximity.

The Ark is shaped like an inverted umbrella - one whose struts and canopy were reversed in a storm. Engine faces down, Habitat domes face away from the engines.A small Bridge section rises on a mast through the bowl-shaped canopy of domes.

Its crew is the best of the best. In fact, there are several crews. Some will be in hybernation, held in reserve for an emergency, or to ensure retention of key knowledge and skills a thousand years into the journey. Some will be just kids - the ship will be their Academy.

The supercargo is from many different nations and cultures. Habitat domes are perfect for this purpose.

Details:

• 55 Habitats per parasol wedge x 6 wedges = 330 habitats
• Each Habitat is 50 miles across
• Bounce tubes connect domes to each other and allow for rapid transit between Habitats

The cultural diversity of the supercargo may be because in the lonely hour of the last instance, altruism prevails. Or it may be out of some Dawkinsite enlightened sense of self-interest: memetic diversity may help ensure the survival of at least some human genes across the generations.

There will also be debates about whether to encourage cultural seclusion (preserving what is unique and special about different nations and groups) or whether to encourage oikoumene - a world-culture for the world-ship. Will each dome be a hermetically sealed universe, or be one part of a world without end?

At the start of the journey, the Ark will be humankind's last best hope. Can it remain so on its long journey?

All images from The Starlost Compendium.

OGL MECHANICS

The Ark at Launch: It does not make sense to use ordinary spacecraft statistics for a space ark that is hundreds of times larger than ordinary spacecraft. Instead, let's imagine the Ark  by specifying it's level of Technology, Environment, Resources, and Aspects at launch time.

Imagine the Ark as a self-contained world.

• Technology +1: Exploiting the system (the Ark can complete its construction in this system and exploit the resources of any system it visits)
• Environment +4: Many garden worlds (all 50 miles across)
• Resources 0: Sustainable (Each dome habitat is self-sufficient). An internal economy has not developed yet.
• ASPECTS:
• Humankind's last, best hope
• Built to last
• Worlds without end - at least 330 of them

The First Diaspora

Without generation ships, the first Diaspora would have been impossible. Humanity had not yet discovered the means of FTL travel. We can't be sure what drove humanity to the stars, but the ancient literature of The First Diaspora period does provide some clues. This is particularly true of the epic poem known as The Aniara, with its intimations of technology gone awry and planetary catastrophe.

We know that over the course of two centuries, the environmental consequences of runaway industrial development and uncontrolled patterns of consumption caused Earth to became unlivable and irreparable. But for some reason, governments and people, long at war with one another over resources, finally and suddenly acted in concert to preserve humanity. No one knows why this happened for sure. Maybe there was some greater and imminent disaster. A rogue planet? Gray goo or some other runaway technology? Further catastrophic changes in the Earth's environment?  Sudden, deadly changes in solar output? Mounting evidence suggesting Earth was in the path of the death beam of a hypernova?

There had to be something to provoke the change. And  a Second Great Leap Forward was required. Humanity had not gotten far into space. Technologies used to create the island communities and orbital refuges of the very wealthy and privileged suddenly became part of the material basis for the design and construction of long-range, intergenerational starfaring vessels.  These elite technologies were combined in new creative ways with technologies designed to create a sustainable eco-commons for humanity, such as the Arcosanti Project and Fuller Design Science.

http://bfi.org/about-bucky

Fleets and fleets of generation ships were constructed in near Earth orbit. Whole populations were moved off world and onto the space arks. Worlds within worlds took flight. When the fleets of The First Diaspora left the Sol System, the vessels had many different designs. Some had Buckminster domes outside the main hull as autonomous habitats for the human supercargo and diverse biota; these designs were often cribbed from the few remaining off-planet biological reserves which had been preserved in final, desperate acts of violent resistance to the corporations' and Earth governments' disinterest and abuse of the environment. Other designs sheltered crew, supercargo, and biota within the main hull of the vessel.

The generation ships were designed to be self-repairing and were typically festooned with redundant backup systems, repair modules, failsafe technologies (such as reserve crew in hybernation), and evacuation systems. They were built to last.

While a few of the great vessels had mutinies while still near home, and turned back to the poisoned Earth, many more experienced a myriad of challenges and disasters in the extrasolar Deep. More on that next time.

OGL MECHANICS

The Sol System at the time of The First Diaspora:

• Technology 0: Exploring the system
• Environment -1: Survivable world (but the trajectory is toward E -2)
• Resources -2:  Needs imports (environmental decline and excessive global consumption)
• Aspects:
• Most of us will not survive
• Now that it is too late, let's work together
• The Diaspora Project is our last, best hope

Coming Soon to FATE SF

I am working on a new setting for FATE SF.

Here's a small clue about the theme:

http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/props/index.html

No worries, we will not be statting out a certain notorious TV series. Instead, we will be exploring a classical SF theme.