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DavidAlltheTime posted:Oh, also, as a former community shared agriculture project manager, the figure we always used was 20 shares per person. Now, a share isn't keeping someone alive all year, it's providing them with 10-15lbs of vegetables once a week for 20-22 weeks in the summer (zone 5). There's still thirty weeks unaccounted for, so let's say a more true figure is 10 people fed with vegetables year round on each acre of land. I don't know how much nutrition they were getting from us, but I'd wager you'd need some sort of meat. I never dabbled in it, but I always heard from my meat-farmer friends that rabbits or turkeys were the most efficient. Fish would be the main form of protein, I'd think, followed by eggs/dairy. I would think the main crops would be wheat, corn, soy and rice, with all vegetables and fruits grown in the skyscraper greenhouses. I really like the idea of community gardens that folks would manage on their own. How big a tower/towers would you need to house 10000 people?
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Jul 18, 2014 22:08
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You should know that. Work out how many bedrooms you need per family - as in like a family gets 3~4 bedrooms and then give other couples or single people a studio apartment or something. Work out floorspace, slot them together and build upwards. This is hardly a difficult thing to work out.
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Jul 19, 2014 01:13
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redshirt posted:Fish would be the main form of protein, I'd think, followed by eggs/dairy. potatoes and beans should be main crops aswell for nutritional value. also, weed
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Jul 19, 2014 01:47
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Liar posted:Are we going with real chickens who are fed healthy food, given space, and raised right? In that case roughly 5-7 eggs per chicken per week. I believe a chicken is good for two or three years because their egg production gets too low and you're better off eating them. The chickens used to fill supermarkets produce far more eggs, but do so at a cost of basically living horribly and only laying eggs for sometimes half a year. So probably two or three chickens per person, assuming everyone on your island wants to eat two eggs for breakfast everyday. Eggs are ingredients for many, many things. Our hens were kept in a large (20' x 50') area behind the horses. We had two egg nests. We started with two ancient (10+ years old) hens, a local rooster, and a bunch of chicks from the feed store. That blossomed to 15 prime laying hens, and about 8 roosters for the freezer. We let at least one hen have her babies every year so that there was a constant influx of new chickens. Between the hens there were always enough eggs for breakfast, baking or whatever. Sometimes we traded a dozen eggs with the Jersey farmer across the street, getting fresh butter. It ended the day the neighbor's Rottweilers ripped down the fence and killed the whole flock. After that I just didn't have the heart to do it anymore. Look up urban chicken farming for an idea of what city people keep. Something to consider is miniature livestock. Miniature cattle, for instance, are ideal for families. http://www.bigpictureagriculture.com/2011/10/ten-miniature-cattle-breeds-for-your.html
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Jul 19, 2014 06:21
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Wouldn't goat or sheep milk be a good enough alternative? Sheep in particular are probably the most useful since you can use the wool to make clothes.
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Jul 19, 2014 07:23
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Lord Windy posted:Wouldn't goat or sheep milk be a good enough alternative? Sheep in particular are probably the most useful since you can use the wool to make clothes. But in a society with no YouTube the goats would be far more entertaining.
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Jul 19, 2014 07:27
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I love the thought experiment, but there's no way to build a self-sustaining modern society of only 10,000 people. There simply aren't enough people to create a society with sufficient specialists to maintain our level of technology. Even if everyone were willing to be ordered into the schoolroom and be turned into perfect engineers or scientists, there simply wouldn't be enough of them. There's no one person with the knowledge for things like designing the efficient semi-conductors on a computer processor chipset, or manufacturing the light yet highly resilient materials used in mining robotics. You need teams of hundreds of different kinds of engineers to start on projects like that. You could give them large stores of materials they could use, or you could tolerate a drop in technological prowess, but 10,000 people would never be able to be both modern and self-sustaining.
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Jul 19, 2014 07:28
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Aggressive pricing posted:Oh, and don't forget to pick something out for yourself, get something that says, "Good Luck" to the future of your project.  That's some good poo poo right there.
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Jul 19, 2014 08:28
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Kaal posted:I love the thought experiment, but there's no way to build a self-sustaining modern society of only 10,000 people. There simply aren't enough people to create a society with sufficient specialists to maintain our level of technology. Even if everyone were willing to be ordered into the schoolroom and be turned into perfect engineers or scientists, there simply wouldn't be enough of them. There's no one person with the knowledge for things like designing the efficient semi-conductors on a computer processor chipset, or manufacturing the light yet highly resilient materials used in mining robotics. You need teams of hundreds of different kinds of engineers to start on projects like that. You could give them large stores of materials they could use, or you could tolerate a drop in technological prowess, but 10,000 people would never be able to be both modern and self-sustaining. Yes, and you'd run out of the rare metals and other materials needed for a bunch of the high tech devices. You could certainly have a self sustaining society of 10,000 people, but before long you'd be stuck 50 or 100 years in the past, technologically, after all your computers and such eventually broke down and could no longer be repaired.
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Jul 19, 2014 18:43
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Forget the 10,000 number. Start off by developing the self-sustaining part. Figure out what you need to do that and how many people. Then scale upwards to 10,000 people and an island large enough. I suspect a 300 sq. mile island would be fine. You also need to take into account population growth.
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Jul 19, 2014 19:10
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redshirt posted:10,000 people Modern society is a huge interconnected web with huge raw-material demands. There are mines that are 3*3 miles large and employ 20,000 people already. The world population of 7 billion is only big enough to support two or three chip fabs. A software company like Microsoft employees 100k people. What are you going to do with just 10k people? You're not going to produce any of the trappings of modern society. With that few people you can't mine them, refine them, design them, build them. The best you can do is give them a snapshot of modern society, with enough spares to last them a few decades, and watch as they stagnate.
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Jul 19, 2014 20:45
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Kaal posted:I love the thought experiment, but there's no way to build a self-sustaining modern society of only 10,000 people. There simply aren't enough people to create a society with sufficient specialists to maintain our level of technology. Even if everyone were willing to be ordered into the schoolroom and be turned into perfect engineers or scientists, there simply wouldn't be enough of them. There's no one person with the knowledge for things like designing the efficient semi-conductors on a computer processor chipset, or manufacturing the light yet highly resilient materials used in mining robotics. You need teams of hundreds of different kinds of engineers to start on projects like that. You could give them large stores of materials they could use, or you could tolerate a drop in technological prowess, but 10,000 people would never be able to be both modern and self-sustaining. It seems most levels of specialization would be difficult to maintain. Medicine, for example. How many specialists could you have? Train? Or would you by force need to do away with specialists?
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Jul 20, 2014 03:00
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Under the parameters of the setup, (unlimited funding and unlimited energy for 25 years), seems the best way to go about it would be an army of robots to support the 10,000. They can do the heavy labor, construction, mining, farming, manufacturing, and with enough finesse, they can do complex tasks like surgery and robot design. Also, you can use them as an actual army to acquire resources you need from uncooperative non-participating portions of the world. Ultimately, you'd probably just want to eliminate those elements as not being a part of your society and then replace them with more robots.
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Jul 20, 2014 03:53
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The first thing I thought of when I saw the thread: http://english.bouletcorp.com/2012/12/09/homo-technologicus/ Seriously, though, you'd be lucky to get past Industrial-Revolution technology levels with such a small population and limited landmass. Maybe if your island had a shitton of copper a few hundred feet below it, you might be able to get electricity running.
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Jul 20, 2014 11:17
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Captain Bravo posted:The first thing I thought of when I saw the thread: Unlimited power implies a fully functional electrical grid. I may have to revise my concept of "modern" society, however, as this thread has shown me that producing a computer or smart phone might be beyond even the resources of unlimited power and money.
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Jul 20, 2014 14:40
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You should read the Red Mars books OP. It's basically this with crazy polyamorous Mars sex mixed in.
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Jul 20, 2014 17:39
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redshirt posted:Unlimited power implies a fully functional electrical grid. For how long? We don't have anything in modern society, aside from a few sculptures and such, that is designed to work indefinitely, without proper maintenance, for more than a decade. You can start off with all the power generators in the world, and a storage shed filled with spare parts, and you're still going to see the grid fail in your lifetime. You're looking for staying power here, and the only way to ensure electricity is to have enough copper supplies to replicate basic generators and wires for when the originals break down.
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Jul 20, 2014 19:59
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redshirt posted:Unlimited power implies a fully functional electrical grid. Well no poo poo, where the hell are the resources for these things going to be coming from after the 25 years is up?
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Jul 21, 2014 22:27
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Captain Bravo posted:For how long? We don't have anything in modern society, aside from a few sculptures and such, that is designed to work indefinitely, without proper maintenance, for more than a decade. You can start off with all the power generators in the world, and a storage shed filled with spare parts, and you're still going to see the grid fail in your lifetime. You're looking for staying power here, and the only way to ensure electricity is to have enough copper supplies to replicate basic generators and wires for when the originals break down. Well, the scenario also includes infinite money, so if you bring your infinite money in various kinds of coins, this could provide you with infinite sources of copper, zinc, steel, nickel, gold, silver and platinum. Chocolate coins could also go some way to solving the food issue. EDIT: Bonus, since your colony is now self sufficient, issue coins in the new settlement made out of rare earths. You only need to make one coin, then you can convert some portion of your infinite money into rare earths by cashing in some infinite money in your new coinage. Reveilled fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Jul 21, 2014 |
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Jul 21, 2014 23:17
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Oh and your power would have to be fission unless you have a better way to produce medical isotopes.
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Jul 22, 2014 00:00
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tsa posted:Well no poo poo, where the hell are the resources for these things going to be coming from after the 25 years is up? Fusion power. At last - this is the modern utopia. I go back to the salvage idea again - say you managed to collect 1000 oil tankers and other big ships to use for recycling into your industrial 3D printers. How long could such a resource fuel the closed economy? Also, how would you feed people? Restaraunts? Grocery stores? In home kitchens? Stone firepits?
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Jul 22, 2014 02:59
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redshirt posted:Fusion power. At last - this is the modern utopia. Then you'd need massive facilities to recycle the metals, as well as a crew of hundreds to dismantle the ships. Also at this point you're expanding past your island. I mean if you're saying you can fill up the ocean with supplies too then you're going off into the realm of "we have infinity space to do whatever we want".
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Jul 22, 2014 03:06
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Orange Sunshine posted:Yes, and you'd run out of the rare metals and other materials needed for a bunch of the high tech devices. Not necessarily. The first computers were klunges, sure, but were refined over time. But each new one didn't spring from a factory until recently. Wang, Hewlitt, Packard, Jobs et al built the things in their garages. Everyone won't have them, but they can certainly be improved and function. Also, fission is the way to go.
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Jul 22, 2014 03:41
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Dismantling and recycling ships is not, by any meaning of the word, a clean industry.
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Jul 22, 2014 03:42
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Liar posted:Then you'd need massive facilities to recycle the metals, as well as a crew of hundreds to dismantle the ships. Also at this point you're expanding past your island. I mean if you're saying you can fill up the ocean with supplies too then you're going off into the realm of "we have infinity space to do whatever we want". Obviously the waters around the island are fair game. Fishing fleets will be scouring much more. I bet a fishing/clamming/shucking industry could employ at least 1000 on the Island.
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Jul 22, 2014 03:44
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redshirt posted:Fusion power. At last - this is the modern utopia. Uh... fusion generators produce heat and helium; they won't help you with the problem of running out of things like rare earth metals to make electronic components. Also, as far as I'm aware, 3D printers at the moment are pretty seriously limited in terms of the materials they can work in: you're not going to be printing any parts which need to function under high physical stress conditions, I don't think. (Some goon who knows more than I about this feel free to correct me...)
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Jul 22, 2014 07:24
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It would be interesting to expand this mind exercise to estimate what the minimum global population would have to be in order to maintain a modern society that continues to progress scientifically and technologically. Also at which point does a population experience diminished gains as it grows larger.
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Jul 22, 2014 12:40
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Use the 25 years and the infinite money and equipment to get all the physicists and engineers on earth to figure out a universal replicator that uses energy-matter equivalence to create and pattern matter however you need it on a timely basis. Then plug your new matter replicator into your infinite energy source. That's probably your best bet.
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Jul 22, 2014 12:42
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Khazar-khum posted:Not necessarily. The first computers were klunges, sure, but were refined over time. But each new one didn't spring from a factory until recently. Wang, Hewlitt, Packard, Jobs et al built the things in their garages. Everyone won't have them, but they can certainly be improved and function. They were assembled in garages but they still used factory produced parts. You might be able to replace foxconn if you build a circuit board and place the chips by hand. You are still going to need a fab to produce the chips (and factories for the breadboard, resistors, copper wire and insulation, capacitors etc).
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Jul 22, 2014 21:18
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NihilismNow posted:They were assembled in garages but they still used factory produced parts. You might be able to replace foxconn if you build a circuit board and place the chips by hand. You are still going to need a fab to produce the chips (and factories for the breadboard, resistors, copper wire and insulation, capacitors etc). I do think a society at a technological level of ww2 or maybe even up to early IC technologies should be possible. Not forever but for a pretty long time. This would need quite a bit of research into substituting for or recycling more exotic mining products as a preparation phase.
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Jul 22, 2014 22:48
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Considering the time you have to prepare I'm guessing you could stay up to a decent technological level, assuming you can handpick the 10 000 people. I'm thinking that if you gave a team of 1000 engineers 25 years to develop technologies that are suited to the environment and its limitations, you could probably do some pretty good stuff. However, most modern gadgets requires really complicated supply-chains, so you'd probably be leaving the iPhone at home. Also to consider is the fact that many technologies don't really make that much sense in a community that small. The need for advanced infrastructure, vehicles and other communications technology plummets if you're not getting off the island anyway.
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Jul 22, 2014 23:02
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The Erland posted:Considering the time you have to prepare I'm guessing you could stay up to a decent technological level, assuming you can handpick the 10 000 people. I'm thinking that if you gave a team of 1000 engineers 25 years to develop technologies that are suited to the environment and its limitations, you could probably do some pretty good stuff. However, most modern gadgets requires really complicated supply-chains, so you'd probably be leaving the iPhone at home. So there's a whole lot of smart engineers. But also smart farmers, fishermen, mechanics, programmers, etc. quote:Also to consider is the fact that many technologies don't really make that much sense in a community that small. The need for advanced infrastructure, vehicles and other communications technology plummets if you're not getting off the island anyway. Further, I assume zoning would be important, specifically seperating all heavy industries away from neighborhoods and fields. Same for the fish processing plants. Anyone have an idea on the basic logistics of feeding 10000 people a primarily seafood protein diet? How much fish would have to come in every day to keep people happy?
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Jul 22, 2014 23:54
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I'm starting to think that the premise is misguided. We were asked "tell me how to build a self-sustaining modern society" -- by which we understood it to mean "a society like today's western technological gadget-filled society that is built upon an entire planetary economy and ecosystem and raw-material chain" By focusing on gadgets, we're missing out the other equally key aspects of modern society - capitalism, globalism, democracy?, nationwide journalism and press, Hollywood or Bollywood film industry, media business, mass sports, fast food chains, "melting pot" cultures, riots, homelessness, military, museums, history, culture. A mere 10,000 people could never recreate a society that's recognizably modern-western in any of these respects. It'd be better to focus on what kind of appropriate society could you make with the given resources. There used to be so many thinkers and theorizers of "utopian" societies in the 1900s. I think our current western society is predicated on a crazy continually-growing unsustainable exploitation of other countries and of resources. If we had unlimited energy and money, I bet we could build a very different self-sustaining society of 10,000 people that's better than today's society.
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Jul 23, 2014 01:56
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ljw1004 posted:
Agreed. For instance, could you even have a capitalistic economy if it's a closed economy? I assume a type of "Full Communism" could work if everyone truly had the same living accomodations, the same food, and the same "bonus credits" for use at the theater or a movie. But then, how do you convince the island's only three surgeons they should live exactly the same as the guy who cleans out the chicken coops. And how would you assign jobs like that? Someone's still gotta clean toilets. Rotating assignment of jobs for "unskilled" work? Like maybe everyone has to spend at least a month working on the farms or at the fish factory.
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Jul 23, 2014 03:20
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redshirt posted:Agreed. For instance, could you even have a capitalistic economy if it's a closed economy? The world economy is a closed economy. As much as your island would be, anyway.
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Jul 23, 2014 04:15
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FrozenVent posted:The world economy is a closed economy. As much as your island would be, anyway. Yeah, but strictly speaking I'm not certain the world economy counts as capitalist.
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Jul 23, 2014 07:28
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If my many hours clocked in Sim City are any help, what you need is a coal power plant, some residential towers for all your people, underfunded services even though you might regret it and the occasional "natural" disaster to keep your people in check with fear.
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Jul 23, 2014 11:01
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redshirt posted:
My three thousand slaves are starting to sound pretty good right about now...
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Jul 23, 2014 12:25
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redshirt posted:Anyone have an idea on the basic logistics of feeding 10000 people a primarily seafood protein diet? How much fish would have to come in every day to keep people happy? Imagine the amount of fish you would want to eat in a day, then multiply by 10000 you idiot. A diet with people eating fish every day is likely to end up with everyone having mercury poisoning in something like 20 years. Don't worry though if they really do eat a lot of fish the lean meat will cause them to poo poo theirselves to death long before that.
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Jul 23, 2014 14:33
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I wouldn't be so worried about mercury poisoning - They'll deplete the stock before then, unless they're eating stuff from high up in the food chain.
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Jul 23, 2014 14:42
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