Post-not-quite-apocolypse part 1
Jul. 25th, 2009 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eustaciavye77It's too early for me to write real stories but descriptions I can handle.
*big booming intro voice*
THE YEAR IS 2500
Okay no we're not doing that. However it is roughly 500 years in the future. In the first three centuries of the new millennium, pollution and loss of green space proceeded at an alarming rate. You would expect this to kill people and shorten lifespans and whatnot but technological advances allowed people to continue to live out longer and longer lifespans even as the environment became more and more poisoned. Result: massive population growth, taller and taller buildings, denser packed cities. Food production became largely the province of laboratories as there was no room to farm. Standards of living were fine except for the constant crowding and complete absence of green space. Nature is self-correcting though and birth rates slowed dramatically. THe old generation would die off replaced by a generation half its size or less. Now the population has receeded to the point where the enormous buildings created to house earths residents are no longer needed and most of them have crumbled leaving empty land behind. The majority of humans retreated to scattered domed cities with artificially controlled climates. No rain, no snow. Water Is synthesized and fed into people's homes. Food is synthesized in much the same way as it was during the overpopulation era. Inside the domes people live as they did in the earth of 200 years ago.
However, some people got tired of life inside the domes, or refused to enter them. These folks saw the decrease in population density as an opportunity to return to an earlier way of life, to rebuild. They created settlements, began small farming, and made use of the technological knowledge humanity still possessed to create a lifestyle of relative comfort that works WITH the earth. Green power, organic food production and the like. Communication systems function much as they did in the late 20th and early 21st century.
Sounds Idyllic right?
THere's a catch though. There are certain things that people need, medicines mostly, that are only produced in the factories of the domed cities. Trade relations between outsiders and insiders are strained. Insiders will not leave the domes to deliver supplied to settlements so the outsiders must travel in. Settlements operate primarily by barter among themselves and the goods they can trade to the insiders are severely undervalued by the governments of the cities which means settlements often can't get the supplies they need unless they steal. The governments on the outside arrange groups to travel to the domes periodically and buy what they can, steal what they can't buy. Needless to say, its a dangerous proposition.
Also since the lifestyle inside the dome still produces the same kind of pollution of life during the overpopulation era, the insiders have devised a system which pumps toxins out of the dome. Within 2 miles of a domed city the air is think with poison. Outsiders travelling through, even with the best protective masks and clothing they can find, risk death, paralysis, severe illness of all sorts because most of them have never come in contact with pollution and have no tolerance.
****
It came to me in a dream. I worry about my subconscious.
*big booming intro voice*
THE YEAR IS 2500
Okay no we're not doing that. However it is roughly 500 years in the future. In the first three centuries of the new millennium, pollution and loss of green space proceeded at an alarming rate. You would expect this to kill people and shorten lifespans and whatnot but technological advances allowed people to continue to live out longer and longer lifespans even as the environment became more and more poisoned. Result: massive population growth, taller and taller buildings, denser packed cities. Food production became largely the province of laboratories as there was no room to farm. Standards of living were fine except for the constant crowding and complete absence of green space. Nature is self-correcting though and birth rates slowed dramatically. THe old generation would die off replaced by a generation half its size or less. Now the population has receeded to the point where the enormous buildings created to house earths residents are no longer needed and most of them have crumbled leaving empty land behind. The majority of humans retreated to scattered domed cities with artificially controlled climates. No rain, no snow. Water Is synthesized and fed into people's homes. Food is synthesized in much the same way as it was during the overpopulation era. Inside the domes people live as they did in the earth of 200 years ago.
However, some people got tired of life inside the domes, or refused to enter them. These folks saw the decrease in population density as an opportunity to return to an earlier way of life, to rebuild. They created settlements, began small farming, and made use of the technological knowledge humanity still possessed to create a lifestyle of relative comfort that works WITH the earth. Green power, organic food production and the like. Communication systems function much as they did in the late 20th and early 21st century.
Sounds Idyllic right?
THere's a catch though. There are certain things that people need, medicines mostly, that are only produced in the factories of the domed cities. Trade relations between outsiders and insiders are strained. Insiders will not leave the domes to deliver supplied to settlements so the outsiders must travel in. Settlements operate primarily by barter among themselves and the goods they can trade to the insiders are severely undervalued by the governments of the cities which means settlements often can't get the supplies they need unless they steal. The governments on the outside arrange groups to travel to the domes periodically and buy what they can, steal what they can't buy. Needless to say, its a dangerous proposition.
Also since the lifestyle inside the dome still produces the same kind of pollution of life during the overpopulation era, the insiders have devised a system which pumps toxins out of the dome. Within 2 miles of a domed city the air is think with poison. Outsiders travelling through, even with the best protective masks and clothing they can find, risk death, paralysis, severe illness of all sorts because most of them have never come in contact with pollution and have no tolerance.
****
It came to me in a dream. I worry about my subconscious.
