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I'm not sure why you think that survivors on Earth, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland, would be more likely to fall into war than the inhabitants of

I'm not sure why you think that survivors on Earth, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland, would be more likely to fall into war than the inhabitants of Mars, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland. Really both groups would be hanging on with limited labor and capital (generators, greenhouses, domes) in the midst of plentiful natural resources and that's the sort of situation that leads to raiding more than what you'd normally think of as warfare. And I'm really not sure why you'd expect a Mars of 1,000 people would have more technology than an Earth with 100,000,000 left alive. A technological civilization like ours depends on a body of knowledge that's way too big to fit in one or 1000 people's heads. Maybe in the future we'll have advanced AI that lets us get around this but that'd render the whole discussion moot.

enraged_camel 10y ago
>>I'm not sure why you think that survivors on Earth, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland, would be more likely to fall into war than the inhabitants of Mars, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland. A fully self-sufficient Mars colony would not, by definition, be "struggling for survival." >> A technological civilization like ours depends on a body of knowledge that's way too big to fit in one or 1000 people's heads. A fully self-sufficient Mars colony would have plenty of computers that can store data. In fact, since the goal of such a colony would be to act as Earth's backup, we would most likely have most of the Earth's combined knowledge stored in a large datacenter underneath the Martian surface. On the other hand, the shockwave from an asteroid that wipes 90% of the population on Earth would also instantly fry most electronics and render most technology useless. Like I said, it would send civilization back a thousand years. Sure, we would still have the knowledge in people's brains, but it turns out knowledge can be forgotten, especially when not actively recalled by the brain. When all your scientists have to become farmers, it is not likely that humanity would be able to retain all the knowledge it has collected over the past millenia.

enraged_camel 10y ago

>>I'm not sure why you think that survivors on Earth, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland, would be more likely to fall into war than the inhabitants of Mars, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland. A fully self-sufficient Mars colony would not, by definition, be "struggling for survival." >> A technological civilization like ours depends on a body of knowledge that's way too big to fit in one or 1000 people's heads. A fully self-sufficient Mars colony would have plenty of computers that can store data. In fact, since the goal of such a colony would be to act as Earth's backup, we would most likely have most of the Earth's combined knowledge stored in a large datacenter underneath the Martian surface. On the other hand, the shockwave from an asteroid that wipes 90% of the population on Earth would also instantly fry most electronics and render most technology useless. Like I said, it would send civilization back a thousand years. Sure, we would still have the knowledge in people's brains, but it turns out knowledge can be forgotten, especially when not actively recalled by the brain. When all your scientists have to become farmers, it is not likely that humanity would be able to retain all the knowledge it has collected over the past millenia.