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This seems like humanity’s last advanced civilization: the easy energy is all tapped out. Maybe some other life form could have one after enough time has passe
by macintux 6y ago
This seems like humanity’s last advanced civilization: the easy energy is all tapped out.
Maybe some other life form could have one after enough time has passed, but we can’t bootstrap ourselves a second time.
(Edit: to be clear, I’m agreeing with you.)
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago>This seems like humanity’s last advanced civilization: the easy energy is all tapped out. That's probably what someone said in the middle ages when they finished deforesting Scotland. We still have nuclear. There's an obscene amount of energy in it. It's just not attractive while we still have other "easy" options.
- macintux 6y agoIf this civilization collapses, how are we going to get to the point where we can build nuclear fission reactors?
- Roboprog 6y agoIs it that hard to enrich isotopes enough to make a steam engine that runs on radium, thorium or uranium instead of coal? If you know that radioactive isotopes exist, it sounds like steampunk, 1850s, level tech could build a power plant, but perhaps not a bomb.
- macintux 6y agoI’m not qualified to answer, but there was a bit of discussion about the idea on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/57peek/can_you_have_nuclear_reactors_in_a_steampunk_world/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/57peek/can_y...
- Roboprog 6y agoInteresting. I don’t think it’s that hard to build a vessel full of warm radioactive pebbles to boil water. Sorting ore by chemical element, and then making a fluid / gas / solution of the fuel element to sort by isotope mass in a centrifuge may or may not be doable for “blacksmith” level technology, though. Hard to say.
- anticensor 6y agoControlled cold fusion would be even more neater as it enables you to synthesise arbitrary molecules out of just hydrogens.