@Kestrel 's excellent Escape from Sol scenario for Test of Time.
Original description below taken from his lost website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20081013212420/http://www.users.bigpond.com/Kestrel18/ESCOVIEW.htm
ESCAPE FROM SOL Scenario V1.1
Last modified: >> Wednesday, 26 July 2000
A race against time to evacuate your people from the planet Mars and the inner planets.
of the Solar system in this futuristic scenario because the sun is going nova.
Perils abound in your quest for the relative safety of the Alpha Centauri system.
Welcome to the afternoon of the Solar System.
You find yourself on a latter-day Mars - Once an idyllic world after being terraformed.
Gradually the Martian colonists have lost virtually all their technologies. Living simple lives for millenia in their nurturing Eden-like environment and aided by the various Genetically Engineered LifeForms {GELFs} to supply their every need.
Contact with the other outposts of humanity has been lost.
But a disturbing thing has been discovered by our Astronomers...
The Sun is going to go *NOVA*
Our Astronomers estimate that in about 500 Years, there will be a massive increase in the solar diameter and a massive flux of harmful solar radiations of all kinds. This will render the Solar System uninhabitable.
However it is part of Mankinds' folklore that millenia ago robotic probes sent by our forebears have shown that there are viable planets surrounding Alpha Centauri that are capable of nurturing life (as we know it).
For Humanity (and your Nation) to survive it will be necessary for your nation to rediscover the lost wisdom of the ancients
- To see if it is possible to construct a ship to travel between the STARS, as folklore suggests.
Mars is a now no longer
such a benign world.
You are unfortunate enough
to have found yourself in
the Epoch known to the
latter-day inhabitants as
the "Great Dry".
The once fertile river valleys
and plains have in part dried
and cracked. The oceans,
including "Grand Tethys",
are but puddles of their
former fecund glory.
Some of the genetically engineered life forms (GELFs) have been by the increased solar radiation and the slippage of the environmental norms outside of "safe" parameters.
Some of the woodlands have mutated and no longer bear edible provenance. There are also a variety of toxic plant forms or GELF-mutated forms that are inedible. Certain of these GELF-animals have gone rogue, and various human nut-cases wander the landscape.
For Aeons only city-less Nomads roamed the surface of the Paradise that was once Mars, but now the Halycon days of that second Eden are over, and the harsh conditions have forced a return to primitive forms of agriculture.
It is said that it only takes 3 generations of not having enough time or inclination to read for a culture to lose its learning and to sink back into barbarism.
Interplanetary teleporters were developed millenia ago but Earth-kind was never able to get their "Heisenburg-Compensators" (See Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle, Quantum Mechanics) to work at distances beyond that of the Gas-Giants of our solar system (That is, beyond about 250 million Kilometres or so).
Remnants of this Teleporter network, with nodes in a variety of shapes and sizes, can be found scattered across the landscape.
Some of the nodes in this old inter-planetary network may still work, and this network may represent your best chance to travel to lost Earth, but alas, the knowledge as to how to build them has disappeared into the mists of time.
Nor does anyone know quite where each one will take them within the solar system, this knowledge also having gone the way of the dodo.
No-one knows what has happened to the Earth over the millenia, but is is likely that the Earth is the only place in the solar system likely to have sufficient resources to allow an inter-stellar spacecraft to be built.
The bad news is that the Earth may also be environmentally devastated, and even there decent pockets of arable land may thus be hard to find...
And finally,
*Beware* of the Neo-Luddites ! A sect that believes that we must accept the will of the cosmos and not research into the forbidden knowledge of our misguided ancestors.
However, as with so many single-minded belief systems, they are not averse to using whatever military or scientific wisdom may come their way to reinforce their point of view and service their ideology.
See the Accompanying "Read-Me" File and the Civilopedia for more details.
Original description below taken from his lost website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20081013212420/http://www.users.bigpond.com/Kestrel18/ESCOVIEW.htm
ESCAPE FROM SOL Scenario V1.1
Last modified: >> Wednesday, 26 July 2000
A race against time to evacuate your people from the planet Mars and the inner planets.
of the Solar system in this futuristic scenario because the sun is going nova.
Perils abound in your quest for the relative safety of the Alpha Centauri system.
Welcome to the afternoon of the Solar System.
You find yourself on a latter-day Mars - Once an idyllic world after being terraformed.
Gradually the Martian colonists have lost virtually all their technologies. Living simple lives for millenia in their nurturing Eden-like environment and aided by the various Genetically Engineered LifeForms {GELFs} to supply their every need.
Contact with the other outposts of humanity has been lost.
But a disturbing thing has been discovered by our Astronomers...
The Sun is going to go *NOVA*
Our Astronomers estimate that in about 500 Years, there will be a massive increase in the solar diameter and a massive flux of harmful solar radiations of all kinds. This will render the Solar System uninhabitable.
However it is part of Mankinds' folklore that millenia ago robotic probes sent by our forebears have shown that there are viable planets surrounding Alpha Centauri that are capable of nurturing life (as we know it).
For Humanity (and your Nation) to survive it will be necessary for your nation to rediscover the lost wisdom of the ancients
- To see if it is possible to construct a ship to travel between the STARS, as folklore suggests.
Mars is a now no longersuch a benign world.
You are unfortunate enough
to have found yourself in
the Epoch known to the
latter-day inhabitants as
the "Great Dry".
The once fertile river valleys
and plains have in part dried
and cracked. The oceans,
including "Grand Tethys",
are but puddles of their
former fecund glory.
Some of the genetically engineered life forms (GELFs) have been by the increased solar radiation and the slippage of the environmental norms outside of "safe" parameters.
Some of the woodlands have mutated and no longer bear edible provenance. There are also a variety of toxic plant forms or GELF-mutated forms that are inedible. Certain of these GELF-animals have gone rogue, and various human nut-cases wander the landscape.
For Aeons only city-less Nomads roamed the surface of the Paradise that was once Mars, but now the Halycon days of that second Eden are over, and the harsh conditions have forced a return to primitive forms of agriculture.
It is said that it only takes 3 generations of not having enough time or inclination to read for a culture to lose its learning and to sink back into barbarism.
Interplanetary teleporters were developed millenia ago but Earth-kind was never able to get their "Heisenburg-Compensators" (See Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle, Quantum Mechanics) to work at distances beyond that of the Gas-Giants of our solar system (That is, beyond about 250 million Kilometres or so).
Remnants of this Teleporter network, with nodes in a variety of shapes and sizes, can be found scattered across the landscape.
Some of the nodes in this old inter-planetary network may still work, and this network may represent your best chance to travel to lost Earth, but alas, the knowledge as to how to build them has disappeared into the mists of time.
Nor does anyone know quite where each one will take them within the solar system, this knowledge also having gone the way of the dodo.
No-one knows what has happened to the Earth over the millenia, but is is likely that the Earth is the only place in the solar system likely to have sufficient resources to allow an inter-stellar spacecraft to be built.
The bad news is that the Earth may also be environmentally devastated, and even there decent pockets of arable land may thus be hard to find...
And finally,
*Beware* of the Neo-Luddites ! A sect that believes that we must accept the will of the cosmos and not research into the forbidden knowledge of our misguided ancestors.
However, as with so many single-minded belief systems, they are not averse to using whatever military or scientific wisdom may come their way to reinforce their point of view and service their ideology.
See the Accompanying "Read-Me" File and the Civilopedia for more details.
