Hello Daniel,
BCS wrote:
Hello Walter,
This would all make for a great scifi story!
the story I want to puzzle out is that a group of a few thousand
people get dropped on a planet with an indestructible encyclopedic
reference,
You mean a ruggedised Kindle 2 a.k.a. the Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy version 0.1?
really good geological maps
Here's hoping Google Earth has that planet, then. :P
That to, but I was thinking of minral maps for finding ore.
and their birthday suits. I've wondered how
long it would take to get into back into space. If they can keep
society
together, I'd bet it would be under 100 years, it might even be under
a
generation.
Without a supply of food, not long, I'd imagine. Assuming your list
of materials is complete, they'd have to figure out what's edible,
then hunt and gather their food for at least as long as it takes them
to figure out what they can grow, and then grow it.
I'd argue that working out the food supply is a prerqueset to keeping society
together
Then there's the question of whether these people are skilled, or just
a few thousand random people off the street.
Most of the work would be skilled labor and when know how to teach that fairly
well. For the rest it wouldn't take much luck for a sampling of 5000 people
to to include several doctors, engineers, some framers, a few scientists
and some programmers. Besides, it a story, I can make my own luck.
Not to mention that to get into space they'd need a hell of a lot of
things. Even with written knowledge of how to do it, I don't imagine
it would be an easy thing to do.
If it were easy, it wouldn't make a good story.
-- Daniel
