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A random sci-fi question for you
You've just been convicted by the UN security council for being a Tildes user, and have been sentenced to 7 years in a penal colony, but you get a choice. Do you choose either:
1: Mars - 7 years without ever being able to go outside without a suit on, but afterwards you could travel back to Earth, if you desired.
2: New Mongolia: An Earth-like planet, almost as if Earth was new again. But it's a one way trip.
(Asking for a friend)
More info needed.
Is there a functioning society on New Mongolia, or am I to be dumped unceremoniously into a solo survival game scenario? If the latter, that's certainly a death sentence with a nicer name, since "no man is an island" etc., and I can't just punch trees for building materials. At least, I don't think I can.
Of course, at our present level of technology, so would a stint in the Mars gulag. Unless I'm misremembering, Mars doesn't have a notable magnetosphere, so anyone stuck there is gonna pick up a hellacious dose of radiation unless the colony is pretty deep under the surface. That raises further logistics questions.
Also, what does Earth look like in this thought experiment? Are we talking present levels of political dipshittery, or are we cyberpunking even harder? I'm gonna guess more the latter, since visiting the tamest vaguely lefty space that exists online is grounds for transportation in this scenario. I figure you just kinda threw that out as a hand wave for the reason, but I gotta work with what I'm given.
A suggestion: maybe change the banishment planet's name to New Botany Bay. It's more thematic.
I mean water/Ice is a pretty good insulator for radiation and you don't need much of it to be an effective shield, so my guess is that anything permanently built on Mars would initially be at the poles.
Also any permanent buildings would probably be made with a layer of water/ice to shield from radiation as well.
Not too unfeasible with current or near-current technology.
I was curious, so I did some digging. On the Martian surface, the eq radiation dose is 0.64 mSv (source). This would put you at about 1.6 Sv for those 7 years.
For an adult, the cancer risk coefficient after exposure to 1 Sv is 4.1% (source (table 1)). So if we crudely linearly extrapolate we get to about 7%.
This is of course not accounting for any shielding you may have due to the habitat, but either way we see that cancer is still far from guarenteed.
Though in reality you'd also need to account the trip there. On Mars, the atmosphere and the planet itself block a big part of the radiation. So the travel there would be a significant chunk if the radiation dose.
Then again, in this hypothetical scenario we have the technology to travel to a far-flung earth-like planet. So maybe none if this is all too relevant.
I mean, in this life? If I didn't have a wife and kids to come back to, New Mongolia, because being a pioneer sounds pretty cool. But there's roughly a 0.00% chance I could abandon my family. Send me to Mars!
New Mongolia. Let’s say I go to Mars — what do I do when I get back? Probably post on tildes about it, and then here we go again….
I'm tempted to choose the New Mongolia, but then, it's a one way trip. Never seeing everyone & everything I've ever known (despite their flaws) isn't very appealing. I choose 7 years in Mars-schwitz as punishment.
I'll take my chances with New Mongolia.
I see it in terms of opportunity. New Mongolia has a lot more opportunity than Mars then back to Earth.
I mean, you'd be the first to see a lot of things, like imagine what exploration would be like, the biology. Even if it wasn't the most advanced and was more like the frontier that'd still be good for me.
after 7 years on mars it's likely (though not certain, we have very little data on this) that muscle wastage means that going back to earth will leave me severely disabled, barring maybe large amounts of physiotherapy or idk a power-assist exoskeleton, so probably would go for new mongolia
This was my thought as well. In reality you couldn't come back to earth unless you kept yourself in incredible shape. Maybe in this thought experiment there are special drugs or medical procedures to fix your body.
I feel like I'd probably do everything in my power to resist and/or become a fugitive or some shit, rather than accept either outcome
Either of those two "options" is suicide
A penal colony on New Mongolia sounds like what they did with Australia. Count me in mate!
Soooooo... what do I need to do to get to Terra Nov... I mean New Mongolia. (I really liked the idea of Terra Nova. Unfortunately the show did not get the space to find its groove and audience.)
But seriously, even if I do suffer some horrible frontier-related death; the thought of a clean slate planet is intoxicating. I'd happily take being mauled by some mega-fauna predator over slowly being killed in a windowless office by my neighbors second hand Vape smoke.
With a colony like Mars, I can easily see it becoming a distilled corporate hellscape. Food, water, data and even air being at a premium and provided through monopoly services. Not hard for those seven years to be dragged out with every excess charge and no real recourse, even with a united workforce. (If this sounds like your thing, can I recommend the game Hardspace Shipbreaker. The plastic free food option is not bad).
Congratulations, [insert name here], you have been granted the opportunity to work for MevilCorp™ on New Mongolia, a frontier experience that will be worth every penny that you'll virtually earn and spend at the company store!
Edit: note that both options are penal colonies which imply management by a colonial power. Sorry :(
New Mongolia, new and full of exploration and an entire new world to build and die on. I'm game, when do I get convicted?
Both sound pretty horrible, so I would make no decision until the decision was made for me. Nobody ever remembers that one of your options is to be a lump.
Presuming that technology is advanced enough to result in the concerns about Martian life beyond 'no air and it's all red and nothing' being negated, and that we're dumped on New Mongolia without any technology whatsoever, just our minds and birthday suits?
I'd probably go with New Mongolia. Context: I'm obese and have at best moderate survival skills. So realistically, my odds of survival are exceptionally low on New Mongolia. But I feel like I'd be able to make peace with that a lot more easily on New Mongolia versus the penal colony; I can handle suffering on an intellectual level if I'm not bound by any authority but 'natural law.'
Now if we can choose what part of New Mongolia we're thrown out to, I'd pick somewhere between temperate forest and southern tundra. I handle the cold a lot better than the heat, and being obese I have padding as well as an excess calorie supply. If I manage to not be easily chased down by wildlife or poison myself by eating the wrong kind of flora (as this is an alien planet that is simply Earth-like, normal rules for determining poison may not necessarily apply) then I think I can manage to subsist long enough to build myself into a healthier state of being and possibly eke out a Jeremiah Johnson lifestyle. I watched a lot of Primitive Technology's channel so while that does not at all translate ability, it does leave me with ideas I could trial-and-error my way into.
But essentially I'm choosing 7 years of horrid suffering and torment (for me) with a possible chance of dying, or a lifetime where my life is in my own hands and will very likely lead to me dying painfully. But, with an opportunity for making it, and being able to say I lived on two planets.
Шинэ Монголын анхны ба сүүлчийн эзэн хаанд урт наслах болтугай
2, But once I get there I'm definetly changing the name to something cooler.
Thanks for the responses all, as some people clearly saw, I mixed together Australia's first fleet experience with thoughts of The Expanse, since I was recently re-watching it, and came up with this question in my head.
Personally, if my currently life was still in play, I'd probably choose Mars, so I'd have a chance of seeing my family again - but if not, New Mongolia all the way, because I doubt I could actually handle the claustrophobia without loosing it, and the idea of a new world is enticing, even if it'll be hard to survive.
But when I asked my wife this question, she reminded me that some women were given the option of traveling on the first fleet to Australia, or be hanged...and some chose the hanging. Perhaps sitting in a reasonably comfortable first world life and pondering the question is quite different to what reality might be.