NationStates Post-Modern Tech Community Thread

[Bashriyya]

Could nano-tech be used to dispatch bio-weapons?

Can you clarify your meaning? Arguably viruses work on the same scale as nanotech.

But what is the point? Bioweapons are kind of lame.

I was thinking nano-tech that could be activated to release a virus.

[Libraria and Ausitoria]

To activate a nanoparticle you'd need to trasmit a signal, which would require proximity. Close proximity, depending on the size of your signal generator. And due to Ostwald ripening the weapon would probably escape beforehand anyway.

But anyway, bioweapons aren't going to stay put. Biology gets everywhere. Bioweapons are boomerangs. Really a guided bullet (or poison in food, or anything else) would be a lot simpler...

[Greater Themis]

Could nano-tech be used to dispatch bio-weapons?

Can you clarify your meaning? Arguably viruses work on the same scale as nanotech.

But what is the point? Bioweapons are kind of lame.

Bioweapons, lame?! What codswallop is this! If they were 'lame', I doubt there would be the millions of pounds/dollars shovelled into biodefence research and contingency planning that there is. Never underestimate a good plague/bioattack/cliché.

In any case, nano-tech wouldn't be used to encapsulate viral particles for delivery - really not much point given they're similar scales. Influenza particles, for example, range between 80 - 120 nanometres in size.

What they could be used for is in larger structures to modify the dispersion property of said viruses, allowing them to be spread through aerosol more effectively. A more micro-engineered approach to adsorbing bacteria to talc or liquid droplets before they're sprayed everywhere. Some minor modification to the structures they are adsorbed could be used to help stabilise less survivable particles and encourage their airborne or aerosolised spread.

[Allanea]

Bioweapons, lame?! What codswallop is this! If they were 'lame', I doubt there would be the millions of pounds/dollars shovelled into biodefence research and contingency planning that there is. Never underestimate a good plague/bioattack/cliché.

And if they were great, people who are not crazed dictators would be stockpiling them by the ton.

The problem is essentially that you can of course attack your enemy with bioweapons, but results will take days and possibly weeks and months to show. This might help you win a truly long war, but on the operational and tactical scale it doesn't do much. If you want to attack your enemy's factory workers and administrators, it seems better to blow them up with bombs or even poison them with chemical weapons, then you'll probably see results overnight.

[Bashriyya]

To activate a nanoparticle you'd need to trasmit a signal, which would require proximity. Close proximity, depending on the size of your signal generator. And due to Ostwald ripening the weapon would probably escape beforehand anyway.

But anyway, bioweapons aren't going to stay put. Biology gets everywhere. Bioweapons are boomerangs. Really a guided bullet (or poison in food, or anything else) would be a lot simpler...

Thank you for the advice.

[United Vallerian Republic]

For anyone who is interested, I have started an NS design Discord. Feel free to join! https://discord.gg/4hgNm66

[Libraria and Ausitoria]

Oooh...

To activate a nanoparticle you'd need to trasmit a signal, which would require proximity. Close proximity, depending on the size of your signal generator. And due to Ostwald ripening the weapon would probably escape beforehand anyway.

But anyway, bioweapons aren't going to stay put. Biology gets everywhere. Bioweapons are boomerangs. Really a guided bullet (or poison in food, or anything else) would be a lot simpler...

Thank you for the advice.

Always a pleasure.

(And in case anyone's wondering about other nanoweapons, none that I can think of (using modern technology) are better than conventional ones - they all come back to needing some level of proximity to activate ... in which case just pull out a laser guided missile already).

[Greater Themis]

And if they were great, people who are not crazed dictators would be stockpiling them by the ton.

The problem is essentially that you can of course attack your enemy with bioweapons, but results will take days and possibly weeks and months to show. This might help you win a truly long war, but on the operational and tactical scale it doesn't do much. If you want to attack your enemy's factory workers and administrators, it seems better to blow them up with bombs or even poison them with chemical weapons, then you'll probably see results overnight.

Meh, you forget that they were stockpiled by the tonne up till the 1960s. Non-Proliferation and the recognition that nuclear weapons were more versatile saw their demise in sensible nations. This is NS though, and one can tend to forget that, with fiction, a good cliché or plot device such a plague can be used to great effect, or great roleplaying writing. Not all about logic - plus how many NS nations are run by crazed dictators?

In any case though, as you recognise, biological weapons were devised as weapons of attritional warfare. Most of the Anthrax programme developed by the UK was to target cattle primarily, and deny that foodstuff to the German populace. As I recall, rice blast was the most heavily stockpiled biological agent by the US, up until stocks were destroyed. They are similarly strategic weapons as you recognised, rather than tactical agents; in most cases.

The strategy as it were depends on who's using them. The most recent publicised use of them is of course as agents of terror, enough to force governments to spend significant amounts on biodefence and contingency planning. If you want to look at it under the microscope, you can consider Hamas suicide bombers infecting themselves with Hepatitis B, or IED manufacturers contaminating their devices with diarrhoea, as tactical use of biological agents. See the 2004 Civil Contingencies Act in the UK for just how in depth that planning is.

Against an army, there's still scope for mischief. Remember historically how many casualties were from disease? There's always potential to cripple an army with a well placed attack, be it an agent of incapacitation rather than the plague, or targeting hygiene, foodstocks, water, etc. The deliberate spread of norovirus amongst a troop formation would have quite an effect, even if the inevitable in NS land is for such a plot to be discovered and nukes to follow in retaliation. In such a war, biological weapons used as an adjunct to nuclear weapons would see horrifying effects - remember survivors of nuclear attacks, even those hit by relatively small amounts of fallout, would see suppression of their immune systems. And I doubt G-CSF will be in ready stock in those mass events.

They're not perfect, but to discount them entirely as a plot device, or as a threat, is somewhat foolish.

--

But that's a total aside to this question. Viruses in nanoparticles... no real point. Viruses on nanoparticles to aid their airborne dissemination, and stabilise them before a target inhales them, thus creating a more lethal, easily spread manifestation of the disease? Far more likely.

[Ghant]

Speaking of the post-apocalyptic genre, I have yet to encounter a single example of a post-catastrophe dystopia story told from the perspective of its ruling class that reveals what goes on behind the scenes. Instead, most dystopian fiction (especially the sort that is set in an environment that arose out of the ashes of some predecessor) is told from the perspective of characters who sit pretty far from the top of the food chains in their respective settings. Is it just me, or does this seem a bit like an unofficial standard or writing convention?

I'm a little late to the PMT Community Thread party, and I'm in need of a tag, so I'll respond to this to the best of my ability (assuming the question isn't rhetorical in nature).

I don't think it's an unofficial standard or writing convention, but more a matter of taste and narrative impact. Here's an example. The Walking Dead (comics or television show) is portrayed from the perspective of the people most impacted by the situation unfolding around them, those people being the ones that experience the day-to-day horror of the zombie apocalypse. That's what makes the story so visceral, is that you see the worst of the situation is.

Compare that to say, what happens to world leaders in such a catastrophic event. A bunch of politicians and elected officials, etc, confined to an underground bunker, living off of rations and trying to figure out their next move. While it's an interesting scenario to contemplate (I compare it to the plot of the film Reservoir Dogs, which mostly revolves around a small number of panicked thieves in an abandoned warehouse), it doesn't really convey the terrible reality of the world they find themselves in, and thus weakens the narrative overall.

Dystopian fiction is no different, and the same general idea applies to writing on NS. Now, I have seen writers buck the trend, the best example that I can think of being Kraven. I would encourage you to read his work, as he presents a dystopian society from the perspective of several elements of his society, from those in positions of power, to soldiers, to the poor unfortunate people that the regime torments on a regular basis.

[The Macabees]

Open question: I'm curious, what PMT roleplays are you guys involved in?

[UniversalCommons]

Dysentery destroyed many armies. A modernized version of the flux could take out an army.

[Supreme Authority]

Dysentery destroyed many armies. A modernized version of the flux could take out an army.

In MT (let alone PMT), I doubt it. Fluid and electrolyte management is much more of a science than before modern medicine. Though it could certainly slow an army down if you could infect enough. But there's some really serious pathogens available IRL, so plenty of material for RP.

[Allanea]

The big problem would be infecting enough people before someone catches on to what is happening.

[UniversalCommons]

I am back with the idea of the Orbital Airship. I would like to take it further than the JP Aerospace one which is interesting.
http://www.jpaerospace.com/atohandout.pdf

Assuming you could build a lightweight carbon fiber shell and aerogels to make an outer skin as well as a form of advanced steel like the recent steel made in South Korea. https://newatlas.com/steel-alloy-strong ... ium/35996/ It would also draw from the Skylon outer shell structure.

Also assuming you would be using a form of low grade radioactive nuclear thermal engine to help push it to orbit instead of a magnetohydrodynamic engine.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... lanet.html

Instead of a dark sky station, you would use a cloud nine tensegrity sphere.

The other question is the Ascender looks very much like the Big Black Delta which you see on various conspiracy sites. It makes thing even more intriguing and a little bit more interesting. It reminds me a little bit of the Hula Walrus and other giant airships which have shown up recently.

Assuming PMT technology would you want to build a heavy lift nuclear thermal airship to orbit. How much fantasy would be involved?

[UniversalCommons]

I am wondering what people are planning to do with quadcopters and minicopters in a PMT setting. There is also the mythical mini-drone sniper blimp.

There is the recent quadcopter bomb.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/militar ... from-hell/

We also have used the Autocopter as an excellent way to clear zombies from the streets.
http://www.hightech-edge.com/helicopter ... ideo/1251/

We have not done drone snipers yet.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/militar ... ne-sniper/

[Ghant]

Open question: I'm curious, what PMT roleplays are you guys involved in?

I wanted to answer this question as a means of providing my own personal perspective. If you're going by threads, I'm involved in two that I would consider "presently ongoing," those being Titanomachy and Never the Twain Shall Meet (I take credit for coming up with the name for that thread). While these are two different threads, they are heavily interconnected and are a part of the same "story arc." So usually when I consider what I'm involved in roleplaying wise, I go off of the story arcs as opposed to the threads (especially considering that at times, any given post could fit in easily in either thread, or one will be moving faster than the other).

[Libraria and Ausitoria]

Did someone say Orbital Airships? There's a couple of words I haven't dared to say together for some years now...

The biggest problem with airships is that if you use, for example helium, then, like meteorology balloons, they will have to expand with altitude. Therefore at some point they will probably (a) be unmanageably large, and/or (b) pop.

This is why I would recommend a pressure-difference airship as far more realistic. This would however require a lot of very expensive and very slow (and rather heavy) vacuum pumps. (Incidentally, in light of my recent size reductions in Aestoria, I'm currently not sure the expense would be justified in MT).

In any event it should be highlighted such ships would be highly unmaneuverable in all directions (unless, perhaps, powered by futuristic energy sources) and therefore sitting ducks. They would also have severe weight restrictions and virtually no armour, weight for defence, or pretty much anything else really. As such they are more likely to find use in assisting space launch by carrying shuttles to a higher altitude, rather than going anywhere near a battlefield themselves.

[The State of Monavia]

I am back with the idea of the Orbital Airship. I would like to take it further than the JP Aerospace one which is interesting.
http://www.jpaerospace.com/atohandout.pdf

Assuming you could build a lightweight carbon fiber shell and aerogels to make an outer skin as well as a form of advanced steel like the recent steel made in South Korea. https://newatlas.com/steel-alloy-strong ... ium/35996/ It would also draw from the Skylon outer shell structure.

Also assuming you would be using a form of low grade radioactive nuclear thermal engine to help push it to orbit instead of a magnetohydrodynamic engine.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... lanet.html

Instead of a dark sky station, you would use a cloud nine tensegrity sphere.

The other question is the Ascender looks very much like the Big Black Delta which you see on various conspiracy sites. It makes thing even more intriguing and a little bit more interesting. It reminds me a little bit of the Hula Walrus and other giant airships which have shown up recently.

Assuming PMT technology would you want to build a heavy lift nuclear thermal airship to orbit. How much fantasy would be involved?

Greater Themis will be the most reliable person around these parts for consulting about airship designs.

Did someone say Orbital Airships? There's a couple of words I haven't dared to say together for some years now...

The biggest problem with airships is that if you use, for example helium, then, like meteorology balloons, they will have to expand with altitude. Therefore at some point they will probably (a) be unmanageably large, and/or (b) pop.

This is why I would recommend a pressure-difference airship as far more realistic. This would however require a lot of very expensive and very slow (and rather heavy) vacuum pumps. (Incidentally, in light of my recent size reductions in Aestoria, I'm currently not sure the expense would be justified in MT).

Size reductions? Are you making major revisions to your canon? Does it have anything to do with the new flag you are now using?

In any event it should be highlighted such ships would be highly unmaneuverable in all directions (unless, perhaps, powered by futuristic energy sources) and therefore sitting ducks. They would also have severe weight restrictions and virtually no armour, weight for defence, or pretty much anything else really. As such they are more likely to find use in assisting space launch by carrying shuttles to a higher altitude, rather than going anywhere near a battlefield themselves.

How precisely does such a craft assist in launching a shuttle? Would it drop the shuttle before it ignites its engines, or release it after its engines are producing suitable levels of thrust? On a tangentially related subject, are you still selling the aircraft at the storefront linked in your signature?

[UniversalCommons]

There are a number of options for this. You could suspend the shuttle below the airship and launch it that way. The Da Vinci Project assumed a Roccoon style launch which had tethers attached to it. They did not drop the shuttle, then the engine ignited. You could do a Roccoon style launch from a cloud nine tensegrity sphere. It is large enough to do this. Or you you could build a platform on top of a tensegrity sphere to launch a rocket. The sphere would have to be huge to remain stable. The size of a small city. Basically a floating airbase.

Or if you wanted something really interesting, you could launch a shuttle from a hanging frame. Suspending a shuttle in Roccoon style would not be impossible for an Aeroscraft style airship. The long term planned capacity for cargo in the Aeroscraft is 500 tons or 800,000 lbs. Unlike a plane, an airship can hover in one place.

The point of this would be to help get large amounts of weight to orbit with a reusable high altitude rocket. Lets say you could get your 300 ton spaceship to 120,000 feet. The rocket would launch. You would retrieve it. Would the fuel savings be worth it.

Assuming that you have a nuclear thermal rocket engine, it will further reduce the weight requirement. If it is high PMT, that would be fusion thermal rocket, something even more efficient. To make it more interesting, the fusion thermal rocket would be powered by Helium 3 from the moon.

[Libraria and Ausitoria]

Did someone say Orbital Airships? There's a couple of words I haven't dared to say together for some years now...

The biggest problem with airships is that if you use, for example helium, then, like meteorology balloons, they will have to expand with altitude. Therefore at some point they will probably (a) be unmanageably large, and/or (b) pop.

This is why I would recommend a pressure-difference airship as far more realistic. This would however require a lot of very expensive and very slow (and rather heavy) vacuum pumps. (Incidentally, in light of my recent size reductions in Aestoria, I'm currently not sure the expense would be justified in MT).

Size reductions? Are you making major revisions to your canon? Does it have anything to do with the new flag you are now using?

I’ve made a minor revision to my canon by reducing the territory of Libraria and have also reduced my population by about a quarter. But, as with all my revisions, no retconning is required - I don’t like to force people to change their cannon and I don’t have time to throw out/replace earlier work anyway. If anyone RPs with me they can rely on it being forever, and when I make changes to history they are insignificant.

But the future is another matter. What I’m currently doing is throwing Ausitoria - inasmuch as it is Ausitorian at all (Ausitorians being only a tenth of the population) - into a sovereignty crisis over legal jurisdiction regarding the ability of the Aestorian (old flag) Supreme Court to rule on the right to openly express sexuality. Suprasovereign Empires are inherently shaky, and there’s nothing more worthwhile than aggravating religious conservatives - because Ausitoria (the background flag) is merely in governmental union with the United Chattakang Realms (the foreground) it is arguably not in legal union - so I’m currently putting the finishing touches to the RP: it will see the collapse of the current system, and may even see the Empire replaced with a Republic on the Dutch model. (You would all be welcome to join it - keep an eye out for Cabbages and Kings…)

In any event it should be highlighted such ships would be highly unmaneuverable in all directions (unless, perhaps, powered by futuristic energy sources) and therefore sitting ducks. They would also have severe weight restrictions and virtually no armour, weight for defence, or pretty much anything else really. As such they are more likely to find use in assisting space launch by carrying shuttles to a higher altitude, rather than going anywhere near a battlefield themselves.

How precisely does such a craft assist in launching a shuttle? Would it drop the shuttle before it ignites its engines, or release it after its engines are producing suitable levels of thrust? On a tangentially related subject, are you still selling the aircraft at the storefront linked in your signature?

It could take the shuttle to an altitude, say 40 km, thereby saving the shuttle from having to use boosters to punch through all the air resistance required to get to that altitude. And it’s the first 40 km that is the real killer of space business, as I’m sure you know, all that atmospheric drag, scorching friction, and wasteful rocket stages means it’s a skyscraper’s worth of propellant for getting a mere car’s worth into space. But the atmosphere turns to nothing fairly suddenly, which is why Ausitoria’s space forces have responsibility for everything above 40 km - because that’s where the tyranny of drag starts to wane into insignificance next to ballistics.

In the Ausitorian design, they use a magnetic catapult powered by a light nuclear reactor to launch the shuttles. Since the ship in question has a thin spine a few kilometers long, the terminal velocity can be hypersonic. But even merely dropping it off railings at that altitude would have saved any craft from needing a stupidly large booster to get there. You could also consider using laser ablation if you wanted.

Anyway, those aircraft on my storefront are still for sale, although the storefront and presentation is fairly rubbish by my current standards, apologies. When I get time I’ll beautify it properly.

[UniversalCommons]

One project that interests me is the concept of the World Brain/Final Encyclopedia. H.G. Wells wrote a book called The World Brain which is about a collection of all the worlds knowledge on Microfilm. This was in the 1930s.
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1303731h.html I believe that the article As We May Think by Vannevar Bush is an extension of this. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... nk/303881/ These existed before the internet. These were rooted in a kind of a reality before computers.

There have been various manifestations of a Final Encyclopedia in science fiction. I especially like the book, The Final Encyclopedia by Gordon R. Dickson. Some people believe this book helped inspire Wikipedia. One of the early pioneering internet organizations was Dorsai.org

There are arguments that the Google Books project was an attempt to create a "World Brain", but it stalled because of copyright restrictions, digital rights management, and intellectual property issues. There is a movie called Google and the World Brain which I have been wanting to see for a while. http://www.polarstarfilms.com/en/watch_ ... -brain.php

Combined with an open source teaching network, a project like this could change a lot of things. Maybe something like the Watson IBM supercomputer to back it up for text analysis and search.

The main obstacles are copyright and other things. This does not mean that at least one government is doing this in secret for their own reasons. I think

[Gogol Transcendancy]

I am back with the idea of the Orbital Airship. I would like to take it further than the JP Aerospace one which is interesting.
http://www.jpaerospace.com/atohandout.pdf

Assuming you could build a lightweight carbon fiber shell and aerogels to make an outer skin as well as a form of advanced steel like the recent steel made in South Korea. https://newatlas.com/steel-alloy-strong ... ium/35996/ It would also draw from the Skylon outer shell structure.

Also assuming you would be using a form of low grade radioactive nuclear thermal engine to help push it to orbit instead of a magnetohydrodynamic engine.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... lanet.html

Instead of a dark sky station, you would use a cloud nine tensegrity sphere.

The other question is the Ascender looks very much like the Big Black Delta which you see on various conspiracy sites. It makes thing even more intriguing and a little bit more interesting. It reminds me a little bit of the Hula Walrus and other giant airships which have shown up recently.

Assuming PMT technology would you want to build a heavy lift nuclear thermal airship to orbit. How much fantasy would be involved?

Since this is PMT, this could be an ideal niche for an Open-Cycle Gas Core NTR. Since your engine's firing above most of the atmosphere at an exhaust velocity several times escape velocity, the vast majority of the extremely radioactive exhaust would just go into solar orbit, making the engine relatively clean.

[UniversalCommons]

Nuclear Thermal is also being looked at as an ideal Mars rocket engine.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/n ... ology.html

[The Macabees]

Not strictly PMT related, but I thought this who article was interesting.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02036-8

We also show that the presence of good storytellers is associated with increased cooperation. In return, skilled storytellers are preferred social partners and have greater reproductive success, providing a pathway by which group-beneficial behaviours, such as storytelling, can evolve via individual-level selection

[Post War America]

Not strictly PMT related, but I thought this who article was interesting.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02036-8

We also show that the presence of good storytellers is associated with increased cooperation. In return, skilled storytellers are preferred social partners and have greater reproductive success, providing a pathway by which group-beneficial behaviours, such as storytelling, can evolve via individual-level selection

...
>Is halfway decent storyteller
>Has absolutely zero "reproductive success"