So, the hypothetical is, a device has been invented that allows access to “sideways” versions of Earth - ones in different universes where things have worked out differently. There’s a lot of them, though, and the way the system currently works is that the scientists can aim at a general “slice” of Earths, but not any specific one.
Plans are laid to colonise one of these Earths.
They will be sending around 2000 people, volunteers all, and a lot of kit - the device can send basically a small warehouse full of stuff, but the people have to be in there too. The Earth they are aiming at will be one that split off from Earth Prime (ours) about a million years ago, and will be one in which the race that become human became extinct in Africa instead of evolving to become us. There may be tool-using hominids around, but it’s expected that they will be at the level that chimps and the like are here now.
It will be a one way trip, and they will not be able to locate the colony again once it leaves, due to the tolerance of the device, so more kit or people would not be forthcoming.
3 questions:
(1) Where would you set up, given anywhere in the world?
1 - Somewhere with awesome climate, maybe on Mediterranean beach or Hawaii or other such place.
2 - I have no clue, given …
3 - Hell no, hell no and hell no. Going somewhere with 2000 nature freaks and hippies and Bear Gryllis-wannabes sounds like my idea of hell, even with decent climate. I want my internet, books, movies - civilization. I can see why it would entice people, though. One other thing besides lack of civilization would bother me as well, which is a fear of it all going Jamestown or Lord of the Flies or some other social failure.
The current world we really have isn’t broken enough for me to take the great leap into the unknown at my current stage of life. Ref the post above, social failure is a near-certainty; the question is how soon.
No matter how much gear we bring, it’ll essentially be a survivalist situation. So we’d better pick a location where surviving is easy. Moderate climate, fertile soils, proximity to fresh water & minerals, etc. Which desiderata conflict with the OP’s conditions that they can’t aim the transport very well. It’d be a shame to go through all that travel and end up in the local equivalent of central Antarctica or 1000 miles due West of Australia (i.e. the middle of an ocean).
I assumed they can hit a particular location easily, just not a particular universe. So if we’d want to go to Hawaii, we’d get there but there’d be no way to tell if we land in Earth 56837047230 or Earth 56837047237. That’s how I read it, anyways.
I wouldn’t go myself: I’m too old and unhealthy and too comfortable.
If I were to recommend a location, I’d choose southern England due to the climate and the proximity of easily accessible tin and other metal deposits in Cornwall, plus, looking ahead, the coal deposits further north and the onshore oilfields (the biggest on-shore oilfield in the EU is in S England). Plus the separation from the continent will provide a barrier against any ‘sub-human hordes’ that might have developed.
As for equipment, I’d keep most of it very simple, but send a lot of (physical) books of knowledge, all with plasticised pages for longevity, in triplicate. I’d send seeds and livestock too.
Keep in mind that humans have killed off many alpha predators that would continue to exist in an alternate Earth. So you’d have that to deal with. On the other hand, there would still be old-growth forests everywhere, so perhaps you could build a nice treehouse above the predators.
Indeed, this is how it’s intended. I’m actually mostly interested in what people think about the location for such a thing - given a pristine Earth, where would be the best places to start a colony, given that we know where many resources are going to be? The rest of it is interesting too
I was going to mention this in the OP, but figured it would confuse things as it’s not the same situation. Does the Long Earth not posit easy transfer between the worlds? The short story it’s based on (the High Meggers, I think) does.
This reminds me a bit of the novels Wildside by Steven Gould and Conquistador by S. M. Stirling. But in those, the gate between our world and the unpopulated version is two-way.
How do they know the device works this way? How do they know the device doesn’t simply disintegrate the warehouse or other payloads they’ve been sending?
This one-way aspect also bothered me when I read Silverberg’s Hawksbill Station way back when.
The way I understand it, North America didn’t have earthworms until ships from Europe began to land there and dump ballast, which contained them. I have no cite to back this up… but if it’s true, then North America probably wasn’t the greatest agricultural area on the planet, originally.
No, I would aim for the Fertile Crescent. Not only is it where humanity did flourish once, in the past, but it gives you access to all of Europe, Asia, and Africa before you need to build sailing ships to get to the Americas. That’s a lot more mineral resources to support technological advancement. There are just a lot of classic inventions that it would be hard to gather the mineral resources for, in the Americas.
The idea behind the Long Earth is that it’s easy to move one step and a time to an adjacent earth, but it’s a major expedition to go very far. Part of the story includes some more distant colonized parallel earth that remind me of your OP. Just thought it would make an interesting comparison.
The Mediterranean region seems to have worked quite well on this Earth - so I’d probably go with that. Not sure exactly where though.
Taking along information is going to be as important as materials. You’ll need tools for mining, cultivation, manufacture, etc, but you’ll also need to know how to make and use almost anything else. Some sort of reliable backup of the entire internet would probably be a good start.
I’d be tempted, but I have family and friends here, so no.
Turtledove’s “Crosstime Traffic” mostly deals with clandestine trading with other Earths.
I want horses,dogs and cattle for transport ,food and guards… Books,books and books. Hand tools,the wonderstuff we import will die soon. (Ann McCaffery )
Would I go?? If I was 16/18 again YES…
What I would find interesting is to see the planet as it was before humans altered it. How big were those herd of buffalo in the Great Plains? Were the flocks of passenger pigeons as large as I’ve heard? That sort of thing.
This, almost to the word. Southern English winters are usually mild, and it’s not at all unusual for them to be snow-free right through. There will be few dangerous animals - possibly wolves and bears but no great cats, hardly any venomous snakes (and those relatively innocuous), no crocodilians… also plenty of iron ore and lead deposits further north, even graphite in Cumbria for a start. Meanwhile the building timber is excellent and the land is well-watered - and when the time does come to colonise further afield, continental Europe is visible from the Kentish coast.
I’m over fifty with a family, but thirty-five years ago it would have been tempting.
For a non-Eurocentric choice, would what’s China in our world be a good spot? Or is it too hard to spread out from there? Otherwise, the Mediterranean or Fertile Crescent sounds good.
What to take? Maybe microfiche would be a good medium for information. Compact yet readable with even a crude microscope, so likely to remain useful even under less than optimum scenarios. The skills of the colonists would be crucial- you’d need metalworkers, weavers, agriculturalists, carpenters, masons, geologists, glass blowers, chemists- in short, all the crafts and skills necessary to maintain self-sufficiency at the small-scale, midterm level. A few high-tech items too convenient to do without at the start, but otherwise only stuff durable enough to be worth taking. The population size given is iffy; if the colonists doubled their numbers every fifty years for ten generations it’d probably work but there’d be a very strong “founder effect” genetically. Still, other populations have had worse bottlenecks.
Would I go? If I was a lot younger and healthier, yes. A very big question is, what would we do different given a fresh start with what we know now? Hopefully we wouldn’t wreck ecosystems as badly as we have, but there’s no guarantee.
2000 people seems like a lot for an initial colony that will - regardless of what you bring with you barring Star Trek replicators - end up subsistence pretty quickly.
So break it into 10 groups of 200 in family. Small towns and villages. Hopefully placed at the mouths of rivers without a lot of marshland.
In the south of England:
Brighton
Portsmouth
Rye
Dover
All those towns along the channel. Maybe even some along the French side
Le Havre
Abbeville
Ostend
In North America all along the Piedmont Plateau and the Atlantic
Savannah
Charleston
Jacksonville
Wilmington
Norfolk
Heck, just along the Chesapeake Bay would work:
Norfolk
Washington
Annapolis
Baltimore
Havre de Grace
Elkton
Wilmington, DE
The important thing is less access to natural resource - though keep the knowledge of locations it’ll come in handy - as access to readily available food supplies. And discounting unspoiled ocean for fish and shellfish and such would be a big mistake. Plus rivers will give easy access to inland areas when the population gets to the point of wanting to do so.
Heck, all the rivers along west africa and the gold coast would be good, too.
Or just claim a large island - like the UK, Cuba or Madagascar - as a starter. But it might make the jump to a continent a bigger leap in the future.
