# A new start, on a new Earth **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 10, 2015, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467 "2015-01-10T13:34:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/81 "2015-01-16T22:14:18Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > 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). I’d like to think that if we had a pristine Earth to live in that we could do better than to repeat the Industrial Revolution and its dependence on fossil fuels. Perhaps we could use a pebble-bed fission plant to produce relatively clean electricity from nuclear energy? Perhaps we’d have access to working fusion power? ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/82 "2015-01-16T22:16:37Z")
Sounds like someone’s been reading [The Long Earth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Earth), by Pratchett and Baxter. ---
**Author:** ![Your\_Great\_Darsh\_Face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ac8455/32.png) [@Your\_Great\_Darsh\_Face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Your_Great_Darsh_Face)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2015, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/83 "2015-01-17T09:41:46Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Sounds like someone’s been reading [The Long Earth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Earth), by Pratchett and Baxter. Sounds like someone’s not been reading [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18041827&postcount=9). Really big animals, including great cats and cave bears, seem to have been gone from Britain for forty thousand years - I’m unsure that humanity had the population density or means to have driven them to extinction. And tbh, if the parallel-earth Britain has them, I’ve no idea where you’d find anywhere safer, except for some small island somewhere with negligible resources and little possibility of ever getting off it. ---
**Author:** ![Teuton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/teuton/32/3864_2.png) [@Teuton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teuton)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2015, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/84 "2015-01-17T13:26:14Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I’d like to think that if we had a pristine Earth to live in that we could do better than to repeat the Industrial Revolution and its dependence on fossil fuels. I rather suspect that, especially in the second situation I posited where the portal is permanent, a new Earth full of pristine fossil fuel reserves would be seen as the whole point of colonising. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/85 "2015-01-19T07:43:02Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Okay, that’s a good point. I wonder if small-scale agriculture would be enough for this, or if we’d need very large scale agriculture. > > I think this is assuming stone-age technology and know-how. With modern know-how, I think life could be far better than subsistence – I don’t see why agriculture would be necessary for things like metalwork, considering what we know now. In a place with the bounty of the PacNW, a few full time fishermen, hunters, and gatherers should be able to feed many, many more people who would be free to specialize in other industries. I think you have an exaggerated perception of the population pure H/G can support - it can support a lot of people _if those people are mostly engaged in H/G activities_. Possibly a few non-H/G elites too (shamans, etc) but I personally doubt it can sustain entire classes of non-subsistence-gathering workers. Even in the pre-contact PNW, no-one was a _full-time_ totem maker or soapstone carver - they did these things _in addition to_ H/G activities, AFAICT. > [@](#): > > My inclination against agriculture in this case is based mainly on the understanding (IIRC) that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle allows much, much more leisure time than intensive agriculture – as well as being much healthier. True, but for a _much_ smaller population. Are you prepared to re-introduce infanticide, [the usual historic H/G method of population control?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide#Paleolithic_and_Neolithic) Because without an industrial base, that’s the only reliable population control method you have, rubber not being native to the PNW. > [@](#): > > The main advantage of intensive agriculture, as I understand it, is the ability to support a much larger population on a smaller piece of land… but without automation, the farms require most of the population to work. I think simply modern knowledge of agriculture combined with modern seeds, modern ploughs and modern draught animals would go a long way to reducing the labour requirements. Just remembering what mouldboards and horse collars are remove you from pure serf labour to more like the 19th Century - and _those_ farmers sustained populous cities like Victorian London, Paris and New York… ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/86 "2015-01-19T07:45:56Z")
> [@Teuton](#): > > If we change the terms of the OP slightly, does it change people’s answers? Say, if the portal was permanent. You can still only make one, so that’s your sole point of entry into the new world, but people and equipment can pretty much freely transfer between the two. > > Where would you put _that_ portal? Is it an on/off portal (like a stargate), or a permanent gate i.e. can I run a pipeline through it? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/87 "2015-01-19T07:56:09Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I think simply modern knowledge of agriculture combined with modern seeds, modern ploughs and modern draught animals would go a long way to reducing the labour requirements. Just remembering what mouldboards and horse collars are remove you from pure serf labour to more like the 19th Century - and _those_ farmers sustained populous cities like Victorian London, Paris and New York… Just a follow-up - basically, what I’m saying is that you’d be starting out with all the advantages of the[British Agricultural Revolution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution), which historically freed up labour for the Industrial one. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/88 "2015-01-19T08:00:31Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I’d like to think that if we had a pristine Earth to live in that we could do better than to repeat the Industrial Revolution and its dependence on fossil fuels. Perhaps we could use a pebble-bed fission plant to produce relatively clean electricity from nuclear energy? Just producing the fuel for this would require an industrial base way beyond that for antibiotics. You can’t make precision ultracentifuges in a smithy. And the having to be near uranium sources is going to restrict your location much more than other options. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be all for the new colony to work as sustainably as possible. I’d assume all the tech brought through would include solar and wind-power options. But you’re not going to smelt iron for tools without some form of carbon for reduction. Just not going to happen. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/89 "2015-01-19T11:49:02Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Except in this new world the predators have developed no such fear, because humans were absent. In southern Britain, you’d have to look out for cave bears (bigger & meaner than grizzlies), wolves, and just maybe lions and leopards. > > A rampaging herd of mastodon / elephants might be an issue too. That was kind of the point I was making 😉 However even animals with no knowledge or fear of humans, when faced with a choice of two targets, one that at the least throws things, and makes startling unpredictable noises, and something that reacts by going “baaaaaa” and running away, will tend to attack the sheep. Unlike in the movies, where predators get determined that human this Shall Be Theirs, real predators want dinner that isn’t going to injure them if at all possible. It would be extremely interesting to find out what animals had survived. I think we make a lot of assumptions about what wiped stuff out really. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/90 "2015-01-19T14:13:31Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I think you have an exaggerated perception of the population pure H/G can support - it can support a lot of people _if those people are mostly engaged in H/G activities_. Possibly a few non-H/G elites too (shamans, etc) but I personally doubt it can sustain entire classes of non-subsistence-gathering workers. Even in the pre-contact PNW, no-one was a _full-time_ totem maker or soapstone carver - they did these things _in addition to_ H/G activities, AFAICT. From my understanding, H/Gs spend less than 20 hours per week gathering food – with modern methods (and modern food preparation and preservation), this leaves a ton of leisure time _even if nearly everyone is engaged in H/G_. > [@](#): > > True, but for a _much_ smaller population. Are you prepared to re-introduce infanticide, [the usual historic H/G method of population control?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide#Paleolithic_and_Neolithic) Because without an industrial base, that’s the only reliable population control method you have, rubber not being native to the PNW. We’ll have a whole planet sans people. We don’t need population control – we can just expand. > [@](#): > > I think simply modern knowledge of agriculture combined with modern seeds, modern ploughs and modern draught animals would go a long way to reducing the labour requirements. Just remembering what mouldboards and horse collars are remove you from pure serf labour to more like the 19th Century - and _those_ farmers sustained populous cities like Victorian London, Paris and New York… You might be right – I’m just exploring alternatives… and especially, more environmentally friendly alternatives. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/91 "2015-01-24T16:31:39Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > From my understanding, H/Gs spend less than 20 hours per week gathering food – with modern methods (and modern food preparation and preservation), this leaves a ton of leisure time _even if nearly everyone is engaged in H/G_. Skilled trades like metallurgy and the like aren’t leisure time activities, they’re full-time occupations. > [@](#): > > We’ll have a whole planet sans people. We don’t need population control – we can just expand. You can’t expand out of the PNW without agriculture, it’s a very specific set of conditions that allow a large-population HG culture to live there (or all of NAm would have been HG-only, with PNW-levels of culture, no?) ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/92 "2015-01-24T18:23:23Z")
> [@Filbert](#): > > However even animals with no knowledge or fear of humans, when faced with a choice of two targets, one that at the least throws things, and makes startling unpredictable noises, and something that reacts by going “baaaaaa” and running away, will tend to attack the sheep. And critters attacking the sheep or raiding the orchards is also significantly detrimental to the new colony. Indigenous megafauna is going to be a significant problem whichever way you cut it. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/93 "2015-01-24T18:57:57Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > From my understanding, H/Gs spend less than 20 hours per week gathering food – with modern methods (and modern food preparation and preservation), this leaves a ton of leisure time _even if nearly everyone is engaged in H/G_. I wonder if that average time figure includes the amount of time people spend going hungry during bad winters or dry seasons when there is no food to find. :eek: ETA: though **iiandyiiii** raises an interesting point: knowing _what we know now_, would a low-intensity mode of agriculture work? One where you primarily rely on gathering nuts and fruit from perennials and “hunt” (more like round up) semi-feral livestock? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/94 "2015-01-24T20:27:36Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I wonder if that average time figure includes the amount of time people spend going hungry during bad winters or dry seasons when there is no food to find. :eek: > > ETA: though **iiandyiiii** raises an interesting point: knowing _what we know now_, would a low-intensity mode of agriculture work? One where you primarily rely on gathering nuts and fruit from perennials and “hunt” (more like round up) semi-feral livestock? That’s sort of what I’m trying to get at – that we may not need to replicate the intensive, environment-altering agriculture of our past to thrive. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/95 "2015-01-24T20:30:53Z")
If the goal is to keep the population very small, hunting and gathering might work. But if the goal is to expand the population over time, agriculture will be necessary. And either way, putting humans on this planet is going to alter the environment. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/96 "2015-01-24T23:07:40Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > If the goal is to keep the population very small, hunting and gathering might work. But if the goal is to expand the population over time, agriculture will be necessary. And either way, putting humans on this planet is going to alter the environment. True, but our colonists would be starting out with a knowledge of what unbridled breeding can do; and how to avoid it- birth control, plus reducing infant mortality so one can be reasonably sure one’s 2+ children will survive. An interesting question: what would we limit the population to? I’d guess a billion or so as the number needed to support our current technology’s economy of scale, while not unduly burdening the planet. Probably the single most important thing our colonists should pass to their descendants would be that big does not equal infinite, and that you _can_ hunt and fish the planet bare. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/97 "2015-01-24T23:20:00Z")
“Unbridled breeding”? There are only two thousand people on the entire (hypothetical) planet. A natural disaster, animal attack or infectious disease could practically wipe out the colony. We should be _encouraging_ unbridled breeding. It will be many generations before birth control should even be allowed. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/98 "2015-01-24T23:38:08Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > “Unbridled breeding”? There are only two thousand people on the entire (hypothetical) planet. A natural disaster, animal attack or infectious disease could practically wipe out the colony. We should be _encouraging_ unbridled breeding. It will be many generations before birth control should even be allowed. Only 19 generations to get to a population of a billion if you assume a doubling every generation (4 surviving children), about 4-500 years. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2015, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/99 "2015-01-24T23:50:32Z")
That seems unlikely; I doubt most people will have four or more children (given the limited resources) and there _will_ be deaths due to epidemics, disasters and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2015, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467/100 "2015-01-25T16:41:38Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > True, but our colonists would be starting out with a knowledge of what unbridled breeding can do; and how to avoid it- birth control Again, I must ask, are you going to re-introduce infanticide? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-start-on-a-new-earth/709467.md?page=6)