Rebuilding Matrix's Earth: possible?

[Eviscerator]

Presume as an Opening the Zion humans discover how/why Dark Storm works and more importantly how to reverse the effect.
They may have done this by finding the info in a bunker or research.
They open negotiations with the Machines and they ask these terms:

In return for:
The freeing of all Matrix-logged in humans after the establishment of the following
1) Assistance in rebuilding infrastructure suffice to support let's say 350K humans in an late 1990's standard of living.
2) Machine assistance in rebuilding farms, power plants, etc etc, the release of archival content i presume the Machines stored in order to recreate an 20th century living environ.
3) An stable, civil relationship between Machine and Man, for example, that man will no longer serve machine, vice versa, and the breach of such by either side will result in an return to the Matrix.

The Zion Humans will furnish details to the machines on Dark Storm's antidote in return for the fulfillment of abovesaid terms. However they would keep the base tech to reestablish DS as an ace-in-the-hole.

How much work would both sides have to do to achieve the stated objectives? Presume that 500 years has passed since any natural sunlight has reached the earth, and that established "doomsday vaults" such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault still retain around 50% of their intended capabilities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_vault

[NecronLord]

Why bother with C20th? The machines are quite capable of producing all kinds of shiny stuff. Flying cars and such. They're not necesserily sadistic (the existance of the matrix, when they could simply paralyse people, demonstrates that nicely) and can probably do much, much better. The machines could certainly produce an arcology to house that many people, with ease; they can life support them in pseudo-perpetual-motion, they can generate an environment that's liveable with ease, if thet have millions of times the available power.

Animal life would be extinct, but there's no logical problem with rebuilding the Earth. It may not be possible, with the cyrostored animal embyros, to repopulate animal species. They can grow humans in pods, they can doubtless manufacture animals too.

Excavating seed vaults and such would be trivial if they can locate them, what with the drilling technology and millions of sentinels with no function now.

Nonetheless, it should be possible to regenerate the ecosystem with their technology, and sufficient determination. I see no reason why the machines wouldn't expand beyond Earth and the situation wouldn't segue into Culture-lite.

[Eviscerator]

Because an premise of the opening is "
Man shall not serve, and vice versa.

alright to modify it a bit, the humans will not be served by "smart" AI constructs only dumb constructs. The whole idea of the Discovery's Channel series "Life After People" was that with time, a lot of artificial stuff will fail, including the svalbard seed vault. This is why i presumed a basic 50% functionality retained after 500years.

Not all animal life would be extinct, how about cockroaches and the organisms that survive in caves ?

[Shroom Man 777]

If Dark Storm was nanotechnology-based, wouldn't atmospheric EMPs or nukings be able to destroy them?

[Koolaidkirby]

Presume as an Opening the Zion humans discover how/why Dark Storm works and more importantly how to reverse the effect.
They may have done this by finding the info in a bunker or research.
They open negotiations with the Machines and they ask these terms:

In return for:
The freeing of all Matrix-logged in humans after the establishment of the following
1) Assistance in rebuilding infrastructure suffice to support let's say 350K humans in an late 1990's standard of living.
2) Machine assistance in rebuilding farms, power plants, etc etc, the release of archival content i presume the Machines stored in order to recreate an 20th century living environ.
3) An stable, civil relationship between Machine and Man, for example, that man will no longer serve machine, vice versa, and the breach of such by either side will result in an return to the Matrix.

The Zion Humans will furnish details to the machines on Dark Storm's antidote in return for the fulfillment of abovesaid terms. However they would keep the base tech to reestablish DS as an ace-in-the-hole.

How much work would both sides have to do to achieve the stated objectives? Presume that 500 years has passed since any natural sunlight has reached the earth, and that established "doomsday vaults" such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault still retain around 50% of their intended capabilities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_vault

mmmm well the problem to me is, why would the humans have a cure to the scorched sky? the machines demonstrated that they can come up with technologies on their own (they invented hover-tech) and the humans haven't given a wink about the sky since they abandoned the surface in the first place.

[Eviscerator]

Because nomatter how silly the U.N was, they shouldn't have approved Operation Dark Storm without some means of reversing it after the Machines were gone. Just presume the solution was lost in the Great War and the Humans have rediscovered how.

The whole Matrix universe needs a bit of spoon-bending.

[Starglider]

If Dark Storm was nanotechnology-based, wouldn't atmospheric EMPs or nukings be able to destroy them?

'Nanotechnology is vulnerable to EMP' is another idiotic sci-fi brainbug (thanks Atlantis). Firstly, most designs for nanosystems do not incorporate any electronics; chemical and mechanical controls are quite adequate for the vast majority of tasks. Secondly, EMP induces a current in unshielded conductors roughly proportional to the length of the conductor. This is why it's a problem for power lines, telephone wires and anything directly connected to a radio aerial. Nanomachines are the last thing that will be affected, because they have such tiny conductive paths they won't experience a significant potential difference. Unless connected to external conductors, even electronic nanocircuitry will actually be less vulnerable than human nerves.

Shock and heat from direct nuking will do it out to a certain range, but I'd expect these things to be at least as resistant as bacteria, likely considerably more. That may make the operation impractical. Still, without knowing how the hell they're supposed to work (what keeps them airborne? where do they get the mass and energy to multiply?)...

[Shroom Man 777]

Nanotechnology is still microscopic, so the intense and wide-ranging heat and radiation of nuclear detonations will still be very unhealthy for them.

[Oskuro]

'Nanotechnology is vulnerable to EMP' is another idiotic sci-fi brainbug (thanks Atlantis).

Actually, there's this page regarding popular nanotech myths, here's a relevant quote, wich is probably the reason Shroomy suggested EMP to begin with:

Rates of heat transfer are correlated to surface area, while heat content is correlated to volume. Obviously, the ratio of surface area to volume is much larger for a microscopic object than it is for a macroscopic object, which means that microscopic objects are extremely vulnerable to heat. This is why a piece of hull armour might survive an intense radiation bombardment while a thin antenna made of the same material might melt away (it's also why a bunch of ice chips will melt faster than one big ice cube). In other words, the normal radiative heat flux on the tiny shell of an exposed nanobot in space (depending on its proximity to the nearest star) might very well be enough to fry its innards (this is a problem for the idea of solar-powered nanobots in space; their fuel source may destroy them). It goes without saying that the heat flux in the vicinity of a pitched battle involving nuclear-yield weapons would certainly fry an exposed nanobot (unless you carefully manufacture a thickly shielded casing for each nanobot, which would make it much larger, thus defeating the purpose and decreasing the ratio of useful machinery to dead weight).

[Sheridan]

Yeah, but if you're trying to make the surface of the Earth livable, shouldn't you, ahem, avoid nuking the whole damned thing?

This assumes, of course, that global-scale nuclear detonations would be needed to get rid of the 'bots.

[Eviscerator]

>.< The whole premise of the OP is that the Humans now know how to neutralise the nanos that block out sunlight. Just as an illustration maybe they discovered the code to transmit to shut them all down or whatever.

A lot of times to enjoy movies you sort of have to shut parts of your brain off, some movies more than most.

[Starglider]

Nanotechnology is still microscopic, so the intense and wide-ranging heat and radiation of nuclear detonations will still be very unhealthy for them.

Well sure, as I said, it will be roughly comparable to the effect that it has on bacteria. Which is to say, inverse-square law means you will need a hell of a lot of nukes.

Actually, there's this page regarding popular nanotech myths, here's a relevant quote, wich is probably the reason Shroomy suggested EMP to begin with:

Firstly, that's directly absorbed short-wave radiation, not EMP. EMP is attractive because it doesn't mess up the environment. Direct nuking tends to boil away the baby with the bathwater.

Secondly, for normal sunlight the high SA/volume ratio simply means that there is little thermal inertia, the nanobot will have roughly the same sustained heat flux tolerance as a large object of the same composition, it's just that it will succumb faster if you go outside of that range.

Thirdly, while accurate for dispersed swarms it ignores the affects of self-shadowing in dense swams. Exposing a dense swam to nuke flash will only cook the outer layer facing the flash. We don't know the composition of the black clouds in The Matrix, but they looked pretty dense to me.

The best option should be making another nanobot swarm that will destroy the first swarm. Frankly I can't see why the machines haven't already done this, when they seem to be more advanced than the humans were, but the setting has a lot of silliness like that.

[NecronLord]

Because an premise of the opening is "
Man shall not serve, and vice versa.

alright to modify it a bit, the humans will not be served by "smart" AI constructs only dumb constructs. The whole idea of the Discovery's Channel series "Life After People" was that with time, a lot of artificial stuff will fail, including the svalbard seed vault. This is why i presumed a basic 50% functionality retained after 500years.

Not all animal life would be extinct, how about cockroaches and the organisms that survive in caves ?

Operating on the assumption that it's eternal night, I have difficulty imagining an ecosystem able to support animals of any sort. Even roaches. Organisms that survive in caves, and around deep sea vents, would of course, manage.

[Eviscerator]

If nothing else, there's comic evidence that Cockroachs survive as cockroach paste is fed to an survivor.
Normally people arent aware of the special organisms that exist all the way at the bottom of the oceans like these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benthic

Unless the Machines went on a Skynet-level total extermination program, life like deep-sea sea organisms or cavefish etc etc

[adam_grif]

Couldn't the machines just build a bunch of blimps with solar panels attached to the top, sit them above the cloud and have cables running back down to lower altitude? It's not a physical barrier (hovercraft goes through it easily) and it doesn't appear to be all that high.

If they're somehow unable to build it (creative sterility in AI or such nonsense, wouldn't put it past the Wachowskis), then they can just trick a bunch of human engineers into doing it in the matrix for them easily.

[NecronLord]

Couldn't the machines just build a bunch of blimps with solar panels attached to the top, sit them above the cloud and have cables running back down to lower altitude? It's not a physical barrier (hovercraft goes through it easily) and it doesn't appear to be all that high.

If they're somehow unable to build it (creative sterility in AI or such nonsense, wouldn't put it past the Wachowskis), then they can just trick a bunch of human engineers into doing it in the matrix for them easily.

The Matrix doesn't make sense, just accept its insanity as a given and discuss. Otherwise the question becomes how the fuck does this stuff work, and the answer becomes 'blatant author fiat'

[Junghalli]

Frankly I can't see why the machines haven't already done this, when they seem to be more advanced than the humans were, but the setting has a lot of silliness like that.

If we go with the assumption that the rather silly notion that humans are an important power source to them is probably bunk, it could simply be that they don't feel any pressing need to fix the sky since they can get all the energy from sources other than sunlight. In fact the present situation might serve their interests, because it makes it harder for humans to survive outside the machines' control, and therefore makes things harder for the resistance.

[adam_grif]

Couldn't the machines just build a bunch of blimps with solar panels attached to the top, sit them above the cloud and have cables running back down to lower altitude? It's not a physical barrier (hovercraft goes through it easily) and it doesn't appear to be all that high.

If they're somehow unable to build it (creative sterility in AI or such nonsense, wouldn't put it past the Wachowskis), then they can just trick a bunch of human engineers into doing it in the matrix for them easily.

The Matrix doesn't make sense, just accept its insanity as a given and discuss. Otherwise the question becomes how the fuck does this stuff work, and the answer becomes 'blatant author fiat'

It's hard to stomach a hypothetical situation that's assuming the machines are going to be acting in their best interests in a rational and logical function when they're totally fucking stupid. Are we to assume that they're only stupid in those specific circumstances or what?

[Eviscerator]

It's hard to stomach a hypothetical situation that's assuming the machines are going to be acting in their best interests in a rational and logical function when they're totally fucking stupid. Are we to assume that they're only stupid in those specific circumstances or what?

One could point to the entire design of the Sentinel as an WTF? No ranged weaponry save short range cutting torch weapon?
They completely threw out energy projectors, missiles, bio weapons, bullets etc?

The battle for Zion would have been really short if instead of "One Sentinel for every man, woman and child" came down those tubes, a couple of nukes or "persistent" bio chem warheads were dumped down insted. would have made all those APUs, infantry etc moot Or maybe the Machines decided to let them put up a fight everytime they wanted to reset the Matrix, like 5 times previously?

[Shroom Man 777]

Nanotechnology is still microscopic, so the intense and wide-ranging heat and radiation of nuclear detonations will still be very unhealthy for them.

Well sure, as I said, it will be roughly comparable to the effect that it has on bacteria. Which is to say, inverse-square law means you will need a hell of a lot of nukes.

Right. I forgot that they covered the whole fucking sky, my bad.

Perhaps they can solve this by living in domed cities that stand on stilts and stick out of the nanoswarms. Like the fucking Jetsons.

[PeZook]

The whole movie would've made so much more sense if it were the machines who scorched the sky. Because while machines can survive without an ecosystem just fine, humans can't, and will inevitably die out unless put on permanent artificial life support, like in the Matrix or Zion.

Getting back on topic: what's going to stop the machines from breaking the deal? They'll still massively outnumber the humans, and the entire human infrastructure will be built by them. I foresee a repeat of the war within two generations, as both sides distrust each other and look for an opportunity to wipe them out.

[Eviscerator]

Because in universe, the Machines themselves didn't go rocking the boat until human's asshattery forced them to. Doom on the lawyer who compared Machines to african-americans and the U.N delegates who rejected the proposal for a stable,civil relationship.

In surmise, the Machines themselves probably dislike this whole "dependecy" on humans despite the Deus EX Machina's statement "WE DONT NEED YOU! WE NEED NOTHING!". Which i'll take to mean "levels of survival we are prepared to accept" isn't exactly all milk and honey for them.

To able to return to their former levels of independency would be an prize worth their while. After all the OP did state that Dark Storm will still be held in reserve by the humans just in case.

[Eviscerator]

The selection of late 90s standard of living was based on
1) the humans now in the matrix are acclimatised to such an standard
2) In universe, Smart AI came into being sometime during the 2000 - 2100 period.
3) A key point of the original problems was because Machine rebelled against Man. Keeping the tech level lower and not using intelligent machines would keep them at peace longer (before the next Dictator comes up that is)

For the purposes of this scenario, let's presume the Machines will not renege on any agreement made (unlike Man) Once they make an agreement, they stick by it. Unlike *cough cough* certain historical figures "The sudetenland is my last demand"

[Junghalli]

The whole movie would've made so much more sense if it were the machines who scorched the sky. Because while machines can survive without an ecosystem just fine, humans can't, and will inevitably die out unless put on permanent artificial life support, like in the Matrix or Zion.

Personally my pet theory is that's exactly how it happened, and the version of history we hear in the films is badly garbled.

[Shroom Man 777]

The whole point of the Matrix films is that almost *nothing* is real. Is it the air you breathe? What is real? The red pill, or the blue pill? I mean even their postapocalyptic "reality" was supposed to be engineered by the Machines to perpetuate their weirdo bullshit plans.