Commentary from SDN:SoT

[Patrick Ogaard]

Likely as not, the key to the island's energy economy in the alternate timeline is going to be crap, and lots of it. Well, that and a combination of booze and oil.

The island's connected to the mainland by at least one big power cable, possibly two by now, but the island is subject to regular power outages. This means lots and lots of generators, mostly powered by propane. Since many of those generator designs are apparently designed to run on natural gas, it should be possible to adjust some of them to accept methane. Then, we build a series of biogas digester units. Once the kinks are worked out, we should have a reliable and steady, if modest, source of methane. Three thousand or so people will produce a lot of dung, and we could add in some plant waste, offal, animal dung, and the contents of scores, possibly hundreds, of septic tanks. Tapping into the gas production of the existing landfill should also be workable.

There's an existing distillery on the island, which should be run pretty much constantly. The low quality parts of each run would serve as fuel, the good parts as a source of calories and a potential fuel. Similarly, large fields planted with sunflowers, especially oilseed types, or with other oil-yielding plants, could provide oil for cooking and heating, and eventually as a feestock for biodiesel.

If additional farmland is needed, don't forget the two regulation golf courses on the island. And don't forget the perfectly edible fox grapes that portions of the island are overgrown with, and that are supposed to have given Martha's Vineyard its name. Also don't forget the scallops: if we get a fishing fleet and the equipment organized, the yields could be in the thousands of bushels of scallops annually, each providing a dollop of meat, a dollop of offal for the methane plants, and a shell for eventual lime production.

Which isn't to say it'll all be wine and roses, since several hundred members may find the situation completely impossible to deal with and essentially go insane, either right off the bat or as the situation sinks in over weeks and months. Those numbers of losses may be further increased by members that run into catastrophic medical problems, and some who just plain turn criminal. Losing five hundred or so members in the first year would probably be a good showing, with most dying in the first few weeks.

The whole thing may depend on how quickly -- and if -- mature adults can establish control over a bunch of teenagers and immature adults. That, and who finds the six to eight Bushmaster-manufactured M4-style automatic carbines that the island's police have for serious work. It could potentially turn into a horrendous bloodbath.

[LadyTevar]

((Commentary Split, moving to OffTopic
-- Lady Tevar))

[Simon_Jester]

The issue in the first few days isn't the presence of medicine, it's the access. We're basically an invading mob with no one to stop us and no one to organize our scavenging and looting for the first few weeks, so added on to the fact that we don't know what is supposed to be around, you'll get people carrying vital supplies off, people hording them, squandering them, and basically no one knowing what is actually available and if they can get it. Add in just general confusion and you're likely to get people only letting out a trickle of antibiotics at first because as far as they know, the bottles in the cabinet are all there will ever be again.

Yes, but if someone is dying of a wound infection over a period of a month, you'd think that someone with antibiotics would use them, if it were just a question of lack of organization.

[Darth Nostril]

Never underestimate the power of selfishness, sure the guy might be dying but what if I might need that someday? People hoard shit for the stupidest of reasons.
Otherwise I'm a refrigeration engineer, maintainence & repair rather than installation, also a qualified electrician and currently certified for handling hazardous waste.
All this talk of rerouting the electric supplies from source to where you want? Fuck right off, it is not a matter of simply running some six mil twin and earth to where you want. Even cannabalising the current electrical supply system, ie the larger cables capable of supporting the load without melting, would result in at least a day without power just for the switch over.
Bear in mind transmission voltage is usually 1000V+ and it would be feeding the local network not just the specific building you want, so I would have to trace the lines and rip out the fuses in the main DBs for each building fed from that sub main just to keep electrical output localised for medical facilities.

[Simon_Jester]

Alright, some swords! I have a feeling my namesake is going to be involved with one of those things, and by "be involved" I mean "get stabbed in the fucking face".

I do like the idea of social hierarchy by superior firepower; seems pretty much how we here at SD.net would run things.

Because we'd build the social hierarchy along lines of firepower, or because we would award firepower to people of high social status?