2012 Canada in 10000 BC

[TithonusSyndrome]

Since a lot of these RARs! don't quite "get it", let's try this one. Canada, a medium power with significant territorial claim and technological advancement, is placed 10000 years before Jesus told Canaanite women that their race was subhuman. None of their trade partners, most especially the United States, exist. All international monetary transactions cease to hold any value. The Canadian population is diverse if relatively modest in size, and lacks overwhelming firepower to bring to bear against any outsiders. Canadian popular notions of peacefulness and tolerance restrict what even the most ambitious and sinister Canadian leaders can openly get away with, and shape a conception of how their leaders ought to treat the tribal animists that make up the rest of the world. All other RAR rules apply regarding the exchange of resources. No serious question exists as to what 10000 BC Canada would endure in 2012, so don't even bother. Most importantly, no serious military force exists that can even mildly harass Canada in this scenario, so that factor needn't even be glanced at. What happens?

[madd0ct0r]

Canadian food balance

http://faostat.fao.org/desktopdefault.a ... country=33

ok. so spike in price of alcohol porducts, leading to many vodka stills opening up, brewing whatever they can find that's sugary

more worryingly, coffee availability in the country collapses, leading to sever migranes and lassitude across the population.


http://faostat.fao.org/desktopdefault.a ... country=33

however, Canada does not starve, with the goverment stepping in to store that year's surplus crops with the recognition that next years might be down a bit if insufficient pesticide can be found.
Probably not rationing, but a mixture of 'eat carefully' and a few days initial panic, partially caused by people panic buying coffee.
At the same time investigation into restarting fishing and possibly whaling starts promptly, with the fleets leaving port within a few months.


Canadian energy balance

more good news here:
http://www.iea.org/stats/balancetable.a ... RY_CODE=CA

Canada produces 389,810 units and exports a further 221,400 units - far larger then its small imports

The government begins investigating wether it'd be more energy efficient to relocate people southwards, but there is no desperate rush yet.

Politically:

Significant arguments: some believe Canada could, through trade and pressure change the world for the better, a common example being the human sacrifices in south america (have they started yet?). Others believe that by carefully ensuring the world develops only slowly, we can actually avoid most of the problems such as global warming - a planet of high quality of life, low population.
Basically, a clash of idealists.


EDIT:
medicines? advanced manufacturing (such as computer chips) music?
hah. no wine, coffee, decent music or prozac. suicide rate exceeds birthrate for the first decade.

[Havok]

Freeze to death? Isn't that still around the time of the last Ice Age?

[TithonusSyndrome]

Freeze to death? Isn't that still around the time of the last Ice Age?

It just ekes out past it, as this point in prehistory is just after the Wurm glaciation ended IIRC.

[Havok]

Wouldn't it still be fucking cold as hell though.

I mean, I know "CANADIAN COLD SHIELDS RARRRRR!!!" and all, but still... brrrrr.

[Solauren]

If it happens right at the start of Winter, when everyone is ready for it, Canada will be fine.

If it happens say, late spring, oh, problems.

[Academia Nut]

Well, global population estimates for 10,000 BC range between about 1 to 10 million, with 5 million probably being a good estimate [wiki]. The current population of Canada on the other hand is taken to be about 35 million.

So this transposition has resulted in a 600% increase in global population, with 1 in 7 people alive being from a First World, Western culture and despite being relatively pacifistic still being a second string military power rather than a complete joke.

So basically, Canada does whatever the fuck it wants.

Now, that is not to say that life would continue completely as usual.

-The personal electronics industry collapses overnight. Most of the factories are overseas. Fortunately there are enough small labs and universities that the skillset and knowledge is retained so some critical components can still be fabricated with the limited resources at hand since a lot of the exotic materials needed are not made in Canada
-There will be short-term and local shortages for things like gasoline as our refinery capacity is likely insufficient to keep up with current demand. We get used to walking, biking, and public transit for a few years as gasoline and diesel is given over to emergency and government vehicles, agricultural equipment, and shipping vehicles
-Our diet amazingly gets worse than it already is as we lose pretty much all access to year-round fresh fruits and vegetables, and a what we do get will be temperate fruits and vegetables, not tropical. We do have enough staples to survive though
-Heavy manufacturing gets a kick in the pants as we no longer have Germany to supply high quality machine tools, and computer automation is no longer reliable due to the aforementioned loss of access to electronics, but then again Canada is now the only buyer of heavy goods. But then again, this loss of market may be compensated by...
-Consumer goods manufacture moved overseas has to come back in a rush
-The colder climate will be something of a problem, but Canada is a net energy exporter by a large degree and our homes are built to withstand the cold, so we can tough our way through, although a lot of Arctic communities are likely to just collapse outright. The nation as a whole does alright though

All of that said, despite a lot of serious problems, the nation is large enough and not dependent on imports enough that in general our nation and culture survives. We can then do whatever we want to the rest of the planet after a few years of rationing and relative hardship. Hell, to an extent we'll get started right away as we go off to set up mining colonies for things like bauxite, rare earths, and all of the other things that we know the location of but don't have access to in our own country. We likely start having conflicts within the first few decades between factions over resource rights and treatment of local natives, but then again the natives will be even more primitive and thinly spread than the native North Americans during European colonization. I wouldn't be surprised if a few yahoos from various ethnic groups with chips on their shoulders either head out to colonize the lands that would eventually hold the lands of their would be oppressors, or who want to rebuild their cultures in the empty lands left behind.

But yeah, Canada and its descendents basically have the planet to do with as they please.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Since a lot of these RARs! don't quite "get it", let's try this one. Canada, a medium power with significant territorial claim and technological advancement, is placed 10000 years before Jesus told Canaanite women that their race was subhuman.

Hey I take offense to that! My RAR was perfectly good thank you! On a serious note, nothing the 10k BC people can do to stop Canada. They may not have a big military, but when the entire world population is smaller than Canada's...yeah. That also means that Canada can go around colonizing wherever they please. It's just a matter of transportation. Plus with no mining to speak of, every resource there is now belongs to our Canadian overlords. Countries like Egypt or any Greek city-state can't develop now, unless Canada stays out of Africa and Europe (doubtful, they need the Mid-East oil, even with Texas being nearby). I predict the world being united under the Greater Canadian Empire within a few decades (maybe a century).

[Academia Nut]

Hey I take offense to that! My RAR was perfectly good thank you! On a serious note, nothing the 10k BC people can do to stop Canada. They may not have a big military, but when the entire world population is smaller than Canada's...yeah. That also means that Canada can go around colonizing wherever they please. It's just a matter of transportation. Plus with no mining to speak of, every resource there is now belongs to our Canadian overlords. Countries like Egypt or any Greek city-state can't develop now, unless Canada stays out of Africa and Europe (doubtful, they need the Mid-East oil, even with Texas being nearby). I predict the world being united under the Greater Canadian Empire within a few decades (maybe a century).

We really have no need of Mid-East oil, not for quite some time, considering the fact that Canada is an oil exporting country, and actually in general is an energy exporting country since we not only have our own oil deposits in various forms and several centuries of coal at current consumption, we also have a metric shit tonne of hydroelectric resources and our own supplies of uranium and a well developed (if slowly being strangled by politics) nuclear industry. With knowledge of completely untapped oil resources in places like Texas and the Gulf of Mexico and the technology to extract it, we would not really need to leave even North America for energy supplies for decades, if not longer. Actually, the entire western hemisphere is likely to supply everything we could want for decades, especially if we decide to embrace a more sustainable lifestyle (unlikely, but possible if people decide to not despoil this older, more pristine Earth). Still, people are likely to strike out just for the hell of it and start up new colonies elsewhere.

[Darth Wong]

-The personal electronics industry collapses overnight. Most of the factories are overseas. Fortunately there are enough small labs and universities that the skillset and knowledge is retained so some critical components can still be fabricated with the limited resources at hand since a lot of the exotic materials needed are not made in Canada
-There will be short-term and local shortages for things like gasoline as our refinery capacity is likely insufficient to keep up with current demand. We get used to walking, biking, and public transit for a few years as gasoline and diesel is given over to emergency and government vehicles, agricultural equipment, and shipping vehicles.

We also have to get used to a much more totalitarian government. It is not possible to institute that kind of rationing without the government using emergency measures to greatly extend its authority. However, I imagine these restrictions would eventually be eased as we find ways to become more self-sufficient by repatriating industrial activity that has been outsourced.

-Our diet amazingly gets worse than it already is as we lose pretty much all access to year-round fresh fruits and vegetables, and a what we do get will be temperate fruits and vegetables, not tropical. We do have enough staples to survive though

We still have vacuum sealing and other food preservation methods, which (while not as tasty) do preserve pretty much all of the nutritional value of fresh fruits and vegetables. Moreover, since we are a major food producer, we have all the hardware for this activity ready to go. We would, however, have to get used to squirreling away food for the winter. Again, the government would probably have to use a heavy hand to make sure this happens on the supply end, because most people are too stupid to do that kind of responsible planning at the individual level.

-Heavy manufacturing gets a kick in the pants as we no longer have Germany to supply high quality machine tools, and computer automation is no longer reliable due to the aforementioned loss of access to electronics, but then again Canada is now the only buyer of heavy goods. But then again, this loss of market may be compensated by...
-Consumer goods manufacture moved overseas has to come back in a rush

Consumer goods manufacturing is not an immediate problem; convenience and luxury take a backseat to rebuilding our economic infrastructure. We basically live Soviet-style for a while. As for machine tools and computer automation, that's not a problem. Canada still has a large manufacturing base, mostly in Ontario, and that includes plenty of tool supply companies which maintain a fairly large inventory at any given time. Moreover, CNC machines and supporting computers are quite reliable; ten and fifteen year old units still work fine, and with little maintenance. There is no reason to believe there would be a short-term problem in either machine tools or CNC machining capacity, and we would address the long-term situation by building up the necessary infrastructure. Again, however, there would be heavy-handed government control; we would have to devote most of our manufacturing capacity to building up the necessary infrastructure to become self-sufficient, so a lot of consumer-oriented manufacturing activity would cease or be scaled back, and people would just have to live more modestly for a while.

-The colder climate will be something of a problem, but Canada is a net energy exporter by a large degree and our homes are built to withstand the cold, so we can tough our way through, although a lot of Arctic communities are likely to just collapse outright. The nation as a whole does alright though.

Arctic communities are fucked because they are not even remotely self-sufficient. They rely entirely on expensive and wasteful shipments of products from urban centres, usually by aircraft. Many of these communities literally cannot be reached by any kind of road. Under martial law, the next and last planes they see would probably be evacuation transports, and they would be informed that if they refuse to get on the damned plane, then they're on their own. We'd probably go back ten years later and find the frozen corpses of stubborn holdouts.

All of that said, despite a lot of serious problems, the nation is large enough and not dependent on imports enough that in general our nation and culture survives. We can then do whatever we want to the rest of the planet after a few years of rationing and relative hardship. Hell, to an extent we'll get started right away as we go off to set up mining colonies for things like bauxite, rare earths, and all of the other things that we know the location of but don't have access to in our own country. We likely start having conflicts within the first few decades between factions over resource rights and treatment of local natives, but then again the natives will be even more primitive and thinly spread than the native North Americans during European colonization. I wouldn't be surprised if a few yahoos from various ethnic groups with chips on their shoulders either head out to colonize the lands that would eventually hold the lands of their would be oppressors, or who want to rebuild their cultures in the empty lands left behind.

But yeah, Canada and its descendents basically have the planet to do with as they please.

We would probably redesign a lot of our technology to be less dependent upon exotic minerals anyway. A lot of the reason for exotic materials is that we want to increase performance, reduce weight, etc. It's not as if the technology wouldn't work at all without those materials; in most cases it would just be bulkier, less efficient, etc.

[madd0ct0r]

if the new world is so fucking cold - anyone want to try and calc the windstorm created by transplanting a canadain sized area of warm air and warmish soil into a colder place?

[Magis]

I'd say the very first thing that would happen is a total collapse of the electric grid in most of the country due to it being so intertwined with that in the USA. The 2003 blackout was caused by a relatively small failure that occurred state-side. Imagine if the whole US grid vanished simultaneously.

The loss of grid power would take down radio and television stations as well as the telephone system (including 911), so a lot of people would probably be freaking the fuck out (like everyone in Windsor who saw the entire Detroit skyline disappear) and would have no way of getting information from the government or even other communities. It would probably take weeks or longer to restore power in most areas. As we saw in 2003, many never-tested diesel backup generators, in hospitals for example, didn't actually function.

The grid power disruption would also cause all the nuclear power reactors to go down simultaneously. The on-site diesel backups pumps would kick on to restore cooling power, but in this scenario they would have to pump coolant for every reactor at each site (that means 8 reactors on diesel power at just the Darlington site). When that diesel runs out, which would be in a few days, there could be trouble getting new shipments, especially to the more remote power plants. I'd say there would be a moderate chance of a meltdown in one or more reactors.

I'd also feel sorry for anyone riding on an aircraft that happens to be part-way over the border during the teleport, or anyone crossing a bridge at a border crossing.

[Solauren]

AS I understand the 2003 black out, the power grid in North America failed because of American issues, not Canadian ones. The problems was the US kept drawing more power and we couldn't keep up, so we went down with them. Since then, there has been alot of redesign, to prevent something like that from happening again up in Canada. We might not be as 'screwed' in that regard as you think.

[madd0ct0r]

wait an minute - will we end up with two Niagara falls?

[Rossum]

Also consider that this is around the time humans first start domesticating goats and such. I don't know exactly how much animals have evolved over the last 12,000 years naturally but don't expect any of the rest of the world to have any of the super-domesticated farm animals or dogs that the modern world has.

Animals and plants that were sent back in time would have to adapt to the new environment. I'm guessing that cattle, horses, dogs and various farm animals would make it through with human help and be seen as highly desirable to outsiders.

If rats or other pests come through... I don't know. Would the rats of 2012 be super badass compared to the poor, naive ecosystem of the year 10,000 BC or would they all freeze to death? We all know how the introduction of animals into foreign ecosystems can cause problems, imagine a whole country full of organisms with a 12 thousand year advantage over the planet?

I guess as long as nobody dumps their aquarium seaweed into the ocean, things shouldn't be too bad. I mention this because there was a massive eco-disaster once where somebody emptied their aquarium water into the ocean and the seaweed inside started growing like wildfire and caused all sorts of damage.

I doubt that Canadas introduction to the past would result in a massive ecosystem collapse due to superpowered geese migrating across the American continent and pecking the hell out of all their competitors, but don't be surprised if a few animals species have to be brought under control. Also, remember all the animals of this era who might be a danger to humans.

Expect an increase in the number of hunters to help deal with dangerous animals and/or keep track of what species are adapting too well to the new environment and causing problems. Any animal species that weren't brought along would have to be found in the new world and domesticated all over again.

There will also be problems regarding diseases, both those brought in with Canada and those currently among the native human population.

[Junghalli]

Freeze to death? Isn't that still around the time of the last Ice Age?

Relevant:

Global land environments over the past 150,000 years: North America

[Darth Fanboy]

This is the only way Canada will get to keep the Stanley Cup anytime soon, thank goodness Winnipeg got the Jets back when they did!

With only seven teams the NHL will immediately expand back to Quebec City for an eight team league made up into two divisions with four teams apiece. Edmonton/Calgary/Vancouver/Winnipeg in the Gretzky Division, and Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal/Quebec City in the Lemieux Division. Vancouver has a good chance in this scenario to finally end almost 50 years of futility.

I can imagine the transplanted Canadians suddenly expressing a desire to move south, now that passports are no longer required and land is cheap.