Survey of Dead Worlds

[Elimdur]

by asnys

"Survey of Dead Worlds" is about picking through the bones of dead societies and figuring out why they destroyed themselves. And yes. It can target toxic planets with the nuclear_devastation modifier as well, but mostly tomb worlds.

Nuclear religious war Accidental nuclear war Science experiment gone horribly wrong Asteroid impact And a lovely little event called "Murder" - the aliens didn't destroy themselves. They were only in the Iron Age. Some unknown species wiped them out.

Science experiment gone horribly wrong: [Root.GetName] was not destroyed by a war - the cause of the disaster appears to have been a physics experiment that went horribly wrong. We cannot be sure, because the site of the experiment was completely vaporized, as well as everything for a hundred kilometers' around it, but a local scientist appears to have discovered the existence of warp fields by accident, a full century before most species do. A series of experiments followed, culminating in what the few surviving records describe as an attempt to open a gateway into another dimension. What exactly happened is not clear, but judging by the global blast and fire damage, pervasive radioactive contamination, and hundred-kilometer-wide crater where the laboratory used to be, we can assume it did not end well. In any event, besides archeological data, we have also recovered a considerable body of information our physicists will find interesting.

Murder: It appears our initial assumption was incorrect. Archaeological digs on major population centres (Or at this stage, areas of most devastation) failed to turn up anything more advanced than basic iron age tools and weapons. Further investigation led one of our teams to a cave where they believed survivors of initial impact could have been seeking refuge. Inside they indeed have found remains of a few individuals who succumbed to harsh conditions of nuclear winter. Well-preserved cave paintings appears to be telling the story of an angel who descended to the land only to be spurred and eventually murdered by a mob of distrustful natives, followed by arrival of more angels bringing swift and fiery retaliation.

Paranoid leader Our archeology teams have picked through surviving documents of the dead civilization and it appears devastation wrought on this planet can be traced a particular leader. Originally preaching non-violence and civil disobedience as means to achieve his nation's independence from a vast colonial empire, he underwent a massive personality change after he got his way. Infatuated with nuclear weapon, he saw them as the only mean to guarantee independence of the new nation and produced ballistic missiles in unreasonable quantities. As his paranoia grew, he eventually ordered a simultaneous strike against multiple nations across the globe he perceived as a threat almost single-handedly wiping out the entire civilization.

Nuclear religious war Going through the few documents that had survived the nuclear annihilation, [Science officer] had concluded that majority of the planet's population used to follow the teaching of two brothers. However multiple confessions could not agree which one, if any should be revered as the incarnation of the deity and which one was merely a prophet. In the last years before the destruction religious intolerance has escalated. Eventually one of the largest nations had launched a massive nuclear strike on its rivals in retaliation for oppression of their brothers in faith abroad, starting the war that wiped their species from the face of the planet.

Accidental Nuclear War Deep beneath the nuclear devastation, still intact, our science team had found a command bunker of one of the planet's nations' armed forces. Archives revealed that, wary of possible operator error they had turned control of the nuclear arsenal over to a giant supercomputer. Unfortunately for them programming oversight caused the system to misinterpret a crank call from a civilian as an order to launch a full scale attack.

He wants atleast 5 more ideas for doomsday scenarios.

[Elimdur]

Accidental nuclear war

I have an idea for this based on a documentary i saw today regarding meteors. There was a short mention of a meteor exploding in our atmosphere could be mistaken as a nuclear attack leading to a nuclear retaliation strike thus starting a planetwide nuclear war.

[shockedsystem]

Grey Goo - Toxic World whose surface is just one giant, seething mass of nanomachines slowly consuming the planet in its entirety. Machine Reign - Tomb World covered in the corpses of both organics and machines. A war inspired by paranoia ended both the creators and the created, leaving behind a dead world. Quarantine World - Beacons in orbit alert the science ship that this planet has been quarantined to prevent the spread of a virulent plague. The cities are empty, and there are no signs of life on the surface. Was the plague cured, or were these people left to die? Quietly Into The Night - A world where it looks like the citizens simply laid down and died. Examination of the cities has found a computer network capable of creating a realistic and dangerously addictive alternate reality simulation. Suggest we shouldn't turn this over to our citizens.

Hope these work.

[Mariawr]

No ideas at hand right now. However, I think the quest would tie in amazingly into https://github.com/MoreEventsMod/More_Events_Mod_Beta/issues/151.

[Elimdur]

Quarantine World - Beacons in orbit alert the science ship that this planet has been quarantined to prevent the spread of a virulent plague. The cities are empty, and there are no signs of life on the surface. Was the plague cured, or were these people left to die?

I have a little believability issue with this one. If there is a global pandemy and the whole world would be quarantined people would not accept this peacefully. There would be violence and destruction. People desperatelys trying to get off world. Even those thinking this might be the perfect opportunity to go on a looting spree. The plaque could be very deadly but there are always those too ignorant or dumb to believe it.

And if there is no violence and destruction why would the planet be a "Tombworld" aka radioactive wasteland in the first place? Imagine all humans died due to a plague. Most of us would end off as a feast for rats and other carrion eaters. Yes there are nuclear plants that will blow off some time in the future but look at tschernoble. Nature finds its way back there even at the plant itself plants grow today. And wildlife there is more diverse than in the rest of that country due to the absence of humanity and despite the radioactivity. So such a planet would end up as a gardenworld instead.

[shockedsystem]

Sure, no reason the quarantine couldn't have been horribly violent and ended in self-destructive bloodshed.

Asteroid impact wouldn't be radioactive either, unless it was a rock filled with Cobalt-60 or something, but I see what you mean. Maybe nix the quarantine one. Or it was glassed from orbit by a race that considers individual life vastly unimportant compared to the safety of the whole.

[ghost]

ShockedSystem: I like these ideas, but I think most of them would be more appropriate as separate events. For both Grey Goo and Quarantine, I think both are extremely cool, but make more sense as anomalies rather than as part of this survey. For Machine Reign, that overlaps too much with one of the event paths in the Extinct Abductors sequence. I think Quietly Into the Night works well, though, and I will add it to the next version I post.

Regarding the asteroid impact not spreading radioactivity, I actually address that in the event text - it turns out that the radioactivity was due to fission reactors leaking after their operators were killed in the impact.

I encourage you to add both Grey Goo and Quarantine as anomalies. Quarantine, I think we can implement relatively easily; I'll do it myself once I've finished some of my current projects, if someone else doesn't pick it up first. Grey Goo will be trickier: it will probably require creating a new 3D art asset, since a grey goo planet should look different from any other kind of planet.

[Elimdur]

And i have an addition to the Quietly Into The Night. What if they are not dead at all?

Think of the "In Limbo" Events. If there was a pandemy or something that threatened to destroy their whole world, maybe the inhabitants found a way to get rid of their weak and ill bodies and transfer their minds into a giant computer hub system that is fully self-sufficient (energy production and maintenance). So you may stumble over that collective consciousness. It may have gone mad in the maintime posing a threat to those settling on the planet OR it might be beneficiant and may lead to higher science output on the planet (via modifier OR even a special building).

[ViolentBeetle]

Should I post text suggestion in comments, or edit into header, wiki-style?

Murder:

It appears our initial assumption was incorrect. Archaeological digs on major population centres (Or at this stage, areas of most devastation) failed to turn up anything more advanced than basic iron age tools and weapons. Further investigation led one of our teams to a cave where they believed survivors of initial impact could have been seeking refuge. Inside they indeed have found remains of a few individuals who succumbed to harsh conditions of nuclear winter.

Well-preserved cave paintings appears to be telling the story of an angel who descended to the land only to be spurred and eventually murdered by a mob of distrustful natives, followed by arrival of more angels bringing swift and fiery retaliation.

[tzerrell]

Regarding where to put suggestions: we have no particular policy, but we've mostly been adding comments. That said, for long threads like this one, it's probably clearer to edit into the initial post. Do what makes sense to you.

[ViolentBeetle]

I have updated top post with 2 my ideas. It's not one proposed, but I hope you like it.

[ViolentBeetle]

The opening post have 5 different texts. There's lots of good ideas there left, but many of them are unfit to tomb worlds.