by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
One thing I’ve always thought was interesting was the specifics of how humanity might settle a new planet. I’ve come up with a very elaborate scenario that would allow humanity to settle planets in a solar system that, say, a galactic empire gifted us as a “homeland.”
But how you would go about settling and governing any of these plants is very, very difficult to figure out. Let’s take earth — in real terms, there are two USA size places that dominate the entire planet — North America and Europe. There are a few other first world nations, but they’re very small in population. While China is growing in economic and military power, the world is still pretty much controlled by the “Western World” of the USA and Western Europe.
Why is this?
Well, let’s talk the Pacific Ocean. The world we live in has more to do with the size of the Pacific Ocean than you might think. It’s this huge ocean that prevented China from settling the New World and makes the type of climate necessary to establish and grow a First World nation so precious. (In other words, it’s easer to warm machinery up than it is to cool it down during an Industrial Age.)
Imagine, however, if there was an Africa-size continent between East Asia and North America. If it had a geography and climate similar to Europe’s, then the world we live in now would be dramatically different. You could probably fit another billion+ people on such a huge landmass.
Anyway, if you take that idea and apply it to a new planet that is empty and ready for humanity to settle, you have a shit tone of problems. On earth, you could literally organize North America and Europe such that you had only two nations that everyone lived in. I mean, we’re not doing the globe’s environment any favors by having so many people live in South America and Africa.
But it’s easy to imagine that if humanity was “gifted” a few planets for our homeland, that there would be a fundimental problem: who gets to settle such a homeland? There are 1 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indians. They’re just as human as anyone else, why would you automatically say the West should get the opportunity to settle new planets?
I go over this problem again and again in my head because it’s impossible to solve using the conditions of the scenario. The USA makes the most sense as the basis for a planet wide settlement, but everyone hates the USA and a lot of MAGA New Right people would hate the idea of the States having to absorb a lot of non-Americans (Read: non-white).
I really want to give this scenario a plot and characters and write something using it, but it’s still impossible to figure out at the moment.
