by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
For nearly 20 years, I’ve been mulling the following scenario — what if a Galactic Empire came to humanity with a deal: it will zap a huge number of people to three new habitable planets in a new solar system….but once we were zapped to the three planets, we would have to figure out how to reboot civilization.
I love making this type of situation as complicated and convoluted as possible. As such, my current thinking is, given the conditions of the scenario, that you would want to start off a REALLY SMALL number of people. I think this, because not only would the selection process for a really small — but important — number of people settling new planets be fun to explore, but that just seems the best way to do things.
If you had a lot of people as your first group of settlers — say the first few days or months of settling these far away planets — it would be too easy for things to go wrong. But just a few people together with the ability to zap new people to the planets they were colonizing makes a lot more sense.
Sometimes, I think I’m discovering some basic element of Game Theory or whenever I realize some basic thing you would have to do given the conditions of the scenario.
Anyway. I love this scenario. It’s a lot of fun.
