by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
One of the core struggles I have with The Impossible Scenario is how many people would you need to successfully build out the planetary infrastructure for the, say, 1`billion people about to follow to the planet?
I have gone back from about 1 million to about 60 million over and over in my mind. Remember, a Galactic Empire has told humanity that it’s going to zap 1 billion humans to a new “homeland planet.” So, in this case, 1 billion people being saved from doomed earth isn’t as laughable as you might assume. No space ships would be involved. People would just wake up in some sort of re-animation pod on the other planet as if nothing happened.
The more people you use, the better the story telling because then you have the jarring image of people snapping back to normal life on a whole different planet. The fewer people, the longer it takes to colonize the planet and the less people have an emotion connection to the story.
Anyway.
I honestly don’t know.
And, what complicates matters even worse is if things were really all that existential, then the 10(ish) major nuclear powers would jump to the front of the line and demand they get more people to settle in the first few waves or they threaten to blow the world up.
Here’s my thinking — even though under the conditions of the scenario the first settlers to this new “homeland” planet would have to work their asses off, they would be in a position to become fabulously wealthy once all was said and done. And incredibly politically powerful.
So, there would be a huge crush of wealthy, powerful people who would, if nothing else, want their offspring to be among the first group of build-out settlers, no matter how many you might come up with.
Of course, if you’re writing the script, you find a way where your Everyman or Everywoman finds themselves among this first wave of settlers and the plot would be how they rise through the ranks to become a global leader.
This is a massive universe I’ve come up with, but there’s catch — it’s much more of a movie universe than a novel universe and I’m working on four novels right now. What’s more, I love those four novels I’m working on so much that I just don’t feel like pulling mental energy away from them to start from scratch to tell the story of all of this.
But I might at some point in the future. And I’m aware from my Webstats that people are growing interested in this scenario. I’m such a nobody that if someone scooped this idea up and made a movie or movies out of it I would be flabbergasted. I would be angry that they did it at first, but, lulz, I did explain it to them.
And, yet, I dunno.
Just because someone is interested in this doesn’t mean they’re willing to throw the huge amount of money at this idea necessary to create a Star Wars or The Matrix sized franchise out of it.
But, at least in my mind, the universe is fascinating. Imagine if we learn that not only are we not alone in the universe, but 1 billion of us can survive earth’s impending doom — if we’re just willing to work together.
