In this article, we continue from our previous discussion, The Science of VDM: The Plan. VDM, or Virtual Design Master, is a technology contest in which contestants must create a technology design based on a fictional backstory, and then implement as much of that design as they can. The current fictional backstory involves a zombie apocalypse. The main requirement is that the human race must survive the zombie virus outbreak. We are looking at doing so by relocating somewhere away from the zombies.
How do you pick colony sites that allow the human race to survive? Several ideas come to mind immediately. Some are farfetched. If the human race is to survive, we must consider the many issues that could affect the establishment and continuance of a colony.
We can just look to history to see that some colonies simply will not survive due to external issues (warfare), internal issues (sickness), or even more basic issues like impact on procreation. A colony that is strong is one that can grow and expand.
To grow and expand, we need readily available resources, imagination, and knowledge. Science fiction stories offer an interesting set of guideposts to consider, as there are plenty of postapocalyptic stories. These lend themselves to some of the more interesting ideas for colony placement.
Locations that come to mind immediately are:
- On a space station
- On the moon
- Underwater
- Underground
- On another planet
- On asteroids
Which of these would you choose? Should we choose only one? Should we choose them all? Let us look at each in turn, keeping the following requirements in mind:
- The human race must survive
- We must be able to build infrastructure
- Human knowledge must be preserved
- We must be able to transport people to their new home
What does this mean for our choice of colonies? To make a colony succeed, we need to first start with enough people, all of childbearing years, with the necessary skills to survive and raise children. Who and how many of these people should be is a question we will handle in a followup article. But let’s just say we need space for one thousand people in the near term and that we will need room to grow to tens of thousands. Picture a small town.
The need for additional space and infrastructure rules out space stations. Those can be transfer points for some of our colonies, but they cannot host that many people today or in the near future. What about another planet, such as Mars? Getting there with enough people and the necessary food, water, and other resources would be extremely tough. I would say that with current technology, it is probably impossible. This also rules out asteroids, as they are even farther out.
That leaves us with the moon, underground, or underwater. Numerous science fiction stories address using these locations as settings for a colony, such as Space: 1999 (the moon), City of Ember (underground), and seaQuest DSV (underwater), to name just a few. Although they are in different locations, what they have in common is that they are all underground in some fashion.
It is possible for colonists to dig deeper or farther to meet their need for additional space and resources. We can easily transport people underwater and underground. However, on Earth, even underwater or underground, there is still a risk of contagion via air or water supply. Therefore, in order to use underground or underwater locations on Earth, we need to treat those environments as if they were on a separate heavenly body (such as the moon). A colony must have no outside contact and no unfiltered air or water.
If it were me, I would probably plan on several colonies, hoping each one would survive but planning for the worst. The easiest colonies to set up in the time allotted would be underwater and underground ones on Earth. Needs we must take into account include:
- Survival: Food, water, medical supplies.
- Shelter: Safety, light, heat, cooling, expansion, power.
- Safety: Anti-contagion, ensuring a lack of opportunities to become contagious.
Underwater
A good way to start would be to find a nice underwater mountain, attach an airlock, and commence burrowing in. Since we need water and food, although resources of the sea would be of use eventually, at the outset we would need hydroponics and extremely good water filtration. A pure, underground spring would be the ideal option, if we could find one in time. The colony’s survival would be dependent on preventing colonists from getting to the surface, contracting the virus, and returning to contaminate the populace. This means that the colony would have to be very deep; therefore, it also would need to deal with high pressure. Updating our overview of basic needs, we get:
- Survival: Hydroponics/the ocean; deep-underground fresh water supply/the ocean; use of the ocean as a source of medical supplies.
- Shelter: Geothermal and ocean movement for power, heat, and cooling; dig into a underwater mountain for expansion.
- Safety: Filters on all water and air; air generated by hydrolysis of ocean water after desalination. Maintaining colonist isolation by building the colony deep underwater with very limited access to vehicles. The chance of contagion does go up if the ocean is used as a food source.
Underground
An underground colony location on Earth requires, once more, a hermetically sealed environment that is so deep that progress to the surface would be extremely difficult. A plan would be made for getting to the surface once the virus is eradicated. At this point, underground and underwater locations are similar with regard to food and water requirements, but the ways to meet those needs are very different. Geothermal cooling, heat, and power generation could be used both underground and underwater. While underwater locations mean dealing with high pressure, underground locations mean battling heat and determining how to meet the need for continual light. Here, our adjusted overview of basic needs looks like:
- Survival: Hydroponics/farms, deep-underground fresh water supply, use of plants grown as source of medical supplies.
- Shelter: Geothermal power, heat, and cooling. Dig farther into the earth for expansion.
- Safety: Filters for all water and air. Location deep underground with no access up. The chance of contagion does go up if there is any available egress to the surface.
The Moon
The moon has nearly all the conditions of the underground and underwater options, but with the additional problem of a lack of atmosphere. It would be just as deadly as an underwater colony if there were a leak, but the leak would be reversed: instead of sea rushing in, atmosphere would rush out. As in the other locations, such a colony could dig down to expand and could use solar energy for power. Here is an interesting discussion on why one would need to dig down to colonize the moon.
- Survival: Hydroponics/eventually farming (à la The Martian); water from lunar rocks is seemingly possible. Medical supplies would need to be grown. Water reuse/reclamation would be a significant endeavor. Water would become a scarce commodity and probably a unit of exchange.
- Shelter: Solar energy for power, heat, and cooling; expansion via digging farther into the moon.
- Safety: Filters for all water and air. Carbon dioxide filtering through plants and scrubbers. Chance of contagion extremely low. Use of a quarantine colony for all newly arrived colonists.
General Needs
Now that we have a list of locations, there are general needs each of these must address to set up the colony in question. These include:
- Getting there. We would most likely need all of Earth’s heavy lift capability to reach the moon, quite a few submarines to reach the underwater site, and a way to get underground. These transportation needs include material, supplies, compute power, and people.
- Setting up the colony. We would need a way to dig down or into each chosen location in order to build the colony. Thankfully, Elon Musk has already solved that problem with The Boring Company. Use of Boring machines would solve many issues; however, the machines need to be modified to work underwater or on the moon.
- Planning for colony growth. We also need to consider the initial layout of the colony and how it will grow. In all cases, growth would be through coffer airlocks to prevent new growth from impacting the existing colony. On the moon, we initially need some form of shelter. Underwater, we could interlink a bunch of submarines. Underground would be one giant cavern with just a few galleries with tents, etc. In each type of location, that initial contingent would immediately start to bore in and build to the plan.
- Supplies. We would need to determine what types and quantities of supplies would be needed. What would the colony be able to produce for itself, and how soon?
- Communication back home. How do we allow communication back home for the colonists? How do we maintain that communication?
- I am sure there are others not listed, so please comment!
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many concerns with each option. Virtual Design Master chose the lunar option.
What choice would you make, given that having multiple colonies raises the hope of survival?
I would opt for lunar, underground, and underwater colonies, with more than one lunar colony. Since the goal is the survival of the human race, establishing just one colony limits the chance of that survival. One disaster would wipe out humanity. Therefore, we should plan for more than one colony. Furthermore, I would plan to branch from the lunar colonies to other heavenly bodies as fast as the populace would support it.
There would be some basic rules, but the most important would be to limit contact between the colonies. If I could, I would ensure none of the colonies knew the others existed. In addition, since we also want the sum of all human knowledge to be preserved and available, each colony would have a fairly serious contingent of highly redundant computing systems. These would employ some of our more esoteric and dense storage devices in use, perhaps including crystal storage devices.
