Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

[Sriseru]

I need some suggestions on how several interstellar civilizations could regress to a primitive nomadic lifestyle, at approximately the same time.

[Clonus]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

I need some suggestions on how several interstellar civilizations could regress to a primitive nomadic lifestyle' date=' at approximately the same time.[/quote']

 

Blow up all their cities in a massive interstellar war.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

A Blue Giant goes supernova in the vicinity. The resulting radiation effectively destroys the population centers and only those who escape the area quickly survive.

[Clonus]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

The civilisations engage in a race to apotheosis and the singularity makes the core of their civilisations just sort of disappear into glowing balls of light that fly away and are never seen again. The few survivors regard the vacated population centers with superstitious dread.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

The civilisations engage in a race to apotheosis and the singularity makes the core of their civilisations just sort of disappear into glowing balls of light that fly away and are never seen again. The few survivors regard the vacated population centers with superstitious dread.

That is eerie. In my game, one of the elder species did just that. Where's the darn rep button again?

[Flames]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

How about this... all the civilizations have been using the same extra-dimensional energy source to advance themselves, and suddenly, without warning or explanation, that energy source has dwindled to nearly nothing.

 

Great hulking ships that once tore through open space at hundreds of times the speed of light now drift helplessly, their remaining crew and passengers desperately calling for assistance and living on backup power.

 

The question of what exactly happened to the power source is something the PCs could spend part of the campaign investigating. If they get the source back online, they can be part of the rebuilding of the empire.

[Markdoc]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

A wobble in a quasar nearby fries their electronics, but doesn't irradiate everything to the point of eliminating all the people. Bereft of technology - including all the "no-longer-printed-on-anything manuals" you get social collapse and the survivors concentrate on learning how to grow things they can eat rather than somehow reacquiring all that knowledge that used to be accessible instantly online. Two generations on, people might still know that such things as matter transmitters used to exist, but since a working battery is considered a valuable and enigmatic treasure, no-one has the faintest idea how one works.

 

Or alternatively, something disrupts interstellar travel - you could blame that pesky quasar again - and without the economy and transfer of goods that everyone had come to rely on, you got economic and social collapse. The inhabitants of technoplanets starved in their billions, while the inhabitants of agrarian and mining planets found that without the expensive technical gear they used to import (and lacking the specialized knowledge and facilities to build it), their own social systems collapsed back to a simpler level - and war over what resources remained pushed them even further down the tech scale.

 

Instead of a quasar, you could have an interstellar war, or a computer virus that wreaked havoc on the wired brains of all adult citizens: society would collapse pretty definitively if only kids under 5 who hadn't been brain-wired into the 'net survived, or an experimental nanomachine that converted ferrous materials into iron oxide was accidentally released or ... you name it.

 

cheers, Mark

[Aroooo]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

I need some suggestions on how several interstellar civilizations could regress to a primitive nomadic lifestyle' date=' at approximately the same time.[/quote']

 

One thing you don't mention is how close are they, or how expansive are their civs? If they are dispersed, or very expansive, then are you looking for one unifying cause/effect, or several?

 

Aroooo

[Sriseru]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

One thing you don't mention is how close are they, or how expansive are their civs? If they are dispersed, or very expansive, then are you looking for one unifying cause/effect, or several?

 

Aroooo

 

Their homeworlds are quite close to eachother, perhaps it's the 12 nearest stars and they are not very expansive. They only leave a system out of necessity, since they haven't invented FTL-travel.

 

By the way, thanks everyone who have replied so far for your suggestions.

[Aroooo]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

Their homeworlds are quite close to eachother, perhaps it's the 12 nearest stars and they are not very expansive. They only leave a system out of necessity, since they haven't invented FTL-travel.

 

By the way, thanks everyone who have replied so far for your suggestions.

 

So when you mean nomadic, you're looking for planet bound nomadic, not planet to planet/system to system nomadic?

 

Since they are close (astronomically speaking) you could have a local star shed its outer layers in a nova-like 'explosion' creating a huge nebula that envelopes all the local system, thus causing the 'downfall' of tech, etc. Another would be some background psionic event that messes with the bulk of the populus - drives them mad, etc.

 

Aroooo

[Nyrath]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

From SPACE VIKING by H. Beam Piper (recommended)

 

By the time the Nemesis was following the Space-Scourge and the Lamia down, towed by her own pinnaces, the illusion that they were approaching a living city had vanished. The interspaces between the, buildings were choked with forest growth, broken by a few small fields and garden plots. At one time, there had been three of the high buildings, literally vertical cities in themselves. Where the third had stood was a glazed crater, with a ridge of fallen rubble lying away from it. Somebody must have landed a medium missile, about twenty kilotons, against its base. Something of the same sort had scored on the far edge of the spaceport, and one of the eight arrowheads of docks and warehouses was an indistinguishable slagpile.

 

The rest of the city seemed to have died of neglect rather than violence. It certainly hadn't been bombed out. Harkaman thought most of the fighting had been done with subneutron bombs or Omega-ray bombs, that killed the people without damaging the real estate. Or weapons; a man-made plague that had gotten out of control and all but depopulated the planet.

 

"It takes an awful lot of people, working together at an awful lot of jobs, to keep a civilization running. Smash the installations and kill the top technicians and scientists, and the masses don't know how to rebuild. They go back to stone hatchets. Kill off enough of the masses and even if the plant and the know-how is left, there's nobody to do the work. I've seen planets that decivilized both ways. Tanith, I think, is one of the latter."

[Sundog]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

Dual stage virus. First one virus goes through the population, doing no apparent harm; being harmless, no special quarantine measures are required. Second virus could be years later; it also is harmless, except to those primed by the first virus. After a few weeks incubation, those who have the second virus and are primed, drop dead of massive, fatal brain aneurysms.

 

High likelihood of being a genetically engineered pair of viruses, or maybe they just "luck out". One of the worst aspects of it would be that medical personnel, with their constant exposures to whatever's out there, would be among the worst hit - causing any other medical situations to cascade out of control as well.

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

I think I like the quasar/radiation thing best. If it goes off just right (per se), it'll fry every bit of electronics and power, wipe out all the manuals, leave masses of people alive ... or even kill a lot of people but not everyone. Would make for an interesting plot point; 'everyone hides inside/underground during certain random-seeming times of day and night' -- i.e. when the 'bright star' swings their way, bathing the planet in radiation.

[Kristopher]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

A Blue Giant goes supernova in the vicinity. The resulting radiation effectively destroys the population centers and only those who escape the area quickly survive.

 

The civilisations engage in a race to apotheosis and the singularity makes the core of their civilisations just sort of disappear into glowing balls of light that fly away and are never seen again. The few survivors regard the vacated population centers with superstitious dread.

 

Basic concepts of my two suggestions.

[Clonus]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

Another civilisation, cunning, subtle, ruthless, but wimpy, uses memetic warfare to spread a kind of insanity among their foes, giving them demophobia and a discomfort for remaining in one place.

[TSandman]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

Gamma Ray Burst (not to close tho)

[Narratio]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

Religious/Political "back to the roots" ecofriendly movement creates a dumbing down of education as it becomes "inclusive" of "non-mainstream humano-centric" viewpoints. Niven & Pournelle's 'Fallen Angels' uses that hypothesis. You know, study of the healing benefits of crystals is equal to nuclear physics and money grants for building pyramids or power equal those for robotics.

 

You'd soon be back to the nomadic level.

[Nyrath]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

Gamma Ray Burst (not to close tho)

This should do nicely:

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1878

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

Religious/Political "back to the roots" ecofriendly movement creates a dumbing down of education as it becomes "inclusive" of "non-mainstream humano-centric" viewpoints. Niven & Pournelle's 'Fallen Angels' uses that hypothesis. You know, study of the healing benefits of crystals is equal to nuclear physics and money grants for building pyramids or power equal those for robotics.

 

You'd soon be back to the nomadic level.

Is that kind of like blowing up space shuttles by sending them up univestigated the day after an accident, or insisting that the government drop billions of dolllars on solar power satellites and orbital weapons that will, y'know, not work?

Sorry, but has anyone here looked at Jerry Pournelle's "site?"

[Clonus]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

Religious/Political "back to the roots" ecofriendly movement creates a dumbing down of education as it becomes "inclusive" of "non-mainstream humano-centric" viewpoints. Niven & Pournelle's 'Fallen Angels' uses that hypothesis. You know, study of the healing benefits of crystals is equal to nuclear physics and money grants for building pyramids or power equal those for robotics.

 

You'd soon be back to the nomadic level.

 

No, you won't. First all we are talking about more than one civilisation so we need a cause that transcends cultural boundaries. It would also be nice if the cause was semi-credible.

[TSandman]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

Religious/Political "back to the roots" ecofriendly movement creates a dumbing down of education as it becomes "inclusive" of "non-mainstream humano-centric" viewpoints. Niven & Pournelle's 'Fallen Angels' uses that hypothesis. You know, study of the healing benefits of crystals is equal to nuclear physics and money grants for building pyramids or power equal those for robotics.

 

You'd soon be back to the nomadic level.

 

 

Also general dumbing down of the Masses, such as "The Republic of Heaven" in the Honor Harrington series. Only wanting to be on the Dole and having the RIGHT to be on it, less and less want to work, less and less want to learn how things works. they have to get "black box" doing stuff so they can be successfully replaced by incompetent...

 

When only a few at the top is near the cutting edge and 99.99% of the rest is wayyyy down the ladder, it can crumble easily.

[TSandman]

Re: Regression of Interstellar Civilizations

 

This should do nicely:

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1878

 

This is what made me think about GRBs