Note: said society is preindustrial and has ample access to flowing water, but not fossil fuels or radioactive deposits. It also has access to mountain hot springs, which I thought could also be used as “batteries” during times when streams freeze. This last point is what set him off.
He also really hates wind turbines.
the province of Quebec laughs at him
but in strange archaic french
MDR or something i dunno i had to google it
While dams are ecological disasters in real life, it’s a TTRPG, he should chill.
Not even full-on concrete dams, it’s just water wheels and shit
Yeah, he should seriously chill. This world your building sounds lovely.
Love water wheels. You do you
the water powered machinery part sounds so cool i have dreams all the time about living in the ruins of a world similar to our own but heavily relying on water power, water management, and hydraulic engineering
maybe because i have always had this submechaphobia thing since I was really young
You might like the indie game Timberborne, which focuses on the lives of post apocalyptic beavers and in which water management is a major mechanic.
I own it actually. Been meaning to make time to give it another run since they added water physics. And yeah that was one of the main draws for me
It’s basically a big-ass arcology built into a mountain by humans who have a symbiotic relationship with the local sapient gryphons. The gryphons are big and powerful and make sure nobody fucks with the mountain people in exchange for steady food supplies, comfortable nesting grounds, and various goods and services they couldn’t normally get on their own (which the mountain people have a surplus of because they don’t have to spend a significant chunk of their productive capacity on maintaining soldiers).
Sounds cozy. Reminds me just a bit of Dragonriders of Pern but mostly just the mountain/cave dwelling and symbiosis with a sapient flying creature part.
I like stories/settings about humans entering into mutually beneficial relationships with other sapients (biological, technological, or otherwise).
Reminds me just a bit of Dragonriders of Pern
Lol, literally the only thing I know about that series is the author’s infamous “tent peg statement” (CW for homophobia if you decide to look that up)
I like stories/settings about humans entering into mutually beneficial relationships with other sapients (biological, technological, or otherwise).
Hell yeah, those are extremely my jam.
oh i definitely had to look that up. holy shit
she was already an old lady by the time i read the first couple books (i was like 20ish) so hopefully it was just her being an out of touch old lady believing a story told to her but i dunno
a short story she wrote about dragon bonding was in my middle school lit textbook
Did you know that at a depth of only a few meters underground the temperature stabilizes year round to about the mean annual temperature of the air?
No I didn’t, that’s really cool!
Hydropower is really neat. Water powered trip hammers and bellows can make a blacksmith’s work a lot easier, and a watermill can make great quantities of flour.
Another cool thing to do in a preindustrial society with ample access to flowing water is canals. You can fit so much stuff on a canal boat.
Canals were so useful that heaps of canals were built in England even during the industrial revolution alongside railroads. It makes sense that if you’re digging something up you can then use it under the rails as ballast and it gives you flexibility if there’s an issue with either option.
One of the only charming things about TERF island is that they still have a subculture of weirdos who live on canal boats
canal boat youtube is kinda neat
Best one I’ve seen is the guy who built a model railroad inside his canal boat home with a canal boat lock built into the model railway layout
oh wow that’s great
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
canals
I really want to do a TTRPG game that centers on traveling up and down rivers. Like the players get an “itinerary” from a medieval person and it looks like a subway map where the lines are rivers and tributaries.
I DM’d a Pathfinder game centred around trains, once. I made the setting teeter on the edge of industrial revolution, but with magicks to handwave away mechanics/plot problems.
It was real fun. And unsurprisingly very easy to railroad the players back on track. Train aesthetics are cool.
Water power is pretty damn reliable, what is he on about? Water and windmills was a huge leap ahead of animal and human powered mills.
Would be kind of interesting to make an archaic nuclear reactor which is just a steam engine that kills you. But you need some pretty advanced metallurgy for that.
Naturally occurring nuclear reactors can happen, there was one that was active for a few hundred thousand years about 1.7 billion years ago in Gabon.
I am not quite sure how a pre industrial society would be able to use hot springs as a kind of battery…
But like… watermills and windmills have been around for a really, really long time, in many different places and eras.
… I can understand being confused as to how hotsprings somehow equals a battery… but a whole rant against the concept of more primitive renewable energy… is probably even more baffling.
Did you have a more detailed explanation for how hot springs would work as batteries?
During winter, most of the water freezes. The hot spring (which is on a mountain) has a sluice installed, allowing it to act as a backup reserve of warm water that can be released and run through the mechanical systems that normally depend on stream runoff. This, obviously, is limited by how much water the springs can hold and which machines are within a reasonable distance of them.
With the comment about the natural temperature regulation inside the mountain itself, they might be able (after massive labour) to hollow out a deep-mountain internal reservoir mostly insulated from the winter, to store potable or industrial water.
During winter, most of the water freezes.
The way most pre-industrial societies would handle that is to not do the labor that needs water wheels during the winter.
Okay but have you considered that I really like the battery idea
Fair enough.
I’ve built civilizations around far dumber ideas.
I’ve built civilizations around far dumber ideas.
Do tell 👀
… I… think I get what you are going for here, but … steam run off?
Steam … doesn’t … run off.
If you mean just… unshunting a sluice, where all the water is exposed to the cold air… its gonna be cooled off significantly after travelling not really far.
Steam in a fired boiler, that keeps it pressurized, and contained, can spin some kind of basic turbine and do some mechanical work, but… you’d need like a massive network of metal piping, like an entire old school (from our modern pov) steam heating system like many older US universities or older cities have.
Like… you’d need basically a metal pipeline going down from the (presumably elevated, mountainous) hot spring, headed into your steampunk industrial center, to lessen, but not remove, the amount of some kind of fuel you’d have to burn to get a boiler up to pressure.
… and that would be further complicated by the fact that mountain springs tend to have a good deal of other minerals and volatile compounds in them… which would likely erode or calcify or otherwise gunk up most metals your pipline would be made of fairly rapidly… and also if it is so cold outside that normal streams and rivers freeze over, well now you gotta deal with seasonal metal expansion and contraction fatique.
Maybe some kind if extremely finely worked wood with some kind of tar like sealent on the inside, and some kind of insulation on the outside… would work as a wooden version of a pipe?
Or sealed up masonry of some kind, an aqueduct with a top cover?
Huge diameter bamboo maybe, lol?
…
If on the other hand, you just mean… unshunt a sluice of hotspring water to flow into watermill type machines… that might kind of work, but you would need a lot of hot spring water to replace an… entire river or large stream’s volume of water.
If you mean the hotspring acts as an emergency resevoir, sure, ok that may actually work… but… that isn’t really a ‘battery’ in the more conventional sense of… an anode and cathode of some kind.
… Either way, I do think its a neat idea!
EDIT: i am also kind of confused by exactly how you are saying… this society has steam powered machines… but is also preindustrial.
… The dawn of the industrial age is generally associated with the invention of high pressure steam engines, and then their subsequent proliferation into many kinds of manufacturing processes that are greatly augmented by these steam powered machines.
How is your society having a network of steam powered machines, but also preindustrial?
Do you mean to say it is just at that actual moment of just beginning to industrialize?
Steam … doesn’t … run off.
I said stream runoff, not steam runoff :P
If on the other hand, you just mean… unshunt a sluice of hotspring water to flow into watermill type machines… that might kind of work, but you would need a lot of hot spring water to replace an… entire river or large stream’s volume of water.
If you mean the hotspring acts as an emergency resevoir, sure, ok that may actually work… but… that isn’t really a ‘battery’ in the more conventional sense of… an anode and cathode of some kind.
This is what I mean, yeah. There are limitations in that there’s only so much water available, but it’s better than nothing, and the reserves can be replenished by spring meltwater.
Also, a “battery” can more generally refer to any stored reserve of energy that can later be released. In specific, these hot springs would act as a gravity battery.
I said stream runoff, not steam runoff :P
Oh fuck, I legit need glasses, my bad rofl.
And yes, gravity battery is a legit term, it just isn’t part of most … colloquial conceptions of a battery.
But you are correct, it would be an emergency gravity battery.
I edited in more while you were typing this reply, but it seems you do mean pre-industrial, pre steam boilers.
In that case, yes, this all checks out, the hot springs could function as an emergency reserve if some simple machines needed to churn…
Presumably this society would… essentially time their preindustrial mfg activities to when the streams and rivers are flowing naturally, and essentially go into a kind of low activity / holiday break mode during the winter, and rely on a surplus from the warmer seasons.
Presumably this society would… essentially time their preindustrial mfg activities to when the streams and rivers are flowing naturally, and essentially go into a kind of low activity / holiday break mode during the winter, and rely on a surplus from the warmer seasons.
Got it in one!
Yay!
(also please include bamboo pipe systems lol)
Yeah, bamboo pipe systems sound dope
I’m not sure I’m getting what you mean by the hot spring winter battery thing. Frozen water at the top of an incline definitely has stored kinetic energy but warming it up enough to capture that energy would probably not be worth it, unless I’m completely misunderstanding what you have in mind.
edit: oh wait do you mean that they have the hot springs behind a dam that they open when other waters freeze? I could see that happening but the question is how warm would the reservoir be and how far could the water flow before freezing. The water at the origin would have to be pretty warm, ie very close to magma vents, on order to stay melted long enough to flow any meaningful distance.
The hot springs act as reservoirs, allowing the civilization to have a (reduced, of course) supply of liquid water during cold seasons. The water is passively heated by magma currents running underneath (akin to how hot springs generally form) so they don’t have to expend any additional energy to warm it.
The water at the origin would have to be pretty warm, ie very close to magma vents, on order to stay melted long enough to flow any meaningful distance.
It’s like a damn Jacuzzi. The civilization pretty much has on-demand hot baths.
Not sure if you were planning on using it as such (or how much you care) but hot spring water can’t be used for drinking water, at least not for any length of time.
It’s just for powering machines.
