Much speculation by Josserek about the Rogaviki, obviously leading toward the conclusion that they are not human, e.g.:
"It shouldn't be humanly possible." (p. 142)
Something of interest to us living before the Ice -
Across the world, there are many large craters above fused layers and:
"...occasionally, relics of ancient cities..." (p. 143)
What might a struggle for dwindling resources have led to? What do we, living in the pre-Ice technological civilization, think is the most likely explanation of such craters?
The text has become a travelogue of Rogaviki territories and will climax in the showdown with the invaders but not tonight.
Tomorrow we walk before rain in the evening so that is when the next blogging might happen.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
More likely, IMO, the downfall of that pre-Ice Age civilization was due to rival powers struggling for supremacy and destroying themselves in a nuclear war.
THE WINTER OF THE WORLD was first pub. in 1975, when the USSR still existed, at a time when it still had dreams of world empire. Also the USSR gave much serious thought to how a nuclear war could be both fought and won/survived. I suspect Anderson thought the Politburo could have miscalculated the chances of them surviving/winning such a conflict, and instead brought down a nuclear winter on the world. One that became a new Ice Age.
Ad astra! Sean
Nuclear winter? I had though of the Ice as just the next natural cyclical Ice Age but I suppose that it could have been caused by nukes.
Why not both?
Nuclear winter accelerating the natural cooling into the next glacial period.
Why not?
Kaor, Paul!
As Jim suggested both could have brought on/hastened a new Ice Age. I think I read somewhere (possibly in FALLEN ANGELS, by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, & Michael Flynn) that the reason why we are not struggling now with an Ice Age was because of the greater heat retained on Earth due to carbon dioxide produced by industrialization.
Ad astra! Sean
See also the 'early anthropocene' hypothesis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_anthropocene
The idea is that human agriculture, starting thousands of years ago, put CO2 into the air due to removing forests for grain fields, and methane due to rice paddies. Without the human activities global temperatures would have been slowly declining from the post-glacial peak temperatures for the past several millennia. According to this hypothesis we would have started seeing glaciers form along the highest points of the Quebec-Labrador border by now.
So by this idea, human activities warming the world was good for us for a long time, though since the industrial revolution we have been overdoing it.
Note that 'Winter of the World' was written before the nuclear winter idea was publicized, and during the period that aerosols from industry were counter-acting the warming from extra CO2.
Kaor, Jim!
And FALLEN ANGELS shows us what might happen from reversing that global warming too sharply.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment