Broader long-term impacts of Prolong on societies

{Sorry if this has been hashed out and exhausted already.}

What would be the likely outcomes of having Prolong available to every member of a society? Does it matter if the society is fundamentally aristocratic vs one that is fiercely democratic, or meritocratic?

I'm not talking about the 'transitional period' that the Honorverse is experiencing in the books, but maybe a few hundred years on (assuming that the events in future books do not overturn the apple cart too badly)


Things to consider:

(1) Most women will be fertile for as long as their 'egg supply' lasts (assuming no way to 'clone' more), and the books suggest that some women are willing to start new children quite late in life (plus there are uterine replicators)

(2) Folks will be waiting to 'inherit' for a REALLY long time.

(3) Longer lives will lead to much longer periods to amass individual wealth or power without it being split up or divided between heirs.

(4) Prolong seems to extend people's creative periods, unlike today, where many brains seem to 'ossify' after a while

(5) Marriages very often get strained year-after-year.

(6) People can get sick of a career, or a hobby, etc. Or they can get obsessed.

(7) Some things depend solely on seniority (e.g. Union seniority, pre-War SKM Admiralty promotions, etc)

(8) (for SEM) Humans outliving their tree-cat bond-mates



What are those future societies going to look like?

good questions all. I'm particularly intrigued by the reversal of the treecat bond, up until very recently the vast majority of cats followed their human partner after they died, but if that is no longer going to happen will humans follow their cats?

or will prolong be adapted to the 'cats?

or might someone having been acceptable to a cat once possibly attract a second?

Dauntless wrote:good questions all. I'm particularly intrigued by the reversal of the treecat bond, up until very recently the vast majority of cats followed their human partner after they died, but if that is no longer going to happen will humans follow their cats?

or will prolong be adapted to the 'cats?

or might someone having been acceptable to a cat once possibly attract a second?

Eh ... it depends on how long it takes for a person who's undergone prolong - especially later versions - to die of old age, when they adopted, and how old the treecat was at the time.
'Cats can expect to live something like 300 T-years (IIRC) under normal conditions, and I'd expect that a treecat who's adopted someone will get at least a few extra years if they can live out their natural lifespan, because they'll presumably have access to medical care, and they won't need to worry about environmental fluctuations impacting their ability to acquire food from the wild.

I'd expect that someone who had their treecat die on them would be in for a rough time, but they're also more likely to have a support network and interests/activities/responsibilities to drag themselves out of the depression and keep them focused on living. I also expect that other treecats would try to help comfort them, even if they didn't go for a second adoption bond.

I think the long term might be -- migration to parts unknown.

Though I'd have to be Sphinxian or ? for this to work, imagine myself, family, a small treecat clan, with: a) a top notch "superfreighter" worth of colony equipment, medical including prolong, etc. for say 1000-2000 prolong-lifespan genius type folks, plus 2) a couple accompanying protective warships bouncing a couple hundred light years outside the current bubble, based on a 3) prior exploration finding an empty space "sector" with plenty of habitable planetary places within say a 30 LY sphere.

Think "Grayson writ large" but more a equitable male female balances, but with a culture that is used to and enjoys large families. Multiply from that first bubble with smaller settlement teams in the "2nd generation" (50 years in) going many different directions, plus maybe a wormhole mapping team to find even more spokes for the wheel system(s), and see could extend outwards in ONE prolong lifetime based on your first bubble. Use exponential math to calculate your population availability.

By PD 2170 you'd likely have a decent size star empire, not uber populated but firmly established and trading, well defended etc. Then just use the ensuing generations to strengthen each core world in your new sector.

Perhaps one eventual side effect may be that individuals might become very very careful with their lives? Borderline paranoia? If a person can expect to live for hundreds of years, getting there might become quite a fixatation? Take no physical chance?.

Try not to take personal risks. Its is not that they would live for hundreds of years, but that being death is for so long. Just me. Respectfully. HB of CJ (old coot) Junior Captain. I love this forum. Do it need to say all of that? This has come up in another forum. I dunno. Some advice?

This launches some interesting trains of thought.

First, I'm betting that the two bonded teams of Honor and Nimitz along with Elizabeth and Ariel will live the longest lives of both treecat and human. I give a slight nudge to Honor and Nimitz living the longest lives on record.

Those two bonds have gone through too much hell together and lived, to easily allow the grim reaper of old age to catch them. Honor will simply out-maneuver the grim reaper. "How do I box this tactically superior old bitch in?" asks the reaper.

The enormous love between Honor and Nimitz for each other will make the other want to live longer. Each will want to spare the other from the pain of a dead link. Which is odd, as for humans it actually turns it into an act of kindness to want to outlive your mate.

I see bonds with human and treecat where each are enduring many pains and afflictions just to outlive the other. Honor will be kept alive by artificial means, with orders not to pull the plug until Nimitz dies.

I wonder if the link is still valid if one half of the bond, human, is unconscious, yet kept alive my artificial means.

I also wonder if bonds can bring one out of unconsciousness.

The late Terry Pratchett touched the subject in one of his novel (not a Discworld one) : Strata.

I have a French version but roughly translated it went something like that :

In theory, the longer one lived, the more prudent one grew and stayed near a geneticist and the local branch store of the Company, where changing one's Days into a precisely calibrated longevity cure was possible, at a guaranteed rate of 24 standard hours per added day of life. Only the Company paid in Days, and only the company administered the treatment. It followed - as was written in every economics textbook - that the Company owned everything everywhere.
But economics textbooks also mentioned the law of non-proportional returns. At the age of twenty, people acted with circumspection, taking no risk, for by working with the Company, they had centuries to live. It would have been a real waste to mess it all up by driving too fast or burning the candle from both ends.
At two hundred years, why should anyone care ? Been there, seen that. Any new experience was a known experience under a new guise. Death would certainly come before three hundred anyway. Not by suicide, not really. No, but because higher and higher mountains would be climbed, jumps from higher and higher places would be made, the parachute would be opened later and later, or one would go hiking around Mercury with a backpack, sleeping in the wild. And sooner or later one's luck would run out.
Boredom was the real killer. Death was the way nature advised to go easy.