Are there already people living on Armageddon Reef?

I'm not sure of my assertion here, but I suspect that the only part of the area for which Loius R's statement is true would be the area immediately around the enclave. The remainder of the area is probably unconsecrated and relatively undisturbed.

Don

n7axw wrote:I'm not sure of my assertion here, but I suspect that the only part of the area for which Loius R's statement is true would be the area immediately around the enclave. The remainder of the area is probably unconsecrated and relatively undisturbed.

Don

Even if that wasn't the case, I'me sure that in a thousand years, or so, there have been the Safehold equivalent of floating coconuts and lost seabirds to transport enough native vegetation to restock the entire archipeligo with native plant life.

n7axw wrote:I'm not sure of my assertion here, but I suspect that the only part of the area for which Loius R's statement is true would be the area immediately around the enclave. The remainder of the area is probably unconsecrated and relatively undisturbed.

Don

I thought the text said that the entire continent was demolished in the attack. I wish I had the electronic version to search for the text.

SWM wrote:I thought the text said that the entire continent was demolished in the attack. I wish I had the electronic version to search for the text.

According to the zoomify map at http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... hold/338/1 Armageddon Reef is a continent bigger than Charis Island. Only the north-west fifth, or so, shows any evidence of bombardment.

SWM wrote:

n7axw wrote:I'm not sure of my assertion here, but I suspect that the only part of the area for which Loius R's statement is true would be the area immediately around the enclave. The remainder of the area is probably unconsecrated and relatively undisturbed.

Don

I thought the text said that the entire continent was demolished in the attack. I wish I had the electronic version to search for the text.

My only thought here was that the enclave would have included only a comparatively small area of the continent and it would have been a waste of resourses along with being pointless to demolish an otherwise empty continent.

Don

Here's the textev from Off Armagedfon Reef:

[quote]From his altitude, it was easy for his enhanced vision, despite the darkness, to see how the kinetic bombardment had shredded a roughly circular zone over eighteen hundred kilometers across. Not just once, either. Nimue had had plenty of time to run the reports from the SNARCs she’d dispatched to the site of that long-ago mass murder through Owl’s analyzing software. It was readily apparent from the overlapping impact patterns that Langhorne had sent three separate waves of artificial meteors hammering across the continent. And he’d given Alexandria itself even more attention than that. At least five waves of kinetic strikes had marched back and forth across the island. Even now, almost eight hundred standard years later, the tortured, broken ruin he’d left behind was brutally evident from Merlin’s present height.[\quote]

The 'roughly circular' part implies that not all of Armagedfon Reef was targeted. Also, there is the settlement that was spared from the bombardment.

[quote]He’d spared a single settlement from destruction, so that its stunned and terrified inhabitants could testify to the rain of fiery thunderbolts—the Rakurai of God—which had punished Shan-wei and her fallen fellows for their evil. The “archangels” who’d swooped down upon that surviving village in the aftermath of the bombardment had borne them away, distributing them in family groups to other towns and villages across Safehold.[\quote]

That single village could have been a repository for Terran life, which, in 800 years could have spread across the badlands. The unbombarded parts of Armageddon reef could have served as a repository for native life. In fact, I wonder if the bombardment might not have made it easier for Terran life to get a hold. (No, I don't have any scientific or textev to support that assertion.)


Also, we do know that birds and wyverns live on the reef.


[quote]The Earl of Thirsk watched the clouds of seabirds and wyverns following the fleet like banks of gunsmoke. He had no idea how many of them made their nests along the deserted coasts of Armageddon Reef, but he’d never seen so many of them in one spot in his entire life.[\quote]


Finally, Opal island is very near the reef.

[quote]Merlin turned his eyes back to the island’s forested slopes. Earl Thirsk and his survivors should be just fine until someone sent the necessary ships to take them home again. Opal had plenty of fresh water, they’d already erected sufficient shelter, especially for the summer, and landed enough provisions to carry them for at least six months, even if they were unable to add anything by hunting and fishing.[\quote]

This implies that Cayleb thinks that they CAN hunt and fish, which implies that Opal island has sufficient edible native species and Terran imports.

So...I'm going to say that it is definitely possible for the right sort of life to be on Armageddon Reef to support people suicidal enough to want to live there.

Tararoys wrote:That single village could have been a repository for Terran life, which, in 800 years could have spread across the badlands. The unbombarded parts of Armageddon reef could have served as a repository for native life. In fact, I wonder if the bombardment might not have made it easier for Terran life to get a hold. (No, I don't have any scientific or textev to support that assertion.)

At that point, there was, nearby, lots and lots of devastation not amenable to any life; native species in not-yet-terraformed and not not-getting-terraformed land ready to reclaim whatever it could; and a small preserve of terran species (insofar as that village was yet completely terraformed). There would be mutual invasion going on, and both sets of flora and fauna claiming, as much as it could, the devastated areas.

My money would be on the native species having the lead: it's their planet to start and in the whole remaining area, there are so many more of them. What I would expect overall is a mixture, favoring the native species for the most part.

Also, we do know that birds and wyverns live on the reef.


This implies that Cayleb thinks that they CAN hunt and fish, which implies that Opal island has sufficient edible native species and Terran imports.

So...I'm going to say that it is definitely possible for the right sort of life to be on Armageddon Reef to support people suicidal enough to want to live there.

Apparently, Safehold and terran animals have a much easier time eating one another than either has eating the other's plants. So hunting native air and water critters - with a mix of imported carnivores in there - may be a lot more possible than trying to eat native plants, or counting on imported varieties to be found on Opal or near it.

Okay. It isn't the entire continent. Looking at the map, the continent is much larger than I remembered. But 1800 km does enclose the entire region marked on the Map as Armageddon Reef. So we can definitively state that all of Armageddon Reef was made uninhabitable by the Rakurai strike, except for that single village. So the question is how much has the area been able to recover in the subsequent 800 years.

SWM wrote:Okay. It isn't the entire continent. Looking at the map, the continent is much larger than I remembered. But 1800 km does enclose the entire region marked on the Map as Armageddon Reef. So we can definitively state that all of Armageddon Reef was made uninhabitable by the Rakurai strike, except for that single village. So the question is how much has the area been able to recover in the subsequent 800 years.

Two other points:
The map projection used is going to warp the polar regions into appearing much larger than they are. As a polar continent, Armageddon "Reef" will be smaller than it looks there: not really small as such, but not so vast.

Additionally, as a polar continent on a cold world, we can expect that much of that land mass is covered by an ice sheet. The relatively warm edge got whomped badly by the Rakurai.

In all, it's a desperate stretch of land. If people were game to live like traditional Inuit, they may make a home there. The alternative would take the benefit of more advanced infrastructure and - particularly - using a whole lot of trade with warmer places for goods they cannot practically make there, in return for fish, oil, and other harvested local resources. It's certainly not settled well enough for that, and it's unlikely stray people trying to get away from it all on Safehold (or shipwrecked there without a choice) will have wanted to recreate a polar lifestyle.

JeffEngel wrote:

SWM wrote:Okay. It isn't the entire continent. Looking at the map, the continent is much larger than I remembered. But 1800 km does enclose the entire region marked on the Map as Armageddon Reef. So we can definitively state that all of Armageddon Reef was made uninhabitable by the Rakurai strike, except for that single village. So the question is how much has the area been able to recover in the subsequent 800 years.

Two other points:
The map projection used is going to warp the polar regions into appearing much larger than they are. As a polar continent, Armageddon "Reef" will be smaller than it looks there: not really small as such, but not so vast.

Additionally, as a polar continent on a cold world, we can expect that much of that land mass is covered by an ice sheet. The relatively warm edge got whomped badly by the Rakurai.

In all, it's a desperate stretch of land. If people were game to live like traditional Inuit, they may make a home there. The alternative would take the benefit of more advanced infrastructure and - particularly - using a whole lot of trade with warmer places for goods they cannot practically make there, in return for fish, oil, and other harvested local resources. It's certainly not settled well enough for that, and it's unlikely stray people trying to get away from it all on Safehold (or shipwrecked there without a choice) will have wanted to recreate a polar lifestyle.

Well ... if it was ok for the original settlers in their villages [before they got whomped], then I'm not sure if that applies. And as Tararoys pointed out above, there is text ev that Opal island is currently forested, so the north at least of the Reef would not be polar