Are there already people living on Armageddon Reef?

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.

I was just looking at the MT&T version of the map at the 5th Imperium and it doesn't look to me as though it is a polar continent. Much of what is labeled "Armageddon Reef" is north of the southern part of Charis. And looking at that map, I am at a loss to understand why the fleets of Desnair and Tarot were anywhere near Crag Reach and Opal Island, it seems very our of their path. Indeed, I don't understand why Tarot went that way in the 1st place.

Another thought about humans being able to live there is that there were humans living there. It had been terraformed by Shan-wei and the terraforming team, so it should be possible for others to move back in later on, assuming they are willing to brave the possibility of demons.
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Safehold/338/1

Keith_w wrote:I was just looking at the MT&T version of the map at the 5th Imperium and it doesn't look to me as though it is a polar continent. Much of what is labeled "Armageddon Reef" is north of the southern part of Charis. And looking at that map, I am at a loss to understand why the fleets of Desnair and Tarot were anywhere near Crag Reach and Opal Island, it seems very our of their path. Indeed, I don't understand why Tarot went that way in the 1st place.

Another thought about humans being able to live there is that there were humans living there. It had been terraformed by Shan-wei and the terraforming team, so it should be possible for others to move back in later on, assuming they are willing to brave the possibility of demons.
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Safehold/338/1

Sure, people lived there--before an area nearly the size of Europe was turned uninhabitable by orbital bombardment. The fact that people were able to live there before the Rakurai does not tell us that they could live there now. The area was wiped out--carpet bombed by orbital weapons. I do not completely discount the possibility that people could live there now, but evidence from before the Rakurai is not relevant.

As for why Tarot and Desnair were there, it's because they were ordered to go there. We've always said on this forum that it would have made much more sense to take a more northerly route. But the Powers That Be in the joint navy declared that everyone would join up and take the southern route.

Keith_w wrote:I was just looking at the MT&T version of the map at the 5th Imperium and it doesn't look to me as though it is a polar continent. Much of what is labeled "Armageddon Reef" is north of the southern part of Charis.

It's not that the whole thing is as southerly as Antarctica. Plenty of it clearly does range much further north. The point's that plenty of it does not. And what's at the south pole or near it is likely under a massive ice sheet, so the livable portions of Armageddon Reef are a fairly modest percentage of the entirety of it. And of those livable portions - quite apart from the amount of terrestrial species and the effects of the bombardment - a lot will be really, really cold. Glacierheart cold, Zion cold, albeit at the other end of the year - without any shipments of food coming in in exchange for coal or religion. And when we do take into account bombardment, that landed on all or most of the portion of the continent that wasn't under the ice.

Birds, fish, and trees have returned - in the case of fish, likely gotten to some places for the first time, since the bombardment dropped the land level below the sea level in places. But it's not had the infrastructure behind serious terraforming efforts - heck, that's still an ongoing issue in South March and Silkiah, not far from some of the earliest (surviving!) enclaves and at some of the most desirable latitudes on Safehold. And the areas that had terraforming beforehand got wrecked, except one village.

So, the whole continent had, after the Rakurai, one village's worth of surviving terraforming, which hasn't been maintained or expanded in some 900+ years. It's highly implausible that refugees, castaways, and wanderers have been able to carry out more terraforming on a cursed continent, so anyone living there is managing without it. And it's a terrible place to try that full time and without trade from other parts.

It may be a fine prospect for settlement and exploitation, if people don't mind (!) it being accursed. Charis could use the logging, the krakening, the fishing - well, it could, if not for having the rest of the oceans already for two of those and Silverlode and Fallos and more for the other. But if you want to get away and make it on your own, you'd do better with Samson's Land, any number of small islands, the Barren Lands, anywhere inland no one else is on Silverlode or Raven's Land.... It's a long list, it's all warmer, and it's all in Langhorne's good grace.

SWM wrote:Sure, people lived there--before an area nearly the size of Europe was turned uninhabitable by orbital bombardment. The fact that people were able to live there before the Rakurai does not tell us that they could live there now. The area was wiped out--carpet bombed by orbital weapons. I do not completely discount the possibility that people could live there now, but evidence from before the Rakurai is not relevant.

SNIP.

Well - we know that Opal Island, which according to the map, is pretty close to Rakurai Bay, which I think was near Alexandria, is wooded now, and was seen as quite habitable for Thirsk's men for quite a few months before the rescue ships came for them!

isaac_newton wrote:

SWM wrote:Sure, people lived there--before an area nearly the size of Europe was turned uninhabitable by orbital bombardment. The fact that people were able to live there before the Rakurai does not tell us that they could live there now. The area was wiped out--carpet bombed by orbital weapons. I do not completely discount the possibility that people could live there now, but evidence from before the Rakurai is not relevant.

SNIP.

Well - we know that Opal Island, which according to the map, is pretty close to Rakurai Bay, which I think was near Alexandria, is wooded now, and was seen as quite habitable for Thirsk's men for quite a few months before the rescue ships came for them!

I could visualise someone not being superstitious and tired of the inquisition looking over their shoulder moving there and terraforming enough to survive for a small group of people. I am not sure they could do it on a multi-generational basis, but they could isolate themselves for a while and subsist on small scale farming and fishing.

Don

On Opal Island, sure. It may have taken a few overs, but wasn't seriously affected by the bombardment. [yes, I would contend that targeting was that accurate ]

It really sounds as if none of you have spent any time on land that has been scoured down to bedrock in the recent past. _no_ human has spent any time on land that's been scoured down to bedrock by an OBS, so even our limited experience is with a situation that's much less extreme. Yah know why OWL was able to reconstruct that bombardment pattern? The same reason that we can reconstruct the bombardment patterns on the lunar highlands: we can see _every_frigging_crater_ left behind that hasn't been obscured by later ones. That's the surface that any tree, shrub or grass has to grow on - and they aren't going to do it after less than 1000 years, because _there_is_no_soil_. Erosion and lichen growth just don't work that fast. The evidence we have suggests that it takes 4-6000 years for vegetation to start colonising rock surfaces, and that's when it only has to move in from nearby [as in meters away] alluvial soils where it settled in a couple of thousand years earlier.

Things do start moving faster after that. Another six thousand years, you do get a fair covering of trees. Know what you get when people clear those trees and start farming? A disaster. There's _still_ no soil on those rocks. Without those pockets of glacial till to provide a foothold, and that's what about 80% of the trees in the Canadian Shield are growing in, when you look up close, I'd be surprised if you see even grasses in less than several millennia. Sooner if the bedrock is one of the softer sedimentary rocks [although they can be mineral-poor and not make decent soil], later if it's hard rock.

n7axw wrote:

isaac_newton wrote:
Well - we know that Opal Island, which according to the map, is pretty close to Rakurai Bay, which I think was near Alexandria, is wooded now, and was seen as quite habitable for Thirsk's men for quite a few months before the rescue ships came for them!

I could visualise someone not being superstitious and tired of the inquisition looking over their shoulder moving there and terraforming enough to survive for a small group of people. I am not sure they could do it on a multi-generational basis, but they could isolate themselves for a while and subsist on small scale farming and fishing.

Don

Louis R wrote:On Opal Island, sure. It may have taken a few overs, but wasn't seriously affected by the bombardment. [yes, I would contend that targeting was that accurate ]

It really sounds as if none of you have spent any time on land that has been scoured down to bedrock in the recent past. _no_ human has spent any time on land that's been scoured down to bedrock by an OBS, so even our limited experience is with a situation that's much less extreme. Yah know why OWL was able to reconstruct that bombardment pattern? The same reason that we can reconstruct the bombardment patterns on the lunar highlands: we can see _every_frigging_crater_ left behind that hasn't been obscured by later ones. That's the surface that any tree, shrub or grass has to grow on - and they aren't going to do it after less than 1000 years, because _there_is_no_soil_. Erosion and lichen growth just don't work that fast. The evidence we have suggests that it takes 4-6000 years for vegetation to start colonising rock surfaces, and that's when it only has to move in from nearby [as in meters away] alluvial soils where it settled in a couple of thousand years earlier.

Things do start moving faster after that. Another six thousand years, you do get a fair covering of trees. Know what you get when people clear those trees and start farming? A disaster. There's _still_ no soil on those rocks. Without those pockets of glacial till to provide a foothold, and that's what about 80% of the trees in the Canadian Shield are growing in, when you look up close, I'd be surprised if you see even grasses in less than several millennia. Sooner if the bedrock is one of the softer sedimentary rocks [although they can be mineral-poor and not make decent soil], later if it's hard rock.

I'd have to go through the thread with more care than I want to to be sure, but I don't think anyone is quite committed to supposing that the very spots hit by the bombardment are fine to move back onto now. I think we're all just talking about peripheral and adjacent areas, that spared village, the remainder of the continent away from the Alexandria Enclave, and the areas now underwater.

Of course, that makes the assumption that there IS much on the continent itself (as opposed to nearby islands) that was spared the bombardment and wasn't under the ice sheet. I don't want to be too confident of that.

I would think that there would be a border zone - probably irregular in depth, mind - where the bombardment didn't get all the way to the bedrock, or where the results weren't from direct bombardment effects at all but (e.g.) horrendous storms, earthquakes, etc. from impacts some distance away. That area probably lost everything _but_ some soil, so it's in better shape than the impact areas at least.

I do wonder though - where water rushed in where the bombardment dropped the surface below sea level - is that going to be a healthy fishery now? It sounds like the runoff from nearby exposed bedrock may not be good for fish, and the bottom likely sucks for plants and other things that'd otherwise live there.

Louis R wrote:On Opal Island, sure. It may have taken a few overs, but wasn't seriously affected by the bombardment. [yes, I would contend that targeting was that accurate ]

It really sounds as if none of you have spent any time on land that has been scoured down to bedrock in the recent past. _no_ human has spent any time on land that's been scoured down to bedrock by an OBS, so even our limited experience is with a situation that's much less extreme. Yah know why OWL was able to reconstruct that bombardment pattern? The same reason that we can reconstruct the bombardment patterns on the lunar highlands: we can see _every_frigging_crater_ left behind that hasn't been obscured by later ones. That's the surface that any tree, shrub or grass has to grow on - and they aren't going to do it after less than 1000 years, because _there_is_no_soil_. Erosion and lichen growth just don't work that fast. The evidence we have suggests that it takes 4-6000 years for vegetation to start colonising rock surfaces, and that's when it only has to move in from nearby [as in meters away] alluvial soils where it settled in a couple of thousand years earlier.

Things do start moving faster after that. Another six thousand years, you do get a fair covering of trees. Know what you get when people clear those trees and start farming? A disaster. There's _still_ no soil on those rocks. Without those pockets of glacial till to provide a foothold, and that's what about 80% of the trees in the Canadian Shield are growing in, when you look up close, I'd be surprised if you see even grasses in less than several millennia. Sooner if the bedrock is one of the softer sedimentary rocks [although they can be mineral-poor and not make decent soil], later if it's hard rock.

Hi Louis R.,

I am not arguing against your main point here. I am merely pointing out that the entire island (small continent) wasn't subject to that treatment. Certainly the enclave and area surrounding it was. But the island itself is as big as Charis which would leave a lot of real estate untouched.

Don

n7axw wrote:

Louis R wrote:On Opal Island, sure. It may have taken a few overs, but wasn't seriously affected by the bombardment. [yes, I would contend that targeting was that accurate ]

It really sounds as if none of you have spent any time on land that has been scoured down to bedrock in the recent past. _no_ human has spent any time on land that's been scoured down to bedrock by an OBS, so even our limited experience is with a situation that's much less extreme. Yah know why OWL was able to reconstruct that bombardment pattern? The same reason that we can reconstruct the bombardment patterns on the lunar highlands: we can see _every_frigging_crater_ left behind that hasn't been obscured by later ones. That's the surface that any tree, shrub or grass has to grow on - and they aren't going to do it after less than 1000 years, because _there_is_no_soil_. Erosion and lichen growth just don't work that fast. The evidence we have suggests that it takes 4-6000 years for vegetation to start colonising rock surfaces, and that's when it only has to move in from nearby [as in meters away] alluvial soils where it settled in a couple of thousand years earlier.

Things do start moving faster after that. Another six thousand years, you do get a fair covering of trees. Know what you get when people clear those trees and start farming? A disaster. There's _still_ no soil on those rocks. Without those pockets of glacial till to provide a foothold, and that's what about 80% of the trees in the Canadian Shield are growing in, when you look up close, I'd be surprised if you see even grasses in less than several millennia. Sooner if the bedrock is one of the softer sedimentary rocks [although they can be mineral-poor and not make decent soil], later if it's hard rock.

Hi Louis R.,

I am not arguing against your main point here. I am merely pointing out that the entire island (small continent) wasn't subject to that treatment. Certainly the enclave and area surrounding it was. But the island itself is as big as Charis which would leave a lot of real estate untouched.

Don

But the discussion was about whether there were people living on Armageddon Reef. That is the area that was bombarded heavily. A radius if 1800 kilometers. Maybe you were talking about border areas. But the subject under discussion was Armageddon Reef. The only area in Armageddon Reef that should be habitable now is the area of the village that was not bombarded.

Opal Island apparently had game animals as well, since Cayleb left Thirsk's surviving crews some arbalests and matchlocks to hunt with.

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. And Cayleb had relented, just a bit, and left a small store of captured matchlocks and arbalests on the beach when his ships weighed anchor this morning

It's likely that the soil hasn't been consecrated, so the forests Merlin is looking at are all native Safehold species, and any game will be slash lizards and such, which may or may not be edible for humans. Unfortunately the text doesn't mention whether Merlin would see any trees if he were to look at Crag Hook, the mainland to their west at that moment. (And I really wish it did!)

If Opal Island is mostly forested, the odds are pretty good that there are some fairly extensive forests along the eastern coastline of Armageddon Reef. Those would disappear where the bombardment exposed the bedrock, but we have no idea how far from the coast that scoured area begins. None of this theoretically forested area is consecrated of course, so humans would have a rough time living there until they consecrated enough land to raise sufficient crops to feed themselves.