Recent content by Drakevarg

I may just need to order a copy of De Re Metallica. There are online copies but the thing is like 600 pages and bugger if I'm gonna read all that on a screen.

Resource mining. That one you posted is the one I found already, which is more about the other thing.

Does anyone know any good documentaries on the title subject? The only one I found that wasn't five minutes long was more about undermining and other such mining-tangental topics than the actual act of mining itself.

I suppose I'll do a small bit of clarification: I'm not literally asking how one might get their bearings in the first few hours of this new paradigm ("find friends, find shelter, find water, find food" is pretty much the universal playbook when your previous support structure suddenly...

Basically a continuation of my previous thread on this subject, this time I'm pedaling all the way back to the very earliest days of hunting and gathering, to try and figure out how humanity might have taken its first steps into a world of monsters. So, let me paint a picture for you: You were...

Given this exact question was posted in the GiantITP forums not-quite-word-for-word, I believe it's supposed to be Robespierre. That's who was named in that version.

Ultimately it's gonna boil down to the author's personal outlook on the world. Personally I think the idea of anyone having "seen it all" requires a pretty shallow understanding of history, or a crippling lack of imagination on the part of the immortal. Life is busy, it only repeats itself if...

I'm generally of the mind that a personality isn't something you decide on. This is mostly based on my own mental framework - my self-identity is tautological. Gender, profession, culture, blood ties, etc... these aren't cornerstones of who I am, if any of them changed overnight I wouldn't be at...

If it's me you're asking, then they don't get born. Not that they'd be able to meaningfully self-identify with the entirety of their existence. To them, the closest thing to their birth would be akin to the birth of your goth phase (assuming for the sake of argument you had one). No real clear...

Naturally there are no "rules" for immortality besides meeting some basic similarity to the definition of the word, so everyone does their's a little bit differently. Personally, I don't like "immortal except" setups. Long-lived is long-lived, but much of fiction almost seems insecure about the...

The degree to which magic impedes the progress of technology is proportional to its mass applicability. In a world where magic exists, it's not going to be some conflicting force with science - it's just going to be a field of science. Even in soft magic worlds where magic is sentient and...

Yeah, I don't think the corpses would be the biggest concern here. Earth has handled extinction-level events before, on scales that I suspect would outstrip the biomass of human population. In the long-term, those bodies are just new dirt. In the short term, just colonize away from major...

Perhaps this doesn't apply to everyone, but at least for me journals, margin notes, outlines and idea webs can only carry my thought processes so far. Sooner or later I need to explain it to someone else. Sometimes it's for a new perspective or just fresh eyes to find things I missed, but just...

Beginning to think that the most sensible strategy for developing civilizations would be a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality. Humans might near-invariably join up with other animals for protection, in relationships that might range from simple domestication to a more dynamic symbiosis...

As mentioned in the previous post, humans were cattle-slaves of a global empire that got very abruptly wiped out. This left human populations scattered all over the world (leading to a rather eclectic distribution of ethnic groups with no consideration to environment). Very little of the empire...