The whole presupposition of Snowpiercer hurts my brain....

OK, so I understand the over-cautious approach to SRM (Solar Radiation Management to fight climate change) because if we really get it wrong, we're in a planet-killing ice age. I'm personally convinced climate change is so serious we need to consider using it a little bit (Dr David Keith says to reduce our warming by HALF) but even he says we would be mad to try and use it to solve climate change completely! There are too many potential side effects. SRM could be bad - I get it.

But assume the last people on earth are in this one awesome train with some kind of futuristic forever reactor. OK. It's a high tech Noah's ark. So far so good - bit weird - but that's the whole job of Sci-Fi right? I'll just assume they've got some kind of hydrogen-from-water fusion system that keeps sucking water in the front of the train to fuel this thing.

Here's where my brain breaks. IF you have this extinction level event, and IF the main challenge is keeping warm, and IF you have this amazing new forever reactor that could keep everyone warm and pull the train... WHY NOT STOP THE TRAIN?

Why not find a suitable subway and park the train in there?
Send people out in the few warm suits they have to start sealing in the tunnel - making some provisions for fresh air with a heat-exchanger or something - and gradually reclaim a larger living space? Warm outside the train. Seal off areas and warm them and gradually expand. Scavenge nearby stores and stuff from the city above. It's an emergency - the fate of the human species rests with this team - and they're trying to maintain business as usual and class privilege on a train subject to super-sized avalanches?

Maybe I've played too many 4x games (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate!) like Sid Meier's Civilisation or Warcraft RTS. And the books I've read certainly also feed into this 'build it up again' narrative. Indeed, one of my favourite genres is rebuilding after the Apocalypse and I've written about it on my blog. (EG: What if some disaster eliminated 99% of us and your nation and state and local city were all reduced to 1% of your population. How long to rebuild? What would be missing, but what would have survived?)

I know the original Snowpiercer movie was a metaphor for how capitalism treats the poor during a time of climate crisis. "Don't look up" was another such metaphor.

But this is a TV series - long term story exploration. It could explore other territory.

I'm imagining an emergency leadership council springs up. They get the best info, and the heroes of the show are scattered across the various classes on the train. The whole first season could be on the train as society is gradually restructured around getting ready to stop the train in the best subway. Protagonists plan the colony, antagonists want to maintain some kind of advantage over the poor, etc. The story follows how both the posh elite struggle to learn to mop floors and do metal work in the workshop after society has been reorganised around guilds. (See point 9 on my rebuilding after the apocalypse page for more.)

The technical guilds are formed. The antagonists - the bad guys - are some of the wealthy elite used to having their way far too long and not wanting to actually pull their weight. I mean, they used to be a TALENT SPOTTER! What are they going to do with a mop or pair of clippers?

Then nature is the next antagonist. There can be successes as they plug tunnels and control the environment - and natural disasters and of course even sabotage events as factions start to fight it out.

Also, depending on what sort of show you want, you can have the usual love triangles, hospital stories, medical stories, military guard themes, family stories, promotional journeys, etc.

I mean, Battlestar Galactica told a gripping tale of a fleet on the run - and there were whole strings of episodes where the Cylon fleet wasn't to be seen. Thoughts?

It's 1001 cars long. Big, double decker cars. The whole train thing is just sick - anyone fearing the end of the world would build a fusion reactor (The Engine Eternal) or at least today's breeder reactors. (Fission reactors that 'eat' nuclear waste and get 90 times the energy out of it.) They'd build this in a safe STATIONERY underground bunker - and also have a whole bunch of cold suits and glass houses to build out on the surface after the 'event' (new ice age, asteroid impact, whatever). That's glass houses assuming we need agriculture! Let me copy and paste my FERMING brief in here. Ferming is so revolutionary I should give it a Sci-Fi thread all for it!
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Think of it as electric food that bypasses photosynthesis. Electricity splits water and feeds hydrogen to bacteria - with a few fertilisers. Here's George Monbiot eating a pancake made from the stuff.


Lab-grown food is about to destroy farming – and save the planet | George Monbiot


They claim it will scale up to grow protein cheaper than soybeans by 2025, and that it will cook all the proteins and fats and carbs we need, and even arrive in different flavours.


Solar Foods - Wikipedia


Here is Ravioli

Here are Bao buns - does that look like a beef strip or bacon to you? I can't make up my mind. But it's solein.

It will be cheaper than meat in just a few years. It will replace all animal products - beef, lamb, pork, chicken and fish (with omega-3's) - in the next 10 to 15 years. It could even replace our cereal crops like wheat and corn and rice. It’s 100 times more land efficient than beef, and 10 times more than our various crops. It’s going to be the biggest jump in human food security since we invented farming 10,000 years ago - and could save us from the worst aspects of climate change - the way it messes up agriculture! Indeed, with all that land being returned to nature we could probably let the 3 trillion trees we’ve cut down since Industrialisation regrow - even plant them out with droid-seed-pods and help nature along with this.


Tony Seba follows the cost curve as it becomes 100,000 times cheaper over the last 20 years. The potential proteins that can be cooked up are infinite in variety. One protein is 1000 times sweeter than sugar cane. We can make spider-silk for building materials this way.

The Chinese are working on another route - a chemical way to cook up sugary starches used for both food and cardboard etc. In keeping with the "Ferming" above, I call this one "Starching". They sound like some gifts from Science Fiction. Worth keeping an eye on!

Watch the Tony Seba stuff on cost curves. He has some shots of North American brand ice-cream and dairy made from the stuff - brands we don't have here in Australia yet