Game theory: Factorio takes place on Earth
Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 10:34 pm
I am suspicious that this alien world is actually none other than Earth.
Possibly what happened:
While the Engineer was away, the bugs attacked Earth and won a war, eliminating all large animal life from the planet. They demolished all of the major structures across the face of the planet. Plants began to grow uninhibited. Thousands of years passed, the Engineer's ship had a malfunction and the Engineer remained in stasis. The planet grew over the crumbled remains of human civilization and the bugs tended the plants, thriving on them.
The engineer's spacecraft eventually repaired itself enough to navigate home, and the engineer was awoken upon landing. It was a crash landing because the bugs shot it down. The main computer was destroyed in the crash, so the engineer is unable to check it and find out navigational details.
Alternate possibility: humans caused the extinction of most of the larger animals, and the bugs would have taken care of them but it was too late.
Supporting evidence:
1.) The engineer requires no special supports to live in this planet's environment. Now (s)he is wearing a protective suit, but I figure there's a limit to how far that will go. The environment could be significantly different from what humans need, but it must have enough oxygen and be within a certain pressure range. At no point does the Engineer require oxygen supplements or any other suit maintenance. The planet clearly has liquid water on the surface. So we can tell that the planet is at least very similar to Earth.
2.) The trees look like Earth trees. Keep in mind that Earth has had plenty of different kinds of trees over its long history of multicellular life.
Trees in the Carboniferous Period would have looked something like this: http://forces.si.edu/atmosphere/images/ ... 007_lg.jpg
Trees in the Jurassic Period may have looked something like this: http://www.pacifichorticulture.org/wp-c ... 12.23A.jpg
But the trees on this alien planet appear to be not just Earth trees, but specifically angiosperm trees. That would be quite a coincidence for trees so similar to that to appear on another planet.
Now I recognize that Earth trees could have been transplanted onto another world, if other humans had been here before the Engineer. But I have more evidence it's Earth:
3.) The ratio of U-235 to U-238 is the same as Earth as far as we can easily measure. (The exact value is a bit less, like Earth a few million years from today. But it's also just a nice round number.) This ratio is a factor not only of the amount of U-235 and U-238 present when the Earth was formed, but also of its age, and it bears a stamp of both this planet's composition and its age.
Possibly what happened:
While the Engineer was away, the bugs attacked Earth and won a war, eliminating all large animal life from the planet. They demolished all of the major structures across the face of the planet. Plants began to grow uninhibited. Thousands of years passed, the Engineer's ship had a malfunction and the Engineer remained in stasis. The planet grew over the crumbled remains of human civilization and the bugs tended the plants, thriving on them.
The engineer's spacecraft eventually repaired itself enough to navigate home, and the engineer was awoken upon landing. It was a crash landing because the bugs shot it down. The main computer was destroyed in the crash, so the engineer is unable to check it and find out navigational details.
Alternate possibility: humans caused the extinction of most of the larger animals, and the bugs would have taken care of them but it was too late.
Supporting evidence:
1.) The engineer requires no special supports to live in this planet's environment. Now (s)he is wearing a protective suit, but I figure there's a limit to how far that will go. The environment could be significantly different from what humans need, but it must have enough oxygen and be within a certain pressure range. At no point does the Engineer require oxygen supplements or any other suit maintenance. The planet clearly has liquid water on the surface. So we can tell that the planet is at least very similar to Earth.
2.) The trees look like Earth trees. Keep in mind that Earth has had plenty of different kinds of trees over its long history of multicellular life.
Trees in the Carboniferous Period would have looked something like this: http://forces.si.edu/atmosphere/images/ ... 007_lg.jpg
Trees in the Jurassic Period may have looked something like this: http://www.pacifichorticulture.org/wp-c ... 12.23A.jpg
But the trees on this alien planet appear to be not just Earth trees, but specifically angiosperm trees. That would be quite a coincidence for trees so similar to that to appear on another planet.
Now I recognize that Earth trees could have been transplanted onto another world, if other humans had been here before the Engineer. But I have more evidence it's Earth:
3.) The ratio of U-235 to U-238 is the same as Earth as far as we can easily measure. (The exact value is a bit less, like Earth a few million years from today. But it's also just a nice round number.) This ratio is a factor not only of the amount of U-235 and U-238 present when the Earth was formed, but also of its age, and it bears a stamp of both this planet's composition and its age.
