in my water survival class we had to swim a mile in full BDUs with boots, *or* swim 50 meters underwater in the same gear without coming up for air. I did both. Because I'm the boss.
But interesting trick -- you can tie your pant legs in knots, and turn them into a life preserver made out of pants. If you want.
I did not know that.
Than again all my swimming skills were gained in sport related activities and not survival.
Sometimes I wonder just how fucked I'd be of society collapses because I have like, no survival skills at all. I don't even know how to start a fire.
Anyways, what's a SU person doing on 8chan? Didn't some random person on tumblr with all the hot air in their lungs declare Steven Universe to be for tumblr only a several months back?
One thing that I from time to time attempted to write on, albeit extremely poorly, was what kind of societies may form from the ashes and how it would advance given the example of a industrial, world-spanning civilization/economic system before them. And when I say this I mean a fully fledged societies with their own cultures, languages and set of traditions (all of which having signs from the society we lived in today, but highly distorted in the teeth of time) be it akin to Greece or China, not warlords and successor states.
Like a civilization a millennium into the future after things go downhill in 2060 or so and just keep tumbling for another 70-100 years.
Anyone know any post apoc settings go with that sort of "collapse" where things just keep getting shittier until society has been reduced back to tribalism and warlordism not from one traumatic event, but from a procession of progressively more destabilizing and disastrous events until everything just ceases not in a boom, but a whimper?
I'm implying that I don't really buy the vocal minority argument.
If there really is a silent majority, they have only doomed themselves to the outside perception they receive by not keeping the minority in check. It is up to people in the group to police the behavior of others. If they do not, they tactfully have enabled the vocal minority. Just like how a abbot is morally obligated to keep his monks in line. Let the lunatics rabble to on and they will color the culture, no matter how many of them exist.
But in 8chan's case i'd believe you more if the top board PPH didn't suggest another story.
The verdant Sanctum is a civilization ran by plant-like aliens that make heavy use of biological and light-based technologies. They have a rigidly class based society whose ruling body and common folk alike seek to make the universe green with life.
The homeworld of the Liliate is a densely packed world, covered in billions of Liliates and orbited by hundreds of ships that like on many of their worlds, keep watch over even commoners here. The world's name is Yvuzzu - or the "Garden of Creation".
Yvuzzu is where the Verdant One resides, it is also a quite overgrown world with dense jungles where trees can get as tall as mountains covering much of the world. Where forests and jungles do not dominate, there are vast, endless stretches of garden that have blatant signs of manipulation by the Liliates who have resided on the world for hundreds of thousands of years. The world itself is slightly smaller than earth, but has a denser atmosphere and quite a bit more available land with all the water on the world notable in having a total lack of salt. Which makes the world have a quite vast reservoir of drinkable water.
The Sanctum holds control over a hundred star systems, of which have worlds that are either in the process of being seeded with life, formatted or are already finished and have gained high Liliate commoner populations transported there by patrons to accelerate the formation of a new habitable world. A few dozen of the worlds in the sanctum are unique in that they are used for experiments in biotech. The standard for these worlds is that they have commoners on world while patrons live in orbit of the planet and may go around to other planets for whatever reason they may find.
Their society is a somewhat feudal society where the affairs of government are private to the common Liliate as the typical Liliate has no concern for political troubles. They are much more inclined to enjoy a pastoral existence on a garden world than to go around conquering and empire building. They don't see the point in democracy since your typical Liliate can live in the wild just fine, modifying it however they like.
The ruler of their civilization is the Verdant One, who is picked by assembly (ritual will be shown IC) from the elder patrons. The Verdant One in human terms has a role in society that is a mixture of emperor and pope. The verdant one holds a high amount of power, being able to declare war or peace, invokes new policies (of which can’t overturn the core tenets) and bless worlds for seeding. Verdant One is kept in check by the elder patrons who can vote to ‘banish’ (read: Execute for treason) a rogue Verdant One that is perceived as having gone too astray from the core tenets and values of the Sanctum. The verdant One keeps her role for life and can never leave this role until death. The Verdant One doesn’t get to choose to be a Verdant One, the Verdant One being simply an elder patron chosen by her peers to lead the Sanctum. In short, the verdant One must not want to be a Verdant one, a Liliate becomes a Verdant One by obligation.
The elder patrons are the close knit circle around the Verdant One who carry out the will of the Verdant One and enforce policies domestically. Their jobs are also highly spiritual in that they will pick worlds to bless with life, however the Verdant One can overrule any of the decisions an Elder Patron may make when it comes to the matter of blessing a world. Besides the additional responsibility of handling the task of seeding the universe with life where it is best suited, they still carry the same burdens of their lesser peers. A patron becomes an elder patron by being chosen by the Verdant One herself.
The Liliate who deal with political concerns and handle the complexities of managing an interstellar civilization are the patrons, who are called such due to their patronage of the arts and their patronage of life. They are only 2% of the overall population and are descended from a select few Liliate from millennia earlier. The obligation a patron has is that they must carry out the complicated tasks of the sanctum such as genetic modification, diplomacy and management of the commoners. The patron class does not own land like a noble, instead they live in a communal spaceship where they take on the tasks in demand in their region of space. The Patrons are who prospect other worlds and handle the thankless tasks of cataloging, abducting and collecting genomes to hoard up in the vast network of genetic libraries that have been diffusely spread across their space.
The commoners have it the best, arguably. While the patrons in theory have absolute control over the commoners, the commoners in practice are simply tasked with making the world a prettier place. They are numerous and live on a planet without borders, tinkering with the ecosystems and biomes of a garden world or progressively designing and terraforming/bioforming a wet enough desert world. They don't get drafted into wars except in situations of planetary defense where they may levied by the patrons to fight against a hostile intrusion. A commoner in some occasions can become a patron should an elder patron or patron will it when they go on world. Commoners have nightmares of this. Outside of the Liliates (and their buzzers), various forms of organic drones/wetware are used for repetitive tasks and ship construction. These drones are quite elaborate and can replicate quite a few tasks of machines, but unlike machines are sentient and can feel pain.
The Liliate are really a composite of two species. The first species being the titular Liliate, who are large, plant-like beings with many lily-like heads. The second species are the buzzers, who are akin to bees except come in many uniform colors instead of the yellow jacket color bees typically are associated with. Through millions of years of co-evolution the Liliate have become a mutually intelligent being. The buzzers get a mobile home and food source in exchange for pollinating the Liliate and carrying out tasks for the Liliate.
The Liliates themselves are large, plant-like beings whose many appendages, stems, leaves, vines and roots give them mobility as they wrap, pull and drag themselves around. They tend to move about in large capsule-like devices when inside spaceships or environments hostile to their kind, but on good soil they tend to go without the capsules. The lily-like parts of their bodies are akin to their heads in that they hold many sensory organs that allow them to see countless more colors than humans. Liliates also reproduce with their lilies, usually pollinating themselves when alone or pollenating with another Liliate in close proximity. They don't have gender or sex, but have seen enough other animals and aliens to have a concept of what gender and sex are. Liliates are universally referred to in feminine pronouns despite not having human concepts of femininity. They're Liliates.
Besides Liliates, there are Buzzers who co-evolved with the Liliate. Buzzers, like mentioned earlier are like bees with multiple castes and a highly eusocial mindset. Physically they're only a bit bigger than a bee, but come in many colors of the rainbow to indicate their role in the hive. A Liliate is a host to Buzzers, usually having at least two dozen hives and queens who make their home somewhere in the Liliate's large stems. These queens act as a consciousness for the Liliate through a mode of communication not properly understood. Buzzers are around the size of a large bee on average, the queens being only 5 inches in size and have a whopping 12% of their body weight as a brain. They're not that smart despite that. The queens produce babies and relay commands from the Liliate to the buddy drones to have them do all sorts of tasks. With advancements of technology, the amount of Buzzer types has expanded greatly through genetic engineering.
Liliates as a species are numerous, but the vast majority are commoners who lack the advanced biotech the higher classes of the sanctum carry about. Their high populations are more due to their long life spans as opposed to fucking like rabbits; a Liliate can live 3 centuries on average.
The diet of a Liliate consists of water, sunlight, fertilized soil and dead, rotting corpses along with a wide range of nectars or bloods (depending on their role) for the Buzzers.
The Verdant Sanctum's overall culture is actually quite artistically inclined, at least for the vast majority. They treat their ecosystems and biome modification as art, and therefore is not usually trying to be efficient in terms of sustainability or ecological harmony. Instead of being in tune with nature, they are obsessed with tuning nature, tinkering with ecospheres like how an engineer tinkers with vehicles and machines. The common Liliate live in quite open conditions with the closest things to homes being shelter systems from harsh weather or incomplete worlds. The patron Liliate tend to live in spaceship terrariums, only being allowed to go on world by an elder patron. An elder patron is only allowed to go on world by the verdant one, who is rooted on the home world. The word Buzzer is never actually used to describe the species that is in communion with the Liliate; Buzzer is a slang term invented by some other species. The Liliate themselves do not really distinguished Buzzers from the Liliate. It's as absurd to them as claiming your tongue or pinky is a separate species. Or claiming white blood cells are separate from humans. In the Verdant Sanctum, the "Buzzers" pretty much act as and perceive themselves as extensions of the Liliate. The queens may be psychologically independent from their Liliate, but they pretty much see themselves as part of the same mind. Despite this, the Buzzers pretty much have autonomy in what the Liliate is saying since when a Liliate talk, it's really the coordinate buzzing of the Buzzers. If a Buzzer queen is lost, it is like losing a part of one's personality.
The Liliate have a great interest in life in general, going as far as to raid and abduct life on alien worlds should there be no other means to obtain it. On several occasions already there are Liliate who have put multiple alien species on a planet and tried making a functional ecosystem out of it simply to see if they can create harmony out of completely alien beings (at least alien beings who can breathe the same air). They see technology as a necessary evil that has enabled them to spread life outside of their single star system and their relationship with technology is very mixed as a result.
Their economy is pretty much built around constant expansion, for they need to keep colonizing and terraforming more worlds in order to keep growing as a civilization. The common Liliate go without money, instead utilizing barter systems. Patrons however, do have a system of wealth that is more based in favors than in actual currency- the better a patron is doing, the more they are allowed to commission to the common Liliate. Trade with aliens is done exclusively in barter, however.
Their relationship with other forms of intelligent life who have embraced metal-based technology to far greater degrees is not all that great, however they may find common cause with an ideologically similar species. Their system of blessing worlds may cause them to get into major trouble with another society. They have many other art forms beyond ecological art including art that humans would refer to as "art" like their large scale gardening, rock art, symbol drawing and painting. (sadly their paintings can't be fully enjoyed, let alone understood by human eyes).
The Liliate have trends in sharing Buzzers between one and another, it is sort of like sharing parts of one’s personality or parts of one’s mind with another. The gain/loss of Buzzers is seen more in the lines of gaining or losing knowledge and character as opposed to gaining or losing body parts.
Various guilds of patrons dedicated to a cause do exist- the Guild For Sprouting Minds being the most controversial of them due to their dedication to go about their research no matter how unethical the action. That organization only being allowed to exist because it has the backing of the elder patron Orange Elder under Unyielding Cause (or OEUC). Besides guilds, patrons who share a home ship in common are referred to as a "pod", with patrons of a pod in many cases being loyal only to others of their pod and their designated elder patron.
The origins of the verdant sanctum date about a millennium back when the home world of the sanctum, Yvuzzu.
The sanctum arose when the Liliate nearly died out as a species from a vague event known only as the weltering, from there things got better for their kind. Eventually the sanctum started to transform worlds blessed by the Verdant One in their galaxy in relative peace. They had to deal with other alien civilizations from times, a issue of which had drove them to develop their biotech arsenals and may have gotten locked into a couple wars due to their horrible diplomatic skills, but overall managed to keep to their plan of making the universe green without much worries. That was until the universe collapsed.
Look at the outlook section for more info.
The phase transition to a new universe has caused a massive rift in the higher echelons of the sanctum, to the point where the last Verdant One was banished into the depths of space since the last verdant one is seen to have failed in her ordained task of seeding the galaxy they once inhabited. That galaxy now never, ever will be full of life now that the last universe has been destroyed. Now the elder patrons by week four near the end of their search for a new leader. The commoners are a bit dismayed by there being less stars at night, but continue their lives as usual while the patrons are in obsessive panic haphazardly scouting out the new universe, the sheer disruption having destroyed centuries of planning in seconds. Even after four weeks there is still quite a bit of adjusting to do!
Technology: They use biotech and like to use all sorts of lasers.
There is four main fields of tech in the sanctum that get the most regular funding from the elder patrons
Verdant technologies (basically biotech), plastic/organic technologies (essentially many forms of plastics used mainly in the spacecraft), chemical technologies (goes without saying) and their spectral technologies (which are a wide spectrum of advanced chemical lasers that have a extreme variance of wavelength). All the three main sections of technology are diverse in application. A few specific super technologies will be labeled after this overview of the general tech.
Spectral technologies regularly find use as ship propellers, a means to give sunlight in dark places, signal makers, energy transferring devices and as a way to fry some brains or warm a cold planet in some cases. In effect, they use lasers of all sorts of sizes and all over the spectrum. Some of them good handheld lasers like their standard issue laser pistols that a Liliate in the field of combat may carry around a couple dozen of in their viney masses. Others large cannons they use on their ships to disorient and intercept missiles.
Organic technologies are technologies derived from carbon and are considered biotech by the Verdant Sanctum. Deemed a necessary evil, as someone in the verdant sanctum managed to figure out how to make a warp drive almost completely out of various types of plastic a while back, organic technologies are a crucial component of spacecraft. However, the patrons have to live around carbon derived materials, whole spaceships being a mesh of verdant tech and plastics. That hasn't been good on their psyche.
Chemical technologies are simply the many forms of chemicals derived from living organisms and reapplicated for mass use in terraforming, soil fertilizing and lots of horrible ways to kill people. Like, a lot of horrible ways. Burning nerves? Check. Hallucinogens mixed with solidification of blood? Check. Knock out gas? Check. The list goes on!
By far the most diverse part of the Sanctum's technologies has to be their biotech, or verdant tech. It is verdant tech that enables their form of computers, enables them to gain vast quantities of energy from stars, enables them to terraform worlds and allows them to genetically modify, control and manipulate life, ecologies and more. They have all sorts of "drones" based on various alien creatures they made into what some might call 'wetware' nominally used to handle anything not related to the management of ecologies- that is the common liliate's domain. They also have found application as vehicles and shock troops on the field.
The dark side of the Liliate are that they hold a vast library of killer diseases that could wipe out entire worlds should just a few get the strain. Not that they'd ever use such a thing, right?
Military Structure: Patrons lead while the commoners get levied in defense situations and drones/various forms of buzzer deployment are used as cannon fodder.
There are patrons known as "troops" whose job it is to run the battlefield, literally. These patrons are trained specifically to deal with conflict and are taught rather specific and insidious strategies to go about fighting enemies who may have a edge in direct combat. Levied commoners tend to be decently armed and generally are much more defense focused than the patron troops.
Notes; Liliate/Buzzer are just terms. Their more alien name is Vznvvnuuvuu. Vznvuvu?
So they are cultural relativists, good so that means they're not going to push that inane idea the Ruling class should distract everyone with pointless political shenanigans.
