Real Life ‘Inspiration’ for a Cyberpunk Game

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In The Neo Frontier, the setting I am working on, (280 pages total at this point), I have a Mikaye Period going on. It is a high level of solar activity that makes wires/ electrical systems/ radios dangerous/ dodgy at best. Thus minimal radio and no broadcast TV (are the things we will notice). Sparkers, as electrical specialists are known, deal with this danger every day. Batteries/ Power Cells are the tools of the day. And even some power generators are nothing more than receivers of this energy.

So I stumbled over this video while researching. I discovered that the cyberpunk future/ now might be more Mad Max. That the wired future of CP2013 and Shadow Run might of been more correct. Want to see the future?



Now if you live in Texas, the power policy is against catastrophism. This is why they had complications a few seasons back when the grid there broke due to weather. There are countries around the world with a similar policy view. A CME of note and it is the stone (or steam if lucky) age for them for a couple of days, and power will take months if not years to fix.

A new view.
 
The Article There are more cool images as well. Remember, the world has "bright spots". As well as positive zones that will break.



I think that there are a lot of good ideas within this typology. There is a great transition between above and underground spaces, indoor and outdoor spaces, and the built and natural environment. The overall design is very appealing. It is definitely somewhere people would want to be.

Looks cool but consider the reality of economics and imagine the inevitable recession that evicts some number of commercial or residential tenants. Less income means less maintenance and you'll see those waterfalls turn to drips that leave green stains running down the walls and neglected trees and shrubs overgrowing from patches of brown weeds and invasive flora. However, we are in the dawn of the robots so who knows?
 
Okay, not real life... probably not very close... but so very cyberpunk if they can do vat beef and cell cloning.

t-5-4.jpg
 
My only thought is "What if they could...."

Actuallly no. My better chronicle thought would be, "What if try parts and accidentally succeed?" You might have a more cyberpunk world as the control would be haphazard at best.

 
Someone tried to convince me that this is totally a Cyberpunk song. What do you think?




This is the setting they came up with....

THE SETTING

When it was first built, the giant city orbiting the Earth at a LaGrange point had a fancy, aspirational name, but by now nobody calls it by that. Instead they call it "Heartbeat City". No one knows exatly how this nickname came about. The most common theory is that, before the sound bafflers were installed on the station before it was built, the thrumming of the machinery that ran it sounded like a giant heartbeat. Some people claim that, in certain parts of station, you can still hear the heartbeat. Other people go further and say that, even if you can't hear it consciously, you can still sense it somehow. They say that tends to make people a little nuts.

The orbital city, which was launched with such promise, has instead become your typical Cyberpunk metropolis, the gap between rich and poor yawning ever more widely. Some people are fighting back against what is happening. Others just try and survive.

Heartbeat City has one attribute that makes it attractive to a a certain type of person. It's government was set up to be completely independent of any nation on Earth or anywhere else. As part of it's independence, it refuses to enter into extradition treaties with any other entitiy. As a result, corporations seeking to evade the reach of the law have set up shop here, as have various criminal syndicates, solo criminals, and people just wanting to start over for whatever reason. It's not completely the Wild West, once in Heartbeat City corporations and people have to abide by it's laws and/or deal with law enforcement. It's not exactly a walk in the park to get to and get into Heartbeat City, either. The corps and the syndicates have handled this in their usual ways.

One side effect of Heartbeat City's "No Extradition" policy is that those wishing to capture certain criminals have turned to the private sector to accomplish this. One of the biggest and most profitable bounty hunting companies in the city is the Huntr app and it's hundreds, possibly thousands, of independent contractors. Many denizens of Heartbeat City use Huntr as a side hustle to their other jobs. The joke around the city is that there is a word for people like that. "Dead".
 
I like The Cars but prefer more punk in my Cyberpunk.
 
Maldives-Floating-City.jpg


Given the rising sea levels and population, building out on to the oceans seems like a plan. Someone planned this on, which will be different than most of the wet towns. Many of the buildings were originally built up when the floats were put in. Some were just frames. The rest were built in with that materials were at hand or could be salvaged. It looks like a good place to live... from a few hundred feet up.

This is a cyberpunk chronicle after all.

Inside is basically spawl with less pollution. There is overcrowding. There are missing utilities. There are secret labs cooking up drugs and biofuel. Cowboys ride the net on Decks, doing work all around the world. Fishermen try to catch fish and hope they are not mutated. There is surprising less crime than one would expect, but that is mostly a function of population levels and people knowing each other (and their stuff).
 
chuckdee chuckdee What? You don't want other peoples asses in your face while traveling? Specially when they're eating a bunch of processed fast food and drinks? Come on Chuckdee! Live on the edge! Live on the edge of the olfactory sensory bandwith! lol

Seriously, those seats look like a fucking nightmare to me, I'm taller though and I find airline seats these days to be torture devices.
 
I'd be curious about the weight analysis involved here. At some point, piling more passengers into a plane is going increase fuel costs past the benefit of selling more tickets. Given this is just college student's homework, I'm doubtful this is happening.
chuckdee said:
One of these seats should cost a lot less

View attachment 62144
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Would you rather have more legroom but have someone farting in your face, or no leg room but no farts in your face?

I'd probably go for more legroom. Nobody is going to be safe from farting in an airplane cabin.
 
You won't notice the farting in your face when little kids are kicking you directly in the head rather than the middle of your back.

Plus, these seem like a VERY economical approach. The chairs probably crumple into urns to manage your remains when the plane crashes.
 
Telok said:
Horseshoe crabs. Blood is copper base instead of iron (hence blue) and valuable in medical testing applications. Apparently this doesn't immedately kill them, so they're returned to the sea. Although there are issues and higher motality than usual surrounding it.
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Yeah it's fascinating, they're learning quite a lot from them. Just one very ancient organism.
 
In 30 years time, those of us still alive, are going to be thinking our 2023 ideas of dystopia were so quaint and comforting.
 
In 2053, all the humans who would have been Matrix-style batteries have been replaced by cheaper solar cells that are maintained by the incessant movement of foraging roaches.

Because we've already invented that technology for humans. And you KNOW we want to miniaturize it.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-018-0024-3

We're pretty much enthusiastically pursuing our own extinction.

Sorry. Is that too bleak? Maybe AIs will like disco balls.
 
rumble said:
In 2053, all the humans who would have been Matrix-style batteries have been replaced by cheaper solar cells that are maintained by the incessant movement of foraging roaches.

Because we've already invented that technology for humans. And you KNOW we want to miniaturize it.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-018-0024-3

We're pretty much enthusiastically pursuing our own extinction.

Sorry. Is that too bleak? Maybe AIs will like disco balls.
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Black Mirror - another cautionary tale turned instruction manual.
 
rumble said:
In 2053, all the humans who would have been Matrix-style batteries have been replaced by cheaper solar cells that are maintained by the incessant movement of foraging roaches.

Because we've already invented that technology for humans. And you KNOW we want to miniaturize it.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-018-0024-3

We're pretty much enthusiastically pursuing our own extinction.

Sorry. Is that too bleak? Maybe AIs will like disco balls.
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It's good for military and police; I heard them working on it back in the 2000's.
 
Ideally, cyberpunk is about using technology in new and surprising ways. The tech is designed for one thing, but used by "the edge folk" or "punks" for other uses.


www.youtube.com

Taylor Swift is using this at her Eras Tour

Taylor Swift is using some cool tech at her new Eras tour! Specifically, these wristbands are responsible for these crazy works of art in the crowd.But my qu...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 

Would you use an artificial womb? (I would)​




For me and the Neo Fronteirs folks, this is an ectogenesis pod.

Once you have artificial wombs you can make artificial lifeforms and species (it is the next step). Thus the great Chimp/Gorilla + Human hybrid that the Soviets were so aggressively persuing in the beginning could be done. (The main issue is that you had to have a big human to carry them to term, as the human hips/ birth canal was required, plus a "hefty" woman. They did not go that far, as they were trying to take the Human out of the equation.) Various "Gamma" to use the Neo Frontiers term, could easily be developed and raised. As well as developing Alphas (humans who have the "higher end" of human genome - stronger, faster, smarter, healthier) and other genetic products. (And that is another ethics/ legal debate, are artificially made humans "people" - thus citizens or products?)
 
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MoonHunter said:

Would you use an artificial womb? (I would)​




For me and the Neo Fronteirs folks, this is an ectogenesis pod.

Once you have artificial wombs you can make artificial lifeforms and species (it is the next step). Thus the great Chimp/Gorilla + Human hybrid that the Soviets were so aggressively persuing in the beginning could be done. (The main issue is that you had to have a big human to carry them to term, as the human hips/ birth canal was required, plus a "hefty" woman. They did not go that far, as they were trying to take the Human out of the equation.) Various "Gamma" to use the Neo Frontiers term, could easily be developed and raised. As well as developing Alphas (humans who have the "higher end" of human genome - stronger, faster, smarter, healthier) and other genetic products. (And that is another ethics/ legal debate, are artificially made humans "people" - thus citizens or products?)
Click to expand...

I didn't expect to see this kind of debate in my lifetime:shock:!
 
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