What if a self-sufficient planet colony was alone?

[Bill Phil]

14 hours ago, Scotius said:

Twenty thousand is enough to keep sufficient genetic diversity. Our knowledge about population genetics is quite solid actually. There are rare races of horses ,dogs and other animals with pupulations counted in hundreds only - yet through careful breeding we managed to keep them relatively healthy and still viable. In Poland for example, population of forest bison\wisent is over 500 animals and growing. All of them are descendants of 8(!) animals that survived in captivity while wild population went extinct.

Oh yes it's enough, for a good long time. But eventually some bad things may start to occur, especially if the colonists are randomly selected. Even now any two humans randomly selected from anywhere in the world are more related than any random individuals from other ape species. We've done fine so far but a bottleneck like that would be dangerous given time, especially with no extra genes infused in all that time. The gene pool would just be those 20k people. And they're very likely to be related in some way.

[tater]

Lunar gravity is very likely harmful to humans over long time periods without the same sort of exercise regimens used on the ISS, and even then would likely lead to irreparable problems.  The best bet would be to use that foothold to build O'Neil colonies.

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, tater said:

O'Neil colonies

-ny. They are 20000 at all.

Eugenized Eloi in O'Neil orbital capital and random lunar Morloks to mine resources. As usual.

[Zeiss Ikon]

14 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

The gene pool would just be those 20k people.

Genetic evidence indicates that, about 75000 years ago, a supervolcano eruption and its climatic effects seem to have reduced the human (presumed not including Neanderthal, Denisovan, and Floresiensis) population to as few as 100 individuals.  Maybe that's why humans are so closely related compared to apes?

[Codraroll]

Okay, it's presumed that the self-sufficient moon colony has a manufacturing base, and that all necessary electronics and machinery can be repaired and/or even manufactured from scratch with materials from the colony.

Luckily, the colony would only need to stay by itself for a few decades. With no complex life to infect, and an individual lifespan of minutes to hours, any plague bacteria would die out rather quickly. Intense radiation would be a longer-term problem, but luckily high intensity also means the material "burns out" more quickly. Intense radiation corresponds to a short half-life, after all. Of course, some concentrations of radioactive waste would be lethal for centuries or millennia, but you wouldn't manage to spread dead-within-hours-of-exposure levels of radiation all over the planet. The Earth is simply too big for that.

So I guess the first thing the colony would do, would be sending probes with dosimeters down the well. Trying to map the areas of higher radiation, and surveying for useful materials. A city would still contain vast amounts of scavenge-able materials, just scattered about a little. There could very well be some mining robots coming next (assuming they figure out a way for them to survive landing - luckily, areobraking with parachutes or even glide-landing on intact airports is an option).

The lunar colonists would eventually have to master remote-controlled robot operations. They would have to have a robot operation going on on Earth for decades, gathering materials enough to manufacture lunar rockets to return scavenge to the moon, or hardened radiation shelters (has to be a known technology to the moon, as a lunar colony is dependent on them anyway) so colonists can come down to Earth again. Living underground on Earth without a biosphere wouldn't be much different from living underground on the Moon, except that the human body is much better adjusted to the gravity.

From there on, everything would have to revolve around bringing in more resources, filtering out and scrubbing away radioactive isotopes, and using them to continue human survival in underground shelters, or radiation-proofed suits/vehicles on the surface. Life would go on both on Earth and the Moon, eventually.

[sevenperforce]

3 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

Genetic evidence indicates that, about 75000 years ago, a supervolcano eruption and its climatic effects seem to have reduced the human (presumed not including Neanderthal, Denisovan, and Floresiensis) population to as few as 100 individuals.  Maybe that's why humans are so closely related compared to apes?

As few as 100? No, definitely not. Likely closer to 5,000.

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

as few as 100 individuals

Afaik, ~10k.

And unlikely Antartics, Easter Island, etc were contaminated by the plague.

Edited June 11, 2017 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

43 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

As few as 100? No, definitely not. Likely closer to 5,000.

Yes, note that cheetahs has an even stronger bottleneck around that time so strong all cheetah is siblings who would accept transplants from each other.
This is an long term danger as am disease could kill them all even if population is thriving. 

[tater]

I think that people will never live on the moon as a "colony" where they don't tend to leave for the reason I stated above. Given the lo gravity, you'd end up with Homo sapiens lunensis at the very least.

[Zeiss Ikon]

3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

As few as 100? No, definitely not. Likely closer to 5,000.

Okay, apparently the estimate has been revised upward since I first read about this, and now stands at 1000 to 10,000 breeding pairs.  The upper end of that is about the size of the colony the OP postulated, however -- so humanity has seemingly been through such an event in the past (even if it wasn't due to Toba, there still exists a genetic bottleneck between about 100,000 and 50,000 years ago).

[tater]

The Toba theory looks like it is not all agreed upon, and there have been papers refuting it, but proposing an alternate, longer timeframe bottleneck. Any paleoanthropologists here?

[upbeta01]

On 6/10/2017 at 10:10 AM, daniel l. said:

Meanwhile on Earth, a deadly plague breaks out, rumored to have been created inside a laboratory belonging to one of the major nations. This disease is completely unstoppable, and within weeks, all multi-cellular life on Earth is dead, and the atmosphere is saturated with radiation, as nuclear weapons had been used in a last-ditch attempt to destroy infected nations. The planet is uninhabitable.

 

I want to take a bite on this concept.

I am skeptical as to, is it possible for any breakouts to reach the space outside earth's atmosphere. Say, the breakout virus is adaptive that it can live on any isolation (area) with say gases that is present on Earth and the outer space.

[sevenperforce]

48 minutes ago, tater said:

The Toba theory looks like it is not all agreed upon, and there have been papers refuting it, but proposing an alternate, longer timeframe bottleneck. Any paleoanthropologists here?

Not a paleoanthropologist, but I play one on TV.

There was definitely a bottleneck at Toba, but it was limited to one human subspecies and it may not have been as severe even as 10,000 breeding pairs.

[tater]

I worked with a few a long time ago, but they are the sort of people I'd feel like a goon asking without an appropriately well-researched question so I don't look like an idiot. It gives me something to read about that's off my usual areas of interest, so this thread has had some real value  .

[kerbiloid]

Wall of text.

Spoiler

1. How did it happen that no rescue ships from the Earth have escaped to the lunar base?
Is it a protected secret facility?
Sanctuary of dark cultists hiding from the Earth?
Base of rebels fighting with the Earth government?
Strange unknown experiment like in Cube movies?
Secret biolab investigating an alien species?
Alien crash site and a secret facility founded to research it?

2. How did it happen that 20k lunar city stays untouched by the infection?
No flights? No contacts?
How could the lunar base no about the pandemy before somebody from the Earth brought infection aboard?

3. What made 20k people to live (obviously not for just a month) in the ill low-G conditions?
They were forced to? They were prisoners? Soldiers? Dark cultists in their runaway? Space maniacs? Criminals?

4. Why was this base built as self-sufficient?
This was a secret vault? Hidden sanctuary? Absolutely isolated biolab studying weird species? Maybe infections?

5. If the base status was not legal, why didn't the Earth close it?
Or it tried? And this intention has started the chain of events?

6. How could the infection kill all its food (humans)?
How could it kill all ethnicities - with their immune difference?

7. How could it happen that local Earth governments didn't try to assault and capture this safe base when the pandemy already had started?
Say, to save the tops and their families.

* * *

I have a theory.

A lunar expedition discovered an unknown crash site with strange organic remains inside.
To provide researches, a huge lunar research center was urgently founded around the crash site.
To avoid any possible contamination, the research base was equipped to be self-sufficient, was protected with numerous anti-airair?! on the moon?vacuumcraft guns or so.

All contacts between the Earth and the Moon had been reduced to the absolute minimum.
200 researches were supported by 20k (100 per 1) workers, engineers and so, with in-situ industrial facilities to cease any possible need in physical contacts with the Earth.
Chemistry, mechanics, electronics - everything could be made by the themselves.
This was a real space colony, not just a base.

But something went wrong.

Not many people were motivated to live for years (or maybe even decades) on the Moon, in bad air and low gravity.
Such conditions would definitely cause health problems or even kill them before the contract was over.

Only two categories were ready to face this destiny. Those, who had no choice.
And another ones, who their choice made.

Most of workers and engineers just agreed to exchange their health on money, career or other material things.
They were just doing their work in conditions worse than anywhere on Earth.

Scientists were enthusiasts, possessed by the greatest honor for any scientist: research the gift from another world.

But there was something more...
Not all the scientists served the science just as science.

The alien organic agent was not dangerous, it didn't kill anybody. Vice versa, it protected everything from dying.
That's how it survived the space journey and crash.

Some of the researchers were united not only by the student "fraternities", "sororities" and other drink clubs.
They got a unique chance to raise their secret cult.
And they were ready to put their lives on the altar, taking almost every second post in the lunar scientific department, with no return.
And their aim was not just the knowledge.

... The shells with the alien agent fell down far from the Earth cities. And it took about two months before somebody noticed that something was going wrong.
Nobody was dying from strange disease.
Even more: nobody was dying.
No epidemiological countermeasures made effect, because there was nothing to cure.
Just a body was still walking after with thirty gun shots.

When the source of the problem got understood, several spaceships were sent to capture or eliminate the lunar base.
But its defence systems shot them down even before they could reach the Moon orbit.

Zombocalypse caused nuclear strikes in attempt to stop the pandemy, but with no visible effect.
And the only remedy was hidden in the lunar base dungeon.

The lunar cultists took the power. They had a self-sufficient lunar base equipped enough to build anything it needs.
But the problem was low gravity. Now there was no need to stay on the Moon, loosing their health.
So, they have built Lunark, a large lunar orbital station for 1000 persons and left the Moon with loyal followers.
And letting other 19k be the industrial personnel to provide resources and products on the Moon facilities.
(Though, with the small doses of the alien agent this was not so deadly. It was curing most of low-G effects providing long and productive life time).