Well first off EVERYONE, thanks so much for graciously taking the time to respond so thoughtfully. It's a pretty nice feeling to be the new member and yet everyone has extended themselves so kindly.
As to the topic, the timeline I'm rather fixed on. If this, that or the other doesn't fit in, I'd rather change that than change the number of years this all takes place. Past that let me try and respond to each post in that you took the time to work with me.
I'll edit the quotes to just touch on specific points.
I don't know if that would be enough time to see any meaningful evolutionary change.
I agree 100%. What I'm considering are minimal things, behavioral, though mostly Darwinian evolutionary changes. A good example of that I can pass along a good anecdote. When I began bow-hunting deer, tree-stands were not that common. So when you would use an elevated stand it all but eliminated good hunting practices, even scent, the biggie they'd be fooled by assuming you were farther away... In perhaps 10-years, tree-stands didn't help. In fact, they hurt your success rate. However, it was speculated due to their short lifespans that 'deer
had not learned to look up.'
What most agreed upon was that the deer that 'by nature' never looked up were harvested. In short order those who did, bred, passing on their particular instincts. In short order, those that didn't look up perished, those that did lived, and within just a few generations, most deer looked up... Naturally, when you'd then hunt on the ground, your success went up.
So that's a good example of survival of the fittest, their natural inclinations insuring they would breed, and thus their traits were passed on until most deer had been born with that trait.
Here are some examples lying about the ether that may constitute or perhaps may help you construct 'reasonable' evolutionary outcomes:
8 Examples of Evolution in Action - Listverse or
6 Animals That Are Rapidly Evolving
I think the problem, from a scientific viewpoint, is that you are looking at highly specific case of changes of environment for the animal or plant in question,
who already will occupy a highly specific niche.
Just perusing through your assumptions: I would have thought that desertification would also be a very strong environmental process in a warming world. You need loads of water for tropical biomes, as the Maya found even when they were making empires in the tropics - even there drought could hit them harshly. Yes a warmer world may have increased rainfall - but not enough for everywhere. (Also the main climatic 'rhythms' of the world should still 'sort of' be in place - I don't see how the regions around the equator will not continue to get a dry season and a wet season, for example!) Remember too that most of the interior regions of the continents are likely to get scorched and dried rather than get temperate/tropical and wetter.
Another thought, on the grand scale, is that perhaps in your world the oceanic conveyer belt has been disrupted (because of the large loss of ice) and now as the water no longer circulates, there are areas of the coast and shallow seas where stagnant water is building up. Areas where anaerobic bacteria thrive, colouring the water red and producing hydrogen sulphide that kills all oxygen breathing life in the area?
...did the nuclear war remove the ozone layer?
Not sure I agree with your movement of hair towards scales.
Great stuff all of it! I'll check out your links. That's a great point about "already" filling a very specific niche, definitely one to keep in mind... Not just from a survivability aspect, yet also demanding that they fill an inline niche.
Great points on the environment, yet let me say this... When I was speaking of 'tropical, sub-tropical, and temperate zones,' the way I envisioned this was due to currents, desalination, weather patterns, loss of ozone, etc., the tropical zone (latitudinally) would expand north and south. As it expands the sub-tropical and temperate zones are pushed N/S. Naturally, initially that wouldn't mean much, yet in the top 2/3's of the U.S. it would be too much for the natural plant life.
The big kicker there average temperature.
Some would wither, yet in contrast others would thrive... However, those that wither are agricultural based, wildfires would become a greater issue, drought, flooding... In a nutshell, just like the animals they occupy a niche and require certain conditions. That could happen very quickly, less than a year, meaning if you say live on a farm in Iowa, it now may be dustbowl, so to survive you leave.
I like the idea of your toxic bacteria and algae, as a Trout fisherman (yeah, they're all gonners
), that could serve me even more in making living off the land impossible... Which is the point.
As to the ozone layer and nukes... I'm not sure what they would do (will look that up). The ones at issue would be the four high altitude air-bursts (for show by the Mad Clown... grrr). In anycase, once we get the perma-frost involved, that will be a biggie (will answer that farther down). As to the 'toward scales,' that was just brainstorming. Still hairs, I envisioned that they would layer-up. IOW, a strip of thin-none, a strip of dense, and so on. The point being, a dense protective layer that could raise up (which they already do). In any case, I agree with everyone... Too much too fast.
I think you're underestimating how long evolution takes.
Massive environmental instability is more likely to cause migration and extinction long before you get evolutionary adaptation.....
....I think for what you want you either need to have a much longer time gap or introduce a modifier. For example scientists tinkering with genetics under a program of conservation and trying to force bigger evolutionary jumps by tinkering with the genetic code. Then releasing (deliberate or even accidental) viable breeding populations into the wild to repopulate....
...Also on climate change and water levels its good to keep in mind that polar ice cap melt contributes to sea level rise only where the ice is on land. Floating ice has far less effect because its already part of the ocean. So the loss of massive land ice sheets and permafrost is more likely to impact.
That said because you are throwing in massive nuclear impacts you've got a bit more room to play around with things how you want...
I agree with all of your points though "time" is out, and I don't think I'm really looking for some post apocalyptic world with mutant critters... I'm just simply trying to consider what changes might occur in that timeframe given those conditions.
Good point on the ice, I recall it's something like 80-90% is underwater... However in our scenario, I think we're looking at a rather thorough initial melt (both poles) and have already considered via maps what various resulting sea-rises would be, even up to a total melt off. It would not be as devastating landmass wise to the U.S. However, I need to look at what it would really take, and ultimately, what does it mean... As to the nukes, once again, there is only one nuke impact of consequence, and beyond escalating environmental conditions, I had no intention of doing more with it.
K2, I think if you increased your time spans by a factor of 10 it might convince better - ie, 150-200 years from now. It's not just the evolution argument - mentioned above - but also the fact that climate change happens slowly.
We've had centuries of uncontrolled pollution, and the USA alone has tested hundreds of nuclear devices, the permafrost is already melting and so are the icecaps - so the argument that the environment suddenly goes to post in less than 2 decades might not come across as so convincing.
Well, again the timeframe I'm fixed on... Which granted saves the trouble of physical/genetic evolutionary change, which is a good thing (that aspect simply a footnote. The people and society the issue. However, how would the world 'is' I do need to present). And I get what you're saying about climate change. What I'm wanting to do though is push it enough that we get a rapid expansion of problems, just long enough to get the people to panic, and then stick to that bad decision assuming it will simply get worse.
I'll speak more on the 'singular' nuke in a moment. The secondary biggie here is escalating the ice melt (which takes less than many realize... Single digits all the difference), although as the sea warms, it begins releasing carbon-dioxide exacerbating the situation. That said, the permafrost is the huge deal.
Check this out:
To cause enough shift to melt the permafrost, even just a little begins a rapidly cascading effect due to the massive tonnage of methane it keeps in place. It's one of those magnitude sorts of thing... Leave it alone it takes centuries, yet as it begins to thaw (say southern reaches) what it releases obviously adds to the conditions inspiring the thaw, and in short order it begins to snowball, 1-10-100-1,000 etc..
That's my target here I believe. The poles help adjust currents and desalination issues, sea rise etc., yet the permafrost is the tipping point. So everything I'm suggesting is to simply bump up the temp enough that this evaporates, that burns, weather patterns change, currents, etc., all until it's enough to get the permafrost moving beyond typical thawing.
Although, even that sounds worse than my goal (which I'll sum up with).
I'm going to do insects (because I've got my own entomologist, and have absorbed quite a bit of information in these matters).
In the case of an insect population finding itself in a resource-rich environment, in my specific example a sylvatic bug moving into a domestic or peridomestic situation with a high availability of blood, deformed or unfit individuals can survive - in particular asymmetrical individuals (which are obviously incapable of flight) rise from an almost imperceptible level to a large percentage of the population within three or four generations, without any perceptible genetic modification - just they wouldn't have survived to breed in a competitive environment. Here, natural selection is for pesticide resistance, rather than optimised scuttling. The larger the brood, the more r strategy the species, the more marked the tendency. As they are very well adapted to their original life style, this tendency toward diversity could be a survival factor if conditions change massively.
Genuine speciation, genetic drift, can occur fast in a situation where a very small base population expands to fill a larger ecological niche - for example there is a group of Triatomin bugs in Indonesia, related only to South American species but incapable of cross breeding with them, where the most likely explanation is that a tiny group, maybe just one gravid female, made the trip in a Dutch trading ship doing the triangle route - so less than two hundred years to establish and stabilise a colony. Larger lifeforms willgenerally be slower, as change is by generation, and the more fecund the more likely a useful characteristic will come to the fore. Equally, birds and mammals that succor their young will be more stable than beasts that leave their eggs to hatch in the sun, and dogs have much more plasticity in their genome than say field mice. So yes, two or three centuries for small beasts, extending as the size increases with maybe a couple of thousand years (without deliberate intervention) for cows, horses and wildebeest. (I'm not expecting elephants, tigers or rhinos to make it).
That is much, much faster than evolution generally progresses, but massive culling accelerates the process.
That's an great point, and one wherein I can present those lesser genetically ideal individuals to
seem as though an evolved species, but simply they can finally be competitive to even perhaps excelling, to even dominating the species. I think that's a viewpoint or way to approach some things that might demonstrate a glaring difference (instead of the classic mutation) within reason. In the end, such a condition I think would actually be an evolution of sorts. They would excel and propagate where the 'ideal' would not to the same extent, and though not truly evolving, the species shifts its path from one ideal to another.
A lot to consider there, a worthwhile tool.
I'm not trying to rip your idea apart here, but to point out a couple of logs which might trip you up.
As has been said, evolution does not work on this time scale. ...(etc.)
The second thing is that were a supervolcano to really rupture, you wouldn't be looking at heat, other than in the immediate vicinity and aftermath. Instead, you would rapidly have a volcanic winter the likes of which have not been seen in recorded history.
If--and I specify if--you combined that with rapid but sustained heating elsewhere (but the weapons you're looking at (as I understand it from your description) as a cause are short-term heat), then you would have the nightmare of massive hot and cold fronts ripping through the Northern continents, which contain 52% of the Earth's above sea level landmass, and just over 75% of the human population.
So, look less at evolutionary changes and more to environmental effects causing physical changes, such as weaker populations due to poor diet (there will always be some individual/species which buck the trend), disease causing disfigurement, and individuals or some small groups faring better than others (often, even when other members of their own families do not).
And, look at what is causing the greenhouse effect in your scenario - a reactor which does not switch off might be more realistic, but even they depend upon fuel being fed into them, and have manual failsafes. The fact that we're not that far from a possible climate tipping point already means it probably wouldn't take much. In which case, maybe leave out the Wyoming caldera, which is kind of grandstanding for the disaster movie effect -- looks snazzy, but may only add complications.
Evolutionary aspects aside for the moment... Regarding the caldera, I wasn't intending (and in retrospect I would need to make that more clear in the story) to set off a super-volcano, cause it to erupt and so on. My intention was to simply open things up enough that the additional heat (though not too much smoke or like you state, then it's counteracts everything I want to happen). The point being to add one more domino to the chain of events to get the weather shifting and so on, all eventually leading to a climate shift.
I read an interesting article a number of years ago wherein they proved out how harvesting a single field of crops actually affected weather patterns. They applied that down to even someone mowing their lawn, building a home, whatever. No matter how miniscule, it nevertheless had an effect. So the point with the caldera chain fracture was not to cause some '2012' mass destruction, but just to add one more big nudge to the whole equation.
The weather issues I already have covered in the initial novel, disease, famine and so on with the health of the animals (which can be rather startling) and was also already considered. As to the reactor/greenhouse gas, I'm still of a sense that the big key to all of this will be the permafrost issue. That and CO2 release from the sea will do more to that end than 100 reactors.
In any case... Since this is progressing from one novel (where none of this matters all that much, the story about the people in the crowded city) into sequels, I am having a hard time giving up Wyoming/Montana due to other ideas. So I'm thinking I need to shift my singular impact down to the Cheyenne area. I'd still like to hear further thoughts regarding the caldera fracture, or do you feel it's an all or nothing?
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All that said, thanks again everyone for so much time devoted to answering me!
In the end, I'm not looking to bring on the next ice age (which how it all progresses, and what happens after is not the focus of the series).
The point is to make things just bad enough that agricultural self-sufficiency, even a hunter-gather lifestyle simply won't work (for the masses in the short term). Most people as it stands could never survive off the land and with that even gone (temporarily), they migrate to the cities to survive. When the cities start to falter (very soon after), the federal government states they cannot help over such a great distance, so the people consolidate in the Northeast Megaregion.
So it would be a year of it environmentally all falling apart, the people migrate en masse, and once there then what? You now have 417-million where there was less than 55-million, yet nothing coming in. At that point, with the world outside of the region now
believed to be unlivable, conditions decline inside to the unimaginable, and naturally those in power take advantage of it.
That said, even the government inside doesn't look outside having much bigger fish to fry (if they even had fish). As it stands after it all starts, in 6-7 years the environment stabilizes, and starts a very slow retreat back toward previous conditions.
At 10-years the focus of the story takes place (the environment not the point of any of the story, simply the catalyst). A rare few have looked outside, and in the distance they realize the world didn't die. More so, a few will have endured outside of the city, and ultimately after a couple more years (and a couple more novels), individuals will begin to come and go.
By that time however, the majority will be dependent upon this new way of living. So the series will then branch off to what is going on within the city and the struggles there, yet added to it will be the adventures of those venturing outward and what they find.
That is the moment all of this comes into play.
Thank you ALL so much again for the help and letting me talk this out with you. It has given me a lot of ideas, insights and knowledge, and is more help than I can express.
K2
