In the summer of 1886, a sudden frost hit the world, and in a matter of months, a once thriving civilization turned into an icy wasteland. And only a small group of people under your command was able to find salvation by gathering at the thermal generator. Now our main goal is not saving the world and certainly not saving people. Only the city matters. The city must survive.
Actually that’s all I know about FrostPunk. A very intriguing idea based on three pillars: the environment of an icy post-apocalypse, a steampunk setting and a difficult ethical and moral choice between what is right and what is necessary. I really want to speculate on these topics, but my press copy apparently got lost in the mail, and after the release of God of War, I’m unlikely to find the willpower to break away from the annihilation of the Scandinavian pantheon. In this connection, there is nothing left but to discuss these very pillars.
Have you noticed that our civilization has a serious problem with suicidal tendencies?. All these nuclear bombs, deforestation and industrial-scale environmental pollution clearly make it clear that some people are not determined to live on this planet for at least another thousand years. On top of that, she has the consciousness of a twelve-year-old emo: Civilization constantly thinks about its own death, but not with the fear characteristic of adults, but with a kind of gloomy joy and thoughts like: “Now I will die from the zombie virus, and you will still cry at my grave.”.
And she has a lot of these scenarios, mostly such as not to destroy everything at once, but to leave someone. Otherwise, the drama will disappear, and there will be no one to tear his shirt over her cold corpse. This is called post-apocalypse, the state of society after a large-scale catastrophe that led to the destruction of established social and economic institutions.
In the world of FrostPunk, the scenario of an icy apocalypse is played out, which is not the most popular in popular culture. Judge for yourself. Zombies and their variations can provide us with hordes of anthropomorphic cannon fodder for colorful and ethically justifiable violence. The consequences of radiation give rise to amazing and dangerous mutants, also well suited for destruction. In addition, both of these options leave untouched an element very important for civilization – climatic conditions. Let’s be honest, winter and cold are not the most favorable conditions for any activity, which is very important for games that focus on gameplay and films that put pressure on entertainment. There’s nothing spectacular about a zombie apocalypse in the middle of a Siberian winter. It’s unlikely that anyone would have noticed the difference until June. Other options like a meteorite fall or a supervolcano eruption are good for their rapid development and global destruction. Again, the onset of cold weather loses both in the speed of destruction and in its entertainment.
However, this game is not aimed at action; on the contrary, the oppressive melancholy of eternal winter will only enhance the general atmosphere of hopelessness that the developers promise. But how will this winter come?? We don’t know this yet, so we can discuss the options for global cooling that the dubious press is scaring today.
Nuclear winter is a hypothetical consequence of a large-scale nuclear war, consisting in a significant decrease in the Earth’s temperature. Under this scenario, explosions of nuclear charges, in addition to releasing huge amounts of dust into the air, will cause a large number of fires, and consequently the accumulation of soot and smoke. Together they, having accumulated in the atmosphere and stratosphere, will block the flow of heat from the Sun. This will lead to an initial decrease in temperature. Subsequently, large amounts of precipitation in the form of snow will increase the reflectivity of the Earth, which in turn will secure the onset of a new ice age.
Discussions about nuclear winter have been https://richy-farmer-casino.co.uk/ going on almost since the early 1980s and, like any hypothetical phenomenon that does not have any impact on humanity, it causes ongoing controversy. So opponents of this theory refer to numerous nuclear tests that never led to a nuclear winter. Supporters respond by saying that these tests were not carried out simultaneously and not in combat conditions (in deserts, underground, on water). There are also opinions that cities will not be able to burn with sufficient intensity and that the fires themselves and the greenhouse effect will compensate for the cooling.
For us, only two facts matter. The first is that once we know whether nuclear winter is possible in real conditions, it most likely will no longer matter. And secondly, in FrostPunk’s world it’s only 1886 and steampunk technology reigns, so the nuclear winter option doesn’t suit us.
On the other hand, as you noted, the direct cause of a nuclear winter would not be the explosions themselves, but the creation around the planet of a kind of heat-insulating layer of soot and dust. That is, a similar scenario with minor changes still has a chance in 1886. Which brings us to volcanic winter.
This natural phenomenon acts similarly to its nuclear counterpart, with the exception that the cause of air pollution is the eruption of a volcano or volcanoes. Another difference is that volcanic winter is a very real and not a hypothetical phenomenon. Strictly speaking, it occurs after each eruption, but its consequences become noticeable only with a force of six or more on the volcanic activity scale.
The last eruption of magnitude 6 was recorded in 1991. Volcano Pinatubo, located on the Philippine island of Luzon. 875 people died, more than 10 km³ of rock was released into the atmosphere, and at its peak, ash completely obscured the sky over an area of 125,000 square kilometers. This eruption caused a temporary planetary temperature drop of 0.5 degrees Celsius. Such eruptions occur with a frequency of 50-100 years.
And eruptions of magnitude 7 occur no more often than once every 500-1000 years. The last one was noted in 1815, which is not so far from the events of the game. Volcano Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. The force of the eruption was comparable to 800 megatons of TNT, about 150-180 km³ of volcanic rocks were erupted. There may also have been an equally violent eruption six years earlier that was not documented.
The average decrease in temperature over the next few years was 0.4-0.7 degrees Celsius. However, in North America and Europe it reached 3-5 degrees. In history, 1816 remained as the “Year Without Summer”; in the USA it was nicknamed “One Thousand Eight Hundred Frozen to Death”. In Switzerland it snowed all year round, on the east coast of the United States snow fell in the summer, on June 4, 1816, a severe cold snap was recorded in the state of Connecticut, and the very next day most of New England was covered by a cold front. Snow fell in Albany, New York and Maine on June 6. In the Quebec region, snow fell from June 6 to June 10, 1816, the thickness of the snow cover reached 30 cm. In central Europe, storms constantly raged, leading to rivers overflowing their banks.
On a global scale, such cooling leads to catastrophic consequences, primarily in agriculture. As a result, famine, migration flows, and the spread of diseases began. Strange, indirect and completely unprovable consequences also include the creation of Frankenstein, the invention of the bicycle and the mutation of cholera.
Finally, the most destructive eruptions of magnitude 8 occur at intervals of 50,000 years or more. 26,500 years ago the last thing happened – the Taupo volcano in New Zealand. Scientists estimate that about 430 km³ of pyroclastic material, 320 km³ of ignimbrite and 420 km³ of primary intracaldera material were erupted, the volume of which is equivalent to 530 km³ of magma. One can only guess about the consequences of such an eruption in modern realities.
Yes, none of these volcanoes led to a new ice age. But we don’t even talk about our world. A small assumption is sometimes enough for a completely unexpected turn of events. For example, in The Last of Us, a mutated cordyceps mushroom began to infect people instead of ants, and now the end of the world is ready. Using the same small assumption, we can assume that after 1815 there were several more magnitude seven eruptions or even an eight magnitude. Perhaps such a chain of events could lead to rapid but gradual climate change, and most importantly leave people unprepared. For the first time, a hypothesis linking volcanic eruptions and global temperature decline appeared only in 1920.
Of course, nuclear or volcanic winter are not the only ways to turn the Earth into a giant snowball. Some theorists consider global cooling, as opposed to global warming, as a natural process of the planet’s development, taking into account the cyclical alternation of ice ages with warming eras.
As one might expect, there are several hypotheses for such cyclicity. For example, astronomical theory believes a change in the Earth’s orbit, and accordingly the approach or distance of a heat source, is the main cause of climate change. Not long ago, the influence of volcanic activity on epochs began to be studied in earnest. And finally, the theory of the direct influence of global warming, in which the initial melting of glaciers occurs, leading to the fall of a large amount of snow, which leads to the formation of a glacier, which in turn blocks the Gulf Stream, and then the glacier, which has stopped feeding, thaws again.
Is such a scenario possible for FrostPunk?? Why not. The only thing is that the change of ice ages is a very long and gradual phenomenon. And the cold could not have come as quickly as indicated in the game lore. Unless we consider the events of the 2004 film “The Day After Tomorrow,” in the plot of which the melting of glaciers led to a sharp and significant drop in the temperature of the world’s oceans, which caused powerful cyclones and, as a result, icing of the northern hemisphere.
And of course, who else but a person is capable of destroying our little world?. He has enough tools for this. Thus, a person can cause almost any possible end of the world himself: organize a nuclear winter instead of a volcanic one, melt the polar ice with consumerism, etc. According to the plot of the film "Snowpiercer", in an effort to stop global warming, people plunged the world into eternal winter by spraying a certain chemical. Personally, I have a hard time imagining something like this at the end of the nineteenth century. But oddly enough, suddenly this not the best and not the most famous film has many points of contact with the game.
Firstly, of course, the icy post-apocalypse, which dictates the conditions of an extremely limited space and constantly sets up themes of cold and inevitable freezing.
Secondly, continuing the theme of limited space, the presence of a fantastic technological heat source. In the film, this is a huge train that moves along the round-the-world railway and its almost perpetual motion machine, which has not stopped for 17 years. For the game, this is a heat generator that can heat an entire small city.
Thirdly, both the film and the game will raise complex ethical and moral topics. It’s difficult to talk about their quality, the game has not yet been released, and most of the film’s problems can be solved in less radical ways.
Fourth, steampunk. The statement is a little strange and perhaps far-fetched, but. Steampunk is based on steam energy and the style of the 19th century, and what could represent the technical revolution and the steam engine more than trains?
