Life Boat

Here's an idea.

I watched a documentary called Evacuate Earth awhile back, your end-of-the-world sort of science fiction story. A neutron star is approaching the Solar System, and we have 75 years until Terra is completely destroyed. In typical <big stupid rocket> form, they decide to build one generation ship to carry away a quarter million of the carefully-selected best human specimens. The whole scenario smacks of statism, including the mandatory catastrophic failure of 'teh rich' to escape in their own spacecraft.

But it got me thinking.

Only a National GeographicHistory Channel-type "scientist" would think that one ship is the best way to deal with the imminent death of billions of human beings. After all, once you're out of the gravity well, you're halfway to anywhere, including escaping a rogue neutron star. Building lots of ships and launching them independently gives you the best survival chance. Instead of betting all your breeding pairs on a single exoplanet, you can target dozens or even hundreds of stars. The biggest problem is you can't design a new human society to match your progressive notions.

My idea is this: we're confronted with a similar scenario. Let's say sometime next early next year, astronomers realize there's going to be a planetary extinction event within a century. Maybe Nemesis is real after all. Perhaps a brown dwarf is going to fatally disrupt the system. Or we could just go with the neutron star.

Regardless, Terra will be completely uninhabitable by 2100. That means roughly 85 years to escape the planet.

First of all, there's going to be a lot of suicides and social disruption. Once we get that out of the way, the engineering work can begin. The UN or some similarly inept organization starts on the centrally planned survival strategy. More visionary groups develop better ideas.

A generation ship, where maybe 1 in 10000 will get to survive (assuming no population growth in the interim) is not going to be a popular option. Instead, it makes sense to get people off world (especially those still of childbearing age) as soon as possible. More enlightened governments direct resources towards domestic launches to medium-sized space colonies (one to ten thousand), which are then equipped for the long haul and set adrift in constellations.

These two approaches coexist fairly well at first, until the planet's resources begin to be exhausted. The central planners cling to their notion despite the obvious fact more people will survive in smaller colonies. War ensues, though the UN side is plagued by soldiers, support officers, and professionals defecting for the chance to save their families.

By the time the end arrives, most of the population has left in smaller craft. The night sky is aglow with fusion flames, as colonies begin their acceleration stages towards different stars after ransacking the outer planets and Kuiper Belt for resources.

You can't have the world end without a showdown. I'm thinking the remaining UN incompetents against the humanist billionaire (trillionaire?), who insisted upon evacuating as many ahead of him as efficiently as possible. In the last year of planet Earth, they duke it out for control of the capital and raw materials to escape. Naturally, he wins.

I'm just now noticing how this parallels the Pak survival behavior in Known Space. Something to chew on.