Survivor communities outside the known world

[urbicande]

Telling proper Morse from random interference is a no-brainer (certain Hollywood movies notwithstanding). Make your dits and dahs and the pauses between have the proper duration (dashes exactly three times as long as dots, etc. etc.) and it'll be pretty obvious that that's an artificial signal even before you transcoded from Morse to letters, much less wonder what language the resulting words might belong to.

Just an addendum: as I try and bring my little tiny radio online and get back into the hobby, I'm hearing a lot of very poorly done morse code, and it's still obvious that it's a human-generated signal rather than random dih and dahs (among other things, a human calling is going to repeat the signal)

[JoB]

I'm hearing a lot of very poorly done morse code

[Divra]

And that right there is proof that your point fails to prove anything.

Of course it doesn't prove anything. Everything we do is speculation. Still, probability is still a thing. But, if you're feeling combative, let's flip the question: Which other places could maintain the levels of quarantine necessary to maintain a viable population, have the infrastructure necessary to support any form of investigation into the nature of the Rash and global radio communications, and (which was the original question) would make someone shell out for a world-encompassing radio?

Previous discussions in this thread have, as far as I know, narrowed it down to "maybe someone in New Zealand". And would anyone in The Silent World feel inclined to shell out for a short-wave radio on the off-chance that someone can get through to someone on the other side of the world who may or may not be alive/have something relevant to say? I'd say that money is spent on new flamers for a Cleanser squad.

[JoB]

Of course it doesn't prove anything. Everything we do is speculation. Still, probability is still a thing.

We don't know the probabilities of people's fates outside the Nordics beyond "they obviously didn't come out unscathed". The Icelanders have two potential bases for their immunity rates to offer for our pondering, genetics and old gods. Both telegraph (pun intended) "things could easily be an order of magnitude different in the next country over". Most of the people presenting a case for survivors in their surroundings in this thread assumed that immunity rates, rate of undeath+trollification, grosslings' tactics and problems etc. etc. would be the same as seen in the comic.

But, if you're feeling combative, let's flip the question: Which other places could maintain the levels of quarantine necessary to maintain a viable population, have the infrastructure necessary to support any form of investigation into the nature of the Rash and global radio communications, and (which was the original question) would make someone shell out for a world-encompassing radio?

For the records, I'm as much outspoken against "there would be survivors in place X because I cannot imagine how the Rash could succeed in wiping them out" as I am opposing "everyone everywhere else is dead because I cannot fathom how people could survive that". Unknown means unknown, not "oh well, then the opposite must be true".

To address your question: I can name you one nation that I would not expect to live up to the criteria you listed, and that's ICELAND. Sure, they have the geographical isolation and had the coast guard to enforce the last bit of "nobody gets in, and we mean nobody". But it's also an island that had quite limited resources ever since it got settled. The early settlers - less numerous than the Y90 population - relied heavily on fishing to keep themselves nourished; the presence of sea beasts (and scarcity of immune people to man the ships) threatens the feasibility of that approach now. Later, Iceland started trade/imports, from food to raw materials - heck, they're officially still importing in Y90, from Bornholm produce to Pori timber to ore to ships (which Minna said to be a Norway-dominated industry) - which would have been outright impossible during the lockdown.

And yet, the official answer to all these considerations is "plot says they managed, but not how exactly. Deal with it."

And would anyone in The Silent World feel inclined to shell out for a short-wave radio on the off-chance that someone can get through to someone on the other side of the world who may or may not be alive/have something relevant to say? I'd say that money is spent on new flamers for a Cleanser squad.

I see amateur radio transceivers suitable for such communication and in working condition getting sold for scrap value on flea markets (probably by the heirs of the original owner). World-spanning amateur radio frequencies get polluted by, e.g., fishermen in Indonesia who somehow got their hands on even smaller transceivers. Marconi took five years to proceed from his first experiments to the world's first transatlantic transmission. For crying out loud, NASA astronauts leave more money behind in the parking lot at the Cape than one needs to get a cross-ocean radio link going.

[Laufey]

But it's also an island that had quite limited resources ever since it got settled. The early settlers - less numerous than the Y90 population - relied heavily on fishing to keep themselves nourished; the presence of sea beasts (and scarcity of immune people to man the ships) threatens the feasibility of that approach now.

Not trying to deny fish has always been important but it never was the main source of food (the importance of fish was also largely in trading dried fish with Denmark). Sheep were, and grass for them we have aplenty. Besides sheep there's also other animals such as horses, reindeer and various birds to eat and even though the country is rather harsh for most plants there are some that can be successfully grown here without the aid of greenhouses even, such as onions, rutabaga, potatoes, carrots, rhubarb etc.

Comment-and-run done!

[Amity]

Unless there's an actual, internationally recognized "hello, anyone out there," similar to how "SOS" is internationally recognized.

Yes.

It goes like this:  "Hello, anyone out there?"  In English.  :p

If Iceland is the only (more or less) intact advanced society left, after 90 years there may not be many English speakers left anywhere else in the world except where English is a native language.  But "not many" is not the same as "none."  If you have 1000 people in your survivor community but only 1 of them has learned enough English (passed down from parents and grandparents) to be able to understand simple sentences, that 1 person is still enough!  And if the next nearest community of 1000 people has 0 English speakers, well, now you can spread the word to them.

Iceland's universities doubtless have a whole language institute where knowledge of old languages -- at least in written form -- is preserved as best as they can.

[Koeshi]

You spoke about the likelihood that the radio operator would "receive the message and decide to record it for a skald to review it". That's not what *I* would do when I receive a transmission that is a) obviously from humans, rather than grosslings, b) at a place where we had no idea humans survived in the first place, c) short enough to suggest that they're actually (still) searching for other humans and d) thus likely to vanish again if I don't answer their call right away.

I think at this point we are just thinking along different tangents, either that or I am far too sleepy to make sense of this.  Either way I'm going to drop this one.

Then be prepared to be a lot less impressed ten seconds from now. Morse ops doing serious amounts of text didn't stick with the historic straight key, either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraph_key
And the sender using a full keyboard to create a Morse transmission is not any more complicated than using a largely identical device to create the 5-bit characters of the abovementioned RTTY system.

Again I am confused (really tired right now).  Are you suggesting that you sent papers by morse using more advanced versions of the telegraph key?  Because the most advanced one I am seeing there is the iambic paddle, which would still take a significant amount of time and will.  Or do you mean that some people use full keyboards to send morse code these days?  I can see how that could be done, though I don't know whether that is a used practice.

[JoB]

Are you suggesting that you sent papers by morse using more advanced versions of the telegraph key?

No, I typed them into a keyboard and thus into a computer.

Or do you mean that some people use full keyboards to send morse code these days?  I can see how that could be done, though I don't know whether that is a used practice.

It is not a very frequent practice, but I think one needs to look at why exactly it isn't. Once you look for a way to type text into a keyboard and have it autoconverted to Morse for you TODAY, you invariably end up looking at a computer (in the laptop to PC range). Having the output be Morse code, however, is a way suboptimal mode for such computers to communicate, even in those cases where the computer is set up to communicate through a radio transceiver.

Hence the result that most people who want to send Morse today are Morse enthusiasts, insist on decoding the transmissions themselves (in their head or with pen and paper), and shun encoding by computer because "it ain't true to the spirit" - and because a computer could send Morse orders of magnitude faster than the human can ever hope to decipher it.

Once we're talking about Y90, the requirements change a lot. You now want Morse for other reasons (be it that you need to pierce through grossling interference, be it that there's no more computers cell phones for the laymen you need to communicate with), computers are now generally unavailable from square one, and getting things done trumps doing them in style. Those who were sending lots of data in Y0 now still want to use keyboards instead of a straight key to continue sending lots of data. The part that has changed is that the receiver is a human. Combine that with Morse having advanced to somewhere between "we should have that option" and "requirement" and - unlike in Y0 - it again makes sense to build dedicated keyboard-to-Morse devices again.

Which can be done with the same, rather simple technology of RTTY equipment, it's just not done today.

[Void Slayer]

It seems to me many of the population survival estimates are very high here.  Using Sweden and Norway as examples of exposed nations that still managed to survive intact, we are looking at .3% survival ratings in optimal conditions.  This is significantly less then the populations simply inhabiting rural, isolated areas.

A bunch of factors needed to come together to help these people survive, I suspect small isolated communities with many people who escaped returning after several months was the norm, and even then most would have failed to beasts and roaming trolls a few months afterwards before the threat was really understood.

Add in Giants taking out even well prepared communities and we can see the survival of Aurland and surrounding area's of Norway as really the only thing that saved a scant 15,000.

I can totally believe that there would be small survivor communities, even ones which found each other again, but I seriously doubt anything over 10-20,000 from very isolated communities would have survived the rash and trolls.  Maybe New Zealand?

[urbicande]

Hence the result that most people who want to send Morse today are Morse enthusiasts, insist on decoding the transmissions themselves (in their head or with pen and paper), and shun encoding by computer because "it ain't true to the spirit" - and because a computer could send Morse orders of magnitude faster than the human can ever hope to decipher it.

In a marginally related comment, I'll be rebuilding my antenna this weekend and will be doing CW on 40m (QRP, of course) if anyone is interested.

[JoB]

I'll be rebuilding my antenna this weekend and will be doing CW on 40m (QRP, of course)

Phased array?

[urbicande]

Phased array?

Nah, that's a little small. I prefer something more robust

[JoB]

Nah, that's a little small. I prefer something more robust

QRP this, then.

[urbicande]

QRP this, then.

I have a bad feeling about this.

Hmm...anyone know how long the ISS can go w/o resupply?  (Not 90 years, obviously, but imagine being on the ISS in Y0)

[JoB]

Hmm...anyone know how long the ISS can go w/o resupply?  (Not 90 years, obviously, but imagine being on the ISS in Y0)

The ISS has had resupply missions delayed for weeks due to technical problems with the spacecraft used. Simultaneously, they keep one capsule suitable as a reentry vehicle docked at all times to allow for immediate evacuation (loss of station atmosphere, noxious gasses in the atmosphere, hard radiation from a solar flare, that kind of "immediate"). I have little doubt that they can return to planetside whenever they want to, the question is which part of the planet they'ld be safe after the landing.