Crazy isolationist cultures!

[Fauna]

Lets play a fun little game!

Since vast areas of land are still most likely unexplored, do you think there are isolationist villages and cultures within the black areas of Scandinavia? The red areas are only the KNOWN world - the areas that have contact with one another! But in the chaos of y0 and the trollocapypse, people must've fled all over the place, seeking refuge in the countryside and the wilderness. A return to viking aesthetics would've hardly been the first thought to everyone, would it? And in the case of Sweden, they have no mages to help influence their religion or faith, and even in Finland and Norway we have no evidence pointing toward the kind of dreamwalking that Reynir was up to, so contact with the rest of the world would still be very limited.

So... the game is to make up wacky cultures and locations! It's like making OC's, but with groups of people instead. For example, what would happen if a cult of crazy Christians were stranded in Lappland, still thinking that the Rapture is coming to pick them up? Or if there was a colony where only young children survived, having to re-discover culture, order and making-sense-of-the-world all over again? A remote mental warden somehow making it through, or a bunch of survivors holed up in a gigantic chicken farm where they had to co-exist with endless chickens for eternity, afraid to step outside due to the disease, eventually creating a chicken religion and a chicken-based world view as they were driven to madness across the generations? Or maybe just a fairly normal little village, that never the less had to come up with their own explanations to explain the madness of the world.


Lets just have some random fun

[Ragnarok]

Got a few from Arbet's travels to various places, but don't think they're very isolationist. Mostly trying to kill each other.

[Keeper]

I imagine there must somewhere be a community that worships the Rash out of fear like some wrathful god. I figure they would leave sacrifices to the trolls, beasts, and giants. Maybe they would even go so far as to honor those who became those monsters, the immunes thinking they are unworthy or something to not be touched by the illness, or mourning the dead who were not strong enough to withstand the "transformation of the gods." It could even be that when people became infected, they would send them out as sacrifices, chosen by the gods to be transformed into a creature to worship or simply to die.

[Fauna]

I imagine there must somewhere be a community that worships the Rash out of fear like some wrathful god. I figure they would leave sacrifices to the trolls, beasts, and giants. Maybe they would even go so far as to honor those who became those monsters, the immunes thinking they are unworthy or something to not be touched by the illness, or mourning the dead who were not strong enough to withstand the "transformation of the gods." It could even be that when people became infected, they would send them out as sacrifices, chosen by the gods to be transformed into a creature to worship or simply to die.

I... well. Damn. This is surprisingly awesome.

[Keeper]

I... well. Damn. This is surprisingly awesome.

Really? Thanks!

[Sunflower]

I imagine there must somewhere be a community that worships the Rash out of fear like some wrathful god. I figure they would leave sacrifices to the trolls, beasts, and giants. Maybe they would even go so far as to honor those who became those monsters, the immunes thinking they are unworthy or something to not be touched by the illness, or mourning the dead who were not strong enough to withstand the "transformation of the gods." It could even be that when people became infected, they would send them out as sacrifices, chosen by the gods to be transformed into a creature to worship or simply to die.

1.  Speaking of crazy Rash cults, RandomTexanReader came up with a brilliant riff on how that might look in her homeland...
https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg26245#msg26245

2. The ancient Greeks had similar ideas -- for example, epilepsy was considered both a curse and a "gift of the gods."  Apollo was worshipped as both the bringer and preventer of plague (conveyed by his swift arrows).  He was addressed as Mouse-Apollo because he supposedly had power to chase away mice, which the ancient Greeks knew to correlate with plague even if they didn't know how it was transmitted via their fleas.  (The Navajo and other native cultures of the U.S. Southwest have supposedly also considered mice, pack rats, and other small mammals taboo to touch, which is of course a very prudent measure against the bubonic plague they carry.)

In fact, many pagan cultures considered plagues and their vectors both cursed and sacred -- monsters likewise.  C.S. Lewis's novel "Till We Have Faces" gives an interesting view of how primitive people might have viewed the people who were designated for sacrifice as both culprits/sinners and specially gifted. 

[Solokov]

or a bunch of survivors holed up in a gigantic chicken farm where they had to co-exist with endless chickens for eternity, afraid to step outside due to the disease, eventually creating a chicken religion and a chicken-based world view as they were driven to madness across the generations

So.... basically a village where everyone in town picked the chicken infested (50% chance of retrieving a chicken from your pack instead of the item you were looking for... no we don't know where the chickens came from either) commoner flaw?

Neat.

[Fauna]

So.... basically a village where everyone in town picked the chicken infested (50% chance of retrieving a chicken from your pack instead of the item you were looking for... no we don't know where the chickens came from either) commoner flaw?

Neat.

I have never heard of this, but it is beautiful :'D

[Athena]

I'm imagining a society where the original survivors went underground to escape the spread of the disease, and future generations may have evolved to have different abilities, like being able to see in the dark and live longer without food. They would fear the sun, and embrace the darkness. Their diet would probably consist mainly of fungi and insects. They might even be living right under Mora and no one would know they were there!

[urbicande]

I'm imagining a society where the original survivors went underground to escape the spread of the disease, and future generations may have evolved to have different abilities, like being able to see in the dark and live longer without food. They would fear the sun, and embrace the darkness. Their diet would probably consist mainly of fungi and insects. They might even be living right under Mora and no one would know they were there!

This is so many early post-nuclear-war SF stories. 

Pity the ISS isn't self-sufficient.

[Athena]

Pity the ISS isn't self-sufficient.

Yeah, if they had a way of growing food up there they would be almost self-sufficient.

[Sunflower]

Yeah, if they had a way of growing food up there they would be almost self-sufficient.

Do they have potatoes?  And poop?     (Guess who saw "The Martian" recently...)

[urbicande]

Yeah, if they had a way of growing food up there they would be almost self-sufficient.

Possibly.  I'm not sure how often they restock water and air.

[Athena]

Possibly.  I'm not sure how often they restock water and air.

I thought that the plants would balance the oxygen levels and they could extract water from human byproducts.

[princeofdoom]

There are issues with development from early stages in low or zero Gs. It might not affect plants but i know for sure even basic animals have problems. So they might not germinate on the ISS.