by Purple Hazel
His was a typical story. ?Many had gone without a decent paying job for some time. ?For years, there wasn’t anything they could do. ?Most jobs prior to the collapse were service economy-based, and people were too broke to buy anything. ?People couldn’t afford gas, couldn’t drive anywhere, couldn’t afford restaurants, couldn’t afford luxuries, couldn’t pay mortgages, and rarely could pay rent, utilities, or their water bill either.
Families regularly?abandoned homes and moved in together, trading specialized?skills and resources to form micro?communities that relied upon one another for subsistence. Everyone had to pitch in, everyone had to contribute. ?Community gardens were created and tended to by children and adults alike. ?Chickens were raised, duties and chores?were shared, squirrels and rabbits were hunted or trapped to bolster communal mealtimes with much-needed fats and protein so bodies could survive the winter. ?
Yet people still starved into gaunt specimens due to the deprivations they endured and diminished calories they could regularly consume.??People only ate once a day usually. Live birth rates plummeted as people realized there was little or no?way to feed any new babies. ?
“Yep...goin’ without food in your belly for a day or two...that’s what I remember the most,” commented one little old lady sitting with her withered husband on a front porch down in New Detroit. ?“Makes ya’ smahtah, that’s fo’ sho’.” clarified her old?companion, “Makes ya’ figgah thangs out, let me tell ya’.”
But that's just?what North Americans did. ?They figured things out. It hardened them, it sharpened them. It even killed them off by the hundreds of thousands! ?Yet people grew to accept it. ?America and her previous greatness were all but a memory now. ?Her time had come and gone. Those who wished to survive—and live to a ripe old age someday—would simply have to ante up and kick in. ?The weak and the lazy could not be helped. ?They were, all these hearty survivors, like a massive herd of bison out on the Great Plains, surviving the winter by forming a circle around their young during a blizzard. ?
Nevertheless, everyone knew, just like the buffalo once knew, that?the wolves would come again, the cold would kill off the feeble, and the grasses may not always be plentiful enough?to feed everyone come spring. ?Every family’s and every combined neighborhood?commune’s outright?extinction was always never more than a month away if folks didn’t?make sacrifices and work hard. ?
The turnaround was quite long in coming, no question of that, but when the GU boldly instituted new policies for the conversion of global energy production into renewable sources like solar and wind power—in hopes of strangling Islamist Bloc nations still in control of the world’s oil supply—that’s when this major planetary threat to world stability finally subsided. The new, radical theocracies of Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan and the Palestinian Caliphate, eventually toppled without having to fire a single shot. Thus it was quite easy to persuade folks to embrace the challenges of conversion when they saw dramatic results like these.
It was a good thing too, Cory eventually discovered in her research—nick of time, some might say. As far back as 2015, she read, scientists had already been predicting that the world’s supply of fossil fuels would become depleted in about six decades: specifically oil in about fifty-three years, coal in little over a century, and natural gas within fifty-four years.
Therefore, the Earth as a planet—and more importantly humans as a species—would someday have to reckon with that irrefutable fact. Things finally had to change and change for the better. The GU reacted swiftly—and in so doing set off a global economic expansion that brought the dawn of a new, spectacular era to its member nations.
Chapter 4
Solar Revolution
In Part Four of her exposé, Cory shifted her focus to the rapid turnaround in the world economy in the years following the crisis. The timing couldn’t have been better for a radical revamping of the world’s energy production—and with the addition of a strong central government now guiding economic policy, plus an implied mandate from the people for revolutionary change, solar energy quickly supplanted fossil fuels like coal and petroleum as the main, accepted source for powering the world.
Amazingly it took less than two decades to make the complete conversion, and ultimately prove that solar power was by far the cheapest and most efficient source for electricity. In fact, the transition to solar technology and sustainable energy practices was rather simple, at least on paper.
Many a late night, Cory pored over web pages on government macronet sites learning everything she could about how they did it…those early pioneers who reinvigorated the world’s economy and standard of living for the masses. Not the glossed over and sanitized historical accounts, of course, but actual news reports, environmental studies, and published White Papers done by North Americans and Europeans, as well as the growing number of scientific intelligentsia who had fled to Europe after the fall of Middle Eastern democracies. One thing she noticed almost immediately was the clear motivation to change things drastically and without hesitation.
The public was behind it, and big business was, too. Now that the nations of the Global Union had the impetus to proceed, developments within the photovoltaic industry came fast and furious from drawing board to reality despite reservations among some within the energy industry who felt that photovoltaic applications on a global scale were far too tall an order without meticulous planning and a careful, long-term integration into existing systems. Objections like those were rare, however, and quickly overruled by the now-immensely powerful GU.
And once the government boldly demanded global conversion to renewable energy sources for everything from power plants to motor vehicles, the development of those technologies associated with it led to a worldwide boom—and the creation of millions of new jobs. Resistance to Karl Habsburg and his aggressive policies was sporadic and isolated at best. To be sure, just how could anyone argue? Most everyone saw the logic in supporting this measure and accepted the inevitable change.
Millions of unemployed Europeans and North Americans desperate for steady work viewed it as an opportunity for good-paying jobs, not the least of which required the placement of thousands of square kilometers of solar mirrors to establish a modernized energy grid. Besides that, and perhaps even more importantly, practically no one doubted the far-reaching effect it would have on world political stability. Not surprisingly, once this was portrayed as a global security issue, most remaining dissenters and skeptics within the energy industry fell into line.
“Oh, they bitched and whined about it, let me tell ya’,” said one weathered old retired solar farmworker—in that style of speech that Cory had grown up hearing in old movies from back in the 2020’s. “But only at first, them old boys at the utility companies and the coal mines, I mean…the oil companies too…they diddun wanna give up that gravy train too soon, you see?” Then he laughed as he recalled those exciting times from his youth.
“Old Karl Habsburg, though, he set ’em straight, you know? Gave ’em a deadline. Straight up, told ’em what he wanted and when. Made it real clear. Oh yeah, they knew he wasn’t gonna let ’em fuck around no more.”
Cory had to assume that government censors would eventually bleep out the old fellow’s salty language before it aired worldwide, but to her surprise they let it slide.
“It was rill simple in those days,” said the old man she’d interviewed sitting with his aging wife down in New Detroit. “Step out o’ line…ya don’t get no food that day. Run yo’ mouth…’n some sol-jah gonna shoot yo’ ass dead right thayuh in the street.” Cory shifted uncomfortably in her chair when she heard him say that—but the man continued unabated. He knew the younger generation had no real concept of what things were like back in those days.
“Na’…ain’t nobody care. Dat just one less mouth to feed, see? Folks be steppin’ right ovah yo’ ass, sayin’ ‘fool why ya’ wanna go ’n get yo’self shot like that?’” Then his wife chuckl
ed and nodded right along with him as she hummed, “Mmm-hmm,” in apparent agreement with every single word he said.
Even better than that, and all the more highly motivating to a world that had seen the rise and zenith of Islamic terrorism, was the vastly appealing idea that these new radical regimes clinging to power in the Middle East would soon have their economies dry up from a lack of oil export revenue (once The West had converted to solar). They could no longer hold the world hostage to oil exports, and that alone would bring them crashing down one by one.
No one had a monopoly on the sun’s rays after all. That concept and the common knowledge that the world’s fossil fuel reserves were indeed finite and likely to run out within a few generations was plenty to inspire rapid conversion. Cory was keen to reemphasize this important point several times in Part Four.
“Technically, solar energy should have been the best choice for an alternative,” she reported. “It was easy to install and could bypass the old power grids…delivering electricity directly to the end user right from a permanent and infinite power source—the sun.” Folks had known of this for over a century, of course; and people after the crash had already started gravitating toward this same conclusion.
Solar Thermal Power Plants (STPP’s) did come with their inherent drawbacks, of course. Concentration Solar Collectors could only focus the sun’s direct radiation and couldn’t concentrate diffuse skylight (solar rays reaching the Earth’s surface after having been scattered in the atmosphere). As a result, STPP’s would only perform well in very sunny locations, specifically the arid and semi-arid regions of the world. There were plenty to choose from, of course; the problem, though, was in going to those favorable locations and building facilities sizable enough to power entire regions and countries.
Although the tropics had high solar radiation, the long rainy seasons made these regions less desirable. The most appealing regions for them were clearly Southern Africa, Mediterranean countries such as those in North Africa, Spain and Southern Europe, India, parts of South America, the Southwestern United States, the High Deserts of Nevada and Utah, Northern Mexico, and Australia. In these regions, operating characteristics of STPP’s were relatively well-matched with intermediate and peak electricity load requirements.
Not surprisingly, Cory had a hard time detailing all this in her broadcast, but no question about it, the boom this caused in employment opportunities led to the creation of millions of new jobs for weary communities suffering for so long without solid, consistent income to support families. Laboring in the intense climates of some of these regions was no small task, of course. But tough men and women—literally millions of them—gladly jumped at the chance and endured immense hardships just to be able to send much-needed Euros to their families back home.
“God, it was somethin’ else, let me tell ya’,” commented the old man who was a retired solar farmworker. “Eleven months on. One month off. Twelve-hour shifts. Four days a week. Haulin’ and installin’ ’til we covered up darn-near half o’ Nevada.”
He then went on to describe having to live in stuffy army-style barracks at night after broiling in the hot sun all day. It was much like being in the military, as he portrayed it. “Or a POW Camp,” he said jokingly. “We were miles and miles from anywhere…and they diddun allow no alcohol in them shacks, neither. They was only modular buildings hauled out into the desert on flatbed trucks and dropped onto a pad by a crane, ya’ see?”
He said construction crews would assemble the components on site and connect endless rows of them to create an entire community practically overnight. Women and men had segregated quarters, of course, even separate showers and bathrooms. But there was plenty of fraternization on days off, Cory soon found out.
“Oh yeah, ever-body screwed. Was practically all we had to do, really. Play cards and go get laid once in a while,” he said chuckling. “Company got on us about it occasionally…tried shuttin’ it off…tried discouraging it. Finally, just started puttin’ condom dispensers in the washrooms. Then folks started breakin’ ’em open so often that, well, they eventually just gave ’em out for free.”
But by 2046, a new opportunity came to light which offered an even bigger stir within the scientific community: Scientists boldly announced plans for mining the solar system for precious metals and minerals necessary for powering the new global economy. It started with the Earth’s moon and developed rapidly from there…
* * * *
The moon, scientists had announced decades before, has millions of tons of near-pure water ice, about 6.6 trillion kilograms of it, buried beneath as much as forty centimeters of dry regolith. The moon of course has no atmosphere, and for water ice especially, it will turn into water vapor and dissipate into space as the moon’s low gravity will not hold gases for any length of time. In any given lunar day—twenty-nine earth days—the entire surface of the moon is exposed to sunlight; and surface temperatures reach 121 ̊C. That said, Cory learned, approximately fifteen thousand square kilometers of area around the Lunar South Pole are permanently shadowed.
It was water easy to access and relatively pure for industrial use, she went on to read, mainly separating constituent hydrogen and oxygen to manufacture rocket fuel by inserting electrodes made from a cobalt-phosphate mixture into water which acted as a catalyst for splitting water molecules into their components. In recent times, she knew, such systems had already become utilized on Earth to power commercial vehicles and even large office buildings using solar panels to store up chemical energy. Domestic vehicles operating on hydrogen fuel cells powered by solar energy gradually replaced those clunky old automobiles that ran on now-antiquated and obsolete internal combustion engines.
But scientists claimed and then later proved that propellant could indeed be produced from Moon water and then distributed at refueling stations in low-Earth orbit, enabling manned exploration ships to refuel while still in space. Besides that, launching from the moon into deeper space made much more practical sense because its gravity is one-sixth that of the Earth. Robotic lunar mining operations were thus designed and implemented, with human operators controlling mining robots in real time from back on Earth twenty-four hours a day, sitting in comfortable office buildings in front of computers working twelve hour shifts, four days a week.
Cory tried but could never find anyone from that profession to interview—mostly former computer programmers and online game designers who flocked in droves to these new GU Space Programme jobs as they opened up. Word was many of these carefree nocturnal types had long since passed away.
What’s more, she never could locate any retired lunar mining engineers or maintenance crews, as well as support staff. These brave souls lived in dormitories located inside lunar bases constructed on the surface, rotating staff in and out every six months. They would have made for rather interesting, lively interviews she could only begin to imagine.
However lunar water mining was only the first step, she learned. After lunar mining operations created rocket fuel for transporting craft back and forth to Earth, methane and ammonia—also contained in cold craters—were tapped for their carbon and nitrogen which became necessary ingredients for long-term lunar settlement. Thus, the development of massive lunar colonies capable of partially sustaining themselves grew into existence. This gave the Moon’s mining operations an almost permanent labor source by the end of the 2050’s. They could even grow their own food using hydroponic gardening systems, and produce drinking water from the moon’s water ice. Cory was never able to find any veteran miners from those early days of colonization either. Many, she’d heard, had succumbed to illnesses like emphysema or acquired lung and breast cancer later in life.
The sacrifices of the few however, paid off for the masses in the long run. All this eventually served to expand lunar operations into the even more lucrative acquisition of Helium-3, a prime fuel for nuclear fusion. This enabled the moon to become a low-cost launching pad for further space exploration—and with it the
eventual exploitation of the vast mineral wealth found in space. There was plenty to be found there, having been embedded in the upper layer of the moon’s regolith over billions of years. This part fascinated Cory the most in her research about exploitation of the Moon.
Unprotected by any global magnetic field, like in the case of Earth, the Moon has been repeatedly bombarded by massive quantities of He-3 by solar wind (a continuous flow of charged particles from the sun that permeates the entire solar system). This has happened throughout millennia. Scientists had theorized for decades that this isotope would offer safer nuclear energy in fusion reactors, because it is not radioactive. Best of all it would not produce dangerous waste products, which had always been the biggest drawback to old-fashioned nuclear fission power plants in the past. This factor alone was probably the biggest benefit to mankind.
Up to that point in history, usable amounts of thermonuclear energy, released in a controlled manner, that is, had yet to be achieved. Acquiring Helium-3 from lunar mining operations changed all that. The physics behind a fusion-driven rocket—with solar panels on the sides collecting energy to initiate the process—were now attainable, and by the end of the 2050’s the initial problems of manned deep-space travel finally seemed to be resolved.
But that was not all, Cory was delighted to learn. There were far more fascinating developments to follow.
Asteroids, it was commonly believed in the scientific community, possessed iron and other valuable materials. But above all, platinum could be found in great quantities. Platinum is used in electrical contacts and electrodes (as well as laboratory equipment and resistance thermometers). It will not corrode. It’s stable at high temperatures, and is more precious than either gold or silver. Basically, one fifth of everything used or manufactured on Earth either contains it or requires it in its manufacture.
