The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion
Page 22
By combining artificial intelligence, robotics, sensors, micro-machinery, distributed processing, and other technologies, scientists will create a wide variety of smart materials and devices over the next couple of decades. According to a company that specializes in creating them, smart materials are “any material that shows some form of response (often physical) such as mechanical deformation, movement, optical illumination, heat generation, contraction, and expansion in presence of a given stimuli, such as electricity, heat, light, chemicals, pressure, mechanical deformation, exposure to other chemicals or elements. The response may be useful in converting the applied energy into a desired motion or action.”5
Smart devices are those that are created using smart materials and computer systems. For example, in TechnoLife 2020, Joe’s condo cabin comes equipped with an array of very sophisticated smart devices. Here’s one description of the wall in his living room:
There were ten depressions in the wall that perfectly fit his fingertips. Depending on the combinations he pressed, Joe could choose his clothing, his facial mask; his eye color, hair color, mindset; his food.
The walls were electronic membranes, reinforced by genetically engineered impenetrable rock. The place was wired with embedded circuitry and microprocessors, everything tuned to enhance his moods, relax him, stimulate him, feed him, nourish him in all ways. What he needed, and when he needed it. At all times.
And a few minutes later, when Joe steps into the shower, more smart devices shift into action:
Each stream of water hit him in a preset location: scalp and face; back and chest; rearend and lower torso; and finally, his lower legs and feet. There was no need to adjust the temperature: it was perfect. The first water streams that hit him included body-cleansing droplets, and the water pulsed in such a way as to lather him thoroughly. Then the water streams stopped the pulsing massage and released a spring rain: all water, no bacteria, no soap, no dust, just spring water in a fine tingling spray. The stream shifted briefly, massaging his body again, this time with a small amount of skin-darkening tint, meant to last 24 hours then fade back to normal skin color. His body was flush, glowing, clean.
Five minutes into the shower, the water turned to mist, spraying everywhere but his head. He pressed his face gently against the face groove to his right. The groove fit the contours of his face. A waft of Ancient Spice: the cream was released from micropores in the face groove, rubbed onto his whiskers, lifting all hair from his face. He turned, letting the cream penetrate and remove all stubble from his scalp.
Before long, our clothes will eat their own stains and odors, our houses will maintain perfect temperature and air flow, our paint won’t peel, and our metal tables, bikes, and cars won’t rust. We’ll have sensor systems that monitor environmental conditions—temperature, humidity, toxins, pollen, pollution, and so forth, and these systems will trigger the use of ventilators, air filters, water purifiers, and other mechanisms. Smart device systems in our walls, keyboards, and clothes will emit chemicals and medications that help us sleep, that stimulate or arouse us, that boost our creativity. These systems, worn perhaps on a belt or embedded in our skin, will monitor our health twenty-four hours a day. Indeed, smart implants may target and release medications, and may help control body functions and synthetic organs using biomembranes. Smart implants may produce hormones and aid in the repair of tissues.
If you’ve watched enough Star Trek, then you know all about holographic devices and holodecks. If you’ve visited a major museum, you’ve probably seen holographs.
In Mockingjay, the hand-held Holo is like a holographic GPS device that zooms in and out of a map, showing whatever is in specific locations. If you go to Google Earth, you can see 3D views of pretty much anything you want: oceans, surfing and diving locations, and even 3D-historical imagery that you can zoom and pan. You can go all over the world, street by street, and see whatever you want. Sure, we’re not looking at holographic images of Bombay, Hawaii, London, or wherever, but we can see if someone has a certain type of car parked in front of his house, whether he’s built a shack, and if a delivery van is down the street. The views set up all over the world via satellite are not real time, of course, as in Mockingjay’s Holo system. It seems that the Holo must use constantly current data to supply information about weapons/pods and people that are possibly hidden from view. (Why the holographic images are necessary is something I don’t quite understand, though I admit it’s cool.)
In short, holography records light emitted from objects, then reassembles the light later to display the objects in realistic simulations; as if interacting with a virtual reality system or playing a first-shooter 3D video game, the recorded holograph appears fully 3D to the viewer. Holography is an optical mechanism that’s been used since the 1960s.
In 2011, MIT created a streaming holographic television video made out of a Microsoft Xbox gaming Kinect camera. The results are rudimentary, but still, the effect is that of a real-time holograph.6
If we set aside the mysterious reason for using Star Wars-like Holo imagery, we can easily see how 3D real-time images might be collected and displayed. Distributed micro-sensors could pick up images and transmit them to some central node, where they would then be collated and massaged by algorithms to display 3D realtime images.
The future of an old prophetic legacy
By the time this book is printed and in your hands (or on your screen, as the case might be), AD 2012 may have already passed. The forces of nature are supposed to gang up on us in December 2012. Armageddon will come, with the ancient Mayan calendar being the culprit. I’m not the betting type, but even I would bet that we’ll all still be here in January 2013. Mayan tradition actually doesn’t place the end of the world in 2012; so hopefully, 2012 will be a period of enlightenment.
AD 2033, this may be the 2,000th anniversary of the crucifixion, so watch out!
Approximately AD 5 billion, the sun will grow old and lash out at us. The sun’s hydrogen will fuse into helium, its core will collapse, and the whole sun will blow. We’ll all be fried.
As readers, we never learn much about why Katniss Everdeen lives in a post-apocalyptic world. We know that environmental problems caused some type of apocalypse, that a major rebellion took place seventy-five years ago, that the Capitol basically destroyed the population of Panem, and as punishment, divided them into thirteen districts and subjected their children to the Hunger Games to teach them all a lesson in obedience. As for the reasons behind the apocalypse, I give you my best guess in chapter 1.
As I write this companion guide, people are rebelling in half a dozen nations against repressive governments. The world is receiving daily news about these events, and other countries are expressing diplomatic concerns and otherwise trying to ease tensions and help the citizens cope. As I write this chapter, Japan has just experienced an estimated 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami with nuclear reactor repercussions, and current news reports fear that 10,000 people have already died. The world is reaching out to help the Japanese people.
It’s true that governments do not always lend sufficient support when major catastrophes occur (Stalin and other dictators slaughtering their own people, hurricanes such as Katrina, and so forth). But the world knows about such suffering, and support is usually available at least to some extent.
So where is everybody and everything? I give you my best guess about this issue in chapter 1, as well: that maybe the survivors in other parts of the world are too busy coping with their own issues, that maybe communications systems have been mangled.
Only Suzanne Collins—and possibly her editor and agent—knows the background of the Hunger Games apocalypse.
Post-apocalyptic fiction has been around for a long time (see Appendix B for examples). So has apocalyptic fiction, which takes the reader through the end-of- the-world scenarios. A typical example of apocalyptic fiction is Stephen King’s 1978 novel, The Stand, in which a worldwide plague wipes out most of the human race. But Ki
ng’s novel is also a post-apocalyptic work because it traces not only the plague, but what happens after the plague kills everyone.
This is a common technique used by writers: show us the apocalyptic event as well as the post-apocalypse aftermath. Richard Matheson, who served as one of King’s strongest literary influences, composed a frightening novel of biological warfare in the near future in 1954’s I Am Legend. In the story, a deadly artificial plague infects mankind and there is no cure. Only a few humans are immune to the disease that turns the rest of the population into vampires who feed on blood. Matheson’s description of the breakdown of civilization was amplified by King to great effect in The Stand a quarter of a century later.
The atomic bomb was the weapon of choice in novels of humanity’s destruction in the 1960s and 1970s. Biological weapons seemed very hit or miss when compared with the total devastation brought about by an atomic bomb. Plus, zombies created by atomic radiation were all the rage. As I write this book, zombie fiction has been making a huge comeback.
But clearly, the depressing future portrayed in The Hunger Games series does not involve zombies. Nor has a killer comet struck Panem, as far as we know. The Capitol didn’t beat down the masses because an asteroid smashed into North America, as far as we know. There were no supermassive black holes or volcanic eruptions that we know of. District 12 wasn’t hit by bizarre gamma rays from outer space. Vampires don’t roam the earth.
It is not within the scope of this book to describe all of these apocalyptic scenarios in great detail:
Plagues and biological warfare.
Chemical warfare.
Nuclear armageddon.
Artificial intelligence, nanobots, and cybernetic revolts.
Genetic warfare.
Killer comets and asteroids.
Supermassive black holes.
Earthquakes.
Global warming.
Gamma rays.
And that all-time favorite, alien invasion.
But it is worth looking at some of the more common scenarios, particularly those that might fit slightly into the framework of the world of The Hunger Games.
PLAGUES AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
If a natural-born plague gripped the Earth, it’s possible that all the major nations and cities would be wiped out, leaving only pockets of people here and there. An evil government could condemn these remnants of a former country to poverty, misery, slavery, and gladiatorial games by use of traditional force. Similarly, if major nations subjected each other to man-imposed biological warfare—that is, a plague purposely set loose upon humanity—the effects could be the same. In the case of the manmade biological warfare, we might assume any evil government and leader that survives has an antidote. The natural-born plague is trickier because it seems less logical that a specific government and its evil authorities would know beforehand that a natural plague would break out, and hence, happen to have a supply of antidotes to save their own lives and their loved ones.
Most diseases don’t remain lethal after being transmitted three or four times. Their effects diminish with the age of the virus. However, if a disease constantly mutates from one flu strain to another, it remains deadly long after most other plague germs have lost their potency.
How quickly would the Earth’s population be decimated? For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that each infected person has contact with five other people each day. And, after that, these newly infected five people only meet five people each day. The geometric progression of the infection is therefore:
On the first day, 1 person infected.
Second day, 5 people infected.
Third day, 25.
Fourth day, 125.
Fifth day, 625.
Sixth day, 3,125.
Seventh day, 15,625.
Eighth day, 78,125.
Ninth day, 390,625.
Tenth day, 1,953,125.
So in this very simplistic view, in which a person only has contact with five people in a day, by the tenth day, close to 2 million people would die from a plague disease, whether naturally made or created by man. Most likely, the disease would spread even more rapidly.
And by, say, nineteen days into the plague, how many would be dead? 19,073,486,328,125 or in approximate numbers, in nineteen days the plague would have been spread to 19 trillion people, more than enough exposures so that everyone on Earth would have been infected a thousand times over by the plague.
Once a geometric progression starts in earnest, there’s nothing in the world that can stop it, other than nipping the sequence off at one of the early stages. In other words, the plague has to be contained immediately, or it cannot be stopped.
If there’s a secret laboratory somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, and government scientists are working on a deadly strain of flu virus for which no antidote exists, and someone infected with the disease goes home that night, then the world is doomed. Unbelievable as it sounds, it could happen. On a somewhat smaller scale, with a slightly less virulent virus, it already has. More than once.
The greatest disaster in recorded history took place during the years 1347 through 1350. It was a disease outbreak that became known as the Black Death, and it killed an estimated 34 million people, approximately one-third of Europe’s population. Records from the Far East and the Middle East show that the Black Death was part of an even larger bubonic plague pandemic (a pandemic is defined as an epidemic over a wide geographic area and affecting a large percentage of the population) that struck much of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The total number of people killed by this pandemic will never be known, but some historians estimate that, in total, over 60 million people died due to the plague.
Bubonic plague, the main cause of the Black Death, returned to haunt Europe again and again until the beginning of the eighteenth century. Recurrent episodes of the Black Death included the Italian Plague of 1629–31, the Great Plague of London (1665–66), and the Great Plague of Vienna (1679).
According to modern researchers, the Black Death most likely began in the steppes of central Asia, though some historians believe it might have originated in northern India. The cause of the disease was a bacteria named Yersinia pestis, which was carried and spread by fleas. Plague fleas were transported by rats across half the world. It was the unchecked spread of rats through Asia, Europe, and the Middle East that brought the Black Death. No other bacteria had so much of an effect on human history.
There were three types of plague. Bubonic plague was the most common. A flea bite deposited the bacteria into the victim’s lymphatic system. The disease was characterized by buboes, large, inflamed, and painful swellings in the lymph glands of the groin, armpits, or neck, depending where the flea bite occurred.
In septicaemic plague, which was almost always fatal, the bacteria entered the bloodstream directly, rather than through the lymphatic system where they might be contained. Like bubonic plague, the septicaemic variety of plague was caused directly by flea bites. Death usually took place within twenty-four hours of catching the disease.
Pneumonic plague was the most deadly form of plague. It was usually fatal and wasn’t caused by a flea bite. When the plague bacteria reached the lungs of a victim, it caused severe pneumonia. The bacteria were present in water drops spread by coughs and choking. This third variation of the plague was highly contagious. Death from the pneumonic plague occurred within three or four days.
In all three versions of the plague, internal bleeding caused large bruises to appear on the skin. This bruising resulted in the plague being called the Black Death.
Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of any organism, including bacteria, virus, or some other disease-causing organism or poison found in nature to wage war. Biological warfare is designed to kill enemy soldiers, and in some cases, enemy civilians. Biological warfare also means attacking nature in the area where the enemy is located—destroying his food supplies, destroying his environment, destroying his habitat.
&n
bsp; The creation and stockpiling of biological weapons was outlawed by the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, which was signed by over one hundred countries. Biological weapons were deemed too extreme for warfare as they could cause deaths in the millions and major economic disasters in countries throughout the world. In a strange bit of wording, the treaty prohibited the creation and storage of the weapons, but did not outlaw the use of these weapons.
Biological warfare was used as far back as the sixth century BC, when the Assyrian armies poisoned enemy wells with a mind-altering fungus that would drive their enemies mad. In 184 BC, Hannibal of Carthage had his army fill clay pots with poisonous snakes and instructed his soldiers to throw the pots onto the decks of Pergamene ships.
During the Middle Ages, the Mongols threw diseased animal bodies into the wells and drivers used by their European enemies for drinking water. Before the Black Death hit all of Europe, Mongols were notorious for catapulting diseased corpses into cities they were besieging, hoping to infect the population with the plague.