Aurora effects

[Hiemalis]

We've seen the power lines on fire with their postlamps on, and we'll probably hear static from all the radios whenever the Aurora manifests, but what else do you reckon would be interesting to see? Furthermore, what functional consequences would be nice to be implemented (not necessarily positive ones)?

It's true we don't know much about the Aurora, which limits our discussion. All we know is that its nature is a geomagnetic one -- which is why we probably won't have compasses -- and it interacts with electrical devices -- of which there aren't too many out there. So will it be a purely aesthetic phenomenon?

(I've posted this in the general discussion forum because that's what this is. I don't mean it to be a feature wishlist; I'd just like to hear about the other players' ideas and talk about them.)

[Rusty_Old_F250]

From the roadmap, it does say the Aurora will have some hazards, what they will be I can't say for sure... But I have a few guesses! 

!) If your near a downed power line, risk of electrocution

2) Electric powered objects suddenly switch on - Better get your hand out of that washer/dryer/microwave/etc!

3) water heaters explode - this might be a bit of a long shot, but if they had water in them and froze, the tank inside is going to be compromised, so if it didn't split entirely, when that thing switches on the tank isn't going to be able to hold near as much pressure and there's a good chance it'll go BOOM long before the safety valve would vent the pressure

Just some ideas...

Sam

[cekivi]

I'm looking forward to flickering headlights. Although popping bulbs and machinery unexpectedly turning on/catching fire would be interesting (and terrifying!) as well.

[miah999]

It would be cool if it could wake your character up, Imagine you put your character to sleep for 8 hours, and 4 hours in the radio starts blaring static, maybe even music being broadcast from some automated system activated by the Aurora. Not very scientific, but makes for interesting atmosphere.

[Dirmagnos]

Its just not "very scientific", its completely unrealistic. Static on power lines and metal objects in general is probable, but flickering lights and radios(not to mention working radio stations, automated or otherwise) is already completely in the realm of science fiction. Elms lights could be interesting tho, with amount of static electricity in the air.

[miah999]

I'm sorry.

No need to be so defensive.

Flickering lights and fires, have already been shown in the preview, also if the radios are never meant to do anything, why do you think the have on/off switches in game.

This is a game, and it is science fiction, last I checked there is no scientific basis, for a solar storm driving bears out of hibernation, and driving wolves to madness.

[Hiemalis]

I like the washer/dryer/microwave oven idea, but... I guess that those appliances, at best, wouldn't do more harm than they do when we replug them in our homes. (In case they weren't destroyed by an EMP.)

I wonder whether the Aurora will have some sort of direct effect in our character; hallucinations or delirium, for instance? Adding to @miah999's great idea, perhaps our character could wake up at night, with less hours of sleep than we intended, without further explanation. There's just... something not right in our heads. Then the radio turns on with static!

I certainly wouldn't mind subtle hints of psychic distortion during the Aurora: perhaps hearing gentle rustles even when there are no animals nearby; or perhaps our calorie storage being temporarily (and deceitfully) increased, only to find we're starving when the Aurora ends.

And definitely yes! Saint Elmo's fires, please.

[miah999]

Well if the game lore is that the aurora is affecting the animals then it could affect the humans as well.

High strength EM fields are known to create a sense of dread, fear, or paranoia in people. At extremely high levels they can induce hallucinations.

Some even believe that people seeing ghosts are the results of EM radiation. If you think your house is haunted, your first call should be to an electrical engineer not the Ghostbusters.

[alone sniper]

Are they unpredictable? 

[miah999]

2 minutes ago, alone sniper said:

Are they unpredictable? 

Can you be more specific?

[alone sniper]

1 minute ago, miah999 said:

Can you be more specific?

Can you predict aurora? 
 

[miah999]

Yes with a solar observatory, or satellite, so not likely something the survivor could do with no tech. They are caused by emissions from the sun, large flares produce the greatest activity.

[alone sniper]

2 minutes ago, miah999 said:

They are caused by emissions from the sun, large flares produce the greatest activity.

yep . I know about it. 

thanks for info

[Hiemalis]

20 minutes ago, miah999 said:

Yes with a solar observatory, or satellite, so not likely something the survivor could do with no tech. They are caused by emissions from the sun, large flares produce the greatest activity.

Has anyone from Hinterland confirmed that the Aurora is indeed related to solar flares?

1 hour ago, miah999 said:

High strength EM fields are known to create a sense of dread, fear, or paranoia in people. At extremely high levels they can induce hallucinations. Some even believe that people seeing ghosts are the results of EM radiation. If you think your house is haunted, your first call should be to an electrical engineer not the Ghostbusters.

Perfectly said. This was exactly what I was going for. It'd be interesting if aurorae became the psychological equivalent of snowstorms; while the latter directly affects our body, the former slowly but surely degrades our mind: both very unpredictable and dangerous.

[miah999]

2 minutes ago, Hiemalis said:

Has anyone from Hinterland confirmed that the Aurora is indeed related to solar flares?

I'll check, but I'm not sure.

Maybe @Patrick Carlson could chime in on that.

[Hiemalis]

As a sidenote: if I were an official source, considering how much people are willing to debate -- at times aggressively -- about the scientific minutiae and consequences of the disaster, I wouldn't say a word about it before the game release. That, and to keep the players in suspense, of course.

[miah999]

I think the cause may be part of the "Mystery" mentioned on the Kickstarter page...

The closest thing to an explination of the "The Long Dark Incident" is this...

"In the "post-digital" world of The Long Dark, mysterious aurorae flash across the sky, destroying humanity's technological might in an instant. All the technology we take for granted, but depend on for our daily existence, suddenly gone."

[Nervous Pete]

There's a very interesting article here by a James A. Marusek about the effects of a major solar storm. However I doubt if it has been peer-reviewed. 

http://projectcamelot.org/Solar_Storm_Threat_Analysis_James_Marusek_Impact_2007.pdf

It's around twenty-nine pages and covers everything from radio interference and gas pipeline fracture to possible strokes. He also has a solar storm disaster-preparedness guide:

http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/SSDPP.pdf

I'd take some of the findings of these with a pinch of salt, however they do have quite a bit of interesting information in them - most especially newspaper extracts from the great Carrington Event of 1859. How much The Long Dark will share with these musings I've no idea, but it makes for some fun guessing!  

[Dirmagnos]

On 8/5/2016 at 3:51 PM, miah999 said:

This is a game, and it is science fiction, last I checked there is no scientific basis, for a solar storm driving bears out of hibernation, and driving wolves to madness.

Last time you checked ? When was that ? Its a well known scientific fact that changes in em fields(and solar storms in particular) have been linked to rather radical changes in behaviors of various animals, including humans.

On 8/5/2016 at 6:46 PM, miah999 said:

Yes with a solar observatory, or satellite, so not likely something the survivor could do with no tech. They are caused by emissions from the sun, large flares produce the greatest activity.

Wth are you talking about ? There is no way, to date, to predict solar flares with any degree of certainty. Observatory allows you to view already happening flare, its not prediction.

On 8/5/2016 at 7:06 PM, Hiemalis said:

It'd be interesting if aurorae became the psychological equivalent of snowstorms; while the latter directly affects our body, the former slowly but surely degrades our mind: both very unpredictable and dangerous.

Aurora is just light show, it doesnt do anything. Also, this is not how em fields work. There havent been a single case of some1 going nuts from northern lights.

[Hiemalis]

43 minutes ago, Dirmagnos said:

Aurora is just light show, it doesnt do anything. Also, this is not how em fields work. There havent been a single case of some1 going nuts from northern lights.

My bad. I meant "aurorae" as "manifestations of the Aurora", not as a reference to aurora borealis/australis.

[miah999]

6 hours ago, Dirmagnos said:

Last time you checked ? When was that ? Its a well known scientific fact that changes in em fields(and solar storms in particular) have been linked to rather radical changes in behaviors of various animals, including humans..

There are no recorded cases of naturally occurring EM fields causing this.

6 hours ago, Dirmagnos said:

Wth are you talking about ? There is no way, to date, to predict solar flares with any degree of certainty. Observatory allows you to view already happening flare, its not prediction.

I din't say you can predict a solar flare, the question was can you predict the aurora, and yes you can. Once a solar flare has be observed by NASA's SOHO, you have an average of 12 days till it reaches the Earth. That allows you to both predict the arrival and intensity of an aurora. You can learn more from NOAA http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

6 hours ago, Dirmagnos said:

Aurora is just light show, it doesnt do anything. 

The aurora is directly proportional to the amount of EM radiation in the upper atmosphere, if those levels exceed what the Earth can naturally shield us from the effects can range from the destruction of small electrical devices to the loss of large scale power distribution networks. The aurora is just the visual effects of the EM radiation, no the aurora doesn't cause anything, but the EM field that causes it does.

6 hours ago, Dirmagnos said:

Its a well known scientific fact that changes in em fields(and solar storms in particular) have been linked to rather radical changes in behaviors of various animals, including humans.

...

Also, this is not how em fields work. There havent been a single case of some1 going nuts from northern lights.

Your contradicting yourself, in one post you say that Em fields can affect people, and then try to argue that they don't work that way because the aurora has yet to drive any one mad. Again your forgetting the context of the conversation, Solar activity has yet to destroy the world's electrical grid, send wolves into a frenzy, or drop planes out of the sky. But all these thing have already happened in TLD, and therefor are in-universe facts, that have to be accepted when trying to predict where the devs might take the game.

Next time instead of trying to start another argument on these forums spend some time with Google and Wikipedia, you'll find that I have looked these things up. Which is what I do on the occasion when I'm not an expert. Now, I shall not wast any more of my time on this conversation. Have a good day.

[Nervous Pete]

I think it's probably silly to argue over the plausibility of effects in the game caused by the solar storm. For all we know the developers might have a mystery behind the aurora that is also scientific. For example there's the hints in the rather wonderful John Wyndham novel Day of the Triffids that the spectacular and strange meteorite shower that blinds 99.9% of earth's population is not caused by extra-terrestrial activity, but instead by weapons-platform satelites that have been triggered, accidently or otherwise, to flash out visual spectrum radiation that is harmful to our retinas. The animals have sense enough to hide away from the spectacle, humans do not. So nowt worth getting het up about.

From what I understand, albeit being a bear of little brain as I am, solar storms can reach Earth a lot faster than 12 days. That's the standard, but significant coronal mass ejection storms hit far quicker and without warning - some of the effects reaching us within an hour. It's all to do with the power of the explosion.

Now if a major solar flare causes aurora borealis spectacular and vivid enough - far beyond the ordinary degree, I believe that could have an effect on animals enough to freak them out. True, I believe that they would probably hide in their burrows until the strangeness had passed, but it cannot be discounted. For the EM field effect, well, sure, it has not been proven one way or another. I tend towards scepticism with anything, but in science fiction I've no issues. And the Long Dark could be considered science fiction in the true sense - a story woven out of a notion grounded in science.

Anyway, check out the link I provided, it may be of interest. I'd love to know if the guy is talking guff or not. Does anyone else have any interesting articles linked out there, or book recommendations?

And I thought it was agreed that the animals were being driven mad by the changing colours of parked cars? "But... but... that wasn't green before... grrrrwwwllll wtf?"

[miah999]

11 minutes ago, Nervous Pete said:

From what I understand, albeit being a bear of little brain as I am, solar storms can reach Earth a lot faster than 12 days. That's the standard, but significant coronal mass ejection storms hit far quicker and without warning - some of the effects reaching us within an hour. It's all to do with the power of the explosion.

That's true, but one you reach a certain intensity of the solar ejection, auroras do not actually occur, as the energetic particles are stripped from the atmosphere. Any stronger and the atmosphere itself gets ripped away. So the "Long Dark Incident" is somewhere between the average and the extreme, but still unheard of in the real world.

14 minutes ago, Nervous Pete said:

I thought it was agreed that the animals were being driven mad by the changing colours of parked cars? "But... but... that wasn't green before... grrrrwwwllll wtf?"

No that's why the bears can't sleep, they keep getting up to make sure the cars are still the same colour.

P.S. @Nervous Pete Those are some interesting links, and seem mostly accurate, but once you get to a certain point the predictions just don't have a lot of data to back them. Not because they didn't do their research, but because there haven't been any super massive solar events in the past few million years.

[Dirmagnos]

4 hours ago, miah999 said:

There are no recorded cases of naturally occurring EM fields causing this.

Numerous studies have linked increased solar activity with adverse health effects. What is unknown is exact mechanics of the process.

Quote

I din't say you can predict a solar flare, the question was can you predict the aurora, and yes you can. Once a solar flare has be observed by NASA's SOHO, you have an average of 12 days till it reaches the Earth. That allows you to both predict the arrival and intensity of an aurora. You can learn more from NOAA http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

Whats that link is supposed to tell me ? How about you provide actual source, not some generic link to noaa site that means nothing. Even according to this same site predicting auroras is not exact science, at best its an educated guess.

Quote

Your contradicting yourself, in one post you say that Em fields can affect people, and then try to argue that they don't work that way because the aurora has yet to drive any one mad. Again your forgetting the context of the conversation, Solar activity has yet to destroy the world's electrical grid, send wolves into a frenzy, or drop planes out of the sky. But all these thing have already happened in TLD, and therefor are in-universe facts, that have to be accepted when trying to predict where the devs might take the game.

Not really. Disturbance in em fields are known to cause adverse health effects, including behavior(like becoming highly irritable or causing mild depression). But there have been no cases where those disturbances would cause people going literally nuts. Animals, on the other hand, are far more susceptible to those changes.

[Hiemalis]

Why does every thread related to the Aurora ends in a discussion about its nature and scientific foundations...