What does the "anomaly" effect?

[Dalec]

I'm sure this is going to be one of the themes of the game and not revealed just yet, but can you imagine finding a gun in an abandoned cabin or house. You stash it away for later, it could come in handy. Wild animals aren't going to be your only problem if there isn't any electricity. People are going to start getting desperate.

Later you find yourself in a situation where you feel you have to use it, whether it be animal or human. This time it's a person who is trying to kill you. You pull out the gun, you can see the fear in their eyes, they recoil away waiting for the bang and the pain. *Click*. You clear the chamber, and try to fire again *Click*.

The person attacking you has slowly figured it out as well, guns don't work anymore...

That's just one scenario though.

What things would you all like to see, or not see happen?

[robdoar]

I have a preparedness class that I start out with, we're only 9 meals away from anarchy.

Most of us have been hungry, but not 3 days no food hungry.

our thin veil of society will crumble very fast when the food trucks stop rolling.

[Dalec]

Something else I was thinking about was:

What if this caused people to see realistic hallucinations.

[shardragon]

@Dalec (1): A classical gun only uses gun powder, some simple mechanics and the basic laws of physics (in particular pressure and force). If these things wouldn't hold everybody would be dead anyways... (Cann't breath without pressure, cann't move or digest without force, ...)

Things might look different with a machine gun through ;-) [i don't know if automatic firing requires electrical circuits]

@Dalec (2): High-intensity magnetic fields only affect electrical circuits and metals, since the body uses electrical transmission internally there may be some effects on people themselves, I'm not sure if the effect would be significant through (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioelectr ... al_effects). Exposure to higher intensities of magnetic fields cause stress to the body (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetobi ... _standards). Would be interesting to know, what levels of radiation would be involved and over what time frame.

[robdoar]

Things might look different with a machine gun through ;-) [i don't know if automatic firing requires electrical circuits]

Not at all. Only thing firearms related that could be affected would be optics / lasers

[Dalec]

@shardragon

I agree if you don't have certain things in place the world just doesn't work right. I guess more of what I was thinking were. Very high pressures like explosions, and the energy they employ that makes them dangerous. (ie: guns and dynamite, even steam power) The things that have given us an edge in the past over mother nature. But, I understand that you have high pressures in nature to so how would you explain those not being affected? ...I'm not sure, I'm just thinking up ideas.

Hinterland hasn't specified, to my knowledge, what caused the aurora or why it's knocking out the power and to what effect it has on the world we know.

"Imagine the lights go out, never to return. Bright aurora flare across the sky, and all humanity’s technological might is laid to waste, neutralized in a kind of quiet apocalypse. Everything that has shielded humanity from the disinterested power of Mother Nature is suddenly wrenched from us, dropping us a few links down the food chain. Food and water are scarce. The roads are no longer safe. And winter approaches…"

Also @shardragon

The second comment you made would be interesting to see. I mean I would think things like pacemakers and people that are sensitive to higher intensities of magnetic fields would probably die or get really sick at the very least. That's a very good point.

[robdoar]

From Update 18:

The “event” that triggers The Long Dark is a massive geomagnetic disruption

caused by the largest solar superstorm in recorded history

. This storm makes the Carrington Event of 1859 look like a party sparkler. In late September, triggered by a massive coronal mass ejection (CME) that covers the distance between the Sun and the Earth in a blazing eight hours, the Earth is buffeted for days by highly concentrated electromagnetic energy, resulting in the following:

The power grid in North America is taken offline. Multiple transformer stations are blown. Swaths of the transmission infrastructure become so highly electrified that they erupt in flames, creating massive “fire lines” that criss-cross the landscape. In some areas, electricity “pulsates” intermittently and without a clear pattern. Other areas black out completely.

Satellites are destroyed or disrupted. This knocks out most of the communications and GPS infrastructure. Shipping and commercial airline traffic are disastrously impacted by this, including countless crashes, collisions, and groundings. Most sea-going vessels immediately become unpowered barges, without functioning engines or navigation systems.

Communications are taken offline. No cell service, no satellite communication. Some landlines still work, but generally nobody has access to this old technology anymore, so its usefulness is limited. The internet is taken down. No email, no online banking, no nothing.

In general, electronics are neutralized. Anything with an integrated circuit that’s newer than the late 70s is probably destroyed -- 99.9% are, which still leaves the possibility of a small number of things like radios, televisions, etc. functioning. Old tube-based radios and TVs still function, but need a power source.

Cars with electronic ignition systems, computers, and fuel injection do not start or run. Fuel pumps don’t work. Older cars (early 70s and older) may work. For the most part, highways leading in and out of cities immediately become gridlocked by millions of cars that suddenly can’t move under their own power.

Within days, some of the larger cities begin to experience food shortages. With no transportation infrastructure able to feed supplies to the cities, millions of people are faced with the reality that they are essentially prisoners in the cities. Many choose to try to leave the cities on foot, causing conflict in the suburban and rural areas, which cannot absorb these “urban refugees”. The have vs. have-not dynamics flare up, often to extreme degrees. Violence is common. The infrastructure of law and order enforced by the police and the military begins to unravel.

Long distance communication becomes nearly impossible, and political power becomes localized. Information becomes a scarce resource. There is wide distrust and speculation regarding what caused this scenario. Many people refuse to believe it was brought on by natural phenomenon, and suspect foreign powers or domestic terrorism.

The weather is just beginning to turn cold, and Winter is on the horizon. Without power, fuel, food -- it’s going to be a grim Winter for people in the Cities, and elsewhere. Between the extreme cold, starvation, and predation (from humans and wildlife), most people will not survive the first Winter.

[Dalec]

@robdoar

Thanks Rob. I just needed to read back further apparently.

[taeonas]

We know a lot about what would happen were something like the solar super storm posited in TLD's story would do. Guns not working really aren't a part of it, unless you're talking about things like the General Electric minigun, which needs electricity to operate, or any of the electronically primed munitions, which simply aren't available for consumer purchase due to cost, bulk and other problems. In short, guns are mechanical and chemical systems, and would be unaffected by a solar storm that wasn't bad enough to largely sterilize the planet.

The biggest hit would be to the power grid. What TLD describes happening to the grid, well, all of that has actually happened. The Carrington event caused telegraph lines and equipment to burst into flames, more recent storms have blown substation transformers like there was nothing too it.

In the event of a storm like the one described, the grid is gone, and it isn't coming back for a long, long time. Generating stations might or might not make it through OK. Nuclear plants would probably be unaffected on account of the massive shielding they're built with. What the storm would do to the coils in unshielded plants, I honestly don't know, but I suspect not very much. It's the power lines themselves that make the grid so vulnerable, not the substations.

That said, I suspect that solar cells, left exposed to the sky, would probably cook out. I would have to build a HERF emitter, and point it at a photovoltaic array to be really sure, but logically I would expect them to be destroyed in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.

Electromagetic flux is the big doom on us. Flux is how we generate almost all of our power. The exceptions would be purely chemical systems like batteries or fuel cells. Flux is how every solenoid and transformer operates. We need flux for our technology to work. More specifically, we need controllable flux. The solar storm envisioned in the long dark is something else. It is uncontrolled, staggeringly powerful flux, too much flux.

Its like EMP, but instead of a pulse, its a barrage that lasts for, from what I gather from the lore, weeks or longer. That makes it a lot more damaging than an EMP event could ever dream of being.

EMP enjoys a rich mythology about how it would destroy everything electronic. This is... farcical if you actually look at the testing done. EMP may stall your modern, electronic ridden car. May, then again, it may not, and if it does, once the pulse is over, it starts up again no problem. Your phone, anything wireless, is probably in trouble, as its designed to be sensitive to flux. That's how it gets the data after all. If you're in a metal or reenforced masonry building though, then its all good, because your shielded, and radiation doesn't turn corners.

The ongoing barrage from this posited super storm.... we have no real idea what that would do to unshielded electronics. It might destroy them, eventually, or it might not. If anyone has tested this I've never heard about it. At the very least, it would render most electronics either useless, or in the case of extremely simple electronic devices, unreliable until the event was over. By which time the infrastructure that supports most of the newer gadgets is so much slag.

In the case of your car, or TLD's protagonist's plane, it would stall, and not start again... for weeks, if ever.

If you give credence to the dirty electricity theory, well, then a small but significant portion of the population would be physically effected as well. If waste energy, stray flux, from consumer electronics causes them problems, something like the super storm could well kill them outright.

So, yeah, plenty bad enough without magic coming into play.

[Dalec]

@Taeonas

I agree! We don't need magic in a game like this to see what can actually happen and how devastating it could be.

Before I was set straight by @robdoar in his post above I wasn't sure of the mythos of the anomaly. But, I was more on the "outside" influence side. Maybe a new power source experiment gone wrong, or horribly horribly right kind of thing.

[kopfstoff]

thats also what i like about the world concept of "the long dark", people always need a fall guy for anything, that's why many "refuse to believe it was brought on by natural phenomenon, and suspect foreign powers or domestic terrorism."

[ANGRYWOLVES]

Places like Cheyanne Mountain SAC HQ would survive because they're shielded.

Civilization would re-emerge from such places.But it would take a while.

A large solar flare is certainly possible as the game authors have described.