There’s a reason we don’t have flying cars yet, and it’s not because we don’t have the technology.
fantasy setting has magic and flying creatures
still using nuclear energy as a main energy source
You can only lose so many stable boys before giving up on your riding griffins.
Imagine a government so cartoonishly evil and/or stupid that it would develop nuclear technology, then use it to extract fossil fuels more profitably. No need, the USA tried.
Ok, but in their defense the other idea was putting small nuclear reactors in everyone’s car. Fallout didn’t pluck that idea from the aether.
Nuclear Fracking has a ring to it though.
At least that would’ve made the traffic interesting. Fender bender directly followed by nuclear contamination of an entire city block.
Wouldn’t be surprised to see someone make a car with a small nuclear reactor in near future just to have it made and shown
You know I just realized I need to get a quick deployment and dedeployment windsurfing parachute to propel my bicycle when the wind is, well, normal here.
shit it looks like i’ve got all the hardware except the sail (my trike has a vertical(ish) post about the same angle we could totally pop a sail mount in or on. and i’m kind of turning my bike into a papier mache pirate frigate for halloween 2026, so this would just, uh, yeah it’d be great.
my wife blames you. i haven’t told her yet, but she blames you.
I can take it. Good luck!
I can imagine power lines being a problem.
not my biggest one tho
Install one of those funky wind-redirecting towers that they’ve started adding to cargo ships
quick deployment
Trivial
and dedeployment
Physically impossible
So it averages out to being about average in difficulty then.
Mid diff
You could attach the parachute lines to electric motors that could quickly reel the parachute back in.
And make the parachute semi-rigid like an umbrella so that it folds in a predictable and reversible way.
And make the anchor point where the lines attach to the motorcycle moveable. When it’s deployed, the anchor point sits at the front of the bike so the chute and lines can pull the bike forward from the front. As the chute is getting close to being fully reeled in, the anchor point swings out on an arm a couple feet to the side of the bike and it gets several feet higher so that the lines and the chute are coming in from directly overhead rather than blocking the riders view.
These are just my preliminary ideas. Of course the engineering team at GM or Toyota or whoever buys this idea off me will likely want to tighten it up a bit to take into account various locale specific regulations and practical manufacturing considerations.
i got knives what you talking about
Checkmate!
That’s putting the cart before the horse!
Is this coach class?
Neigh
Is this the hyperloop they talk about?
I’m laughing at both the mental images of the horses being shunted through the hyper loop at high speed, or them being the motive force to pull passengers through.
That’s at least 18 horsepower!
So basically these planes run on horsepower, where as hamster power runs the on-prem machines at work.
Starting to make sense.
> setting has bikes and trains
> still using cars as main form of transportation
You do know steam powered locomotives started appearing in the early 19th century, long before than cars?
Cars are much more advanced tech than bikes. Hell we have partly self driving electric cars now. That’s some sci-fi shit
huh, now i want to slap some sensors on my ebike so it can do ACC
That’s why I can’t understand how some bikes can cost as much as a small used car.
And some watches cost far more than both.
Price isn’t always perfectly aligned with complexity or utility 🤷♀️
Yeah, some watches, but you can buy perfectly competent watches for very low prices.
You can’t buy a perfectly competent electric bike for a low price, at least not where I am.
Is that true for used e-bikes, too?
The used market for pretty much anything is shit here in Italy, idk why
Weird. That’s definitely not a problem here in Germany.
Buying something at the beginning of its usefulness vs the end where it’s practically falling apart and worth only what you can sell its parts for…
I basically have a teensy weak motorcycle that I can “fuel up” at home or bring a spare battery for long rides. I’m bothered the used cars are so expensive, not the bike
I also ain’t looking at $12k frames, (mine was $700) so it’s got that going for it too.
Economies of scale and subsidies
Hold on, let me just load up the family onto my bicycle and ride the 15 miles to the grocery store.
Can this argument just disappear from discourse? People don’t always drive around with their partner, dog and 2.5 kids AND groceries AND spare tires AND grandparents.
The majority of people in car-centric areas use their car only to haul around themselves, which could be done with public transport or bikes.
That, and the nearest grocery store being 15 miles (25 km) away is highly unusual even by US standards. In the US alone, over 80% of people live in what the Census Bureau calls a city, defined as “encompass[ing] at least 2,000 housing units or hav[ing] a population of at least 5,000 people.” The fact that someone chooses to live in bumfuck nowhere shouldn’t mean that the other people who live in a town with population > 5 shouldn’t get to have safe, affordable, well-kept walking/micromobility/public transit infrastructure.
People don’t suddenly stop driving cars when not-cars becomes the predominant form of transportation. Like I said, “main form of transportation”. That cars are by far the main form is the problem because, among other huge problems, it induces reliance on cars and creates expensive, unmaintainable sprawl that makes other forms of transit completely impractical. Hell, even bumfuck nowhere towns used to have passenger rail that came through them before the tracks were ripped out. I think people who worry that good not-car infrastructure will destroy their ability to drive are projecting, because in reality, it’s always been car infrastructure that eats up everything else around it, not vice-versa.
“What do you mean ‘boats shouldn’t be the primary form of transportation’? Did you ever consider that I chose to live on an island off the coast of Michigan??”
True. However “food deserts” do exist in some US cities. Though that’s another consequence of unfettered capitalism.
Im surprised everytime I see a car with more than 2 people, just 1 is the norm
Legit. If my wife wants to come on a trip I’m driving on, she can hop on her bike. The two of our bikes together cost a fifth what our car cost, and the “fuel” expenses are negligible with solar.
Honestly thinking of a way to solar recharge the bikes while we’re camping. Like, an umbrella to shade the battery, with a solar panel on top and an extension cord up connect the battery under the damn thing. Maybe solar panels on the bike too and some active cooling for the batteries idk
Oh yes, the grocery store commute. You can clearly see in traffic that every car is full of groceries and people everyday at all times, and is rarely one person alone
I leave the 8-story building (with an elevator), walk 5-10 minutes (one road crossing with lights), buy groceries, in 30 minutes I’m back home.
Something is wrong with that murrka thing.
Most Americans are used to very spread out cities. It causes a lot of problems with groceries since you have to make far fewer grocery trips, which then means fresh foods are rare. Probably a huge contributor to America’s obesity problem
Yeah many of our cities in statesia have tiny urban centers and sprawling suburbs.
There’s a “town” suburb of a nearby city that has the waterfront zoned for multi-use property. Businesses (including my favorite restaurant ever) are on the first floor, residences on the second. I really want to rent/buy the apartment above my favorite restaurant and eat there every day, but the restaurant owner’s daughter lives there right now. It’s almost ideal for a walkable community
The closest grocery store is literally in the same building I currently live in. It takes me ~30 seconds from my apartment door to grocery store door… This (<3 mins to the nearest grocery store) is the norm in a lot of places.
When I lived in my own house in the woods (literally no neighbors), I could bike ~10 minutes to the nearest small farmer’s shop, or ~20 minutes and get to a bigger grocery store. The fact that you must drive to buy groceries is, frankly, insane.
When I lived in my own house in the woods (literally no neighbors), I could bike ~10 minutes to the nearest small farmer’s shop, or ~20 minutes and get to a bigger grocery store. The fact that you must drive to buy groceries is, frankly, insane.
I live in Russia, dachas are common enough here (mostly summertime and not heated houses on small plots of land, used for gardening and sometimes growing food). So, we have one. When I’m there, I only bike for fun. I can literally walk to the neighboring town with a cinema and a mall and plenty of conveniences in 40 minutes on foot. I mean, people who have cars do drive to that kind of distances, but it’s not necessary. It’s the kind of place where in like 1 in 20 houses people live most of the time. And still.
You know that your family can ride too? In cities which aren’t car-centric hell-holes, it’s normal for kids of very young ages (6-8 years old) to walk/bike everywhere on their own. It also tends to help a lot with their independence and development.
Also, if you build your cities correctly, your grocery store will be a <3 minute walk. Your spouse or kids can just walk there.
And when they are close, you don’t need to hoard 2 weeks or a whole month worth of groceries per trip, you can just get them more frequently and enjoy fresher produce
If, if, if… That’s not how the real world works
I mean, it’s literally already how it works for billions of people.
This is precisely how the real world works, unless you live in under a dictatorship of capital so brazen they have even taken the concept of a livable city away from you.
This is precisely how parts of the real world work, but guess what? There’s a fuck ton of places that are not like that, so why just pretend that isn’t the case?
I mean, this is the premise of the original comment here. That there still are backwards-ass places where people have to own a car and drive, when much better forms of transportation exist.
They didn’t pretend that, they literally just told you exactly why it isn’t the case.
You were the one who said that it isn’t how the world works, when it literally is.
It’s not how the world works though, only select parts. Saying the world works this way implies it does for everyone.
Step one: leave the family (especially toddlers and infants) at home with a trusted caretaker or dog. Step two, ride about 15mph so you don’t drain the battery too fast. Step three, wake up
I’ll be sure to tell my brother (single parent) he can just leave his kid at home with the caretaker he can’t afford
Some people are completely unable to understand that not everybody lives in a city with everything on their doorstep, some people have children, and some people need to be able to transport more than a few small items at a time.
Therefore the majority that do live in a city must use cars too?
No one is coming to your rural community to build a bike lane. These discussions are never about the rural folk. Y’all are going to be left alone. Bikes and transit don’t make sense in low-density rural areas
Now please stop fighting the change the rest of us want in our cities
Big city people: Boy, it’d sure be nice if there were fewer cars in the center of this big city right here, and more people would use the public infrastructure already at their disposal.
Country people: Some people don’t live in cities, therefore this statement is also about me! There tryin ta tek muh cur!
It takes time to come to the realization that a lot of what we do is inefficient because that’s just what people are used to doing. Some towns survive solely due to coal mining, and they see it as an existential threat if it were shut down. Nuclear power also takes very knowledgeable individuals, years of planning, and many resources to get started. Coal is cheap, dirty, and primitive.
Eh…a lot of what we do is inefficient because that makes the most money for people who already have too much money.
Nuclear was kneecapped by the fossil fuel industry. They’re still fighting against renewables.
We’re going to destroy the planet so that the rich get richer.
Don’t forget pride and an extreme disrespect for any new idea.
Hooman make fire, fire make warm, fire make food, fire good, huk!
and makes steel.
Use hydrogen for that (using coal creates 1.5 tons CO² per ton steel). Green steel needs no phosphor and sulfur too, making it stronger.
Hydrogen isn’t cheap, though.
Gets cheaper though.
It is if you have a nuclear power plant
Ah yes, the famously cheap nuclear power plant.
How expensive is it per MWh compared with coal if you account for removing the CO2 from the atmosphere?
Most countries don’t and won’t do that, though. Coal is only expensive when a society agrees to stop externalizing the costs, and that only works if either most major countries are doing it or when they severely restrict trade with countries that keep externalizing the costs.
Nuclear also isn‘t even a good energy source. Way too expensive and the waste is a problem for millenia. Renewables + hydrogen/battery/mechanical energy conservation is simply superior. Fusion would be cool too
Nuclear is a great energy source. My state (Illinois) generates over half of all its energy from nuclear. France is a great example of a country that maximizes the potential of nuclear energy. The waste is not a problem if it’s stored properly. The much bigger problem are carbon/methane emissions which are fucking our climate right now. Also, nuclear waste can be reprocessed to make it less volatile and radiotoxic, but that requires an advanced application of technology.
Batteries and solar absolutely yes, we need to be scaling up battery technology as fast as possible, particularly sodium-ion batteries for static energy storage from solar power. The biggest problems with wind/solar is the actual storage of the energy. No wind? No power. No sun? No power. That’s why you need batteries, and battery technology has only gotten good enough in the past couple years.
Scaling up hydrogen is very difficult, it’s extremely volatile, and can realistically only be used in large scale power plants because transporting hydrogen is extremely expensive. Fusion could be good, but it’s still being worked on, and who knows how long it’ll really take for us to have a practical implementation.
Yes battery + solar seem to have gotten good enough in recent years. So much so that it seems they are more cost effective than nuclear for newly build systems. Nuclear even seems to be the most expensive one. Link
We have an increasing number of windmills here. The wind never drops below 15mph (there are a few airfields taking advantage of that) so like, the one time I remember the wind stopping there was a tornado 30 miles away. Ages ago.
Did you even read my comment? There already are ways to efficiently store electricity generated by solar and wind turbines. These methods use conservation of movement, gravity or hydrogen made through electrolysis to flatten out the fluctuations in sun and wind availability. That and nuclear fusion is the future, coal AND nuclear are outdated and we should get away from them as quickly as possible. No new nuclear power plants and no coal mining anymore.
France only pushed for nuclear, because they need an excuse for the costs of their nukes and nuclear submarines. The disadvantages of high cost and nuclear waste remain.
if it’s stored properly
For millennia, which we can’t do yet.
nuclear waste can be reprocessed to make it less volatile and radiotoxic
Which needs energy.
France’s 80 years of nuclear waste takes about the space of an Olympic swimming pool and half.
In a millena, it’ll be 150 swimming pools, and that’s assuming we haven’t found a way to repair/reuse/recycle it in 1000 years. Or not decided to just yeet it on the nearest inhospitable planet via railcannon or something.
Nuclear waste is a non issue.
If it’s such a non issue, how come we still don’t have a single long term storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in the world? After more than 70 years of nuclear energy production.
“If it’s not an issue, how come we haven’t built a thing to solve it”
Yeah, that must be the reason why the United States pay half a billion dollars of tax payer money each year to the utility companys to compensate their failure in finding a suitable storage location.
We do, it’s called really big hole
The money hole?
Which is still not operational, just like the dozens of other potential storages, we started building just to find out last minute that they are not suitable. Or even better, those we started using just to find out they were not suitable to begin with later. I’m curious to read how many billions it will cost to retreive the waste from Onkalo in 30 years when we’ve learnt that it’s also not safe for the next million years.
They’re expensive to build because we don’t build enough of them.
Yahtzee’s book Will Save the Galaxy for Food actually covers this, in a sci-fi way. In the future, all transportation is done via Quantum Tunnelling, so guess what job suddenly became obsolete? Space pilots. Space pilots now only exist because people have nostalgia for the old days, reducing pilots to little more than tour guides and adventure holidays.
It’s like in those MMOs where you can teleport basically anywhere, but you still have mounts and yes you can travel from one end of the map to the other on your horse, admiring the scenery, or you could just click the coordinates someone pasted into the chat to get to the world boss you’re supposed to kill for the most optimum play… Lookin’ at you, Guild Wars 2!
It’s like in those MMOs where you can teleport basically anywhere, but you still have mounts
Typically, you can’t teleport somewhere you haven’t already visited in these games. So the horse lets you travel beyond your historical borders, while teleportation allows you to reconvene with friends at a prior explored location.
I feel like it would be much more effort to tame a flying creature or magic, with the latter often being displayed as a life-long commitment.
At the very least, building a fence to keep in a Pegasus seems like MUCH more work
As would building a fence to keep in a bird.
Cages are clearly more effort (and cost) than fences (given a similarly-sized creature), though.
And it would be especially hard to feed those things. Can you imagine how much a magical creature eats? They use a lot of energy. Much more than a horse would normally
Yeah, you can put horses on any pasture and they will happily graze on whatever weed grows there. Gryphons (just one example of a popular fantasy mount) should be carnivorous. So how many cows do you need to feed that thing before it will fly someone safely across the countryside, without deciding that this someone looks awfully tasty?
Big flying mounts should be horribly expensive to maintain. Only the most wealthy nobles and wizards who can literally conjure money should be able to pay for them.
Personally I always have to suspend a lot of my disbelief whenever dragon mounts are being mentioned in fantasy books and there is absolutely no explanations how these creatures are being fed. Usually the topic is quietly sidelined or simply dismissed with “something something magic”.
Except high-magitech worlds of course.
has anon considered, that maybe, horses are just extremely fucking cool, and that is why?
Boo horses. Hooray horsetaurs
I’m amazed how in fantasy settings with houndreds of humanized species, all being like horse, oxes, cows, pigs, parrots and what not… but acts like humans and have similar social status as humans… still, meat is being pushed as the core diet in these worlds. It’s so importantt to push this narrative that not even fantasy worlds are safe, even though it just gets weird (and prob really dark) with how that world otherwise works.
… Buddy, you do realize that meat-eating is sort of a core concept for most things on earth, right?
About 63% of species are carnivores, only 32% of species are herbivores. It’s literally just a small subsect of humans that think eating meat is weird or some kind of ‘narrative.’
It’s not so much that, but the presence of fables of species that humans usually exploit for their bodies. If these fables walk around and have citizenship etc, in many settings you can start wonder who are people of the show eating.
still, meat is being pushed as the core diet in these worlds
The natural tension between herbavoires and carnavoires is a major plot point of Beastars. It’s primarily used as a metaphor for the tension between age cohorts and genders, but vegans and anprims ahem eat it up, regardless.
Similarly, Attack On Titan is all about humans turning into giant cannibal monsters, then justifying it to themselves.
Also, a very popular trope in Vampire / Werewolf / Zombie settings. “How does cannibalism become socially appropriate?” has become a popular subject of modern fiction, particularly in the horror genre.
Yea there’s are a few shows playing on the subject, but I promise you this is the case in the wast majority of fable indulgent isekais.
Just like Capitalism Realism, authors can’t even imagine societies with other economic system than capitalism.
I know they are exceptions of that. If you like to mention your favorite one please do it.
Yea, so much for fantasy and imagionation right. I think another reason why some ideas or concept are transferred as is, is even considering alternative methods means acknowledging that there are alternatives, This could be a reminder of that nothing is perfect, there’s always room for change and improvement, and we need change and adjustement to function - even though most of us aren’t cognitively set and ready for it, instead settle in current state and habits.
Not sure what you’re asking, favorite show that isn’t regurgitating the same ideas, or?
World that has nuclear coal energy, but rides magical horses as the main transport.
Charcoaled!
Nuclear’s always a fun idea until someone decides to commit an act of domestic terrorism. Or until some freaks decide to target the nuclear facilities of their enemies.
That’s why nuclear facilities security is so stringent and fail safes are everywhere
Every country using nuclear power has incidents with covered-up leaks or near-core-melt incidents in reactors, if you dig a bit deeper. I’m swiss and know of multiple of them* in Swiss, France and Germany. Imagine how it looks in a absolutistic 3rd-world country.
Btw, the one in Ucraine was forcefully taken over by Russia (with international diplomatic pressure caused only by them firing on the outer walls) and power cut.About fail safes; historic statistic mean is every 25 years somewhere all of them not working and causing large swaths of land being uninhabitable for centuries. Human error always gets underestimated there.
* like, secretly using low-grade steel for the reactor walls to cut cost, fissures not being reported, or the one, where Leibstadt had to be cooled by firefighters (not being told anything (i know one of them)) due to cooling canal congestion after heavy rain.
Edit: Or were you sarcastic and i failed to notice?
Yeah, all the dirty bombs that are set off each year show how unsafe nuclear power really is!
Hust*Iran. There’s a international black market for fissile material.
Nuclear facilities are very very tight on security. Domestic terrorism is a terrible reason to not build them.
And if you are a part of a war? With or without the Nuclear plant you are going to have massive problems.
Weird excuses to not build them if you ask me.
Do I want the results of the war being that my hometown needs to be rebuilt from the ground up?
Or do I want to have that be the case, except we gotta wait 5000 years for the radiation to be at a level where we can do that safely?
A nuclear plant is not a nuclear bomb. And 5000 years is outta your ass.
And, the most important thing - military targets are usually protected worse than nuclear stations and big industrial plants. A nuclear station doesn’t move anywhere, it just sits on one place armored so well that it’ll likely survive the town being nuked (pun intended).
There are pollution dangers and complex logistics of rare and expensive materials. And the stations themselves are very expensive. But the danger of a nuclear station giving out a nuclear explosion is nonexistent.
Yeah, remind me how long it took for Hiroshima to be habitable
You have a higher chance of being struck by a falling wind turbine blade than you do of being victim of a failure due to a bombed nuclear power plant.
You gave an example of the Zaporizhzhia plant being bombed in Ukraine, wheres the explosion or nuclear fallout? And thats a plant from the 80s.
We’ve had at least two of these in the recent past: that Ukrainian power plant that was under attack, and also Iran’s nuclear facilities getting bombed.
Nuclear is also freaking expensive. You need a lot of safety measures to run a nuclear power plant relatively safely, and disposing of spent fuel material and the building itself when it’s decommissioned is really expensive, too. On top of that, the nuclear material that power plants use isn’t cheap, either, and there aren’t that many countries that actually have them in mineable quantities. And one of the major exporters is Russia.
This
People act like there isn’t a rather large contingent of our society that doesn’t openly invite “end times” or want to create as much pain and suffering as possible for poor black and brown ppl who you know these plants will be built around.
There is substantial reason to advocate for nuclear, but to handwave the concerns of organized sabatoge in the times we’re living in does not help.
There’s plenty of shit that disporportionately comes down on minorities, but nuclear power plant building sites?
Please, please, I’m literally begging you: Please point me to a place where a nuclear plant has been constructed somewhere that displaced anyone.
Only restriction is it can’t be people who were displaced by nuclear disaster, like Chernobyl or Fukushima.
Bonus points if it displaced minorities. Even more if there was an alternative build site available but they chose to be bastards.
Hasn’t ever been an attack against nuclear power station, I can’t think of one
Three years ago: Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant crisis
I envy you. Not having watched the news for 3 years must be nice.
The only thing I can assume you’re alluding to is when the Russians took control of Chernobyl which is not an active power station and didn’t result in a radiation leak.
The one at Zaporizhzhia is active and has been attacked a half a dozen times.
And we’ve all read about the nuclear winter that subsequently ensued.
Huh? Not sure what you’re trying to say. It’s pretty much impossible to trigger a nuclear explosion from a nuclear power plant, no matter what you do.
It was sarcasm.
