A world where the rich control the water supply

This is a second project (After my first project I found it boring) for me and I am going to tell a story consisting of parallels and metaphors of modern-day social issues.

In a world of the far-future, 200 years after a Cataclysm. The rich classes called the Rex Regum had dominance over the entire water supply of the planet, which is now a massive desert planet. The water supply source comes from the Great Northren Mountains, which encircles the all of the Arctic Latitudes. The world is in a everlasting sunny day without clouds and nights of warm weather - most of the seabed have been dried up and now a great desolate lands of skeletons and stones. The rich have power over water, electricity, gas, food and sources of life. They formed a strict caste class system called the Conception System which consists of:

Rex Regum (The Royality) Trofosylléktes Periousía (The Rich) Barruko Zirkulua (The Sways) Cylch Allanol (The Lawmakers) Zakon Rycerski (The Knights) Dai Saishi (The Clergy) Muraqabat 'Aqall (The Watchers) Krieg Soldaten (The Soldiers) Petani Tanah (The Farmers) Andzerrnamkhelinery (The Unwanteds)

Together with this tyrannical system, the higher powers oppress the lower caste classes and put strict laws to prevent rebellion of the lower caste classes. They force the lower caste classes (Unwanteds, Farmers, half of the Soldiers) and the rest of the higher caste classes to worship their Supreme God Emperor of the Rex Regum, named Haikal and his consort Adrianna.

Up in Useful Notes/Paraguay

Not going to work. See, all of the ice in the world today would only raise the oceans 60m if it all melted. Meanwhile, the Pacific covers about 1/3 of the world's entire surface and has an average depth of over 4 km. No way you could lock all of that up into ice.

edited 2nd Jun '16 2:42:16 AM by MattII

If we are talking about earth, (which I doubt, because what mountain chain is that?) It is quite possible. But the depth of that ice would be massive. I think exceeding an average of ten kilometres depth. That is assuming that at that point in time, most of that water has not been lost to space.

Two problems you may want to consider. The first is farming is the number one water consuming industry. And that is including the domestic water supply industry. Second, large scale farming produces clouds, because plants breathe. And unlike other industries, you can't reduce water usage much.

You can fix both problems with greenhouse, hydroponic, or aeroponic only farming. Under such models, you can use giant condensers to reclaim the water lost. Although this is quite energy intensive.

One thing to note is that the high price of water will drive up the price of oil, and other alternate lubricating, coolant and cleaning substances across industry. Also, the waste reclamation industry will become a fair bit more important.

This reminds me of that Flash Gordon remake that had a similar water based regime.

I'm reminded of the plot to the film version of Tank Girl. Only with less song sequences.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Might make more sense on a desert world but keep in mind that water can be reused.

At least 10 km of ice at the poles (and probably more, remember Antarctica's Ice sheet is on average, about 1.9 km thick) and a lack of oceans elsewhere will have epic consequences on the place's plate tectonics. It's a wonder the world can actually support anyone any more. Come to think of it, that would have a major effect on atmospheric pressure, most people living on the land would be suffering at least mild altitude sickness, with many former high-altitude cities now utterly unlivable.

edited 2nd Jun '16 4:27:30 AM by MattII

Two important things to consider in any dystopian setting are 1) Can the thing that makes this a dystopia be enforced effectively (the problem with arranged marriage for everyone stories) and 2) Will the same thing not cause a revolution right off the bat anyway (the problem with The Purge)? The water cycle hinders the first condition here, and as for the second condition, well, I don't care how scared people are, they won't stand for that system for long. You can hold it off until the appropriate plot moment by saying "they tried once and it didn't work" (like the Hunger Games did), but a French Revolution X10000 is inevitable.

please call me "XionKuriyama" or some variation, thanks! | What is the good deed that you can do right now?

It would have a moderate effect on air pressure. But probably not as massive as you are guessing. As the oceans deplete, the air pressure at sea level will rise.

EDIT: 67 KM average depth if concentrated at a single pole.

edited 2nd Jun '16 12:12:28 PM by war877

Great, so instead of being at the equivalent of 3 km altitude they'll now be at the equivalent of 2½ km altitude. I'm sure the people of Mexico city would be very happy to know that they're now at 4¾ km equivalent pressure instead of 5¼ km.

In any case, it's still impossible, you couldn't pile all that ice up without wrecking the plate tectonics.

edited 3rd Jun '16 1:25:49 AM by MattII

I don't know about the plate tectonics, but if the planet has a crust depth comparable to earth, a pile of ice that big would sink right through to the mantle. I think. Although it would take a while for the rock beneath the pile to melt through.

Other than some increased volcanic and seismic activity, how would messing with the tectonics be a bad thing?

The main problem with a pile of ice that high is it would deform and overflow the ringing mountains.

Let's say the mountains are extremely large enough and there is lots of dam-like mountains and rock formations. Also the rich create dams to control the water.

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Ice is a really deformable substance at large sizes. Especially since it is self lubricating at normal polar temperatures. But if you had a really tall mountain ridge, and since a pile of ice that large would sink into the earth, you might manage it.

The tallest mountain is almost nine kilometres high.

Do you have an ice stockpile at the antartic latitudes as well?

Yes, there is the Grand Southren Mountains

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It would release a lot of particulates into the atmosphere, leading to a volcanic winter, as happened in 1816, only this would probably last much longer.

edited 3rd Jun '16 4:11:21 AM by MattII

Parts of your setting will need to be handwaved. With technology sourced from our universe, water cannot be controlled like this, The economic cost of maintaining those resevoirs would exceed any possible economic benefit to the elite who control it. Even if those mountain chains are natural. But doubly so if the mountain chains are artificial. Now, if they had some strange desire for 100% clear skies, maybe they would think it worth it anyway.

Furthermore, farming is a huge, water intensive industry. With the same human technology, the same problem emerges. It will cost more to keep that water controlled and out of the hands of corrupt farmers than the possible economic benefit to those in power.

Not to mention the perpetual problem, if the technological level is higher, of keeping the average citizen from building condensers themselves and literally pulling the water out of thin air.

For these reasons, you are going to need to go soft on the science and economic realism in your story. Either that, or add a bit of magic to your setting. Since you are writing an allegory, I don't see a problem with this either way.

Interesting fact: there is theorised to be multiple times the ocean's worth of water trapped in ringwoodite, in the transition zone of the earth's mantle.

edited 3rd Jun '16 3:57:23 AM by war877

The technological level is of probably between World War One to World War Two with a touch of simple electronics and mechanical computers.

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In that case you will not have as much problem with condensers all over the place. But keep in mind. The type of condenser I am talking about, there is one in every refrigerator (invented 1913).

And like I said in my first post, you would need condensers+greenhouses, or you will get clouds.

The clouds are ventilated back towards the water stations of the world.

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Then you're clearly not working with WW 2 tech, nor even with modern tech. You're talking global-scale geo-engineering, which is only a wet dream at this point.

Yeah, that would simplify things. Those must be some incredible structures, though. Large scale atmosphere filtering would be something to behold.

You know, instead of setting this on Earth (or an alternate Earth) could it be set on a different planet that's being colonized and terraformed?

Like say... humans have started colonizing space and one ship that was financed at least partially by a group of wealthy people travels to a distant star system and is able to set up a colony on a largely Earthlike but water deficient planet.

Their technology could be largely primitive (at least by far-future standards) because they only had room for so much manufacturing equipment on their ship and their planetside factories are initially making bulky-but-durable stuff at least until they get enough access to all the right materials and research their stuff.

As for controlling the water... there was only so much water readily available on the planet's surface and they may have had to dedicate one or two of their smaller ships to harvesting water from ice asteroids to get more. The people in control thus enforced a rationing system to ensure they had enough water to run the farms, use in industrial processes, and possibly use for terraforming the planet (Earth's oceans act as a giant heat regulator, keeping the sunlight side of the planet cool and slowly releasing it again on the night side. Their planet might have nasty hot days and freezing cold nights and there might be a long-term plan to create a manmade ocean to regulate that).

Fast-forward a bit and their colony might reach some point where they have alot of water, possibly even an excess that could be used to make the average citizen's life easier, but the colony was initially set up on the assumption that water was a scarce and valuable resource that must be regulated. The Water Conservation Protocols are very useful and supply the ruling class with a great deal of power over the colony, and they can always find new valuable uses for any water their asteroid miners get ahold of.

They could have... say... self-replicating robots or something that were able to mine resources and construct massive holding tanks and pipelines to hold their water. Like a giant system of them that circle the planet. These tanks and pipes were basically created to produce an artificial (but contained) ocean to regulate the planet with area around the pipes are less hot in the day, less freezing at night, and maybe have fish in them to provide food and stuff.

Whatever the case, there's a whole mess of water theoretically available for human use, but it's all being carefully regulated by the ruling class for their own ends. Not sure exactly about the politics of the situation, but it might make sense for the planet to have simply been water deficient from the start and their culture and the status quo arising from that, with only recently there being enough water on the planet to really show how much they are abusing their power.

This setting would be more doable if the technology available is around 1900 technology, but there is some future tech embedded in the barrier mountains, to maintain the artificial isolation of the water.

The tech would essentially be lost tech from before the cataclysm. It could easily be recovered through study, but the ruling class is against this, because it would erode their power.

Who gives a shit about the actual logic of how the world works, when this entire setting was concieved for the express purpose of exploring issues of class and political power? Mad Max did almost the exact same thing, and if you look past the Citadel-Gastown-Bullet Farm trifecta, its worldbuilding has a bunch of holes in it (what do the Buzzards, Rock Raiders and swamp-stilt-people eat and drink?). But none of that matters, because the film is so engrossing and compelling on the dramatic and metaphorical level that no-one cares to ask those questions.

For another example, me and a friend watched Zootopia, and then spent hours afterwards discussing how the city of Zootopia's economy worked. How would the varying needs of its citizens affect the price of food and other necessities? How would they calculate the cost of living, and by extension the minimum wage? How would they create a non-electronic currency that the city's entire populace could easily use, considering that the largest demographics (elephants and rhinos) were 10 times larger than the smallest (mice, rats, shrews, etc.)?

But at no point did we think that Zootopia was somehow a worse film for not tackling those questions, because those questions were totally irrelevant to the dramatic functions of the story. So if Huthman wants to write about tyrannical polar ice-lords and their oppressive society, so be it. "The god-emperor controls all the water, and that's that." is literally all the explanation his story needs.

edited 4th Jun '16 3:45:12 AM by Tungsten74

<—— Has a geology hobby.

Nope. The ground would sink and deform under the ice (and raise elsewhere, a process called isostatic adjustment) but it wouldn't just "sink through to the mantle".

On Earth there are sections of crust where the Moho discontinuity (the "rough boundary" between crust and mantle) is not really determinable until you've passed well in excess of 100 km. For example the Rocky Mountain region of North America. In areas where it is at its thickest, the crust is at least 100 km before you actually hit mantle. Sections of China and India along, including and north of the Himalaya system are even thicker, consequence of continent on continent collision.

Additionally, while ice is heavy and does deform crust when applied to continental scales like that, it is significantly less dense than the silicates (minerals, rocks and solutions/compounds/mixtures that contain silicon dioxide aka SiO2) that comprise it. Were such an ice sheet concentrated over continental craton or a thick orogen (mountain range) with crustal thicknesses of dozens to over 100 km in depth, the amount of isostatic deformation would amount to less than 1000 meters of vertical displacement. The crust and mantle are more than elastic enough to have that happen without serious affects on tectonics or interior geological phenomena (volcanoes, etc.). You'd get more displacement from a Large Igneous Province type volcanic eruption (like seen in the Columbia Plateau), than any amount of ice.

edited 4th Jun '16 5:28:19 AM by MajorTom

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Yeah, I should have taken back those words a while ago. It would sink a ways, but not that far.

I was imagining all that ice on the actual arctic circle, Which I believe is pretty thin overall.