Life on an Ice Planet

I've been toying with creating an ice planet culture for a sci-fi story. It's soft sci-fi, but I still want it to be believable and to put some thought into it.

What sparked this idea is actually the desert planet. I really like desert biomes in fiction, especially, sci-fi, and I wanted to make a planet that is mostly desert, but it seems hard to make it distinctive when lots of other sci-fi works have desert worlds that imitate the Wild West or North Africa, so I decided to make a cold desert planet.

Now, obviously such a planet will not have a large, sprawling population, but I want there to be pockets of somewhat permanent settlements and small civilizations (maybe only little larger than a city-state). While the planet is mostly covered in ice, there is a strip of fertile, habitable land along the equator. It might be temperate, or just less cold and snowy than the other parts of the world.

I've been toying with the various ways people could live on it, and my first thought was subterranean societies kinda like the Vaults in Fallout. They could take advantage of geothermal energy an use underground water for drinking. I'm not so sure about how they would acquire a sustainable food source, but I was thinking they could have special plants they farm.

Another idea I have are people who live on the surface in large vehicles that can house a small family to a small tribe, and live a nomadic lifestyle. Food source is also an issue with them, but I think they may practice a form of pastorialism like many IRL nomads, but carry the animals with them inside of the vehicles, and let them out when they stop. Maybe the vehicles could be large enough to house a small farm. Another issue is such a planet may be resource poor, so they would need someway to get the various materials they need to build such vehicles.

As for the planet's geography, it isn't compleley icy. While I did take some inspiration from Hoth and Antarctica, there are also taiga and tundra, and mountain ranges.

Any thoughts on these or how to make it make sense?

If the planet is tectonically-active, then there may be hot-springs that act as heat-oases, enabling lusher plant- and animal- life around them.

One question that I have is that of how your population ended up living there, in so hostile an environment. That may provide some inspiration as to how they adapted to the conditions.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on May 1st 2019 at 7:09:31 PM

I don’t really know how they got there, yet, but I’m kicking around some ideas.

One possibility is that it is a colony world for an interstellar civilization and people are sent there to mine for something or as prisoners. Or scientists could be sent there for research.

Or maybe some ships crash landed there and the people are stuck and have nowhere else to go.

It is true that a permanently and completely frozen world could not have organic life as we understand it. However, there are many potential sources of energy that can allow for liquid water (and thus life) to exist in such circumstances.

• In a planet that retains heat in its core, that heat can keep oceans liquid beneath the icy surface, and life can evolve and thrive around the energy and nutrients that emerge from geothermal vents.
• Gravitational proximity to very large planets can cause tidal heating, with similar results to geothermal activity. Many of Jupiter's moons, particularly Europa, are kept "warm" in this manner.
• At least part of the extreme volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon Io may be caused by induction and similar forces caused by passage through the planet's intense magnetic field.
• Ancient civilizations frozen over by some catastrophe might retain a semblance of life by moving underground or underwater and drawing energy from geothermal or nuclear sources.

The novel Icerigger, set in the Humanx Commonwealth universe by Alan Dean Foster, describes an ice world that undergoes rapid climatic shifts every ten thousand years or so because of how it orbits its parent star. The dominant intelligent native life form has adapted to this and has two morphologically distinct forms that emerge in accordance with the climate; however, the catastrophic changes caused by each transition have prevented them from retaining cultural and scientific information, and thus maturing.

Edited by Fighteer on May 1st 2019 at 3:19:07 PM

It all depends on how cold this ice world is. Antartica is a frozen landmass surrounded by oceans because the temp is cold enough to freeze fresh water, but not salt. You could arrange your entire planet that way, or, as others mentioned, provide geo-thermal vents at various places on the surface, or an equator that is relatively ice free. If these are Earth-descended humans living there, they might have technology to keep them alive, even if they have forgotten the science behind it. And you could always go for magic.

Technically speaking Earth right now is an Ice Planet specifically Icehouse Earth.

Mars is also an Ice Planet, and a Desert Planet.

Europa is an Ice Moon that is all but confirmed to have liquid water oceans under the surface ice.

Single-Biome Planet is very much Truth in Television. Go nuts with ice planet ideas, most of them will probably be at least somewhat realistic.

If you're going with a nomadic lifestyle, I'd recommend that you research nomads/indigenous cultures that have and currently do live in extremely cold regions right now. You know, the First Nations and such, that currently exist and whose historical methods of subsistence have been recorded. I can guarantee you they don't take animals around with them in vehicles, though, as that sounds and is extremely impractical since animals need space to properly grow.

If this planet already has life on it when your colonists get there, or even if they're just descended from animals the colonists brought with them, then said wildlife would already be adapted in your setting to the world as it is. And humans would learn, out of necessity, where these animals are at what points in the year. This is a lot more practical than merely taking farm animals everywhere with them. (And at that point, if they have vehicles that can comfortably house animals, then they can build permanent homes for themselves and the animals and moving around is impractical.)

I like to imagine what kind of basic cultural beliefs would emerge from an alien race in an Europa-like ocean. I doubt sight would be a sense any creature in such a condition ever would experience. There would be tales told about the "impassible barriers" that are the ice layer and sea ground, many might revere them as the great gods who govern the cosmos. The very idea of something beyond their world would emerge only as wild speculation, and any space travel would only be conceived as possible by sheer accident of something cracking the surface

And yet paths to the surface will exist- Europa's solid crust is only a few kilometers thick in places, and plenty of cracks appear. Intrepid explorers will find these paths, and return to tell their stories. That could easily become the basis of myth and legend.

To a Europan life form that lives in the oceans beneath the ice, the surface of their planet would be as inhospitable to them as the surface of the Moon is to us. Maybe if they had a way to develop technology, they could try it, but that's an all but certain impossibility. We've discussed the hurdles to an aquatic species developing technology previously in this forum.

Edited by Fighteer on May 11th 2019 at 9:03:43 AM

Interesting to speculate how a species could develop the capacity to tell itself "tales" without developing fire.

Oral history can still be a thing. What's more interesting is how an aquatic species with no access to the sun would develop the concept of the progression of time.

With no access to tools how does it evolve conceptual intelligence?

Hard work and gumption? Ask dolphins that question. They certainly show signs of that kind of intelligence, although they don't have oral history that we are aware of.

Edited by Fighteer on May 16th 2019 at 8:38:04 AM

I heard of a study that proved that Crows had an oral history with Crows responding to threats their parents encountered.

Link please?

https://youtu.be/zGYII1XbE4U?t=508

I thought you said the birds had an oral history with the Native American tribe. That would be interesting though. Regardless, we're finding out more and more that we're more like other animals (and some non-animals) and vice versa than we thought. Yet we're still far ahead of all other species in many ways.