Building Real Underwater Cities.

[FtRapture]

Real life cities in the sea?

http://www.thevenusproject.com/en/technology/cities-in-the-sea

I have a bad feeling about this.

[Ryans Rapture]

Whoa.... creepy. I looked at the site long and hard and I'm still unceratin whether the whole thing is fake or not. But still, the questions asked and the theories questioned are very.... familiar.

Would I want to live there? No. But with an entrance like the one in the first Bioshock... then yes. :p

[BioShockLvr]

Wow! That site is amazing, however I'm not sure if I could bring myself to believe in it being 100% real. Now, we do know there are underwater hotel complexes in the Hawai area, I believe. Those are real and are actively being constructed as we speak.

This site shows a few of them (both active and being built): http://blog.hotelclub.com/top-five-underwater-hotels/

But as for this site about daily life underwater... I don't know. I'd love to learn more, and I'd give an underwater hotel a try. So long as it wasn't built to escape the governments, religions and cultures of the world. And they don't have genetic modifications in vending machines! Lol.

P.S. - The logo of that site is a lot like Ryan's lighthouse motto. Beyond Politics and War. No Gods or Kings. Only Man.

[EliteRosie]

Oh I've actually heard about this and yeah I guess you can say its like Rapture. The difference though is that its not really an underwater city. Pretty much what they're trying to build is like a manmade island. Part of the city would be underwater while the other part of the city would be above the surface within and around the two towers you see in the pictures. Either way its pretty awesome. When someone does build a completely underwater city I will totally live there.

[Donut232]

These designs look similar to the ones I saw on a show on the Discovery channel. It actually may be the same thing, I kinda caught the end of the show so I didn't know what was going on haha

Still, pretty interesting though. And I agree with BioShockLvr, that motto is oddly familiar lol

[Delacroix]

The concept of a city capable of withstanding ocean pressure or being above the mirror of water but still in the middle of the ocean is present e.g. in Stargate Atlantis. BioShock only stripped the city's possibility to come up or submerge back in the ocean.

However, as for this. Both concept of an underwater city, or an artificial island city would indeed save our asses as long as we're talking demographic problems. However, for how long?

Please remember that it was the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that came with a huge boost in population. Just 200 years sufficed to jump from millions to billions of people. Now, 1/4 of the planetary surface is slowly becoming not enough for this amount in certain regions. I assume, another 200 years would suffice to completely overcrowd the planet... at least, it's landmass.

Now, imagine such cities popping up. We're talking both submarine and island ones. That would be ca. twice the 3/4 of entire planet surface (3/4 once, for the ocean floor and 3/4 for the ocean surface filled with islands). That'd be approx 6 x 400 years to completely overcrowd the area mentioned. We're buying ourselves a LOT of time by this: over two millennia to come up with a solution to go into space and colonize other planets. It took us quite a lot of time to come up with basic means of travel that would allow us to reach... even Mars, if we could afford it. Remember, that we're not there yet because NASA doesn't have the funds to.

There is but yet another matter we should be aware of. We're dumping a ☺☺☺☺load of garbage into the ocean. When occupying ocean directly, we would only increase the amount of garbage thrown in there and decrease the amount of "lebensraum" the fish currently have. Eventually they would die out, and with them, also birds that feed on them. Besides, fish are a large portion of what we eat, without fish, many people would starve to death.

The question is: is it worth it? Because if the amount of time bought by building such cities in order to delay the moment when population is too big to fit the planet will not be sufficient -- if those two millennia will not suffice for us to learn to colonize planets -- we might end up with an overpopulated planet with zero ecosystem and with nothing to feed upon and no way to go to. Even if we would be able to survive the pollution levels, the only other living creatures would be of our own species. Is that what we're to eat?

Let me put it this way:

Our technical progress in terms of space exploration -- the ONLY long-term way to secure the future of our rapidly multiplying species -- might prove TOO slow to make it through the next 4 centuries. If we intend to find some place for ourselves to live, the ocean is the only good bet. This might provide us with VAST amount of space to fit people into and buy us enough time to come up with a solution to conquer and terraform at least Mars. The concept of Rapture might be the key to help our species.

[RaptureWillBeReborn]

Pretty cool, but have you guys read the Economy section? It's pretty much like Communism. That's a major turn off.

[Shades]

I agree with RaptureWillBeReborn.

[temporaryplaceholder]

Delacroix, you've certainly thought this through but you're in some parts misguided.

The ocean, and space are not solutions to overpopulation. They do not give us more land, because we're not getting something from nothing. To populate the ocean, we need to take the earth with us. It will always be more economically viable to just fix what we've got (eg, bioremediation) and keep building it up, than to try and shift it off somewhere else, which in itself takes time and effort and money. To somehow try and overcome the enormous complexities of living in environments we are not adapted to, our plants and animals are not adapted to, and that in order to make them so we have to work a few hundred times as hard is not a solution.

That's not to say we don't/wont do these wasteful things... we already DO have cities where they don't really belong (deserts, barren wastelands, etc.) But what it is to say that it is not a solution, not even a temporary one- to an environmental problem. It's merely something that we may use our resources to do for other reasons. Reasons such as cultural, to establish/escape political ideologies, etc. The very reasons proposed for these projects.

Having said that, this project is still just a pipe dream for what is likely a group of pennyless hippies.

If it gets off the ground, I'd consider investing heavily into and living there, though. But rest assured it would only be for the scenery. The political ideology would have to go. Give me Ryan's Rapture any day.

Looking into this though, they do have some interesting ideas, even a few that actually mirror Rapture/Gate's gulch... but the majority of their ideas that are nothing short of fantasy that they think actually works when taken from paper to real world.

[The_Iceman_Cometh]

This thing is real. Dont believe me? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNZDCafccyo

I read about the project a couple months ago. I am not sure what to think about it.

[EliteRosie]

After watching that video I don't think the project really has anything to do with communism like people are saying. Essentially their saying that there would be no political system. Political systems are brought about mainly due to scarcity of resources and how to give out those limited resources. What their saying isn't a new idea essentially he wants to build a futuristic city that would be automated and use machines so that it would be more efficient thus getting rid of the need for any political system at all.

[BioShockLvr]

Man, that video was really informative. It definitely shined some needed light on the situation...

[temporaryplaceholder]

After watching that video I don't think the project really has anything to do with communism like people are saying. Essentially their saying that there would be no political system. Political systems are brought about mainly due to scarcity of resources and how to give out those limited resources. What their saying isn't a new idea essentially he wants to build a futuristic city that would be automated and use machines so that it would be more efficient thus getting rid of the need for any political system at all.

The problem is, the method to bring about that idea is juvenile at best.

The designer acts like if we just embrace technology, BAM we will solve all our problems simply by producing abundance. Yeah, because we haven't been trying THAT for centuries now...

Yes, embracing tech is a good thing- but it's not a new thing, and it is NOT a complete solution to our lives. Humanity is adaptive; if you produce abundance, it takes advantage of that abundance. It's a never ending cycle. You don't just manage to get to some visionary "end point" where everyone is happy. That is fantasy. The key is creating a balance, not abundance. Both Ryan's Rapture and Sofia's have a much better grasp on this concept (though in different ways, of course.)

Second of all, production of technology is not a one-way street. You don't get something out of nothing. Right down to the design level, there is an associated cost, associated labour, etc. Sometimes, whilst the end result is fantastic, the means by which we get there makes it not worthwhile. Living in the ocean is a prime example. If we ever did it, it would be a true marvel of ingenuity... but actually getting that off the ground to start with isn't as simple as saying "lol lets do it!!"

Don't get me wrong, this guy appears to be a somewhat brilliant designer in some respects... but in other respects he is a quack, including his economic and philosophic policy.

[2K David]

Wow, I hadn't heard of this until now. Reading through the site is really, really unsettling, and not just because I've played BioShock :)

I've also seen Waterworld :P

[Shades]

Reading the thing back, it seems somewhat frightening! This person's ideals are strange, and remind me of Ryan's. Perhaps someone has played too much Bioshock?