Unnatural Resources · 3:59pm Apr 1st, 2014
Introduction: One important basis for any Industrial Revolution, let alone Information Revolution, lies in natural resources. This essay briefly examines the Equestrian Earth in that regard.
The Age of Wonders: One major problem the Equestrians face is that the high-technology civilization of the Age of Wonders consumed some non-renewable resources, most specifically fossil fuels. It also converted other resources into the form of artifacts. The civilizations that grew up after the Age of Wonders often obtained metals by mining their garbage dumps; they also at least initially used lots of relic plastics. By the time of the Equestrian Realm, 2500-4000 years after the Cataclysm, the easily-accessible relic metals have mostly been exhausted (and in the process rendered metals fairly cheap throughout their history). Much of the remaining oil and natural gas is however untapped, because Equestria has only recently rediscovered the internal combustion engine.
Geothaumic Processes: Since the Cataclysm, the Earth has been converting its own internal heat and magnetism into natural magical transformations, carried along the ley lines. This has resulted in accelerated crystalline growth, ores being refined while in situ, and in some cases in actual elemental transformations. The tendency -- perhaps due to the fact that the magic which caused the Change was stolen from the Great Wish -- is toward the formation of gemstones and noble metals, sometimes fractured along the lines of attractive cuts, and in the case of the noble metals, found native and pure.
Petriculture: The Crystal Empire first noticed geothaumic processes and began taking advantage of them some 3000 years ago, buidling its might in part on its superior grasp of geology. During the Age of Discord, 2500-1500 years ago the Empire responded to the increasing cost and risk of mining by developing means of accelerating geothaumic processes through the arrangement of rocks at ley line nexii. This technology, called "petriculture" or "rock farming," was brought to Equestria during the Time of Thrones, especially the period around 1100-1000 years ago, when the Crystal Empire entered its terminal decline. It has become an Equestrian industry, and is especially prevalent on the Old Coast and in the mountain ranges of Eastern and Central Equestria.
Organics: Equestria is a fertile land rich in organics, including woods and vegetable oils. The Northeast, especially the Old Coast around Morgan, has some thaumic cultivars originally of G'marrean and Eldren descent, which were pushed down the coast from Hyperborea during the Little Ice Age, 3000 years ago, and have since remained. The Everfree is rich in numerous wild organics, though most of them don't grow well outside the Everfree and are hazardous to harvest. The same is true of the southeastern swamps.
Energy: Equestria's mountain ranges are rich in coal, and even the hungry industries of the Age of Wonder failed to exhaust them. This is one reason why Equestrians favor the external-combustion engine. Oil, however, must mostly be imported -- one prominent source being Saddle Arabia. This slows the development of the internal-combustion engine and associated technologies, though the increasing importance of airships is creating a demand.
Industrial Metals: The Age of Wonders civilization of Amareica concentrated large amounts of metals into its cities. Manehattan in particular first become a major commercial center by mining the ruins of the titan towers built during that previous age, and trading the metals to the coast in return for other goods. The richest deposits of these relic metals have now been depleted, though enough remains that ruin-mining is still an important extraction business. Currently, metal ore mining now focuses on the Foal and Unicorn Ranges, where many old Age of Wonders mines have been reopened and some new deposits discovered. Recently, a major stockpile of titanium left over from the Age of Wonders was discovered in the swamps of the southeast, with important implications for the development of airships and other aerospace technologies.
Precious Metals: Equestria is rich in precious metals, in part because of the concentrations of ley lines producing especially-active geothaumal processes. The Unicorn and Pegasus Mountain ranges are sites of copper, silver and gold mining. There are believed to be especially-rich deposits of precious metals in the far south, deep into the Palomino Desert and Macintosh Mountains into the Badlands, but this is dangerous and unroaded territory, haunted by monstrous races, and exploited only at considerable risk.
Crystals: Certain crystals have long been known to possess useful thaumic properties. Bahamut's Rest, the original name of Canterlot, was founded as a crystal mine, but its important deposits were long since extracted. The Crystal Mountains are good sources of magical and industrial grade crystals -- however, only the eastern portion of the range (north of the Old Coast) has been accessible since the Northern Waste advanced around 1000 years ago.
Quartz-Boron Processes: Just before that time, the Quartz-Boron process was discovered for growing crystals into specific thaumic guides. This allowed crystals to be used much more efficiently, which reduced the requirement for large quantities of raw materials -- fortunately, as the fall of the Crystal Empire was to deprive Equestria of its main source of crystals. Recently, the return of the Crystal Empire has led to the rediscovery of Quartz and Boron's original research notes, and hence of a more advanced process they had developed to enable the production of precise crystalline circuitry. This is the key discovery that may enable a new Information Revolution.
Radioactives: Recently, Equestria has begun an attempt to regain earthfire technology. Parties are searching the Pegasus Range for natural deposits and for a wastes storage facility which has been lost since the Age of Wonders. Meanwhile, existing amounts of uranium and other fissionables are being used in an attempt to build and operate a research reactor at an undisclosed location. It is likely that within a few years, Equestria will be theoretically able to generate earthfire energy, and in a few more years, to detonate earthfire explosives.
Fusibles: For obvious reasons, Princess Celestia is very aware of the potential of sunfire technologies. Unfortunately, the generation of the intense electromagnetic fields and lasers required to use sunfire on an industrial scale will first require an Information Revolution. For what it's worth, Princess Luna knows exactly where large deposits of tri-helium have been concentrated on the surface of the Moon -- but Equestria doesn't yet have the technology to go there and mine it.
Nanotechnology: One of the apparently never-achieved dreams of the Age of Wonders was nanotechnology -- the construction of swarms of tiny machines to do precision, adjustable and self-replicating mass production. What is generally not realized is that this was achieved by the Crystal Empire over 2500 years ago, in one limited field -- petriculture. Rock farming is actually conducted by nanomachines empowered by the geomantic Earth Currents. The machines may someday be adapted to other applications.
Exotics: The silver lining of the Cataclysm is that it generated small quantities of exotic matter of various kinds. Equestrians already use some exotics in magic -- the tantalizing possibility exists of finding large deposits in the vicinity of the gigaton explosions that ended the Age of Wonders and applying to purposes such as generating interstellar wormholes. Sadly, this is currently far beyond Equestrian technology.
Conclusion: Under normal circumstances, Equestria is about 50 years from an Information Revolution and 100 from large-scale space travel. Under the lash of the Shadow Wars, Equestria will develop them much more rapidly -- with what damage to its cultural stability, only the distant future can tell.
soo....
any predictions on cybernetics? Robotics and augmentation is fun.
Oh, how can I not have equine super-cyborgs or robots in the future? Heck, there's a tradition of that sort going back to the Steel General's steed from Roger Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness ...
well, what if they entered it long ago? (I assume Age of Wonders referring to early failed civilization, in your timeline). This is incompatible with canon-as-shown in show, but I like thought experiments. I assume Inforevolution can be defined by automatic (not requiring constant attention) large-scale storage, searching, and transportation of information, to wide masses (in both directions, often in any-to-any, or one-for-many formats, not inflexibly predifined by available technology)?