With Stable-Tech putting many of their Stables through arguably strange social experiments, I wanted to come up with one a little more functional (there's another word I'm thinking of, but I can't remember what it is so that'll have to do).

With Equestria's reliance on coal being one of the early factors in the conflict of the Great War, what if some of the Stable-Tech experiments were centered around perfecting alternative power sources? For example, one Stable I have in mind is tasked with perfecting a geothermal power plant. The twist is that their Stable's spark generator is designed to break down early around the 100 year mark and until then their door requires two encrypted keys to open (of which they only have one), giving the ponies incentive to get the geothermal power plant working sooner rather than later.

Another one might be creating a bio-fuel engine and instead of an apple orchard their main crop is maize with which to make bio-diesel.

What do you guys think? What other coal-alternative power sources might Stable-Tech try to get the ponies of the future to rely on?

7331098
What about bikes or treadmills and just all the members of the stable end up looking totally ripped from it? Like they all look like Jojo's characters level of ripped.

You could even have it be like the bikes from the black mirror episode five million dollars or whatever its called. They have screens in front of it to exercise to certain scenery (among other things)

Could make things interesting especially if a pandemic happens in the vault. Even something as simple as the flu would leave the power a flickering

7331098 It... could be interesting.

7331102 I love this idea!

7331098
The main concern I'd have is that you'd want to come up with some good social side to the experiment as an explanation, rather than just researching better power sources. Spark energy seems to be a pretty miraculous power source already. They appear to last forever (Or at least a couple of centuries) without maintenance or fuel, have no emissions. The only downside they appear to have is exploding when badly damaged or destroyed, but any system packing that much energy is going to have that sort of danger (That's kinda what energy does). I doubt there would be much pressure to develop new power tech.

But that's all veeeery close to social experiments involving limited resources and organized development, which also mirror some of the Vault experiments in Fallout, and that seems like it has a lot of potential here. For example, using a limited resources (In this case, power) that isn't enough to fulfill all needs at all times, in an attempt to foster communal responsibility through resource management. Or using the threat of an inevitable decline in resources to promote social cooperation to develop a solution. The later one gets the same basic idea (Power plant that's going to go out, so they need to develop something new), but now you've got a social side to the experiment that would probably make it much more attractive to Stable-Tec.

Though you can also go with it being unrelated to any social experiment (Maybe even in one of the fabled but rarely seen control Stables!). Maybe there was a small flaw in the spark generator, undetected during construction and testing, but which became more pronounced a decade or two in. Maybe the Stable survived a nearby megaspell detonation, but the shock damaged some systems that they didn't have replacements for, and the strain of operation is slowly wearing on them. Whatever the cause, the ponies in the Stable are faced with the decline or eventual failure of their power, with their options being either open the Stable early and face whatever conditions are outside, or find some alternative solution. That makes something like the pedal-based power generation more plausible, because it's something the Stable-dwellers could cook up while working on better solutions (Incidentally: I loved that episode of Black Mirror).

In any case, I'd recommend making the failure point happen earlier, maybe only a couple of decades in. Stable Two was a special case, planned to never open. Most Stables opened up well before then. Generations ago, at least. If you have the power set to fail after a hundred years, the solution might just be "guess we'll have to go outside by the time that happens." If the failure is going to be just 10-20 years out, then it's likely to be clear that it's not a safe bet. Though if you really want to, you can do something like Stable Two by making the long shut-in time be part of the experiment. Also, if it's an experiment by Stable-Tec, there should be some way that the experiment failing doesn't lead to certain death, whether it's an emergency power source known only to the overmare or relaxing the "don't go outside" restriction. I don't see Scootaloo approving of a plan where failing to come up with a power solution would lead to ponies dying.

7331221 Some ideas I had for this were that Spark Generators require massive amounts of time an effort to make and aren't renewable. Once they're done, they're done and can't be recycled or reused. Additionally, unknown to everyone in the stable, their external sensors were designed to show more radiation than there actually was, tricking folks into thinking that there was still too much radiation to survive outside.

In any case, love your comment. Lots of good points and details I'll see if I can work in if and when I decide to write this story.

7331361
Glad to hear it! And yeah, there's a lot of things that can be tweaked around. I just like nerding out and digging into the details.

Given Stable-Tec, I'm thinking they'd be more likely to do the secret sensor tweaks as "unknown to everyone in the Stable except the overmare," so the overmare can end the experiment if it's becoming dangerous... but if you want to be a complete secret, well, accidents happen. Stable-Tec instructions can get lost or deleted, overmares can have unexpected heart attacks, and information that should have been available to the new overmare is lost. For just one example.