October 29, 2015
Dear Diary,
Sorry about not writing this week. I would call this last week suboptimal, but I feel like that might make me liable for some sort of criminal understatement suit.
Okay, it might not be completely fair to say this entire week hasn’t gone well. After all, the first wave of immigrants arrived five days ago and that went pretty well! Not all of them plan on staying, and some aren’t sure whether or not they want to stick around. Already it looks like the colony is splitting off into cliques, but… forget about all that!
The day started with a phone call I’d really rather not have gotten, now that I know everything else that would come of it. Hindsight, right? It was the HPI, using the communicator they gave me last time I visited. Well, visited might be a little weak. Last time I volunteered myself as a living subject for experimentation.
The goal was pretty obvious: determine what about pony bodies makes us immune to the damaging effects of the thaumic field. Got DNA, brain scans, that whole bit, but none of the scientists looked that thrilled about any of it. Honestly I’m not sure if it helped… but what they got was just the first wave of results, right? All kinds of great things might come when they get the chance to fully sequence my genome, get down into the really nitty-gritty stuff. It took decades of research to perfect the first antibiotic!
Spending time with the HPI reminds me a little of Princess Luna. Edmond Clark… I’m sure you’ll remember him… he’s the one in charge. He’s more far-seeing than anyone I’ve ever met, maybe even more than the Princess herself. To hear that man speak is like hearing the schemes of a Greek god.
To be fair, I would be quite surprised if there was a single person in that bunker with an IQ lower than 130. Say what you want about IQ not being a comprehensive or even accurate evaluation of intelligence (and you’re right), but there’s a POINT! The point is that they picked the very best humans in the world. Strongest, smartest, fastest, you get the idea.
To lead them, the greatest of all. Clark isn’t frightening until you hear him speak. His plans stretch centuries after his own death, a comprehensive branching web of goals and projections. Some good news: The HPI have accumulated more nuclear material than any organization has ever possessed. So much, that he tells me the heat generated by the fuel supply is actually used to generate much of the ordinary electrical demands of the bunker.
He shared some other numbers with me. Based on optimistic predictions of existing hardware lifetime, the bunker should last about a century. Assuming they are able to make repairs and replace the components of the CPNFG (and that the exotic matter they invented for its core doesn’t degrade somehow), then Clark’s engineers give them somewhere between 500 and 1000 years, depending on how much they’re able to salvage during the next few decades (and everything rots).
You’d be correct to say that’s an awful long way to be making predictions, that they’re all pretty meaningless that far. You’d be right. I think it underestimates the value of advancing technology. After all, weren’t we convinced we were going to run out of oil at one point?
I’m serious. It used to be a big deal, back when hu-MANs were men and meat was tasty. I spent my childhood hearing about things like “peak oil” and how we were sucking the planet dry. If the Kimballnet’s still a thing, go ahead and look at the known reserves of oil by year, and compare it to production. Even though humans made more and more each year, the known supply of untapped oil kept going up!
How is that possible, you might ask. Probably because you think oil comes from olives or soybeans or flax or something by this point. Peanuts? Didn’t one of the first diesel engines run on peanut oil? I think I saw a Mythbusters episode about that once.
I think the point of my stupid rambling is that TECHNOLOGY is what stopped us from running out of oil. We kept getting more advanced, so we were able to tap resources better, find them better, make what we found go further.
The HPI will need to do that in order to survive. The absolute key for them, the project that’s consuming more of their resources than any other, is making survival in the thaumic field possible. Ultimately, they wish to perfect an inoculation or vaccination against its effects.
They have technology down in that bunker I didn’t know existed. Apparently, in the few years leading up to the Collapse (as they call it), there was a wave of unprecedented cooperation and innovation all over the world, a sort of interdisciplinary renaissance to create everything the last survivors of mankind might possibly need. Much of it was brought to their bunker, but much of it remains at large. After all, once everyone was dead, they would be able to fly all over the world and collect it, housing it in the hundreds of underground warehouses that have been built to receive them.
A number of cultural artifacts are already there. If you had the bright idea to raid the Smithsonian or maybe snatch up the Declaration of Independence, forget about it. Objects of similar worth had been brought in from each of the member nations, since of course the HPI is not a merely American endeavor.
I learned some fascinating things about my own physiology during my time in the bunker, though I’m not sure how much the HPI have learned about magic. They’re working on an entirely robotic research station, one that will soon be running nearby. It will be able to take measurements of our interactions with the thaumic field, which of course doesn’t exist in the HPI bunker. They are somewhat limited in what they can learn about magic when no magic is allowed inside.
If I sound like I’m avoiding an important subject, it’s because I absolutely am. Ultimately there wasn’t much to say about my visit with the HPI. I know they’ve got things well under control, and I trust the management there to make the best choices for humanity’s future they can. I made it back a little sick from being away from magic so long (not to mention what passes for food in that place, I don’t recommend it), but that was ultimately it.
They gave us a Hummingbird. Gorgeous machine, one of the most impressive creations I’ve ever seen. I can safely say that my understanding of mechanics gives me very little insight here. Ultimately things turn and it moves, that’s the familiar part. The rest? God only knows.
I got such a wonderful chance to learn more about it yesterday. As fun as I’ve had flying the ultralight (flying on it, technically), I think I might prefer the ground from now on.
The HPI gave it to us because they trust us now, and because we can go out into the really dangerous areas (or areas with ponies in them), and recover things for them. They’ll give us manufactured stuff we ask for each time we bring something in, so it’ll be a bit of a trade. We go on adventures, they give us some crap we don’t know how to make.
We don’t have much use for anything like that right now, since we can pretty much salvage anything we want. But I fully realize that won’t be the case forever, and that having this relationship established now will make a huge difference in the years ahead.
Getting distracted again. No, distracted is the wrong word. I’m avoiding the subject.
The HPI detected something big in Philadelphia, something bigger than the arc radio transmitter Sunset Shimmer used by an order of magnitude. My thought was that they’d spotted an Alicorn, perhaps arrived here by accident, or (my hooves tremble at the prospect), born of a returning human.
It wasn’t that last one, thank god. According to Equestria, the chances of that happening are astronomically small. Hopefully smaller than one in seven billion. That’s pretty astronomical.
Something tried to attack us as we got closer to the city. I can only call it a something, because I didn’t get to see it. We’ve only got Moriah’s word and some frightening readings from the ship’s computer. She described it as a “goddamn dragon made of fire.”
I didn’t have my doubts at the time, because I was at the time having one of the worst days of my life. She had to use most of the power to run the CPNFG, which makes sense. I tried to get everypony into their restraints at the first sign of trouble, but there was one pony who didn’t make it in in time.
Me. We started a dive, then we started spinning. The ceilings are fifteen feet in some parts of that plane. Or, if you’re traveling vertically, the bottom can seem like forty feet away. Those of us not pegasi have no recourse but to pray we don’t break our necks.
It felt like something broke. I bled badly, felt some stuff poking out where it shouldn’t have. I’ve never seen an injury that bad, and I’m thankful I haven’t yet. One of those little blessings I guess.
When I came to, things were much better. Oliver and the others were pale as death, and he’d just finished with some medical miracle. We were on the ground by then, had been for awhile. The others were just relieved, but not Oliver. I met his eyes, and I saw at that instant that he knew. Probably something to do with that medical cutie mark of his.
Unfortunately, my accident and recovery was eclipsed by what we discovered. I wasn’t allowed to go out and see on account of what had happened, so I spent the day getting casts from Oliver I didn’t need and getting fitted for a neck-brace that I was not looking forward to wearing.
The stories the others brought tortured me, though I could do nothing to investigate. True to what Adrian told us, there was a fairly large group of ponies living here. It’s hard to guess at numbers, but they had huge painted signs and didn’t really try to hide anything so it’d be hard to miss their handiwork.
They’d turned some kind of shelter or halfway house into their home, and it looked like they were doing quite well.
Apparently it’s burned. Not the city! Not like what we saw in Los Angeles (though talk of a “fire dragon” makes me want to break somebody else’s neck this time). The shelter is apparently burned, along with lots full of cars and trucks, a nearby warehouse, a church… basically all the buildings on that block, but the fire didn’t spread to the surrounding blocks.
The others found bones in the wreckage. Oliver is the only one with any hope of piecing together how many they were, and he refuses to leave my side even now. It’s incredibly kind of him. Not that I’m interested in company, but if I was, I could do worse. He’s given up being there on the scene to care for a patient who needed much more emotional support than she needed physical.
Does being still alive after these accidents make me lucky? Or am I unlucky because they keep happening?
There were runes everywhere, at least according to what I was told. Oliver can’t read most of them, though he was able to translate a single passage based on what he’s studied of the “unicorn alphabet.” Apparently it says “Odium Forgives.”
I don’t have a clue what that means. We’ve radioed back to Alexandria. Sky’s not happy we’re staying away. She doesn’t know the half of it. We don’t want to say anything until we’re sure something bad happened, particularly since it’s obvious at least some of the immigrants came from this direction. Perhaps the shock of surviving something like this is why Ryan is so reticent about where he came from, or why Carol is so often on her own. I’m no psychiatrist. Psychologist. Not even psychic. Need Joseph and Moriah for that.
Sorry, Doctor’s pestering me about sleep. Apparently I shouldn’t be making so many movements with my neck and head, and I should be laying down. I guess I’ll do that. See if I don't have nightmares again, Oliver! This is what happens when I don’t get to properly decompress with my diary!
—Alex
I think Moriah's earlier hypothesis was right. Some malcontents from equestria snuck in, and they're trying to eliminate any competition before it gets established.
Also, hooray for alicorn resiliency.
It's confirmed: Lonely Day is Wolverine.
Hmm. 'Odium' does not sound like anything in standard MLP lore. I have to admit that this makes me a little concerned about the direction this story's taking. I know that most authors will inject a certain degree of headcanon into their stories, but I can't help feeling a little... put off when certain elements in a story deviate too far from canon when everything had been following it pretty closely up to that point.
Still, Starscribe's done a great job of growing this story (and the one before) out of canon MLP so far, so I hope my concerns are unfounded.
Odium is Latin for hatred. Still doesn't explain what that tidbit means.
What's with Alex's weird emphasis of the "man" in human there?
Doesn't look like any residents survived that dragon, though I still hope some survivor will pop out somewhere. Were they trying to summon that dragon?
Apparently someone used a weaponized dragon to destroy a settlement of ponies.... pretty damn grim.
Well, this isn't good, Alex's ludicrous toughness aside. Whatever Odium is, it's going to need to be dealt with at some juncture. Unless this is just a poetic term for some insane unicorn who loathes everything about this new world. Worst-case Moriah, as it were.
As for the HPI's research, I'm not sure if they're going to be able to achieve their goals using entirely nonmagical methods. This feels a Catch-22: They may need magic in order to protect themselves from magic.
Well... this would be a real good time for Sunset to arrive back.
If there's an Equestrian with this kind of magical power out there specifically targetting survivors, defending against them is going to be ridiculously difficult.
On the cipher:
"Odium Forgives" sounds like the kind of thing that might get used as a keyword in a cipher.
Interesting....
This pretty much confirms that there's a malevolent group out there working towards their own goals, though we still have no idea what those are. Personally, I don't buy that it's Equestrian in origin. This has human religious fanaticism written all over it.
And some of the things Day said make me wonder about what Celestia and Luna did to her. The way he talked about alicorns made me think that they didn't give him the potential to become one (at least, not that he knows about. Harmony may have a different opinion of that as time goes on). But they obviously made him, at the very least, incredibly durable. There's no precedent for what's happening to him in canon, so I don't even know what to call it.
Looks like Oliver has twigged onto Alex's Functional Immortality (and, possibly, proto-Alicorn status). I wonder if Alex will be able to persuade him to keep it quiet or is it already too late to do so?
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I'm not sure it was a real dragon but rather a powerful fire spell that used a dragon that has the form of a dragon. Which possibly means several high-power rogue unicorns all working together or some other magic-using species (and, given that unicorns are the only we know of right now...?) Well, it seems that the first post-Change war is about to happen although it's going to be hard to define it as a 'war' when there are unlikely to be more than a dozen combatants on both sides.
With luck, there is a single leader who can be taken out and make the other members of the belligerent group more pacific and even friendly.
War...
War never changes...
It's getting a little disorienting how much (like Alex's trip) happens off-page and is only alluded to later.
I'm not even surprised anymore at seeing how used Alex is at her pony body, to the point of not feeling good in a magicless environment.
After the description of the HPI this chapter I think I have a new appreciation of how big of a resource is Alexandria to the HPI, and how the HPI still have it a way easier than expected in some areas (they don't have a 7 billion+ human bodies rotting with the whole contamination risks it implies, for example).
And now, Lonely Day's worderful recoverying saves her life for real.
“Odium Forgives.” That's a strange way to translate the signs, because I'm not sure if the first word is a noun (otherwise "hate", which makes the sentence like an oxymoron) or a name (maybe who caused the dragon was part of a sect back when human? or it's something from Equestria?). The fact they were written in the "unicorn alphabet" is strange on itself, because nobody on Philadelphia shouldn't have made contact with Sunset Shimmer (then again, there are hints of being "Princess or closest" search parties on Earth other than Sunset)
I'm more interested in that Pony Genome Project.
Odium? Well that's great to hear.
Ah what? I can't go all 'Last Man on Earth' and just steal all the cool stuff like the Declaration of Independence?
I mean, this guy did it. Seriously, look at this:
thedailycrate.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Tumblylast-man-on-earth.jpg
I'm not joking. Look at what he's using to wipe his mouth with: The Declaration of Independence.
Ah well, i'm rambling about 'Last Man on Earth' references and making people have to scroll further through the comments section to find code deciphering MANEiacs.
Now, shoo now. I've heard the newest codes we've got are driving our code decipherers insane.
6285742
Oh gods you might be on to something.
Quick, use 'Odium Forgives' as a keyword for the codes!
Damn... Just damn that's a lotta uranium
hA! I flipping knew it! The HPI snatch n' grabbed national treasures!
And lastly... Oh boy... That's not good
6285801
Dang it grey, you're such a nerd
So... the flaming dragon is the one that burned down the city before?
Cool, cool, so then, definitely some crazy Equestrian's sneaking into the world, already II will be hating whoever they are.
... Foreshadowing to ship with Oliver?
Also, speaking about Oliver, looks like his journal entry is next.
6286002 History is history. It would still be sitting there in the museums even if they didn't take it. Mapping out the genes of the new biology? That's what's more important to me (and Robin.)
6286015
But our history is also what makes us human. I'm not calling the genome sequencing less important I'm just thinking of the more cultural aspect
6286020 That's why you have text books with pictures! The actual physical objects are as important when you realize you don't know what dosage of advil to take when you have the sniffles, or if it will actually kill you.
6286028
The two projects can consist side by side can't they? Besides its going to take awhile to sequence the pony genome
6285775
Major weakness of this story series. Too much impersonal telling after the fact. Makes me feel nothing for the characters, and have no feel for them.
Last chapter was great because it was immediate, I could "feel" everything.
Yikes, wonder what happened there. Though:
That's not actually true. The supply of untapped oil we knew about keeps going up, but the total supply is going in one direction, and that direction is down. Eventually, we'll find all of it, and when we do we'll stop finding more of it.
That's a pretty good goal. If ponies plus science can equal magic immune humans, that's a huge priority. That population of 500 people would do far more good not locked in a hole.
Well, it's probably a really good thing to have someone who is thinking that far ahead.
Neat.
Heh, sounds like Alex's secret resilience is out of the bag.
Ah hell.
Now that bodes poorly.
Shattered your neck, Alex? You're fine, walk it off.
Oh, that's just what we need, some doomsday cult with the knowledge to start creating magical firedrakes. Did somepony end up being brought to Equestria and came back with too much knowledge and not enough sanity?
6286053 I see it as a strength, given the setting. For the LPoE world I want to know the big picture and the impact of actions on it beyond the personal here-and-now action view. Not that I don't enjoy it, last chapter was fantastic and nearly left me breathless. Still, for me, this strange world itself is the main character really. That I can also relate to the protagonists is a bonus I guess.
Different story telling for different tastes.
6285467 If they are lucky the spell will place them on the nearest flat surface. so if the building was leveled they would still appear on the ground.
Just tried to see which famous author Starscribe can compare to...
According to "I write like", the current work most closely resembles the style of Arthur C. Clark. Well done. From Wikipedia:
Give that page a try if you have a story of your own, it's fun!
Alex: The Indestructible Pony!
6286204
Europa's Report about oil is definitely correct, it was part of what I've been learning in my petrology class.
Never thought I'd get to upvote and reply to my favorite moon!
An entire successful settlement burned to the ground, with all it's people inside?
I know it's just a story, but that still hits me right in the gut. Every single life in this world is precious, and fledgling civilizations even more so. All of the future humans and ponies of Earth are worse off for the loss of a potential city. Whatever created that dragon needs to answer for their heinous crimes against the world.
6285741
I think that those magic-suppressing manacles are a pretty important piece of Equestrian tech that the HPI will want to reverse-engineer. If you can create a device to keep a pony's magic in, it should be possible to keep the rest of the world's magic out.
6286308
That's probably what happened. It'd make sense that the Equestrians didn't want to put all of their eggs in one basket, but I do worry that maybe they trusted some people more than they should have. Or, perhaps, an Equestrian archive was stolen from its rightful settlement.
6286536 Heh... I get different results for different chapters as well, it's just that it fit so nicely on the first try. I used today's 'Interlude' by the way. On the other hoof, to place 'Alexicorn' and 'Assault Weapons' correctly is probably a little too much to ask for of the poor algorithm
I get 'Neil Gaiman' more often than not for my stuff... maybe there's hope for me.
What I'm curious about is why Alex apparently felt the need to code her diary.
And huzzah for Alicorn resiliency! Break many bones, have them magically heal. Apparently Alex has known something of it for a while, that's interesting to know.
"Oh my god!"
"You killed Alex!"
"You bastard!"
Not knowing anything about decoding cyphers, (and I admit I'm letting my ignorance show here), but several of the runes on the dragon look remarkably similar to Elder Fuþark used from the second to eighth centuries for writing proto-Norse. If translated directly two of them show up twice- 'torch' and 'giant'. We also have 'Sun' and 'horse', and 'harvest'.
Don't know if that is helpful to anyone.
6285897 Well I can tell you right off the bat that that isn't a keyword using the previous cipher method.
6286204 Of course, that might just be showing Alex's ignorance in that matter. Alex might remember everything, but doesn't necessarily have the context to interpret it.
6286314 I see where you got the -11 (z is the 26th letter, o is the15, so the difference is 11), but IDK where you got the +5 and the -8 from. That being said, I looked at all the 5-6 character long chunks in the previous messages and they all had double letters or a pattern to them and do not fit a simple substitution for either Odium or Zodiac.
I have checked and "Odium Forgives" does not directly fit into the text on the side of the dragon. The Dragon has 11 characters (assuming the Zodiac Symbols are one character each, which is supported by the fact that there are zodiac based alphabets out there), and the phrase "Odium Forgives" has 13 characters. Additoinally, 'Philadelphia' and 'brotherly love' don't fit either.
Ok, so we have a murder mystery here. Time to whip out my cork-board and string!
I think it is safe to start listing off what we know and what we can infer about this situation:
1: I assume the dragon and the writer of "Odium Forgives" are related due to their proximity. My guess is that the dragon was summoned by the Odium writer.
2: I assume that the summoner of the dragon was the one that left all the runes. I cannot tell from the short description here if the runes were written before or after the fire came through. However I have the inkling that it is afterwards simply because it seems more likely to be legible that way. Granted, this still leaves the question of "Why would they go through the trouble if everybody's dead".
Combining the two assumptions implies a bigger conclusion:
3: The fact that the runes are in unicorn script all but confirm that the writer is Equestrian.
Alexandria is the only known reference library on Earth that has Unicorn script in it, and I doubt that any of those survivors did this. The only other option is that an Earth survivor found another source to learn Unicorn script, spent the effort to learn it, and then wrote all over the place in a language that most likely nobody else could read.
There is a few other observations I've made:
4: Others have pointed out that "Odium" means hatred in Latin (which makes the phrase 'Odium Forgives' a little ironic). "The City of Brotherly Love" randomly being attacked, and then having an entity named 'hate' be mentioned seems too coincidental to be a mere accident.
5: On that note, 'Odium Forgives' implies a transgression to be forgiven. I am assuming that the line is supposed to refer to those attacked.
This leads to another conclusion:
6: The fact that the fire was contained, the method of attack (The dragon), and the writing in the area all suggest malicious intent.
If the assumption that this is the result of a hostile action is correct, it leaves the questions of 'Who?' and 'Why?'. Answering one can help answer the other here. From here on it gets into really speculative territory, so keep that in mind.
The choice of target, the writing on the wall, and the fact that the perpetrator seems to be Equestrian implies an Umbrum, possibly Sombra. If it is Sombra, he is shown to be a powerful magic user in the show, has the drive to be a dictator, and most importantly would be far away from the Crystal Heart. If he somehow reconstituted himself, he would theoretically have free range to do whatever he wanted to do. If it is another Umbrum, then that would explain who 'Odium' is, as it would fit with the 'latin style naming' theme they had going on. Though at this point, I am stretching.
6287324
I have gone through and used this chart to try and replace the zodiac signs with letters, which results in the following:
I suspect that the longer (4+) character strings are straight up ciphertext rather than codewords and such. I want to say that TUL is a punctuation mark, such as a period. If it is a period, then the placement of them suggests that the coded messages are in fact transcriptions of a conversation as that would best fit the punctuation pattern that produces. Additionally, I can also state that the single characters are not immediately obvious replacements for "I","a", and such because there are too many of them. Similarly with the two character bits, there are too many for me to safely say that they are straight up replacements of "Be" , "By", and other two letter words unless there is a poly-alphabetic cipher involved.
I am waiting on if we see a sample of the unicorn script, because I half expect it to be based on the alchemical zodiac alphabet I linked earlier.
Out of curiosity, what training in codes do you have? I just have a children's book on this, the internet, half remembered Japanese knowelge, and a copy of matlab on my end. No real experience but a wide reference base.
6286315
Quick example: Oliver.
I couldn't care less about this doctor, because we don't know anything about him beyond "doctor" and "botanist".
If he died, I would just think "Oh well, better train up another Medic from the Barracks." Worse yet, I have no idea how any of the other characters in the story would feel about him dying. At all.
When Starscribe recently replied to me saying "Well, Oliver cares about healing Adrian despite his stubbornness because they're friends." Uhh... I didn't see a shred of that in the actual story, though. As far as I knew they never spoke 2 words to each other. Is Starscribe going to explain to us how all the characters feel about each other in the comments section?
All this ambiguity spurs a lot of character speculation in the comments section, but it's an entirely artificial phenomenon. The story itself is lacking in this area.
6287024
Alex is a dirty climate change denier, is what he is.
Yeah sure, we can keep using newly discovered deposits. But why would we want to?
(Though, now that humanity has been slapped by God's flyswatter, they can start using dirty combustion again no worries.)
6287016
Can't joke in this comments section I guess?
I miss the comments sections where we had fun laughing at the story, guys. I don't think deciphering codes is much fun. To me, atleast.
6287862 Oh no, I didn't mean to come across as so hostile! I thought it was a legitimate suggestion...
knew what??? What did he know??? Starscribe, please explain!!!
Now I really feel stupid for missing something that has been right in front of me all this time. Alex's eldetic memory, it's Lonely Day's special talent! Which is explictly mentioned as "Preserve the memory of humanity, no matter what." and it fits the scenarios of the other ponies' cutie marks when their special talents have made a difference: Moriah's "flying/airplane" make her noticeably easier to fly the ultralight even with hooves, Adrian's "rescue" allowed him to navigate easily to locate Riley. and Lonely Day "preserve the memory"... I think being able to remember everything fits the theme pretty well.
This still leaves the question of what happened that final day in Equestria, and what is the cause of Lonely Day having so quick healing.
40.media.tumblr.com/cd7c9770466e1773f213a564ab4f096b/tumblr_nqwe46DNRO1rsmidfo1_540.png
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Bitch be an Alicorn in disguise. The wings and horn just haven't grown in yet.
No seriously.
She keeps shrugging off lethal bodily harm, was entrusted with the safety of a planet and its inhabitants...
And has mentioned that Equestrian Alicorns "changed" her.
They handed her the combined secrets of Equestria because they fully expect her to BE there when they finally get back in a millennium or two.
She is the Author, Overseer, Recordkeeper, and Librarian of Equestria's new unwitting colony world.
They also likely expect her to have cooled down and come to terms with her position by the time Equestria comes "in range" again...
6288604
I thumbed up your comment to compensate for whoever downvoted it.
I don't actually think she'll become an alicorn but everything else you mention rings true for me.
OH FFS
so is this part of the cosmere now?
some years later, but I still think I better to comment
I run into this specific problem some years ago. Here was link I found after some brief russian-only story, dedicated to the problem:
http://web.archive.org/web/20090130015243/http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/secondpage.html
well, you see, this is not so much about technology itself, but about interacting between our psychology (on small and big scale) and technology. Via politics, economics ...
This specific page was shut down by author, there even was blogpost about it:
http://billhicksisdead.blogspot.com/2011/10/life-during-oil-crash.html
Additional link, same question many years later:
https://lwn.net/Articles/749530/#Comments
still, main point stand, for me: we have no way to correct our own course as of now. So much for control ...But then again, if I zoom out - wasn't this whole series ("ponies after people") motivated by same (sub)conscious understanding? Without big out-of-current-humans-control Event things have no chance to change track ...
To be honest, Lonely Day, you should probably be hoping humanity doesn't figure this out until you folks are well established with your own nuclear weapons, because the HPI has been nothing but shady, and megalomaniacs who think they're the shit are the most dangerous of all.