Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

End of the World - Part 4

The stallion was silent for a moment, looking at Twilight, perhaps waiting for the shadow that had fallen over them to move out of the way. "I don't know. Every world is similar, but every world is still different in its details. That yours has already gone so long without any major changes might actually be a good sign, but I can't tell when things will start to get worse. It could be years, in the luckiest of cases. It could be just months. It could be tomorrow. But I frankly doubt it will be that last one."

Twilight took a breath in and out. "What's the plan?"

"Do you want the bad one or the one you'll refuse to go with?"

Twilight hesitated for a moment. The stallion continued to be exactly as smug and annoying as he could rightfully get away with, and she didn't know if she was bothered or amused by it. Though the worry on her mind mostly overshadowed both of those feelings. "Let's hear the second one first," she said.

"You find the least inhabitable worlds you can, figure out a way to make it possible to live there, move everyone and everything you can manage to, and leave your old world behind where it can fall apart when the time comes." The unicorn was completely serious as he talked, though he also didn't seem particularly keen on actually following through with what he'd said.

Twilight opened and closed her mouth briefly, then finally spoke. If a single word. "That's..."

"A logistical nightmare and a very morally questionable choice," the other finished the sentence for her.

"Yes," Twilight agreed, "that. We can't possibly move everyone. Especially not all other creatures. And how should we decide who to leave behind? And we can't ask someone to leave behind everything they know, everything they have, to put them into a world that's maybe barely good enough to keep them alive. And that's all assuming we ever find a world with enough resources, even with just ponies... " She paused for a moment. "The solution that would work best is sending a small group and leaving the others behind. Large numbers wouldn't make it either way."

"Yeah, it's horrible," said the unicorn. "It's also the only solution that ensures you save at least somebody. As many as you can, ideally, the more and sooner you go in that direction. Everything else you choose to go with means you leave things up to chance. If it works, great, if it doesn't, everyone dies when you at least could have saved some. But you'll take the risk, won't you?"

Twilight stared at him, thinking for a moment. "Looking for potentially habitable worlds isn't out of the question, and neither is setting up a last resort plan to start sending creatures to them if things go irreparably wrong. That doesn't mean I'm not gonna try to solve the issue instead of running away from it."

"Hope makes creatures do a lot of stupid things," the stallion commented. "But it leads to a lot of great ones as well. And I hope our case will be the latter."

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

You find the least inhabitable worlds you can, figure out a way to make it possible to live there, move everyone and everything you can manage to, and leave your old world behind where it can fall apart when the time comes.

In other words, we need to build an exact copy of Equestria right over there. We may have less than a minute. No wonder Twilight rejected that one.

There's also the diaspora strategy: Find as many habitable worlds as you can and have a lot of evacuations. But that still means making impossible choices about who to send where, inevitably shattering social ties and straining logistics even further.

Twilight's choice doesn't have the best odds of success, but she's pulled off the impossible before. We'll see how that works out this time.

[Saix]

And we can't ask someone to leave behind everything they know, everything they have, to put them into a world that's maybe barely good enough to keep them alive.

If history shows anything it's that most people prefer to stay alive no matter what kind of conditions they have to survive in. She makes good points that I didn't think through when I thought of it though, it would be a logistical nightmare and some creatures would undoubtedly be left behind. I'm glad they've put the option on the table though, and I assume the stallion doesn't think that they'd be chased down across worlds if they evacuated if he's suggesting it, which is a good sign. At any rate, if anyone's capable of pulling the logistics of such a plan off it's Twilight, and between earth ponies and powerful unicorns there might be more worlds capable of supporting decent populations than it seems initially. Twilight's position in the second to last paragraph is the most sensible one for the situation, I think.