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why after 2000 years is Novus not that much more advanced then present day earth?

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    Originally posted by McAvoy View Post
    How many of the original scientists can actually create something from scratch?
    You can probably derive all knowledge back to a caveman going "huh?" in stead of "oh **** run!"

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      Trial and error has always been part of science and civilization.
      Hi There!

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        Kind of an old thread but I'll put in my two cents.
        Besides scientists there were also admin and soldiers. You know military types probably had hobbies. Greer would have figured out how to build a barbecue and what can be hunted for example. Didn't Camille Wray garden for example?
        Survival would have been really tough. Remember the guys died on the planet builders planet.

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          Hi!

          So many smart people! So many good points! So many wild guesses about how Novan society got going!

          There's no need to guess: we see onscreen how things went. It may seem an extremely optimistic timeline, but it's canon, and it sidesteps most of what's been posted on this thread.

          First of all: those aren't just any random group of people. They're a highly motivated and trained bunch of smart and capable people who have survived onboard Destiny for 2 years (plus what they did at Icarus Base and before that) and must have considered life as colonists often, every time the ship malfunctioned.

          SGC likely learned a lot when setting up Alpha Site, other off-world outposts, and studying alien civilizations (many of 'em less advanced than Earth). Hiring people who can wear more than one hat is likely close to the top of their list. Closely followed by having a serious interest in ancient peoples and their doings.

          Then, they are under one single and capable military commander (whatever his other faults): Young. They also have a handy survival expert: Varro, who you can bet knows more than a dozen ways to skin a cat. Those who stayed at the 'Eden' planet had neither. How many times must Young have wondered what he'd have done at Eden to keep his people alive and well? Many, if 'Trial and Error' is any guide.

          Others have mentioned Army Ants and the Old Romans. Young did the right thing at Novus: he got everybody working like the Old Roman Legions, who built their own cities and started their own industries, from scratch, everywhere and everytime they felt like it, and did it in months or years, not decades or centuries. And yes, they could do it even when under attack.

          We are shown Destiny's crew doing just that. There's the snippet about Brody (the same guy who makes paper and builds complex stills) making medical-grade needles. Forget stone knives or bronze tools, this is the US Army/Air Force! They carried fully-loaded automatic weapons on a trip to Earth. They don't need lighters, they got Swiss-army knives, plus who knows how many other handy tools. Novus hasn't got a chance: They ain't gonna survive, they're gonna conquer!

          We see their night lights, and their not-so-artisanal clothing, before Young dies. They have old multi-story brick buildings, with glass windows, before Wray dies. That's serious Industry and Development. We know they recorded everything, and they saved every kino recording, even those from before Novus. So they must have had electricity fairly early on: odds are Brody crafted electrical coils (and with 'em both generators and motors) soon after the Iron mines went into operation.

          Another thing the Roman Legions did (and modern militaries also do) was diversifying, teaching, learning, and preserving knowledge. Literally written in stone. Start with the Periodic Table of the Elements, and basic practical Chemistry (a common prerequisite for Astronomy and Engineering) and you've got all of early XXth Century industry in a bottle, including explosives. If Stargate has taught us anything, it's that nothing is impossible if one has the right explosives.

          We know Eli and others are avid gamers, and have played Sim City and Sim Earth, much like the Atlantis crew knew Civilization. Those are world-building simulators. We see our real-world militaries use a lot of simulators for everything. Bet SGC does too.

          There's Dr. Jackson's Instructional videos with enough hours of packed knowledge that even Eli, the Human Recorder, got full. Was Naquadah, the base of all advanced technology, in there? How could it not be? Icarus Base was built on a planet-ful of the stuff!

          Alas, the Comm Stones would have been useless to them Novans, until SGC started using 'em, in the early XXIst Century.

          Wray drafted the first Novan Constitution. What did they have before? Enlightened Despotism, obviously, in the form of smart military rule. They were using Stargates from day one, and rebuilding an advanced civilization fast as they could in between having all those babies. They had a goal, a roadmap, resources, and leadership. They just did it.

          Those who didn't like being ordered around, or didn't share the common goal, had 2 options: Join Brody and his Futurans, or Gate around building their own off-world Colonies. Which we know they did, for centuries, with varied success.

          Unlikely? Yes. Unbelievable? Maybe. But there's no doubt that's how it went at Novus.

          We like to think what technology we still don't have is harder to get than what we already got. How hard? Well, it's been longer from fire to Nobel's Dynamite than from Dynamite to the H-bomb. It may have to do with numbers, not raw population numbers, but numbers of dedicated researchers, scientists and engineers.

          Or it may be motivation. The rule of thumb has always been what someone can dream, another can build, and nevermind the naysayers. If your military commander says "we're gonna do this, exactly as explained in these books", you'll do it, by Jove, or they'll throw you into the kawoosh and find someone else with a proper work ethic.

          Sadly, we never got to see any really advanced Novan worlds other than Novus. Pittsburgh fell somewhat behind, despite not having to deal with rogue black holes, or perhaps because of it? Seems Novan tech was a bit ahead of ours in many things, a bit behind in others. That might have been the result of a millennia-long Cold War, or of a different environment and needs, or of limited TV budget. Who knows. They weren't perfect, nor is it likely that they enjoyed relentless progress.

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            Originally posted by plumber View Post
            Wray drafted the first Novan Constitution. What did they have before? Enlightened Despotism, obviously, in the form of smart military rule. They were using Stargates from day one, and rebuilding an advanced civilization fast as they could in between having all those babies. They had a goal, a roadmap, resources, and leadership. They just did it.

            Those who didn't like being ordered around, or didn't share the common goal, had 2 options: Join Brody and his Futurans, or Gate around building their own off-world Colonies. Which we know they did, for centuries, with varied success.
            You make a lot of excellent points, but where is said that they had built off-world colonies for centuries? You suggest that there with "third party" groups that left for their own reasons for some reasons, but the Stargates are actually an excellent resource that can be used to fast-track civilization building. The Ancients understood this and appear to have built individual cities on planets which they connected to each other by way of the Stargate. This limited environmental damage to a planet, facilitated travel as every aspect of their civilization was seconds away from one another (plus short walks to and from Stargates), and, with the introduction of city-ships, it became very easy to pick up and leave in the face of catastrophic changes to an individual planet.

            If Ancient China could reach Europe in seconds rather than having to travel thousands of miles overland and vice versa, the world would be very different today. Goods and ideas would have spread more easily and industries would have flourished because the ease with which goods and services could be transported would have increased demand. Hence, why modern society has flourished so much more quickly with the advent of faster methods of transportation.

            In the case of the Destiny's survivors and their descendants, they could have found a mine near a Stargate, set up a settlement on this other planet that would grow over time, and shipped ores through the Stargate much faster and more easily than setting up a mine off somewhere on Novus. Industrial centers could have been built offworld to quickly ship products, farms would have been established to ship food and insulate themselves from the environmental problems of a single planet or limit themselves to just the conditions of the area nearby a settlement of one planet (there could have been a potential breadbasket near a Stargate of some other planet), etc. This should also rapidly facilitate growth on other planets as doing so would be a an easy way to create easy access new markets. Thus those people should have had a galaxy wide population, but they didn't.

            That colony world that they found people on had been established, not centuries prior, but 30 years prior in response to the earthquakes that were happening on Novus. The other colonies mentioned were similarly tied to this idea that the earthquakes prompted them to look for other planets to colonized thirty years ago. Also, that colony world could only gate to Novus, which means it is within the local cluster of gates that Novus can reach without gate hopping. As a perfectly habitable world it should have been among the first colonies created long ago. That it wasn't suggests that they limited themselves to one world. That Futura was a technological and political rival is another suggestion that colony worlds did not exist because if they did Tenara should have been much more advanced since it controlled the Stargate and thus access to all the trade and industry that colonies could have produced. Then, of course, there's the obvious, which is that if they've had off-world colonies for hundreds of years they wouldn't have needed to send small numbers of people to various worlds 30 years ago to build small settlements as a precursor to larger scale evacuations.

            It therefore seems that the writers kept them limited to Novus for most of their history. I would certainly think that the oppose would be the case because of the aforementioned reasons, but it also solves the issue of how the Destiny take II crew didn't run into other humans elsewhere in the galaxy before encountering this small group, so even if I can't quite understand why those fictional people would do that, I can see why the writers would limited them like that.
            Last edited by Xaeden; 16 June 2018, 05:59 AM.

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              My thoughts, exactly!

              But here's canon, from Blockade, when they dial Pittsburgh:

              ELI: The archive said our people spread out from Novus for centuries. That's enough time for dozens of planets to be settled with large populations.
              YOUNG: They don't seem as advanced.
              ELI: Depending on resources, ideology, isolation, they'd all advance at different rates.
              Eli's only speculating, but it lends weight to the notion of a "decentralized" colonization effort.

              Of course, the Novans are key to my fanfic ending/continuing SGU, so I speculated there on their possible colonization patterns too.

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                Thanks for the quote! I was looking exclusively at "Common Descent" and "Epilogue" for details. I had forgotten about "Blockade" entirely.

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                  The subtitle files for all episodes help with searching.

                  Here's another from Blockade, a couple minutes earlier:

                  GREER: I hope we don't have to use any bullets. We're runnin' low.
                  YOUNG: Brody'll have to make some new ones.
                  They're on Destiny, not Novus, but doesn't sound like a joke. Brody is a one-man industry by himself.

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                    Originally posted by morrismike View Post
                    Had they taken the stones they would have surpassed the ancients with the head start that would have given them.
                    Why, the Ancient Shad the stones for more than fifty million years?

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                      i wonder if they are somehow the reasons those aliens are obsessed with destiny?

                      anyways books do deteriorate but they would have had a order of librarians or professors who stored and taught ancient knowledge, the real issue is war and desperation create new ideas, and the truth is they may have had a sucesful colonization effort perfectly preserving everything so no one had to think of new ideas, just learn what they were taught and find ways to apply it, thier methods of thinking may have changed so drastically over time to not being born on earth or in the galaxy they were genetically from that they may not even be able to think in certain patterns that lead to great new ideas very easily, it may require them generations just to develop a completely new realized method of space travel, and why would they need space travel without war or enemies? they have thier colonies with resources and computers and freinds, content means a lack of exploration or expansion of ideas and the lack of interest in gaining more power or technology etc

                      slothe is a product of contentment, fear is a producer of creativity, rage and anger lead to the gathering of power and knowledge, and happyness.... is its own reward for having gotten to that point

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                        Novus, i think a more advanced Novus or its colony planets than what the writers chose to set the civilization at when the Destiny meets their descendants in Common Descent would have been the wrong call. The crew of Destiny stranded on Novus, alone multiple galaxies from home with no way of telling if they have been sent far backwards in time or far forwards (surely some of them had heard about John Sheppard being sent 48,000 years into the future once before) their first concern would be to find shelter to survive through the night and hope there would be no dangerous wildlife on the planet. then they could turn their attention to other problems and use their scientific skills to find clean drinking water and enough food for everyone. Yes they had a lot of very smart people stranded together and after they had built tools, homes, a fence to surround the settlement then it was smart of people like Eli to preserve knowledge but much of the knowledge he, and others possessed, would be of little use to the next generations their concerns would not be with technology that is centuries beyond them or Earth that multiple galaxies away and possibly fully forgotten. The writers could have gone in the other direction and made the people of Novus even more advanced than modern day Earth than they chose to but that would have been a stretch in my mind as they wanted to show how the crew of Destiny was remembered 2000 years later. i find parallels between the whole Novus story line and the end of Battlestar Galactica (2009) where survivors find a new planet to call home and much knowledge is lost (in case of BSG this was mostly done on purpose) but some survived such as religion (BSG) and cherished greetings (SGU).

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                          Originally posted by EvaWallE7744 View Post
                          Novus, i think a more advanced Novus or its colony planets than what the writers chose to set the civilization at when the Destiny meets their descendants in Common Descent would have been the wrong call. The crew of Destiny stranded on Novus, alone multiple galaxies from home with no way of telling if they have been sent far backwards in time or far forwards (surely some of them had heard about John Sheppard being sent 48,000 years into the future once before) their first concern would be to find shelter to survive through the night and hope there would be no dangerous wildlife on the planet. then they could turn their attention to other problems and use their scientific skills to find clean drinking water and enough food for everyone. Yes they had a lot of very smart people stranded together and after they had built tools, homes, a fence to surround the settlement then it was smart of people like Eli to preserve knowledge but much of the knowledge he, and others possessed, would be of little use to the next generations their concerns would not be with technology that is centuries beyond them or Earth that multiple galaxies away and possibly fully forgotten. The writers could have gone in the other direction and made the people of Novus even more advanced than modern day Earth than they chose to but that would have been a stretch in my mind as they wanted to show how the crew of Destiny was remembered 2000 years later. i find parallels between the whole Novus story line and the end of Battlestar Galactica (2009) where survivors find a new planet to call home and much knowledge is lost (in case of BSG this was mostly done on purpose) but some survived such as religion (BSG) and cherished greetings (SGU).
                          In theory Novus should be more advanced, since they had a jump-start and as mentioned previously by other posters no dark ages or anything alike. In practice, I do not believe this to be true, for a few simple reasons. Here is why I don't think that Novus could be more advanced:

                          Resources: Good luck trying to find large deposits of gold, silver and so on to create electronic components.

                          Infrastructures: They have nothing, need to build it from scratch. That means prospecting for metal, create forges, etc. It's basically starting a new Minecraft game with an empty inventory.

                          Workforce (most important aspect): It would take generations to build a suitable workforce for any ventures, considering that the survival aspect had to be a priority. They won't build iphones before they get good crops and farms.

                          Knowledge: One single man, even though Eli is a genius, cannot possibly hold all the essential scientific knowledge on top of its head. It is obvious that a good portion of the knowledge was lost / missing.

                          More advanced than us? Maybe in some specific fields but otherwise I would say no.
                          Spoiler:
                          I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more.

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                            Originally posted by EvaWallE7744 View Post
                            i find parallels between the whole Novus story line and the end of Battlestar Galactica (2009) where survivors find a new planet to call home and much knowledge is lost (in case of BSG this was mostly done on purpose) but some survived such as religion (BSG) and cherished greetings (SGU).
                            There are also the Ancients who returned to Earth 10,000 years ago and like the colonial survivors in BSG, gave up on the idea of rebuilding their civilization, preferring instead to settle among the human population and, with the exception of gently nudging them to create a civilization of their own, lived out their lives among the humans without trying to pass down their scientific knowledge.

                            Of course, this only refers one faction of the returning Ancient population. Some also spent their lives trying to ascend, while others left Earth entirely.

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                              Originally posted by Chaka-Z0 View Post
                              Here is why I don't think that Novus could be more advanced
                              I feel your pessimism.

                              But, are you saying it isn't likely the Novans jumpstarted their civilization, despite all their advantages, or you don't believe anyone can possibly achieve such a jumpstart, period?

                              Originally posted by Chaka-Z0 View Post
                              find large deposits of gold, silver and so on to create electronic components.
                              Nope, that's not how it's done.

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