![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Okay. You, and a bunch of your friends, are going off to colonize an alien planet.
You know that this planet has:
Gravity, heat, light, temporal cycles, elemental resources, and weather that are close enough to Earth's that most reasonably adaptable Earth species can survive and breed there.
A functioning carbohydrate-based planetary ecosystem that does basic things like keep the atmosphere oxygenated and soils fertile and dead things rotting and oceans thawed and all the other cycles rolling, and has been around long enough that much of the geology is fossilized (so there are probably coal and petroleum and carbonite deposits, etc.)
A fairly large landmass with a subtropical/Mediterranean-like climate with warm temperatures year-round, no major extreme weather, and ample seasonal rainfall, where you are planning to settle.
However, the planet's biology is not close enough to Earth's that Earth life can interact with it on any complex level. You can count on being able to use native life for things like fibers and building material and fuel and maybe latex and dyes, but anything you want to eat or use for medicine you'll have to bring with you. Along with pollinators and symbiotic fungi and any other life needed to keep that life going. And you're going to need to be self-sufficient within a year or two of arrival, with a fairly small initial population and very limited technological resources. On the plus side, local diseases, pests, and predators are mostly going to ignore anything Earth-based.
If you could have your pick of all species currently alive anywhere on Earth(and maybe a few that are recently extinct, and maybe a few that need a tiny bit of gene-tinkering first), what among Earth life would you bring with you? I am especially interested for species that aren't currently common food products in Europe/North America.
You know that this planet has:
Gravity, heat, light, temporal cycles, elemental resources, and weather that are close enough to Earth's that most reasonably adaptable Earth species can survive and breed there.
A functioning carbohydrate-based planetary ecosystem that does basic things like keep the atmosphere oxygenated and soils fertile and dead things rotting and oceans thawed and all the other cycles rolling, and has been around long enough that much of the geology is fossilized (so there are probably coal and petroleum and carbonite deposits, etc.)
A fairly large landmass with a subtropical/Mediterranean-like climate with warm temperatures year-round, no major extreme weather, and ample seasonal rainfall, where you are planning to settle.
However, the planet's biology is not close enough to Earth's that Earth life can interact with it on any complex level. You can count on being able to use native life for things like fibers and building material and fuel and maybe latex and dyes, but anything you want to eat or use for medicine you'll have to bring with you. Along with pollinators and symbiotic fungi and any other life needed to keep that life going. And you're going to need to be self-sufficient within a year or two of arrival, with a fairly small initial population and very limited technological resources. On the plus side, local diseases, pests, and predators are mostly going to ignore anything Earth-based.
If you could have your pick of all species currently alive anywhere on Earth(and maybe a few that are recently extinct, and maybe a few that need a tiny bit of gene-tinkering first), what among Earth life would you bring with you? I am especially interested for species that aren't currently common food products in Europe/North America.
From:
no subject
Do you have a fairly thorough idea of what the colony's plant life is capable of? Because I'm thinking that silkworms (and the mulberry bushes they feed upon) might be a good idea, as well as rubber trees. Also if you need something quick-growing that has multiple applications, hemp is good stuff, though your characters' opinions may vary.
Bananas/plantains could make a good staple foodstuff.
See also the Wiki pages on herbalism and plants used as medicine.
I'm guessing that you'll want a source (or a few sources) of caffeine or other stimulants, some things that ferment well to make alcohol (which has industrial and some medicinal applications beyond simply intoxicating people), a range of pain relief options, etc.
From:
no subject
I was actually thinking about breadfruit - they supply an excellent staple crop (like plantain, but easier), give a semi-usable latex, and have medicinal uses.
I'm debating what to bring as their stimulant of choice. There will be something, yes, but so many choices! Kola, coca, cacao, tea, betel and areca, coffee, guarana ... and those are just the first that come to mind. If you could only pick one, which would you pick?
They're definitely going to bring some yeasts, for alcohol and bread and cheese and yoghurt and so on; I don't know if it would be necessary to bring a crop *just* to ferment, though. And they're going to bring some bacterial strains that produce antibiotics, and maybe a few other useful pharmaceutical-producing bacterial strains. Though I'm not sure what would go into a basic pharmacopeia, and what you would want to get herbally. Also while I can name lots of medicinal herbs that do various things, I'm not sure which I'd pick if I had to pick only a few!
Off the top of my head, I'd want, as the very basics: at least two painkiller choices, a sedative, a febrifuge, an anti-inflammatory, an anti-biotic, an anti-histamine, insulin, birth control, and a general immunosuppressant. But I'm probably forgetting something. Some of those I could cheat and use engineered bacterial strains; some could be multi-purpose. With a limited labor pool, they won't be able to grow everything, so it's going to have to be triage, especially on the medicinals.
They aren't going to have many serious infectious diseases, since they aren't bringing many and they'll have a fairly small population pool for breeding more, but there will be all that results from our various friendly flora, and trauma, and all the ways the human body can attack itself.
From:
no subject
One that I would want to make sure was around if your folks are going to be around a lot of strange flora and fauna is epinephrine of some form. Being able to bring people out of anaphylactic shock = good. :)
Also, this one's a fairly simple chemical with a long history of use rather than a plant-derived medicine, but Magnesium sulfate, aka Epsom salt. VERY important if you're wanting to have basic medical means of dealing with some of the trickier pregnancy complications, and has many other medical uses as well.
What is the situation on this planet for mining, etc.? Can it be usefully done, and should it be? Or will this just completely screw up the local ecology?
From:
no subject
I've actually spent quite a while pondering/researching whether allergies would be more or less of a problem with non-Earth-evolved biota.
Most (type 1) allergies are reactions to specific proteins, and if I'm positing alien biota don't use anything that can pass as Earth protein (which seems reasaonable - you need a carbohydrate-based biota to get free oxygen in the atmosphere on an Earthlike planet, but you don't necessarily need Earth amino acids), then the native biota, it seems like, *shouldn't* trigger allergies in humans.
On the other hand, that could be the equivalent of living in a hyperclean environment, and trigger more immune reactions in the humans. And on the third hand, it's possible that with exposure, human immune systems could learn to react with the alien proteins.
SF as a whole seems to be split on the question, and I've never seen a serious discussion of it by experts.
But, anyway, they'll definitely want some kind of anti-allergy drug - an adrenaline like epinephrine or an H1 antagonist like Benadryl, or both. Unfortunately I am having very little luck finding out how you *make* an H1 antagonist; there's always jewelweed and plantain, I guess.
The idea is that nearly all the planets being colonized have those conditions, so we want a basic kit of the stuff every colony ship carries. Most of them will have reasonably accessible and a good variety of mineral resources, though, and you always do a comprehensive mineral survey early on, while you still have aerial/orbital mapping capabilities. So anything that can be mined is there, and they have the know-how to extract most of it, yes.
From:
no subject