Abusing the Kardashev Scale For Fun and Profit: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"Your race hasn't even reached Type 1 on the Kardashev scale. It doesn't control the resources of this one planet, let alone a solar system or a galaxy. The Time Lords were '''the''' Type 4 civilization. We had no equals. We controlled the fundamental forces of the entire universe. Nothing could communicate with us on our level. [[Blasphemous Boast|Most races pray to lesser beings than the Time Lords.]]"'' |'''Time Lord Marnal''', ''[[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]]: [[Eighth Doctor Adventures|The Gallifrey Chronicles]]''}}

 

 

Note that the Kardashev number of a civilization indicates only its power use: it is at best just a proxy for the scale of technological capabilities at play, and it can become less proximate the [[Mohs Scale of Sci Fi Hardness|softer]] the Sci-Fi gets, which also makes it harder to evaluate where a civilization rates on the Kardashev scale [[All There in the Manual|if no hard numbers are given]]. As an example, consider the human civilizations of ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'' and ''[[Ender's Game]]''. Both use relativistic craft and travel between fairly local systems. Though there are world-destroying weapons and much larger scale space travel in ''Ender's Game'' and its sequels, the [[Applied Phlebotinum|phlebotinum]] involved is specifically said to use enormously less energy than normal physics would suggest for accomplishing those tasks. In ''Avatar'', the necessity of brute-forcing relativistic travel may put that civilization higher on the Kardashev scale, despite the largely inferior technology and scale of development. Keep this in mind when placing examples, and try to include some explanation. After all, a hallmark of improving technology is increased efficiency, which would actually ''lower'' a civilization's Kardashev rating, all else equal.

* The 12 Colonies of Kobol in ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined|Battlestar Galactica]]'' (prior to the Cylon nuclear bombardment), given that they used at least a fraction of the power available on 12 planets, and have a decent fleet in a setting where nukes are plentiful and considered powerful.

* The sub-Vorlon/Shadow civilizations of ''[[Babylon 5]]'' seem to be in this neighborhood.

 

 

** In one episode, the power output of the ''Enterprise-D'' is given at "12.75 billion gigawatts", which is the same power output of an entire Type 1.3 civilization. So either the ''Enterprise-D'' alone uses an appreciable fraction of the Federation's resources, the Federation is well into Type 2 territory, or [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|the writers just picked a really big number that sounded impressive]].

** For comparison, a Nimitz-class carrier's output is about .001% the total global output, and a Saturn V's was about 3%. So, assuming a similar ratio between the Galaxy-class and the Federation, the whole civilization would be between 4 x 10²⁰ and 1 x 10²⁴W, solidly in Type I territory. This seems to be in line with the widespread use of fusion and bulk antimatter for power.

* The Zentradi of ''[[Macross]]'' are the slowly decaying remnants of [[Precursors|an ancient (perhaps Type II) civilization]]. At the time the series takes place, they are probably mid-to-high Type I. In the course of the various series and movies they become progressively assimilated by humanity, which is itself an upwardly mobile Type I.

* The ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' Asgard and their enemies the Replicators are tough to call. They are among the most powerful active civilizations (if the Replicators can really be called that) in the setting, but they don't do a whole lot of big, Kardashev-Scale-bumping stuff on screen, and the actual power use of their tech is largely not shown. Still, they're active on a scale that would suggest something in this category.

* Delphons were an alien race in ''[[The History of the Galaxy]]'' series of novels by the Russian science fiction writer Andrey Livadny. They had a civilization spanning several star systems, and were likely here.

* The Krell, the (extinct) inhabitants of the ''[[Forbidden Planet]]''. They left behind a facility of enormous power (described as 9,600 thermonuclear generators occupying 33,000 cubic kilometers), and "harnessing the power of an exploding star"<ref>though that was very likely hyperbole given that an exploding star uses far more energy than the mass-energy of a terrestrial planet</ref> though the purpose was initially unknown. It doesn't display a whole lot of power in the movie, but estimating a reasonable power density for the generators would put the Krell in this range.

* The Tau, Orks, and non-Imperium human factions of [[Warhammer 40000]] are probably here. Compare with the Imperium, probably a borderline Type II, the Eldar, a clear Type II, and the Tyranids and Necrons in Other.

** The Tau have probably the smallest civilization of the playable factions, but fairly dense development.

* Vorlons of ''[[Babylon 5]]'' are possibly this high based on some demonstrated planetary bombardment, but they're rather mysterious, so it's hard to say for sure. This is even more pronounced for their rivals the Shadows, which, though their superweapons seem to be considerably less powerful, are apparently in a stalemate with the Vorlons.

* The [[Warhammer 40000|Imperium of Man]] probably goes here. It possesses myriad hive worlds, each probably rating about Type I, and countless Type 0 worlds across much of the galaxy. Their more powerful weapons can blow up planets, indicating transitory mid Type II scale power use, though that happens fairly rarely.

 

 

** It's explicitly stated more than once in-universe that creating a tachyon bubble (the faster-than-light travel method of the Lords) "consumes" a star. Whatever that means, precisely, it's almost certainly a ''lot'' more energy than simply using its entire power output, and is arguably sufficient to categorize them as Type III, though they don't seem to ''continuously'' require this amount of power. It's also possible... no details are really given... that the technology is extremely inefficient and most of the power is actually wasted.

* At the maximum tech level in the ''[[Space Empires]]'' games, you are capable of creating and destroying stars, nebulae, black holes, [[Ringworld Planet|Ringworlds]] and [[Dyson Sphere|Sphereworlds]].

* The Protoss in [[Starcraft]] have Warp Gates, shields, the ability to distort localized space, and no small amount of [[Frickin' Laser Beams]]. Even individuals and their robots can create local spacetime distortions. However, it is mentioned they are not a prolific race, so that may play with their measurements somewhat.

* The Combine in ''[[Half-Life 2]]'' has most of their technology operate on exotic matter. Their Citadels are powered by dark energy reactors that screw around with physics to power themselves and generate infinite amounts of dark energy plasma. Said plasma is used for a number of purposes including portable power sources<ref>a fist-sized plasma capsule can power a [[Deflector Shield|wall-mounted shield generator]]</ref> and ammunition<ref>said plasma capsule acts as a [[Disintegrator Ray]] on contact with organic matter and Combine pulse weaponry fire plasma blasts that put bullets to shame</ref> as well as being fed into a dark fusion reactor that can literally [[Teleporters and Transporters|tear a hole in the fabric of spacetime and tunnel into other universes]]. While this already makes them Type II, the Combine has already [[Planet Looters|conquered an unknown number of worlds]] which makes them a solid candidate for Type III.

** A star puts out a lot more energy from fusion than a black hole of the same mass would from Hawking radiation. Also, the more massive the hole, the lower its effective temperature. This might be more of a Type II or borderline Type III, depending on exactly how many "multiple" is.

* Though the details are a bit sketchy, some remarks in [[H.P. Lovecraft|HP Lovecraft]]'s ''Whispers in the Dark'' suggest that the Mi-go could be here, since they've mastered interdimensional travel and apparently rule entire galaxies in their native dimensions.

* The Danannians from L.E. Modesitt's The Eternity Artifact were at least Type III, but it's entirely possible they were a borderline type IV+.

* Established powers in ''[[Orion's Arm]]'' do things like suck entire stars through wormholes called grazers (over a period of many decades) and convert their mass directly to energy. A star's mass is in the 10³⁰ kg, just under 10¹⁷ J per kg, "decades" is around 10⁹seconds... you do the math.

* The observable universe glows with about 2 x 10⁴⁹W.

* The highest possible transient power output for a point source is about 9 x 10⁵¹W based on Relativity predicting the formation of an event horizon around anything more. The final word on this will probably have to wait for a working theory of quantum gravity, however.

** Their ultimate weapon was so powerful that only the Time Lord president could wield it and it requires a hidden key only the president knows about to operate. The weapon in question is the Demat Gun. It doesn't just destroy a target, it ''erases'' the target from time and space so that the target never existed in the first place with nobody even remembering what the target was.

** The Doctor probably ranks as his own personal Type IV. He uses supernovas when needed, which produce 10⁴⁵W (100 [[wikipedia:Foe (unit of energy)|foes]] over 10 seconds) during the stellar collapse.

** The People, from the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' [[Virgin New Adventures|New Adventures]] novel ''The Also People'', are described as being roughly on par with the Time Lords (to the extent that they actually have a non-aggression pact with them). The technology we see is at the "magic" level, but there's not enough specific information to pinpoint it. They seem to use it only for personal sensual gratification, however.

*** Note that The People are collectively a massive "[[Captain Ersatz]]" of [[Iain M Banks]]' "The Culture."

*** One has to allow for both Davros having spent considerable time in stasis, along with the fact that time travel is involved. Dalek history may not be linear. It is also worth noting that Davros individually and the Daleks generally (the Doctor once referred to them as "scavengers") seemed to have a strong desire to acquire Time Lord technology, and possibly the necessary intellect to at least marginally understand it. That they may have stolen most of what they had is reinforced by the fact that in most instances the Doctor seems to understand how their technology works.

* The [[The Culture|Overarch Bedeckants]], the civilisation that built the probe in ''Excession'' travel between universes so as to avoid extinction by being trapped in one when it undergoes heat death. Their lone probe brushed off the most powerful weapon the Culture wielded without any apparent effort. However, most of the information about the Excession comes from Intelligence report suppositions and a single largely incoherent rambling rant from the Excession itself.

* Traditional view of a God creating the universe ex-nihilo means you need to take the current mass-energy content of the universe (4 x 10⁶⁹J) and have expelled it in the time before time existed (one unit of Planck time, or 5.39124 x 10^-44 seconds), coming up with 7 x 10¹¹²W. This would put God, at a bare minimum, as a [[Beyond the Impossible|Type X]].

* Pre-Mending Planeswalkers from [[Magic: The Gathering]] tended to have enormous reality-warping power, frequently creating entire planes of existence by themselves. The entity Yawgmoth was powerful enough to overlay multiple realities over one another for the purpose of invasions, and apparently survived the detonation of his personal plane of existence, caused by the essence of several god-level beings being fired at him. This would probably indicate Type IV+ if anything like real physics applied.

** Post-Mending 'walkers are still powerful, but much less so. Still, they probably would easily exceed Type III.

* The holder of the Infinity Gauntlet in the [[Marvel Universe]] possesses pretty high order omnipotence, capable of moving multiple universes and effortlessly deposing the living incarnation of all matter, energy and time in the universe.

* The 4-D beings from ''[[Star Ocean: Till the End of Time]]'' could be considered an example, if a very strange one. Sure, our entire universe is just an MMORPG that they created, but by our standards, the energy output needed to manage our universe as well as all their own affairs would be absolutely incredible.

* The Markovians from Chalker's [[Well World]] series are here, given that they built planet-sized megacomputers that could freely revise physical laws, edit the course of history, and indeed kept the universe stable. Specific estimates of energy usage are probably a moot point, as they were the ones deciding how much energy there ''is'' in the universe.

* The Tyranids of [[Warhammer 40000]] are an interesting case. If the statement that they've consumed multiple entire galaxies is true, they might be an unconventional Type III, though that depends greatly on the dormant metabolism of Tyranids drifting through space, as even if they have that much mass available<ref>questionable even then, as they seem to only assimilate parts of planets rather than entire stars and nebulae</ref>, actual power use is what counts. Their typical MO of removing a good chunk of terrestrial planets' mass and draining the heat from what's left operates fairly slowly, so probably represents a mid Type I power expenditure per planet being consumed. They may consume up to few planets at any given time, though hive fleets take a while to travel between systems, so this output probably isn't sustained. A full hemisphere-darkening invasion force probably represents about a Type I expenditure for each planet under attack.

** The Necrons and their masters the C'tan are also hard to pin down. The C'tan feed off stars, so might individually approach Type II, though they're not usually very active. The Necrons have the goal of separating the Warp from physical reality, a universe scale goal, though they seem to confine their efforts to one galaxy for now. They have the most advanced technology in the setting, and have fought on galactic scales in the distant past, but virtually all now lie dormant in buried tombs. Though their technology is very potent, they may be low on the Kardashev scale of the major factions of WH40K in the present setting due to their extremely small active numbers. Like the Tyranids, all bets are off if they become active en masse, particularly since they are known to possess at least one Dyson Sphere.

* The Forerunners of ''[[Halo]]'' at the height of their power were more or less masters of the galaxy, though it's hard to put a number to their power use. They built rather large structures around the galaxy, which might indicate low to mid Type I depending on how fast they did it. Their higher-end stuff, like the "kill everything sapient in the galaxy" function of the halos could potentially get them into Type III, though its actual workings are pretty sketchy on the power needed, especially since it doesn't appear to be a brute-force effect, and the halos would appear to not have nearly the mass-energy available to fuel Type III power use.

** Turns out they successfully built an actual Dyson Sphere (and contained it within another dimension to be only a couple meters wide in normal space), so at least Type II.

 

== Multiple: For the upwardly/downwardly mobile. ==

** In ''Master of Orion 2'' the weapon ''Stellar Converter'' is capable of destroying planets in matter of seconds (debatable as it takes a turn to do so), meaning their energy output has to be in order of 10³⁰J - give or take few magnitudes - in order to overcome the gravitational binding energy of a planet sized object. Also, you can also construct Earth-like planets from asteroid belts and gas giants. This would suggest mid to high Type II power use.

* Civilization in the ''[[Lensman]]'' novels progresses from what's probably a low Type II (a significant portion of the Milky Way colonized, FTL travel, 'super-atomic' and energy weapons) at the beginning of ''Galactic Patrol'' to a probable Type III (two galaxies colonized, travel between parallel universes, faster-than-light planets used as weapons powerful enough to cause supernovas) by the end of ''Children of the Lens''. The Children of the Lens themselves are near-godlike beings.

** Still, one funny thing. Functional immortality is probably enormously easier to achieve scientifically than FTL travel, as it likely hinges on a mixture of nano, cyber and/or biotechnology already theoretical by our science (just tricky to achieve) as opposed to nudging the laws of physics in ways that we don't even have any idea how for FTL travel.

** The PL scale being lifted wholesale from TSR's defunct RPG [[Alternity]] which Wizards of the Coast inherited and then let die.

* In 2000, Steve Jackson Games [http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=1861 officially announced] that we had reached TL8 and that they were forced to rewrite the old Tech Level scale from the 1985 rulebook because science had progressed faster in some fields (like biotech) than expected and slower in others, which affects the Tech Level descriptions in the current 4th Edition rulebook. [http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2006-03-21 This article] from March 2006 lists another example that modern bio-science is close to breaking through to TL9.

* Interestingly, even a TL 12 civilization doesn't have much in the way of technology above Type II. This is likely a problem of game balance (when handguns can take out a planet it doesn't really matter what Advantages characters have).

** TL 7 -- Nuclear Age (c1951-2000): Computer invented. Lasers, miniaturization, mature fission technology.

** TL 8 -- Microscience (c2001-2050?): Gengineering, longevity, micromachines, early fusion technology. Beginnings of AI.

** TL 10 -- Robotic Age. "True" AI. Hand held lasers, particle beam weapons. Gravity control.

** TL 11 -- Exotic Matter. Altering atoms. FTL technology (with superscience). [[Space Opera]].

* GURPS is also notable among RPGs because it gives rules for mismatched tech levels. An enlightened and peaceful civilization might have figured out bodily immortality (TL 11) yet have no weapons more advanced than "mere" 20th-century nukes (TL 7).

** GURPS also allows fantasy/alternative technology forms, For example, a Steampunk world like ''[[Girl Genius]]'' would be [[TL 5]]+4 (Steam engine/victorian with flight, death rays, and mechanical AI), while ''[[The Flintstones]]'' would be [[TL 0]]+6 (Stone age with TV and cars! )

* Human civilization in ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' merits mention here. Humanity's technology level is ''ridiculously'' schizophrenic thanks to tens of millenia of war and upheaval. At its height, humanity had true AI, rapid interstellar travel, controlled the vast majority of the galaxy, is implied to have mastered matter-energy conversion, and bent the laws of the universe to its whim. Twenty thousand years of devastating galactic war later, scraps of technology from that era are worth destroying star systems over. Though the Imperium of Man and Adeptus Mechanicus don't understand how much of their most advanced technology works anymore, they still show hallmarks of a borderline Type III civilization, notably whenever the technologies of war come into question. Meanwhile, any given Imperial planet can range from the Stone Age to high type II. [[Schizo-Tech]] at its finest, folks.

* ''[[Star Ruler]]'': You start at star-faring. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJJEMmzKzR4 Galaxy-sized ships are possible, if ridiculously lategame.]