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

==== Unmarked Spoilers Abound From This Point Onward ====

 

 

== Type 0: Less than Type I. Clear cases go here. If it looks like a large fraction of a planet's power, it's borderline. ==

* ''[[Transmetropolitan]]'' explicitly references the trope -- or an older version of it, anyway. Type I is described not only as harnessing all the power, but having eliminated internal conflicts. The other two types are largely the same. Spider notes that they can perform miracles with engines too small to be seen and have turned all of Mercury into a solar battery enough to power the entirety of Earth continuously... but they are still divided. Approximately 10¹⁷W if 60% or so of Mercury's light is harnessed.

* ''[[Cowboy Bebop (Anime)|Cowboy Bebop]]'' displays a multi-planetary civilization that has gotten banged up quite a bit. Populations are small by today's standards, but interplanetary travel is fairly common. Probably somewhere around this level.

* ''[[Farscape (TV)|Farscape]]'' seems to have dozens of civilizations at around this level, depending on just how much power the phlebotinum uses.

* ''[[Firefly (TV)|Firefly]]'' might just be Type I, depending on its population. ''Serenity'' (considered old in-universe) takes minutes (say, 1000 s) to get out of an Earth-like gravity well (Earth's gravity well has a depth of 6 x 10⁷J/kg), and is capable of carrying herds of cows (say, 50 cows weighing 700 kg each); putting all that together, ''Serenity'' herself has a power output of at least 2 x 10⁹W<ref>(actually more, because she has to lift her own weight as well as that of the cows, but since she could be made of some random ultralight futuristic material that's harder to estimate)</ref>. So, if ''Serenity'''s engine represents one part in 10⁸ of that civilization's power output, the total civilization's output is at least 2 x 10¹⁷W. (For comparison, note that 1 / 10⁸ is roughly the ratio of a car engine's power output to the power output of our entire civilization.)

* 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]].

* In ''[[Known Space]]'', Puppeteers are pretty solidly Type II. They (claim to have) disassembled at least one entire solar system to build their Fleet of Worlds and accelerated it to a reasonable fraction of the speed of light. They bought the technology to do so from Outsiders, but they were still able to implement their plans on their own.

* The Combine in ''[[Half-Life 2 (Video Game)|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.

* The Eldar in Warhammer 40,000 were, at their height, capable of birthing and destroying stars. Much of their technology was lost with the Fall (such as the ability to maintain and expand the Webway, a pocket dimension used for safe interstellar travel), they are still able to "capture" stars to use as power sources.

* ''[[Manifold Time (Literature)|Manifold Time]]'' by [[Stephen Baxter]]. In the distant future, descendants of humanity maintain vast Dyson nets around the supermassive black hole remnants of galaxies until they evaporate via Hawking radiation, accessing the power equivalent of multiple galaxies.

** 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.

* An offshoot of the Caeliar species in the [[Star Trek Destiny]] series. They had been shunted back in time nearly fourteen billion years into another galaxy. In the intervening years, they constructed a [[Dyson Sphere]] around ''every star in their new galaxy'', knowing that such overt technology would attract the attention of their past selves [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|living in the present]], which would let them destroy them for investigating and send a few meager remnants into the past, completing a [[Stable Time Loop]]. They fact that the Caeliar as a whole are borderline [[Reality Warper|Reality Warpers]] who have [[Clarke's Third Law|ridiculously advanced technology]] that makes them functionally immortal and can teleport away entire planets and civilizations that come bothering them probably pushes them close to a Type IV.

* 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+.

** The People, from the ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|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.

* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', the aliens seen [http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=010826 at the end] of the "GOFOTRON Champion of the Universe" arc are able to contain hundreds of exploding stars within a sphere the size of a soccer ball. And this device was created by a ''waffle company''.

* Each portion of [[Isaac Asimov]]'s science fiction short shorty "The Last Question" takes place in a human civilization at a different point on the scale--each time the Last Question is asked, man is so much more advanced yet still powerless to answer it. It finishes by outlining a possible Type ''V'' scenario: ''reversing'' entropy even after the apparent heat death of the universe.

* [[Isaac Asimov]]'s stories, in chronological order, begin with mankind as a type 0 or a borderline type I. Then they establish Spacer colonies, invent faster-than-light travel and eventually colonize almost an entire galaxy, having reached a Solid II level.

** An update is published online as [http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page The Millennial Project 2.0].

* Michio Kaku talks about the Civilization Levels a fair bit. Might want to look up his books.

[[Category:Just for Fun]]

[[Category:Abusing The Kardashev Scale For Fun And Profit]]