The activists on earth. Qs that I need answered plz.
 

In my new fan-fic: A Better Tomarrow I plan to have a refrence to the "Ristance" movement on earth. I do have a problem though. I don't quiet have an Idea of what the scale of it is if they are doing it under the RDA's nose. If you can give me some ideas, it would be great. THank you. oh, and it would be great to discuss how the ristance would go down in the Avatar Universe.

(Spelled "tommorow." Sorry for being pedantic.)

What's the Ristance Movement? :S

Resistance??

I would say that for an underground movement you'd need about 30/50 people, then hopefully a joining of those 50 people with other small groups of like minded people through communication links like internet/messages or phone. Of course it depends on how severely the RDA would be censoring the communication networks.

I really like your idea for this fanfic, let us know when you've done some tsmukan. ;)

You also have to remember that depending on where in the timeline you place this what the public opinion of the Na'vi/Avatar program/Pandora is. In the movie Selfridge talks about how bombing the Na'vi would lead to bad PR. Now picture that same situation but only after the RDA has had its ass handed to it. I would put pretty good money on the RDA spinning the story in such a way that public opinion would turn from "Poor Na'vi" to "They attacked us....kill em!"

Even if Jake and CO are able to release "footage" of Quaritch's attack on hometree I doubt they would be trusted. So basically your resistance group would not only be fighting the RDA but a good chunk of the population as well.

It's not going to happen - that video will arrive in 4.4 years at lightspeed, well before Selfridge arrives back. The group who the survival guide originated with seem to have a lot of insider information - I would say at least one spy at a high level in the RDA, in addition to contacts on Pandora itself. Now all the marines and Selfridge are gone, all those logs of what happened are here just waiting to be transmitted.

That's a very good point. I think that's the only way that the activists got their information.

They have ansibles on the ISS Venture Star so Selfridge and the remaining military would be able to transmit their own spin on things pretty quickly. It would basically end up as a "he said she said" situation. It would really come down to how the public feels. There would definitely be a "revolution" going on the question would just be how large.

HNM insists the canonical figure for that is 3 bits an hour. You can't get a very long message inside ~11.4kb.

My idea was that the inside man on pandora would download the attack footage, Jake's video logs and the facts about the plants that can restore earth and smuggle it to the other activists to place it on the internet and the "Cause" organizations (pg. 128).

I don't think the public opinon of the na'vi being savages might stay if they upload the data. Take the movie Blood Diamond, once they got the diamond, they got to london and Solomon denied the offer by the company and Maddy got the pictures for Time Magazine. What happened afterwards? The company got protests for their little skeem with the dirty diamonds.

I think thats what people might think when they learn that unobtainum is dirty and that the plants can help restore earth.

True, true. But then again Jake and Co would be limited by the same bandwidth issues as well(unless Pandora has a really strong ansible). Either way it degenerates into a shouting match between the to.

Also downloading footage of the attack over that type of link....would take a very, very long time. Trust me. On GOOD days I get maybe 80kb download rate. I am STILL trying to download a HD version on Game of Thrones...its 20gbs and has been going for about three days now.

I thought the idea was that Jake & co. use a conventional radio signal. (Ignoring the power required to send such a signal)

Why do you assume this? And besides, we have no idea what public opinion of the Na'vi IS - I actually suspect that it'd be like Avatar's fandom's reaction, only much stronger/worse, due to Pandora actually being real. Grace has been writing about the plants for YEARS, and published back on Earth. The public would be lapping it all up, and the RDA would be putting as good a spin on Pandora and the Na'vi as they could, I imagine. With the amount of linking via internet, even the bio-connection would just be seen as a bio-internet.

And I really doubt that the footage of the Hometree attack would change ANYTHING. If seeing destruction and people screaming actually did anything, we wouldn't still be having the amount of war that we do. By 2154, viewers would be even more desensitized than we already are.

Don't get me wrong, the footage would certainly HURT the RDA a lot - but I don't think it'd change people's perception on the Na'vi in themselves.

Until Earth's economy pretty much collapses because there is no more unobtanium.
Qouteing the wiki here
"Without unobtanium, interstellar commerce on this scale would not be possible. Unobtanium is not only the key to Earth’s energy needs in the 22nd century, but it is the enabler of interstellar travel and the establishment of a truly spacefaring civilization"

Imagine if all the world's oil(save for a small reserve) suddenly vanished. The economic panic would be sudden and devastating. The RDA may or may not recover from that. They and other Mega-Corporations would be in a pretty tight spot. Sure someone may have a synthetic form of unobtanium ready to go, but odds are slim. The RDA and other Mega-Corpratioins would either have to lay off millions of workers or figure out some way to get the unobtanium back.

Walking on eggshells here, but....picture 9/11 but over oil. You have more then just an "attack" you have economic destruction. Sure some people may like the Na'vi but when the spin story comes out that they are responsible for a severe economic down their opinion will change.

Excellent point, I didn't think to mention that (despite a WiP fic of mine having one of the plots centered around trying not to doom Earth, oops.) Yeah, public opinion might just be ugly over that. Forget interstellar travel - if the trains and power grid shut down, you've got utter collapse on your hands.

Basically picture the current worldwide economic collapse...but about a thousand times worse. I am using this idea for the FF I am writing(shameless plug, check out Unshackled in the FF section). Really unless JC pulls a major handwave for the sequel I really don't see how the sequels won't end up in a lot of bloodshed. Human nature is to be greedy, and money grubbing. If something messes with our profits we are going to get angry...and get even.

Now on topic of activists on earth. I like to picture them as Eco-terrorists to the extreme, probably to the point of rejecting "technology" to show that they want things to change. I could see them conducting "civil disobedience" with bows and arrows. Okay maybe thats just because I practice archery and would probably be doing that. Soon as the mega-corp show up I am going full on protestor!

Looks at reports about how Wal-mart and "Wal-mart international" are currently the first and third "largest" corporations in the world.

TO WAR!

I like to picture them more like the Underground in Equilibrium. Or maybe even the Resistence in Half Life 2.

Don't have to be greedy to be worried about economic collapse - no jobs, no money, no food on the table, no medicine. Also no ability to pay bills, so at that next killer heatwave, no air con. Or you and your family get evicted. And the people to be hit first would be the poor. Look at Hurricane Katrina - a lot of people literally couldn't afford to get out, because it wasn't pay-day.

The resistance movement, I can see a mix. You'll have the protesters, the 'hearts and minds' advocates, the people who break in destroy property, the people who blow things up while trying not to hurt anyone, and the people who would see deaths as part of how revolutions are. Organization-wise, I can see them grouped in cells with not a lot of contact between each for protection. You'd also probably see a large range in attitude towards the Na'vi, from the Na'viphiles who worship them and want to be them to the people who go 'that's nice for them, but we need to concentrate on Earth' right to the people who regard the the Na'viphiles' attitude towards the Na'vi is creepy and fetishistic and rather full of appropriation. You'd get the people who are hard-core socialists, and the people who, due to the Na'vi, are more open to different ideas of society. So, yeah, I think you'd get a large mix. Maybe more than one movement? It's a huge area to play around in.

Nope.
Not enough bandwidth.

Anyway, even if so (which isn't right for the reasons above), look at history - modern history at that. Read up on the Streisand effect.


The 3bit/hr IS Pandora's 'ansible'. I already said that the scientists aren't limited by time, so they can send it at light speed if necessary - 4.4 years to arrive is a LOT faster than an ISV.

Interstellar commerce, yes. that has nothing to do wth an economy. Stop going Earth needs unobtainium!!1!, it is patently false.

The RDA are in everything. It's a setback, certainly, but you act as if it's the world's fuel source or something, and indeed, as if the RDA are devoid of other profit sources.

You mean the economic depression that ALREADY exists? :facepalm:
Normal people don't profit form unobtainium. The RDA execs do :facepalm:

One thing - if the execs don't profit, they cut jobs (and/or slash hours and/or hire people who cost, for whatever reason, less per hour or per year). It's THAT which hurts everyone else. The unemployment rate would jump, and the share-market would go crazy, which would lead to OTHER companies being in trouble, which in turn would affect the lives of THEIR workers. If the share-market crashes, hello economic depression.

Also, according to the ASG (pages 17-18), unobtanium is used on the maglev trains. Given that other kinds of fuel would be hard to find and/or ridiculously expensive (we're running out of fossil fuel NOW, let alone 140 years in the future with a global-city type Earth, and solar power would be hard thanks to the smog), uh, yeah, I'd say the lack of unobtanium would be a massive problem for transport. And countries can't really run without transport.

Not to mention that you'd have issues with other colonies in the solar system itself (I....can't believe that Hell's Gate is the first colony off Earth, that just makes ZERO sense). Travel between them would go back to being years without unobtanium.

Considering their use (bringing workers across the world so as to avoid hiring more expensive workers locally), the loss of that ability (which would not happen as Unobtainium is not a fuel) would actually improve things from the perspective of anyone who doesn't work for the RDA under a specific area.
Even so, all that would happen was that they would be very limited in further expansion. Where's the problem exactly?

Unobtainium is not fuel. Earth has HUGE amounts of electrical energy available, which is used as the actual energy source.
Again, I would point you to StarDestroyer.Net BBS • View topic - Avatar Military ****ers Read This First .

Again. EVEN IF there were other extrasolar presences, no unobtainium means you can not build more ISVs at the same efficiency of use (not not not at all, either). Unobtainium is not fuel. Is is not the structural material that makes ISV construction possible. It is not oxygen, or water either.
:facepalm:

Never said it was a fuel. Said it was used in the maglev trains. Which is stated in the ASG. You need superconductors for the maglev trains to work. Not only transporting people, but also goods, and supplies.

I tend to think that those things are important. Bad things happen when the transport of food is disrupted.

What were you referring to then? :hmm:

Yes, and if the supply is cut off, then they can't expand further, but they do not spontaneously stop working. That isn't a problem, particularly when they aren't used for food. Food is grown over the majority of the oceans, which everyone but the very richest people eat.