Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
I don't like the drought because of the science. It seems to me that the designers could have achieved the same ends by using "nuclear winter", a theory that was widely accepted during the late Cold War and for which some scientific evidence supports. Why they went the other direction and made it a drought, I don't know. My guess is that a hot, dry desert wasteland is more fun to adventure in than a frozen desert wasteland.
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With respect, that wasn't what the designers were saying. Drought does not necessarily mean hot and dry, it means a lack of precipitation. There
was a nuclear winter in T2K (actually the designers referred to it as a "nuclear fall", because of the slow, tit-for-tat build up of nuclear strikes a full-blown nuclear winter didn't occur). The winters of 1999 and 2000 were very cold but weather patterns had changed so there was a lack of rain (and I assume lower snow fall than normal) along the US east coast.
There are lots of places IRL where there are "cold deserts". Large parts of Antarctica are technically deserts because of the very low rates of precipitation. In fact from my (limited) understanding of climatology, cold can definitely equal less rain. One of the concerns about global warming is that higher temperatures mean greater evaporation from bodies of water resulting in more rain.
Then there is the Gulf Stream. I'm pretty sure we've discussed on this forum or its predecessor the possible effects of the Gulf Stream being disrupted or altered. It may well be that in the T2K universe the rains will return to the US east coast as the Gulf Stream returns to its "normal" configuration.
I completely understand that some people may not like the US east coast drought posited in
Howling Wilderness and that is fine, to each their own. But the drought is not an entirely unreasonable scenario when you look at the science.