I mean, snowball earth existed, if enough of the planet is covered in snow and ice, it reflects more light meaning it gets colder. It could be that they observed a REALLY bad solar minimun, that + vulcano + whatever else leading to a feedback loop. even after the suns back to normal
Snowball Earth was so long ago that Sun was really quite dimmer so losing CO2 from atmosphere (by new life nomnoming it) could cause such dramatic outcomes. For Frostpunk I think it's that combo yes. Worst possible stellar minimum plus major volcanic eruptions and astroid impacts, and if you really want to be mean add entire Solar System drifting into a more dustier zone of the Galaxy.
oxygen caused the first snowball earth. oxygen has been definitively shown to have an inverse greenhouse effect (which is more than we can say about the greenhouse effect with CO2, which is highly inconclusive at best). more oxygen causes the upper atmosphere to be more reflective, meaning less energy reaching the surface. the first snowball was caused by a sudden boom in a photosynthesizing algae that would turn CO2 into oxygen. this caused rapid cooling and the freezing planet had a runaway feedback loop. this would be a perfect explanation of the frostpunk universe as well. something could have produced significantly more oxygen all of a sudden, boosting the atmospheric concentration to the point of freezing the planet. this thing could have very well been the industrial revolution. remember, it is CO2 that is turned into oxygen, meaning a huge boost in the CO2 levels can and almost guaranteed will cause a huge spike in oxygen as well. a huge influx of CO2 from a significantly more rapid and extreme industrial revolution (they had automatons in the late 1800s. we only got that technology 40 years ago at best, and didnt use it to make anything near as big as mechs), could be the cause of the great frost.
@@aidenaune7008 What the fuck. No. Oxygen doesn't cause cooling. Lack of CO2 does. The effect of CO2 has been understood WHEN FROSTPUNK TAKES PLACE. Shut up
@@aidenaune7008 Well...all of this is just wrong. Oxygen does not act as an inverse greenhouse gas (I am curious where you got this information from) - the proposed mechanism for the cooling is that the introduction of oxygen into the atmosphere reacts with and breaks down the existing methane, a stronger greenhouse gas, into carbon dioxide, a weaker greenhouse gas. This would reduce the greenhouse effect. But even ignoring that, the "Huronian glaciation", the event you're referring to, was more or less a normal glaciation like our ongoing glaciation, there is pretty much no evidence of snowball Earth happening back then at all. More information from a geologist who is specialized in Paleoproterozoic Eon (when the "Huronian glaciation" occurred) here: ua-cam.com/video/bpIQhClkWcA/v-deo.html The Sturtian/Marinoan glaciations, though, have better chances of being global, but it is still debated - some thinks it's more of a "slushball" where the equator never froze.
There's also galactic dust. The solar system oscillates up and down through the galactic disc, so it's feasible to consider that it sometimes travels through "thicker" parts of the galaxy, and that "thickness" - the ambient dust and gas that eventually accumulates to create new stars - could become a bit of a fog between the earth and the sun. Some speculate on this as part of the cause for the various incidents of "Snowball Earth" in the distant past. So rather than the simple comet theory from the video, the idea would be an interstellar fog, some remnants of which might manifest as meteors that strike the Earth, but mostly would just cause a general dimming of the sun. It would also last a _very_ long time. Although the volcano theory also works. The first Frostpunk was set in 1887, and Krakatoa erupted in 1883. If Krakatoa triggered some additional volcanoes (similar to the volcanoes that helped finish off the dinosaurs after the meteor impact), that degree of atmospheric ash could easily cause a global cooling.
Interstellar dust is pushed away by Solar Wind. For galactic dust to appear within the Solar system it would have to coincide with the Sun suddenly radically decreasing its energy output, cooling off as well, which is highly unlikely to happen with main sequence stars. If we were to speed up time, the only thing that we would notice is our sky changing, but only focusing on our Solar system, we wouldn't notice anything, as the Sun will keep burning and its winds will keep the Solar system dominated by stellar matter, rather than interstellar. Meteors would have to have already existed, they would be too close to form. The only major influence going through the Galactic disk would have is there being different gravitational pulls, which would manifest in orbital perturbations at most.
Im no scientist, but i keep up with the news and...i thought we had fusion reactors, the issue wasnt heat and pressure but efficiency, being able to get more energy out than what is put in. I mean, if heat and pressure were the issue fusion would have been a problem too
Laser fusion experiments use deuterium and tritium but those only exist in trace levels so coupled with the massive resource and energy investment its very inefficient; this is similar to brown dwarf stars which aren't big enough to fuse elemental hydrogen but can fuse deuterium While main sequence stars have the power to fuse elemental hydrogen into deuterium and helium by itself
Kind of. The big issue with fusion reactors is not that we cannot fuse as well as the sun but rather we can di fusion reactors even stable ones far far better than the sun it is just that the sun actually prices an incredibly small amount of power per volume/mass so even though we have been able to do hundreds of times better than the sun in terms of fusion density for decadrs the energy output is still small enough to not be a viable power source we use deuterium and other easier elements to fuse to ease that increased power density. We are again able to do hundreds if not thousands of times better than the sun in terms of energy density it is just that the sun is not efficient ancient and colossal that causes it's immense energy output and we need to do far better for it to become a practical power source on earth.
The thing about heat and pressure is it's not that we cant contain it, it's that we cant make it. The sun cheats fusion because it's so increasingly massive that everything is so close together that it doesn't nearly need to heat up as much as it would be on earth.
That's right. We have loads of fusion reactors that accomplish fusion all the time, but only the national ignition facility has gotten more energy out than in and it's only a research facility that isn't even focused on energy production for the grid. Progress is mostly limited by how long it takes to build fusion reactors to test new techniques and technology. This task does require machines that outperform stars, but we already far exceed the core temperatures of stars since we can't come close on the pressure.
@@Rose_Harmonic Nobody is going to build fusion plants when there is no concept for nuclear fusion that produces more energy than that is put into it. As others have said, the main problem is with keeping up the high temperature and the magnetic fields to keep the plasma confined.
if i remember the events of Frostpunk, at least when keeping up with the idea that this is the late 1800s, apperently this hole event happened after the Krakatoa eruption, so this being a classic ice age wouldnt be too far from possible, i can imagine that basically in this world the eruption was way worse than in the real world and it began a simple ice age as the ash and dirt and more from the eruption blocked the sun from the earth, and as someone else here said the idea that snow and ice reflects light and that could make the world colder, it could make sense that basically in the first 100 or so years, the world was darkened by indeed the Krakatoa eruption, and then after that the bad luck of the world being covered in ice made it so the ice age continues for far longer, now i can imagine that at one point the ice and snow WILL melt, it makes natural sense that this ice age has to end at one point as now there shouldnt be anything covering the planet from the sun, but yea from this here onward that all depends on what the developers will do, all we can do now is just wait
i don't think it's realistic to say that planetary drift would cause the night sky to ‘completely change’. even neptune's star map isn't really noticeably different from earth's. the real changes wouldn't be in the night sky. even the relative positions of the planets wouldn't appear to change all that much, unless earth was flung way out near mars; in that case, mercury and venus would appear to move noticeably closer to the sun, but… interplanetary space is a big place. even very large changes on the human scale would only cause very slight changes to the sky. the real noticeable changes would be in disruptions to the moon's orbit and changes to the length of the year. a gravitational disturbance in the earth's orbit would also disturb the moon's orbit, and of course, moving further away would cause the year to get longer. (it would also mean a decrease in apparent size of the sun, but that would be relatively small - enough to be observable by advanced telescopes, but not immediately obvious to the average person.)
Actually now that you mention it I'm not sure anything in game talks about seasons after the big storm at all. Even if things are on average colder you'd still expect a colder season and a warmer season.
In lore explanation could be "Steam Cores". They were a piece of technology that was so advanced that in Frostpunk 1 and 2 we have to scavenge for them because we are incapable of producing them. There is a theory backed by some lore bits from endless mode suggesting that production of those Steam Cores happened at the same time as cooling started. Temperature fell when there was peak of Steam Core production and stabilized when it was halted. They are most likely cause.
@@coolestdudeever8113 True. But this correlation is significant enough that it would be ignorant to overlook it. It's not like correlation never equals causation. In very many cases it does.
You also have to remember these are scientists from the 1900s, they are well read for their time but their knowledge is nowhere near ours and pre-ww1 scientists probably didnt even know what an aerosol was 😂
This is a good point that I brought up in a previous video; many people just take every log entry at face value when I would say that the game just has an unreliable narrator and the scientists in Frostpunk are just wrong because they lack the full context that we as modern people take for granted
@@Sewexan but it doesn't all need to be evenly spread out there might be vast areas of the world where there is no light but the layer around Antarctica is only minor so light can still get through and people can survive but still only just.
This has happened in real life. There was an event called the Year without Summer in 1816 where global temperatures dropped because of major volcanic eruptions. However, volcanic winters are usually short lived. Their effects last a couple of years at most, not decades. They also have never caused temperatures to drop as low as Frostpunk (during the great storm, the temperatures were low enough to theoretically freeze the gases in the atmosphere). Even nuclear winters, a similar but more severe effect that could be caused by substantial amounts of nuclear explosions, would likely only last for maybe 20 years at the absolute worst.
I thought It was that a toba-like supervolcano eruption caused a chain reaction on the whole ring of fire that at least should make a snowball earth for at least 100 years. But I'm not a scientist
This short got me thinking of the movie Sunshine. One thing I did notice is during one of the Frostland expeditions is the mention of splitting atoms (You can find a entry log during a doomed expedition). Makes me wonder if Oppenheimer or Einstein (Or their equivalent) will play a part in a DLC or Third game.
I always thought that it was at least in part a bit of a reversal of manmade climate change. Frostpunk's industrial revolution(s) were much more intense than our own, if the general steampunk vibe and Dreadnaughts are anything to go by. We had the London Death Cloud from soot and coal in our timeline, what if the Frostpunk world was burning so much coal it created a nuclear winter of sorts. People then kept burning coal to heat themselves, so the particulates never fully settled. The scientists said that volcanoes weren't enough to cause this level of cooling, but well, it isn't just volcanoes.
There is the theoretical idea of “poisoning” a star with large amounts of heavy elements. At a certain point, it takes more energy to fuse elements than is released. This is what happens at the end of a star’s life. So if a particularly large exosolar asteroid made of lead and uranium (perhaps from the core of a dead star?) were to intersect the sun, it might disrupt core fusion enough to reduce its output.
This was actually one of the ideas that I had tossed around since Iron is when fusion stops yielding energy but any heavier than that and fission starts working, some types of hybrid nuclear reactions uses the neutrons from fusion to cause fission of uranium or plutonium; even if it a bunch of iron was dumped in the Sun's core, fusion could still work in an onion ring around the iron, this is what happens prior to helium fusion in main sequence stars, and all it would do is add more mass to the star If it was hit with enough mass of iron it could cause the core to collapse and cause a supernova which is kind of the opposite reaction we're looking for Basically it would require some magic to completely replace the composition Sun's core without changing its mass in order to stop it from working
@@RoninFoxSpeaks Well, fission is significantly less energetic than fusion. Heavy elements would sink to the core, where the pressure is greatest, making it harder for the lighter elements to be squished together enough to fuse. Any fission happening would be negligable compared to lost fusion. We only want to lose a few percent of output, after all. Honestly I think the devs don’t have an explanation at all, they just magicked up the situation. 😛
"Core of a dead star", would be a white dwarf, that would still glow and be definitely visible if it were to collide with the Sun. It would also highly likely cause a nova or several novae that would cause a lot of the Sun's envelope to be lost, and life on Earth would definitely be extinct at that point. (not due to cooling, but due to roasting) Meanwhile as for the Sun, our Sun is still getting hotter, until it reaches around 8-9 bln years. This is due to the core getting heavier and more dense, increasing fusion efficiency. Only afterwards these heavy elements start to act like poison and the fusion efficiency slightly decreases. It still remains high until the star leaves its main sequence, where it stops its fusion due to a lack of material within the core and no other areas being hot enough to do fusion. Even with a somewhat massive meteor the contents of it would eventually get to the core, but it would take an extremely long time, with a significant chunk of it being probably blasted away again as well.
Thing is, how long would it take for a huge chunk of heavy elements to actually sink into a star? We know (aka, Wikipedia says) that it takes 170,000 years for light to get from the core to the surface, which... has no bearing on a lump of heavy stuff from the surface inwards, but even if you teleport that heavy stuff in and it immediately kills fusion, you're not seeing any results from that for frickin' ages.
@@manoflead643 Exactly right, the impact must have happened long, long ago, making it impossible for astronomers to have noticed anything strange (which was used as a counter to the theory of a massive coronal mass ejection) until the effects of the dimming make it to the surface of the sun because the initial event must have predated humanity.
I didnt seen anyone mention this, but i think its actually worth talking about ti Back in the early 1800's-1880's scientist genuenly though the sun is dying... In fact a famous (well, in my country) author, Imre Madách even used this at the time VERY POPULAR theory for the 12th and 14th chapter of he's book, called "The Tragedy of Man", in the 12th chapter a pseudo-commuist world government (reminder: this author died in 1863, so he basically foresaw the rise of totalitarian ideas) lead by scientists and burocrats took control of Earth, and basically enslaved everyone in order to save humanity from extinction - nominally in the play the scientists try to create something which gonna replace the Sun, since the Sun is dying and the temperature is dropping (in the 14th Chapter a literal permanent Ice Age was settled already)... Sounds familiar? Imre Madách is actually wrote something very similar to Frostpunk not just in regards of the theme in that chapter, but also the message - just surviving is not enough, we must also preserve our own humanity (the entire play is basically Lucifer trying to make Adam and Eve end their life, and by extension Humanity by showing events which happened though history... and in the 12th chapter what the ppl. at the time though to be the inevitable future (in fact, the date is most like around today, the begining of the 2000's, which should also give an idea how pessimistic the scientists were about this at the time)... and the reoccuring rebuke of Adam to Lucifer's visions were to see a silver lining in every situation, and finding the good in the ppl. in that particular era... well, for Chapter 12 Adam didnt had such a rebuke, partly, because its literally a hypothised future, so Madách obviously couldnt predict the details of things enough for providing such "positive ending" for that chapter... ). Im not sure if Frostpunk is inspired by this particular book (what i gathered is its adopted to be in theatre in Poland, where the devs are, so they might or might not seen in) OR there was an another auther in Poland who also happened to use the belief at the time about the "sun is dying" in he's time period for he's story too. Frostpunk is a literal recreation of an impending doom the Victorian era scientist believed in, and the "sun dimming" is just their confirmation bias, nothing more. The real reason is most likely not only unrealted to the sun, but there might be not even a explanation to begin with, since the game might be a recreating of the Victorian-era's worst fear in regards of the future.
There are historical records of periods of unusually warm weather in ages prior to industrialization followed by periods of colder than normal temperatures for extended periods of time. We also have records of unusually colder temperatures that coincide with "solar minimums.". Two particular sonar minimums that have been studied in the past were the Dalton and Maurander minimums. The latter occurred in the 1400's and is somewhat well documented as it coincided with an extended period of far lower than normal sunspot activity (as recorded by Chinese records). This minimum was so severe that we have records from London when people celebrated an ice festival because the Thames river froze completely solid. The festival was held in AUGUST.
Solar flares don't have to hit the earth, I don't know if it would even be observable if it was ejected from the opposite side of the sun to Earth. Maybe they travel so slow and stay bright that it would be observable by the time Earth came around enough on its orbit to spot the ejected mass? But on the other hand such an event I assume would be observable on the suns surface even on Earths side of the sun in some form I guess(?) Edit: My point being a response to the points about solar flares being visible or dangerous to life on earth assuming the flares would hit Earth.
The whole game reminds me of the year without summer but on way bigger scale and due to the earth becoming a snowball it reflected way more light causing the temperature to be low but stable
2:00 Yes, we have. Only very recently, sometime within the earlier part of this year, but it has been done. Not self sustaining, of course, because the scientists weren't expecting it so it just suddenly fizzled out, but it did happen
A great solar flare or coronal mass ejection (?) that originated on the other side of the Sun. As the event would occur on the other side of the Sun than Earth was facing at the moment (also maybe when Earth is in aphellion ) could 1880 people see any evidence of it like auroras? I mean the EM would be directed in a diffrent direction and wouldn't impact Earth atmosphere. Note I have no knowlladge of physics and astronomy so not sure if it even works like this
Ever seen stargate? Season 5 episode 5 had them go through a star which altered the core with new heavy elements and turned the star a different colour. It is possible that this couldve happened without the humans knowing if the star remained the samish shade or white.
IIRC Red dwarfs (a type of small star) are kinda unstable and the light they give can change rapidly (in a few hours or days) maybe the star in frostpunk is a star a little bigger than these and whats happening is a type of dimming cycle
Only comment on the massive solar flare is that it could've happened on the other side of the sun from the Earth in which case we wouldn't be able to observe it... at least I think. Although that would be very disappointing reason because there'd be no way for the people in the game to really figure that out and for us to see their reaction
Probably a combination of all the different possibilites, a few too many solar flares, a change in orbit by a distant rogue planet, worse volcanic eruptions, etc.
I recall frostpunk having lots of volcanic activity which could have initally caused it my other thought is that steam cores generate impossible amounts of energy given there fuel supply and even appear to not actually require fuel given that we have cases of automatons runnign continuosuly walking in circles for years without refuel and in sorm cases remaing functional. As well as stuff like the wall drill not taking any fuel. I wonder if the explanation for the cooling is just that whatever magic powers the steam cores pulled the power from ambient heat or something. The other thought is the volcanic activity awoke some kind of storm monster or something since by frostpunk 2 we have whiteout storms lasting month which are far colder than a normal seasonal shift in temperature ~60° despite being unrelated to seaosn or time of year and it is an even greater relative shift whne you remember that the temperatuees in frostpunk are a bit closer to absolute zero so it is a larger relative drop in energy.
i thought it was because a super volcanoes erupted the after effect caused a super cooling of the planet, very likely leading to a ice age we get to live through in game
I think I got a pretty solid explanation. An alien race of unfathomable technological prowess took a chunk of the sun. Does it logically make sense? Not really. Does Frostpunk make sense? No so the explanation stands. Or the aliens made a dyson sphere using actual walls.
a comet could probably have yanked us just everso hard enough in order to not fully get us out of orbit but just enough to change it to the point we get snowball earth
Nah probably Volcanos,Meteorites and some secret weapons that happens in the same time or close to each other time and.. well there is frostpunk for you
@xkoala303x I'm working on another theory that I don't see many people talk about that; the steam cores might have something to do with the saffron cloud archive entry; essentially that they made an aerosol that reflects sunlight kind of like CW7 in snowpiercer and the volcanic winter just tipped it over the edge Since the scientists were being censored they ruled out aerosols and therefore assumed the sun was dimming
Bro we are a couple months from 2025 can we get more updated maps when you talk about it and use real world grafts as an sample. Also FP 2 video please. Oh a dyson sphere can increase the suns life but it will increase the heat so earth would get hot or to hot to live. Cold air is more dense and smoke and co2 gets stuck lower to the ground so maybe all the smoke from all the burning is increasing the effect by reducing the sunlight.
A thiught i had was if the frospunj universe took place on an older earth which is the reason for the ludicrously abundant coal literally everywhere before mining started and as a result the frost is a result of the uranium and so on decaying less and less in the planet menaing less heat.
I really like the research done for this video I honestly think not even the authors know the cause, just like in the tv series "LOST" they made up the mystery first and have no idea on how the solution will look like. If I had to guess I would say something on Earth itself, maybe someone was trying to make a doomsday weapon and it went wrong.
Personally i think it would have been a perfect storm as eruptions are mentioned in a few of the events and if the sun ejected a small amount away from the visible section of it a by just enough that it is now just a little bit cooler along with a massive amount of volcanic ash and other substances from either a few volcanos or a lot of volcanos ( one may have triggered another) cooling the planet although considering that robots exist that are steam powered it is safe to say that it uses a slightly different physics system than our universe
The games always reminded me of Snowpiercer. Although in that movie the world's froze because a chemical was sprayed into the atmosphere to cool the planet down and it worked too well
The original novel of Snowpiercer was French" Le Transperceneige" so the big French train in The Last Autumn DLC "Crève-neige" is most likely a nod to an inspiration of the game
For reference my headcannon is this Volcano goes off cools it down and then the greenhouse effects help lock it down, the snow acting as a insulator for a the CO2 “hail”
@SteamPower-kr6ui that's actually not crazy for one thing co2 condensation point is at -78C but the thing is that the most abundant ghg is actually water which would condense out of the air, form clouds and ice which would reflect light causing cooling instead
I mean, snowball earth existed, if enough of the planet is covered in snow and ice, it reflects more light meaning it gets colder.
It could be that they observed a REALLY bad solar minimun, that + vulcano + whatever else leading to a feedback loop. even after the suns back to normal
Snowball Earth was so long ago that Sun was really quite dimmer so losing CO2 from atmosphere (by new life nomnoming it) could cause such dramatic outcomes.
For Frostpunk I think it's that combo yes. Worst possible stellar minimum plus major volcanic eruptions and astroid impacts, and if you really want to be mean add entire Solar System drifting into a more dustier zone of the Galaxy.
oxygen caused the first snowball earth.
oxygen has been definitively shown to have an inverse greenhouse effect (which is more than we can say about the greenhouse effect with CO2, which is highly inconclusive at best). more oxygen causes the upper atmosphere to be more reflective, meaning less energy reaching the surface.
the first snowball was caused by a sudden boom in a photosynthesizing algae that would turn CO2 into oxygen. this caused rapid cooling and the freezing planet had a runaway feedback loop.
this would be a perfect explanation of the frostpunk universe as well. something could have produced significantly more oxygen all of a sudden, boosting the atmospheric concentration to the point of freezing the planet. this thing could have very well been the industrial revolution.
remember, it is CO2 that is turned into oxygen, meaning a huge boost in the CO2 levels can and almost guaranteed will cause a huge spike in oxygen as well. a huge influx of CO2 from a significantly more rapid and extreme industrial revolution (they had automatons in the late 1800s. we only got that technology 40 years ago at best, and didnt use it to make anything near as big as mechs), could be the cause of the great frost.
@@aidenaune7008
What the fuck.
No. Oxygen doesn't cause cooling.
Lack of CO2 does.
The effect of CO2 has been understood WHEN FROSTPUNK TAKES PLACE.
Shut up
@@aidenaune7008 Well...all of this is just wrong.
Oxygen does not act as an inverse greenhouse gas (I am curious where you got this information from) - the proposed mechanism for the cooling is that the introduction of oxygen into the atmosphere reacts with and breaks down the existing methane, a stronger greenhouse gas, into carbon dioxide, a weaker greenhouse gas. This would reduce the greenhouse effect.
But even ignoring that, the "Huronian glaciation", the event you're referring to, was more or less a normal glaciation like our ongoing glaciation, there is pretty much no evidence of snowball Earth happening back then at all. More information from a geologist who is specialized in Paleoproterozoic Eon (when the "Huronian glaciation" occurred) here: ua-cam.com/video/bpIQhClkWcA/v-deo.html
The Sturtian/Marinoan glaciations, though, have better chances of being global, but it is still debated - some thinks it's more of a "slushball" where the equator never froze.
There's also galactic dust. The solar system oscillates up and down through the galactic disc, so it's feasible to consider that it sometimes travels through "thicker" parts of the galaxy, and that "thickness" - the ambient dust and gas that eventually accumulates to create new stars - could become a bit of a fog between the earth and the sun. Some speculate on this as part of the cause for the various incidents of "Snowball Earth" in the distant past.
So rather than the simple comet theory from the video, the idea would be an interstellar fog, some remnants of which might manifest as meteors that strike the Earth, but mostly would just cause a general dimming of the sun. It would also last a _very_ long time.
Although the volcano theory also works. The first Frostpunk was set in 1887, and Krakatoa erupted in 1883. If Krakatoa triggered some additional volcanoes (similar to the volcanoes that helped finish off the dinosaurs after the meteor impact), that degree of atmospheric ash could easily cause a global cooling.
I'd support this theory its reasonable and concise but the crazy theories are still fun to read
Interstellar dust is pushed away by Solar Wind. For galactic dust to appear within the Solar system it would have to coincide with the Sun suddenly radically decreasing its energy output, cooling off as well, which is highly unlikely to happen with main sequence stars.
If we were to speed up time, the only thing that we would notice is our sky changing, but only focusing on our Solar system, we wouldn't notice anything, as the Sun will keep burning and its winds will keep the Solar system dominated by stellar matter, rather than interstellar.
Meteors would have to have already existed, they would be too close to form.
The only major influence going through the Galactic disk would have is there being different gravitational pulls, which would manifest in orbital perturbations at most.
Im no scientist, but i keep up with the news and...i thought we had fusion reactors, the issue wasnt heat and pressure but efficiency, being able to get more energy out than what is put in. I mean, if heat and pressure were the issue fusion would have been a problem too
Laser fusion experiments use deuterium and tritium but those only exist in trace levels so coupled with the massive resource and energy investment its very inefficient; this is similar to brown dwarf stars which aren't big enough to fuse elemental hydrogen but can fuse deuterium
While main sequence stars have the power to fuse elemental hydrogen into deuterium and helium by itself
Kind of. The big issue with fusion reactors is not that we cannot fuse as well as the sun but rather we can di fusion reactors even stable ones far far better than the sun it is just that the sun actually prices an incredibly small amount of power per volume/mass so even though we have been able to do hundreds of times better than the sun in terms of fusion density for decadrs the energy output is still small enough to not be a viable power source we use deuterium and other easier elements to fuse to ease that increased power density. We are again able to do hundreds if not thousands of times better than the sun in terms of energy density it is just that the sun is not efficient ancient and colossal that causes it's immense energy output and we need to do far better for it to become a practical power source on earth.
The thing about heat and pressure is it's not that we cant contain it, it's that we cant make it. The sun cheats fusion because it's so increasingly massive that everything is so close together that it doesn't nearly need to heat up as much as it would be on earth.
That's right. We have loads of fusion reactors that accomplish fusion all the time, but only the national ignition facility has gotten more energy out than in and it's only a research facility that isn't even focused on energy production for the grid. Progress is mostly limited by how long it takes to build fusion reactors to test new techniques and technology. This task does require machines that outperform stars, but we already far exceed the core temperatures of stars since we can't come close on the pressure.
@@Rose_Harmonic Nobody is going to build fusion plants when there is no concept for nuclear fusion that produces more energy than that is put into it.
As others have said, the main problem is with keeping up the high temperature and the magnetic fields to keep the plasma confined.
if i remember the events of Frostpunk, at least when keeping up with the idea that this is the late 1800s, apperently this hole event happened after the Krakatoa eruption, so this being a classic ice age wouldnt be too far from possible, i can imagine that basically in this world the eruption was way worse than in the real world and it began a simple ice age as the ash and dirt and more from the eruption blocked the sun from the earth, and as someone else here said the idea that snow and ice reflects light and that could make the world colder, it could make sense that basically in the first 100 or so years, the world was darkened by indeed the Krakatoa eruption, and then after that the bad luck of the world being covered in ice made it so the ice age continues for far longer, now i can imagine that at one point the ice and snow WILL melt, it makes natural sense that this ice age has to end at one point as now there shouldnt be anything covering the planet from the sun, but yea from this here onward that all depends on what the developers will do, all we can do now is just wait
i don't think it's realistic to say that planetary drift would cause the night sky to ‘completely change’. even neptune's star map isn't really noticeably different from earth's.
the real changes wouldn't be in the night sky. even the relative positions of the planets wouldn't appear to change all that much, unless earth was flung way out near mars; in that case, mercury and venus would appear to move noticeably closer to the sun, but… interplanetary space is a big place. even very large changes on the human scale would only cause very slight changes to the sky.
the real noticeable changes would be in disruptions to the moon's orbit and changes to the length of the year. a gravitational disturbance in the earth's orbit would also disturb the moon's orbit, and of course, moving further away would cause the year to get longer. (it would also mean a decrease in apparent size of the sun, but that would be relatively small - enough to be observable by advanced telescopes, but not immediately obvious to the average person.)
Actually now that you mention it I'm not sure anything in game talks about seasons after the big storm at all. Even if things are on average colder you'd still expect a colder season and a warmer season.
Nah humanity got stellaris’d an alien civilization is building a Dyson Sphere
Ez.
Well, frostpunk was coal, frostpunk 2 oil, I think frostpunk 3 will be fission
Frostpunk 4 will be throwing people into the generator
@@nagitokomaeda161 The city must thrive!
@@nagitokomaeda161You're saying you haven't been doing that already..?
@@jooot_6850 I’m saying it’s going to be non-negotiable that little Timmy is going to jump in the generator
In game one crazy scientist think it's answer how make ame.. earth hot again
In lore explanation could be "Steam Cores".
They were a piece of technology that was so advanced that in Frostpunk 1 and 2 we have to scavenge for them because we are incapable of producing them.
There is a theory backed by some lore bits from endless mode suggesting that production of those Steam Cores happened at the same time as cooling started.
Temperature fell when there was peak of Steam Core production and stabilized when it was halted.
They are most likely cause.
correlation does not equal causation
@@coolestdudeever8113
True. But this correlation is significant enough that it would be ignorant to overlook it.
It's not like correlation never equals causation. In very many cases it does.
You also have to remember these are scientists from the 1900s, they are well read for their time but their knowledge is nowhere near ours and pre-ww1 scientists probably didnt even know what an aerosol was 😂
This is a good point that I brought up in a previous video; many people just take every log entry at face value when I would say that the game just has an unreliable narrator and the scientists in Frostpunk are just wrong because they lack the full context that we as modern people take for granted
Yeah, the dominant theory of what space was made of was still the aether theory in this era
@@thisprojectisretired1055 luminiferous aether wouldn't really make a difference here
I always thought it was due to volcanos coating the atmosphere with a layer af ash that made it so less heat got through
it would work if not for the fact that sunlight still appears in the game and plants in hothouses use it to grow
@@Sewexan but it doesn't all need to be evenly spread out there might be vast areas of the world where there is no light but the layer around Antarctica is only minor so light can still get through and people can survive but still only just.
This has happened in real life. There was an event called the Year without Summer in 1816 where global temperatures dropped because of major volcanic eruptions. However, volcanic winters are usually short lived. Their effects last a couple of years at most, not decades. They also have never caused temperatures to drop as low as Frostpunk (during the great storm, the temperatures were low enough to theoretically freeze the gases in the atmosphere). Even nuclear winters, a similar but more severe effect that could be caused by substantial amounts of nuclear explosions, would likely only last for maybe 20 years at the absolute worst.
@@lazuliartz1296 in this case it was a lot worse
I thought It was that a toba-like supervolcano eruption caused a chain reaction on the whole ring of fire that at least should make a snowball earth for at least 100 years. But I'm not a scientist
This short got me thinking of the movie Sunshine.
One thing I did notice is during one of the Frostland expeditions is the mention of splitting atoms (You can find a entry log during a doomed expedition). Makes me wonder if Oppenheimer or Einstein (Or their equivalent) will play a part in a DLC or Third game.
I always thought that it was at least in part a bit of a reversal of manmade climate change. Frostpunk's industrial revolution(s) were much more intense than our own, if the general steampunk vibe and Dreadnaughts are anything to go by. We had the London Death Cloud from soot and coal in our timeline, what if the Frostpunk world was burning so much coal it created a nuclear winter of sorts. People then kept burning coal to heat themselves, so the particulates never fully settled. The scientists said that volcanoes weren't enough to cause this level of cooling, but well, it isn't just volcanoes.
There is the theoretical idea of “poisoning” a star with large amounts of heavy elements. At a certain point, it takes more energy to fuse elements than is released. This is what happens at the end of a star’s life. So if a particularly large exosolar asteroid made of lead and uranium (perhaps from the core of a dead star?) were to intersect the sun, it might disrupt core fusion enough to reduce its output.
This was actually one of the ideas that I had tossed around since Iron is when fusion stops yielding energy but any heavier than that and fission starts working, some types of hybrid nuclear reactions uses the neutrons from fusion to cause fission of uranium or plutonium; even if it a bunch of iron was dumped in the Sun's core, fusion could still work in an onion ring around the iron, this is what happens prior to helium fusion in main sequence stars, and all it would do is add more mass to the star
If it was hit with enough mass of iron it could cause the core to collapse and cause a supernova which is kind of the opposite reaction we're looking for
Basically it would require some magic to completely replace the composition Sun's core without changing its mass in order to stop it from working
@@RoninFoxSpeaks Well, fission is significantly less energetic than fusion. Heavy elements would sink to the core, where the pressure is greatest, making it harder for the lighter elements to be squished together enough to fuse. Any fission happening would be negligable compared to lost fusion. We only want to lose a few percent of output, after all.
Honestly I think the devs don’t have an explanation at all, they just magicked up the situation. 😛
"Core of a dead star", would be a white dwarf, that would still glow and be definitely visible if it were to collide with the Sun. It would also highly likely cause a nova or several novae that would cause a lot of the Sun's envelope to be lost, and life on Earth would definitely be extinct at that point. (not due to cooling, but due to roasting)
Meanwhile as for the Sun, our Sun is still getting hotter, until it reaches around 8-9 bln years. This is due to the core getting heavier and more dense, increasing fusion efficiency.
Only afterwards these heavy elements start to act like poison and the fusion efficiency slightly decreases. It still remains high until the star leaves its main sequence, where it stops its fusion due to a lack of material within the core and no other areas being hot enough to do fusion.
Even with a somewhat massive meteor the contents of it would eventually get to the core, but it would take an extremely long time, with a significant chunk of it being probably blasted away again as well.
Thing is, how long would it take for a huge chunk of heavy elements to actually sink into a star? We know (aka, Wikipedia says) that it takes 170,000 years for light to get from the core to the surface, which... has no bearing on a lump of heavy stuff from the surface inwards, but even if you teleport that heavy stuff in and it immediately kills fusion, you're not seeing any results from that for frickin' ages.
@@manoflead643 Exactly right, the impact must have happened long, long ago, making it impossible for astronomers to have noticed anything strange (which was used as a counter to the theory of a massive coronal mass ejection) until the effects of the dimming make it to the surface of the sun because the initial event must have predated humanity.
I didnt seen anyone mention this, but i think its actually worth talking about ti
Back in the early 1800's-1880's scientist genuenly though the sun is dying... In fact a famous (well, in my country) author, Imre Madách even used this at the time VERY POPULAR theory for the 12th and 14th chapter of he's book, called "The Tragedy of Man", in the 12th chapter a pseudo-commuist world government (reminder: this author died in 1863, so he basically foresaw the rise of totalitarian ideas) lead by scientists and burocrats took control of Earth, and basically enslaved everyone in order to save humanity from extinction - nominally in the play the scientists try to create something which gonna replace the Sun, since the Sun is dying and the temperature is dropping (in the 14th Chapter a literal permanent Ice Age was settled already)... Sounds familiar?
Imre Madách is actually wrote something very similar to Frostpunk not just in regards of the theme in that chapter, but also the message - just surviving is not enough, we must also preserve our own humanity (the entire play is basically Lucifer trying to make Adam and Eve end their life, and by extension Humanity by showing events which happened though history... and in the 12th chapter what the ppl. at the time though to be the inevitable future (in fact, the date is most like around today, the begining of the 2000's, which should also give an idea how pessimistic the scientists were about this at the time)... and the reoccuring rebuke of Adam to Lucifer's visions were to see a silver lining in every situation, and finding the good in the ppl. in that particular era... well, for Chapter 12 Adam didnt had such a rebuke, partly, because its literally a hypothised future, so Madách obviously couldnt predict the details of things enough for providing such "positive ending" for that chapter... ).
Im not sure if Frostpunk is inspired by this particular book (what i gathered is its adopted to be in theatre in Poland, where the devs are, so they might or might not seen in) OR there was an another auther in Poland who also happened to use the belief at the time about the "sun is dying" in he's time period for he's story too.
Frostpunk is a literal recreation of an impending doom the Victorian era scientist believed in, and the "sun dimming" is just their confirmation bias, nothing more. The real reason is most likely not only unrealted to the sun, but there might be not even a explanation to begin with, since the game might be a recreating of the Victorian-era's worst fear in regards of the future.
Nice I've got another to add to my reading list
New subscriber and I love frostpunk lore videos so please keep them coming also can I ask you something
In Slavic mythology there is something called the wild Hunt when the wild Hunt comes a eternal Frost comes with it
There are historical records of periods of unusually warm weather in ages prior to industrialization followed by periods of colder than normal temperatures for extended periods of time.
We also have records of unusually colder temperatures that coincide with "solar minimums.". Two particular sonar minimums that have been studied in the past were the Dalton and Maurander minimums. The latter occurred in the 1400's and is somewhat well documented as it coincided with an extended period of far lower than normal sunspot activity (as recorded by Chinese records). This minimum was so severe that we have records from London when people celebrated an ice festival because the Thames river froze completely solid.
The festival was held in AUGUST.
Do you have a source for the august festival, I can't seem to find anything
@@user-zz3sn8ky7z I don't have it in front of me. It'll take time to look.
@@user-zz3sn8ky7z it happened in 1683 River thames frost fair. One possible explanation in the mini ice age.
Solar flares don't have to hit the earth, I don't know if it would even be observable if it was ejected from the opposite side of the sun to Earth.
Maybe they travel so slow and stay bright that it would be observable by the time Earth came around enough on its orbit to spot the ejected mass?
But on the other hand such an event I assume would be observable on the suns surface even on Earths side of the sun in some form I guess(?)
Edit: My point being a response to the points about solar flares being visible or dangerous to life on earth assuming the flares would hit Earth.
The idea of solar dimming reminds of the book Hail Mary, where it's caused by space bacteria
The whole game reminds me of the year without summer but on way bigger scale and due to the earth becoming a snowball it reflected way more light causing the temperature to be low but stable
2:00 Yes, we have. Only very recently, sometime within the earlier part of this year, but it has been done. Not self sustaining, of course, because the scientists weren't expecting it so it just suddenly fizzled out, but it did happen
An Interstellar dust cloud moving in does seem like the best explanation.
A great solar flare or coronal mass ejection (?) that originated on the other side of the Sun. As the event would occur on the other side of the Sun than Earth was facing at the moment (also maybe when Earth is in aphellion ) could 1880 people see any evidence of it like auroras? I mean the EM would be directed in a diffrent direction and wouldn't impact Earth atmosphere. Note I have no knowlladge of physics and astronomy so not sure if it even works like this
Ever seen stargate? Season 5 episode 5 had them go through a star which altered the core with new heavy elements and turned the star a different colour. It is possible that this couldve happened without the humans knowing if the star remained the samish shade or white.
IIRC Red dwarfs (a type of small star) are kinda unstable and the light they give can change rapidly (in a few hours or days) maybe the star in frostpunk is a star a little bigger than these and whats happening is a type of dimming cycle
Only comment on the massive solar flare is that it could've happened on the other side of the sun from the Earth in which case we wouldn't be able to observe it... at least I think. Although that would be very disappointing reason because there'd be no way for the people in the game to really figure that out and for us to see their reaction
Probably a combination of all the different possibilites, a few too many solar flares, a change in orbit by a distant rogue planet, worse volcanic eruptions, etc.
I recall frostpunk having lots of volcanic activity which could have initally caused it my other thought is that steam cores generate impossible amounts of energy given there fuel supply and even appear to not actually require fuel given that we have cases of automatons runnign continuosuly walking in circles for years without refuel and in sorm cases remaing functional. As well as stuff like the wall drill not taking any fuel.
I wonder if the explanation for the cooling is just that whatever magic powers the steam cores pulled the power from ambient heat or something.
The other thought is the volcanic activity awoke some kind of storm monster or something since by frostpunk 2 we have whiteout storms lasting month which are far colder than a normal seasonal shift in temperature ~60° despite being unrelated to seaosn or time of year and it is an even greater relative shift whne you remember that the temperatuees in frostpunk are a bit closer to absolute zero so it is a larger relative drop in energy.
i thought it was because a super volcanoes erupted the after effect caused a super cooling of the planet, very likely leading to a ice age we get to live through in game
Quite sure I had a comment here as well.
Why was it deleted?
Honestly don't know I don't delete comments it must be some UA-cam problem
I think I got a pretty solid explanation. An alien race of unfathomable technological prowess took a chunk of the sun. Does it logically make sense? Not really. Does Frostpunk make sense? No so the explanation stands. Or the aliens made a dyson sphere using actual walls.
Huh, interesting theory! I had never thought of this before, thanks for making a video explaining it!
Its kinda like in Nine Sols, the fusang used solar energy to power the island but it enveloped the sun and plunged the Earth into an ice age
a comet could probably have yanked us just everso hard enough in order to not fully get us out of orbit but just enough to change it to the point we get snowball earth
Unlikely reason being is that everybody would’ve noticed the comet years before hand if it was big enough to do that.
Nah probably Volcanos,Meteorites and some secret weapons that happens in the same time or close to each other time and.. well there is frostpunk for you
Idk I still think it’s at least in part due to massive industrialization
@xkoala303x I'm working on another theory that I don't see many people talk about that; the steam cores might have something to do with the saffron cloud archive entry; essentially that they made an aerosol that reflects sunlight kind of like CW7 in snowpiercer and the volcanic winter just tipped it over the edge
Since the scientists were being censored they ruled out aerosols and therefore assumed the sun was dimming
It's not that complicated, it is called *Stratospheric aerosol injection* caused by the vulcano eruptions in-game lore.
I had covered that in my original science of frostpunk video but then everyone went "what about the sun dimming"
Bro we are a couple months from 2025 can we get more updated maps when you talk about it and use real world grafts as an sample.
Also FP 2 video please.
Oh a dyson sphere can increase the suns life but it will increase the heat so earth would get hot or to hot to live.
Cold air is more dense and smoke and co2 gets stuck lower to the ground so maybe all the smoke from all the burning is increasing the effect by reducing the sunlight.
A thiught i had was if the frospunj universe took place on an older earth which is the reason for the ludicrously abundant coal literally everywhere before mining started and as a result the frost is a result of the uranium and so on decaying less and less in the planet menaing less heat.
No climate change wiki link? UA-cam fell off
I don´t care what they told you in school Progress, Merit and reason is right and everything else is wrong.
I really like the research done for this video
I honestly think not even the authors know the cause, just like in the tv series "LOST" they made up the mystery first and have no idea on how the solution will look like.
If I had to guess I would say something on Earth itself, maybe someone was trying to make a doomsday weapon and it went wrong.
Personally i think it would have been a perfect storm as eruptions are mentioned in a few of the events and if the sun ejected a small amount away from the visible section of it a by just enough that it is now just a little bit cooler along with a massive amount of volcanic ash and other substances from either a few volcanos or a lot of volcanos ( one may have triggered another) cooling the planet although considering that robots exist that are steam powered it is safe to say that it uses a slightly different physics system than our universe
The games always reminded me of Snowpiercer. Although in that movie the world's froze because a chemical was sprayed into the atmosphere to cool the planet down and it worked too well
The original novel of Snowpiercer was French" Le Transperceneige" so the big French train in The Last Autumn DLC "Crève-neige" is most likely a nod to an inspiration of the game
Another out-there theory is that earth has been dislodged from its orbit and is slowly moving away from the sun.
huh i thought they mentioned a close miss on earth causing us to move farther and father away from the sun
the temperature is the same in the entire planet.
unless the sun exploded; it can't make that happen.
for some reason i thought the earth got pushed further from the sun
There is also the potential that the great storm sucked some carbon out of the atmosphere and allowed for more cooling
For reference my headcannon is this
Volcano goes off cools it down and then the greenhouse effects help lock it down, the snow acting as a insulator for a the CO2 “hail”
@SteamPower-kr6ui that's actually not crazy for one thing co2 condensation point is at -78C but the thing is that the most abundant ghg is actually water which would condense out of the air, form clouds and ice which would reflect light causing cooling instead
Astrophage