Chemistry Help

[EJDeBrun]

Thanks for the concerns Montero, but don't worry about it too much.

To answer your questions: they're technically a post apocalyptic society. Their small island chains that used to be the land bases for their metropolitan areas were flooded when a stray asteroid crashed into their moon. The results were seas rising and the survivors had to rebuild in a changed environment. They rebuilt their civilization over thousands of years. Don't like to live in the water because of predators in the ocean.

Population density would obviously become an issue then as well as resources. This leads to a lot of contention among populations which is one of the backbones of their society.

Anyways, none of this is relevant to my question above, but I didn't want you go away thinking that I was writing something ridiculous like a planet fueled laser or anything.

 

[Montero]

Thanks.
It is one of the big annoyance for me when people decorate their books with cool looking stuff that is totally out of synch with the rest of the economics of the world building. A lot of people are used to be around "stuff" - like massive bridges etc - and don't realise how much of a technological understructure you need for that. As in Iron Age man might have had iron, but they were a long way off building metal bridges.

 

[EJDeBrun]

I totally get you there, hence my starting this post in the first place!

 

[Mirannan]

First of all, oil-based technology (such as incendiary bombs) is far from impossible; there are such things as natural oil seeps.

Regarding the building of oil platforms without steel; well, nature produces some remarkably strong materials. Bamboo is used for scaffolding in several Far Eastern countries, and spider silk is stronger than steel weight for weight; byssus (the stuff that anchors various molluscs to rocks) is similar, and is also a really good glue.

Given that this is an alien planet, it's at least conceivable that nature has gone much further there than here. For example, monomolecular chain cellulose (with metres-long molecules of the stuff) could perhaps be made - with strength within an order of magnitude of nanotubes.

In fact, biologically produced explosives aren't completely ridiculous; Niven's stage trees are a good fictional example, and a real-world example (which might be improved on) is the chemical mix made by bombardier beetles. I can't really think of a good reason why organically-grown rockets would be selected for by evolution, but perhaps some gene engineering?

 

[Montero]

Forgotten the bombardier beetle - cool.
Love your bamboo, spider and mollusc glue ideas.
My only "but" is that the planet is a water world? Or that was the impression I had.