- #1
dysfunction
- 10
- 0
I've written a scifi short story for a contest on the theme of environmental disaster, and I want to check the plausibility of the chain of events that occurs in the story.
1. It opens with a spill of massive quantities of methyl and phenyl isocyanate into a bay area on a planet in the process of being terraformed. The bay and a section of the river that empties into it make up the only region that is so far fully habitable, the environment maintained by a utility-fog bubble.
2. On contact, the isocyanates react violently and form urea compounds. This contributes to eutrophication.
3. This leads to increase in algal blooms, including toxic algae. Die-offs of animal species begin.
4. The protagonists try to deal with this using ultrasound to break up the algae, but they overshoot and cut it back too far.
5. Anaerobic bacteria move into the now anoxic waters and attack the reefs. Between this and the loss of algae and many sea plants, terraforming is set way back.
6. The protagonists engineer a facultative anaerobic bacterium that both photosynthesizes, and fixes nitrogen out of the water.
7. With little competition, it reproduces too quickly and depletes the bay of nutrients.
8. The protagonists seed the bay with nutrients, and start carefully reintroducing species.
Does any of this make sense? It is science fiction, but I'd like to be accurate. I had barely more than a month to write this story, so I didn't have nearly as much time to do research as I like.
1. It opens with a spill of massive quantities of methyl and phenyl isocyanate into a bay area on a planet in the process of being terraformed. The bay and a section of the river that empties into it make up the only region that is so far fully habitable, the environment maintained by a utility-fog bubble.
2. On contact, the isocyanates react violently and form urea compounds. This contributes to eutrophication.
3. This leads to increase in algal blooms, including toxic algae. Die-offs of animal species begin.
4. The protagonists try to deal with this using ultrasound to break up the algae, but they overshoot and cut it back too far.
5. Anaerobic bacteria move into the now anoxic waters and attack the reefs. Between this and the loss of algae and many sea plants, terraforming is set way back.
6. The protagonists engineer a facultative anaerobic bacterium that both photosynthesizes, and fixes nitrogen out of the water.
7. With little competition, it reproduces too quickly and depletes the bay of nutrients.
8. The protagonists seed the bay with nutrients, and start carefully reintroducing species.
Does any of this make sense? It is science fiction, but I'd like to be accurate. I had barely more than a month to write this story, so I didn't have nearly as much time to do research as I like.