Could you live in a city like Rapture?

[8bithamster]

Besides the obvious scientific issues and the other ways it's impossible to ever happen. Would you live in Rapture if you could?

For those who don't know. In the Bioshock games (1 and 2, and DLC in infinite), Andrew Ryan builds an underwater city to escape the world in prevention for a nuclear war and the government collapse (Bioshock: Rapture novel).

For me, I could. I love the idea behind rapture. Andrew Ryan's ideology, even though highly unrealistic (as the novel/games show) area great in theory.

[Calfredd]

I'd rather live in Columbia but with Ryan's ideologies. Safer for an air island to plummet than to have a cracked hull that floods everything.

[Korgoth]

No. I am of the rocks and the trees and the mountains and the sky. Not of the Ocean. Because fish shit in it.

[8bithamster]

Columbia would be awesome, but with my extreme fear of high places I won't go there

[Skulljin]

Some videos worth taking a look at.

Rapture and Columbia.

[Calfredd]

Some videos worth taking a look at.

Rapture and Columbia.

Your Rapture link is broken but the Columbia one works.

[Skulljin]

Should be fixed now.

[Deleted]

The ideology in both would prevent me living in either. Even if you just count the city itself, not its moral values, living underwater like that would be creepy. And cramped. You saw how tiny most people's living space was. Single room apartments, sealed off with ugly steel doors. And a flying city would just terrify me. So windy, so many places you could fall off.

[s_bushido]

No. I wouldn't mind spending some time there, but I need to see the sun every once in a while...and drowning is pretty high on my list of "ways I wouldn't like to die."

[Deleted]

No. I wouldn't mind spending some time there, but I need to see the sun every once in a while...and drowning is pretty high on my list of "ways I wouldn't like to die."

I heard drowning is actually really peaceful. Like you have a little bit of panic while the water is going into your lungs but apparently after that it's really peaceful!

[Durandro]

I heard drowning is actually really peaceful. Like you have a little bit of panic while the water is going into your lungs but apparently after that it's really peaceful!

You probably wouldn't even drown. You'd be crushed either by the water itself or by the pressure wave.

But yeah.

Oh, and both cities would suck to live in. They are both totalitarian in their extremes. But if I had to choose, I'd choose Rapture - since then at least you have a chance to succeed if you're talented enough. In Columbia... Well, just hope you're not born Black or Irish.

[Deleted]

You probably wouldn't even drown. You'd be crushed either by the water itself or by the pressure wave.

But yeah.

Even if it was like.. a slow leak? Like, suppose a seal was leaking and just slowly filled the place up with water over a couple of days?

[Dezerte]

Without even touching the political side of it, I don't think I'd ever want to live in a under-water city.

[8bithamster]

Even if it was like.. a slow leak? Like, suppose a seal was leaking and just slowly filled the place up with water over a couple of days?

I assume (and I have no knowledge about the real working of water pressure at such depths) that with a small leak, the pressure would build up over time, and burst. You'd drown, because either a.) the water smashes you into something, you get knocked out, and drown. Or b.) You get dragged along with the current and drown.

Politics aside, the Rapture idea is a great concept, and can work in my opinion. It's unrealistic as fuck at this moment, because we just don't have the technology for it, but colonizing the sea? If money can be made from it, people will do it.

[Deleted]

I assume (and I have no knowledge about the real working of water pressure at such depths) that with a small leak, the pressure would build up over time, and burst. You'd drown, because either a.) the water smashes you into something, you get knocked out, and drown. Or b.) You get dragged along with the current and drown.

Politics aside, the Rapture idea is a great concept, and can work in my opinion. It's unrealistic as fuck at this moment, because we just don't have the technology for it, but colonizing the sea? If money can be made from it, people will do it.

Do you feel like space colonization is more or less unrealistic than colonizing the sea?

[Afrospinach]

Do you feel like space colonization is more or less unrealistic than colonizing the sea?

Less from a practical point of view. The bottom of the ocean is a relatively calm place with steady currents and such which could also be used to generate power at a depth. All the pressure can be accounted for with structural design as it is constant. You can't really build a defense against a meteor strike though even on the moon that is probably unlikely(even the tiny ones that would otherwise burn in our atmosphere) and you have very limited resources on your doorstep. On the ocean floor you have a means to create oxygen and often have a nutrient rich stream of water around you. It is probable that we can make both water and oxygen on the moon from moon rock but it would be more challenging.

[Pool of the Dead]

I heard drowning is actually really peaceful. Like you have a little bit of panic while the water is going into your lungs but apparently after that it's really peaceful!

I almost died from drowning.

Trust me, it is not peaceful. It feels like your lungs and chest are exploding. the Last thing I felt before I passed out was like someone hammering a blunt piece of metal through my Ribs into my heart.

It happened because I went surfing during a storm and I was pulled to the bottom from a major undercurrent.

The only peaceful part about it was since it was so dark and overcast, I was about 4 meters below the surface and did not know which way way up or down and my limbs could not touch any surface. Just floating in absolute freezing darkness with no sound/sight/smell/touch was the most surreal experience of my life.

Probably the closest I will ever be to experiencing outer-space.

On that note: Fuck no I would never live under the Ocean.

[Adam Jensen]

BioShock was a rather scathing criticism of libertarianism, if you really look at it. Rapture fell because of Andrew Ryan's philosophies (note that he has the same initials as Ayn Rand.)

I would not live there for three reasons

1. Libertarianism doesn't work
2. Its underwater. One crack in the wrong spot and you're fucked
3. Kinda don't want to have to dodge enraged Big Daddies and psychopathic splicers every time I commute.

[Afrospinach]

I almost died from drowning.

Trust me, it is not peaceful. It feels like your lungs and chest are exploding. the Last thing I felt before I passed out was like someone hammering a blunt piece of metal through my Ribs into my heart.

Almost died might be the important part. I went through a drowning experience after jumping into a pool after being in a sauna for ages and passed out immediately then woke up momentarily later basically deaf and blind. I managed to get to the side of the pool in such a state but being deaf/blind is basically the last stage of consciousness. It was agonizing but not painful per se. Apparently if you are someone who can keep their presence of mind like this you are in for an uncomfortable panic ridden ride to the bitter end. The euphoria is for people who take a pull of water and basically get anaethetised by it, losing consciousness almost immediately, which some people will not even do when they are unconscious. That or it is getting mixed up with nitrogen narcosis.

[Zeras]

No way man i firmly believe the bottom of the ocean is one of the most ick and freaky places known to man. Mermaids, sea serpents, bishop fishes, the abyss aliens and krakken to name a few. But as a Norwegian the darkness would not be a problem at all.