Cave-Zero: The Reference Scenario

Project Calorie Fountain is expected to be an evolving thing: I want to get something started quickly and then iterate, iterate, iterate. Ideally each new version will be better than the last, but what does "better" mean, exactly? There are a lot of variables that could be improved: more calories produced, smaller area required, faster maturity cycle, etc. How do we compare them?

The problem is complicated further by the fact that I don't know much about the conditions I'm designing the system to operate withn. Knowing that society has “stumbled” in some way doesn't tell me much, other than that the food supply has been compromised in some way. Do we still have power? Running water? Heat?

Furthermore, it doesn't say anything about the specific set of conditions being faced by whoever is tryng to build the fountain. Do you live in the tropics? The Arctic? Are you living underground? On the roof of a skyscraper?

Of all the possible futures and all the possible fountaineers, the number of different situations calorie fountains might be deployed in (I call them “stumble scenarios”) are endless. So the only option I have is to choose a worst case scenario and design for that. Hopefully, if you ever need to actually build a fountain, you'll be operating in a less hostile environment than the one it was designed for, so you'll be fine. But my goal is to make it work for even this bleakest of worlds.

I call this the "Cave₀ Scenario," in which we'll be trying to grow food in a cold, dark cave. (As a science fiction writer, I can actually imagine worse conditions, but I've decided that if the air is unbreathable or radiation is frying your eyelids, feeding yourself for a year isn't going to be your biggest concern.)

It stands to reason that any improvements in the Cave₀ Scenario should improve most other scenarios as well, so that makes it a good standard for comparison. Eventually, each version of the calorie fountain will be scored for the efficiency of its inputs and outputs in those harsh conditions, but these metrics have not yet been worked out.

That'll be the subject for a future post.