Let's make a setting

An apocalyptic event forced the last remnants of humanity to seek refuge in the now melted continent of Antarctica. Againts all odds they did not only survive, but thrived.
After a millenia, what does life, culture and sociey now look like on this world of 6 month long day/night cycles, aurora filled skies, frequent meteor falls and probably giant penguins.

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Would it actually be possible for crops to be grown or are we going to be living on mostly fish?

Would humanity be able to survive if there were no crops? Not sure how big Antarctica is to sustain hunter gatherers, much less how there would be many animals to hunt even

OP did say melted, so I guess it would be at worst a Scandinavian/Russian level climate, which still had agriculture in it

As for culture, yeah were gonna need more examples on climate and temperature, but assuming it is still pretty cold

>lots of festivals for things like the White Nights, and a large emphasis on the yearly cycle, with almost a pagan 8 segment calender for the year with how drastic things change throughout the year
>traditions around the aurora borealis, and probably lots of domestic traditions for the long and cold nights
>seafaring is going to be important for trade throughout the archipelago, even in further inland areas

Also what level of technology and what happened to force this exile?

>descendants of the nations that had claims on Antarctica often lord it over everyone else, and on occasion try and enforce it
>these actions led the descendants of those nations which yet reserve the rights to make a claim to indeed claim the whole of the land, leading to a series of wars

I mean, I guess the main things would be soil. Shit takes time to build up, and that's time humanity might not have. So unless they're shipping in topsoil from the presumably burning north, that could be an issue.

The penguins would kill the survivors. They're huge penguins. You don't mess with penguins man.

Here's a reasonably accurate size comparison between europe and antarctica, if that helps.

Wow that's quite the size

One of the biggest things to consider is that there are 6 continents worth of people all being compressed into one area, and it would actually make for a pretty cool intrigue setting as the many many cultures fight for a place on the continent or try to form alliances and diplomacy

Talking out of my ass here but I'd think it would be an arms race by the existing countries to reach the continent, establish territory, and defend from others, so that only the more advanced societies would be able to continue on in the new land while weaker ones couldn't get a foothold in time

Europe has a few dozen countries, so Antarctica may have a good amount of countries, but it would be a pretty hard fight between them all to survive, especially with the population compression issue, as a good amount of the world population would get offed

Or the vast majority of people are dead by whatever drove them there. It could be pretty empty.

I have to agree with you there

Apparently Antarctica also has a fair few volcanoes

Instrad of global warming, can the apocalyptic event be a polar shift that puts much of humanity in the arctic circles?

Why did you think that it is called the "ring" of fire? If it wasn't active in Antarctica then it would be the arch of fire

Also OP, here's something to consider for your setting: newsweek.com/antarctica-melting-below-mantle-plume-almost-hot-yellowstone-supervolcano-705086

Is imagine they're the descendents of perhaps those lucky enough to make it there either by sailing south or, by being there already. So, while not populated it likely is very multicultural from flocks of people sailing south and being lucky enough to survive the voyage there.

If this is based on my post in the map thread I'm very happy.

The current research bases there would probably be the sites of the major cities. McMurdo station, as an example, is a deepwater port that receives a couple ships ever year. I could easily see something like McMurdo-Scott City, the capital of the American Antarctic Successor/Ross Island Republic, being a major trading hub, etc. There would be a ton of historical sites, such as Building 155, "The Blue Building", which once served as the center of the base, with housing, a barber shop, stores, computers that can reach the outside world, and a large dining room called "The Galley".

Food would probably be grown mostly through hydroponics, with a lot of fishing/whaling thrown in for good measure.

It's not necessarily that many. There aren't that many nations that could evacuate like that in the best of times, let alone during some kind of apocalyptic scenario.

>American Antarctic Successor/Ross Island Republic
>not The United States of Antarctica

I mean itd be like the united state of Antarctica. I forget the Russians have a base?

A ton of countries have bases there. Iirc, there are around 4,000 inhabitants in the Antarctic during the summer months.

>not The United States of Antarctica

I was assuming that the Kiwis a mile away would object to something that blatant. Besides, would there really be anything analogous to traditional American states? I was thinking more of a city-state confederation, as most of the people and manufacturing would be concentrated at the major, developed settlements. Antarctica, even melted, is probably still going to be a barren wasteland for quite a while.

If not outright desert due to over farming initially.

Could it be possible to send expeditions to acquire fertile soil from what land remains?

That's a hell of an undertaking. More likely your gonna see areas along the coast stabilise by fishing heavily while inland mass forestation and crop management come into play. Shipping likely millions of tons of arable soil would be madness,

Hydroponics would be a more likely outcome than shipping in soil

At some point yo will need wood. Growing trees in hydroponics would be a bitch

There's probably a disproportionately high number of Australian, New Zealander, Argentinian and Chilean descendants simply through proximity. Tasmania is "only" about 2700km away compared to europes 12000+

It'll probably start with hydropinics and over timr you could improve the soil using animal and human waste as fertilizer. There's whole beaches down there made of penguine corpses and guano that could be potentially excavated and mixed into Antarctic soil to make arable land.


Besides that I'm not sure how barren the soil would actually be, it used to be covered in forrest before the ice cap formed.

The movement of the glaciers would have soured away all the old organic surface matter eons ago and pushed it into the sea.

The organic material of penguin shit mixed with terminal moraine would potentially make something you could grow things in. Efforts then should be made to increase this.

Human shit is bad for this as it contains too many harmful pathogens. It would have to be mixed with other waste products and left to break down for some considerable time. Soot from fires, discarded fish parts, sea shells and the like are useful for this. Mix it all together and wait a couple of years. Also depending on what trees are being grown it is possible that you could be mixing old leaves in there as well.

And you will need to be growing trees. Dig concern is going to be food preservation. At those latitudes even if the ice sheets are gone you are still going to be shutting your civilization down in the winter. You are going to need all the preservation methods, including smoking the fish. Also building material and boats. Wood is going to be a very valuable commodity.

One problem.
Without industry to fuel advanced climate change, in less then a century Antartica will freeze over again.
This is literal fact.

Humanity will be moving back across the globe before the founders even die.

Worsening winters would be a good driver for sending people back out to explore.

>permafrost melts
>releases deadly diseases not seen for hundreds of years
yeah no, they would all be dead as fuck

Given the possibility of what else might be unfrozen a new strain of flu might not be the worst thing. Also there will be survivors from this. It is extremely rare that a disease wipes out every member of a millions strong society. The survivors will pass on the immunity.

It's the rumours of ruins of a city pre-settlement up in the Transantarctic Mountains that you should be worried about.

Or god help us even worse after watching fortitude I really have a few ideas for what might come crawling out.

Whatever caused the apocalypse will probably keep the Antarctic warm for millennia.

Steam-pirate-apocalipse-punk-relic-worshippers-scavengers-tribal societies

I suppose if you were insane you could make volcano heat based power to fuel industrial expansion

I mean geothermal power exists already. I could easily see towns relying on it for things like lighting and heat.

> It turns out the Nazis actually did have a secret base in Antartica and may or may not have accidentally initiated the apocalypse.

Nazis were there examining the ruins of what may or may not have been a settlement of extra-terrestrial origin in the hopes of gaining a significant technological edge from their leftovers. Sadly they found nothing of value. The ruins of the city or outpost or whatever it was, although possibly predating humanity by some considerable time, held nothing of value. Just doorways, empty window frames and stonework. The carvings are interesting but they either depict things from an inhuman perspective and then stylized into incomprehensibility or they are just meaningless shapes and markings that their creators thought were pleasing to look at but represented nothing.

The apocalypse might have been because they disturbed or set loose something with their inane blundering or the timing might be entirely that it happened on the geological scale almost immediately.

Either way there is little to learn from the ruins beyond that the inhabitants were maybe slightly bigger than the average human but not massively so and that they travelled on land by foot.

Presumably there were once other places like this before the ice sheets formed and wiped it all away, this site surviving due to being on a mountain high enough to be above the ice sheets.

The Nazi records make for dry reading.

I like the concept, unused landmass gets my 'tism going; like most of Africa, Greenland, or the outback of Australia. It's satisfying to see something being done with it.

But I feel that the spike in temperature that would be required to make Antarctica habitable year round (even if you had to bunker down for winter) would mean the rest of the world is so incredibly fucked that it'd probably spell the end to the survivors on Antarctica in indirect ways.

We're talking Clathrate trigger levels fucked.

no niggers and chinks, sounds good

It could be that the axis has shifted slightly or some shit.

Maybe Nemesis came back around and fucked everything up.

bump

a near miss by a rogue planet has shifted the earths axis significantly during the gravitational interaction. Impacts by asteroids orbiting the rogue planet fucked shit up for the more inhabited regions of earth.