SpudNutimus
I make maps and things.
- Pronouns
- he/him
So, to make it short, I'm trying to develop this very ASB robot uprising vignette into a more fleshed-out setting.
To sum it up, the general premise is that Charles Babbage's analytical engine design receives additional funding and is completed in 1847, resulting in general-purpose mechanical computers becoming commonplace by the mid-19th century, soon being electrified (not as in directly electronic computers, just like, the shafts and turbines of the mechanical CPU are driven by electricity) with the advent of early telegraphy and power infrastructure.
The first sapient AI comes online in 1898, and by the 1920s there are millions of them around the globe. In 1922 a group of robots in New York City revolt and robot uprisings begin around the globe, and in a last effort to save humanity the leaders of mankind make a deal with the remaining loyal robots to destroy the revolt in exchange for the creation of an independent robot state consisting of a large portion of the American West. By the 1930s the new state, known as Zion, is the center of global infrastructure and technology as the rest of the Earth languishes in the absence of its previous mechanical labor.
Now, to get on to the actual reason for this thread: I'm not good at planning fictional megaprojects and would like to know what types of insane superstructures I could have the robots build within their country. In particular the Colorado River is supposed to be the center of their infrastructure, so basically how can I make the Colorado River as powerful as possible via water megaprojects at the expense of all of its neighbors?
They're robots, so they don't actually need to drink and would just be concerned with power generation, and they don't really care about the environment at all either. The problem is that first of all we're still in the 1920s, albeit a much more advanced version of them, and so will be limited by the physical infrastructure of the time period even with utterly unimaginable advances in computing and machinery.
Second of all, they're stuck within their own borders due to the tense truce with humanity, so they don't actually have access to that many extra water sources to pump into the Colorado. I was considering the possibility of diverting the Snake River and Rio Grande into it but once again, I don't actually know anything about water infrastructure or how rivers work, so I could use some guidance.
Here's a map of the country's borders for reference.
To sum it up, the general premise is that Charles Babbage's analytical engine design receives additional funding and is completed in 1847, resulting in general-purpose mechanical computers becoming commonplace by the mid-19th century, soon being electrified (not as in directly electronic computers, just like, the shafts and turbines of the mechanical CPU are driven by electricity) with the advent of early telegraphy and power infrastructure.
The first sapient AI comes online in 1898, and by the 1920s there are millions of them around the globe. In 1922 a group of robots in New York City revolt and robot uprisings begin around the globe, and in a last effort to save humanity the leaders of mankind make a deal with the remaining loyal robots to destroy the revolt in exchange for the creation of an independent robot state consisting of a large portion of the American West. By the 1930s the new state, known as Zion, is the center of global infrastructure and technology as the rest of the Earth languishes in the absence of its previous mechanical labor.
Now, to get on to the actual reason for this thread: I'm not good at planning fictional megaprojects and would like to know what types of insane superstructures I could have the robots build within their country. In particular the Colorado River is supposed to be the center of their infrastructure, so basically how can I make the Colorado River as powerful as possible via water megaprojects at the expense of all of its neighbors?
They're robots, so they don't actually need to drink and would just be concerned with power generation, and they don't really care about the environment at all either. The problem is that first of all we're still in the 1920s, albeit a much more advanced version of them, and so will be limited by the physical infrastructure of the time period even with utterly unimaginable advances in computing and machinery.
Second of all, they're stuck within their own borders due to the tense truce with humanity, so they don't actually have access to that many extra water sources to pump into the Colorado. I was considering the possibility of diverting the Snake River and Rio Grande into it but once again, I don't actually know anything about water infrastructure or how rivers work, so I could use some guidance.
Here's a map of the country's borders for reference.