Semi-sensible thousand-year plans?

[Ruin Explorer]

Depends on the job. Monthly pay on a North Sea oil rig can be as much as $16k/month, working 1-2 months on, 1-2 months off.


Is it hard, dangerous work? Absolutely. And that’s one of the reasons it pays well.

Worth noting that video is very much a heavily-edited advertorial too, rather than any kind of real insight. It's a best case scenario of extremely well-run modern rigs. It's absolutely not at all how, say, North Sea oil rigs were in the 1980s and 1990s.

Even today, even in modern rigs, it's so mentally and physically destructive that people go crazy:

Offshore worker Robbie Robson was bludgeoned to death on an oil rig. Was it a random attack or does the industry have questions to answer?

When the contractor started a two-month job in the Persian Gulf, he said it was his final lengthy posting. Six weeks later, he was dead, and a co-worker charged with his murder. What happened?

www.theguardian.com

That's after decades and decades of trying to improve, because conditions used to be so poor that even with the relatively completely insanely high salaries, it was extremely difficult to get people willing to work on them.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Worth noting that video is very much a heavily-edited advertorial too, rather than any kind of real insight. It's a best case scenario of extremely well-run modern rigs. It's absolutely not at all how, say, North Sea oil rigs were in the 1980s and 1990s.

Even today, even in modern rigs, it's so mentally and physically destructive that people go crazy:

Offshore worker Robbie Robson was bludgeoned to death on an oil rig. Was it a random attack or does the industry have questions to answer?

When the contractor started a two-month job in the Persian Gulf, he said it was his final lengthy posting. Six weeks later, he was dead, and a co-worker charged with his murder. What happened?

www.theguardian.com

That's after decades and decades of trying to improve, because conditions used to be so poor that even with the relatively completely insanely high salaries, it was extremely difficult to get people willing to work on them.

All true!

But I will also say that the people I know who were roughnecks were consistent with each other’s tales (and that vid): if you could take the stress, the money was great.

 

[MarkB]

All true!

But I will also say that the people I know who were roughnecks were consistent with each other’s tales (and that vid): if you could take the stress, the money was great.

Probably not "keep doing it for a few centuries" great, though. Even in a regular urban environment, over the course of a couple of hundred years the most likely cause of death would start to be random accident, let alone in an inherently high-risk setting.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think a lot of thousand year projects don't inherently make sense or not make sense, rather it's about the context.

Like, a thousand year project that makes sense in a world that's effectively in a permanent or many thousands of years long neolithic or bronze age (or even iron age, as is the case in some settings) is going to look very different from a thousand year project in a rapidly changing renaissance-esque world where technological advance is a real thing.

If the setting is more or less permanently stuck in say, the Iron Age (c.f. Conan etc.), a thousand year plan might simply be to slowly mine out a network of tunnels, or just one big tunnel, to allow your undead hordes to completely bypass the Wall of Doom or whatever. But if technology is actually moving, that'll likely be a joke by the time you're done, because your sword-armed undead will be running into cannon and muskets, if not tanks and assault rifles.*

Equally though you can flip that if you have some foresight, like maybe your magic crystal ball tells you that X resource is going to be incredibly valuable in 1000 years, so you can spend that thousand years going around and buying up the resource as much as possible in time for it to become actually worth something - just make sure you are in a good negotiating position, not where the most sensible thing to do is just attack you.

* = I have seen this in fiction, albeit badly handled - Malazan attempts it, but it's so inconsistent as to just be a mess. They have terrifying beings from 100k years ago who are still terrifying, but later introduce other ones who are (intentionally) just a bad joke now, and there's consistency or predictability to it, so whilst it's obvious that this is supposed to be very funny (and presumably is to whoever wrote it), it just reads like they wasted a lot of space on it and "subverted expectations" only in the dumbest way possible (in that they set those expectations - this would be like if in a serious Star Trek show - i.e. not Lower Decks - the Romulans attacked but they were all dumb klutzes engaging in Three Stooges-style tomfoolery - technically "subverting expectations", but in a way that's not clever or even really funny).

 

[MarkB]

I think a lot of thousand year projects don't inherently make sense or not make sense, rather it's about the context.

Like, a thousand year project that makes sense in a world that's effectively in a permanent or many thousands of years long neolithic or bronze age (or even iron age, as is the case in some settings) is going to look very different from a thousand year project in a rapidly changing renaissance-esque world where technological advance is a real thing.

If the setting is more or less permanently stuck in say, the Iron Age (c.f. Conan etc.), a thousand year plan might simply be to slowly mine out a network of tunnels, or just one big tunnel, to allow your undead hordes to completely bypass the Wall of Doom or whatever. But if technology is actually moving, that'll likely be a joke by the time you're done, because your sword-armed undead will be running into cannon and muskets, if not tanks and assault rifles.*

Equally though you can flip that if you have some foresight, like maybe your magic crystal ball tells you that X resource is going to be incredibly valuable in 1000 years, so you can spend that thousand years going around and buying up the resource as much as possible in time for it to become actually worth something - just make sure you are in a good negotiating position, not where the most sensible thing to do is just attack you.

* = I have seen this in fiction, albeit badly handled - Malazan attempts it, but it's so inconsistent as to just be a mess. They have terrifying beings from 100k years ago who are still terrifying, but later introduce other ones who are (intentionally) just a bad joke now, and there's consistency or predictability to it, so whilst it's obvious that this is supposed to be very funny (and presumably is to whoever wrote it), it just reads like they wasted a lot of space on it and "subverted expectations" only in the dumbest way possible (in that they set those expectations - this would be like if in a serious Star Trek show - i.e. not Lower Decks - the Romulans attacked but they were all dumb klutzes engaging in Three Stooges-style tomfoolery - technically "subverting expectations", but in a way that's not clever or even really funny).

Done really well in an early episode of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, with a demon who was sealed away because he'd developed a new form of magical attack spell that nothing could block, and it was impossible to actually defeat him permanently.

Spoiler

Fast forward to when the seal breaks 80 years later, and he once more unleashes his unstoppable spell - only for it to be blocked by a still-in-training mage using the most basic barrier magic.

As it turns out, his spell had been such a game-changer that it had gone on to be studied and mastered by many human mages, who developed detailed understanding of its applications, and came up with defenses against it. Now this incredible spell is considered "basic attack magic", that is taught to every aspiring mage along with the means of shielding against it. In fact, perhaps the only prominent mage who's defenseless against it is the demon himself, as he shortly - and briefly - finds out.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Done really well in an early episode of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, with a demon who was sealed away because he'd developed a new form of magical attack spell that nothing could block, and it was impossible to actually defeat him permanently.

Spoiler

Fast forward to when the seal breaks 80 years later, and he once more unleashes his unstoppable spell - only for it to be blocked by a still-in-training mage using the most basic barrier magic.

As it turns out, his spell had been such a game-changer that it had gone on to be studied and mastered by many human mages, who developed detailed understanding of its applications, and came up with defenses against it. Now this incredible spell is considered "basic attack magic", that is taught to every aspiring mage along with the means of shielding against it. In fact, perhaps the only prominent mage who's defenseless against it is the demon himself, as he shortly - and briefly - finds out.

Yeah that was good because it was consistent and straightforward and made sense.

Whereas Malazan spends SIX books establishing that scary dudes from the distant past can still be scary AF now, even if they're using literally stone-age weapons and ancient magic, only to "subvert" this in book seven and to spend chapters hyping up another scary dude from the past, only to say "GOTCHA LOL, u ackshully believed this dude was tough? DUMMY!!!! STUPID!!! Obviously because he's from the past he's weak AF and it's very funny u the reader and the characters believed he was tough just because we spent several chapters on how tough he was and all the other people from the past are tough as hell!!!!!". Man that book was a tonal car crash - unable to decide if it's Ayn Rand meets Terry Pratchett (a horrifying combination) or the brand of increasingly-problematic (mostly due to an unfortunate rape obsession) self-serious grimdark fantasy the previous books were.

 

[Zardnaar]

One of my villains is a lich who kidnaps 1 person a year. He tracks ancestry and those they deem pure enough a put in stasis to rebuild his fallen empire.

He also keeps track of those slain. If he has time he will yoink body parts, clone them put them in stasis.

His niece has also been preserved for close to 2000 years. 5E clone spell deages you. She's insane but has in effect died over and over and remembers it as she gets cloned.

 

[Zardnaar]

Depends on the job. Monthly pay on a North Sea oil rig can be as much as $16k/month, working 1-2 months on, 1-2 months off.


Is it hard, dangerous work? Absolutely. And that’s one of the reasons it pays well.

I know millionaires at least on paper via normal jobs.

Think it's billionaires it's really hard to be one with out exploits.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I know millionaires at least on paper via normal jobs.

Think it's billionaires it's really hard to be one with out exploits.

Before he got married, my barber had a Maserati Quatroporte. The customer who was usually scheduled to be in his chair before me owns a collection of high end cars.

One day, my Honda Accord was parked between the Maserati and the Lamborghini that other client had driven that day.

I wish I had taken a photo…“Which car does the lawyer drive?”

 

[Zardnaar]

Before he got married, my barber had a Maserati Quatroporte. The customer who was usually scheduled to be in his chair before me owns a collection of high end cars.

One day, my Honda Accord was parked between the Maserati and the Lamborghini that other client had driven that day.

I wish I had taken a photo…“Which car does the lawyer drive?”

Heh. I started an ethical billionaires thread elsewhere looking for examples.

George Lucas I think was best we came up with. Creative type invented something. I'm sure someone will claim he exploited lucasfilm workers though.

Lamborghini isn't a Maddie flex imho unless it's those super rare models as specialists can afford the cheaper models.

I wouldn't buy one even if I won the lottery. I do have a soft spot for Contach though.

Knew a well off guy once with European car
collection. Day to day Toyota iirc he took out a cheaer fiat or whatever occasionally.

Expensive stuff rural roads only rarely. Might see it occasionally at gas station. Most weren't that obvious though. Some obscure pre war Daimler Benz or whatever.