Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mg_ridgeview]

If Dwarf Fortress existed IRL, how far below the surface of the planet could a dwarf dig before having to worry about running out of oxygen?

[GoblinCookie]

That is not the problem, the problem is that he will get roasted by the heat underground.  Oxygen naturally distributes itself evenly, so the problem is not how deep the dwarf is, but how many dwarves are there 'above him' along with torches, fires and other oxygen hungry things. 

[Cathar]

Yeah Oxygen wouldn't be his main concern. Caverns have an ecosystem including trees and plants who will break down C0². The problem with torches are not the fact they consume oxygen, but the fact they produce a lot of smoke, which you absolutely don't want in a confined space.

The main death / sickness factor in a dwarf fortress would probably be :

• Hearing losses due to echoes
• Dust particles accumulating into their lungs
• Cave ins
• Pockets of gas being lit by your lightsource

Like in IRL mining really

[Rowanas]

I personally like the idea that dwarves have developed a tracheal filter that diverts dust into their stomachs for use in grinding food down. Similarly, they have flaps of skin which cover the ears in high-noise environments. Sometimes these get stuck closed, which is why they can't HEAR MY GODDAMN ORDERS.

Point is, I still rate oxygen as a significant contributor to dwarf deaths.

[Dorsidwarf]

I suspect that the problem is not so much running out of oxygen as succumbing to carbon dioxide accumulation.

[Mechanoid]

I suspect that the problem is not so much running out of oxygen as succumbing to carbon dioxide accumulation.

Displacement of oxygen is a real thing and is a real hazard. It doesn't matter how well you can filter out CO2 in this case, because if there's no oxygen in the atmosphere you WILL suffocate.
Considering many parts of a fortress often rely on U-bend shaped areas (at least, if they want to make sure nothing can crawl up through a grate) and various low-laying areas beneath populated rooms, any gas which is denser than air would accumulate there over the course of the many days a dwarf doesn't pass through to disturb the atmosphere.

If gasses were properly modeled by Dwarf Fortress, most fortresses would slowly fill with water-like CO2 until everyone drowns in it.

[DG]

[Halnoth]

Well... if dwarves actually existed, then I would imagine they would have evolved to suit their environment.

The problem is that something would have to give. Dwarves were contrived by humans who still believed in magic and later by humans writing books about fantastical worlds where magic actually exists.

In order for Dwarves to exist IRL with all their well known physical attributes and without any weird additions, Dwarves would have to live closer to the surface. Their mountain halls would be more like elaborate hobbit holes. At best their cities would have to have a significant surface component.

Or Dwarves would have to be physically different with a wide array of cave animal adaptations.

Or their technology would need to be superior to ours such that they could solve all the problems associated with living so far underground. But if this was the case, then I posit that humans would either no longer exist or we would be forcibly working for the Dwarves. Or maybe there would just be zoos full of humans where dwarf children come to gawk and throw food into the cages.

[OluapPlayer]

Keep in mind DF dwarves have perfect darkvision. They don't need torches (or any source of light for that matter) to see in the dark.

[GoblinCookie]

Keep in mind DF dwarves have perfect darkvision. They don't need torches (or any source of light for that matter) to see in the dark.

You cannot see if there is no light, however good your vision.  Unless you are seeing in the infrared spectrum maybe. 

Well... if dwarves actually existed, then I would imagine they would have evolved to suit their environment.

The problem is that something would have to give. Dwarves were contrived by humans who still believed in magic and later by humans writing books about fantastical worlds where magic actually exists.

In order for Dwarves to exist IRL with all their well known physical attributes and without any weird additions, Dwarves would have to live closer to the surface. Their mountain halls would be more like elaborate hobbit holes. At best their cities would have to have a significant surface component.

Or Dwarves would have to be physically different with a wide array of cave animal adaptations.

Or their technology would need to be superior to ours such that they could solve all the problems associated with living so far underground. But if this was the case, then I posit that humans would either no longer exist or we would be forcibly working for the Dwarves. Or maybe there would just be zoos full of humans where dwarf children come to gawk and throw food into the cages.

Technology isn't a single thing.  Dwarves would likely invent technology that is specifically useful to the problems their underground lifestyle creates, that however does not mean they are inventing machine guns and conquering the world.

[Saiko Kila]

If Dwarf Fortress existed IRL, how far below the surface of the planet could a dwarf dig before having to worry about running out of oxygen?

It would depend solely on his Toughness and Endurance

These two are only factors in DT when it comes to oxygen, so whatever is their equivalent in real world would count too.

In real life though we know not much about our planet's interior (including quite shallow depths), so it's hard to extrapolate it to the planets from DF universe. Oxygen, however, is denser than air. Not as much as carbon dioxide for example, but dense enough that it probably wouldn't be a problem.

There is also a chance that dwarves would have perception of CO2 and/or CO (carbon monoxide). In real life there are three gases which are also signalling molecules. Two of them are smelly to us, but the third one, CO, for some  mysterious reason is not (*). I suppose dwarves would be able to detect both gases, and maybe some more.

*)It's mysterious, because as a signal molecule we do have receptors of it, and evolutionally it was much danger for cavemen. So there are two important reasons we should be able to detect it.

[Starver]

*)It's mysterious, because as a signal molecule we do have receptors of it, and evolutionally it was much danger for cavemen. So there are two important reasons we should be able to detect it.

How long/how intensely were 'cave man' ancestral hominids actually cave-dwelling to the extent that innate and direct CO sensing would have become a selective pressure?

Perhaps a more obvious 'evolution' is learning that when whatever cave-fires they built in a deep cave system (which they must also have avoided smoking themselves out with) goes out but smoulders just so then headaches and worse may follow for all those that stay in there. And that's a memetic inheritance, not a genetic one much quicker to develop, much easier to spread (once there's language).

[Saiko Kila]

*)It's mysterious, because as a signal molecule we do have receptors of it, and evolutionally it was much danger for cavemen. So there are two important reasons we should be able to detect it.

How long/how intensely were 'cave man' ancestral hominids actually cave-dwelling to the extent that innate and direct CO sensing would have become a selective pressure?

Since CO is so lethal, I guess it could be very fast. Since CO signalling is involved in epigenetics (methylation),  it means it could be even one generation, with a bit of luck.

Perhaps a more obvious 'evolution' is learning that when whatever cave-fires they built in a deep cave system (which they must also have avoided smoking themselves out with) goes out but smoulders just so then headaches and worse may follow for all those that stay in there. And that's a memetic inheritance, not a genetic one much quicker to develop, much easier to spread (once there's language).

People probably lived in caves only for relatively short time, mostly during last glaciations. But there were so many bottlenecks events, that it is possible that all survivors knew each one. However, I gave the cave example only because it is similar to dwarven lifestyle. In reality probably bad fuel in tents caused more deaths than in caves (because people lived in tents longer than in caves, and in higher numbers). Still, I'm convinced that humans had CO or CO2 detection in the past - in some group, which did not survived.

By the way, lethal monoxide poisoning still happens to this days, and often there are no symptoms before it is too late. You can start a fire in the cave, fumes and smoke disperse after some time, but lethal CO levels can remain for weeks after that. You'd have to be very smart to link it to the old fire (if you even know about it).

[Starver]

Since CO is so lethal, I guess it could be very fast. Since CO signalling is involved in epigenetics (methylation),  it means it could be even one generation, with a bit of luck.

Both those points are reasons why I don't think it would work.

It's so lethal, when it is a factor, that it doesn't leave much room for a chance (pre-)adaptation squeaking past such a life-limiting emergency.

For (some of) the very first generation to have the means to ascend above the danger that kills their (un-preadapted) cousins means a very fortuitous point mutation (squared or cubed if multiple SNSes are required to implement this 'skill' from scratch, out of nowhere). It'd be like the X-Gene (of the X-Men universe) spontaneously being useful 'all of a sudden'.

Which is not to say it didn't happen (the chances of something having happened, that did happen, is 100% by retrospect even if it was unlikely to have happened at the tradutional point of measure of before it did) and you mention the bottlenecks... Maybe one of the bottlenecks was a small group of X-Cavemen having the innate ability to avoid monoxide poisoning that claimed their 'normal' fellows.


However...  While undoubtedly there were deep-caving 'cavemen' (Rouffignac Cave apparently had cave painters operating at least half a mile into the ground, with or (probably) without much in the way of torch-light, never mind big fires), there does not seem to be the the evidence that this was the norm for the paleolithic peoples (from maybe half way to just a quarter of the way back in time through to the arising of the first anatomical humans. And evidence that they were fishing (presumably outdoor fish, rather than cave fish, regardless of the fresh-/saltwater distinctions) suggests they'd not exactly gone full-troglodyte.

A cave (shallow cave, or just an entrance to a larger system whose mysteries they explored only relatively briefly/ritualistically) might have handily sheltered them, but it seems we still retain much of our evolution upon the plains, maybe features from our theorised Aquatic Ape phase, but cave-adaptation (in Dorfy or RL cave-ecosystem terms) doesn't feature much.

Our eyesight is keyed to nocturnal-at-a-push levels of ability, but retains certain expectations of daylight. Our stance isn't squat for avoiding low rocky rooves above our heads. Our skin is atuned to (varying degrees of) sunlight upon it. We're basically not Gollums or Dwarven or Trollish (given that we can recognise those types as being hypothetically more 'of the subteranean life' , and no reason to believe that we were significantly more like that (perhaps our Neanderthal distant cousins and illicit ancesters push the limit in that sort of direction? But barely).

And, as you point out, we do not detect CO properly. If the X-Gene for CO detectiom bred itself in due to need, then it reqlly ought to have not bred itself out again without an opposing selection, so easily. Mere non-use doesn't rust an allel frequency. If it was problematic, maybe. And if there were (after avoiding the bottleneck, due to not being cave-humans) more dominant norm-genes bred back over this circumstantially lucky X-Gene (recessive, but somehow was still spread around enough to get the first generation of CO-exposureds out of danger).


Probably it's more complicated than that. Without checking any proper research about anything you've said about what we have already¹ I'd say that maybe the recepter is a chance thing. That hasn't yet found a connected-up use because most people who experience CO to lethal levels die (by definition!) withoutmanybody having also lucked upon the necessary biofeedback loop to make use of such biophysical self-awareness of the issue and biomechanically/hormonely/neurologically act with the suitably life-afirming response method.

I shall find time to see if I can't find something to educate me better on this subject. Including correcting any misapprehensions that I've succumbed to along the way and misassumptions I've therefore fallen into the trap of.


¹ I 'know', but would need to check that this isn't a Lie-To-Children, that our haemoglobin acts as a receptor to CO, in exvlusice preference to Oxygen, and that's the problem!  I hadn't heard about any further molecular signalling that goes on. Only the ability to diagnose one suffering from CO from their changed appearance in blood-filled areas of the face, like the lips.

[Xyon]

well the dwarfs that do exist on earth now have dug so deep that we don't even know they exist any more, so i'd say pretty darn deep