## [AH] Green Antarctica (civilization on an alternate Antarctica)

* Author: u/taulover  *House Atreides**
* URL: http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/timelines/green_antarctica
* Score: 6

* Created: 2014-11-25T17:35:25

### Post:

[Link to content](http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/timelines/green_antarctica)

### Comments:

> **u/Timewinders** [+6]  (13 hours later)
> 
> I found the opening sections on the geography and ecology of Antarctica interesting but I don't find the society plausible. It seemed more like the author was trying to justify having as dark of a society as possible than trying to consider what kind of society would actually result from the premise. In real life you see people do horrible things to people they consider outsiders, but they naturally care about one another. Even societies that practiced cannibalism in real life mainly did it ritualistically and only on those who were already dead. In the Tsalal society in this story it seems that antisocial behaviors, including killing members of one's own family, are considered admirable. I was able to suspend my disbelief during the initial sections of the story when the humans were struggling to survive without agriculture, but after that it was just laughable.

>> **u/None** [+2]  (a day later)
>> 
>> Later scenes where there is a Western tourist/journalist exploring the continent appear specifically written to disturb and disgust (one example was about torture as an admired art form). This is where I had to stop reading.

> **u/RMcD94** [+2]  (4 hours later)
> 
> Alternatehistory.com has a lot of stories and writing that while not rationalist per se are often striving for accuracy in terms of real world people (in charge of countries) with motivations of their own reacting to something abnormal (Great Britain teleports to beside the USA), or a normal point of division (Archduke's driver goes down a different street)

> **u/Articanine** [+2]  *Imperium of Man* (12 hours later)
> 
> It says I don't have permission to read it??

>> **u/taulover** [+1]  *House Atreides* (2 days later)
>> 
>> You need an alternatehistory.com account to read threads in the "Alien Space Bats" subforum, apparently.

> **u/FTL_wishes** [+1]  *superluminal* (3 hours later)
> 
> I can't for the life of me see anything rational in cannibalism.

>> **u/alexanderwales** [+11]  *Time flies like an arrow* (3 hours later)
>> 
>> Really?
>> 
>> Set aside the taboos, and the issue of disease transmission (which can mostly be avoided by eating the right parts). When people die, they leave behind meat. Currently, the two most common things to do with that meat are to burn it, or lower it into the ground. Compared to those two options, eating the meat seems like one of the best things you could do with it.
>> 
>> Now, growing humans *for their meat* is unethical and wasteful on top of that, but cannibalism in general has never seemed irrational - just bundled up with a lot of psychological hangups.
>> 
>> Edit: I actually tried, for a time, to figure out a business model for cannibalism that would work in the United States (for a story). There aren't any outright laws against cannibalism (and if there are, they're on a state-by-state basis which means a potential business could relocate to a favorable legal climate), but there are laws against misusing medical waste and desecrating a corpse. Anyway, the scheme would involve having people sign consent forms for either the event of their death, or the amputation of a body part. I think that at least could be done fairly cheaply, since people tend to discount things that are in the future, and many young people don't think of their deaths as "real". The two biggest questions I had left were the legal hurdles involved (since i somewhat doubt that the business could exist without having an in-house lawyer from day one) and whether there would be a sufficient market for it - neither of which are all that easy to figure out for someone who has only a theoretical interest in the subject.

>>> **u/EnvironmentalZero** [+1]  (8 years later)
>>> 
>>> But we have better forms of eat meat

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