Dr. Stone discussion about V16 of the Manga (SPOILERS BEWARE)

Spoilers for the Manga and what happens in what will probably be season 4 of the Anime. I will try and avoid some spoilers (because the why is not important but the how). YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

So Senku and the Kingdom of Science are aiming for the Moon and their first stop is America to get Corn to make the Alcohol for the revival fluid and food. Thing is, they are heading to the West Coast and I can not figure out how they will pull off getting to the Great Bread Basket of the World (ie. the American Midwest).

The problem with going West to East is simple, California has some farmland but not enough to do much. Then you hit the Movae and Death Valley. Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada all dry barren deserts that are death traps for anyone but the most well prepared. (even then, death is always just a heartbeat away.) All the way to the Rockies. Utah starts to have more capabilities to grow, but not great.

Farther north is the Pacific Northwest, it is better, but freezes early and has long and cold winters. It would be a slow long grind. But more survivable.

What I would do is leave the West Coast until last and go from the East Coast (some place around the Carolina's). Good Farmland for immediate growing. BUT biggest advantage of the East is not even in the America's, it's Iceland.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault would still exist, it is designed to exist through everything. The cold temperatures actually work to our favor causing the seed to "hibernate". Not all of the seeds would still be viable after 3700 years, however there would be enough modern hybrid seeds to get the ball rolling well. (wheat found in an ancient Egyptian tomb was planted as an experiment, 10% still grew after thousands of years in storage.)

Crossing the Rockies will always be difficult, better to cross the Appalachian Mountains. Even better, Appalachia has a great amount of mineral resources. Georgia Texas and Kansas has SALT mines, salt is critical to life and will be necessary to rebuild civilization. (Salt was a strategic resource until the 20th century.)

Today, the Salt mines in Kansas have been repurposed to be archives and storage. If any recordings of Lillian's songs still exist, it would be there.

In conclusion, the West Coast will be a death trap. But the East Coast will safely lead to the Great Plains where we can produce enough food for the World (a couple/three/four times over).

 

Well, some of why the author may have picked to just go west to east, in this case, may be because he didn't really know some of this information.

Hell, I've lived on the east coast all my life and I didn't know Georgia had salt mines...but I would agree that overall the east coast would've been a better place to start for a lot of reasons. Not the least including access to things like the various rivers and bays like the Chesapeake, Potomac, or Mississippi for a couple of examples.

 

Well, to be fair, only historians know about salt mines. They have not been important since just after the American Civil war. Hmmmm, looking through Wikipedia I am not seeing anything about Georgia. I am seeing a bit about Texas Salt mining though. Did I somehow get the two mixed up? Georgia has salt marshes, but not mines.............. Oh well, time to fix myself.

Access to clean fresh water is probably the most important thing about surviving and building a civilization. All the modern cities that were also antient (like London, Rome, Jerusalem, and many other) are still there because of the easy access to water. Water is the most vital of Strategic resources. The Ogallala Aquifer would probably be fully recharged after 3700 years. Making the American Midwest an even more important location.

Now I am slightly worried that the author does not realize (or maybe appreciate) just how big the US is. Honestly, it's a bit insane to think about us having almost every natural Biome under just one flag. I mean, Senku knows how to build trains sure. But is he ready to build a cross-continental railway system and would he know where to build it?

Would the man-made passages still exist through the Rocky mountains? The roads would be gone sure, but not the locations they were built. Some might be impassable due to rockslides, but not all.

 

You did mention Georgia and Kansas having salt mines.

Chances are he does not. It's one of those things that can be hard to recognize how true that is, let alone the sheer scale of the country without visiting or doing research. Not counting people who've been to places like Russia, China, or maybe Brazil and Australia.

Heck, I'm in Maryland and we have a ton of variety in landscapes in a very small area here. To say nothing of the sorts of trips I've been on with just driving. So, chances are the actual scale of how big the country is may be simply lost on the author. Which...isn't that surprising to me sadly.

It'd probably depend on which ones you're looking at. As some of them would most likely be mostly fine, while others would be varying degrees of unusable/gone.

Still wouldn't make it easier to get access to the midwest than passing through Panama before following up the Mississipi River. Unless you've got some very good land vehicles or some such.

 

I'll preface this by saying that I've only watched the anime, and while I've already been spoiled on the broad strokes of how the manga goes later, I don't know all the finer details. That said...

While you raise some good points about the advantages of making landfall on the east coast, actually getting to said coast has some non-trivial issues. The route, for one; there are three main routes a ship can take for a Pacific-to-Atlantic voyage. There's the easy way, via the Panama Canal... but I wouldn't bet on it being usable after 3700 years. Going south around the tip of South America, you've got a choice between the Straight of Magellan, the Drake Passage and the Beagle Channel; all three of them have serious dangers ranging from shallow waters and narrow passages, to icebergs and unpredictable weather. Finally, the Northwest Passage, sailing through the Bering Straight, around Alaska and along Canada's northern coastline... poor weather conditions again, and the Arctic Archipelago provides what might as well be a maze of islands to try and sail through... and they have to make their own charts as they go along.

Now technically, they could sail westward from Japan, around the tip of Africa (the Suez Canal is as likely to be unusable as Panama), and cross the Atlantic to reach America... but that has similar problems with weather as the southern South America route, and the distance and travel time would be... long as fuck.

 

Well, really what'd probably be best is to bring a large enough group of people to Panama. And if the canal is totally unusable for taking a ship to the Atlantic, then trying to move the ship to the other side by way of a land route or building a new ship or boats on the other side of a simpler make to then head on up to America.

Though considering their big ship was actually able to get around Brazil from around the southern tip of South America...don't know which way admittedly, if I remember right. Then it is possible to do that with the ship they've made.

 

I'm sorry but I can't take this manga seriously with the absolutely ridiculous hairstyle the MC is rocking.

 

My issues are a bit different, but I've grown to accept that the characters here have the same power as the Yankee in King Arthur's court to magick up technology more or less out of nowhere, just in shonen flavour. That makes it easier to swallow some of the nonsense and appreciate some of the ballsier plot points, including the latest one.

 

The biggest problem with the Panama Cannel is that it uses a series of locks to raise and lower the ships over a small mountain range. I just assume that it would be fully unusable. The Northwest passage is nigh un-sailable even with modern shipbuilding. I've only heard of special built research ships being able to make it and even then it is absurdly dangerous.

I was thinking about them going around South America, but I did not realize that way was quite so dangerous.

Of course, you do not "need" to use the former cannel. If you designed a ship that could be disassembled and carried over land. It would be a pain, but doable.

On a side note. If they do go via the West Coast, they should still find the perfectly preserved remains of Las Vegas. Might be one of a small handful of cities that would survive thousands of years due to the dry desert. It would be an Archeologist dream. Gold, Platinum, Silver, all rip for the up-recycling. Speaking of Gold.

Do Gold records actually have the music on them? When a performer gets Gold for selling enough records I mean. I assume not, they probably are not real Gold anyway (or are plated).

 

There've been a few ships that've made the passage carrying cargo (and at least one cruise ship), but they also had hulls that were specifically designed with arctic conditions in mind, had experienced crews... and could call on the Canadian and American Coast Guards if they ran into trouble.

According to this, most gold or platinum records are just regular vinyl that's been dipped in mettalic paint, and should play fine.

 

That is disappointing, but not surprising (Gold is expensive). Gold is inert so if those records were actually made out of Gold they would still exist 3700 years later. The Smithsonian has the back-up copy of the Gold record that they put onto the Voyager space probe, so there is a good chance that would still exist and be playable.