A few people know I have been hired to write an adventure for the Serenity RPG, and I thought I would through this into the hivemind to see if anyone has any answers for something my editor and I are struggling over. While this is a background detail, it dovetails into one of the plot points that drives the scenario.

When people fled Earth-That-Was for the 'Verse was it ever explicitly stated anywhere whether Earth was completely abandoned or if there was a sizable percentage of the population left behind? Looking Earth's population curves (we are looking at least 10 billion by 2100) and based on the line Earth was 'used up' I was thinking there just wasn't resources to do a complete excavation, and there were people left behind. But other than one shot in Serenity (it didn't look like there were tens of thousands of ships leaving Earth-That-Was) I can't find anything substantive.

Any help would be appreciated.

I think that they said that Earth was abandoned. . . but I always thought that there had to be people left behind. (In my head - that's where the Fray-verse and the FF-verse connect.)

I figure Earth's evacuation was as successful as any. In other words: a few hold-outs could not be moved, many perished.

They never explicitly stated that Earth was completely abandoned. It was kinda implied in the cheesy opening voice-overs both for the series and the movie.

There is this translation of the shadow show going on in the background when Mal meets the Bad Guy in "Heart of Gold":

CIRCULAR SHADOW representing Earth-That-Was fills the frame.

NARRATOR (Chinese): Little by little, the tribes used the Earth up. Barren, she had little left to offer them.

Silhouetted shapes appear. SPACESHIPS. They radiate out from the shadow sphere, scatter in all directions. Leave it behind.

NARRATOR: Swollen of her, they left. And for the first time since the Great Burn that birthed her, she was alone.

The ships are gone now. A wisp of SMOKE wafts off the sphere, creates a snake of shadow.

NARRATOR: The Earth cried, and terrible were her tears. Acid and caustic, the spawn of the tribes' rape. They flowed a century.

The smoke INTENSIFIES, becomes shadowy FLAME.

NARRATOR: The fire that finally came did so as a blessing.

The sphere SMOLDERS now, bits of it breaking up and disintegrating under the intense heat.

Which strongly implies either a) complete evacuation or b) anybody left behind is dead dead deadski now.

Oh yeah, the implication was that everyone that didn't make it on a Ark was basically left to die. But EtW biosphere death does help explain why the Exodus was an event rather than a process, because after the 'fire', there was no point on going back and there were no Arks trickling into the Verse decades later.

Hrm, that also brings up the idea if spaceships are leaving in all directions, I wonder if the 'Verse was the only destination. If several different solar clusters in addition the 'Verse received different Exodus fleets.

Reminds me that back in the day, one of my thoughts was that the Reavers were going to end up being the refugees from Earth that left too late and were pissed on being left behind. The whole idea of link the Reavers with the Indians, Indians being the original inhabitants of the West and the Rievers (if from Earth) being the humanity's home.

Hrm, that also brings up the idea if spaceships are leaving in all directions, I wonder if the 'Verse was the only destination. If several different solar clusters in addition the 'Verse received different Exodus fleets.

Where did you get the idea they left in all directions?

Not being snotty, I'm curious.

Seems to me...and I am having the gorramest difficulty finding a transcript of that horrible voice-over they tacked on to some of the air eps...that the implication was "We were dying, we found *a* system with hundreds of planets and moons and whatnot, we ditched Earth and headed for it." But I can't nail that down.

*My* question was always "Why go to a whole other system? We got dozens upon dozens of moons and whatnot right here in ol' Sol System. Mars, anyone?" But that's probably just me.

I think the idea that everything was taking place in a single system was in Serenity (the movie).

I think the idea that everything was taking place in a single system was in Serenity (the movie).

I actually got that feeling from the show, too. Damn it, I know I can find that fucking thing...

Where did you get the idea they left in all directions?

SPACESHIPS. They radiate out from the shadow sphere, scatter in all directions. Leave it behind.

*My* question was always "Why go to a whole other system? We got dozens upon dozens of moons and whatnot right here in ol' Sol System. Mars, anyone?" But that's probably just me.

Mars is the only real terraforming candidate in Sol. Beyond the asteroid belt, solar luminescence is far too low to support plant life, and Mercury is way too close. Also you would need to accelerate Mercury's rotation without breaking it apart so there is planetary temp evens out a bit. Venus would be a good candidate if only it had a magnetic field. The planet is very close, it has an atmosphere, lots of free CO2, but without the magnetosphere free O2 gets blown into the solar winds way too fast, which explains why there is no free H20 on Venus. And to get a magnetosphere you need a rotating liquid iron core, not something that is easy to whip up.

As for the 'Verse, it is my understanding is that is a tight cluster of solar systems, making traveling between systems of the Verse possible though long (in the month long trip category, very pioneer/settler trail analogy) but the trip to system outside the 'Verse across the Deep Black would take years, which is beyond most ship's endurance.

DXMachina was the first to bring it up, in the Buffista archives, now, in the first Firefly thread [link] AKA Firefly 1: Josssssss Innnnn Spaaaaaaaaaaace! :

DXMachina - Sep 21, 2002 10:02:41 pm PDT #533 of 10011

"After the Earth was used up, we found *a* new solar system, and *hundreds* of new earths were terraformed and colonized."