[UTGM] Foolish Mega-engineerng Projects

[roseembolism]

As part of my worldbuilding project, I'm wondering what sort of megaengineering projects might be undertaken by people with far more power than common sense.

I'm not talking about "small scale" projects, like flooding the Dead Sea, or a sea-level canal through Panama. I'm thinking of insane projects at the scale of Atlantropa, or even larger.  Like deciding to lower the sea level by 100 meters to get more land area (and facilitate paleolithic archeology), or focusing statites on Antarctica to melt the ice pack. Or both at the same time, leading to a lot of engineers shouting at each other. these are the sort of things done by people who have the ability and attitude to shrug and say "Oh we'll just clone or build robot duplicates of any species that go extinct, and we'll adjust the climate manually if we have to".

Any ideas?

Under the Green Moon Info:
A big part of this exercise is thinking about some of the weird things that the Precursor civilizations may have done in the 30,000 years that separate Now from the time of UTGM.  The world in the game is currently in a low-energy, low-impact mode, but that hasn't always been the case.  The presence of humanity (in the broad sense) is everywhere in UTGM: aside from tons of artifacts (you can't go anywhere without stumbling over some old ruin), large areas of the world have been shaped.

Possibilities:

The World Tree: one entire subcontinent has been overrun by a gigantic plant that is it's own ecosystem.  Aside from having a huge diversity of forms that mimic ecological layers, at periodic intervals immense trees that would make Miyazaki blush have sprung up, growing up to a kilometer high.  The peoples that live in this artificial biome can get all of their needs met by this single uber-plant, and have a surprisingly sophisticated civilization.

The Hex River: on a vast plain, someone took a river and it's tributaries, and altered it into a series of canals that form a hex grid over hundreds of square miles.  the project was one of brute-force engineering, as the canals sheer through hills, escarpments and other river systems to form the grid.  Why?  Nobody knows.

The Desert of Pits:  So exactly why did some Precurser create a grid of 512 holes, each a half kilometer wide, and two kilometers deep, reinforced by super-strong concrete?  It's an immense feat, and there's no sign of why it was done.

The Moon:  There's a reason it's green, and has a blue rim around it.  On clear nights one can even see lights on the unlighted portion. 

Comments

[baronlaw.livejournal.com]

Ring around the Earth, geosynchronous Satellites with Space Elevators. Why blast into space on a messy smelly rocket when you can ride an elevator and then catch a shuttle to the Moon.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's a good one. As part of my background I note that the Earth itself is surrounded by "the Golden Mountain", a cloud of orbiting "stuff" that at twilight takes the appearance of a huge golden arc.

And of course Astrology and related sarts are completely different, because few people even know about the "fixed" stars. To most people "stars" are the countless wandering lights that traverse a near-infinite number of orbits.

The planets are still known of course, since they are brighter. And the blue of Mars and Venus are highly noticable....

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely a fan of this idea, especially if parts of the ring are still inhabited and other parts appear deserted and are known to contain various obscure dangers, including ancient robots going about their business and strenuously objecting to anyone interfering with them.