How much do you know about diesel engines? I didn't know much at all before the research for this bit. XD
BLOOD AND DIESEL: THE DIESEL ENGINE
The first successful diesel engine was operated in 1897 by Rudolf Diesel, a German born to an expatriate family living in Paris. The “City of Lights” sparked the young Diesel’s imagination and his abilities as an engineer made him lauded by the intelligentsia of the continent.
Perhaps the most notable fact about Rudolf Diesel other than his self-named invention is that he was a dedicated social reformer. Having spent his life surrounded by the results of the “steam revolution,” Diesel also saw the damage done to individuals, families, and nature itself by the coal-burning steam piston engine. Steam engines were loud, dirty, heavy, and dangerous; the combination of heat and pressure made them liable to explode, and the exposed pistons—necessary for maintenance—made them quite capable of ripping off fingers or even limbs. He also viewed the industrial revolution as the end of individual effort, a time in which the work of geniuses was going to be subsumed into the vast emptiness of mass production.
Rudolf Diesel envisioned a safer engine, working at a lower temperature with a better thermal efficiency and less need for either open flame or gouts of boiling water. The diesel engine creates its initial thermal reaction by compressing the fuel until ignition occurs. At the end of the great industrial revolution, efficiency was everything; while few people cared about Diesel’s politics, the fact that he had made an engine with significantly greater efficiency at far lower cost.
The only hitch was the fuel source. Diesel experimented with coal dust, whale oil, and vegetable oils as fuel, but he was convinced that a better source existed. By the time of the 1911 International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden, he had found it in the form of distilled petroleum. The direct distillation, which he called simply “diesel fuel,” had a few issues, including turning into nonfunctional gel at temperatures below freezing, but the fair-runners were so impressed that dozens of nations were soon ordering diesel engines for their ships, airships, trains, and automobiles. Indeed, the diesel engine may well have made the widespread adoption of the automobile possible at all.
Rudolf did not live long enough to enjoy his success, unfortunately. Only two years after the “diesel revolution,” he was on a cruise in the Atlantic and disappeared from his ship. Ten days later, his body was recovered from the ocean, identifiable only from his personal effects. Though the death was ruled a suicide, more than a few suspected that the good professor might object to some of the uses that European powers were planning on for his wondrous device. Less than a year after Diesel’s mysterious death, the Central Powers rolled out their new war machine on the world—and at the heart of that war machine were diesel-powered tanks, diesel-powered zeppelins, and diesel-powered warstriders.
The horrors of the Great War were made significantly more far-reaching by the addition of the powerful diesel engine. When the war ended in 1918, few nations looked forward to the possibility of another one. Unfortunately, the shift to petroleum as the staple fuel diminished the worldwide reliance on coal and instead made resource-hungry nations seek out more sources of readily-available oil. The Middle Eastern nations have grown wealthy from the trade in “black gold,” though many have become little more than puppets for Western powers.
Whether for good or ill, the modern world could not exist without the Diesel Engine.
A role-playing and writing blog.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Blood and Diesel
Better late than never... =3
BLOOD AND DIESEL: INTRO
It is an age of vastness.
This is the age of the zeppelin, the ocean-liner, the continental railway, and the skyscraper. It is the age of multinational corporations, mass political movements, and wars that span the world. Man is dwarfed by his creations, and the once-solid things of daily life are subsumed into abstractions.
The year is 1939, but not the one that you know.
It has been over two decades since the devastating end of the Great War. An entire generation was lost to tanks, machine-guns, poison gas, warstriders, bombs, and flame-projectors. In Europe, in Asia, in Africa, the war raged. Only the Americas were left untouched by battle, though it still cost the young nation many tens of thousands of lives. Germany and its Central Powers were crushed beneath the weight of debt and remuneration, while a new era of peace and prosperity was supposed to dawn for the Allied Powers.
The expected peace came at a high price, and the prosperity it bought was limited at best. Weary from war and battle, nations turned their eyes inward and devoted their resources to self-improvement. These selfish impulses ultimately led to the Great Collapse of 1929, when the world’s economy—as delicately linked as its political alliances, but not as obviously—came crashing down. Millions are unemployed worldwide, whole nations are impoverished, and radical political elements are gaining greater traction among the disaffected populace.
Nature itself rebels against the wounded nation—in the American West, over-farming and high-industry radium growth techniques have stripped the soil from the ground and sent it flying into the atmosphere. Terrible radioactive dust storms sweep the Midwest, driving towns and communities before it to avoid the killing winds, the cancer-ridden dirt, and the monsters that rise up from the few survivors of the storms. Diesel trucks have become the lifeblood of the refugees, moving from camp to camp and town to town, looking for whatever work they can find.
Life in the big cities has become an urban hell, where the strong and the rich prey on the weak and the poor. The elite live in buildings that reach up to scrape the sky, while the poor live in overcrowded, crumbling tenements within a stone’s throw of brass-gilded zeppelin stations and moving-picture theaters. Gangs begin to fill the poverty-stricken neighborhoods, looking to find ways to survive cheek-and-jowl with real bad guys: bootleggers, white slavers, bank robbers, and the leg-breakers of organized crime.
For a decade, the world’s people have languished in poverty while their governments increasingly stockpile weapons for a great second world war that may never come. Though the German sabers have rattled menacingly since the ascension of the People’s Socialist Party in 1933, the “Nazis” have yet to expand beyond their borders—though those borders are now far more secure than any time in the last thirty years. Germany has made prosperity its watchword as it rebuilds its cities, invites in wealthy foreign tourists… and quietly “cleanses” the country of its “impure elements.”
This is a world where the zeppelin is the king of the air, the train rules the long, empty spaces between the American coasts, and the diesel engine rules the road. Atomic power has been harnessed but promises only mutually assured destruction. The promises of science have turned to ashes in the mouths of those that spoke them, and the price of freedom may wind up being too high for any nation to pay.
This is the world of Blood and Diesel, an alternate-history dieselpunk game.
BLOOD AND DIESEL: INTRO
It is an age of vastness.
This is the age of the zeppelin, the ocean-liner, the continental railway, and the skyscraper. It is the age of multinational corporations, mass political movements, and wars that span the world. Man is dwarfed by his creations, and the once-solid things of daily life are subsumed into abstractions.
The year is 1939, but not the one that you know.
It has been over two decades since the devastating end of the Great War. An entire generation was lost to tanks, machine-guns, poison gas, warstriders, bombs, and flame-projectors. In Europe, in Asia, in Africa, the war raged. Only the Americas were left untouched by battle, though it still cost the young nation many tens of thousands of lives. Germany and its Central Powers were crushed beneath the weight of debt and remuneration, while a new era of peace and prosperity was supposed to dawn for the Allied Powers.
The expected peace came at a high price, and the prosperity it bought was limited at best. Weary from war and battle, nations turned their eyes inward and devoted their resources to self-improvement. These selfish impulses ultimately led to the Great Collapse of 1929, when the world’s economy—as delicately linked as its political alliances, but not as obviously—came crashing down. Millions are unemployed worldwide, whole nations are impoverished, and radical political elements are gaining greater traction among the disaffected populace.
Nature itself rebels against the wounded nation—in the American West, over-farming and high-industry radium growth techniques have stripped the soil from the ground and sent it flying into the atmosphere. Terrible radioactive dust storms sweep the Midwest, driving towns and communities before it to avoid the killing winds, the cancer-ridden dirt, and the monsters that rise up from the few survivors of the storms. Diesel trucks have become the lifeblood of the refugees, moving from camp to camp and town to town, looking for whatever work they can find.
Life in the big cities has become an urban hell, where the strong and the rich prey on the weak and the poor. The elite live in buildings that reach up to scrape the sky, while the poor live in overcrowded, crumbling tenements within a stone’s throw of brass-gilded zeppelin stations and moving-picture theaters. Gangs begin to fill the poverty-stricken neighborhoods, looking to find ways to survive cheek-and-jowl with real bad guys: bootleggers, white slavers, bank robbers, and the leg-breakers of organized crime.
For a decade, the world’s people have languished in poverty while their governments increasingly stockpile weapons for a great second world war that may never come. Though the German sabers have rattled menacingly since the ascension of the People’s Socialist Party in 1933, the “Nazis” have yet to expand beyond their borders—though those borders are now far more secure than any time in the last thirty years. Germany has made prosperity its watchword as it rebuilds its cities, invites in wealthy foreign tourists… and quietly “cleanses” the country of its “impure elements.”
This is a world where the zeppelin is the king of the air, the train rules the long, empty spaces between the American coasts, and the diesel engine rules the road. Atomic power has been harnessed but promises only mutually assured destruction. The promises of science have turned to ashes in the mouths of those that spoke them, and the price of freedom may wind up being too high for any nation to pay.
This is the world of Blood and Diesel, an alternate-history dieselpunk game.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)