On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 4:31 PM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > Douglas replied to David: >> I worked for US Customs and can say that there is more to it than just >> fighting between governments. One really important part of it is >> stopping the transportation of pests from one area to another. This is >> very important to a lot of people. Examples of this failing in the USA >> include, rats, kudzu, dandy lions, starlings, cats, dogs, and a big >> bunch of bugs like Japanese beetles, fire ants and tent caterpillars >> and a bunch of diseases too. I would think any ecosystem with pockets >> of isolation would have this problem. > > Once you have multiple planets and their ecosystems to worry > about, little differences might pale, or the need for strict > controls to stop alien pests effectively means controls for > any pests. If your ecosystem is messed up by Terrans and > their crops, who cares about more contamination? But if you > took painstaking steps to prevent Terran invaders, would > you want that ruined by intercontinental invaders? Could go > either way. > > Onno
Hawaii is a great example. It now has all sorts of pests that humans simply don't like. A good example is that there are a ton of types of mosquitoes. Pre-white man there were no mosquitoes on the islands. If I had a world that was nice and free of mosquitoes, ticks and tick diseases, bedbugs, vampire bats, flees, rats, fire and other ants, spiders, bad snakes, not to mention a lot of other diseases and parasites, I for one would want to keep it that way. At tech 10, it might just be possible. If we are talking ice world then I still would want to keep the bed bugs out! :-) -- Douglas E Knapp Why do we live? _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
