ottarrus
Emperor Mongoose
Am I the only one who's looked at the Aging table and thought, 'Wait a frikkin' minute'?
With improvements in exercise, diet and environment, human lifespans could reach a solid 80+ years old. There is active discussions about raising the mandatory retirement age before pension benefits begin in several countries. Now, yes, I know that I'm speaking largely about the Middle Class [and up] of G8 nations. I'm fully aware of the real life issues about all this... feeding a world of 10 billion people, all of whom might live to 90 years old and so forth. But I'm strictly considering this in a Traveller Third Imperium sense.
Consider all the diseases that we've developed vaccines for in the last 100 years. Plagues that could and did wipe out entire regions of the world have been faced and, if not defeated, then effective treatments have been developed. For crying out loud, when HIV erupted on the scene scientists largely agreed that anti-virals were out-and-out impossible to develop. Now, 40 years later, they're not only out there but some actual cures for viral infections have been developed [Hepatitis C, for example]. And all this way down here at a mature TL8-early TL9.
Now, without getting all Altered Carbon with it and putting effective immortality in play, I imagine that high-TL health care would push the age where someone is physically capable with good healing ability to way beyond age 36 and the 'roll for decrepitude table'. I can imagine an Imperial citizen on a world of TL 9+ to have access to very good health care, and if a character does several terms in the very high TL services [Navy, Marines, Scouts] that would go up to excellent.
I also imagine that if one does choose to bump the age at which Aging Rolls are required, you'd have to raise the number of terms for retirement and probably the rate of promotions in services as well.
These are just my beginning mental rummagings on this. Anybody else think about it?
With improvements in exercise, diet and environment, human lifespans could reach a solid 80+ years old. There is active discussions about raising the mandatory retirement age before pension benefits begin in several countries. Now, yes, I know that I'm speaking largely about the Middle Class [and up] of G8 nations. I'm fully aware of the real life issues about all this... feeding a world of 10 billion people, all of whom might live to 90 years old and so forth. But I'm strictly considering this in a Traveller Third Imperium sense.
Consider all the diseases that we've developed vaccines for in the last 100 years. Plagues that could and did wipe out entire regions of the world have been faced and, if not defeated, then effective treatments have been developed. For crying out loud, when HIV erupted on the scene scientists largely agreed that anti-virals were out-and-out impossible to develop. Now, 40 years later, they're not only out there but some actual cures for viral infections have been developed [Hepatitis C, for example]. And all this way down here at a mature TL8-early TL9.
Now, without getting all Altered Carbon with it and putting effective immortality in play, I imagine that high-TL health care would push the age where someone is physically capable with good healing ability to way beyond age 36 and the 'roll for decrepitude table'. I can imagine an Imperial citizen on a world of TL 9+ to have access to very good health care, and if a character does several terms in the very high TL services [Navy, Marines, Scouts] that would go up to excellent.
I also imagine that if one does choose to bump the age at which Aging Rolls are required, you'd have to raise the number of terms for retirement and probably the rate of promotions in services as well.
These are just my beginning mental rummagings on this. Anybody else think about it?