Engineering Mortal Engines: Debunking the Traction City
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- čas přidán 26. 06. 2024
- Imagine if you took the city of London, stacked it like a layer cake, put the whole thing on wheels and drove it around Europe.
That’s the premise of Mortal Engines, a steampunk novel by Philip Reeve that tells the story of a distant future where gigantic mobile “traction” cities roam the Earth, preying on one another in what's known as Municipal Darwinism.
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0:53 • Part 1 - How big and heavy is the traction City of London?
4:06 • Part 2 - How much energy would it take to move it?
6:01 • Part 3 - How many people could London accommodate?
8:23 • Part 4 - What would a realistic traction city look like?
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#Mortal_Engines - Věda a technologie
If London was so big imagine what Tokyo or Shanghai would look like in this film...
London wasn’t the biggest predator but it became the most powerful after it got medusa
tokyo and shanghai dont exist but in the book, london actually destroys the largest city in the world with medusa, which is a german city named pazerstadt-bayreuth and it was actually said to be big enough to eat london. contrary to the apex predator london is depicted to be in the movie, in the books, london was a mid-tier city that couldnt survive in the great hunting ground and medusa was supposed to be the thing that made london "great again"
@Feverflower wasnt manchester 15 tiers?
@@petesthename1588 and then it exploded lol
@@oscargurdian9389 the largest city was motoropolis at 16 tiers but it ran out of fuel and was dismantled between several other cities
While mobilizing a city like London or larger wouldn’t be possible, you could theoretically mobilize a small town like Salthook. It’s considerably smaller, and only runs at about 120MPH which, if the driving conditions were good enough, would have allowed it to outspeed London, if only by a little. If you were to ditch the mining equipment, that would also take off considerable weight.
Edit: plus it’s mostly metal and wood so the vibrations would likely not be as taxing on it as it would on stone structures
i mean,
they hold the medusa weapon in the cathedral so...
they kinda DO need it.
@Akin Khoo But the population of Shan guo was much more than london so shan guo suffered a lot more than London
Am I the only one who paused the video to read the assumptions list?
Yes.
It just got crazier as it got on
I read it too.
Yeah me too.
Crazy right especially the last few ones mentioning chuck Norris
I’m a huge fan of the books and while the film was mediocre London was certainly a visual feast, and I definitely loved this video, to give some context if your interested London was rebuilt by a band of motorised nomads called the Movement officially as a way of escaping encroaching ice caps but unofficially as a weapon of war against other Nomad Empires, it was actually only about a third complete when it was forced to move off. Despite enjoying the maths and engineering greatly I’ll be a bit of a book nerd and throw a wrench in the gears but London’s engines aren’t actually steam, they’re Stirling or operate on that principle, how do you think this would affect the mathematics of the city?
Secondly cities aren’t just occupying Europe, raft cities like Brighton and Ice cities like Arkangel which run on huge skates exist too, do you think these could be considered more practical ignoring the already blatant impracticalities?
I loved the movie XD
@@drakeredwingofficial Im almost finished with the second audiobook. Its awesome. It made more sense after the second book. Im looking into the prequals. I like the premise and I dont care its not possible. Municipal Darwinism is fun and I hope for a game where we build a town to a major traction city, or antitraction.
Edit: The prequels are illuminating the traction cities were created by mutants. Extremely smart, cruel, and with a superiority complex. They rarely procreated. They were the types of mad scientists whose genius was closer to madness.
@@ClarinetInThePark Yeah I like both the movie and the books--I'm almost done with the main series and then I plan to move on to His Dark Materials after I finish the main four
@@drakeredwingofficial What has His Dark Materials got to do with Mortal Engines?
@@bilbobaggins5938 nothing really, but they're both dieselpunk, so I think I'll enjoy it
"Help I'm a prisoner being forced to write funny lists!"
Me: you're assumptions are quite funny
THAT BURN AT THE END 😂😂 "Certainly better than losing $100 million on one that doesn't [work]"
A little tip, It states in the prequel books that, London uses (I believe) 4 extremely large external combustion engines.
Oof I hated those ones
@Mr Purple The sterling engine is an external combustion engine.
For those who read books and have some speculations about the engineerings factors, I recommend to read the Illustrated World of Mortal Engines, its accessable in pdf online.. There are a lot of concepts, mortal engines art and ideas which are described in books but not to be seen in movie, along with engineering descriptions.. there are a few very clarifying tales about the world in which mortal engines takes place.
I wish they did more videos like this. I hope you do some engineering analysis of Firenation technology from avatar the last airbender. The drill comes to mind.
Exotic technology is a hallmark of the setting. We even see highly compact exotic energy generators still operating at the time of London's tractionisation in the prequel series. The protagonist there destroys one such thing explicitly out of fear of how much more powerful it would make the new London. The only hint as to what these are is a scientist calling them molecular clockwork but given the insane energy weapons and the fact that someone like Shrike's battery still hasn't died, it seems like a reasonable guess.
All the higher level apprentices have seen this video and it's gone down well. One of the main problems today is that young engineers are not used to estimating what the answer should roughly be before they calculate something and so the answers are often ridiculous. This video is a good example of how this can be done even for something quite outlandish! It looks about right too - the total power required for your first moving city is roughly the same as the total power that can be transmitted by the UK national grid - which seems reasonable.
With the right bearings, you could power it with a midget on a kid's single-speed bicycle.
That is not the case.. The thing about moving really big objects is the economy of scale. I seen a lot of people just calculating it linery, and that is what you would end up with. But with economy of scale, that would not be how it worked.
Is Traction London just the City of London or all of London? Yes there are two Londons.
Aircraft carriers are built very specific for that purpose, lots of extra weight not needed, im sure some clever engerneering firm could do a more specific design for a traction city, think about alloy frames used to span bridges wrapped in fiber fabric and thickly sprayed with cnt foams
30% for a diesel engine? Wow, that is really bad. Modern ship diesels is over 50%
Even though a traction city is definitely an odd way to go if the mortal engines scenario was real , it's pretty cool , your solution is awesome and I thankyou for spending the time on this , now where are my spanners ? Going to start basic first put a mobile home on a tank ..........
You can generate energy, just have to do it fast. Also, the gears may heat
There is a few assumptions here that is stight down wrong, or in some cases implied to be wrong.
That the cities was mobilized during the steam age. Reading the book makes it clear that its not the case.
That the stone buildings is actually stone building. Its suggested that is not the case in the book. Also looking at the time frame of when the city was mobilized, that would make it very likely that its just a very thin fasad of stone at the most. The movie plays out millennium into the future. The existence of aluminum is clearly stated in the book.
That static friction is not a thing. The problem with the crawler example that the crawler always move under static friction not dynamic. It simply move that slow. And, well its built so it can´t move any faster. But if you make something that could move faster, and get into the dynamic friction range, the power needed would actually decrease, and do so quite significantly.
There is nothing suggest that the main power for the cities is carbon based. While the furnace to melt stuff is suggested to be, the power is not (at least not in the book). The lack of a chimney and the simply fact they are not just ripping up treas to burn them suggest its not. Some kind of nuclear or other non chemical power is certainly a possibility. In the beginning of the first book they talk about running out of fuel when going in chaise mode. Suggesting that there might be an auxiliary power unit burning carbon, but the primary is not. The second mobile London in the 4:th book is clearly stated to run on a non carbon diet only.
Fascinating!!!!! (Even though most of what you said was wayyyyyyy over my head!!!)
Nice Video! So in summary such a traction city may be possible to build but producing enough power to move it, is the big issue.
So the weight calculation based on Chicago in 1860 would be wrong, since Chicago in that day would be constructed mainly of wood, until the great Chicao fire of 1871. London is constructed of mainly steel and iron. However, if the creators of this video would simply have referenced the Hollywood Reporter from Dec. of 2018 in which they interviewed the design team who made the movie, the city of London is estimated at 50 million tons, cover 686 million cubic meters, and moves at 300 kmh.
It says in the book many homes in London were constructed of paper
Well technically, in the book, everything was made of paper
At the start of the movie, London TC is something like 5 miles and closing from the Bavarian TC. It takes about 2 minutes to capture the smaller city. So all that mass is moving at 150 mph?
Nice. Please make more videos.
What about the economic weight of brexit tho
I mean just have all these stone building on tracks shaking all day long...
While steampunk it’s still post apocalyptic far-future, so technology would be much better than Victorian
Pause at 1:32. Plenty of Chuck Norris jokes!
What about smaller cities like Salzhaken and Speedwell? How Feasible are those?
You mentioned Sheffield. For somebody who comes from steel city that’s awesome. Would be even more awesome if you had a working men’s club on your wheeled city. And as Sheffield FC is the first football club ever, you need a football club.
You can get population of 1901 London by linking together or conjoining or combining these aircraft carrier size traction cities into a larger city that is longer and wider rather than piled up.
That would make this larger traction city...1997.1 meters long and 153.6 meters wide, or 1331.4 meters long and 230.4 meters wide.
I don't know if that would impact the weight of this longer and wider city...
I got an idea on humungus floating cities fron building a crappy square lego boat that had the messy random bricks but I had alot of fun playin with it now I want to try and draw it.
What if the traction cities ran on nuclear fusion reactors? Remember this is in the really distant future, where they have some really advanced tech left over from before the sixty minute war, so it's definitely not out of the realm of possibility that they've come up with a kind of engine that can produce the needed energy with minimal fuel...
I doubt any reactors would survive the war, after all, infrastructure and power stations are quite an obvious target, and even if they survive the initial attack they'd probably be destroyed by meltdowns after getting abandoned.
@@henrywong7607 Nuclear Fusion Reactored wouldn't go into meltdown, that is nuclear fission. Nuclear Fusion would just go cold and shut down. at the worst-case containment would breach, you'd have a jet of instantly hot plasma then nothing else. as the conditions to make that instantly hot plasma just lost power and contentment
What about the huge clouds of smoke from the engines.
London could be powered by high altitude air turbines that pump air for a pneumatic generator at deck and concentrated solar thermal. Helluva lot of surface area on those cities. They have airships and glass so its doable.
2:55 = you need to divided 73 megatons by 3 = 24 megatons
Chuck Norris is a mortal engine? I knew it!
Traction cities will not work but powered, floating, nuclear, cities are very possible. There are already floating, nuclear, military bases.
London wasn't the biggest city with its 9 tiers. I forgot the name of the city from the forth book but I think it had 14 or 15 tiers
@Mr Purple your right, sorry
I think the city was Manchester
Karol Krowicki yeah Manchester was at the top of the food chain
Jack Foley why was manchester bigger than london?
@@oscargurdian9389 Because it just was.
The thermal efficiency of diesel engines is over 50% and could be up to 70% - I am a former technical writer for MAN Diesel. (reference the comment about 4:45)
Further, the film clearly shows that the width of the city was at least double the height - meaning it is double the width of your example.
Yea.. its kind of embarrassing when a engineer claim that a diesel is 30%
Imagine cooling 700MWs of heat plus auxiliary systems. You need to carry lake of water with you. It is not possible to make carrier on wheels.
Imagine New York City as a Traction City
Or Mexico City or Sao Paolo, Brazil
New York city and London are almost the same size. London is just a lite larger.
Unfortunately in the setting New York City would have been destroyed in the sixty minute war as was most of the rest of the continental USA. Though there are a few american cities like Anchorage in the books
i don't think it really needs debunking,
obviously it is incredibly unrealistic, but its a hella-fun idea for fiction :D
Can I live on London and it is a good movie
Hey u might not see this but could you possibly do a video about snowpiercer
I don't understand it.
It's a postapocalytic scenario and oil,/ diesel and other fuel is very rare so it's a very high consuming energy. To move forward .
I mean with the fuel they use to move 10meters is enormous they could use this energy in the city for transportation and run generators for a long time
the lore explains that the cities mobalised right after the 60 minute war becasue they had to escape changing weather caused by the nuclear atmosphere. Then the moving cities worked out that they could hunt other cities as a power source.
And then they eat them and break the prey for fuel, allowing them to move more, to eat more, to move more, etc. It's an endless loop, but what happens when the fuel is all eaten? (Moving the earth itself afterwards seems like a useful idea, if those people really want to move forward all the time. But the earth has settled down, if it weren't for the Scriven Movement invading London, traction cities would never really exist.
Even today's (Ancients') cars and trains are thought of as hybrid settlements, both static and moving. So it did not take much to reinvent the wheel, motorise it and get moving again, this time, for your home itself!
Fuel isn’t rare in the setting at all, just because its a post-apocalypse doesn’t mean that fuel is rare. The ‘apocalypse’ in the setting is the ‘sixty minute war’ in which powerful energy weapons mounted on satellites end up destroying much of the earths surface and in particular cause massive damage to the earths crust, resulting in lots of earthquakes that make static settlements much riskier affairs(though by the time of the book series/movie the earth has recovered and static settlements once again make sense, though mobile cities are what stops static settlements coming back in force since the mobile cities both ruin the ground for farming and directly attack static settlements as easy prey.
1:30 there is a sentece where there stand that it is a prisoner that write all the sentece
Assuming steampunk here is a mistake. This "civilisation" is what remains after our own, or a slightly more advanced version of our own, collapsed. So it's pretty safe to assume they have both regressed to more primitive stuff AND kept some of the advancements, even though they likely don't remember how they even work. Valentine recognizes a "fusion cell" or whatever, which means they did have fusion at some point. So it's not too far fetched to think the weight might be lower than expected (light and tough alloys instead of just iron), or the engines / power plants more efficient that initially thought.
But even if we halve the weight and double the efficiency, the very idea of moving cities burning enormous amounts of fuel, whatever fuel that may be, to capture other cities for fuel, is ridiculous. Not to mention the fact they add the captured city's population to their own, which means the need for more food, water, and ressources in general. This thing is basically an allegory of capitalism : it's a big dumb suicidal and extremely inefficient way of life, but they're doing it anyway.
It's not a coincidence that the Thatcher is the deified patron of unrestrained Municipal Darwinism.
There is no way whatsoever London could exist in an even close to realistic world.
Why is it that people say wheels when London is on tracks
To answer every question
*YES BUT ACTUALLY NO*
Its a Frigging Movie Dude.
Can someone tell me what it says in the video? I am a Spanish speaker and I would like to know what it says, I would appreciate it very much :'>.
click the settings icon in the bottom right and go to subtitles > auto translate, then select your language.
One day I will build a motel
engine
I'm going to need a really big hammer
The units are messed up, you mixed up the energy needed to accelerate with energy needed to move, so to sustain movement of thing already moving. By your narrationa and numbers you should say It takes 9,7 gigajoules to accelerate by 1 m/s (without any friction), moving by 1 meter is whole different calculation depending on friction, so also on speed, surface type and drivetrain lossess, whole different thing.
The more realistic part of the movie was the floating 'town'/outpost...
London only 700 acres? 700 square miles actually. And St. Paul's and all other brick and stone buildings would collapse within minutes of the city's starting to move, since the vibration would be like an endless earthquake. A great series of novels, by the way, if one can suspend disbelief.
Hey John T. Shea - we assumed in our calculations an area of 2,153 acres (at 2:52).
And you're absolutely right, the vibrations would cause stone and brick structures to collapse in motion; it's something we discussed while writing on the topic but excluded in our final analysis because well, there'd be no traction city for us to analyze.
engineeringdotcom What he means is that you said that 2153 acres is “3 times the size of present day London” (which would make present day London 700 acres). You’re confusing the city of London (the city) with the “City of London” (a small district in the middle of the city). The city as a whole is more that 300 thousand acres or 700 square miles as he said.
If you see The Wandering Earth , in which people put hundreds of fusion engines on the Earth to push it out of solar system, because the sun is about to explode
Also known as: “We failed physics class: planet level edition”
Yes, but those crawlers are not fast enough to hunt down anything. They had a top speed of 3km/h.
Debunking science fiction is now a thing?
Why not we use nuclear power as an energy source in this?....please do answer this
Nuclear power isn't used because they don't have the tech to build nuclear power plants.
@@henrywong7607 I didn't mean nuclear plants...I spoke about the same mechanism of nuclear submarines....won't that same mechanism give us enough power to run this huge machine
@@sharunchristo8092 Nuclear submarines are powered using nuclear reactors. It's the same mechanism.
@@henrywong7607 yeah ....the thing I said was just an assumption or it's just an idea like why can't we use that as fuel ....may be not in that movie they did it.. ..but just an idea
@@sharunchristo8092 Oh, in that case then I agree with you. Nuclear power is probably the only plausible option.
it wouldn't work???? I can't believe it!!
But this is NOT Victorian England, this is during the future, about a thousand years into the future, havent you seen the movie?
Technology has gone backwards but apparently, the airships would impress by modern standards.
@@reverendbluejeans1748 Not really. At least acording to the book. It was sort of a new religion that stated that some technology was wichcraft and was baned. Like heaver than air flying... a ban that was removed in the 3:d book.
So it was not really that the tecnology didn´t exist, they just didn´t use it... While the motivation is.. well willy nilly... its needed to make the storry
Just use Minecraft slime blocks and pistons.
You cannot pass the shield wall never go to Shan guo
You are so smart!
Debunking fiction?
its realistic but nobody wants to do it right now
this concept really needs to be debunked?
This is a kids book, for like, idk, 3 year olds. Imagine if an adult read Dr. Seuss and then tried to figure out anti-gravity and quantum mechanics based on the engineering principles of green eggs and ham. In a post-apocalyptic world with virtually no resources let us build a massive mobile city that requires advanced heavy manufacturing, Giga-tons of refined metals and specialty alloys, and a power source that uses the entire petroleum refining capacity of a few countries.
More for young adults/teenagers, there is slavery, death, etc in the books, plenty of heavy stuff
Spoiler alert: it's fiction, not real, couldn't happen.
Is it really necessary to "debunk" a traction city. It just seems tedious and pedantic
Ewww London.
Lol federal trumpism