Rich

@jamesqf Well, there's nothing to indicate Hopeans are especially bred for longevity. I'm just going by the available information, which is that real world Earthlings who live to 110, 120, spend most of their lives being elderly. You are wrong as a matter of fact when you say the condition of being elderly shows up in the last decade or two of life.

@MichaelRichardson - not just active flora and fauna, but also what we're seeing here with the thawing permafrost on the tundra: diseases whose hosts went extinct may be reintroduced by other means. You've also got the problem that "successful" diseases are the ones which don't cause too much damage; but when they jump species they can be disastrous, i.e. unsuccessful. COVID-19 could well have been one of those: bats can survive with the virus - thrive, even - because they maintain a higher body temperature and sleep inverted. Humans, not so much.

@jamesqf "Much of what we associate with being elderly is really the result of inactivity &c." Okay that sounds a bit woo. Two extreme examples don't change the general condition of physical aging: its effects can be minimized and a positive outlook can be maintained, sure, but neither can alter the plain facts that wounds and fractures take longer to heal; eyesight and hearing diminish; teeth crack; reaction times lengthen; pulminory function is lessened; and so on. It's inevitable, unless you have some worldbuilding reason why not.

I think yuou mean infectious diseases, rather than illnesses. Couple of other points needing clarification. 1. They live about 6 decades longer than Earth humans, that sounds like they spend most of their lives being elderly. 2. What is "a year"? This matters because infectious disease cycles tend to follow the seasons. If Hope's year is shorter than a Terran year, then your isolation period may be shorter. If Hope's year is far longer, say 250 Terran years, then ... play with that.

@TeunVink You're technically correct - those people who carry such sensitive information into a hostile environment "do not exist". That body with the slightly greenish foam around the mouth? Just some hobo.

You're hung up on a narrow definition of the suffix -ism. I suggest you look that up in a reliable dictionary like Oxford. You can log into it with many library cards. oed.com/view/Entry/100006?rskey=BJtyFU&result=2#eid

Speaking from personal experience, the very last point is in the line before the Customs desk where the fruit-sniffing dogs find the bag you forgot you'd packed fruit into. Trust them, they're Good Boys! and they'll find it for you.

@AzorAhai Sure, with your "Do you have a citation for that?" and your "what sort of weird argument is that?" and your "Perhaps you linked the wrong article then" and your "So far you haven't shown that." Maybe live up to your own expectations before you go doling out advice!

@AzorAhai suit yourself, I said.

@AzorAhai AGAIN, this isn't up for debate. You asked for a reference, and that was simply one of many articles that can be found using pretty much any search engine. If you find your deeply-held personal opinions at odds with plain scientific fact, then perhaps it would be responsible to challenge yourself instead of holding onto long-discredited theory.

@AzorAhai Again, this isn't really what's up for debate here, but ... you are incorrect, because if you follow the references, yes it does support the argument (not mine) that diets-in-general are bad. That's aside from your inserting "some unbalanced diets" into your personal dislike of factual information, quite by definition, all weight-loss diets are unbalanced.

@AzorAhai That isn't really what's being debated here, but okay suit yourself. Here's one: sciencealert.com/… Eating less is only one variable in the equation - another is exercise, and the other is stress. Just as bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa are two sides of the same eating disorder coin, dieting and binging are the pre-clinical forms of the same disorders.

@AzorAhai Current epidemiology says that weight-loss dieting is unhealthy. So binge would indeed be the correct, scientifically-accurate opposite of diet.

@DavidK "for clearance holders", precisely - not open ended.

For context, a secret clearance, passport application, and immigration process don't allow this kind of open-ended discovery. Clearly, the organization in question holds the door open because it doesn't trust its employees and past employees to play nice, (possibly as an admission they don't pay a living wage).

"no personal bias", except maybe a little resentment at the lack of freedom. And if the idea is to prevent corruption, why do you think slavery itself is not corrupt? It think you've misunderstood the very ideals you've set yourself. Sure, great idea, but re-think why it was done.

@Swier. Thanks for the response. Second point: "The shortest path from the Saharan portal back to the Mariana Trench is through the Himalaya's, so my guess is the water will mainly flow through ..." Not so fast! The volume of water being shifted is starting to be on a planetary scale (the diameter of the portals is 0.7% that of Earth) so that would have a planetary-scale effect. Would the Poles shift? Even if not, would the flow be different? Wouldn't the flow actually go mainly westward?

Something's way off. When you pull the bathplug, the water doesn't dump directly out, it finds its path and gurgles quite a lot. Plus, the backpressure from the ground and the already-transferred water at the output portal is going to limit the flow, almost exactly like a drain blocked with sand. I suspect you're ignoring the entirety of fluid dynamics, which would severely limit all the figures you're plugging in.

I'd also take combinations of EU countries as single entities when weighing against Russia. France + UK, France + Germany, Germany + France + UK. That's how the forces operate in reality. When you do this, the Russian columns start to look puny.

Nobody's mentioned the sizes of the countries in question, or their coastlines. Germany is physically much larger than the UK, but UK is all coastline. France is similar in size to Germany, but has two long coastlines. Turkey is stuck between the Middle East, Europe, and Russia. Russia is a vast country, with multiple coastlines. To answer your questions I would definitely include these factors into my research, but I'd also be looking at the effectiveness of training, the responsiveness of each of the armed forces, and the efficiency of investments in, and maintenance of equipment.