they poured in and they mostly died...

[rSin]

western settlers
gold rush

the stories we got are idealizations

the west was a brutal place

those people mostly died on the plain
then up in the rocks

you can run out of food along time
but out of water and its down to hours

[Intrinsic]

You could bring still talking about the upcoming rush Mining the asteroids and outer moons.

There is a genre, Western Science fiction. that is going from planet to planetis an anology to going to town to town in the old west.
Mike Resnick wrote often in that genre. A favorite.
Asimov's foundation trilogy...

[webeblzr]

[the west was a brutal place]

Everywhere is a brutal place. No mater where you go, there you are.

I can envision, the East coast of what is now called America, say around the year 1500 or so, living life as a First people nation.
One day, big canoes, float in , and begin to vomit up, a white, up right viscous animal, that resembled a human.
It smiled, it offered gifts, it needed help, or so it said.
As they watched it, the horror of this demon, was to kill more animals than it needed. To murder the forests of all life, clear cutting vast areas. They murdered and raped, looted and pillaged at will, as any red human skin is an animal, it's use, for slavery, and thrill killing.
When the demon came into their villages, they wanted to pretend to trade.
What they traded with was blankets, that were used first in Europe, from towns that got a plague running through them.
The First Peoples, began dying by some invisible demon, killing entire nations of the First People.
The white demon, saw this as a sign from God! Now, it could open even MORE area, now that, the First People had *moved on from*.

Th great hoard of demons grew to enormous size, spreading out, murdering, slathering where ever they went.
The demon drivers, said, Go west young demon, there is more slaughter and riches to find, while your out there kill it all!!
Buffalo herds the size of 3 territories, killed for pelts, and they left a ton of meat to rot per animal....slaughtered by the millions, for more.
The white demon, had such a lust for more, that it clear cut so much area, that they killed their own selves, made a Dust Bowl, and they, died in the dust, or ran to better area to restart the cycle of murder and carnage to chase their lest for more.

The west was a brutal place.

[rSin]

damn
its rare that i understate things