It's a bit of a legacy idea of mine, have a very strong light source (a nuclear bomb, for example) and pipe the light to dumb streetlights by fiber optics.

Back at the light source it could show ads like eat at Joe's, do different colours, cable tv etc.
-- not_morrison_rm, Sep 10 2020

Really you can't just say "the problem is" a certain thing... without saying why you think that thing is a problem.
-- pocmloc, Sep 10 2020


But fusion weapons, amortized on a price-per-corpse basis, are very cost-effective compared to most other means, other than chemical and biological weapons, which are by and large fairly unspectacular and lack entertainment value. Certainly they're much more efficient than conventional munitions.

// you need to keep setting them off for constant illumination. //

We fail to see the snag with that approach.

Perhaps the answer to this is to set up a large mass of hydrogen, sufficiently massive so that it holds together against radiation pressure, and then initiate fusion ? Then you could just position your planet so that the electromagnetic energy impinges at a level which sustains your environmental conditions to your liking. Obviously if you have the planet rotating, this solution will only work 50% of the time, but that's just a detail requiring further R & D ...

Oh, wait ...
-- 8th of 7, Sep 10 2020


Thankyou, we have our own, but the offer is appreciated.

Besides, we don't chew books. At least not much ... and we don't "scribble" in them . However, we admit that we do add many corrections, annotations, references and footnotes to books, but neatly and in pencil so they can if desired be changed or erased.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 10 2020


For a straight road, you could just have a powerful laser (or 2 or 3...) at one end, at "street-light height", and a mirror or energy-collection device at the other. Pity about the birds & insects & occasional stray football or frisbee, but such is the price of progress.
-- neutrinos_shadow, Sep 10 2020


Bats.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 10 2020


Would you believe that predictive text changed " a few glow worms" to "nuclear bomb"?

Damn that predictive text..
-- not_morrison_rm, Sep 10 2020


[8th of 7], yes, I know you're bats (or batty, or nuts, or something...).
-- neutrinos_shadow, Sep 10 2020


//The problem with using a nuclear bomb// isn't the need for repetitious energization, it's the fact that a) your fiber distribution net loses optical clarity and conductivity a very short time into the first pulse, and b) the portions that most need to be replaced form a fairly crappy environment for replacement work.

Other than that, bombs away.
-- lurch, Sep 11 2020


// the portions that most need to be replaced form a fairly crappy environment for replacement work. //

Fortunately, there are such things as short-term migrant worker visas; simply hire badly-educated teenagers with poor language skills from far-away hot countries, get them to do the work, then ship them home again before the symptoms of radiation sickness* become overly bothersome.

If you literally "ship" them back, on a slow boat, they will hopefully die on the voyage and can be buried at sea, forestalling any possible investigation, complaints or lawsuits. There's no risk !

*If they're made to work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, and fed inadequate amounts of poor-quality food, the tiredness and weight loss will be unexceptional; however, bleeding from mucous membranes, and hair falling out, are harder to glibly explain away.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 11 2020


Pistol shrimps at the end of each fibre? But that would mean a hidden seawater aquaculture under the street which could just have bio-luminescence.
-- wjt, Sep 14 2020


// Pistol shrimps ... seawater aquaculture //

No.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 14 2020



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