Wont the metals eventually run out?

[KroniK he/him]

So I had a thought, and Didnt see it anywhere on the first two pages of threads...

 

Allomancy is based on a physical material which is a scarse resource. I know that only a fraction of the population has Allomancy, but eventually... the metals will all have been burned. I wonder if this is part of the push for space exploration in the last series?

 

Anyway, I figured it was interesting enough to start discussion.

[Lightsworn Panda he/him]

Actually, our world has a lot more metals than you think it has. There 11 million metric tons of tin that are currently available to mining, with metric tons more deeper in the earth. It's much more economically to research digging deeper into earth than building space ships.

[king of nowhere]

the rate of allomantic metal consumption is negligible. let's takke for example the most rare of them, gold.

Gold is nowadays extracted at the rate of 2700 tons per year. the earth crust contains a few hundreds to a few thousands billions tons of it (couldn't find an exact reference), however only a small amount of it is economicaly viable.

Anyway, allomancers would consume what, a few kilograms per year? given that burning gold is only useful to a compounder, and that a very small amount of metal can provide a helluva lot of power, gold consumption for allomancy is unllikely to reach 10 kilos per year. But let's be ccrazy and say it's one ton. it's still 0.04% of total gold consumption. But hey, most gold can be recycled, unlike the one burned. So, assuming 95% of gold is recycled (which is not), we see that allomantic consumption would cause less than 1% of total gold depletion. And that after making extremely high assumptions. One hundredth of that figure is much more likely.

So, sooner or later scadrial will have to conquer space to look for rare metals. We ourselves will have to. But allomanticc consumption won't have any influence on it. They will need the metal for totally mundane means.

 

That is, unlesss they manage to make a technological allomancy, where machines are capable of burning metals. in which case, metal consumption would be much higher. I can see, like, a crane working with steel and iron; instead of consuming electricity it consumes metal, and it's more eco-friendly because it don't produce carbon dioxide. And uses like those could take millions of tons worldwide.

Still unlikely to make much of an impact. the only metals whose burning produce a useful industrial effect are iron and steel. current steel production is a few billion tons/year, I doubt even a technological allomancy could consume anywhere comparable to it. and iron makes up, like, 5% of the earth crust. it is pretty much the only metal that cannot run out.

[Kurkistan he/him]

It's rather hard to hunt it down, but we actually do have a Word of Brandon that burned metals "return" somehow.

 

Source: (paraphrase)

I just got back from the Phoenix Comic on, where Brandon is a guest at, and I must say it was an honor to meet him. He read parts of Wax/Wayne 2, Legion 2, and the Taravangian interlude in WoR. There weren't a lot of cosmeric goodies, but I did get a couple interesting tidbits in relation to Mistborn: Ruin would have had to manifest to reabsorb the atium, the Well of Ascension did not come at a price to Preservation's power, and perhaps the most interesting one. Burned metals are turned into a different form, and will eventually return to the planet. The Pits of Hath sin are meant to foreshadow this.

Edited November 8, 2014 by Kurkistan

[A Joe in the Bush]

There's also a WoB somewhere stating that Scadrial has more Metals than Earth. I'll see if I can find it.

[Asperity he/him]

It's rather hard to hunt it down, but we actually do have a Word of Brandon that burned metals "return" somehow.

 

Source: (paraphrase)

That's really interesting.

 

That fact that he specifically says "planet" makes me think it's something to do with transition/bleed between planets, through Shadesmar I'd guess.

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

The ones more likely to run into supply limitations are the rarer and more difficult alloys such as Bendalloy and Nicrosil, and the ones that have difficult and complex or lengthy refining processes such as Chromium. That has more to do with production infrastructure limitations though than with actual supply deficits.

[king of nowhere]

The ones more likely to run into supply limitations are the rarer and more difficult alloys such as Bendalloy and Nicrosil, and the ones that have difficult and complex or lengthy refining processes such as Chromium. That has more to do with production infrastructure limitations though than with actual supply deficits.

in which case you can expect technology to overcome those limitations within a few decades, centuries at most. I'm too tired to look right now, but i think all allomantic metals except gold are pretty cheap with today's technology. and our technological use of them eats up millions of times more than allomancy would.

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

Most of the metals used  by today's technology are fairly cheap. Aluminum was insanely expensive up until the invention of electricity allowed for a much easier refining process. Chromium is somewhat difficult to produce because it requires extremely high temperatures to refine (over 2000 degrees centigrade), but with modern furnaces that is not particularly problematic. I can't find actual costs for Nicrosil, but it is sure to be somewhat more expensive and difficult as it involves alloying with silicon (84.5% Nickel, 14% Chromium, 1.5 % Silicon) and silicon is sort of tricky to work with, but that is production costs not rarity costs and would probably be overcome with a higher demand for the metal than we have. Cadmium is fairly cheap, but Bendalloy should not be because Bismuth is reasonably expensive and not that common.

 

I take no responsibility for the above information. It is what I managed to pull of google in the last 5 minutes, so if someone can point to better sources that contradict me they are probably right.