Although the core technology wasn't cryogenic (it was handwavium), Philip
José Farmer postulated the use of what could be a stand-in for low berth as
a measure for dealing with overpopulation. In his novel _Dayworld_, people
only "lived" one day in seven, the rest of the time being in suspended
animation. This might not be practical in a Traveller milieu, as Farmer's
handwave was technologically perfect and instantaneous, not requiring
medical attendants, recuperation, or rehabilitation... but the idea is
probably something that SOMEONE would probably come up with...

On Thu, 4 Feb 2021 16:08:47 -0500, Kurt Feltenberger <xxxxxx@thepaw.org>
wrote:

>I seem to remember reading an article about low berths in either the
>original TAS or maybe MTJ about how professional athletes and performers
>used low berths as a way to "extend their shelf life" by going into them
>between seasons and jobs.  This, the article suggested, allowed a
>professional athlete to have almost twice the effective career length as
>he would have had otherwise, being in the low berth for about half a
>year at a stretch.  Performers had a somewhat longer window as they
>would only be "thawed" for a few months to do the production and then go
>back under until something else of value came along.  Given the way we
>can do deep fakes, and extrapolating that and green screen technology,
>I'm not sure there will even be live performers for vid shows, but
>that's another thread entirely.
>
>What really kicked off this thought exercise was something I'm currently
>writing.  One of the characters has two puppies that he's going to show
>in the puppy class at the dog show, and I started wondering how a low
>berth would be able to extend a show dog's career.  Once they win their
>Championship title, the next is Grand Champion and beyond that it's all
>ribbons for the "such a good dog!" wall.  It takes a year, maybe two or
>more depending on how often the dog is shown and how many dogs are in
>each show.  Sometimes, once a dog becomes a Champion, the handler will
>retire it and only show the dog in certain shows.
>
>This would work with just about any type of competition that used an
>animal; horse races, poni races, whatever.  It would allow the effective
>career to be extended to several times that of a normal lifetime, while
>also allowing the animal to be steadily bred.
>
>Beyond this, I could also see certain governments using the frozen watch
>concept writ large; they want a large military, but rather than have
>five million people under arms, they put three million in dispersed
>bunkers on extended "tours" of duty and only raise them when they're needed.
>
>Anyway, I'm curious how others might use the low berth in an unexpected
>manner.

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