Anon finds a plot hole

There's a reason we don't have flying cars yet, and it's not because we don't have the technology.

fantasy setting has magic and flying creatures

still using nuclear energy as a main energy source

You can only lose so many stable boys before giving up on your riding griffins.

Imagine a government so cartoonishly evil and/or stupid that it would develop nuclear technology, then use it to extract fossil fuels more profitably. No need, the USA tried.

Ok, but in their defense the other idea was putting small nuclear reactors in everyone's car. Fallout didn't pluck that idea from the aether.
Nuclear Fracking has a ring to it though.
- At least that would've made the traffic interesting. Fender bender directly followed by nuclear contamination of an entire city block.
- Wouldn't be surprised to see someone make a car with a small nuclear reactor in near future just to have it made and shown

You know I just realized I need to get a quick deployment and dedeployment windsurfing parachute to propel my bicycle when the wind is, well, normal here.

Sail bike
- shit it looks like i've got all the hardware except the sail (my trike has a vertical(ish) post about the same angle we could totally pop a sail mount in or on. and i'm kind of turning my bike into a papier mache pirate frigate for halloween 2026, so this would just, uh, yeah it'd be great.
  my wife blames you. i haven't told her yet, but she blames you.
I can imagine power lines being a problem.
- not my biggest one tho
Install one of those funky wind-redirecting towers that they've started adding to cargo ships
quick deployment
Trivial
and dedeployment
Physically impossible
- You could attach the parachute lines to electric motors that could quickly reel the parachute back in.
  And make the parachute semi-rigid like an umbrella so that it folds in a predictable and reversible way.
  And make the anchor point where the lines attach to the motorcycle moveable. When it's deployed, the anchor point sits at the front of the bike so the chute and lines can pull the bike forward from the front. As the chute is getting close to being fully reeled in, the anchor point swings out on an arm a couple feet to the side of the bike and it gets several feet higher so that the lines and the chute are coming in from directly overhead rather than blocking the riders view.
  These are just my preliminary ideas. Of course the engineering team at GM or Toyota or whoever buys this idea off me will likely want to tighten it up a bit to take into account various locale specific regulations and practical manufacturing considerations.
- So it averages out to being about average in difficulty then.
- i got knives what you talking about

Checkmate!

That's putting the cart before the horse!
Is this coach class?
- Neigh
Is this the hyperloop they talk about?
- I’m laughing at both the mental images of the horses being shunted through the hyper loop at high speed, or them being the motive force to pull passengers through.
So basically these planes run on horsepower, where as hamster power runs the on-prem machines at work.
Starting to make sense.

It takes time to come to the realization that a lot of what we do is inefficient because that's just what people are used to doing. Some towns survive solely due to coal mining, and they see it as an existential threat if it were shut down. Nuclear power also takes very knowledgeable individuals, years of planning, and many resources to get started. Coal is cheap, dirty, and primitive.

Eh...a lot of what we do is inefficient because that makes the most money for people who already have too much money.
Nuclear was kneecapped by the fossil fuel industry. They're still fighting against renewables.
We're going to destroy the planet so that the rich get richer.
- Don't forget pride and an extreme disrespect for any new idea.
Hooman make fire, fire make warm, fire make food, fire good, huk!
and makes steel.
- Use hydrogen for that (using coal creates 1.5 tons CO² per ton steel). Green steel needs no phosphor and sulfur too, making it stronger.
Nuclear also isn‘t even a good energy source. Way too expensive and the waste is a problem for millenia. Renewables + hydrogen/battery/mechanical energy conservation is simply superior. Fusion would be cool too
- Modern reactors can run on the spent fuel of older generation reactors. The waste issue isn't as big of a deal as it was a few decades ago.
- Nuclear is a great energy source. My state (Illinois) generates over half of all its energy from nuclear. France is a great example of a country that maximizes the potential of nuclear energy. The waste is not a problem if it's stored properly. The much bigger problem are carbon/methane emissions which are fucking our climate right now. Also, nuclear waste can be reprocessed to make it less volatile and radiotoxic, but that requires an advanced application of technology.
  Batteries and solar absolutely yes, we need to be scaling up battery technology as fast as possible, particularly sodium-ion batteries for static energy storage from solar power. The biggest problems with wind/solar is the actual storage of the energy. No wind? No power. No sun? No power. That's why you need batteries, and battery technology has only gotten good enough in the past couple years.
  Scaling up hydrogen is very difficult, it's extremely volatile, and can realistically only be used in large scale power plants because transporting hydrogen is extremely expensive. Fusion could be good, but it's still being worked on, and who knows how long it'll really take for us to have a practical implementation.
- They're expensive to build because we don't build enough of them.

setting has bikes and trains

still using cars as main form of transportation

You do know steam powered locomotives started appearing in the early 19th century, long before than cars?
Cars are much more advanced tech than bikes. Hell we have partly self driving electric cars now. That's some sci-fi shit
- huh, now i want to slap some sensors on my ebike so it can do ACC
- That's why I can't understand how some bikes can cost as much as a small used car.
Hold on, let me just load up the family onto my bicycle and ride the 15 miles to the grocery store.
- Can this argument just disappear from discourse? People don't always drive around with their partner, dog and 2.5 kids AND groceries AND spare tires AND grandparents.
  The majority of people in car-centric areas use their car only to haul around themselves, which could be done with public transport or bikes.
- Oh yes, the grocery store commute. You can clearly see in traffic that every car is full of groceries and people everyday at all times, and is rarely one person alone
- I leave the 8-story building (with an elevator), walk 5-10 minutes (one road crossing with lights), buy groceries, in 30 minutes I'm back home.
  Something is wrong with that murrka thing.
- You know that your family can ride too? In cities which aren't car-centric hell-holes, it's normal for kids of very young ages (6-8 years old) to walk/bike everywhere on their own. It also tends to help a lot with their independence and development.
  Also, if you build your cities correctly, your grocery store will be a <3 minute walk. Your spouse or kids can just walk there.
- Step one: leave the family (especially toddlers and infants) at home with a trusted caretaker or dog. Step two, ride about 15mph so you don't drain the battery too fast. Step three, wake up
- Some people are completely unable to understand that not everybody lives in a city with everything on their doorstep, some people have children, and some people need to be able to transport more than a few small items at a time.
Trains and bikes are much more inconvenient. Though bikes are good for close proximity.
- I find the opposite to be true. Taking a train is so much more convenient. Don't have to find a place to park, don't have to do any work to get there. Just sit down and wait
  Bikes are nice because I don't have to worry about traffic much, and generally parking isn't an issue
  Cars are really inconvenient. You have a gigantic vehicle that you have to navigate around many other vehicles, then find a parking spot, usually not close to where you're actually going
- There are bikes that have motors, it helps reach further away locations.
- I can't speak to trains (our rail system is a joke here) but I've been having more fun traveling and saving money by using my bike. Since I'm on the ground floor, it's very convenient.

Yahtzee's book Will Save the Galaxy for Food actually covers this, in a sci-fi way. In the future, all transportation is done via Quantum Tunnelling, so guess what job suddenly became obsolete? Space pilots. Space pilots now only exist because people have nostalgia for the old days, reducing pilots to little more than tour guides and adventure holidays.

It's like in those MMOs where you can teleport basically anywhere, but you still have mounts and yes you can travel from one end of the map to the other on your horse, admiring the scenery, or you could just click the coordinates someone pasted into the chat to get to the world boss you're supposed to kill for the most optimum play... Lookin' at you, Guild Wars 2!

It’s like in those MMOs where you can teleport basically anywhere, but you still have mounts
Typically, you can't teleport somewhere you haven't already visited in these games. So the horse lets you travel beyond your historical borders, while teleportation allows you to reconvene with friends at a prior explored location.

I feel like it would be much more effort to tame a flying creature or magic, with the latter often being displayed as a life-long commitment.

And it would be especially hard to feed those things. Can you imagine how much a magical creature eats? They use a lot of energy. Much more than a horse would normally
- Yeah, you can put horses on any pasture and they will happily graze on whatever weed grows there. Gryphons (just one example of a popular fantasy mount) should be carnivorous. So how many cows do you need to feed that thing before it will fly someone safely across the countryside, without deciding that this someone looks awfully tasty?
  Big flying mounts should be horribly expensive to maintain. Only the most wealthy nobles and wizards who can literally conjure money should be able to pay for them.
  Personally I always have to suspend a lot of my disbelief whenever dragon mounts are being mentioned in fantasy books and there is absolutely no explanations how these creatures are being fed. Usually the topic is quietly sidelined or simply dismissed with "something something magic".
At the very least, building a fence to keep in a Pegasus seems like MUCH more work
- As would building a fence to keep in a bird.
Except high-magitech worlds of course.

I'm amazed how in fantasy settings with houndreds of humanized species, all being like horse, oxes, cows, pigs, parrots and what not... but acts like humans and have similar social status as humans.. still, meat is being pushed as the core diet in these worlds. It's so importantt to push this narrative that not even fantasy worlds are safe, even though it just gets weird (and prob really dark) with how that world otherwise works.

.... Buddy, you do realize that meat-eating is sort of a core concept for most things on earth, right?
About 63% of species are carnivores, only 32% of species are herbivores. It's literally just a small subsect of humans that think eating meat is weird or some kind of 'narrative.'
- It's not so much that, but the presence of fables of species that humans usually exploit for their bodies. If these fables walk around and have citizenship etc, in many settings you can start wonder who are people of the show eating.
still, meat is being pushed as the core diet in these worlds
The natural tension between herbavoires and carnavoires is a major plot point of Beastars. It's primarily used as a metaphor for the tension between age cohorts and genders, but vegans and anprims ahem eat it up, regardless.
Similarly, Attack On Titan is all about humans turning into giant cannibal monsters, then justifying it to themselves.
Also, a very popular trope in Vampire / Werewolf / Zombie settings. "How does cannibalism become socially appropriate?" has become a popular subject of modern fiction, particularly in the horror genre.
- Yea there's are a few shows playing on the subject, but I promise you this is the case in the wast majority of fable indulgent isekais.
Just like Capitalism Realism, authors can't even imagine societies with other economic system than capitalism.
I know they are exceptions of that. If you like to mention your favorite one please do it.
- Yea, so much for fantasy and imagionation right. I think another reason why some ideas or concept are transferred as is, is even considering alternative methods means acknowledging that there are alternatives, This could be a reminder of that nothing is perfect, there's always room for change and improvement, and we need change and adjustement to function - even though most of us aren't cognitively set and ready for it, instead settle in current state and habits.
  Not sure what you're asking, favorite show that isn't regurgitating the same ideas, or?

has anon considered, that maybe, horses are just extremely fucking cool, and that is why?

Boo horses. Hooray horsetaurs

World that has nuclear coal energy, but rides magical horses as the main transport.

Charcoaled!

Nuclear's always a fun idea until someone decides to commit an act of domestic terrorism. Or until some freaks decide to target the nuclear facilities of their enemies.

That’s why nuclear facilities security is so stringent and fail safes are everywhere
- Every country using nuclear power has incidents with covered-up leaks or near-core-melt incidents in reactors, if you dig a bit deeper. I'm swiss and know of multiple of them in Swiss, France and Germany. Imagine how it looks in a absolutistic 3rd-world country.
  Btw, the one in Ucraine was forcefully taken over by Russia (with international diplomatic pressure caused only by them firing on the outer walls) and power cut.
  About fail safes; historic statistic mean is every 25 years somewhere all of them not working and causing large swaths of land being uninhabitable for centuries. Human error always gets underestimated there.
  like, secretly using low-grade steel for the reactor walls to cut cost, fissures not being reported, or the one, where Leibstadt had to be cooled by firefighters (not being told anything (i know one of them)) due to cooling canal congestion after heavy rain.
  Edit: Or were you sarcastic and i failed to notice?
We've had at least two of these in the recent past: that Ukrainian power plant that was under attack, and also Iran's nuclear facilities getting bombed.
Nuclear facilities are very very tight on security. Domestic terrorism is a terrible reason to not build them.
And if you are a part of a war? With or without the Nuclear plant you are going to have massive problems.
Weird excuses to not build them if you ask me.
- Do I want the results of the war being that my hometown needs to be rebuilt from the ground up?
  Or do I want to have that be the case, except we gotta wait 5000 years for the radiation to be at a level where we can do that safely?
Nuclear is also freaking expensive. You need a lot of safety measures to run a nuclear power plant relatively safely, and disposing of spent fuel material and the building itself when it's decommissioned is really expensive, too. On top of that, the nuclear material that power plants use isn't cheap, either, and there aren't that many countries that actually have them in mineable quantities. And one of the major exporters is Russia.
This
People act like there isn't a rather large contingent of our society that doesn't openly invite "end times" or want to create as much pain and suffering as possible for poor black and brown ppl who you know these plants will be built around.
There is substantial reason to advocate for nuclear, but to handwave the concerns of organized sabatoge in the times we're living in does not help.
- There's plenty of shit that disporportionately comes down on minorities, but nuclear power plant building sites?
  Please, please, I'm literally begging you: Please point me to a place where a nuclear plant has been constructed somewhere that displaced anyone.
  Only restriction is it can't be people who were displaced by nuclear disaster, like Chernobyl or Fukushima.
  Bonus points if it displaced minorities. Even more if there was an alternative build site available but they chose to be bastards.
Hasn't ever been an attack against nuclear power station, I can't think of one
- Three years ago: Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant crisis
- I envy you. Not having watched the news for 3 years must be nice.