They find a quarter-charged ZPM that will power the city for... a few years? Three ZPMs powered the shield that held back an entire ocean for ten thousand years. Unless they were running the shield at full power and detonating 50 nuclear warheads on it every five minutes, I doubt a quarter-charged ZPM would run down in under 500 years.
Depends. If you use my car for an example, the miles I get from full to 3/4 of a tank greatly outnumber the miles I get from 1/4 tank to empty. *g* That acually does have a reason - mostly, being that fuel tank indicators are a little inaccurate - but it's easy to see a ZPM might have similar properties; cascading energy useage is something I could buy.
Granted, I know nothing about the laws of the kind of physics the ZPM is supposedly subjected to, but if, for example, the engergy level helps to maintain the efficiency of the ZPM, or somesuch, I could buy that it drains faster and faster, the less power it has.
no subject
Depends. If you use my car for an example, the miles I get from full to 3/4 of a tank greatly outnumber the miles I get from 1/4 tank to empty. *g* That acually does have a reason - mostly, being that fuel tank indicators are a little inaccurate - but it's easy to see a ZPM might have similar properties; cascading energy useage is something I could buy.
Granted, I know nothing about the laws of the kind of physics the ZPM is supposedly subjected to, but if, for example, the engergy level helps to maintain the efficiency of the ZPM, or somesuch, I could buy that it drains faster and faster, the less power it has.
...Now, a good author would explain that. *g*