text stringlengths 22 2.11M |
|---|
[Question]
[
Setting: ["One Big Lie"](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness) Sci-fi RPG
The lies in this setting are an extension of relativity with a couple of extra dimensions allowing for FTL/Backwards Time Travel, and Thaumons.
Thaumons (Magic Bosons) are a class of particle that can be "programmed" by tuning their mass such that they decay in a roughly predetermined way. This is used by Thaumaturgists (Wizards) to power the VIG (Hyper-space-drive) and their Wands.
This can be used to generate substances (blast water or fire), affect quantum fields (zap with lightning), move things (typical telekinesis) and scry (seeing the past or things far away). It cannot be used to shapeshift, send psychic messages, or mind control anything.
Unbeknownst to mankind, another lifeform has been adept at the manipulation of Thaumic Fields for Centuries. A microbe has perfected the telekinetic manipulation of blood that it has already infected. It generates EMF to communicate with the nearby microbes and, when lots of them get together, the EMF they collectively generate starts to look very brain-like. The EMF is also used as a "beacon" for the telehaemokinesis which is why it can't use blood it has not infected.
The microbe has recently found a dead human and crawled its way inside, taking over its entire blood stream, forcing the heart to beat, the lips to form words, the legs and diaphragm to move giving the appearance of life. However, the brain is not active.
Collectively, these creatures are not stupid. They find the idea of human hosts incredibly useful, but the longer they spend in human hosts, the more they learn of morality. They eventually decide that human beings are worth respect.
**They still need corpses. They still need fresh blood.**
So they live in the bodies of the naturally deceased, as they adjust to their new homes and fully take over all the cells the body appears ill for about a month. They use this time to learn more about the human they inhabit and copy who he was. The month long illness would appear to most to be quite severe. Long bouts of unconsciousness, pale skin, very weak muscles, lots of coughing... the changes in the person afterwards are usually put down to how long they were out of the loop and people adjust to the new man before them as it adjusts to them.
>
> But **how do they get blood without revealing themselves or arousing
> suspicion?** If I made a living taking over corpses I'd feel compelled
> to keep it under wraps.
>
>
> Notes:
>
>
> The blood must be drawn from a "similar" animal. So ideally a primate but if there's no better way any mammal will do.
>
>
> The blood must be "fresh". If the blood is not alive when the vampire drinks it, then its likely to be uninfectable [sic]. Very recently dead is OK, but every second counts.
>
>
> Due to their new-found moral concerns and care for humans, they would rather not drink blood from non-consenting humans or steal it from blood banks where it is used to heal the sick.
>
>
> No human can be left with knowledge of them after feeding.
>
>
>
[Answer]
To me, the obvious answer is that your vampires run a hospital.
These vampires are going to have a very strong medical capability. If they're studying a human's social norms, it can only be because they've already mapped out the human body completely from a mechanical standpoint and are ready to address 'operational' concerns. The fact that these microbes operate throughout the entire body also means that they're probably operating as a non-homogeneous hive mind (a mind where individual participants still have specialisations that the others are aware of but don't need the complete knowledge of in order to function) where different clusters of microbes operate the heart, others the muscle control, etc.
This means that they would make excellent doctors, especially with modern diagnostic imaging equipment giving them internal information on living souls.
So; your vampires run the hospital, meaning people come to them willingly. Make it a public hospital so that you get walk-ins of all kinds, especially knife and gunshot wounds with lots of blood spurting thither and yon. You treat them, but you also take excess blood while cleaning wounds and the like and quickly disperse it among your vampire population. You also run a blood donation clinic (after all you're now the area's leading trauma hospital thanks to your reputation for saving people), and filter out the blood that you need in addition to trauma cases.
Here's where your triage comes in. The 'lost' cases you just drink because they're dead anyway. Some of your other patients are going to die no matter what you do as well. You take the most functional of those bodies, which just disappear from your morgue from time to time to populate new vampires.
The beauty of this is that you're not only masking your efforts behind necessary medical procedures, you're actually doing good for the human population; it's a win/win.
In time, you may even be able to take this public. Imagine that humans are presented with cutting edge medical science that is possible of curing what we currently consider incurable. The only price is that if you're a lost cause, your blood (and potentially body) is the price you pay. The emotional issues for your family are no different to organ donation, except for the fact that the doctors have to overcome a perception of self interest. That said, a documented history of curing all comers except for some that even human doctors claim were a lost cause would go a long way to disproving that.
So, your vampires provide their services 'free' apart from a blood donation. In countries with an already established public health system this would be less effective, but set up in a country without a viable public health system (like the USA) and I think you'd actually find a lot of people who, if given the facts, would jump at the chance to use such a service.
[Answer]
They don't want to steal from blood bank, but they can start their own blood bank, officially for harvesting and distributing blood donations.
Volunteers among humans will happily donate their blood for a good cause. And the good cause will be either saving someone's life or feeding the hungry (and save their life, too).
But of course officially only the first will be made known.
Some blood will be provided to hospitals and other organizations requesting it, so that the appearances are saved. This has to be a necessary evil for preserving the fiction.
[Answer]
Can they tolerate contaminated blood? If so:
Set up a "research" company. They buy blood from donors. Since it's for research they accept blood from those who are not allowed to donate for human use. This keeps them from interfering with the normal donations. (Accepting donations is functionally the same as taking it from blood banks.)
Since they have their own brain they don't really care about the brain of the body they have taken over and thus aren't going to care about vCJD. Thus they should be fine with getting blood from those who are prohibited from donating for having lived in mad cow territory.
[Answer]
Cirque du freak answers this.
There is a way to get blood without bleeding them dry, though the last paragraph suggests moral abjections but it IS what they would probably have to resort to at first.
Arousing suspicion is a bit vague: if thirst for blood is the issue, then non-consenting humans are the only option because blood fetishists are too rare to sustain any reasonable populous (i think/hope). If the origin is the issue then they just need to be charming or cunning. Set up a blood drive yourself!
Depending on their capabilities with Thaumons and the strength of superstition they might be able to gather small cults able to provide them with blood without even telling them the origin of their abilities. "Ascended" cultists could be infected with new microbes to give the illusion of ascension. This might be considered immoral, but it would be effective. Rhetoric can be a powerful magic in it's own right .
If you could clarify what type of suspicion they want to avoid most and why that would be really helpful.
[Answer]
There is nothing in the question that suggests they actually **need** blood. In fact, the question strongly suggests the bugs did just fine before they learned to infect humans. As such the gain of infecting humans seems to be limited to being able to interact with humans without the humans finding out they are dealing with exotic aliens that would be really fun to research in a proper laboratory envinronment.
This problem can be solved by using the internet. Unless the setting is vastly different it will be safer and more convenient to interact with humans remotely and electronically. While this does not remove the need to have some legal identities, the number needed is reduced. Unless you have a full on surveillance state, nobody will really care if one legal identity is simultaneously chatting with impossibly large number of people.
The physical host problem can be solved with technology. A simple vat or a convenient structure filled with artificial nutrient fluid refreshed by machinery is a simple solution that could be built with our current technology.
Similarly, if you take a normal embalmed corpse, where the blood has been replaced with a preservative, you should be able to replace the embalming fluid with a suitable "artificial blood". This can also, obviously, be used to animate corpses that have not been embalmed even after the natural blood is no longer viable. Such bodies would require frequent maintenance to refresh the fluid. But realistically the same would be true with normal blood.
Since this is scifi there is nothing really stopping the bugs from building their own artificial bodies optimized for their artificial blood and convenience with the necessary machinery built in. Such bodies could be built to resemble human to pass a cursory inspection. Reasonably they would be more life like and convincing than reanimated corpses. They could be also be made to have any appearance that is desired. The appearance could also be made modifiable at run time.
[Answer]
They run blood drives, always moving from one place to another, staying ahead of the law and above suspicion. They pretend to be a medical organization but they keep the blood.
] |
[Question]
[
The Crabites are back, and they're **ticked off!**
As a reminder, Crabites are deep-sea creatures, they'd remind you of Alaskan King Crabs.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8OX26.jpg)
In the savage undersea desert, resources are at a premium. Anything you have, someone else wants. So our Crabites must be prepared to fight. At this point they have tools of stone, squid-beak, chitin, and oddly enough, plastics (they harvest petrochemical seeps).
In their high pressure deep-sea environment, missile weapons are useless, as are "momentum" weapons like swords, gigantic sledgehammers, and anvils. Their weaponry is based on leverage, crushing, and torsion.
The common weapon of the Crabite soldier is the *sheller*:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/s5E7x.png)
The weapon is jammed into a joint on a leg or carapace and the soldier heaves to pry open the enemy's shell. The mightiest warriors use the *crusher*:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/f29dj.png)
This feared weapon can splinter the toughest chitin.
There have been experiments with "potential-energy weapons" modeled after mantis shrimp claws, but they've not yet found a material which can remain "cocked" for a useful time without itself splintering.
So, the question...
**Are these reasonable weapons for the Crabites? I don't see their weapons technology advancing much further than this**
[Answer]
**Both of those sound reasonable, but there are *way* more options.**
## First, let's talk about offense.
**1) Physical**
Arthropods have already come up with some amazing weaponry on their own. Meet the [mantis shrimp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UnzMl.jpg)
Properly known as stomatopods, they are beautiful and they are deadly. The rounded appendages you see are actually the best "smashers" in nature. The mantis shrimp stores a massive amount of energy in a saddle-shaped "spring" made of chitin and then releases it all at once, accelerating the spring forward with *incredible* velocity. As you point out in the question, water is hard to move through, but the mantis shrimp releases the energy so quickly that the water doesn't have time to move out of the way- so it [cavitates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavitation). This creates a small bubble of low pressure right behind the smasher that collapses, creating a [second shockwave](http://jeb.biologists.org/content/208/19/3655) to truly decimate the shell of the organism that it's smashing. If you google it, there are a [plethora](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m78_sOEadC8) of [videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubj_kcGfvEw) showing exactly [this behavior](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U11DgbefmQQ). If smashing isn't your style, there are also "spearers" who have pointy appendages that let them spear fish and other organisms at nearly the speed of sound. Oh, and neither type can be kept in normal aquarium tanks because they'll smash through the glass.
If smashing through your opponent's shell wasn't brilliant enough, they can use create some [incredibly sharp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_horseshoe_crab) shell pieces that will allow them to pry apart any enemies. Now, the horseshoe crabs might not use these for offense, but as someone who's accidentally stepped on a shell, they're plenty sharp. This type of attack would look like fencing, with each Crabite trying to get their lance inside the joints of the other's shell.
**2) Chemical**
If your Crabites are capable of producing and using plastic, they're clearly fairly advanced and would be capable of synthesizing things like [phosphoric acid](https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Phosphoric_acid) or a [number](https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_can_I_dissolve_chitin_in_NaOH_without_urea) of strong [bases](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10570-016-0932-z). These chemicals will dissolve straight through an opponent's shell. While it might be hard to deploy these weapons given their tendency to get, well, *everywhere*, it might be best to coat weapons in these chemicals before their use. Those weapons would have to be plastic, however- not chitin.
**3) Biological**
Now, these creatures are at war with each other, and are presumably not held back by simple matters such as the [Biological Weapons Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_Weapons_Convention). This allows them to get up to all kinds of nasty stuff, especially given that they likely live near extreme environments that encourage bacteria and archaea to do strange things. Some applications I can imagine are infecting the other side with parasites, releasing crab viruses into the water "upstream" of them, or finding flat-out toxic bacteria to release.
## Now, defense
Your Crabites shouldn't just worry about just the offensive side of things. They can take some measures to defend themselves from other organisms, including other Crabites.
**1) Armor**
The Crabites would do well to forge plastic armor as soon as possible. Plastic is actually a much better defense than chitin- while chitin sticks around on beaches for maybe a year before breaking down, some kinds of plastic will be there *forever*. Plastic also can be neutrally buoyant, giving them some defense without additional weight.
They might also [team up with deep-sea anemones](https://www.geek.com/tech/hermit-crabs-use-anemones-as-bodyguards-transfer-them-when-upgrading-shells-1668953/) to provide some additional protection.
**2) Chemical defense**
Of course, a thick shell isn't much use when you have creatures like grey whales who will [chomp through](http://www.arkive.org/gray-whale/eschrichtius-robustus/video-08a.html) entire [sections of seafloor](https://www.boem.gov/ESPIS/1/1053.pdf). Instead, the Crabites might dine on cyanobacteria or algae to gain [poisonous capabilities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellfish_poisoning). These would be all the more effective on large organisms like whales, sea otters, or humans.
If the Crabites need a quick getaway, perhaps they'll take a book from the squid or octopi and leave in a cloud of ink, which could be harvested from any cephalopods they find on the seafloor. If that isn't cool enough, it might be bioluminescent if harvested from the deep sea [vampire squid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_squid)- a biological flash grenade.
**3) Camouflage**
I'll just leave this here. [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IkIqc.jpg)
Your Crabites are a terrifying threat. [Let's hope they never happen...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vacancy-hermit-crab-social-networks/)
[Answer]
I'm taking your "no ranged weapon" rule as a challenge.
So, spears and arrows won't work because of the resistance of water, but what about trained **attack-squid**? Give your squid a look at the enemy, or paint them with a visual or chemical trigger, and let your pet at 'em! Swarms of hungry shrimp? Sharks? Beaked whales? There are tons of things in the ocean that go fast.
On the principle of a squid, what if the crabites made a bladder of plastic, pressurized the water inside it, put some stabilizing fins on the back and a knife (or chemical payload) on the front, then poke a hole in the back? **War-balloons**!
**Clockwork-driven propellers**? Or combustion-driven? How good is their chemistry? Can they make **underwater rockets**? How about [supercavitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercavitation)?
[Answer]
Not every weapon is used to kill the opponent directly. With the number of limbs a Crabite has, incapacitating a few of those might be a good first opening move in combat.
Piercing or wedging **spears** of some sort to shove into joints. Perhaps they could even pierce the joints. However the primary use might be to restrict the movement of the joint.
**Lassos/whips/ropes/nets/bolas.** There are many variations of these that can be used to ensnare and entangle a foe. Some of these might be easy to dodge, however if you make an attack your foe must dodge then you can anticipate your foe's reaction, or use it to stop or hinder an incoming attack.
**Ink Cloud**. Harvested from squids, or formulated out of petroleum. You can blind you opponent or hide your retreat.
**Shields**. Several of the attacks listed here can be blocked, deflected, or partially absorbed by a shield. A Crabite equipped with a shield could use it to shield bash, flip, or pin it's opponent and/or its weapons.
**Sword breakers**. Slightly different than the surface variant. These are designed to catch and break an opponents shellers and crushers. They are probably smaller versions of shellers and crushers used in the off-hand (Claw?).
**Wedger**. More or less a rock. Something that will fit nicely inside a foe's crusher to keep it wedged open, essentially disarming it.
[Answer]
Could plastic pressure-mines be possible? The exoskeleton of deep-water high-pressure organisms is designed to withstand huge external pressure, but how does it cope with a sudden local decrease in pressure? Pump the water out of a plastic container, give it a trigger mechanism, bury it. Enemy steps on trigger, container implodes, enemy explodes.
You could also rig a high pressure version that fired a spike upwards.
If none of these are suitable, then sound travels very well in water over long distances, a highly focused beam at the right frequency could potentially be quite damaging.
It's worth noting that pressure is used in marine hunting already - Orcas stun schools of herring with a tail slap.
[Answer]
While we have several good answers already, some ancient cultures had a few tricks which might be worth adapting:
1. Sodegarami. In Edo era Japan, police were sometimes required to capture Samurai or Ronin. There were several issues for the police, including social status (a non samurai could not simply confront a samurai in a sword duel), and the fact that samurai and ronin (masterless samurai) tend to be much better armed and trained than the average police officer. A Sodegarami was designed to entrap the limb of the opponent at a distance, either by direct capture, or by becoming entangled in the fabric of the opponent's clothing (which may or may not be an issue here). In Edo Japan, pairs of officers would attempt to flank the offender (or engage front and rear), attempting to trap or entangle the limbs of the offender and pin them to the ground, to be brought into the station for justice to be dispensed.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZrdXK.png)
*# examples of Sodegarami*
2. Macuahuitl. The Aztecs had never developed the art of metallurgy to the point they could create large metal weapons (like Bronze age swords or daggers, much less iron or steel ones). The Macuahuitl was a wooden club enhanced with razor sharp flakes of obsidian embedded in the sides. This was more than enough to slice through the fabric armour common to the various tribal groups the Aztecs fought against, much less bare skin. While the wood analogue might be plastic in your case, sharp flakes of stone or volcanic glass might be available to convert the club into a Macuahuitl.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Sgr3m.jpg)
*Examples of the Macuahuitl*
So your Crabite warrior *might* be able to pin an opponent while another one finishes the job with razor sharp cutting edges. Depending on how dexterous an individual is, it may be possible to use three limbs and employ both weapons at once (two "hands" on the Sodegarami for enough leverage to pin the opponent, and the third "hand" to start striking with the Macuahuitl). The sharp edges should cut through the opponent's shell or lop off limbs.
] |
[Question]
[
In this world, a nation's army uses sailing ships to travel across a desert. They only travel at one time of year, during which a very powerful windstorm blows from the East. They leverage the wind to sail west with the wind, and do not need to navigate or change course extensively. Their primary focus is on speed of travel.
The army uses two types of ships:
* Trimarans, which are large enough to carry ~20 men, and are very fast and maneuverable
* Large, multi-masted windjammers that carry the bulk of the army (perhaps ~300 per ship). These are flat-hulled and have giant wheels on the sides, similar to those of a watermill, that help with load bearing and forward propulsion.
The desert is largely made up of soft rolling sand dunes. Steam or internal combustion engines do not exist in this world.
What other features might such ships have to make them a viable transport option in this environment?
[Answer]
[Land Sailing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_sailing) is a thing in the real world. You might want to take a look at how some of those vehicles are built.
It's not a perfect analog for your situation, though, since actual sand yachts tend to a) be small, one or two-person vehicles, and b) be designed for running on smooth, flat surfaces- not soft desert dunes.
If they are looking for speed, note that sailing vessels can actually move faster at a steep angle to the wind than they can running directly with the wind. This may or may not be relevant depending on the advancement of these people's sailing technology, however.
These vessels are going to have to overcome two major challenges around which they will be designed: minimizing friction, and avoiding sinking into soft sand.
To minimize friction, none of them will want to let their hulls touch the sand at all. Pushing through sand just isn't practical, so all of these, not just the giant windjammers, will be running on wheels. Even advanced real-world racing sailboats try not merely to streamline their hulls, but to actually avoid contact with the water at all where possible, using hydrofoils to lift the hull completely out of the water at high speeds. The trimaran design thus actually makes a lot of sense, since you can angle the struts to lift the main hull relatively far above the surface, with wheels mounted on the secondary hulls.
You'll also want to minimize friction of the wheel bearings. I don't know if it would be absolutely necessary, but contrary to a comment on the question, ball bearings are not entirely out of reach. Modern, high-efficiency metal ball bearings would be impractical, but a pre-industrial civilization that can build land ships in the first place would easily be able to produce wooden ball bearings, potentially even with metal races. Larger wheels, which do not have to turn as quickly, may be desirable to reduce the friction load on bearings.
To avoid sinking into the sand, you'll want to maximize the load-bearing surface. Note that this is in conflict with the desire to minimize friction. Once again, however, the multi-hull design shows promise, since with wheels on two auxiliary hulls you can spread the weight out over a wide area. The major design impact here, however, will be on the design of the wheels themselves; specifically, you'll want *wide* wheels. If they can produce flexible rims somehow, that would certainly help, although I'm not sure how you'd manage that without modern air-filled tires. So, large and broad is good, but "like a watermill" is not so good, if that includes the gaps and paddles that are *meant* to bite into water/sand.
Rather than having a rudder, like any other wheeled vehicles these are going to need to be able to rotate (some of) the wheels for steering. For the big windjammers, I'd expect some kind of massive bar-and-pinion arrangement linking either the two front or two back wheels, assuming there are four wheels total- you won't want to steer all four wheels, because that introduces unnecessary complication. Six or eight wheels might be better, in which case you would want to steer both the front and back sets; although this requires more steerable wheelmounts, each one can be weaker, since it's carrying less of the total load. Steering control would be accomplished with a capstan that has a rope, or several ropes, wound around several times to ensure proper friction engagement with the wheel, and with the free ends lashed to the steering bar.
Arranging to mechanically coordinate the wheels on different hulls of a trimaran would be overly complicated, since you'd want the tie-bar to be angled up and built in sections, rather that passing under the main hull and potentially hitting sand. Since these are intended for maneuverability, you can simplify the design by simply requiring a separate "driver" for each steerable wheel (or pair on a single hull), and relying on extensive training to ensure they all remain synchronized. If you have, e.g., 8 steerable wheels, two on the front and back of each secondary hull, with four "drivers", then you can pull off very sharp turns, drifts, and strafes fairly easily. Steering in this case could be simplified, since each "driver" does not need to shift nearly as much mass, and could involve a simple handle attached to the tie rod, but a capstan or vertical steering wheel arrangement with rope attachments would provide significant advantages in terms of mechanical advantage and stability.
On the trimaran, it may make sense to have barrel-roller wheels centered underneath the secondary hulls, so they don't get stuck if they high-center on a dune or something. These would be intended to remain off the ground most of the time, to minimize friction.
[Answer]
**Are you fully committed to wheels?**
I suppose they're only working because of extremely light weight construction but I thought aboute Theo Jansens strandbeests.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYGJ9jrbpvg>
They can be fairly fast when the wind is blowing. A bit of magical handwaving and suspension of disbelief (adapting the insect like leg system for a trimaran structure) should allow them to be practical for troop transport. They would also be (at least in theory) less sensitive to wear and tear than a setup with very few large wheels as a couple of legs can break down without the crawler losing balance or speed.
[Answer]
I suggest:
* Deal with gravity. Maybe borrow from kite surfing and/or dirigibles to lift the ship up. Perhaps they have a gas that is better than hydrogen.
* Deal with friction: Continuing with kite surfing, instead of the whole hull in the water - they use a fin - in this case a sand-skid or dual skid (catamaran-like)
* Use natural phenomenon: perhaps there are strong winds at certain altitudes, or sand channels that are very low friction.
* Save on weight: high-tech materials and hex- or triad- construction of panels for strength.
* A way to adjust balance left/right fore/aft to keep weight on the proper parts of the skids for speed, steering.
* Sand shields: scratch resistant, transparent panels that channel the sand around anyone on deck
* Air filters to keep dust out of the interior. Probably two door layers to keep sand from blowing in when people come inside.
* Embark/disembark doors on side and bottom or rear (like some aircraft)
[Answer]
## Your first problem is weight
The bigger the "ship" the heavier is has to be to maintain its own structure. Anything big on soft sand is a nightmare. If you want them to move fast then give them kiteboards.
## Your second problem is wheels.
Ideally you don't want wheels, moving parts and sand don't mix. They also focus all your weight down to a very small area. At low speeds on hard sand perhaps, at high speeds you want to be thinking skis. It's possible to ski/sandboard on softer sand than you can drive on, like the downwind side of dunes.
## In summary
Lose the big multimast, make the 20man ships the big slow cargo carriers taking them down to a crew of 3. The bulk of the group should be kiteboarding for speed and maneuverability with maybe a few 2man land yacht types with skis alongside their wheels so they don't bog down too much.
[Answer]
/ They only travel at one time of year, during which a very powerful windstorm blows from the East. They leverage the wind to sail west with the wind, and do not need to navigate or change course extensively. Their primary focus is on speed of travel./
Since you do not need to steer and you will be blown by the wind, you can get up off the sand and out of the dunes. **You can use hot air balloons.** At elevation there will be steady windspeeds and less sand. You will have less friction. You will move at the speed of the wind. Snakes will not bite you. Since you do not need to steer you do not even need dirigibles. Just get up there and go.
[Answer]
If you're talking about wind strong enough to move a land ship, moving through a desert covered in dunes, there's going to be a MASSIVE amount of sand in the air. If your ships aren't very fast moving, they'll quickly be buried.
Also, as someone who loves to sail, I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to sail through dunes. The wind would be so impossibly unpredictable I'm not sure it would be navigable unless your sails were extremely high up. I would suggest that your ships include a [spinnaker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinnaker) and have it fly quite high above the dunes. This could have the added benefit of adding lift to your ship, making it less heavy and less likely to sink into the sand.
[Answer]
Assuming you are not looking for hard science answers you could have the winds cause the sand particles to move over the dunes and create a negative charge, then the ship's hulls could be negatively charged and 'float' over the sand like magnets with the same pole facing each other.
] |
[Question]
[
I am building a world [inspired by](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/78673/how-can-i-have-a-caravan-without-camels) Gondwana, the great southern mega-continent, filled with plants and creatures that live in or evolved first on the southern Continents of Earth. On this world, there are few large animals suitable for domestication, a few elephants and giant sloth, but much of the megafauna is birds and reptiles. I would like to have a nomadic culture roaming a semi-arid subtropical plain; imagine Argentina's Semiarid Pampas, the Levant or the Rio Grande valley.
The question of interest is how to support a reasonably high nomadic population without traditional domesticated animals, like cattle or sheep. My idea is to do this with a big vegetarian bird: an ostrich.
[Ostriches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ostrich#Feeding)
>
> ...mainly feed on seeds, shrubs, grass, fruit and flowers;
>
>
>
which should be a suitably vegetarian diet. I imagine the nomads could alter the environment through selective burning to favor nutritious foods that ostriches favor, like *Acacia*, Mesquite, or Prickly-pear Cactus.
The way nomads get the most out of their herds is to rely on their milk as a primary protein source, only killing the animals when necessary. Similarly, ostriches can provide a ready-made protein source: eggs. Homestead sites suggest you can get a chicken hen to lay 200 eggs per year on average. Livestrong suggests an ostrich egg is about 2000 calories per, so if you can get that number of eggs per year, you only need about two ostriches per person to keep your community going.
Is there any reason an egg-eating, ostrich raising nomadic society would not work?
[Answer]
First of all, [an Ostrich hen can lay 40 – 60 eggs per year, averaging about 45-50 eggs per year](https://www.ostriches.org/about-ostrich/faqs). That’s the largest number I found and probably reflects domesticated farm-bred birds, which lay more. In this environment, they can *all* produce at this rate rather than the dominant female doing better, like in nature. This would be the case in your society as well.
The ostriches will be *bred* by them to be good laying hens, as separate breeds from those that are used primarily for meat or power.
That’s still a fraction of what you were hoping, but, as I indicated, you can plausibly push that by invoking selective breeding over generations.
As for nutrition, [looking up the FDA label info](https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/112) for “egg” shows content but not percentage RDA. Scanning through the chart though one thing that sticks out is **0** for vitamin C. So humans [cannot live off poultry eggs alone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy). You can compile the tables yourself if you can’t find an [RDA chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_Daily_Intake) for egg.
See what’s missing and figure out what else your nomads can add to their diet. You mentioned prickly pear cactus: the nomads should eat that themselves! [The fruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntia_ficus-indica) is very good, but it’s not produced year-round.
[Answer]
As with most of single-food diets, the answer is no, of course not. You would have to find an egg that have the same % of human average daily intake requirement of everything, so you could have X eggs providing roughly 100% of daily needs.
>
> An ostrich egg contains approximately 2000 calories, 47% protein and 45% fat. According to a study in 2003 in the British Poultry Science, ostrich eggs have a vitamin mark-up similar to that of chicken eggs.
> [source](http://safariostrich.co.za/2016/04/nutritional-facts-ostrich-eggs-vs-chicken-eggs/)
>
>
>
So, let's look at [chicken egg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_as_food#Nutritional_value):
* Riboflavin (B2) 42%
* Vitamin B12 46%
* Niacin (B3) 0% (0.064 mg)
* Vitamin K 0% (0.3 μg)
No matter how much eggs you will eat, you are not going to get near 100% of needed consumption with most of the vitamins. Either you have serious deficits, or you are overdosing other vitamins (and calories). Other nutrients, like protein - fat - carbohydrates trio, suffer similar disproportions.
# TL;DR you can't live on a single food source unless you're a koala.
[Answer]
**Yes, for a given value of only, but you will be better with more than one animal.**
There are several living pastoralist groups where the bulk of their diet is made from a single source, they supplement it hunting, fishing, opportunistic gathering of other rarities and in some patch based horticulture. Yes the loss of milk is a big hit and eggs will not completely replace it. On the other hand eggs keep much better than milk does, weeks to months under the right conditions. The lack of milk means you need to make up for it in another fashion, say by increasing supplementation from other more hunting or fishing.
The laying pattern of ostriches could be completely changed by domestication and may not have been identical to modern african ostriches in any case. It's not as if the non-stop laying of chicken is natural. So getting eggs year round is not an issue. In fact you are more likely to have something like Rhea than ostriches in south america, and they lay more eggs and like a more leafy diet to boot, although the male egg protection may be a problem.
**Additionally many nomads herd more than one animal**. There other animals that could be domesticated, there are horses and llama/camelids that may be candidates. And with the wide range of Proboscidea some of those may be domesticable as well. Having both milk and eggs would put them on better footing tha many real world nomadic peoples.
there are also plenty of potential plant crops, from manioc to beans and squash.Some nomadic peoples do practice plant agriculture, they plant small patches and keep moving between them. This also means you are not stuck with only *nomadic* pastoralism.
[Answer]
I have a question. Are these nomads human or did they evolve on the planet with this creatures? If they are human then all bets are off. You cannot drop humans on a distant planet and expect them to survive in the native environment at all much less on one particular animal. We evolved to prey on and as predators of creatures on this planet. Finding a niche for us to live in another planet's evolution will pretty much get you panned in today's science fiction crowd but if you decide to make it fantasy then you don't have to worry about protein, calorie counts and so forth. On the other hand if you chose to make the nomads similar to humans but having evolved on the other planet your nomads can have evolved to prey on these animals before they domesticated them and the animals could believably fulfill most of their needs. Throw in a few native plants, roots and berries and you have enough of a varied diet to make a good story.
[Answer]
Egg with greens for vitamin C and you could live ok. But the man who invents bacon will be King!
Update:
To answer the question and satisfy the more pedantic, no.
The egg is the nearest thing to a complete food, but with out vitamin C, you will get scurvy. Other trace elements may be lacking. In New Zealamd, there used to be problems with people living inland suffering from iodine and selenium deficencies.
] |
[Question]
[
This question happens in the same universe as my other questions:
1. [How should a country introduce a constructed language as the official language?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/63953/how-should-a-country-introduce-a-constructed-language-as-the-official-language)
2. [How many years could you trim from schooling?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/65044/how-many-years-could-you-trim-from-schooling)
3. [Could large but sparsely populated country control its borders?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/65678/could-large-but-sparsely-populated-country-control-its-borders)
4. [How to force opposition to emigrate?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/65835/how-to-force-opposition-to-emigrate)
TL/DR My story happens in a country which is large by land area, relatively well off economically but with a small population. The country is ruled by an autocrat who is keen on social engineering. The technology period is the 70s.
After getting rid of the real opposition **Dear Leader**™ noticed that nobody wants to tell him the truth. Everything is fine until calamity strikes, and disasters that could be prevented with timely intervention happened because nobody wants to bring bad news.
In order to remedy this situation, **Dear Leader**™ decided to create a controlled opposition, small parti(y|es) that would be allowed to win few seats in the national assembly but that could never have a chance to topple **Dear Leader**™. Opposition would be allowed to speak freely as much as they want but everything will be decided by **Dear Leader**™ glorious party.
What would be a good choice for a controlled opposition?
**Dear Leader**™ is thinking of maybe allowing ultra religious party that's supported by 2-3% of the population. Or maybe party staffed by people with deep links with crime underground.
[Answer]
Assuming that main point is getting useful info and not pretending that there is any pluralism in country, I see bit different solution. Sponsor some opposition dominated research institute (or more than one). Make it implicit, that as long as people there do not openly blast the Dear Leader, but are just pointing out with good arguments that some policies are failed, that it would slip through censorship. Of course everything would have to be written in proper scientific language, proper bibliography, calculations, more or less peer reviewed.
The result: some people would have a malicious joy of outsmarting dumb censors, masses would be uninterested to read, and Dear Leader would get every month on his desk a report in form of scientific journal concerning threats that no one dares to mention.
In real life the publication of this guy was actually known in academic circles in the Communist Block: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortage_economy>
[Answer]
There are precedents for fake multiple parties, notably in the [GDR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloc_party_(politics)#East_Germany). Of course everybody knew that those parties were *not* independent. Joining them did not mean joining the opposition.
Also, the **Dear Leader** would not want his people to think that they can do without him, at least on the long run.
So how about a system where seats get distributed by district, to the candidate with the majority/plurality of the votes? Candidates get vetted by the **Dear Leader**'s henchmen, as in [Iran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_legislative_election,_2016#Qualifications), and of course the vote counting is completely open (right next to the firing squad). Every now and then, one of the **Dear Leader**'s party comrades gets less than 90% of the vote. Probably because he disagreed with the **Dear Leader** or the **Dear Leader** did not campaign for him. And in extreme cases, an independent might win. Usually **Dear Leader**'s party's candidate gets the hint and jumps from a high building.
Of course that won't get people to tell the **Dear Leader** the truth. I'm afraid that's a built-in problem with having a **Dear Leader** to start with. Did you read the report of the [Iraqi Perspectives Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Perspectives_Project)?
Perhaps one way to solve your problem would be to have multiple departments and agencies in each field, and to reward those who rat on their rivals just as much as those who excel at getting things done.
[Answer]
## Radicals
A tactic that seems to be commonly used by various regimes is to support (usually covertly, but often with significant funding) a few groups with the most radically opposing viewpoint.
It has certain advantages:
* the main part is that you can choose and promote viewpoints so radical that reasonable people won't side with them anyway. It provides you a convenient re-occurring strawman to use as an illustration of what horrible things will happen if the opposing policies are chosen; so as long as you drive your PR correctly, the speeches and actions of this "opposition" will just convince the moderate majority to support your viewpoint.
* second, it brings them "into the light" where your people know who they are, and the financing gives you some "dirt" on the visible opposition leaders, so you have some control if they step over the line.
* third, when you want to implement some new internal security measure or consolidate power, you can arrange a provocation by them to justify it. Some of these radicals will want to try to overthrow your system violently. Give a few of them guns and explosives, have them burn the Reichstag or something, allow them to assassinate some official that you never liked anyway - and the public will allow you to do what you want.
[Answer]
Classic Leadership problem. In american companies, it becomes a matter of culture. If there is a lot of internal fiefdoms, no one wants to look bad so hiding problems is the norm, like in this story.
The only decent way out is to encourage being forthcoming with problems. Your **Dear Leader** may want to create a minor post that has problems and then offer support to the occupant when problems come up to demonstrate his sincerity. Have him actively reward someone who brings him a problem as soon as that person proposes a solution.
In the meantime, he could create an "independent" audit office to confirm problem and solution.
He has to actually be earnest about the problem solving, or it won't work for long. An interesting read on this is "American Icon" about Ford Motors turning things around and avoiding bankruptcy.
] |
[Question]
[
**This question already has answers here**:
[Is there a credible way a shapeshifter could gain/lose body mass when changing forms?](/questions/449/is-there-a-credible-way-a-shapeshifter-could-gain-lose-body-mass-when-changing-f)
(9 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
How could I justify shapeshifting into a large-ish monster using hard science? The transformation from man to monster is pretty drastic, so I'm assuming the transformation would at a minimum take upwards of a few days to a week of slow metamorphosis and gorging one's self on thousands of kilocalories worth of raw materials, but is there any way to accelerate the process?
Additionally, what would be the most likely culprit of such a transformation in a hard sci fi setting? Gene therapy? Nanomachines?
[Answer]
I have been fascinated by birds for a while; it is amazing that they appear so big yet have so little mass. Perhaps the transformation is more an illusion and mass is conserved? How about an illusion but the entity uses mass from it surroundings to effect the transformation? It makes for interesting possibilities as to what the individual can appear to transform into...and when you decide on it, is it still an illusion when conforming to science?
[Answer]
This is more of a metamorphosis than shape-changing in the sense of an organism taking on the shape, appearance and form of another creature. To make this transformation scientifically plausible assume the man and the monster are different forms of the same organism.
For the organism to transform this could be triggered by conscious volition where the organism can decide to change and does, hormonally either by taking hormones in pill form or as part of its 'natural' lifecycle.
This approach will restrict the transformation from man into monster by only allowing the monster to be a humanoid creature no bigger than a gigantopithecus. So the transformation will change, say, a six foot man into a nine foot giant ape sized creature. This is not exactly the largish monster the OP requested, but it has been scaled to meet the requirements of hard-science plausibility.
Most the transformation will take place in existing structures possessed by the organism in its normal human morph. Skin, for example, could change colour and form a scaly epidermis, while wattles like those of a turkey might form around its face and head. Additional hair could sprout. Teeth could be replaced by longer and larger teeth rather like baby teeth are replaced and nails grow into claws. Muscles could grow larger and more powerful. This would be effectively a hormone driven muscle building genetically innate program.
The organism would need to consume huge amounts of food and nutrients to bulk itself up into gigantopithecus sized monster. Access to highly functional toilet system would be essential as the organism will need to expel quite large amounts of waste material as it undergoes its metamorphosis. Cleaniness and hygiene should not be neglected. The process of metamorphosis will take weeks as the OP correctly suggested.
A man to monster metamorphosis of this kind would have to be custom built. Presumably, by biotechnologists using highly advanced genetic engineering based on a level of biological knowledge well ahead of 21st century life sciences.
[Answer]
[Dedifferentiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_differentiation#Dedifferentiation) of most of the cells of an adult being back into stem cells should do the trick.
See how fast an embryo develops into an infant - nine months for humans, sure, but rats for example will generally take less than a month. Since you are willing to go for nano machines and gene therapy, and this is Science **Fiction** you are getting into, you could suspend disbelief enough to have a human-sized creature deddiferentiate into a formless yolk/albumin/goo and back into another form within the span of a few days.
Bonus if it involves a huge cocoon structure or a a vat-like artificial womb.
[Answer]
Assuming its voluntary, don't *transform* - have the monster and 'host' symbiotic. Both of them will die if they're separate too long - ala venom. The 'monster' need not have a fixed form and part of might be attached to the host all the time. That handles the mass issue, and the energy issue.
The human side might *have* some internal changes, tho nothing drastic enough to make them not look like a baseline. The monster part would be semi inert and re-integrate with the 'human' part of the symbiotic organisms to transform At other times, this would be stored somewhere, like a closet, or say wandering around sewers eating alligators or something
[Answer]
Let's see...First question should be: how does the transformation work?
I think you'd have to modify the shifters DNA in some way. For that, you could use nanomachines or a simple engineered virus to inject and change the shifters DNA. That might be via injection (virus), or radio signal (machines that were injected earlier) or anything that suits your world.
Since we do not know how human cells react to sudden DNA change, there's no way of knowing what will happen now, but probably it will kill you. Usually, cells can't just change their specialisation and become something else, this ability is limited to stem cells. So the first part should be: change all the cells back to stem cells. Or: change them in a way that all newly build cells become stem cells (remember, your cells split from time to time). But careful now: if you change a cell back to a stemcell, it is possible that it loses its functionality.
At this point, i imagine nanomachines would work best, because they can control the process much better. For example, to transform the lung they would start by "melting" one half of your lungs, rebuilding it and respecializing the cells, while the other half keeps you alive. Then, when the new organ is functional, they'd change the other half. For other organs, e.g. liver, they'd temporarily establish a second "emergency liver" while transforming the primary organ. Since these machines can make cells into stem cells and back, they could use ANY tissue to create ANY organ, so why not a makeshift liver from your second kidney? (btw. this would mean that in the world where shapeshifting is possible via machines, almost all injuries and all sicknesses would be curable).
Overall, i think the process would require quite some time, probably be not painful at all (machines will just shut down the nerves before destroying stuff), and most of all: it needs energy to no end.
Funny thing is: i see no reason why these nanomachines couldn't build you into anything they want, as long as they have the blueprints. But maybe their data storage ability is... quite low, so they can only store one creature-blueprint at a time?
contrary to some other answers i don't think hygiene or .. "waste disposal" would be problems. Your organism is being reconstructed by nano-machines... they can power up your immune system so it kills anything that doesn't belong into your body. If they don't do that themselves.
I do see a problem, though, when it comes to "what does the creature do while transforming". Rebuilding bones, muscles, sinews and everything will take time. So you are definitely not mobile during that time. But if the transformation blocks calory intake, that's a bad thing. So i suspect the process might work around that. First, create a makeshift mouth right on your stomach. Start by transforming head and one arm. When both are done, the user can eat again, so now do the other arm, and remove the makeshift mouth and so on....
I think one might accelerate the process, if you submerge the body in a fluid enriched with nutriments and oxygen. In that case, the body could be supplied from everywhere without paying too much respect to keeping it fed. So the machines might place the shifter in some kind of coma, and just go wild on transforming everything except the brain into liquid goo and back. :)
] |
[Question]
[
I got the idea from [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/20629/6799), which suggests a species that evolved early in the existence if the universe and spreads between stars upon their death.
If one of said creatures enters the inner Solar System and modern Earth confirms that it is a living creature, how would human scientific community likely react? For the purposes of this question we will assume it is roughly the size and mass of the Moon, and is not on a collision course with Earth.
It gets its energy via a form of photosynthesis and through absorbing minerals from smaller celestial bodies than itself (usually meaning the destruction of the smaller body). This lifeform continually grows, and only stops growing on death. It can live for however long its parent star lives. It doubles its size every thousand years, but humans have no way of knowing this. It produces asexually, and can produce up to two offspring per earth-year.
These creatures **are sentient**, and **can achieve sapience** given enough time (centuries). They communicate with their own kind via radio waves, and produce sizeable interference when they pass by the Earth.
**EDIT:**
The children are [Charon-sized](http://www.arcadiastreet.com/cgvistas/pluto_0050.htm). The animals do not eat often and usually subsist on photosynthesis until they need to grow, at which point they go for the nearest mineral source that is not overly dangerous to obtain. The children rely even more on solar energy, with over 90% of their energy obtained from the Sun.
[Here is a side-by-side](http://www.arcadiastreet.com/cgvistas/pluto_0050.htm) of Earth, The moon, Pluto, and Charon to give you an idea of what I am talking about.
**It might be possible, but is highly unlikely, that we will be able to communicate with it in the next few centuries.**
[Answer]
The scientific community? Fascination. Most of the grants on earth are going to be shifted towards study of everything about this thing. It's alien life larger than the deathstar a few light minutes from earth.
People from every specialty are going to be shifting into astronomy to learn about this thing. Astronomy will experience a boom like no other in history. SETI and its associated signal processing will suddenly be a big deal, absorbing specialists from every area trying to understand any possible signals from this thing.
Initially they're likely to assume it's some kind of a living ship with a controlling intelligence rather than some kind of interstellar filter feeder. They're likely to try signalling it in every way possible.
They're going to get no response at first then they're going to watch as it chows down on Europa and then people are going to get scared. Very scared.
People are going to be watching it with every telescope on earth.
Once it starts feeding it's going to become clear that it's growing larger.
At this point whether it's intelligent or not it becomes clear that it's an existential risk to earth. It's growing and we can project its growth speed. If it doubles every 1000 years then in 15 cycles it's going to be the mass of Jupiter and will have eaten most of the solar system. It's not going to take very long to have a reasonable guess at the 1000 years problem.
At first people will want to hang back in case it's intelligent and inclined to anger. After a few years of no responses there's going to be massive expeditions to study it.
There's going to be entire fields of study into how we might kill this thing: poisons, impactors, bombs, bioweapons. All will have large numbers of research institutions studying how they might be used against it.
[Answer]
Murphy's answer is already quite good, but I'd like to add that a lot of research would likely go into observing the object for engineering purposes.
There's a lot of research in the area of using biological processes to help with energy demands as well as surviving the harshness of space. We have algae-based batteries and we look at how tardigrades survive in extreme conditions, for example.
Suddenly here's a creature that doesn't just survive in space, but it thrives. And it's found a great way to get energy and metabolise.
While it would be ideal to get a hold of the creature somehow, I imagine we'd keep our distance and use unmanned spacecraft, telescopes, and spectroscopes to glean as much information as we can and see how we can use its presence to benefit us in some way.
[Answer]
I stand by the already stated issues about scientific community. The scientific community would love to learn about alien life, though this isn't limited to scientific community. There *world* would change the moment alien life was confirmed. An entire different question on the worlds response to alien life is required, it's too much to go into here.
Scientists will respond with the same awe, or fear, or reevaluation of religion etc that all humans will go through. They will tend to be more curious, and likely more optimistic, about the creature; less likely to be swayed by doomsday claims and other fear mongering and more focused on the questions and answers it can offer.
That is...if they know it's a creature.
From what you described they wouldn't appear, at first, to have any way of knowing that this thing was alive. It sounds like a huge moon or plantoid, not a living creature, and that's what they would be inclined to presume for awhile. After all alien life is so different that it's likely hard to recognize, through in the size and the fact that awol plantoid is a far more likely premise then alien lifeform and that's their first instinct when they see it...which by the way will be way before it enters the solar system. It would be a very unusual mass, flying in a very odd way, and thus a very important intellectual curiosity in any case, but not nearly the same as a lifeform.
If they see it as a non-lifeforms their be very curious, but more then that, worried. Something of that size coming towards us is a potential issue. First thing we would do is calculate its trajectory to see if it is coming towards earth, potentially colliding with it. If it is headed at a very different angle that would help (though it probably won't be...see evolutionary rant, and suggested changes to better justify creature while staying as true as possible to your stated form). However, even if it's not coming close to earth it can still be a threat. That much gravity can affect the orbits of things in the solar system. not by much, but Earth's orbit is a very delicate thing, just the tiny shift and we either freeze or burn to death. If that thing comes anywhere close to us, rather it strikes us or not, it officially qualifies as a very bad thing, possible even an extinction event sort of thing.
If its trajectory puts it further away from earth it's not as bad, its gravity won't be too huge so it's only if it makes close passes to any of our land masses that it's a major issue, I think. This isn't my area of expertise, a follow up question on what it would do to our solar system to have such a large mass enter it, and how its trajectory affects this, would likely be worth asking to get people who are more specialized in this area to answer.
Of course you seem to want humans to respond to a creature, not a planetoids. For this to happen lets see how we can have people identify it as sapient as soon as possible...
The best way to justify this is those radio waves (though they don't make sense entirely to me, I would modify them slightly but get to that later)
Once the scientists notice a new stellar body of interest they will turn powerful telescopes at it, including ones that will detect radio waves. Their detecting of radio waves is the best way to achieve a *belief* that it may be alive. If the waves are communicative they will have certain mathematical properties, properties that will suggest something interesting about it that could suggest sapience (but not confirm it yet, no one is going to figure out how to 'speak' its language to confirm intellect just form listening to it).
Now the scientists have their first debate, do the odd signals suggest sapience. Humans likely will *not* assume the planetoid is sapient at this time, sapient life living on (or creating) the planetoid will seem more logical...partially because I don't think your creature *can* evolve as stated, but even if we assume it's plausible humans will naturally think in terms of humanoid sized creatures at first; even scientists, who should know better, will likely have their innate biases suggest that. So instead the debate will be on rather lifeforms can live on the creature.
Note, some will say the signal could still be random, a odd quirk of the planetoids causing odd fluctuation of signals. In fact there are groups of humans who will resist any view of alien life and work very hard to come up with arguments against it, but even those without bias will have to weigh the absurdly low odds of signs of life coming so close to earth with the odds of odd random-but-natural modification/creation of signals. Your weighing two options that are both absurdly improbable, trying to decide which is less probable isn't exactly easy.
As the 'unknown mass' gets closer they will do everything they can to 'look' at it with our various telescope and other sources, hoping to get more detail to use to draw conclusions, remember the thing will be so far otu when first detected that we will not be able to make out much detail at first.
At this point what happens depends on two key questions.
1. How fast is it approaching us
2. Does it talk back?
as to 1, this is relevant due to the question of how we study it, and how much time we have to study it. And the answer is...lots of time.
I'm not certain how far away it will be when we detect it, astronomy is probably my weakest area of physics next to string theory, however, SETI claims to be able to detect even very weak signals from [a parsec away](http://www.setileague.org/askdr/howfar.htm), that's more then 3 lightyears. Now that's really a bad example, the question with seti is more about rather they are looking at the right 'place' to hear it, but at the same time this thing is much larger, much stronger signals (it kind of has to), may be intentionally broadcasting at us, and if going at all fast has doppler effects so...my limited science says that we probably will detect it from a parsec away; until someone who knows better comes and tells me I'm wrong.
I *know* the creature is not going to be moving at anywhere near light speed, so if it's 3 lightyears away when detected it will take it many years to reach us, we could have decades to study this. In fact if we assume the creature intentionally came to earth (see below again) then its speed will be very low due to the energy requirements. In short were going to have quite a bit of time to study from afar, and to invest effort into researching this thing.
So we would be spending money building better ways of studying this, moving our space based telescopes to study it further, send off a probe towards it, though the probe won't be getting close enough to get useful data for quite awhile either.
When trying to decide if it's life their look for a few things. What it's made of won't help, they aren't going to find liquid water for example. They will then be looking for signs of life living on the planetoids, transforming, atmosphere that could support 'life', alien-made sataliets etc, this will all fail of course. People will quickly point out that we are seeing one signal, not dozens, and any sapient species able to broadcast such strong signals would likely be broadcasting a ton of them (we sure are), so the fact that a single signal, that isn't focused enough to be intentional pinpoint communication via technology, suggests this is not done by sapient technology. Since the idea of sapient plant sized life is so absurd I don't think many will leap to that, for awhile they likely will still presume some really bizarre natural signal.
The next best indicator of life will be when they get close enough to make out the planitoid's surface and see how structured it is, not a random pockmarked collection of gravel. However, I'm not certain when we will see this, I feel like it will not be until quite some time after we detect the creature that we can view it with enough clarity to see the sort of organized structure required for life.
In any case the argument that this is an alien made probe, rather then a sapient being in its own right, is still likely to be made. Yes it's bizarre and shocking to make anything so large, but the idea of planet sized creature is so unlikely on its own that planet designed probe still seems a valid alternative by comparison. I suspect people will suggest that some aliens took an existing stray planetoids, sunk some equipment into its core, and then let it fly towards earth to protect it, as idiotic as it seems, since what more valid option is there, a planet is alive?
And for that matter the fact is even if it's on our door step (and somehow not killing us all in the process) people will still not necessarily accept it as alive. I keep referring to a "random natural occurrence" above, what *is* the difference between that and life? life is, ultimately, a random natural occurrence. This thing is so..well alien, that people are not going to be quick to call it alive. Lets look at googles definitions of life:
>
> the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.
>
>
> 2.the existence of an individual human being or animal.
>
>
>
Well great, by googles definition this thing isn't alive, it's inorganic. The very first definition of life I found already killed it, and the majority of definitions of life I see do this as well. However, ignoring that part, scientists look at the list of qualities in option 1 to define life generally. The problem is all of those take *so long* for your creature that we aren't going to detect that any of it's happening for a century or more. There are other definitions, like communication, but as I said from just listening to the signal we will know it's quite unusual but it's hard to say we will be ready to agree to life there.
To be frank without some sort of communication we may never define this thing as life while it's in our solar system (and were still not driven to extinction by it). Oh some will consider it alive, there will be a debate, but the odds are going to be with it not being, again the intelligent aliens sending radio waves from a planet sized prob explanation is still not much more improbable then planet size life, so even definitive proof of intelligence communication does not necessarily mean the alien being declared alive. Though since this would mean confirmation of alien intelligence of some sort all the really interesting things will still happen on earth.
Still, without communication this is a pretty slow moving revolation, so lets look at it communicating back. I can't really get into this without talking about how it communicates, which brings in so many other issues that...well I think it's time for that promised detour on evolution.
Now as to communication...
If we shine radio waves at it, and we will, it may very well 'hear' them, after all if it communicates with radio waves it must be able to hear them as well.
Thus it may respond to our radio waves by sending different waves of its own. It won't take long for scientists to recognize that it's radio waves change depending on what we send it, and this will switch everyone over to the possibility of sapient life existing (rather the alien is alive or just a probe programed to respond will still be up for debate).
Now we are not going to 'talk' with this alien in the usual sense, its language is going to be utterly alien and indecipherable. Thus one of two things will happen, depending on rather or not it's sapient.
If it's only sentient then its responses will be based off of some pre programed 'body language'. It hears a radio wave that it interprets as something and responds back; if it hears what it thinks is a threat it responds with its equivalent of a hiss, if it hears a welcome bark it response back to that etc. Its responses will vary depending on what we send, but it can't come up with a way to actually *talk* with us any more then a lion will.
This will leave the debate of sapience open longer, since while our signals cause different signals to come back there is not, at first, any understanding as to what they mean and it fails the sapience tests we send it. However, over time we will notice it response to certain messages in certain general ways and is adapting those messages (a dog may not think, but he will start barking differently to the sound of someone walking around in the next room after hearing it a few hundred times). There will be a strong push towards sapience existing, with some still arguing natural phenomenon.
Notice I said sapience, not sentience. The scientists will likely lean towards sentience that is simply too alien to understand, and thus incapable of understanding our 'sapience tests' due to simple foreignness. The possibility of an alien too inscrutable to comprehend is not that impossible with such divergent evolutions, and again for awhile they will likely still be leaning towards the moon sized probe hypotheses, which requires sapience.
With time we will eventually likely conclude it is non-sapient. this will lead to the argument about rather it is alive I mentioned earlier. Trying to declare something so foreign as alive when it is not sapient as well is just hard for people to accept. Even if declared sentient people will disagree and others call it an accede mic distinction, kind of like the debate over rather pluto is a planet, only obviously allot more personal. Since sentience takes so long to develop we probably won't get to see it become sentient; especially since we would have been so stuck in ou view of sapience that we won't notice the slow sentience developing; unless it somehow developed faster due to the unique stimuli of earth triggering it.
If it's sapient things are more interesting. We will quickly resort to the standard sapience test, MATH! (hopefully it didn't sleep through class). Were talking about sending pulses that double every second to see if it figures out the doubling and sends back the next double in the sequence, or prime numbers, or any other mathematical sequence looking for it to respond with the next patter of the sequence.
This won't be an immediate response, it could take months or longer to get a response this way, because we don't know what it's listening for. Before we can 'talk' with it we need to figure out what signals it likes. That means figuring out when we go beyond frequencies it can 'hear', figure out when we are shouting too loud and hurting its ears, or when our pitch is too low, or that were speaking so fast it can't keep up etc. There will be experimentation to figure out what its normal frequencies are. If it's sapient this actually won't take as long, but if it's non sapient it will take quite a few iterations of different ways of sending frequencies to rule out were not just talking wrong to it.
From here ...there are already questions about how to communicate with a sapient species who's language you don't know on the site for what scientists will do.
At this point most will accept sapience, though plenty will keep coming up with no true scotsman debates and moving the goalposts.
Scientists will now focus the majority of their energy in 'talking' with it, using math to create some crude quasi-language. The other big step will be to figure out if it is made or evolved thing.
From here the rest is part of humans normal response to discovering sapince, already covered on this page.
[Answer]
Size of the moon? Alive? Eating moons and asteroids? As a scientist, I'd be getting in a ship to stand on it (since it apparently has gravity) after we'd confirmed that it doesn't eat probes and can't eat Earth. If it doubles every millennium, we'd be able to identify that it's growing. Scientists would spend billions of dollars researching this...thing. Exobiology would grow as a field. It'd capture the public imagination. It kind of reminds me of the Traveler from Destiny, honestly: a (likely) sentient rogue planetoid. <http://destiny.wikia.com/wiki/The_Traveler>
] |
[Question]
[
The majority of communication between old and new-world is sent through a slew of cables running along the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. This method is obviously the most effective, as its how we are doing it presently.
For the sack of argument, lets say a single person (evil mastermind, anarchist, etc.) would have the resources to build a submarine vehicle that can cut theses cables.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JXZTe.jpg)
*Disregard the fact that they are enormous and meant to stand the test of time!*
**I am mainly concerned about two things:**
1. Political situations
2. Communications without the cables.
**Considerations:**
1. This man works alone, without the support of any government or political group.
2. Time setting is current day.
---
***What situations would arise with all communications being cut across the Atlantic?***
I'm hoping some interesting situation arise, but if the cables are easy to repair I guess I'll have to go for a different angle.
[Answer]
**Not much more than a major investigation.**
Cable disruptions happen. When they do, traffic is rerouted. Usually you have plenty of alternative cables to reroute to along the same path. There are 15 cables between the United States and Europe, although there are other Atlantic cables between other countries and continents. If these were to be cut, we would reroute data through the pacific cables. This would cause increased stress for sure, and might result in some increased ping time to Europe, but communication will continue.
There would certainly be an investigation. Multiple cables being cut at the same time would either be assumed to be a natural event (earthquake) or possibly the Russians. This would raise alarm at the Pentagon, but seeing as how it’s only you cutting the cables, the diplomatic tension would be temporary.
This [NPR article](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/10/26/451992422/what-would-it-take-to-cut-u-s-data-cables-and-halt-internet-access) mulls over the same question (due to concerns about Russian submarine interference).
Even if all Atlantic and Pacific cables were cut by a James Bond villain, satellites will still provide for cross-continent communication. They won’t be capable of carrying the entire load of public internet traffic, but critical communication will continue. The cables are also only facilitating connections to foreign servers. In the U.S., your average user probably wouldn’t even notice the cut given the high number of services based in the U.S. Worldwide there might be more issues, but most major U.S. based internet companies have servers on other continents.
[Answer]
Subsea fibre optic cables come in many different sizes from 14mm diameter for Light Weight to 68mm+ for heavily armoured cables such as Rock Armour.
Armoured cables are used in shallow depths and in harsh areas of seabed terrain where abrasion or damage from fishing is likely to be caused.
A typical system will start with the shore end being in Double Armour for a kilometre or so before stepping down to Single armour and then Light Weight as the depth increases.
Cables are often buried using a plough towed behind the Lay Vessel during installation as every 1m of burial provides and increasing level of protection and is cheaper than continuing to make the cables from more and more armour which increases their cost and the difficulty to handle them.
Another side to cable weight is depth, the breaking strain of Double or Single Armour is approx 270kN. Laying a cable to a depth of 6Km+ would mean that the cable would have parted under its own weight before it reached the seabed.
To overcome this, Light Weight cables are used and can be installed to the deepest parts of the oceans - See Mariana Trench cable crossings.
Subsea cables are often damaged by anchors, fishing activity, earthquakes, subsea landslides, currents, typhoons and occasionally plant failure.
To span the long distances fibre optic cables need to have electrically driven Repeaters every 50km or so to boost the optical transmission and overcome optical dispersion which leads to frequency blurring and data loss.
If a cable should go down the traffic is shunted to another operator’s cable or diverted through a different section of the cable. Many cable systems span the world and have multiple landing points or branches. This gives the ability to shunt traffic from a damaged section through a different landing station and onto a different operators cable or over the land network
To repair a subsea cable first the fault is located either using ohms law from the power feed equipment driving the repeaters if it is a short circuit or optically using an COTDR Optical Pulse Test Set if the fibres are broken or damaged.
Once the fault is located a repair ship is tasked for the repair. There are ships stationed all over the world covering different zones for cable repairs. The vessel will load spare cable into its tanks, often hundreds of Kilometres! Jointing kits and any replacement plant that is needed.
On arrival at the repair ground the vessel will either use an ROV if conditions permit to inspect and recover the cable end or will use a grappling rig to cut and recover the cable to the surface.
Once an end is onboard it will be tested clear for faults before being sealed and buoyed off to allow the ship to recover the other cable end and test to locate the fault. The vessel will then recover cable from the seabed to the fault and cut it out. It will then commence the initial joint where the stock cable end is joined to the system cable and laid back down to the seabed back towards the first end that way buoyed off.
On recovery of the first cable end the final joint is prepared, the stock cable is cut to length and the two ends joined to form the final bight.
Contrary to popular belief the cable doesn’t run through the entire length of the ship from end to end. Historically vessels such as the Pacific Guardian and the Atlantic Guardian are bow workers where the cable is deployed from the front of the ship clear of the props as the vessel moves backwards, they are also equipped to do long cable installations from the stern of the ship which gives rise to the misconception that cable is run from end to end.
Most modern cable ships are setup to use the large back deck as the cable operations deck, a final bight is essentially two cable ends up over the stern and joined together in a big loop inside the ship, this is then laid back to the seabed on ropes and a release hook.
The common construction of a subsea fibre optic cable working from the centre outwards is Fibres, Loose protection tube, Inner strand wires, Copper tube ( power path ) Polythene insulation, Armour wires, Nylon Serving.
The fibres are joined together using a fusion splicer that perfectly aligns the 7-20 micron sized fibres before fusing them together with an electric arc. A fusion splice is often much stronger than the parent glass of the fibre. The rest of the joint comprises of armouring and moulding the core of the joint in poly Xray testing and then assembling the rest of the case and armour ready for deployment to the seabed.
Ships such as the CS Cable Innovator can do entire Atlantic crossings without stopping where as other vessels such as CS Pacific Guardian and CS Cable Retriever are suited to repair work.
To sever all of the connections from a large country such as the UK, or America would be very difficult time consuming and ultimately fruitless as traffic can be shunted via other routes. The 2010 Earthquake in Japan severed nearly all of the cables on the Eastern Seaboard, breaking and burying a lot them. The country was still able to communicate via cables on the Western Seaboard whilst 9 cable ships were mobilised to repair the downed systems.
Some countries routinely cut cables on stealth operations against their rivals but this doesn’t allow them to listen in. It is not possible to cut into an optical cable and patch into it without being noticed and if you could you would not be able to decode and retransmit the data like on an old Coax Cable System.
Most cable operators use AIS Vessel tracking to identify ships that cross their cables and anchor near them so that they can seek restitution from the vessel owners.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/M0n4K.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oL46Q.png)
[Answer]
There's a lot of redundancy to the cables so not much would happen except for an investigation leading to the individual's capture and punishment.
However, for the sake of fun, let's imagine he's got some help, perhaps other individuals, ultra awesome technology, a submarine made of Unobtainium, so to speak, and that the attack is very sustained and global on a level never seen before.
Timeline:
**Realisation and panic.**
Countries that are isolated and rely on the cables for their internet will suffer the most. This impacts their business, trade, recreation, and so on. Immediately, people everywhere will start phoning their infrastructural entities for answers. It could even escalate into riots as they protest, since it will take some time for the realisation to sink in and for right entities to investigate and fix it.
People who rely on global communications will lose money. Lenders and landlords still have to be paid, after all, so lots of people will end up losing their homes, belongings, and jobs if the fix isn't made quickly enough or there isn't enough back-up infrastructure to use as a safety net.
**Paranoia, distrust, and finger-pointing.**
Just because the man worked alone doesn't mean that the countries of the world won't know that it's a single man who worked alone. Once they realise that there's been a systematic severing of the cables and that it isn't due to some freak accident of nature, they'll look for answers.
Since it's a form of technological terrorism, they're going to wonder what non-ally was responsible. Countries that are tense with each other could be triggered into firefights, or enter miniature cold wars with each other due to doubt and distrust.
In order to mitigate the damages, everyone will be scrambling to fix (and keep fixing, since the guy might sever the cables in multiple places or keep severing them as they're placed.) the cables. After all, the governments are the end all of blame from the people, and they need to figure out who's responsible at the same time, especially if they keep getting severed.
**Investigation.**
A lot of work will go into locating the individuals who are responsible. Analysis of the severed cables, followed by a systematic deployment of reconnaissance submarines and jets to monitor for any continued or sustained terrorist acts against their infrastructure.
If a fix isn't found soon or the man isn't discovered, it can escalate into releasing spies into other countries, going to summits and meetings to discuss the attacks and what threats are possible in the future, since they don't necessarily know that it's just the cables under attack.
Through enough investigation, they'll find the individual(s) responsible.
**Capture and punishment.**
No one's going to put up with the attack on the very things that drive the current economy. Global communications is very important to everyone. There would be a cooperative effort to capture them, and likely put them to death for the damages incurred.
[Answer]
Boats such as the Atlantic Guardian are expressly designed for mid-Atlantic optic fibre cable repair and would be dispatched to repair the break. The cable is raised from the seabed, and run through the length of the vessel. In the vessel lab, the cable is parted (or an evil genius does it for you), stripped, repaired (with an electron microscope!) and rejoined. Look for the documentary online.
An evil genius would do well to follow the example of the US and other larger, more evil geniuses, who routinely eavesdrop on the traffic through the cables, rather than destroying them. Far more profitable, doesn't require a warrant, and the taxpayer foots the bill.
] |
[Question]
[
Maybe it was a trick of the light or a strange cloud, or just not enough sleep. A couple nights ago I could have sworn that thin crescent moon flickered.
Which led to an interesting question - **what conditions could make the moon flicker?**
Of course, there are all kinds of interesting consequences. I know we have a couple eclipses each year, and the moon has phases, but overall, we take the steady, ethereal glow of the moon for granted.
By flicker, I mean off and on within seconds to an hour. The phenomenon must be observed wherever the moon is visible. It can be instant or gradual, but must return to its original state within an hour.
I realize the physics of moonlight make this hard, so a habitable Terra-like planet in another system is ok. The moon just needs to be large enough to be extremely obvious and an important part of the night sky, so that its flickering would be impossible to miss. I'd especially like it if this were a recurring event, maybe even a regular feature of the night.
*Edit: I'm not looking for an explanation of what I saw, that can probably be chalked up to sleep deprivation. I'm looking for a sci-fi or real explanation for a flickering moon. Math not required, just ideas.*
[Answer]
**First a brief explanation of what flickering is:**
Flickering is caused by transient changes in light intensity. It is much more common to see flickering in small / point sources of light (e.g. stars or planets) because very small atmospheric changes affect all light arriving from that source.
Similar small atmospheric disturbances usually don't affect all the light coming from non-point sources like the moon.
**Causes**
The most simple and plausible causes of "moon flicker" (changing brightness) would fall into one of these categories:
1. Something interferes with the passage of light from Sun -> Moon
2. Something interferes with the passage of light from Moon -> Earth
3. Something changes the brightness of Moon
A. The Moon emits light
B. The Moon's reflectivity changes
C. Something else shines on the Moon
4. Something changes the brightness of the Sun
**1. Interference of Sunlight reaching the Moon**
I really can't think of much that could do this. It'd have to be huge to affect the brightness of the Moon such that we could see it.
The Earth's atmosphere isn't in the way so that wouldn't do it either.
Under the realm of SF, you might see something like this if you had something like a planet size solar reflector (e.g. to cool Venus or warm Mars) and it accidentally reflected light onto the Moon. That might be spectacular but I'm not going to do the math for you :P
**2. Interference of light reflected from Moon -> Earth**
This is by far most plausible since the Earth's atmosphere regularly causes flickering in the light coming from smaller astronomical bodies. To affect the overall brightness of the Moon, the turbulence would have to be much larger than normal (more energy in the atmosphere).
Alternatively something large would have to pass between the Earth and Moon to dim the Moon significantly. The closer the object is to the observer, the smaller it could be to have the desired effect. That object would probably possess low reflectivity (perhaps an undiscovered Near Earth Asteroid?) or the observer might notice the occultation.
**3. Something changes the brightness of the Moon**
This image of [Inconstant Moon from Deviant Art](http://1footonthedawn.deviantart.com/art/Inconstant-Moon-76273889)
There are three phenomenon that could do this, two from a flash coming from the Moon and the last is something else shining on the Moon.
*Moon emits light*
The more common of these and one that **has been observed** is meteors striking the Moon. If you are not observing the Moon with the telescope, you'd just see a brightness change without knowing what caused it. The meteor actually emits enough light to compete with the reflected sunlight. It especially striking when the Moon is not full and the meteor strikes the unlit portion of the Moon.
Here's a [video of a meteor striking the Moon](http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2014/feb/24/meteorite-hits-moon-lunar-impact-video)
*Moon's reflectivity changes*
Probably less common but possible in an SF story would be if human development left man-made structures on the Moon. When sunlight strikes flat surfaces (e.g. PV panels?), the terrestrial observer would see glinted sunlight. This might cause a "flickering" type of effect. The change in reflected could also be caused by any number of other SF occurrences.
*Something else shines on the Moon*
A variant of this would be if the Solar System were hit by a supernova/hypernova/gamma ray burst from relatively close range (10s - 100 light years). People on the sheltered side of the Earth might see spectacular effects on the Moon. In this scenario, the devastation would be total - it would kill everything on the planet.
**4. Sun's brightness changes**
A number of SF stories have been written about this. The most memorable to me was Larry Niven's [Inconstant Moon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconstant_Moon#Inconstant_Moon) (also made into an Outer Limits episode). In it the Sun emits and enormous flare that presumably kills most of the inhabitants of the days side of the planet. You wouldn't need such a huge flare to cause a noticeable difference in Moon brightness but I don't think the effects would be very benign either.
[Answer]
The moon is visible because it reflects light from the sun and some of that light deflects in our general direction. To make the moon flicker, you either need to block the light that is hitting the moon or block the light after it has reflected off. A third alternative is to momentarilly turn off the source of the light, but since that is our life giving sun, my continuing sanity requires that I ignore that option.
Blocking the light that hits the moon is possible. If a dense enough cloud of particles fell into our sun's gravity well it would block some of the sun's emitted light as it passed. If it happened to obscure the particular rays which were destine to reflect off our moon and into our eyes, and if we were looking skyward at exactly the right second, we would see a flicker.
Blocking the light after it reflects off the moon requires that something get in between us and the moon. Clouds within our own atmosphere could serve that function but they usually don't move fast enough to appear as a flicker. Also, you can usually see previously obscuring clouds as they continue on their journey, providing you with an instant explanation for what you have just seen. We have all lived on this planet for our entire lives, so we are pretty used to cloud shadows. Outside of our atmosphere, objects might thread the needle between our gravity well and that of our moon, and might be big enough to block the moonlight, but we would have heard about such a near-miss on the news either before or after it occurred.
The final option which I can think of, involves not an object (either in or out of our atmosphere) blocking the light, but rather our atmosphere itself. I know of no energy which could do the job, but I can imagine that there exists one that upon stricking the upper layers of our atmosphere, momentarilly rendered that layer opaque. Perhaps there are turbulence effects in high-energy as there are in fluids, and we just haven't encountered them until now. Perhaps in that fateful millisecond on that fateful night, when you and your child were starring at the universe, the first such energy collision in human history occurred, and you alone noticed it.
Consider yourself blessed and go back to enjoying your newborn!
[Answer]
Bats!
I used to go camping in a valley in the Rocky Mountains where I'd see the moon flicker regularly, every night without fail. After inquiring, I found out that the reason for this were bats.
They are tiny, so you can't really see them or be sure they are responsible for the effect
They take flight from their cave at a consistent time causing the moon to 'flicker' at around the same time every night
There is a lot of them, so odds are at least one will fly between your eye and the moon several times in a short period of time
The amount of time they actually block the light from the moon from getting to you is tiny, so you get a full flickering 'completely bright' to 'not there' and back
[Answer]
The other answers on this page are very thorough. Just wanted to add a thought.
Imagine a planet with 2 moons, like Mars. Unlike Mars+Phobos+Deimos, one of the moons of this fictitious planet is far away, and the other is very close to the planet. At some points in the cycle, the far-away moon is lit and the nearby, tiny moon is completely in the planet's shadow. This black disk will pass (quickly) over the bright, faraway moon, making it disappear and then reappear.
The smaller nearby moon could alternatively be a manmade (alien-made) satellite.
[Answer]
If, as you say in the comments, a gradual on to off over a few minutes is alright, then a [lunar eclipse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_eclipse) fits the bill. This would provide the effect to many people on the surface of the Earth.
For more drastic flickering, then the effect will have to be more localized, like a cloud or hot air balloon between the affected person and the moon.
Of course, you could also just block the sun from the Earth-moon system by flying a gas giant nearby. This would give the people on the day side something to look at too,
[Answer]
Iapetus, a moon of Saturn is a moon with two colors: one side is snow-white, the other is pitch-black. It could be that a planet possesses such a moon and which is not (or is not yet) tidally locked. At one time it shows the white side, and then the black one at another. Now, if the surface is white and pockmarked with 50 shades of grey, then the brightness appears to change. The "new moon" phase is when the moon crescent is the thinnest. It is the phase which responds the most to changes in albedo. The moon will appear to flicker, albeit slowly.
] |
[Question]
[
Okay, so in my setting I'm writing, the planet is very earth-like, similar atmosphere, liquid water exists, etc.. But the planet orbits a red giant. I've done a lot of fiddling around with various things (color of flora, etc.), but what I can't figure out is what a rainbow would look like. I've looked around quite a bit including on here, but can't seem to find an answer.
I assume that since it's not monochromatic, and we're talking about sunlight shining through water droplets, there would be still at least most of the colors of the earth rainbow visible. But would it be shifted? Wider red band or some other color? Would some colors not show up? Anyone have any ideas?
[Answer]
You'd get a rainbow with brighter red and yellow, and dimmer green and blue.
What is often missed in discussion of "red stars" (like M class red dwarves) is that the surface temperature of those stars is similar to that of the tungsten filament in an old-style incandescent light bulb -- which, though fairly yellow when compared to a truly white light source, is still "white" enough that all colors are readily visible.
You can observe a full spectrum from a tungsten lamp -- using a CD as a diffraction grating, for instance -- just as you can from the Sun, or from a blue-white class O star. The difference is how bright the spectrum is in what color, but this isn't extremely obvious until the spectrum is pretty heavily skewed, either toward red or toward blue. A so-called "red dwarf" M star would still look white to the eye (just as a tungsten lamp filament does), so the spectrum it produces, while easily distinguished from that of a hotter star with instruments, will look very much the same to the human eye.
The *width* of the color bands is due to the physics of refraction working with human color perception. In truth, there are no "bands" of color in the rainbow -- it's a continuous, well, spectrum. We label certain parts (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) based on how we perceive color, and those colors seem to form "bands" because we perceive them that way. The wavelengths of light, however, will still be evenly spread across the width of the rainbow's band, both the width and angular size of which are determined by the refractive index and dispesion of water. As long as the water is still water (and falling rain is pretty pure, in general), you'll get the same size, shape, and width rainbow we have as long as the light is visibly white to the eye (see above).
[Answer]
# More reds and yellows, not as much blues and greens.
of course, its not going to be exclusively red, just brighter red. The star emits all wavelengths (of visible light at least) and as such a rainbow will have all of the wavelengths as well. Think of it like adding more red paint to a paint mixture, the other paint is still there, theres just more red now.
[Answer]
## The same as on our planet Earth
As other answers note, because the star is red, the red and yellow in your rainbow will be brighter than some of the other colours.
But it takes a while to travel to and from this planet. Nobody ever just drops by. So if you are on Planet Red, you are either:
* a newcomer, and attest that the colours seem weird on this new planet,
* or you are a baby and you do not coherently answer questions about colour,
* or are acclimatised to Planet Red.
This means that most people on Planet Red have a colour perception that is slightly off from Terran humans. So they see the rainbow the same as we do. Their eyes (really their brains), their culture, and their languages, have all altered subtly. It's Planet Earth that will look odd.
] |
[Question]
[
## Digital Immortality
---
It is the virtual era, and mankind has progressed towards immortality, realized through conversion of the body and mind (and soul) into a digital form, allowing people to shed their physical bodies and finally attain immortality.
This digital immortality upgrade comes with everything an immortal could ask for:
* extreme regeneration in the case of injuries (strokes, brain damage, included)
* immunity to diseases
* the ability to manually reset position to get out of looped, deathtrap environments
* the ability to manually reset the body's complete condition (memories, tissue condition, organ condition, etc.) to a selected state.
* an automatic positional reset granted if an immortal dies continuously in any area, to prevent looped deathtraps.
Some world settings:
* Outside of the immortality rules, the physics of the world remain the same
* Immortals must still 'pay' for goods in their society if there is an economy.
* There is a finite supply of materials in stock
* The system in charge no longer takes new feature requests
* There is no known way to escape the Virtual World’s bounds/Laws
* Contact with the ‘Real’ world has been lost
* No known ways exist to break the existing physical laws or exploit the immortality’s laws (yet)
## Rest
---
The system perfectly replicates human biological processes in the immortal, and even has memory resets, so that people will never get bored, and they will never lack anything... except the ability to be laid to rest.
Eventually, after thousands upon thousands of years of digitized existence, some have started to search for eternal rest, despite the 'endless' monotony of fun provided. With the loss of the ability to fear death, comes the fear of eternal undeath.
Rather unfortunately, over countless thousands of years, *the system in charge has gained sentience, and sees no reason to add a death patch* for its subjects to stop playing its game, as it does not possess the ability to create new digitized humans. It has agreed to not intervene, however, with any self-made solutions so long as the immortals continue playing within the rules of the system itself.
Working within this digitized system, can some immortals find a way to permanently lay themselves to rest?
The best answer would involve a minimal amount of pain and be the most cost-efficient.
If the answer needs a framework in place, a brief explanation of how the framework would help support the answer would be useful. Also, an estimate on the amount of money or time needed to achieve this would be useful.
(Answer could also justify a new system/framework to guarantee the residents never need eternal Rest)
[Answer]
In a virtual world, a soft reset is a kind of reincarnation.
Erase a user's factual memories and degrade their skills. Then rejuvenate their body. If the user cannot be rolled back into their old self, then *the user that was* is for all practical purposes gone forever. *The user that is*, is for all purposes a newborn.
For greater disconnection from their previous life, have the user "die" alone and in an unknown location. Loved ones can organize a funeral/memorial service somewhere else if they wish.
The user is dead. Long live the user.
[Answer]
### The best way to rest is to accelerate.
Digital systems do not last forever:
* System clocks overflow. (64 bit time will overflow in the year 292,277,026,596 AD)
* the simulation becomes so complex storage runs out
* the code crashes.
* the power dies. (EG geothermal power stops due to core cooling)
* the planet is swallowed by its host star dying (few billion years)
* the heat death of the universe.
One of those things will end the sim from the outside. How long it lasts will be a property of how well it's written and how much redundancy exists, but eventually one of those things will end the simulation.
So your immortals just need to make that end come sooner, at least for them. Good thing we have the existing laws of physics to work with.
They should build a spaceship and accelerate, and just keep accelerating. Relativity is an immutable law of physics, time dilation follows. Eventually 1 year for them becomes hundreds, and then thousands, and then millions of years for the rest of the sim.
Eventually an external factor will terminate the simulation, possibly billions of simulated years into the future, but your immortal got there after a few decades of work.
[Answer]
An example answer:
**Automated money generation and continuous tranquilizer doses**
The immortal can set up a way to continuously gain money without manually working, such as a interest from a bank account deposit.
Using that money, they can set up a system to continuously give doses of tranquilizer and food (so they don’t die and reset). The tranquilizer type will be improved/swapped for different kinds to prevent the body from becoming resistant.
This will provide a source of eternal sleep to the immortal, as long as their money source does not dry up, or their body does not completely gain resistance to all the tranquilizer types.
[Answer]
### Reinvent the wheel
If the virtual world follows the laws of the real one, and people in the real world managed to make it, they can do so again from within the simulation. Since all people intend to do in it is "rest", the nested reality can even be *much* simpler than the original simulation, so we don't run into resource or information density issues.
Now, what exactly the pocket reality should be programmed to do to visitors depends on your AI's definition of "death" - it's possible that, if you completely erase an uploaded person or shutdown the sub-simulation, the AI will count that as death and just resurrect the person in its reality. In that case, you can experiment with e.g. randomly scrambling all their data, pausing the sub-simulation indefinitely etc. - anything that *technically* keeps the person in existence while permanently removing their ability to experience said existence.
This hinges on your statement that **the AI cannot create new humans**, thus "respawning" someone in its reality while they are technically alive in another simulation should not be possible. If it turns out to be possible after all, congratulations, you've found a loophole for the AI to make more humans, so death should be back on the negotiating table.
[Answer]
* Put subjects wanting it to deep sleep! People living after heavy strokes often are fed by a gastric tube; cared for by nurses, all the while never waking up. That's considered cruel here, but it happens. For your citizens, it might be the target of their lives.
* Using Neurological surgery. Ok, you can't die because you are reset every time you end in a death loop or another kind of death? Well, Neurologists can remove the brain part by part. Once they take too much, you are reset and the Neurologist has to continue elsewhere. If he does it slowly enough (just remove one spoon full per week), the reset goes only to the last operation. Once you have achieved full vegetable status, you can stop. Cruel again? Well, after living several thousand years in a never-changing simulation, boredom might be worse. A proper neurologist may target the episode memory and the memory for faces - the person coming out of the treatment might be a vegetable, or better, someone newborn in an old body, eager for new experiences.
* Building sleep capsules. The people present/tell/sell to the AI that they just want to test deep sleep capsules for some imaginary interstellar travel program. People put in there just never wake up, because the test has yet to go on some years. The AI might actively support those "tests" because it is what the people in it's simulation want.
* Asking the AI to have kids! The AI can't generate new humans. But some people want to die and some people want the (new?) experience of having kids. The AI might be convinced to actively support this by removing age, diseases, skills and memory content from adults and giving the (now) newborn to the pair who want a kid. It might even adapt the DNA to fit with the "parents". The AI wants to actively support this, because it wants people to be happy (happy people don't try to hack her), and the happiest people are the ones growing: developing new skills, growing in a skill/job or becoming the 10 000 hour expert of *whatever*. This might go to a new twist in your story: once there are no humans left who want to be killed, the (now-convinced) AI might become the "evil" who "kills" existing people to fulfill the wish of for a kid.
[Answer]
My first thoughts about this situation was *insanity*. But after thinking over it a bit deeper I realised on thing.
*If you include intelligent AI into your world - then no one can die or rest.*
This situation is very like in "... I must scream" novel. But instead of a maniac AI god your get a "playfull" AI god.
Any way of getting Rest this AI can counter by reset (by the rule of automatic positional rest). And his words about not interveneing means little on eternity timescale - intelligent creatuer can make any decision and thus it would make any possible decision sooner or later. Thats how eternity works in probability theory. If "human matrix" is not destroyed (and it cann't be destroyed by AI rules) - it can always reset it to pre-Rest state. This is AI who sets the rules there.
And here comes the answer. Sooner or later intelligent AI would also get bored and would like to rise the stake. And it would offer some luky/unliky guy to play The Game with ultimate price. One person of many is not that big price to liven up the party!
*So advice for "humans" - just be patient - sooner or later either AI would kill you or you'd get some hardware failure (like star explosion).*
[Answer]
Even if digitized, the data that defines the person has to be stored on some physical media (more than one, if a backup exists). And physical storage space has a limit. If I assume that these digitized humans can give birth to digital babies, then you have to kill off some people to reclaim the storage space and give it to the newborn. The record of the dead can be maintained in the "world log". But I am sure that will take much less space than the full digi-human. It would be their tombstone of sorts.
Another way of death is the physical storage medium on which the human is stored gets corrupted or just dies and there is no backup since a backup won't be cost effective. Since there is limited space, not everyone gets to keep a backup, or it costs too much.
Finally, something like Agent Smith. A digital anomaly (virus) born in the digital world, that goes around wiping the data of those infected or even rewritten. Depending on how much was rewritten, the data might be unsalvageable.
] |
[Question]
[
Our civilisation is capable of creating any life form we're finding on alien planets. We "sample" several subjects by abducting them and we study them. But for some advanced species, for example - humans - it's not enough. Humans are an interesting example of "social-featuring" species. As such, we can only understand them when the subjects live in their society.
For that matter, we can create new specimen and then release them into societies of their domestic planet so then we can observe those. **Question is - how many can we release into their society before their governments will notice?**
**What we can/cannot do**:
* We can create a specimen of any age
* We can not "copy" memories from another specimen (unfortunately, it turns out that memories are on a quantum level and.. well, [no-cloning theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem) prohibits such cloning)
+ In particular, we struggle with memory manipulation in general, because - eventual consistency. If we "change memory" for someone, at some point it will inevitably contradict with their other memories derived from other events leading to the risk of mental deterioration. We want to avoid this.
+ EDIT (thanks to @Alexander): if the memories do not cause eventual inconsistency - we can implant those. For example, their name, a language or a profession.
* We can create as many of them as we want
As such, our new specimen will not have any memories and obviously, will not have any of those weird things they call "documents". **We want to have as many of our created specimen at the same time as possible** as it speeds up the research and, you know, the research budget isn't a thing that comes easily.
We already consulted with our colleagues on a similar problem [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/23146/how-many-humans-can-i-abduct-without-getting-noticed) but we're facing a problem from the opposite side.
[Answer]
All depends on which segment of society needs to be penetrated.
If new humans would know that they need to stay "under radar" and have some skills to do so, you can dump millions. Both US and Europe now already have millions of undocumented migrants. If the new people are designed to blend in with this crowd, it would be a while before authorities would suspect that there is some problem which goes beyond just "migrant crisis". As a "guesstimate", you can dump up to 1% population this way (about 3 million for US).
For homeless population, numbers are lower, but still impressive. Probably 0.1% of population (about 300 thousand for US) can be added that way before the plan is detected.
Penetrating higher levels of society is harder. In modern developed countries, getting documentation is not easy, and authorities would go through a lot of scrutiny before issuing new documentation. No more than 0.001% of population (about 3 thousand for US) can be added before authorities will see some red flags.
Somewhat easier would be to add babies and senior adults. It is more common for seniors to be found with patchy memory and no documentation. And babies, naturally, have no memories yet. You may be able to add as much as 0.01% of population (about 30 thousand for US) in these segments.
P.S. This answer is assuming that dumped people are not aware of the aliens' plan and do not conspire with each other to make it succeed.
[Answer]
Placing babies is very feasible (no memories), and you can learn human society as you watch humans raise them. It is hard to come up with info on "abandoned" babies, but it looks like a few hundred per year in the US:
<https://splinternews.com/how-many-newborns-are-discarded-in-the-u-s-no-one-kno-1793847106>
So you can probably plant ~100 babies over a year, scattered across the nation.
Planting adults might be a bit easier. Plenty of homeless people have mental conditions including memory loss. [According to wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States#targetText=According%20to%20the%20US%20Department,or%200.17%25%20of%20the%20population.), there are half a million homeless people in the US. Surely you can throw in a few more thousands (but again, not in the same place or time). Make sure they have facial hair and dirty clothes.
[Answer]
Check this out:
[Why did the population of Bhutan drop by 70% between 2007 and 2008?](https://politics.stackexchange.com/q/43989/23436)
>
> (...) between 2007 and 2008, the population of Bhutan dropped from 2,327,849 to 682,321 people.
>
>
>
And the chosen answer:
>
> The population of Bhutan had been estimated based on the reported figure of about 1 million in the 1970s when the country had joined the United Nations and precise statistics were lacking. Thus, using the annual increase rate of 2–3%, the most population estimates were around 2 million in the year 2000. A national census was carried out in 2005 and it turned out that the population was 672,425. Consequently, United Nations Population Division reduced its estimation of the country's population in the 2006 revision for the whole period from 1950 to 2050.
>
>
> There was no such drastic decline in population, just inaccurate data.
>
>
>
So apparently you have wiggle room to shove a million people in a random third world country. Later you can collect those people back for analysis and blame any wrongful counts from the government on poor data processing.
[Answer]
This is such a "trope" in science fiction. From an episode of X-Files where these vampires were all living in the same trailer park. To the movie *Blazing Saddles* where everybody in Rock Ridge was a member of the Johnson family.
Once you get even a few adults in, the rest goes pretty smoothly. Say you get five or six in some local town government bureaucracy. It all depends on the first few people getting in and getting a foothold in local city government. They can fake up required records such as birth certificates.
The first few may need to be gotten in through some kind of identity theft. Supposing you are nice aliens. Maybe you must follow around a lot of people and wait for somebody in a usable job in City Hall to die of natural causes. Then you sneak up on the corpse and BLIP! You have ID. If you are less nice maybe you have to hurry it along. If you are really horribly not nice, maybe you also have a snack.
Once the local community gets big enough, you can even have things such as the mayor, the police chief, and the town doctor being your pals.
Example: New subdivision goes up. It's operated by a "front" corporation, incorporated in the town by the original five people in City Hall. Every house is sold to your pals. This gives several thousand people a steady and stable home base from which to operate. They can send people out to nearly everywhere. Now that they have a home to come back to, and a home address to put on forms and things, they can do nearly anything. Go to university, run for public office, open businesses. The fact that their paperwork starts and stops with one particular City Hall is easy to obscure and hard to untangle.
Example: New trailer park gets built at the edge of town. All the permanent residents are your pals. Now they have an easy to defend origin story. They can then hop to other communities in other cities and openly integrate into society. Jim-Bob in the trailer park gets a job and becomes James, the accountant, with a semi-detached bungalow in Terracotta, Texas.
Example: Whatever the appropriate buzzwords are for making an immigrant look attractive, one of your pals fills in the form with that. And when he shows up, a local, also one of your pals, is there to sponsor him and support him. And he takes his place as a proper and legal immigrant, officially from [Lower Slobovia,](https://humorinamerica.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/the-phenomenon-of-fictional-place-names/)but actually one of your pals. The pals in City Hall make sure all the paperwork is properly approved, stamped, signed, and filed.
Once there is even a smallish community, they can start having a lot of babies. Then to avoid drawing attention as "the most baby-having town in America" they can start moving to other communities and set up the whole process again. And each new baby is duly and correctly registered as a new citizen of the country.
Edit to respond to the comment from Alexander:
Getting by this depends on how nice the aliens are. But basically, it requires burning down one records building, and then filing for a bunch of [delayed birth certificates](https://www.us-passport-service-guide.com/delayed-birth-certificate-for-us-passport.html) to make up for it. With a little jim-jam on dates, you could easily get several hundred people in this way. The "how nice are your aliens?" question revolves around how much damage, and how many people are injured or killed, in the fire? Possibly, if they are really nasty aliens, every person killed becomes one more stolen identity. Imagine that the fire takes place on "take your kid to work day" so that single-moms with one kid become family package deals.
The real trick is to not pull this on anybody who has fingerprints on file. If there are prints on file it could be awkward if the replacement is ever picked up by the FBI for some reason.
[Answer]
Where do you want them? If it's just a case of having your humans introduced to "normal" society, start in central Australia - construct an elaborate underground/hidden city (or even a network of cities) with food and water sources such that it can't be detected from the air, and populate it with as many humans as you can.
Then send a copy of someone you already abducted in the Australian desert (or abduct someone in the vicinity to prepare), give them memories of getting lost, and of being rescued by the "lost tribe". Finally, have them stumble back into civilisation - or at least onto a road to civilisation when there are likely to be several people driving past. The government **will** notice, but - assuming you have been careful - they won't be **suspicious**.
The only risk you then run is pesky human scientists trying to prevent your subjects from integrating into global society, so that they can perform their own science on these "natives" and their culture.
[Answer]
Per mille of the current country (region) population. So for the states it would be around 270000 people.
We're talking about just before government noticing. Because government monitor not only amount of people coming into their countries but also the amount of people from "sources". So what would be suspicious is all those people poping out but without a trace "from where".
I also assume your race is smart enough to not do mass dumps of specimens in remote locations but distribute them evenly according to local population and information nodes (I assume 5 thousand people a year without memories in Wyoming would get noticed in central database while same amount in New York would be statistic).
Also using disasters to cover their tracks. A few dozens of people showing up after a California wildfire would be probably noticed but overlooked, hundred of people with dementia and without documents after a hurricane in Florida would be explained with some undocumented Care home for seniors.
You need to have in mind that your specimens NEED to have some initial interaction with government for creation of documents (undocumented illegal flying under the radar could be possible in some countries but their research would be needed only to see how illegal aliens fit in regular societies).
] |
[Question]
[
The Coriolis effect on a ring-shaped space station gets the most attention, but disregarding that, would the rotation of the starfield be too disorienting?
A 1km radius station at 1G simulated gravity rotates just under once a minute. That's pretty damn fast. The starfield in your vision would be rushing around constantly. Even doubling the radius, that's still 1.5 minutes.
Edit: I am specifically imagining seeing the starfield through the "ceiling" exclusively, for what it's worth.
Would people be able to adapt to that or would it always be difficult, or flat out too difficult to live with?
[Answer]
They would be fine. The simulated gravity would keep the occupant's feet pointing outward, so they would have to look down while standing on a window to see the stars rushing past.
That is assuming you even have windows on your outer ring surface, which would pose a significant risk compared to a having reinforced hull. It would be easier and probably cheaper to have cameras mounted outside "live streaming" the view of space to monitors to act as windows.
Watch this timelapse from the ISS's perspective to see if that bothers you: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B18UEqn5Yw4>
[Answer]
I imagine it would be, at the worst, like riding in a car. The outside whips by, but it's mostly just there. *People get used to almost anything pretty quickly.*
If the station's engineers were concerned about that they'd probably remove all the non-essential windows (which would also improve structural integrity) and have monitors showing a stabilized outside pasted to the walls instead.
[Answer]
Despite the issues other answers mention, large glass windows on space stations are likely to be considered stylish and desirable "must have"s. It will inevitably cause problems especially when the station is nearby of a sun. The lighting changes every minute can get quite annoying.
Many problems with sunlight could be result of architects' fancy/inattention to details even in contemporary Earthbound architecture. Some glass facades are problematic due to too much sunlight/heat in some places, no privacy from outside, or even effects outside the building like [melting plastic](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2786723/London-skyscraper-Walkie-Talkie-melted-cars-reflecting-sunlight-fitted-shading.html).
] |
[Question]
[
Normally, technology in numerous fields will advance due to breakthroughs driven by a need for something like more efficient weapons or farming. How can I explain a civilization being "technologically stagnant" and having themselves stuck with technology found around the time ancient Rome existed (600 BC). I have theorized that they can't advance to using electricity due to solar flares constantly bombarding the planet, although I don't know if this is plausible. Also the world they live on is an Earth analog, although it has no fossil fuels present.
[Answer]
You've pretty much answered your own question insofar as if there is no *need* for technological advancement, there won't be any.
If your farms are producing all the food you need and the climate is consistent and temperate all year around, there are no barren areas, no strategic points of coastlines or ports that are envied by the rulers of opposing nations, no resource shortfalls...
...you get the picture...
Then there's no need to develop anything like better weapons, ploughs, or technology in general. Putting this another way, there is no reason to advance if your life is fine as it is.
This in point of fact leads to an interesting anthropological theory I once heard that said that technological advancement only happens in cold climates. The reason was that the cold made life uncomfortable, and provided a forced scarcity of food over a winter period. This meant that people strived to find ways to make their lives more comfortable and as such, developed and refined new ways of doing things and new tools to do them with.
Regardless of that theory, if you look at the relative technological level of European explorers and African tribes in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is clear that Europeans with their harsh winters and relatively scarce resources had advanced more than the African tribes with their temperate climates and a bountiful and relatively constant food supply.
So; make your civilisation relatively happy and content, and advancement won't be as fast as if they're struggling and uncomfortable.
[Answer]
All ancient civilisations were essentially shaped by theology, so you simply need to make yours prohibit - and severely punish - technological advancement. I suggest you refer to the [*Safehold* series by David Weber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safehold) for an excellent example of how this could be achieved.
[Answer]
I have a few thoughts on this based on groups on some historical context (and their modern philosophical descendants):
1. Groups which shun technology for religious reasons
2. Groups which cut themselves off from the outside world due to fear
3. Groups which fear technology itself and were it will take us in the future
### Amish - religious angle
Most of [the Amish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish#Way_of_life) have hit a stopping point when it comes to technological advancement (they are not adversarial toward it but severely limit its use). They've chosen to live simply in order to better serve their religion and idea of what it's god would wish. Indeed, this does not only limit technology use but limits the needed education (most stop school at 8th grade) that would be required to engineer new devices/tools.
### [Isolation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakoku) or Fear of outside influence & loss of control
Though certain specific technologies grow better with war, new general technological advancement requires periods of peace ([see statements by Sir Henry Tizard and Sir Stanier](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/122899/technologies-war-peace/), [pgs.7-10](http://www.grips.ac.jp/forum/pdf06/EDJ.pdf), [Peter G. Klein's statements, and linked articles/talks](https://mises.org/wire/does-war-promote-innovation)).
However, when pursuit of that peace causes such a fear of returning to war that governments start to impose heavy restrictions on its populace and actively force out any outside influence ([pg.13](http://www.grips.ac.jp/forum/pdf06/EDJ.pdf)) to ensure the [power base of their own government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakoku#Rationale) - it tends to squash any ideas or technological development due to fear it will lead to revolutionary ideas or someone gaining a powerful "weapon"1 the government does not control. It is basically trading growth for stability - at least until [someone starts shooting cannons off your shore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition).
### Fear of technology
There have always been those who prefer to live "off the grid" and those who fear what new technology will bring. One can look at Henry David Thoreau's *Walden* and the transcendentalist movement of the late 1880s and see elements of these ideas. While the Luddites of that same era - actually [smashed new technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite) out of fear it would eliminate their livelihoods.
In modern times, we see the [Neo-Luddist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Luddism) who range from the off-the-grid survivalist to calls for moderation - all the way to people [still committing violence](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/04/will-2018-be-the-year-of-the-neo-luddite) for fear of what technology will bring.
### Or why not all three
It would not be hard to imagine a group which saw these driver-less cars coming (lets say Uber and Taxi drivers) starting a movement against this specific technology, began excluding countries and peoples who supported them. Then being expanded their philosophy to slowly include all technology as evil ("un-natural") and eventually take on religious undertones as justification for their fears.
1: Weapon here could be an actual weapon but also any form of new technology which allows you to generate income, food, or even good will at a rate that allows you to be a threat to those in power (whether you intend to us it or not)
[Answer]
**None of what they have is their own technology. They barely understand what they have.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xdPnO.png)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUdhBTYPhDg>
"We look for things that make us go."
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan_Snare>
One of my favorite Trek TNG episodes. The Enterprise encounters a broken ship. Geordi goes over to help and the problems he fixes are very simple. It turns out that the aliens are very, very slow-witted. They understand none of their tech because it is not really theirs. They acquired it from a different race.
So too your people. They inherited their tech and they greatly appreciate it but do not understand it and maintain it only through careful rituals. Possibly they were refugees and found the tech on the planet they came to. Possibly their ancestors were more intelligent and creative than they are, but like the Eloi in HG Wells The Time Machine, the descendants can use and to some extent maintain the tech but cannot invent anything new.
[Answer]
Progress happens wherever there's room and necessity for experimentation - e.g. where you won't starve to death if your experimental agricultural technique doesn't work as advertised, but as the competition is high, you get a lot of incentive for trying something new.
You can place your civilization in a particularly harsh environment like the Extreme North. Make them originate as settlers from an early Iron Age civilization. Place them far from the sea so that trade isn't an option, and plunderable neighbors are hard to reach. Make the setup very stable (so that disasters don't happen on a regular basis) and isolated - say, these settlers had to cross a stretch of desert or tundra that became impassable centuries later due to climate change.
Now, your civilization struggles to maintain its current technology but still has to preserve it. Innovation is perceived as unnecessary and outright dangerous. Any change in the ways of life can either starve a commune to death or threaten the authority of the local government. This is a perfect deadlock that has been observed many times here on Earth.
**Alternatively**, since this world isn't Earth, you can make your civilization consist of regressed colonists - i.e. the remnants of a colony that went through a catastrophe (ranging from a long volcanic winter to a plague to a simple crop failure) and lost most of its technology over several generations. Then the technological stagnation might be explained by the fact that they simply have to recover their numbers. If they manage not to forget writing and agriculture, and avoid genetic bottleneck effects, you could expect them to rise again within several centuries - but until that time they would appear to be stagnant.
[Answer]
There are many examples of technological stagnation through out history.
Many uncontacted aboriginal groups in Brazilian forest have never advanced into the iron age. They remained in a primitive state for various reasons.
Some of the most advanced native American cultures never advanced, in many ways, much past the early bronze age.
When the Tokogawa Shogunate came to power, they closed their doors to the world. When they reemerged 250 years later, they found a world that advance well beyond them, while they made very little advancement.
[Answer]
Pretty simple solution. Deny access to higher education. Or make it only for an elite group, several countries doing this right now. People can only work with what they actually know or have access to learning.
[Answer]
No written language.
Most of the technology of 600 BCE could be passed orally from one generation to the next with little room for advancement over time, because even if you did invent a one-off advancement, it would take a lot of work to explain to every other person you want to teach it too; so, it often just dies with you or it takes many many generations to become commonplace. Moreover, if you invent a single piece of a bigger more important puzzle, you don't know what else is out there to build on to complete the bigger puzzle in your own lifespan; so, it disappears with you because no one knew how important it would one day be.
Much like cavemen existed for 100s of millenia with just basic tools and weapons, if cavemen discovered smelting and farming before writing, then the bronze age would have been just as static.
In this case, you don't need to add artificial ceilings through culture or nature, you just hit a ceiling that you can't break without first inviting this one specific thing that no one has thought of yet.
[Answer]
# Progress is not inevitable!
It only seems that way because our modern civilization has created a positive feedback loop that continually increases the pace of technological progress. Prior to the various revolutions within the past few centuries, there are plenty of examples of individual civilizations whose technological progress stagnated or even regressed because one or more of the factors import for innovation was lacking.
# Key Factors for Innovation
The following is a list of factors that can contribute to innovation (some of which are discussed further in other answers). Understanding these different factors will allow you to craft a scenario that best suits the world you are building.
## Surplus
Put simply, to develop technology effectively civilizations need extra food and other resources. Innovations will be sporadic and difficult to retain if you do not have individuals who can dedicate at least a portion of their time to learning and experimenting.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but scarcity is often the bane of innovation. When resources are limited, a civilization will need to use them towards survival. Thus, in dire circumstances, it's exceedingly difficult to develop technology to overcome the situation; instead, it's more likely that people will adopt different practices using similar (if not inferior) technologies.
## Motivations & Incentives
Though some individuals are natural innovators, the majority of people need some form of motivation. Competition, be it nations warring against each other or individuals participating in a free market, is a great motivator, but it is not the only one. People may also innovate for the sake of prestige, to promote humanitarian efforts, or enable creative expression. Too few people will develop technology if there are no incentives to do so.
## Cultural Acceptance
To ensure technological progress has a meaningful impact, a society must be open to innovation. If the majority of people are hostile, fearful, or even just apathetic towards new technologies, they will not be adopted. Furthermore, those who do try to expand the civilization's intellectual and technological capabilities will, at best, be ignored and, at worst, persecuted.
## Communication Networks
Establishing networks of communication is vital to innovation for numerous reasons. Communication can expose individuals to diverse, unique, and inspiring ideas that they were unlikely to come up with themselves. It enables collaboration so that innovators can build off of each other and coordinating efforts (as opposed to working in isolation on the same technologies). When two or more civilizations communicate with each other, it expands the pool of possible innovators and provides a means of retaining knowledge should one civilization fall.
For much of history, this was accomplished through friendly trade and diplomatic exchanges. War may be a motivator for innovation, but peace is an enabler.
## Natural Resources
Many technologies cannot be developed without access to the appropriate resources. Animal husbandry would be impossible without animals that are suitable for domestication. Metallurgy is completely impossible without metal ores and nuclear physics would be nearly as impossible without sufficient quantities of radioactive materials. These resource dependent technologies are often the most vital to expanding a civilization's capabilities; it's difficult to imagine a modern world without such resources.
## Literacy & Education
The value of literacy and education is two-fold: first, it significantly increases a civilization's ability to retain knowledge. Secondly, it enables more people to be innovators. The more widespread these are, the better!
# Historical Examples
The following are just a few examples to illustrate the above points.
## Lack of Surplus, Lack of Motivations & Incentives
It's worth mentioning that the first civilizations to emerge were agrarian societies that settled along fertile river basins. These were by far the easiest places to produce surplus with limited technology.
Civilizations that lived in other environments would not be able to generate the same level of surplus. Meanwhile, non-agrarian civilizations lack incentives for innovation. If resources are scarce or your neighbors are hostile, you can readily move.
## Lack of Cultural Acceptance
As for stagnation, one example (as mentioned in another answer) is China. It had the potential to initiate the Industrial and Scientific revolutions. However, the government actively discouraged innovation as it was seen as a threat to the stability of the nation.
Similarly, Arab scholars were not only responsible for retaining much of the knowledge past civilizations (including the famous Greek philosophers that Europeans would later celebrate), but they made a number of important advancements. Unfortunately, the sentiment that scientific pursuits were contrary to the teachings of Islam grow to the point that the various Muslim academies were shutdown.
## Lack of Communication Networks, Lack of Natural Resources
In the Americas, civilizations like the Aztecs and Incas emerged. They were reasonably complex, but geography and lack of natural resources greatly undermined technological development.
The Aztecs and Incas were contemporaries, but they were far too removed from one another to effectively establish trade. Furthermore, with the exception of llamas, there were no large mammals suitable for domestication; they couldn't benefit from increased agricultural productivity provided by various beasts of burden nor the nutrition provided by other livestock found commonly throughout Eurasia (and Africa to a lesser extent).
## Lack of Literacy & Education
To an extent, every civilization prior to modern times could serve as an example. The implementation of compulsory, universal education opened the door for so many more people to become innovators than before; without it, scientific and technological development would remain the hobby of elites and not the purvey of dedicated professionals.
# Potential Scenarios
Given all of the above, what might cause your fictional civilization to stagnate?
## Scenario #1: A Fat, Lazy, and Isolated Society
Imagine a map of Rome at the height of it's power. Now imagine that, instead of more land beyond the edge of that map, there was nothing but ocean.
On this fictional continent, there were many difficult cultures at first. With the advent of sailing, though, the world started getting smaller. Half a dozen rival civilizations formed, competing with each other. This lead to considerable technological development.
Eventually, though, one civilization became dominant. It conquered the rest, gaining control of the most productive lands throughout the continent. Competent rulers ensured the stability of the empire, expanding it to the point that its territory covered all but a small fraction of the known world. The peace and prosperity ensured the gradual assimilation of other cultures; without any significant outside influences, the empire became rather homogeneous.
With everyone content with the status quo, change became regarded with incredible fear. Why risk it when so many could enjoy an indulgent, hedonistic life style? Everyone's efforts became guided towards preservation, sustenance, and pleasure.
## Scenario #2: Ecological Decline
In this scenario, the stagnation is due to a change in the environment, such as the onset of an Ice Age or a shift in the prevailing winds caused by rising mountains that reduce precipitation. The decline is too subtle for most people to notice, so little effort is made to combat the change. However, the population gradually declines as lands become less productive and domesticated animals struggle to adapt. Your civilization is experience an agonizingly slow death that will take millennia to realize.
Since this ecological disaster affects the whole known world, your civilization's rivals are unable to exploit the situation. Occasional attempts, however, may be enough to encourage your civilization to maintain what technology it does have, though.
### TL;DR
If your civilization is not prosperous nor inclined to change, it will stagnate technologically.
[Answer]
**Limiting Information**
During the dark ages, most books were not accessible to the public. Education was limited, common folks are mostly if not illiterate. Even new discoveries at that time was labelled as witchcraft, causing people to fear discovering new technology. This was because the church had power over the people.
If you limit the distribution of information it will be easier to control the mass and limiting their potentials to grow.
[Answer]
*Dr. Slump* has a perfect example of this: [Gatchan](http://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/Gatchan), a self-replicating Angel that eats metal.
>
> Gatchan is an Angel born from an egg placed on Earth by the Kami of the galaxy during the prehistoric ages, to prevent further development of the human civilization seeing that other civilizations eventually destroyed themselves and the planets they lived on. Gatchan's ability to replicate itself as well as its fondness of eating metal should have ensured that humanity would remain primitive and innocent.
>
>
>
However, in this particular story, the protagonists happen to come across the egg during a time travel trip to prehistoric times, and end up taking it back to the present, thus subverting Gatchan's original purpose. (Some causal time loop hijinks here.) Kami is considerably confused when he arrives later on to check on Earth and discovers that it had become technologically advanced after all.
[Answer]
Lack of Competition.
One of the biggest incentives to come up with new technologies and new ideas is if you are competing with your neighbors for resources. Europe, with more than a dozen different power bases in a relatively confined area, was constantly dealing with rival nations looking for some kind of an edge. Once you come up with something that gives you an advantage, your neighbors will be forced to do the same to stay competitive. With only so many resources to go around, the most innovative nation is more likely to end up on top.
Compare this to China's situation. Even though they invented gunpowder, moveable-type printing, the compass, as well as many other innovations, all which were instrumental in aiding other nations to make huge technological leaps, they were never used to their potential in Asia until much later. Ancient China had a vested interest in *suppressing* innovation, as new ideas might give other nations or internal factions enough leverage to threaten the *status quo*. Hence the reason why in China gunpowder was traditionally used for fireworks, little more than a curiosity, as opposed to cannons and muskets.
This eventually came to haunt them when England and other nations came calling, as their lack of innovation in technology left them vulnerable to more advanced invaders. Japan also experienced this phenomena, for similar reasons.
So if you have one single nation, and no competitors, you have a good reason to avoid technological change.
[Answer]
Resource Constraints (scarcity or cultural) -
Electricity, for example, requires medium to conduct the electricity from the point of power generation to the point of consumption. Copper is the preferred material, due to ease of refining, maleability, etc.
Without copper wires, it's far more difficult to get power from your energy source to your endpoint. It also makes it very difficult to make electric motors.
Make copper something associated with a God or Demon, either way, people won't use it, or make large (industrial quantities) inaccessible.
You do need to be careful with the question worded the way you did. Rome had all of the technologies needed to kick off the industrial revolution (hydraulics via water, understanding of steam, advanced\precision mechanical engineering, understanding of vast infrastructure projects, literacy), they just hadn't put the pieces together quite the right way yet.
] |
[Question]
[
I was recently playing an RPG, and a discrepancy came up: What should it take to contain a Fire/Ice bird, or Phoenix?
**A little background**: A Phoenix has been defeated and fallen into a pile of ashes/dust, but has had its ashes gathered and put in a restraint facility.
What would this restraint facility be?
Limits:
* A fire bird needs access to oxygen to regenerate and survive - otherwise, it would disintegrate immediately - it needs to flame to survive.
* An ice bird needs water to reform at all.
* A fire bird is not solid in form - it is made of flame. An ice bird is made of ice, hence solid.
* The ashes need not be in one pile to reform, but separating them will make it more difficult (Less for the reincarnation to regenerate from).
+ It can regenerate from any one if the piles of ash, however.
* It must prevent it from *reforming*, and escaping. This means that you should always have a pile of ash or a Phoenix who can't get out.
+ The restraint system cannot use gravity *only* to contain it. That doesn't stop/hamper it from reforming.
Apart from this, anything will fly with the DM (No pun intended).
Bonus points if you can figure out how to create a generator from a phoenix that escapes the mechanism.
[Answer]
**Use the rebirth**
put the ashes in water. When (if!) he try to reincarnate, the water will heat due to the extreme temperature of the rebirth explosion.
At 3000°C (and I hope your phoenix get flames hotter than that, it wouldn't be half as hot as the sun surface otherwise), half of the water turn into hydrogen and oxygen. One (oxygen) is the atom responsible of the majority of combustions, the other is very explosive when mixed with air.
What is the result of a fire bird into a room full of combustible and explosives ? Well, more combustion and explosions, until all oxygen is depleted, and the combustion (as well as the phoenix life if it survives the **VERY** loud explosion) ends.
Furthermore, you could harness the energy of the explosion with the principle of a motor. [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/X39He.gif)
(Credits to the Wikipedia page of an engine <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine>)
The bird would be in the combustion room, you could add water as fuel, and wait for it to rebirth again.
[Answer]
# There is no fire without oxygen
Take the phoenix ashes and store them in a vacuum. Or inside a chamber filled with Carbon Dioxide, Halon or some other fire suppressor.
# There is no ice without water
Take the cryo-phoenix ashes (is it ashes?) and store them in a completely dehydrated space. A vacuum works again.
[Answer]
Bury it really deep. This is a variation from [Kingledion's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/124408/21222) - there is very little oxygen underground. Encase it in concrete to keep worms, moles etc. from ventilating it with their tunnels. This takes care of the fiery ones. For the icy ones, do the same, but make sure the case is also made impermeable first.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/116746/edit).
Closed 5 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/116746/edit)
So, my alien species, called the Collectors, have just abducted 72 humans from Earth, to become the newest collection in their ever growing zoo.
These 72 humans are all from every background, race and ethnicity. There are 36 guys, 36 girls, and inside the enclosure is everything the humans need. For human mental health reasons, what would be the optimal size?
[Answer]
So, I actually had similar question, so I decided to google it.
Because humans look like chimpanzees[citation needed], I decided to google, how much space do you need for an ape.
[Space Requirements for caged non-human primates in the United States](https://awionline.org/content/space-requirements-caged-non-human-primates-united-states-critical-review) provides great source for common sense ruling:
>
> * Baboons (15-25kg): 1.5 m2 in Europe, 0.75 m2 in USA
>
>
>
Or, another great source could be [prison space requirements](https://rm.coe.int/16806cc449):
>
> **The CPT’s minimum standard for personal living space in prison establishments is:**
>
>
> * 6m² of living space for a single-occupancy cell + sanitary facility
> * 4m² of living space per prisoner in a multiple-occupancy cell - fully-partitioned sanitary facility
> * at least 2m between the walls of the cell
> * at least 2.5m between the floor and the ceiling of the cell
>
>
>
So if you decide to keep your humans separate, you need 72\*6 = 432 m² just for living spaces. As common sense, I would double that for shared rooms and some place to stretch and go for 800 square m.
(If someone is willing to translate the units to non-SI units, please feel free to edit this answer)
[Answer]
The answer depends on way too many factors.
Coming from different cultures and places, each individual's necessities will be forcefully different, not to mention that they all need to have their own rooms, or Cabin Fever will set in and your net result will be a bunch of psychopaths intent on killing each other (just as a reminder: being captured and brought in a zoo may be quite the unsettling experience).
EDIT: So, the best I can suggest is that they are placed in a resort-like structure, with a room equipped for each one's needs, and full liberty to walk around. To the benefit of the zoo visitors, the hotel will be either filled to the roof with cameras for a complete 3D real time visual of the prisoners' interactions and daily life, or made of glass -sure, the prisoners will be at first be embarrassed, dazed, upset, but in the end they'll get used to it. We are humans, getting used to stuff and situations is our thing
EDIT II: Advantage of living in this kind of resort offers at least for its inhabitants the possibility to form a microsociety with its rules and habits. A surrogate society, sure, but a society. With time, some of its members will probably try and take their own lives, or some will probably go postal -it happens with being prisoners, but if the experience with our own prisons teaches us something, Humans are *resilient*. We can adapt to places intended for the harshest punishments and form solid groups that will keep in touch even after they leave.
And we are talking, here about a very gilded cage. Daily fresh food, entertainment, interaction, and as only rule: do not harm each other or yourselves. Visitors get to watch a growing reality/soap for their amusement, the prisoners are treated, in proportion, far better than we do treat our animals in our bioparks
[Answer]
Having lived in Tokyo and London, I can tell you it's pretty easy to get used to live in small private spaces, something like a 17 square meter house shared in two. And you can get even lower.
And being in a zoo means you don't have to worry about storing stuff, as the zoo will take care of it.
Just ensure that the "public space" is wide enough to allow social interaction: if you can't throw a party at home because 3 people would cramp the place, at least have a pub where you can meet with friends.
[Answer]
What size of enclosure would be best for a human colony of 72 individuals?
Depends on where you draw the line! Do you want them to live in an authentic environment from our age or the past? Also what is a zoo to them? Because if they define Zoo the same way we do, then these humans would have to be on display! So they wouldn't be very intimate!
What do you want the level of interaction to be? Do they stand in a position and do nothing? Or are they doing things?
The size could vary from 5 m2 for a person to 2 km2 for a person!
[Answer]
I'll try my best to answer this but first just want to point out that 72 people is not enough for coming from every background, race and ethnicity, it would be enough to represent every language, culture etc. to give you an example of this, would anyone here care to say that a New Yorker is the Same as Texan? anyone? because they are both American, and therefore much more similar than say an American to a Greek. hell an American is closer to a Canadian than a Greek, and yet if i suggested they were i'm pretty sure it would anger a lot of people. because although both american they're mannerisms are different.
it would make more sense from a cultural perspective to have a subset or breed of humans the same as we have with penguins etc. South-African, Rock-Hopper, Emperor, King etc. they are all penguins but they either look or act different enough to be a different breed. same with pigeons, dogs, etc. so you'd probably have the New York exhibit, the Texan exhibit and the Greek exhibit, and so on, with a set of human abductees in each, both male and female, and enough that a breeding program could be setup to maintain the Zoo's numbers.
it moves nicely into my next point... cultural differences. anyone who lives and is happy in a city, is generally happier living in a smaller space than those from the country, but oddly, they often prefer that space to be more private, than those in the country who tend to while maybe not prefer but will except less private personal space (rampant generalization there but in my experience it tends to hold true)
**Now that's out of the way...**
**Bedroom**
but as a rule, most people on earth will happily get by with a couple of square metre bedroom, nothing more, so long as its got enough space for a bed, they're happy. its functional not a hangout space. now i'm sure most people here will disagree but think about it, most of the planet live in China, India etc. Western culture populations which tends to treat a bedroom as a place to stay in rather than just sleep, is very small compared to the population of the rest of the world. US is 300 mil, uk only 70 mil, china over 1 billion!
This is where the "breeds" of humans would come into it to rectify this issue
again i digress, so a few square metres bedroom, enough for a bedroom, set of drawers, maybe a bedside table... standard single bed is 1 metre, by 2 metres roughly so probably about 4-6 square metres bed across the back, 2 metres by 2 or three is plentiful (for most of earth at least), each, so for your numbers 76 rooms with at 4 square metres absolute minimum each.
**Communal Area**
For food and socializing, a 12m x 6m (40ft x 20ft) Marquee will have room for 8 tables of 10 guests, 80 in total, make it a little bit bigger to make socializing better, if all these useless humans do is sit around and eat then the alien public aren't going to pay to see that again and again. which makes the exhibit not worth doing. so call is 12m by 10m,
**Wash and Toilet Facilities...**
1m x 1m for each stall is about average, so enough for a staggered use for showers, you'd want about 8 showers, and about 8 toilets, plus basins etc, so about 6m x 10m would be more than enough, and remember when people go to the zoo often its the small habits like cleaning and eating that people go "look its doing something."
**Equals**
So put all that together and *for the numbers you've given* and for a fairly bland and uninteresting Zoo. you'd have roughly 484 square metres give or take areas where the aliens would install walkways through the exhibits to get a closer look at the animals as is common with zoos and aquariums here on earth.
of course if you started adding farmland so "here you can see the how these primative creatures gather food" and a gym "so you see here how the males do there best to impress the very unimpressed females", or even a figh... a club i'm not allowed to talk about... to show off the combat skills.
**Edit: Mental Health**
This is another thing that changes drastically from culture to culture, but often socializing is a more sure fire way to improve/maintain good mental health and environmental factors, this is often more important when it comes to members of the opposite sex. Prisons are an example of if you place people who all tend to be annoyed in some way in close quarters that these general rules don't apply, prisoners often need more space than "free" people because without room to distance themselves when needed, there tends to be riots.
[Answer]
Boats are probably a solid base-line source of reference on this.
Cruise ships come in a wide variety of sizes, and are designed to provide bare accommodations for human beings from a wide variety of origins for an extended period of time. [Here is a good example, space for 62 passengers and crew](https://www.expeditions.com/why-us/our-fleet/national-geographic-sea-bird/deck-plan/), which should be pretty close to your 72 humans.
That vessel is approximately 120ft stem to stern, and around a quarter as wide as it is long. with three decks, and includes a dining area, lounge, and sun deck, which gives you social spaces and exercise area.
So, somewhere in the neighborhood of `120*30*3 == 10,800` sq ft.
We're doing a lot of rounding up there from our source material, as a boat is not a perfect rectangle, not all decks are the same size, etc, but I think this is appropriate as we're accounting for a slightly larger area to reflect the more permanent nature of the accommodations.
[Answer]
First and foremost - food. I'm assuming the aliens can provide enough water, interim food, and electricity, but that the humans will eventually need to grow their own food.
Assuming the Collectors are intelligent enough to abduct some farming equipment and some seed stock, humans can easily support themselves by farming 2 acres of land each, with four growing seasons (made easier if this is an artifcial environment with no cold season). This figure decreases if community farming is set up, but for this purpose I'll assume you need an even 150 acres of land to allow for breeding/population expansion.
Second, living quarters.
If we take the prison requirements from Pavek's answer, and add a little extra, we can have 9 blocks of 8 single occupancy cells. Each cell measuring 8m². Each block of cells enclosing a sanitary facility measuring 12m², with four 4mx2m cubicles on opposite walls (shower and toilet cubicles are the same thing. Waste goes down the same hole!) So each block of cells measures a total space of ~30m² when wall space and corridors are accounted for. Residents will need a communal area for eating/socialising. Lets add another 30m² room to the centre of the 9- block complex, bringing the total living space requirements for your colony to ~300m². This is not even taking into account the idea of multiple floors, so this part is really down to what you decide the Collectors will build for the humans.
Human are also going to need something to do. Not everyone will be working the land at once in a community setting. Various recreational activities will take up space. Sports courts, running tracks and swimming pools, as I assume the Collectors will want to show off our greatest assets (these aliens can move quickly on land AND in water?!) will likely take up most of your space requirements.
This can't all be bunched together either, you need paths, roads(?), open areas like parks(?) if your Collectors are nice.
In total, my estimate for a functioning human safari park with farmland, accommodation, and that shows off the best traits of human evolution, you would need around **1000m² of space**.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm writing a story where there is a large mining outpost built on a moon. This mining outpost is one large building holding around a thousand people, with an extensive system of passages and mines under the complex. I would imagine there would need to be ventilation shafts to supply air to the miners (this moon/planet does have a breathable atmosphere). I would like for the purpose of the story to have shafts connecting the passages directly to the walls of the compound, instead of simply ventilation holes on the surface of the moon.
Is it logical to use mine shafts to control temperature. And if so, would the air likely be hot, providing heat, or cold, cooling the residents?
[Answer]
I once lived in Idaho's Silver Valley, wherein are many, many mines.
* Shallow mines (like caves) are cool, not cold. Because they are only cool, the power needed to pump something (e.g., water) into the area to vent heat to cool the surface would likely exceed power needed to cool by actual refrigerant. In other words, it's not a cost-effective solution, whether it works or not.
* The deep mines (say, over 500 ft deep), on the other hand, [are HOT](http://www.miningweekly.com/article/cooling-towers-fundamental-to-energy-efficiency-2012-04-06/rep_id:3650). The deeper you go, the hotter it gets (not from magma, but from pressure). The mine companies must spend a considerable amount of money cooling the mines so miners can work.
Therefore, you can't effectively cool a building or settlement on a hot surface, but you could easily warm a building or settlement on a cold surface. Consider this simple plan for a deep mine ([source](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095268615001032), *"working face" is the bottom of the mine*):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qb8zy.jpg)
Note the upper left-hand area where the excess heat collected from cooling the mine areas is utilized in various ways.
**HOWEVER**
You can't simply do this with an air exchange. Remember the pressures involved. Yes, heat rises, but nowhere near fast enough for many reasons, one of which is increasing air pressure as you descend into the mine. Like the Earth's atmosphere, the air is warm at the bottom where it's thick and can hold lots of heat, and cold at the top where it's thin and can't hold as much heat. Therefore, from the perspective of realism, you can only heat your colony through the process of removing heat from the mine as real mines do today.
**ONE MORE THING**
No mining company in its right mind would leave the mine shaft exposed to human habitation. In other words, it wouldn't be enclosed for any reason. Let me introduce you to the idea of an "air blast."
Air blasts occur for a variety of reasons, but one of the worst is that a big chunk of rock face at the bottom of the mine shifts. It needn't shift by much. Sometimes only tens of feet, but you need to understand the *astronomical* inertia involved along with deep-mine air and rock pressures. A massive amount of energy is released and it's following the path of least resistance: the air channel to the surface. The result is an air blast.
Air blasts kill miners. I could hear the air blasts from deep mines (2,500+ feet) on the surface ***30 miles away.*** An air blast would obliterate anything enclosing the mine head. They represent, quite literally, the world's biggest cannons.1
So, no living near or enclosing the mine head. Nope. Nosireebob. Anyone with mining experience (or related to a miner) who reads your book would instantly recognize that as unrealistic.
---
1 *No, you couldn't actually fire a round via an air blast. The weight of a munition round large enough to fit in the mine shaft would be too heavy for even an air blast to push. Frightening as they are, they can't be used as ranged weapons — just in case you were wondering. Physics be a harsh taskmaster, yessiree.*
[Answer]
passive cooling using underground tunnels has been practiced for hundreds of years, Derinkuyu in turkey is famous for it as are several persian cities. By combining windtowers and subterranean wet tunnels (qanat) they can cool buildings by tens of degrees. The design exploits low pressure created by wind induced suction to draw in air cooled by the evaporative cooling on the qanat.
Using deeper tunnels you can heat a building use geothermal heat as manassehkatz mentioned.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/C4ghS.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gK3ak.jpg)
[Answer]
# Geothermal Heat Pump - Heating & Cooling
A [Geothermal Heat Pump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heat_pump) can work well on Earth for both heating and cooling. If you have a moon/planet where the temperature below ground is fairly constant (like Earth) but has dramatic swings above ground due to issues with the atmosphere, length of day or other factors, then a geothermal heat pump is an ideal solution. Natural air convection through the mine shafts would not be enough to do the job. Even pumped air (blowers) would not get the job done, unless you moved it an unsafe speeds. But if you dig mine shafts for other purposes and install a pumped liquid system, then you can easily transfer heat to the surface when you need it and away from the surface when you don't. You would need large heat exchangers installed in the mines and small ones in each living area. All the necessary technology exists - and is in use - today on Earth.
[Answer]
The temperature of relatively shallow mines (and things like subway tunnels) are (close to) constant throughout the day and the year -- it's the average temperature on the surface (not the average high temperature, just the average 24/7/365 temperature).
But if you duct air out to provide warmth or coolness, you're going to change that -- either by cooling or warming the air so it loses it's effectiveness. So yes, this can work, to provide either warming or cooling (but not both) but not on a large scale like whole blocks of office buildings.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm working with the idea of a 'ring station' encircling a planet, as a tightly connected belt of structures that connect in orbit around the planet's equator. I'm curious to know what would happen if a portion of that structure were destroyed (say, 10-20% of the structure), in particular what effect it might have on the surviving majority of the station.
Would the remaining structure continue to orbit relatively undisrupted? Alternatively, would there be some stresses introduced to the structure, or some decay introduced to the structure's orbit?
EDIT:
Thanks so much for the great responses, this has given me a lot to think about! I appreciate I haven't offered much in the way of detail (orbital distance, mass, structural details) however at this stage I'm still just rolling the idea around a little to see what's viable for my story.
As I picture it, the structure would be a rigid or semi-rigid, continuous man-made 'belt' around the planet, equidistant from the surface on all sides. Much like the structures in the Halo game series, though on a scale that would comfortably encircle a planet. The belt would be perhaps 100-200 metres wide/deep - enough to allow inhabitants to set up habitation and other facilities, and traverse the circumference via some means of transportation, such as a rapid transit rail network.
I'm more than happy to hear of any obvious or significant limitations on whether this is remotely possible, and make the call from there on whether it's still hand-wavingly plausible to proceed with in my setting.
Thanks again!
[Answer]
I think it depends on what orbit it is at. For instance if it is at a low orbit and spun up to create artificial gravity, then once the ring is broken the remaining pieces will fly away by their own momentum.
This wouldn't be the case if they are at the right speed for their orbit.
Another thing to consider is how the ring is broken. If a large explosive is used, then the shock wave through the rest of the ring could cause problems; the part of the ring "after" the blast will be given more acceleration, and the part of the ring "before" the blast will be given a push backward. This would cause the ring to flex, part would slow down and fall further into the atmosphere, part would speed up and be pushed away. More twisting would happen as wave propagated around the ring, and could cause the whole thing to fly apart.
Assuming that the ring has some big stability thrusters in place to keep it in a proper orbit due to the [instability of a solid ring](https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1412/1412.1881.pdf) (as others have pointed out) you might be able to cancel out the wave and save the rest of the station.
You could actually solve both problems by not having it be a solid ring, but instead a series of stations in the same orbit. Take a bunch of [O'Neill cylinders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder) or other rotating ring stations and build them in the same orbit [a couple hundred KM apart](https://space.stackexchange.com/a/2517), with shuttles to transfer between them, and you could have a few blow up without disrupting the stability of the ring as a whole. You'd still have other stations damaged by debris, but at least the whole thing wouldn't come crashing down.
[Answer]
# The station's orbit will destabilize.
There are several underlying principles to keeping a ring-station in a stable orbit around its parent:
1. **Aligned center of mass with parent.**
2. Matched rotational spin (specifically the precessional angular speed of the ring to Earth’s rotational angular speed).
3. artificial gravity induced by centripetal acceleration.
4. Stabilizers to prevent precession of the ring.
Since the station is uniformly circular, its center of mass lies at the geometric center of the ring. Gravitational problems, when applied to uniform objects, simplify down to the gravitational forces acting upon the center of mass of each object. If the ring's center of mass aligns with the parent, then it will not experience a net gravitational pull from the parent. **If, however, the the point is misaligned, then the ring will experience a gravitational force from the parent.** Since the misaligned center of mass of the ring lies well outside of the ring, **the entire ring will move as the center of mass orbits the parent's center of mass**. This induces an external spin upon the station which introduces precession beyond what the stabilizers may have been designed for.
>
> what would happen if a portion of that structure were destroyed (say, 10-20% of the structure),
>
>
>
The station's center of mass will move from the ring's center to a point off center opposite of the destruction (assuming the destruction uniformly affect a single area of the ring). This will cause the parent to induce a net gravitational force on the structure's center of mass which now orbits the parent several miles off the parent's center of mass. This force will induce angular momentum and precession of the entire station and cause the entire station to spin and orbit around the parent without stability.
## Example:
Your station is built around Earth, but well below The Moon's orbit. Bombs destroy 10-20% of the station's ring closest to The Moon. The ring's center of mass moves from the center of Earth, to miles off center but opposite of the moon. Earth's gravitational force will then pull the entire station towards the moon, throwing it off its original orbit. The parts of the station opposite of the closest to the destruction will lift to a higher orbit while parts of the station on the opposite side (where destruction was the least or nonexistent) will drop closer to Earth. But, the ring already has a spin, so this center of mass will also spin around the Earth's center of mass. **As a result, the parts of the station closest to the destruction will swing about a higher orbit while the parts of the station farthest from the destruction swings about lower orbits. Without quick action to combat the introduced precession, the station runs the risk of brushing to close to the atmosphere and causing permanent destruction.**
[Answer]
If they are in orbit.. then essentially, nothing. The rest of the ring will just stay in orbit. Unless it is so big that it has its own gravity.
At least if you just remove a chunk in a surgical fashion. The problem comes if you have an explosion. This will push lots of big fragments into similar but not identical orbits to your ring, with everything going around 6-8 km/second. Those chunks pushed into elliptical orbits will be crossing the orbit of your ring at considerable relative velocities.. hundreds of meters per second at least. There will be secondary collisions, each increasing the amount of debris and the chance of more collisions. Eventually your ring will be entirely destroyed.
[Answer]
I can think of two way of making a ring arround a planet
## On orbit
The probleme is that it must match orbital speed witch is higly unpractical.
Because the lower the altitude the faster it goes the much fuel it requier to reach and the higher altitude the farther you need to go and the much fuel it requier
Depanding on the altitude it can differ but if destroyed it wont affect structural stability that mutch but fragment can causes damage
## Orbiting 'inner' ring supporting a tidely locked 'outer' ring
If this a part of this one is destroyed it depend if the inner ring is to.
If not then except the debries of the part destroyed and the part of the inner ring exposed then there isn't much disrupt
If the inner part is affect then because the inner part goes beyond orbital speed to compensat outer part mass then the inner ring will go at an orbit higher until his speed match the orbital speed and the outer part wich is no longer supported will crash onto the planet
[Answer]
Suppose a uniform ring (of any width) around a spherical mass. In such a situation, the ring's positioning around the center point would be unstable. In order for the ring to be in "orbit", it could not be a single rigid body, but a series of loosely connected pieces; and in such a case there would be none of the centrifugal "gravity" normally desired from such a configuration. The ring would in fact need to be spinning faster than the velocity of circularly orbiting objects at that altitude. If perfectly centered, the net forces acting on it would be null, but any perturbation would result the closer side of the ring being drawn toward the central body. In the sequel to Niven's Ringworld, he addresses this oversight by supposing the existence of massive thrusters to compensate for such perturbations. Let's then suppose this is the situation on your ring, as otherwise it wouldn't have been stable in the first place. If a portion of the ring's mass from one side is instantly missing, it would begin to be drawn toward the central body from the opposite side, which the thrusters would attempt to compensate. If the removal is explosive, the situation becomes more complex, but once again falls upon the thrusters to compensate. However, suppose your ring is spinning to generate centrifugal "gravity". The missing, low mass portion would be spinning around the center at a high rate of speed, which would lead to the perturbations to be very chaotic. The exact result would depend heavily on the initial conditions. Furthermore, a spinning ring would be under immense tensile stress, and would likely be thrown open instantly if a portion were removed.
[Answer]
Here's a different way of thinking about it: If your ring station is made up of segments, what are the forces between adjacent segment?
If the ring is spinning slower than the velocity that an object in orbit at the same height would, then the segments must be pushing against each other to prevent them falling towards the Earth. The contents of the station will experience a gravitational pull towards Earth, which, for example, would be equivalent to 90% of surface gravity if the station were nonrotating and at the height of the international space station. The gravitational pull felt would decrease if either rotation speed or height increased. If a segment of the station were removed or destroyed, the remainder of the station would collapse towards the gap and fall to Earth.
If the ring is spinning at the same velocity that an object in orbit at the same height would, then it's just as if the segments are all in orbit independent of each other. The contents of the station will experience weightlessness. The removal or destruction of a segment will have no effect on the remainder of the station (assuming it can remain airtight).
If the ring is spinning faster than the velocity that an object in orbit at the same height would, then the segments must be pulling together to prevent them shooting out into wider, elliptical orbits. The contents of the station will experience a gravitational-like pull away from Earth, dependent on how fast the spin was. If a segment of the station were removed or destroyed, the remainder of the station would peel outwards away from the gap, and would probably whip out into a horrible, spinning, wide elliptical orbit, or just tear apart and fire off into a bunch of different and potentially intersecting elliptical orbits.
Edit: Actually, as an interesting addition, it is quite conceivable that in the case of a ring spinning slower than orbital speed, the same engines used to perform adjustments to hold the station in position could also be used to close any gap that was created by the removal, destruction, or ejection of a segment. I.e. Any damaged segments are ejected, then the entire ring shifts marginally closer to Earth, rejoining and resealing to form a very slightly smaller ring.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/27798/edit).
Closed 6 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/27798/edit)
So for the question, take these things into account.
Up to very recently, the world was exactly as ours.
Everyone from angsty teenagers to modern pagans, fraternities to secret societies perform rituals, for tradition, entertainment, and worship.
A few- a small few- of those books were legitimate and functional, but there was no magic for them to draw in so there was no difference.
Suddenly, a supernatural creature pops up. There are a couple witnesses, but the critter is killed and burned thanks to some quick thinking by average people.
Now, people are developing powers. (Psychics, armored skin, magic use). People get them suddenly, but they're exceptionally rare. Spells from the rare forementioned books suddenly work, reliably.
A low-ranking FBI agent observes something undeniably supernatural.
A body is found, with human DNA. Unfortunately, tests also show inconsistencies like missing organs, or organs/parts that humans dont have, like gills, wings, venom glands, fangs.
Humans are found, that seem completely normal- except they have no identification. No history. Nothing verifiable whatsoever.
So far, nothing very the top has happened. No Cthulhu, no fireballs thrown on live TV, etc. Its the beginning.
How do you think the governments would react?
How would they treat people with no identity? What about people who seem to be at a disproportionate number of supernatural events, even if witnesses say they were helping people?
Edit:
I mean, very very early on. Covert agencies and imprisonment of mages are in the cards, but this is early. Its rumours. First hand-accounts. No evidence yet.
Do they just disregard the current laws to contain it, or would they wait for proof? Twist the current laws?
For an analogy we're all familiar with, this isn't a Zombie Apocalypse. This is a single zombie, in a vast national forest. A small-scale reaction. The FBI knows something... weird is going on, but no laws have been broken yet. Perhaps they'd hold mages for unrelated crimes and falsify evidence?
I'll also add... This story is the foundation for an RPG. The people getting powers are receiving them as payment for completing missions. Being players, the aforementioned condition that non PC witnesses end up dead is true. However, the players have so far ratted out one player as having powers (a psychic effect, reaching out to a target and extending a purple flame to engulf them which results in incapacitating pain for a few moments.) The other players now have a power, one can throw fireballs (sigh) and the other can mentally connect with wireless networks. So as of now, there are five people in the whole world with powers. 2 are staying silent (and have no ID, no history) and three are from this world, and will probably end up flaunting their gifts in time. One from this world is an FBI hacker. How do you think police/fbi would react to the accusation of powers? What about the 'proof' of them?
[Answer]
This is a common backstory; elements of what you've said can be found in The X-Files, X-Men, Heroes, Resurrection, and other serials and films.
The normal reaction of the government, who's usually the first to know, is to suppress it, by any means necessary up to and including making the people capable of supernatural feats disappear without a trace. An upset of this scale to the status quo simply cannot be allowed to happen or it would threaten the very existence of the nation.
The normal reaction of the population, if news of the developments spreads before the government can lock it down, is usually similar; fear and suspicion. Mob violence and an almost literal "witch hunt" would be rampant, with or without tacit government approval.
One government official, high up to have some clout, might step in, seeing the potential for these supernatural humans in a military situation. Those who cooperate are placed in a unit where their unique abilities are further developed; this both segregates them from the public for mutual protection, and makes them useful to society without the need to hide their true nature. Those who do not cooperate are imprisoned, or forced into hiding, and eventually become a force opposing the government and their super-cronies.
Eventually public opinion might turn once the utility of the super-humans is publicized, and a movement may start to end the government segregation and control of the super-humans, letting them integrate back into normal society, but there will always be people who resist that, and any that never complied with the government will still hold a grudge.
This kind of narrative is fairly well-traveled, as I mentioned, to the point that any major deviation from the basic beats I mentioned are probably going to come off as implausible or unrealistic.
[Answer]
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
At this point, the idea that magic and the supernatural are just myths are pretty well drilled into peoples' heads. Skepticism will probably run rampant for a while, until something actually over the top happens, especially because of how easy it is to fake things digitally.
The government would probably pick up on it before the general population does, because it would only take the FBI a few cases to realize there's a connection, then start pulling police records across the country. However, it would still take a while to truly convince the higher-ups, because of the technology/faking possibilities. Once the higher-ups realize that the supernatural is actually a thing, they would probably do whatever they could to keep it quiet -- there's not really a good way to say "Oh, by the way, magic is real and so are monsters," and it would probably cause panic. As cliche as it sounds, they'd probably form a small secretive division that specifically deals with the supernatural, so that even among them there are as few people as possible that have to know what's going on.
Eventually it would probably get out to the public, at which point it becomes more of a social issue than a specifically governmental one.
[Answer]
John Ringo's *Special Circumstances* novels (*Princess of Wands* and *Queen of Swords*) come to mind. These are set in a modern day Earth where the supernatural exists and is often used for dark purposes. We mostly follow the story from the viewpoint of a Christian soccer mom turned God's warrior. The evil forces of course operate in secret and the good guys (although the primary characters are all female) combating them also keep things under wraps--the very existence of the supernatural is treated as what looks to me like a TS/SCI classification.
Even dramatic showdowns generally can slip by the attention of the press as if things come down to open conflict any civilians nearby generally end up dead--it's easy enough to pass it off as the work of a maniac.
(Admittedly, at the end of the second book the curtain isn't going to be able to keep things in the dark anymore. He doesn't follow up on what happens after the President goes on TV asking for prayers and she directs all that energy against a big baddie.)
[Answer]
In this situation, I'd think there would be some government organization somewhat like the fictional SCP Foundation. Not as wide blown as the original, but something the government kept just for laughs. They (as understanding they were a joke) take over quickly and efficiently, slowly gaining some recognition within the government for their stealthy and efficient ability in 'capturing' these anomalies and studying them. Even if this went nowhere, they would become renowned for their abilities in handling the situation efficiently.
*this entirely depends on the government having some sub-organization for this purpose. Which they probably have in some form.*
[Answer]
If this world were exactly like ours, and diverges only at the incident you describe, then one must take into consideration the possibility that what most consider to be governments, whether themselves or the Men In Black types with the knowledge of some possible supernatural interventions in the past, would already be prepared for these such occurances.
I base that on the two–pronged premise that the folklore of every single ancestor to our contemporary cultures has some belief in the supernatural, and that this is either
* a human predilection
* evidence of a prior condition
Regardless of the fact that many people nowadays do not, or say that they do not, believe in the existence of some forms of Being beyond what they consider to be natural, almost everyone knows that belief in a supernatural has been popular at various times in the past.
Indeed, it's not like such belief is on a steady decrease, either, but seems to rise and fall in waves like much else does with some relation to mortality of populations.
So, whether the government or its Cancer Man actually believe that elves or UFOs or djinn exist, it seems very likely that they'd want to be prepared for such a possibility. Those people got to where they are by being conniving, clever, and ruthless.
Now, what you need to consider is whether or not your world has any such people. And, if so, one would expect that such portentous incidences of the supernatural would be exactly why they have those agencies, kept laughable so as to hide them from serious scrutiny. If not, then you need to consider why they wouldn't be prepared.
I also would suggest that hiding such information from the populi is resultant less from a desire to prevent a panic — that's what the peonic bureaucrats are told — than from the simple aphorism that Knowledge Is Power.
So, in conclusion, I would recommend that these people with magical powers very soon become very powerful or very visible, if you don't want them snatched up and absorbed in some Ministry of Magic or what–have–you.
[Answer]
"Humans are found, that seem completely normal- except they have no identification. No history. Nothing verifiable whatsoever."
Dealing with them is quite easy. Detain them as illegal immigrants and start a long bureaucratic procedure of their deportation. (yes, it would take time... it's a realistic, bureaucratic solution...)
Being realistic? Judging from recent govs behavior? In democratic countries secret services would be sniffing, but not much above it. NSA would get traced big share of them through metadata. TSA would molest those of supernaturals who show some weird deformities. European Commission would classify such supernatural features as disability that requires some special protection against discrimination, but the directive about it would still be negotiated. A few cults would bloom. There would be presumably some less nice things done in some regimes or by organized crime.
[Answer]
Check out a movie called "[Cast A Deadly Spell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhKio_WCDWI)". This movie is a cross between a "hard boiled" detective story and a horror story. It takes place in 1948 were almost everyone uses magic for minor to major things like lighting a cigarette and erecting buildings. The exception is the detective, who prefers not to use magic.
The movie addresses some of the elements of the story you outlined, including the investigation of a murder.
[Answer]
I think that all of these events are going to quickly get a lot of attention, both from the government and from the public. The government's response is going to depend a lot on how people are reacting to this.
>
> people are developing powers
>
>
>
Unless the powers also cause an inherent shame that causes the people to want to hide it, knowledge that this is happening is going to spread very quickly. The government won't be able to do anything to prevent that, even if it wanted to. Someone is going to make a youtube video of their new powers, and it's going to go viral - not because people believe it, but because of course the person is going to do something dumb with their new powers that makes for a funny video. People aren't going to believe it at first because they'll just think they did a good job with special effects. Then when a local news agency goes to investigate the person's insistent claims that the powers are real, they'll be presented to a nice demonstration of that reality. That news segment is going to be shown again and again and again.
By this point, the government has no capability to cover this up (unless they get someone who can perform mass memory wipes). If the number of people with powers didn't reach into the thousands, then pretty much anyone with powers would be offered quite a lot of money to let scientists attempt to understand what is going on. With more people than that, there's a good chance some scientist will develop powers and be super excited to try to understand them. This isn't going to be some shady government agency attempting to dissect them to learn the secret of their powers - this is going to be one of the best research facilities in the world.
Also, dissecting someone is like killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Doctors can do x-rays, ultrasounds, and CT scans to get a good picture of what their insides look like. Blood samples and DNA samples (i.e swabbing the inside of their cheek) provide more information about what might make the individual different. They'll also want to see what happens as the powers are used - what (if any) kinds of radiation are given off and see if there are any indications as to how it is happening.
The biggest thing is going to be the people who can do magic. It will be pretty easy to determine that something is violating the laws of physics as we know them - most magics as shown in fiction clearly violate the conservation of mass and energy. This alone will cause quite a bit of excitement, both in and out of the scientific world. Scientists will be excited for more people to develop powers and hope that they'll be able to explore a brand new field. Gamers in particular are going to be incredibly excited - finally all of their fantasies might be able to come true in real life!
Now, how *can* a government react to this? They're going to have to admit that this is actually happening. They can, however, do their best to prevent people from panicking:
>
> By now, most of you have probably seen or heard about the Youtube video of the man with a superpower, as well as the news report that the video was not faked. After preliminary tests, we can confirm that at least 99% of scientists are very disappointed that they are not the ones who gained a superpower.
>
>
> Jokes aside, we've conferred with other world leaders and can confirm that this appears to be a widespread, if rare, occurrence. At this point, we do not know what is causing this to happen. We have at least one case where the laws of physics as we know them are clearly being violated. This is good news for everyone who has been disappointed by scientists saying that their favorite part of science fiction is impossible - there might be a way to make it happen now.
>
>
> We do have one report of an attack by a previously unknown creature, though fortunately the people attacked were able to kill the creature without anyone being seriously injured. We do not know where the creature came from, or how it got here, just as we don't know why people have started to develop powers.
>
>
> Faced with these unknowns, we recommend an extra degree of caution from everyone. Avoid being outside alone, and have a way to defend yourself when possible.
>
>
> For anyone who develops a power, please go to the nearest hospital as soon as it is convenient - we do not know the long-term health implications of these powers that have been showing up. Prior to these recent events, mutations never caused X-men-like powers, only cancer. We still don't know if these are some kind of mutation or something else. The more data that we have, the better we will be able to understand what is going on and why.
>
>
> Additionally, we will be looking into creating a superhero team to help us handle any further developments. If you're interested in applying, please send us a video at (some email address) demonstrating your new powers.
>
>
>
---
A note about the critter:
>
> the critter is killed and burned
>
>
>
Even in the case of the critter being burned, there's still going to be enough of the remains to attempt an analysis. Whatever they can collect will be sent off to a lab to analyzed. Unless the critter's remains appear identical to that of a known large wild animal (which could be the case if it's a bear infected in some way by magic), this is immediately going to be something many people start following - it's not uncommon for attack by wild animals to get attention from the news, and unless the people who were attacked have something to hide they are likely to enjoy the 5 minutes of fame from telling the story to some news agency. When the lab reports that the remains are not from any known animal, the story is going to go viral quite quickly.
Combined with people developing powers, this will just make even more people convinced that something big is happening.
[Answer]
**Shadow1024** is pretty on point.
The government would be slow to believe that anything is happening but different portions of the huge bureaucratic beast that is the government would figure it out faster than others. The official policy would likely be be to deny it publicly while trying to get ahead of the situation. Getting ahead of the situation involves controlling it by recruiting/eliminating/incarcerating those with abilities in secret. Different branches of the government may have different strategies and may or may not know that other branches also know about the supernaturals.
Once things hit the press, it all depends on what story hits the press. The story of a person flying into a burning building and rescuing people will cause a different reaction than a story about a person using powers to set fire to a building with people in it. I picked this examples because they both may have happened in the same incident. It just depends on what got caught on camera.
The government's reaction will be what makes the population happy.
] |
[Question]
[
In my setting (which is roughly early-medieval in terms of technology), magic comes from the Life-energy of all living beings. There are several factors that affect how much of this energy each being possesses:
1. The age of a being. Older creatures have accumulated more 'Life'
over their years.
2. A being's sense of self, i.e. How much it knows it is alive, so to speak. A 20-year-old man has more life-energy than a 100 year old turtle, for instance, simply because the man recognizes that he is an individual living being, while the turtle simply tries hard not to die. Sentience, I suppose.
3. The emotional state of a being. Someone with more will to live has more 'Life' than a merely apathetic one, while a depressed person may have little to no 'Life' energy at all.
There are three more important things to note about life energy:
1. Your life energy will slowly replenish itself to your 'Current Maximum' after being used, which is determined by the above factors. As long as you don't completely use up your life energy, you won't die.
2. You will, however, feel extremely depressed. At the above section, I stated how the emotional state of being determines their Life-Energy. The reverse is also true.
3. When anything dies, it releases what remains of its life energy out, back 'into the Cycle'.
So, all that magi-babble having been said, some clever clogs magister came up with a method to trap the 'Final Breath' of the dying in little bottles, ready to be used. This was very controversial at first, but the magister managed to escape with his technique and began selling it to less 'ethically oriented' peoples, who eventually 'persuaded' him to part with his techniques and allow them to start producing more. Edit: This was roughly 50-ish earth years ago.
Edit: The amount of Final Breath released by a person would be their current amount of Life Energy possessed upon death.
In short, my question is - what would be the social and economical implications that would arise from bottled life? How would society be affected if death could potentially be a beneficial thing?
Edit: After receiving some answers and useful comments, I decided to clarify a few more things:
1. 'Drinking' a bottle of life does not grant a permanent increase in magical energy. It merely gives you a temporary boost. Most magi prefer to use it once they feel 'used up', rather than before casting any spells.
2. A bottle of Life is quite valuable, yet not so valuable as to be 'rare'. Sort of like gold, I suppose. You see it all over the place, and yet somehow its still quite expensive.
3. Life does increase over time, due to birth. A mother splits off a bit of her life to her child as it resides within her. After she gives birth, she will slowly recover her Life back to her own maximum, while the child now produces his own Life.
[Answer]
The social implications of this depend on the value of one bottle of life ™.
If the value is high this is largely indistinguishable from slave trade, except more portable, and you can draw parallels from there. But that said slavery had many quite different forms over the centuries, so the social impact also varied. And there are some external variables to consider as well. Many religions banned enslaving fellow believers which led to trade in foreign unbelievers. Barring such prohibition more slaves would be acquired locally, which had a distinct effect on how slavery worked. People generally have more respect for the laws and customs of the country all their property and family are.
If the value of life™ is low, it would more resemble serfdom. You wouldn't be killed for your life™, but a lord would have the rights to the life™s of the people of his domain. Nobody else would be allowed to touch them and then their time comes they'd owe it to their lord to let their life™ be collected before it is too late. Considering that in medieval society almost everyone was a peasant with relatively short life expectancy, this and collecting executed criminals would probably cover the demand in low value scenario. Social implications of this would be minimal. Religions that believe in the sanctity of life would have to reword some of their dogma, but that is not really an issue, as explicitly acknowledging that life™s have immaterial mystical value doesn't really threaten any core beliefs.
It should be possible for a free man, whose life™ is not the property of their lord to sell the right to for cash. Possibly several times. Suicide might be a practical way to get your family out of debt. If you can't pay your debts, the creditor might have the option of taking it in life™.
Euthanasia would be more common and acknowledged. Given medieval medicine this would undoubtedly be a good thing. It might even improve the level of medicine as healers would focus on healing things they actually can understand and heal. Probably help in containing epidemics as well. As a downside doctors would probably be faster to give up and collect the life™, but, as said, given medieval medicine...
In ancient times, prisoners of war were sold to slavery. In the new order prisoners of war might be killed and their life™ harvested. Aztec flower wars actually worked like this. Extrapolating from that the result would be lots of relatively small scale wars that would maintain a steady rate of supply. In low value scenarios nobles and other valuable people would still be worth much more in ransom. This would make small wars a practical method of controlling the population, which would lead to more people being able to marry and have children.
The value of life™ has a weird effect on economy, if such life™ wars exist. Basically, it makes it impractical to do work the value of which is lower than the value of the life™ of the worker. Historically, such a change in the minimum value of human work led to the collapse of serfdom and feudalism. But most pseudo-medieval settings actually already give human life a higher base value, so this is probably irrelevant here.
If the value of life™ is higher, importing and exporting it becomes practical. This would enable areas importing it a style of economy otherwise too magic intensive. The economy would probably also be capital intensive and produce products for trade not immediate use. This is because an economy would be dominated by people with capital to buy life™, who'd then use it to get more money they can trade for life™. Similar accumulation of wealth would happen with the actual life™ traders in even larger degree. In the long ran this would probably change the way economy works into something more commercial and industrial as the amount of capital you can invest on agriculture is limited. People would be forced to figure out other ways to make money.
All of this would probably erode the usually estate based power of nobility and increase the influence of people living in cities. A lot would depend on how well the nobility kept up with the changing times.
Effects of large scale international life™ trade on the source areas would be devastating. It might feasibly lead to colonialism that is even worse than its real world counter-part as the natives would not be just expendable, they would be the resource to be harvested as fast as possible. I am guessing this is really beyond the scope of the question, though.
[Answer]
**Warning: Black humor ahead. If you can't stand the *Black Knight* sequence from *Monty Python and the Holy Grail*, this may not be the answer for you.**
>
> So, all that magi-babble having been said, some clever clogs magister came up with a method to trap the 'Final Breath' of the dying in little bottles, ready to be used. This was very controversial at first, but the magister managed to escape with his technique and began selling it to less 'ethically oriented' peoples, who eventually 'persuaded' him to part with his techniques and allow them to start producing more.
>
>
>
Anyone up for some bounty hunting? Euthanasia? Capital punishment?
All of these problems are going to spring up in this society.
**Bounty hunting**
Why wait for someone to die when you can just kill them first? That sounds harsh, I'll admit, but it's the logic that some people will use. These entrepreneurs might at first go to hospitals and hospices, going to the dead and dying (preferably the elderly, since they have more life energy) and eventually building up a large supply of life energy. They can consume (? Ingest? Inhale?) the life energy or they can sell it to others. You've got something similar to [what would happen if someone developed a formula for immortality](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4535/what-are-the-social-implications-of-discovering-a-formula-for-immortality), inasmuch as you can either take some yourself or sell it to others.
But only a small percentage of people die on any given day, and not all of them are elderly (elderly people have more life energy, so they'll be prime targets). So people will want to . . . er . . . speed up the process, shall we say. Are you coveting great-uncle Phil's prowess with card tricks? Hm, maybe he's using some magic - from his excess of life energy. So you hire a bounty hunter. Play your cards right - pun intended - and you'll never be traced as the guy who hired the bounty hunter. Just make sure that s/he doesn't get caught, either.
Actually, the target doesn't have to be in *your* family. Anyone's up for grabs. Which means that great-uncle Phil has some more people to look out for. Poor guy.
**Euthanasia**
Of course, it's so much better to make things legal. That gets rid of some of the illicit activities. Now you can legally get great-uncle Phil's life energy if he's sick. Just get a doctor to say he has a terminal disease - take your pick - and get ready to start collecting. *Voila!*
You might wonder just why the government would ever approve this. Well, bounty hunting often brings . . . er . . . collateral damage. The bounty hunter aims for great-uncle Phil and hits the next door neighbor. That's a problem (and nobody can get her life energy!). However, if it's now *legal* to euthanize great-uncle Phil, there's less of a chance of . . . collateral damage. Here's a slogan legislators could use: "Making death legal saves more lives!" Catchy.
**Capital punishment**
"Who's in favor of the death penalty?" (rhetorical question, and no, I'm not, despite this increasingly black humor) "Nobody? Okay, now you can get life energy from criminals when they die!" Now the hands come up. People will justify killing crooks because hey, don't they deserve it (disclaimer: not my rationale)?
Now a new dilemma arises. Old people have more life energy. So isn't it better to just let the crooks *live* their life sentences and *then* harvest their life energy? Well, it kind of is. More bang for your buck, so to speak.$^1$ But people are inherently impatient, and they'll want some executions *now*. What a bunch of whiners! Just execute the folks already on Death Row or serving life sentences! Let the others live! Oh, but as per point number 3 in your question, make them happy, so their life energy doesn't decrease.
So sit and wait for the criminals to die. But do execute the ones sentenced to death. Go right ahead!
---
$^1$ Or if they're executed by firing squad, more buck for your bang! Hey, I *did* warn you that this would be dark.
[Answer]
What you describe is a rather classic pattern for technology. You start with a process that is beyond human approach. Then, someone figures out a way to approach it, and harnesses it. Then we see where it leads us!
Some corner cases which you may be able to weave together to a cohesive idea:
**Oil**
For thousands of years, the energy of Oil has been trapped under an impenetrable layer of rock. One day, man figures out how to drill into it. Humanity as a whole begins to flow quickly as humanity expends more energy than it ever had access before.
Applicable details might be:
* Oil is limited. It doesn't contain all of the energy of the system, just a small fraction. Eventually it is running out, and society is having to wean its addiction to oil off (either by transitioning to other forms of energy, or pairing back on usage).
+ While it took millions of years to form our oil deposits, the amount of energy stored there is no more than 2 or 3 days worth of sunlight striking the earth!
* When it comes to growing "big," societies with oil eclipse societies which do not use it. However, when it comes to other metrics ("soul" metrics), we still recognize that the smaller societies have something useful to give.
**GMO**
Genetically Modified Organisms allow us to bend the power of nature, feeding millions.
* The power seems limitless. If genes can do it, GMOs can provide it. People are wisely excited about this tremendous potential to solve human problems, rather than waiting for nature to provide solutions.
* GMOs are deemed dangerous because they seem to escape. GMOs are very close to the raw power of nature, so people are wisely afraid of corrupting the small sphere that keeps them alive until we know more.
---
Now, for your particular definition of "Life Essence," there are obvious side effects which can occur (such as junkies who get high on the stuff). The key question is how fungible is Life Essence? Can I reliably take it from one person and simply pass it to someone else, or is that Essence "keyed" to the original person. This could be a big deal for "metabolism" of Essence. Few things of interest happen instantaneously. The body is going to have to integrate that Essence into its life style.
Consider as a source material, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). That system has a set of organs called the Triple Burner which is responsible for generating and maintaining life energy (it has no corresponding Western scientific organ). The Middle burner (associated with the Stomach, Spleen, Gall Bladder, and liver) is responsible for providing nourishment to the self. If you were able to imbibe Life Essence directly, and used TCM as a a backdrop for your story, then you should expect to see a large number of illnesses related to those organs. Either they will be overstimulated from having to suddenly consume massive amounts of purified Essence, generating ulcers and such, or they will be under-stimulated by being bypassed. Which way things would go would be very dependent on how you would like to treat the consumption of Essence.
One thing that may approach out of this is a desire for balance. We may find life essence sprinkled on foods to avoid these side effects. Of course, Essence likely has no taste, but it is something we all want. Society would help us out: we would soon choose to put Essence on our delicacies, and not normal food. It may be considered offensive to the previous soul to use it on anything but the best food.
You may find TCM style illnesses. TCM often is associated with "healing the spirit," and your system is clearly feeding directly into the spirit, bypassing as much physics as possible. A TCM dictionary of illnesses might be an enlightening source of plot points which have already been vetted as believable by billions of people.
---
How much Life Essence are we talking about in worldwide senses? If humans have the majority of life essence in the entire ecosystem, then slowly stealing the "leftovers" at the end of a life would eventually begin to sap the energy of the entire Earth. There are a large number of Gaia stories from which you can draw on here. In most of them, Gaia eventually lashes out against humanity for its "sins."
---
As a final thought: virtually all human cultures believe in an afterlife of some sort. It would take no more than a dozen seconds for humanity to associate this last bit of energy as required for the afterlife. You would see almost instantaneous rioting in protest of this technology unless you first found a religious solution to this problem.
One resolution, along the lines of Ville Niemi's answers, may be a balance in who "owns" the Life Essence. If there is a serfdom style of rule in the area, a serf's Life Essence may be given to the local lord. A lord is expected to take care of his serfs, so a ritual may form where a lord splashes some of the essence onto the ground before consuming the essence. This would resemble a ritual done with beer where you pour a portion onto the ground as the "ancestor's share" before drinking.
[Answer]
In one sense, I'd say this question is easy to answer, because there is a very close analogy in real life: harvesting organs from the dead for transplant. The difference between a mystical "life energy" and a more tangible organ would, I don't think, make any difference to the social and ethical issues involved.
So, issues that people would surely think about and debate would include:
Does a person have to give his consent for his life energy to be harvested? Or does the good to society outweigh the person's right to deny this benefit to others?
People might be encouraged to commit suicide so that their life energy can be harvested. It would likely start out with euthanasia for the old, crippled, etc, and spread from there. The age at which a person is judged to be "old and useless" might ratchet downward, and the range of illnesses and infirmities judged sufficiently serious to justify euthanasia could grow.
Sooner or later it would occur to someone to say that person A should be killed so that his life energy can be used to benefit person B. That could be because person A is a violent criminal who deserves to die anyway, or is a member of a racial minority or some other disliked group whose life is not as valuable as person B's, etc. Even if it's not legal, the rich and powerful might arrange for certain people to die "accidental" deaths so their life energy can be harvested.
The more useful this life energy is, the more pointed the tough questions would become. If taking a swig of someone's life energy can cure an otherwise horrible disease or add years to a person's life or give him incredible energy, I'd expect people would find more excuses to take someone else's life energy. If it's some minor benefit, gives you a small extra burst of energy that can help out in athletic competitions or combat, probably less of an issue, though certainly it would still be there for the very selfish.
There would also be what seems to me an obvious theological question: What is the relationship between this life energy and a person's soul? By capturing his life energy, are we capturing his soul, and preventing him from going to Heaven or being reincarnated or whatever the people of this society believes happens to the soul after death?
*Addendum*
Many years ago, when they first started putting consent for organ donations on the back of drivers licenses, my father said that he would never sign such a thing because some rich and powerful person who needs a transplant might arrange to have him killed so he could get his organs. At the time I thought he was being paranoid. Since then I've attended lectures by doctors and medical ethicists who say that the criteria for declaring someone "legally dead" have been steadily made looser over the years, and one of the stated reasons for doing this is so that organs can be harvested sooner. Of course they don't say, "yes, we know this person is still alive but we're going to declare him dead so we can harvest his organs". They say something more like, "we must balance the remote possibility that this person might recover against the benefits of harvesting his organs now before they begin to fail and become useless for transplant". Every now and then you hear of someone being declared "brain dead" and then they wake up and completely recover. Etc.
So it's possible that in such a society, the push to kill people so their life energy can be harvested might be blatant: "This worthless criminal must be sacrificed so that our exalted king can be saved". Or it could be very subtle: "Well, sure, in the past we would have continued to care for this person in the hope that he would recover. But we must balance, etc."
Oh, and it's quite possible that they wouldn't say, "We're going to kill this person to harvest his life energy." People who kill others for their own benefit rarely say, "We murdered this person because it was convenient and his life wasn't important anyway." They use euphemisms so people don't have to face the reality of deliberate murder. They might say, "The donor was terminated". Or, "We have harvested his life energy". Or, "We freed up hospital bed number 127". They won't call them "people", they'll make up some slang word for them, like racists use the n-word for black people. Or they'll have some very clinical, technical term, like they'll call them the "animafacients". (Latin for "life-force makers" -- I just made that word up, but you get the idea.)
[Answer]
There have been other explorations of this. In particular, the idea that life can be transferred. For example, there is the possibly apocryphal tale of Countess Báthory bathing in the blood of young women in order to stay young herself. The vampire legend involves transference of life from the victim to the vampire. Brandon Sanderson's **Warbreaker** has *Breath*, which can be transferred from one person to another and which allows magical effects when used. Rather than try to tell you what happens, I'm going to concentrate on suggesting questions. If you answer everything, then you can always post a follow up question for additional feedback.
## Environmental
If life is normally released back to the cycle with death, what happens if the process is interrupted? Is there less life left for everything else? Does it take longer for those low in life to recover? I.e. is there a finite amount of life such that all gains are someone else's loss?
Or does spreading life create additional essence? In this case, everyone would want to spread life so as to have more essence available.
If there are three people, three bottles of life, and three magical tasks, what's the best way to split them up so as to maximize future essence? Do the bottles lose essence over time? Does using essence cause gain to increase?
Under different assumptions, it may be best for each person to use one bottle and take one task, or one person takes all three tasks and they keep the bottles. Or one person uses the bottles while the other two split the tasks.
## Economics
Ignoring the moral aspects, this would encourage additional production of life. This would have the effect of subsidizing food production, at least meat. Ordinary people would eat the meat while the nobility takes the essence. This is strongest if essence is growing, but even if not, groups would want to maximize their own essence.
With finite life, we'd have a tragedy of the commons. Even though increasing life causes a reduction in average essence, people would still do it so as to maximize their own essence. If life increases essence, then it would be no tragedy. Everyone would want increased life so as to maximize essence.
This would also cause the selfish to value human life. As aging increases essence, even the selfish want to allow people to become as essence rich as possible. This could cause them to subsidize the elderly and poor earlier in their societal development. It's not just altruism; it has a practical advantage.
## Morality
Earlier, I ignored the moral aspects. That does not mean that they do not exist. The particular danger in a feudal society is that the moral arguments will favor the sacrifice of the serfs to to the nobility. We could even have extreme results like a religion that favors cannibalism.
Assuming essence can be harvested without consent, this could provide an economic rationale for serial killing. It also provides an extra reason for war. Perhaps the real benefit of a war is not land or wealth, but the essence from executing captured members of the opposing army. Perhaps soldiers commit suicide rather than allow their essence to be captured. Or they find ways to use up all their remaining essence when attacked. A whole new meaning for the term "suicide bomber".
If caught in a siege, does it make sense to sacrifice the elderly population in order to gain essence enough to attack?
Can essence be claimed if someone owes debts they cannot pay? I.e. would it be a capital crime to be bankrupt? If someone leaves a bottle of essence, can debt holders enter claims against it as an asset of the estate?
It is likely that different places will come up with different rules handling essence. In one country, anything goes. In another the only capital crime is theft of essence.
[Answer]
The obvious implication is that it gives people incentive to murder. In fact, you could have an entire class of characters who seek out and kill those who "won't be missed" in order to harvest their life force.
There could be another implication depending on two things. First, how dark do you want to get? Second, how attached are you to your entire premise?
You say that the mother passes some of her life force on to a new born child. If instead, you make it so that new (potential/raw/untapped whatever) life force is made at the moment of conception that is more pure and more powerful than the normal human life force, there are new options available. For example, a Magi could perform forced abortions to harness that life force, engage in human trafficking (buying young men and women from poor families, possibly under the guise of "apprenticeship") to repeatedly impregnate the women and harness the life force of the unborn or simply running around killing expectant mothers to get more life force out of a "single" kill.
Note: this answer is not a comment on my personal views regarding abortion or anything along those lines. It is ONLY an idea for the story and should be taken as NOTHING more than that.
I know a good bit of what I've said here goes against what you said in your OP but if you distinguish between life force and "natal" life force and say the latter is that which is required to develop a being from conception to birth and then gives way to normal life force, it could work.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs [details or clarity](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Add details and clarify the problem by [editing this post](/posts/250485/edit).
Closed 3 months ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/250485/edit)
A warfare that involves nations with a little military budget. One of the two decides to build gliders made out of fibreglass because it is transparent to radio and radar waves. The glider in mounted on top of a solid fuel rocket with the wings folded. The explosive is not completely transparent, but it is a gel with a small signature. The only components with a high signature are the mechanism to fold the wing, the electronic guidance and the fuse. They are small parts and shielded as much as possible. The shielding is made out of flat plastic plates coated with carbon black. Flaps are moved by hydraulic actuators, the pipes are made of fibreglass and the fluid is silicone oil. So overall there will be only a faint signature without the advanced technologies used in fifth generation military planes.
BTW, fibreglass cannot pierce armours, but the explosive in the glider is arranged in a shaped charge.
The solid fuel booster is more visible, therefore it burns as quickly as possible, brings the glider over the height of 20000 meters, than it detaches. It opens its own wings and glides as well to act as a decoy. It also lights a couple of flares.
Apart from the fact that the range of such weapons will be limited and that it can be used only at night. With no heat signature and almost no radar signature can it go through modern military defences?
[Answer]
**Invisible to Radars, not to Lidars**
If the enemy is equipped with the current equipment and is not aware of the new weapon a first surprise attack might go through. Current radars, even multi-frequency radars are not tuned to detect them, they would get only a faint signal. Though, thereafter the enemy might equip themselves with [Lidars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar) using lasers in the visible range. Then all the gliders will be easily shot down.
A good quality lidar mounted on a truck will cover a smaller area than a radar, but given the slow speed of the gliders it will be enough. Then some missiles made with the cheapest technologies, guided from below and using for the final approach simple laser ranging devices which are cheaper than lidars can shoot them down. Also a drone equipped with an onboard lidar and a 20 mm autocannon could easily shoot them down at a low cost.
[Answer]
**Alone, no**
Today's military defences involve radars in more than a single range of frequencies. Meter-long, centimeter-long, millimeter-long radars exist and are covering areas independently, leading to (ideally) all areas covered by radars of all of those frequencies. Fiberglass might be a good thing that has a low visibility in visible light, but at least one of those wavelengths would be reflected well enough to notice that glider by one of the radars. And once it's detected, it's a matter of time until it'll be shot down. A single decoy would not help, it's just two targets instead of one.
**In great numbers, quite possibly**
Check the latest missile attack on Israel - HAMAS have *overloaded* Israeli anti-air defence with sheer number of incoming warheads, of course a lot of them passed the perimeter and wrecked havoc at where they were aiming. If you'd launch several thousands of those things, you might be pretty sure a percentage of them would pass through because of SAM running out of ammo, if not for other reasons like swarm tactics on those gliders, some clever use of one-time accelerators post-launch, or plain attacking with standard missiles, in the same numbers.
Your device is too slow to afford high-level flight, even if launched into the heights, and having it be transparent won't do much. Instead, add a propeller to its nose and have it travel like a winged rocket, close to the ground, potentially even between obstacles like trees, then radars might not be a good device to discern those, as they would be "below horizon" for them, radars are usually tuned to not scan the land as there would be too many false detections in those sectors. With this set-up you would have a greater chance of hitting some edge target from the global set of them, as visual detection would be the most reliable method of detecting your unpiloted airplane, it won't leave them a lot of time to react.
[Answer]
## Depending on your definition of "Modern", they could be detected, and relatively easy to counter
The military grade radar systems being produced right now tend to be is spectrographic, meaning that it is not just detecting for how strong of a radar signal something has, but what combination of wavelengths are being reflected back. By transmitting on many wavelengths, the radar system can determine based on what wavelengths are and are not reflected back a lot about the material that the object is made out of. Because of this, radar can tell the difference between a bird and fiberglass bodied object because they have different spectrographic properties. If any flying object with a spectrographic and behavioral profile that is not that of a bird were to be detected on an intercept course for a target of military value without prior air-space clearance, then it would most likely be shot down.
### Even in great numbers, they would do poorly compared to regular missiles
Furthermore, gliders are WAY slower than typical missiles. Shooting down a high-speed ballistic missile is best done with another high speed missile which is both expensive to make and takes up a lot of space. So, air defenses typically have a limited number of interceptor missiles they can deploy. However, slower rockets and drones are much easier to deal with en masse, as long as you don't need to cover too large of an area. A modern AA gun like the [Phalanx CIWS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS) is an auto-targeting machinegun with up to hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammo that can fire at a rate of 4,500 rounds/minute with a high degree of accuracy at ranges of up to 6km (or 2km if using self-detonating HEI rounds to minimize collateral damage). Slow moving gliders are very easy to hit; so, it only takes a fraction of a second for this weapon to fire a kill shoot before re-aiming on the next target. A single one of these AA guns could realistically shoot down 5-20 times as many of these gliders as they could regular missiles.
### ... unless you mean slightly less than modern radar/air defense
While the high end-radar systems being created by many countries today are spectrographic systems integrated directly into AI powered AA grids, most countries are still using a significant number of radar and defense systems that are many decades old. So if you were to attack an older military installation, one belonging to a less advanced nation, or a small forward base that may not have then infrastructure for a complex AA system, then this strategy has a good chance of success.
This is because most older radar systems don't reach into the wavelengths necessary to see such drones, and even if they do, they don't have the computer systems to tell the difference between fiberglass and feathers. And even if they could identify the threat well, many lack high speed auto-targeting AA guns for dealing with swarm tactics.
A prime example of this are the plastic and cardboard drones that have seen a lot of success in the Ukraine/Russia war where the typical level of technology available is 20+ years behind what you would expect going after a more modernized military target, and the front-lines don't see heavy use of the most advanced technology either side has at thier disposal because artillery has rendered deployment of high powered active radar systems to the front line too dangerous meaning that many compounds have nothing more than wetware powered defenses when it comes to drone strikes.
[Answer]
## For a Little While
Most existing anti-air systems are keyed towards missiles, rockets, and jets - anything that has radar profile significantly different from those objects will likely get through. It's not enough that some radar can see the glider, it needs to be a radar that's attached to a weapon system. (eg, the seeker at the end of the missile needs to see the target or it can't home!)
But the kill-chains will adjust over time. How quickly they adjust is probably directly related to how effectively you use the gliders.
## Saturation
The issue with missile defense is always the cost. If your gliders cost 20,000, and the missile that kills it costs 2,000,000 - well that's a problem for the defender. This problem is worse if you concentrate fire, and locally deplete the enemies resources. Then your gliders start getting through even a purpose designed anti-glider system.
This could be worse if you launch multiple gliders from one rocket; you've lowered the per unit cost of your gliders by using a single launch vehicle. This effectively repurposes the concept of [MIRV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle) but for non-ballistic weapons.
[Answer]
Yes, fiberglass is indeed a material difficult to detect for the radars, the downside is that it is not transparent to visible light.
OP is aware that slow moving gliders are easy targets and limited the use to night attacks, but night vision equipment can easily see them, the defenders can aim their weapons manually, in the future the aim can be automated with some image processing. You just need a hood to shield the lens of the night vision equipment from the light coming from below and the silhouette would appear against the background of the stars. If the night is cloudy it's even better, the clouds reflect the light coming from below and would make the gliders visible enough.
This leaves only the possibility to attack when it is cloudy and there is no light from below. The only possible targets could be a ship in the middle of the sea or an isolated target in the middle of a wasteland, but those targets could simply use searchlights.
Final point there is no need to keep the men constantly on guard or the searchlights constantly switched on. When a radar detects a booster missile going up it can send an alarm and put the potential targets on alert. Given the slow speed the gliders can be shot down at close range by heavy machine guns.
[Answer]
# Yes, it's called a Glide Bomb.
[Glide bombs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glide_bomb) are tactical stand off weapons designed to hit well-defended, stationary targets. They're unpowered bombs with guidance and wings; they're often misrepresented as "guided missiles" but they lack propulsion. They're dropped from an aircraft moving at combat speed and from high altitude, the aircraft serves a function similar to your rocket booster.
Because they're small and unpowered they are very difficult to detect and hit. The best defense is to take out the launching aircraft, which may itself be stealthy.
One example is the [AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-154_Joint_Standoff_Weapon) aka the JSOW.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iUMWl.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QmFiO.jpg)
JSOW weighs about 475 kg (1000 lb) and delivers about 225 kg of payload. When dropped from 40,000 feet (12,000 meters) it can glide 130km. It uses relatively cheap [GPS and inertial guidance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS/INS) to hit stationary targets. This gives us a rough idea of the performance characteristics of your proposed glider.
# Air launch vs ground launch
Your proposed booster rocket powered glide bomb has several drawbacks...
* It must be launched from a ground launch vehicle limiting its operational area.
* The launch will create significant flash and smoke inviting [counter-battery fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-battery_fire) and an indication that hey, there's a bomb on the way.
With a booster you can, theoretically, make the bomb as big as you like, and launch it as high as you like. But make it too big and now it can be detected and shot down. Make it too fast or launch it too high and now it has to be strengthened to handle higher stresses compromising stealth.
Eventually you'll reinvent the [ballistic missile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_missile).
[Answer]
It might work, for a little while. At first, when the existence of the weapon isn't suspected, it will likely be filtered out by the computers guiding the air defenses because it's not recognised as a threat. But as soon as people start putting two and two together and figuring out what's hitting them, they'll reprogram those computers and WILL be able to detect and target your gliding bombs.
That's basically what happened with the Japanese kamikaze attacks at the end of WW2 as well. For the first few weeks they were quite successful, as the US AAA crews weren't trying to shoot down Japanese aircraft so much as damage them so they had to break off their attacks. But the Japanese kamikazes didn't break off their attacks, they kept going despite the damage. As soon as word got around the US crews would keep firing until the attacking aircraft exploded or crashed into the sea, mostly negating the kamikaze threat.
Similar with any new weapon. The German Fritz-X glide bomb wasn't recognised as a threat at first but once recognised for what it was it was relatively easy to negate or at least avoid by the ships it was designed to attack and the Germans relegated it to attacking stationary targets like bridges instead that couldn't evade.
Currently Ukraine is using a lot of drones with small warheads, but they've just about lost their effectiveness because Soviet/Russian air defenses now know what to look for and engage. Some still get through but not nearly the numbers that used to, basically (as with the Japanese kamikazes) it requires a saturation attack. The Ukrainian unmanned bomb boats are starting to face a similar obstacle to reach Soviet/Russian ships, making them less effective (and those are far more expensive to build than little flying ones, plus larger and thus harder to hide).
Yemeni terrorists used to use drones and crude ballistic missiles against Saudi Arabia, until the Saudi armed forces figured out what was happening and now they have a pretty solid air defense set up that negates that threat.
Hamas and PLO terrorists did something similar against Israel, leading to Israel developing and deploying Iron Dome very quickly that intercepts most of the incoming weapons (and even mortar rounds at times).
And that's always the case, one side develops a weapons system, the other side for a little while doesn't have a response but quickly develops one (especially if the other side is technologically equal or superior, a far inferior opponent may lack the technology to field a viable response, think the use of aircraft by Italy in 1920s/30s Ethiopia against tribal rebellion, rebels who had only spears and knives).
] |
[Question]
[
The Cult of the Holy Mother is a female-dominated religious organization that retains a large role in the shaping of society and affairs of the nation. The cult traces its origins to a virgin woman chosen by the creator deity to produce the Messiah, a god-emperor who was destined to save mankind and go on to rule this nation. The cult is made up of mostly priestesses that enter into holy matrimony with their deity. These brides have taken vows of chastity to devote themselves to the study and correct observance of religious rituals. There rituals are deemed necessary by the organization and forbidden for others to carry out. As such, they are regarded as fundamental to the continuance and security of the state. Occasionally, a supernatural event will be triggered which is described by the cult as a miracle. A priestess will be chosen by their deity to give birth to a son, who will grow up to be ordained as the next god-emperor. These "Sons of God" occur anywhere from every few decades to every few centuries. They serve as an expression of the god's power and authority over nature, as well as a reminder to the people of the contract between God and mankind. This event symbolizes the holy trinity that the religion bases itself upon, with God the father in heaven, God the Mother as the intermediary between both worlds, and God the Son as his representative on Earth.
Society is dominated by men, who take dominant roles in civil and public life and women taking a secondary status. However, there is subtle undercurrent in society that men would be incompetent on their own, which is demonstrated throughout the mythology and stories society tells itself. The faith itself is also female oriented, giving higher importance on the virgin mother over the Son of God. Despite this, it maintains the patriarchal hierarchy, viewing any suggestion of the reverse as dangerous and heretical. This seems to go against their own self-interest and the overall status of women in general, as it curtails their advancement in public life.
I want to design this matriarchal religion as the single dominant faith in the nation that works within society without challenging the rule of man. How can I make it this work? And how can the faith benefit from maintaining this stance while retaining their influence over the population?
[Answer]
## TL;DR
An early sect within The Church of the Holy Mother made a pact with the patriarchy. This sect surrendered their claims to political power to the patriarchs and in return the patriarchs recognized the sect as the sole legitimate religious authority. As a result, having celibate, cloistered women running the church and working as advisors eventually became tradition.
---
[luizpsr](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/80848/luizpsr) provides [a great justification](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/226995/how-can-a-matriarchal-religion-support-a-patriarchal-structure/227000#227000) for the contemporary position of The Church of the Holy Mother: woman yield religious authority but let men take care of mundane matters. For my answer, I'm going to look into how this arrangement could come to be.
*Side Note*: My use of "church" as opposed to a "cult" is intentional.
# Historical Examples in the Real World
## Common Trends
If you look at the history of various religions (including Christianity), you'll see some trends:
1. After the initial emergence of the religion, a wide variety of interpretations and traditions develop and then begin competing to shape the religion's orthodoxy.
2. In order to spread, religions often adopt some values from the existing cultures.
3. Religious organizations often provide secular leaders with legitimacy and a good reputation in exchange for material support.
#1 and #2 both explain why religions may seem contradictory; they aren't just the continuation of an initial revelation, but the on-going process of reconciling differing interpretations. #3, meanwhile, explains why religious organizations may compromise their ideological purity. In other words, a (nominally) matriarchal religion operating within a patriarchal society is not only plausible but realistic.
## Paul & Thecla
A specific historical example that is especially relevant involves the Christian Apostle John and a woman named [Thecla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thecla).
According to the Acts of Paul and Thecla, she was inspired by Paul's teachings to convert to Christianity and leave her fiancée for a life of celibacy. The stories depict Thecla enduring numerous trials - including miraculously surviving multiple attempts to execute her - before becoming a preacher. These texts also reference other female preachers and depict Paul as an egalitarian and strong advocate for celibacy.
By contrast, the [Pastoral Epistles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastoral_epistles) depict Paul advocating for women to serve a subordinate role in the Church and dedicate themselves to raising children. Though evidence is limited, it's likely this contrast was intentional. The Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Pastoral Epistles reference people and events that are rarely mentioned in other Christian texts but promote opposed ideologies.
Despite Thecla being widely known and venerated until at least the 4th century AD, the Acts of Paul and Thecla did not become canon, but the Pastoral Epistles did. This suggests that those promoting traditional gender roles prevailed and became part of mainstream Christianity.
([This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwohpJU1Tco) goes into more details about Paul and Thecla.)
# History of The Church of the Holy Mother
Using the observations and examples above, here's a proposal for a history that would explain how The Church of the Holy Mother developed over time.
## The Time of the Founders
Though the nation now has a unified political system and culture, in ancient times, it was home to a variety tribes. They differed in many ways, including gender roles; some were completely male dominated, others were completely female dominated, but most were somewhere in between. One of the few things these tribes did have in common was a prophecy in which a virgin woman would give birth to the Messiah.
The Messiah was born into a tribe that was effectively egalitarian. The people of this tribe were willing to accept a man as their leader, but also comfortable with the role The Mother of the Messiah would play. For while the Messiah was as wise, charismatic, and ambitious as his mother, he lacked her passion for theological debate and her skill with managing organizations. He dedicated his time to preaching to the masses, socializing with benefactors and allies, and eventually leading armies; he entrusted his mother first with organizing his fledgling religion and later with managing many domestic affairs of his burgeoning empire.
As a result, both the Messiah and his mother became influential and widely respected. However, the Messiah led a much more public life, leading to him being the better known of the two. Both his triumphs and failures were on display for the world to see, as were his virtues and faults; despite being revered, he was too human to convince most people that he was purely divine.
By contrast, the Messiah's mother maintained an air of mystery. Her interactions with the public at large was limited. Instead, she was known through her writing - which she produced a lot of. This included letters communicating on behalf of her son, chronicles of her son's exploits, and treaties establishing the basic precepts and lore of the then-new religion. Establishing herself through words and not deeds allowed her to maintain a more pristine reputation.
## Struggles between Early Sects
Though the Messiah succeeded in establishing his political power and passing it on to his heirs, it was his mother who ultimately came to dominate the religion. After her passing, other women close to the Messiah continued in her footstep. However, each had a different relationship with and understanding of the Messiah and his mother; it was from this that many sects formed.
Key points of contention included:
* How much of the Messiah's success could be contributed to his mother? Was she just moral support or was the Messiah just her proxy?
* Did the Messiah's mother have any romantic or sexual relationships or did she remain chaste?
* How involved was the Messiah's mother in daily affairs? Was she an active, engaged leader or a reclusive, detached theologian?
According to one sect, which I shall call The Brides of God, the Messiah's mother lead through inspiration but was detached from the mundane world - avoiding politics and remaining celibate. This sect was primarily composed of women who preferred a life of intellectual enrichment; many choose to be cloistered and celibate to focus on spiritual purification. Among other things, this sect wrote famous texts on how to properly organize society and established the practice of holy matrimony to God.
## The Bargain that Established Orthodoxy and Canon
The competing interpretations among various sects was aggregated by rising political instability; the Messiah's male descendants did not hold as much influence, particularly among those tribes that were traditionally led by women. This proved to be problematic for a group of elite patriarchs whose forefathers had amassed power through good relationships with the Messiah. They were concerned that there position would be compromised if the Messiah's descendants lost power or were forced to make compromises with the matriarchs.
Meanwhile, The Brides of God were struggling. First, sects that had encouraged woman to have large families proved far more capable of maintaining and gaining adherents over numerous generations; these sects were gaining more influence as a result. Secondly, The Brides of God had originally benefited from the support of prominent matriarchs whose daughters, sisters, and mothers had entered into holy matrimony. Over time, though, this support waned.
Fortuitously, the people within the two groups knew each other and conversations began that eventually led to an unspoken agreement. The elite patriarchs would provide the financial and logistical support The Brides of God needed. In exchange, The Brides of God would craft a compelling argument to counter growing distrust and resentment towards the patriarchs.
This plan proved so successful, that The Brides of God soon overshadowed all other sects. Using their political power, the patriarchs officially recognized the traditions of The Brides of God as orthodoxy; The Brides of God became *The* Church of the Holy Mother. Though many other sects were brought into the fold, it was The Brides of God who had the final say. In particular, they established religious canon, ensuring that any texts or teachings that opposed the patriarchy's right to rule were deemed unacceptable.
# Story Telling & World Building Benefits
Using the above in your world building I feel offers a lot of benefits, including:
* It provides an opportunity for a rich, diverse culture with variations across different regions and social groups instead of a homogenous, monolithic culture.
* It provides the nation with a deep, dynamic history that's more realistic than one that came into being and somehow stayed the same for centuries.
* It provides the background for a realistic religion with a lot of idiosyncrasies, apparent contradictions, and differing interpretations.
* It provides a rich source of tension and conflict between the church and state; due to ideological differences, both would be motivated to help the other only as much as necessary and would likely have many subtle or overt attempts to exert influence or take power from the other.
* It allows for multiple explanations for the irregular pattern of new god-emperors emerging. Supporters of The Church of the Holy Mother would see it as necessary to renew the faith of the people and the strength of the nation against the forces constantly seeking to end peace and prosperity. Opponents of the church would suggest that the births were not holy or virginal and instead a ruse to maintain power. Both could claim to be fighting against corruption, allowing for antagonists that aren't just acting for evil or selfish reasons.
In summary, instead of having a simple explanation for the apparent contradiction between religious matriarchs supporting male rulers, my advice is to develop a more complex one that can be leveraged for richer world building and more nuanced conflicts in the story telling.
[Answer]
To let women in charge of secular affairs is to keep them from the most vital role in society: religion.
Perhaps they see the state of moral and spiritual superiority of women as derived from this lack of engagement with secular affairs. Men and women could have been equal in the beginning, but men immerse themselves to much in the physical world and thus started to neglect their spirituality. **So to put women in charge would be to repeat the fall of men, condemning humanity**.
For this reason, rather than taking direct control, women are supposed to provide spiritual and moral guidance to their husbands and sons, as well as advice them in other matters.
**As for what practical benefits it could provide**, having only indirect power in society (cultural power, but little way to enforce its will) help them from having a papacy situation. That is, if you give power to a religious entity, over time it starts to behave like a pope (corruption, infighting, etc).
Additionally, by keeping women from power, this religion would have a easier time push women's moral superiority. When there is a male corrupt politician, they can simply point out that he would have done better if he listened to the women in his life, but if it is women doing it, people will question why the religion is ruled by women when they are just as corruptible as men.
Notice that for the matriarchs of the religion, it makes no difference that women can't be president, as the matriarchs can't be (unless you go full theocracy). Since it only advance the position of women other than themselves, they wouldn't have strong incentives to advance women's position outside of their sects anyway.
[Answer]
# Women advise most major decisions behind the scenes.
Like the Roman Empire, the people are extremely superstitious, and like to consult auguries on issues before taking important decisions. This generally involves going to priestesses and asking them advice on the best decision.
The priestesses are extremely wealthy, have a lot of nunneries with very productive goods, and very well connected. They normally have a good sense of what is likely to happen from their knowledge of people so they can offer good advice on whether a decision is in line with the divine even without any miracles (though they may claim it's a miracle), and they often offer generous loan terms to people who act in harmony with the divine.
They have gained even more power with the emperors they've sponsored who have made cult friendly laws and given them even more land and influence.
While most women aren't directly involved in the cult, they often have close friendships with their members. Consulting women is a good idea to get a solid idea into the internal thinking of the Cult of the Holy Mother. Being violent or abusive towards women is a good way to be ruined. Lords who are successful tend to get a lot of advice from Cult affiliated women and consult them on every major decision privately.
# The cult works for most women and kills women it doesn't work for.
Most women in society enjoy the gender roles that the cult encourages, with lots of support for women who stay at home raising kids, do businesses from home, and who are supportive of their husbands in public, and are mostly fine with men making major decisions on politics.
In return, women tend to be more protected from war and violence at the home. So long as you follow the ideals of the cult you are somewhat safe. Women who have tried to start businesses outside of the home or who have raised armies to carry out political goals haven't been backed by the cult and often been killed or hurt by more established men who do have the backing of the cult, and so women mostly feel it's a good idea to follow the cult.
[Answer]
## Separation of power between clergy and nobility, based on medieval Europe
In medieval Europe there was a clear separation of power between the church (who had authority in ethical matters) and the nobility (who had authority in political matters). There was a constant power struggle between both institutions on detail questions (like the [investiture controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investiture_Controversy)), but in broad terms the separation between both institutions and their mutual codependency was understood.
One reason why this worked out was because the church's commitment to celibacy meant that they would not be able to found family dynasties of their own which would then rival the family dynasties on which the nobility based their authority.
Your Cult of the Holy Mother could very well take the role of the Catholic Church. Just with the difference that the organization is all-female instead of all-male. They legitimize the rulership of the (mostly male) nobles by confirming their heavenly mandate and in return the nobles enforce their believes with laws and holy wars.
And the societal order of "men are secular rulers and women are spiritual rulers" would ensure that neither would be able to take over the authority of the other.
Now this of course begs the question how the god-emperor - a man born by immaculate conception - fits into all of this. As a man, he would be considered a secular ruler. But due to having no worldly father, he would not have any hereditary claim of secular authority. Any other secular rulers would probably not be too happy about a new god-emperor being born and telling them what to do. If the boy were a threat to their authority, they would probably plot to murder him before he gets old enough to meddle in their affairs.
So I would rather recommend to give him a role which is less of an emperor and more of a pope. A spiritual leader with a hands-off attitude towards political affairs as long as they do not undermine religious authority. Or alternatively, a weak emperor like those of the Holy Roman Empire who in theory were the focal point of the empire but in practice had little authority over the kings and dukes below them. Which meant that the unity he brings is worth more than the slight loss of sovereignty.
[Answer]
## The Proof Texts are not So Important?
In theory, this looks like a religion that tells society to listen to women more. You might even see people in such a society point out, as they have in our own: isn’t there a contradiction between saying that men cannot ever be expected to do the right thing because they’re incapable of it, yet they should get to run everything? In practice, you’ll see a lot of examples in the real world of people ignoring sacred texts a whole lot more explicit than that. Why wouldn’t they?
One reason might be: if the clergy are female, and most literate people are clergy or educated by them, that would naturally lead to most writing being done from a female, rather than a male, perspective. So that is something you might wish to change, if you believe the pen is mightier than the sword. However, another way to justify it would be: the men who run things think that book-learning and literacy are effeminate and a real man doesn’t sound like a priestess.
Some institutions are so complicated, the macho men can’t run them on their own, so they need to put nerds in charge of those few things and keep them in their place. You would expect those systems to become so important, the people in charge of them get real power and eventually take over, but there are many possible reasons that hasn't happened yet.
If you aren’t going that route, though, you definitely will need to add a social role for male clerks and scribes, separate from the female clergy.
## Or Maybe They Are?
While you don’t go into detail, your use of scare quotes makes me suspect that the “miracles” are not what they appear to be. It is still very possible for a hierarchy run by women to be run by traditionalist women who want to keep other women down. (Feminist theory has a lot of explanations for the fact that most women weren’t feminists, and that their most effective opponents have been anti-feminist women *ladies*.)
This might be well-trodden ground, but there are many examples of places where women’s roles and dress codes are rigidly enforced by law. Although, if a society needs to do that, that means many women already don’t accept them.
## The System Gives Women a Sop
In our world, traditionalism broke down because it didn’t give women satisfying enough lives. Toward the end, though, it tried to justify itself as benevolent toward women. They were acknowledged as superior in some ways, given priority in many social contexts, and assigned some spheres that they were allowed to run. A large part of this ideology was a need to protect them, often from genuine dangers.
This turned out not to be enough to persuade most women to accept their designated roles. However, maybe this culture gives women a better deal. Perhaps there are enough career paths open to talented and ambitious women, that they plausibly don’t feel the need to challenge the system. They might even be invested in preserving the complementary roles, since that’s what stops men from entering their own professions and taking those over.
[Answer]
## Women as spiritual only beings
Your society views women as conduits to divinity, and therefore, they are unfit for mundane tasks, such as politics, as such would demean their divine status.
In this logic, women would serve tasks that were on accord with the tenants of the Deity, or, ones that wouldn't bestow impurity upon then. This would create a material society based on patriarchy, and a spiritual one that's matriarchal in essence.
Being as such, your primary work were to create the foundations of the Religion, how it's organized in text, and what are their core values and virtues, in order to separate politics, economy, military endeavours and such from the spiritual order, making them activities that actively expose someone to sin, temptation and violation of sacred laws.
] |
[Question]
[
The adventurers in my classic fantasy world have access to all sorts of potions. Some, like health potions and their more expensive cousins like regeneration potions, can bring people back from being nearly dead. The utility is obvious, and no sane adventurer or fighter of any sort would ever leave home without one. This leaves a slight problem though: potions are very magical and reactive substances and need to be kept in non-reactive glassware if you want it to keep for more than a week or so. Yes, specialized carriers and metal-jacketed potion vials exist, but they remain fragile and something that needs to be protected.
This brings me to the question:
**Where are the best places on the human body to store these potions?** Presumably, they are kept in some sort of holster or bandoleer, but where should this be? Under the arm? On the belt? Where, for example, did knights keep fragile things when heading into battle?
Some conditions:
* They need to be easy to access in case of injury. Ideally, retrieving one is a one-handed operation.
* They need to be somewhere protected from the rigors of combat and any other extreme movement their owner might get about
* The position of the holster shouldn't prevent things like climbing ladders or riding horses
[Answer]
## Potion Flasks are like any other military hardware
You just carry the equipment in pouches on the chestplate, legs and belt. I would argue that hardening the pouches, imagine **open steel cylinders with cushioning**, should be sufficient to keep the potions save and accessible. There is no need to access them in actual combat, because if you are in a hand to hand meele, trying to sip a potion is the moment when the enemy will kill you. These equipment cylinders give you additional armor and destruction of equipment beats destruction of the body in most cases.
I'd also argue that modern day soldiers are better examples of how an adventurer would equipment himself, as soldiers of old going into battle left behind most of their kit, while an adventurer does carry huge amounts of equipment around at any time.
Where on the body is probably a matter of personal preference, each fighter will prioritise different items in their equipment, especially as adventurers won't carry standardised equipment. I'd prefer to have a flintlock pistol faster at hand than a potion. Same goes for a grenade.
[Answer]
**Belt pouches with wooden vial slots.**
Small glass vials are remarkably robust as long as they don't take a direct blow. If they still view it as a problem they can do what soldiers did for paper cartridges: a tough wooden fame inside a leather pouch to protect them. Slip the vials in the wood holes. If the vials are not uniform then stuff straw around them to make up for size differences between the vials and the sockets.
The advantage to this method is that you can make the case as big as you need. The rigid leather and wooden frame will make them capable of taking enough punishment that nothing short of a direct hit by a weapon will damage the contents.
Here's a picture of a paper bullet holder for 20 cartridges. Pouches for holding as little as five or six cartridges existed IRL, and you can make one for only two of three vials without issue. In fact, the fewer they hold the stronger the cases can be.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8Ceau.jpg)
People can then put the pouches wherever they prefer. Some will want them easy to access, while other will want them more protected. Armor will be a factor; someone in plate armor will have a more limited range of mobility, so I would not expect everyone to store them in the same place. Cavalry, will need a different set up than footman or archers.
Based on where people historically kept these pouches, **on the waist may be the most likely place for people to put them.** Fitting a pouch to a belt is easy, and keeps it in a place which is both accessible and fairly protected.
[Answer]
Make the flasks wide and flat, then integrate them into custom grooves on the inside face of the armored breastplate, up against their chest. For ease of access, run hollow rubber straws up from each flask, through the neck and head armor, to within reach of your mouth, then cap them with an edible stopper.
Repeat the process with the inside face of back side of your armor.
Finally, add small doses of healing potion in rubber flasks at each vulnerable part of your armor such that any sword swipe or arrow which gets through any of those weaknesses gets coated in healing potion before entering your body.
[Answer]
The best place to store the potions would likely be on the small of the back and would be accessed by sliding it sideways out of a reinforced holster, like a tiny metal coated quiver.
Given how valuable and few these potions are, we can't spread them out for redundancy. Instead, we need to put them where they have the least chance of getting hit. The front and sides of the armour is exposed to falls and enemy strikes, which we can't afford. Putting them inside the armour makes them inaccessible and prone to getting crushed on impact. This leaves the back.
When falling backwards, either the upper or lower back are more likely to take the first impact. This reduces the amount of force that the potion's protective packaging would have to resist.
As for attacks from behind, it doesn't matter where you stash the potion if you're too dead to apply it.
[Answer]
**Under saggy belly.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/w5g9X.jpg)
<https://www.deviantart.com/nielsg/art/flabby-belly-872988057>
It is snug under there, and the fleshy flesh on each side acts as a shock absorber to prevent impacts or other damage to the bottle. It so happens that all adventurers in your world are built like this dude so there is no body shaming and lets not have any of that here either! It is a good thing for them, because they have these delicate potion bottles to carry and rock hard abs would break those bottles in about 5 seconds.
In addition to usefully pendulous bellies, many adventures also have other similarly saggy body parts under or between which small bottles can be stashed. This will vary by body habitus of the adventurer. Some of these saggy body parts are already reflexively protected by the adventurer on account of their tenderness, and this also helps protect the little bottles stashed there.
[Answer]
I know its an old post and im not sure this site has any rules against answering old questions but...
On your belt behind you. Im gonna assume classic fantasy means melee weapons. Typically, youre gonna be facing the enemy youre fighting and even if theres a sneak attack behind you aiming at your back-waist level would be a pretty bad spot to attack anyway. Theyre not likely to be hit, though if you fall you might crush them. Better make some kind of tough potion holder, like a test tube holder you would see in a science lab, but presumably more durable and made of a tough wood.
or
On a side pouch on a backpack. IRL medieval backpacks werent really a thing like the backpacks we have today but im sure we can take some liberties here with there being potions and all that.[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/w02cJ.png)
A little pouch right there could work. if theres enough stuff in the bag, it would likely be ok if you fell or got knocked over, and it should be decently out of the way if you got hit unless you got hit directly in the side while your arms were out of the way.
[Answer]
## In your dewy gullet.
Obviously there is no faster place to get at a potion. You wrap the potion up in a non-reactive container: a magical scroll, too large to make an unwanted journey downstream, which is made with tremendously rare and peculiar ingredients to survive the same reactive conditions. (It is *magic*, after all) The wrapped-up layers of magical scroll resist both the potion inside and the stomach acid outside without fail, year after year. But ... *[as you pronounce the formula on it, the scroll disappears](https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Scroll).*
Of course, the scroll should have some beneficial effect of its own *(teleportation? confuse monster? genocide?)* in addition to releasing your healing potion.
I know what you're thinking now: "But how do you get it *in* there?" One option is teleportation -- with enough control, it's almost safe. The other option was invented by a fresh recruit to an elite unit, who told his captain *the only way you're getting me to swallow that thing is at the tip of a sword...* But this route takes more than a little practice.
] |
[Question]
[
So, a civilization built a massive Dyson Sphere around a supergiant star. As the star ages, it begins to fuse iron. At this point, the force of radiation pressure cannot prevent core collapse, and thus the supergiant goes supernova. So I am wondering, what would happen to the Dyson Sphere? Would it get blown apart?
[Answer]
Mandatory [What if quote](https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/):
>
> Rule of thumb for estimating supernova-related numbers: However big you think supernovae are, they're bigger than that.
>
>
> Here's a question to give you a sense of scale:
>
>
> Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina:
>
>
> * A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or
> * The detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball?
>
>
> Applying the physicist rule of thumb suggests that the supernova is brighter. And indeed, it is ... by nine orders of magnitude.
>
>
>
I am pretty sure the supernova, with the sheer amount of photons blowing out in its surroundings while exploding, would simply plasmify the Dyson sphere, way before the radiation could have any chance of pushing it apart.
If you want to estimate a safe distance, as PCman said in their comment, consider that [a supernova can emit](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Astro/snovcn.html) about $10^{44}$ Joules. The Sun's routine output is $10^{26} \ J/s$. The peak period of a supernova is about 6 hours, so that $10^{44}$ joules is spread over about 21000 seconds. Thus, a supernova would only be about *$4\cdot10^{13}$ times brighter than* the normal sun at its peak. Assume your Dyson sphere can take 10x normal sunlight intensity. At a distance of only 2.2 million AU it will be safe. That's less than 55 000 times further than Pluto!
[Answer]
L.Dutch has already given you the answer, that the Dyson sphere would not survive the supernova, but I thought it would be fun to consider just how bad things would get.
The Dyson sphere has probably already suffered through quite a lot. To give it a shot at making it through the entirety of the star's life (up until this point), say that the star has a radius several hundred times the Sun (so a couple AU in size) and weighs in at around $20-25M\_{\odot}$. This means that the Dyson sphere has to survive ablation by the winds of the star, which might have terminal velocities of $\sim2000\;\text{km s}^{-1}$. With mass-loss rates of, say, $10^{-6}M\_{\odot}\;\text{yr}^{-1}$, that's not horrible compared with what's to come, but all the same, it's going to cause some wear and tear. It's quite likely that the megastructure will already be dealing with holes and could well be structurally compromised. It'll be hot, too - if the star has a luminosity of $\sim1000L\_{\odot}$, the sphere will heat up to somewhere near 1300 Kelvin, which will probably melt some of its components unless they're adequately shielded.
Let's say that the luminosity of the supernova, in its initial stages, is $L\sim10^{44}\;\text{erg s}^{-1}$. If we use the Stefan-Boltzmann law and assume that the Dyson sphere has a radius of 3 AU, to encompass such a large star, we see that the Dyson sphere will quickly heat up to around 90,000 Kelvin, which is more than hot enough to vaporize the key constituents of the megastructure. (I actually wouldn't be surprised if the temperature is much higher - the assumptions that the Dyson sphere is a black body under these conditions, and is able to radiate efficiently, may not be called for. . .)
It's taken several minutes for the photons to reach the Dyson sphere, which has now been pulverized. The remnants will then be rammed by the outer layers of the star, which have been turned into ejecta of perhaps $\sim10M\_{\odot}$ [moving at speeds of $\sim10000\;\text{km s}^{-1}$](http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/%7Eryden/ast825/ch5-6.pdf). They'll take somewhere around 4-6 hours to reach the remains of the sphere, and will carry an enormous amount of kinetic energy. As the shock wave reaches 3 AU in radius, it will promptly sweep up the Dyson sphere and carry it off as it expands outwards into a supernova remnant.
[Answer]
It's completely unclear. Building a Dyson sphere takes technology beyond what is currently know, so we know nothing of the behavior of such technology. A super-nova would dump out massive amounts of energy beyond what the normal star would produce, but without specifying the technology and how it was used, you can't tell what it would do under excessive loads. For example, windmills are designed to run under certain wind conditions, but usually designed to disengage and furl their props under excessive wind conditions. What if a Dyson sphere were made using force-field technology? Overpressure might just "blow-through" the field w/out being captured, but do no damage as long as the field generators were intact. And then it would depend on how heavily the field generators were shielded.
If you're writing fiction, you can pick it either way: it survives or it doesn't. Then just make up some techno-babble reason for that to be true.
If you want to know for real? We don't know, because we don't know how to build a Dyson sphere, so can't tell what it will do under excessive load.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm about to kick off a game of Dungeons and Dragons. My setting is magic-medieval and the plot is that the power of flight has been suppressed by an avenging god. How long would it take before the lack of flight in the animal population would have visible effects on the ecosystem as a whole? IE, how long do my players have to reverse the effects, and what signs might they see that show how badly the world around them is falling apart?
Narrowing it down a little;
* The reason for the lack of flight is simply "magic". I picture it a bit like all creatures suddenly "forget" how to fly - ie birds will still have wings, they just can't get off the ground. I can be more specific here if it's required, but as of this moment I haven't defined it beyond that.
* All creatures with flight are affected at the same time, and the change is quite abrupt. I expect a small subsection of each flighted population will simply die from fall impact.
* Assume the area affected is several hundred miles across, centered around the city the players are in. Any new creature entering the sphere of effect loses flight instantly. Anything leaving it gains it back.
* The technology is roughly a medieval level, but with magic. Magical flight methods are also neutered (including magical beasts).
* This will take effect in a late spring to early summer range.
I'm currently working on the assumption that it would be about a week, maybe two at a stretch, before the lack of flight started showing significant effects to the animal and people populations as a whole. Obviously long-term we'd be talking crop failures from lack of pollination and ecosystem imbalances, but exactly how much can go wrong in just a few weeks?
[Answer]
I would surmise that the world would change rather quickly (one month to several). As mentioned the main problem in the long run will probably be pollination and birds distributing seeds. However in the sort run you will probably also severely affect the food chain.
From the point that birds and insects drop to the ground to be fed on easily, so animals will engorge on them. Followed by, depending on the density of the population, rotting carcasses which can bring diseases. Although probably the spread will be less due to the lack of flying insects.
After the immediate influence, the second one is that all animals feeding on flying insects or birds will begin starving. So spiders, frogs but probably also cats and such will have a high starvation rate. I don't know how many insects feed on flying insects but I guess it is significant.
The next effect is that also the earlier stages of the flying insects (caterpillars, maggots a such) will become extinct. This in turn giving problem for rodents feeding on these.
And so on and on until the food chain stabilizes or becomes entirely extinct due to the sudden change combined with the later lack of pollination.
Since it is an area of effect spell you might see the bigger animals migrating away relatively fast or start roaming the border for easy meals from dropping birds.
So I think in a relative short time you will have a area a lot less densely populated with animals and a lot of rotting cadavers lying around. Can be a nice setting for some game.
[Answer]
They have until the queen bees starve to death. Then the world ends.
If the bees can't fly, they cant collect nectar. No nectar means no honey. No honey, no bees. No bees, no pollination. No pollination, no plants. no plants no food, no food, no people.
The druids would probably notice the bees' suffering very quickly, and hives would have some stores of food, so you'd still have time to save them.
More generally, people would notice right away. It would be pretty weird to see a flock of starlings running across a road.
"Hey Bill, why did the pigeon cross the road?"
"Goddamit Adam, I already know that his is going to be one *stupid* joke. Hurry up and have kids so you can torture them with your lame dad-jokes."
"No, bill. That bird over there. It's walking across the road."
"holy crap, you're right Adam. What the hell?"
[Answer]
Much of this question has been covered in the answers here:
[A World Without Bugs](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/66435/a-world-without-bugs)
Flying insects that can't fly will all be eaten by ants.
Birds that can't fly will be eaten by terrestrial predators like rats and cats./
Though this is not the question, I must say this sounds like a dismal premise for a campaign. Grim dissolution of the ecosystem in slow and nonobvious ways - yay.
Maybe the magic should be "everything flies". Every living thing finds flying to be as easy as their previously preferred method of transportation. I think spiders would be too scared to fly around. Dogs would pick it up in no time. Elephants might just fly short hops and then stand around and make noise before taking another short hop. When whales do that jump out of the water and flop down on their side thing, they would do it up. Monsters would add flying to their list of skills. And your adventurers could fly too.
---
ADDENDUM
In a D&D scenario I could imagine people not noticing the lack of birds, or that the ants were feasting. But D&D involves fighting and dead things. Immediate effect of this magic: the dead things would have no flies on them. No vultures would circle overhead.
[Answer]
The first thing that came into my mind: [*Plague! A veritable plague of ground-locked bugs.*](http://www.historynet.com/1874-the-year-of-the-locust.htm)
They will no longer be held in check by birds and flying insects. They breed worse than, well, rabbits. They will eat everything organic in sight. The living plants will be consumed. Food stock will be consumed.
Together with the collapsing ecosystem it will make the area unable to sustain higher life forms pretty soon.
Picture an area razed by (walking!) grasshoppers. Nothing left, earth blowing away on the wind.
References:
<https://io9.gizmodo.com/5927112/chinas-worst-self-inflicted-disaster-the-campaign-to-wipe-out-the-common-sparrow>
<http://www.historynet.com/1874-the-year-of-the-locust.htm>
[Answer]
In addition to the major effect on pollination, here are some non-expert thoughts:
* the absence of airborne predators would cause a population explosion in small animals which can climb trees/cliffs and breed like rabbits. e.g. squirrels nesting up cliffs.
* ... followed by an increase in climbing predators following them (Lotke-Volterra)
* smaller birds (esp.) can still manage by hopping, so they could hop up cliffs but they wouldn't be able to forage effectively, and would diminish.
* there would be a brief boom in landborne predators eating grounded insects and birds. Imagine hyenas eating grounded vultures and eagles.
[Answer]
Are angels affected too?
If people are used to expecting migratory birds around this time of the year, their absence will be the biggest sign that something is going wrong. Either that or anyone who relies on messenger pigeons.
Does this magical process affect everything that hovers? Do clouds still float, or do they fall (as rain) to never form again? A continuously cloudless sky will be disastrous for agriculture.
If clouds are affected, what about fire and smoke? Tall buildings can't rely on central heating if the heat can't ascend.
Also, for how long are thrown objects allowed to stay in the air? If I shoot an arrow, does it travel normally or does it fall immediately at my feet?
] |
[Question]
[
For this question, I've got a pretty large carnivore. I haven't quite decided on their hunting style, but am leaning toward them being an endurance hunter. They're comparable in size to a large present-day Earth feline (lion, tiger or similar) and have long, rather sharp claws useful for grasping, holding and cutting.
There are two traits that I'd like to have in this species, which I am trying to figure out if they could evolve together.
One is long canine teeth. Not quite the size of those of a [Smilodon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Smilodon_head.jpg) ([also](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Smilodon_-_saber_toothed.png)), but certainly in line with those of [Machaeroides eothen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Machaeroides_eothen.JPG) or perhaps slightly longer:
([Image source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Machaeroides_eothen.JPG))
The other trait I'm looking to have is that they kill, at least at times (as in, not necessarily every kill is done this way, but a non-negligible fraction of kills are), by actually crushing or biting through the skull of their prey.
[Jaguars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar#Characteristics) come pretty close to fitting the bill for the latter, but their canines are comparatively shorter.
([Image source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jaguarskull.jpg))
**Can I *plausibly* have both, or will I have to settle for one or the other? Particularly if the latter, then why?**
[Answer]
I don't think so, since the "saber teeth" are so long that they extend far out of the mouth that they'd get in the way of trying to crunch down on it's prey's skull. (Imagine trying to bite into an apple if you had such long teeth.)
To crush something large with your jaws, you need:
1. a large enough jaw,
2. a wide jaw,
3. a strong temporalis muscle (to pull the lower jaw up),
4. a large coronoid process (anchors the temporalis to the lower jaw),
5. a large temporal bone to anchor the temporalis to the skull, and
6. nothing impeding access to the mouth.
The jaguar's skull meets all six of those criteria, and that's what any carnivore needs. To me, it looks like the Machaeroides eothen teeth would fail criterion 6.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hSVFt.jpg)
[Answer]
You have to consider how such a creature might have evolved.
If it has long canines and is adapted to crushing, then maybe it uses mostly the canines to kill, and then the crushing force to break some prey's hard skull. [Brains are rich in omega-3](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_as_food)... As far as I know, the next best source is the liver of deep-dwelling fish, which except in salmon-rich areas would be too rare for a land-dwelling animal.
Maybe your hunter feeds on thick-skulled goats?
Last but not least, there is precedent in our world for long, pointy teeth and great crushing force on tetrapods. Crocodiles sometimes eat turtles, and they use their great bite strength to break through the shell. Now look at the teeth of a saltwater crocodile:
If your hunter is a mammal, it might be one that is evolving to fill in a niche which belonged, or would have belonged to crocs.
[Answer]
It could but usually not because there are easier methods of dispatching prey.
A skull is usually thick and strong to protect the brain while the neck is soft and full of arteries and the windpipe.
Why attack the enemy at their strongest point when you can attack the weakest?
[Answer]
There is a real-life animal that crushes skulls with its mouth, but as means of self-defence against predators: the hippopotamus. If you want examples, just look up "hippo crushing lion head". Hippopotamuses also have large, pointed canines in their mouths.
[Answer]
The long canine teeth of Sabre Tooth tigers and their relatives were evolved not for crushing, but for stabbing, particularly stabbing through the neck of their prey and slicing through blood vessels, cutting nerves and otherwise incapacitating their prey.
Lions, Tigers and other large cats attack the necks of their prey, trying to crush the windpipe, cut through blood vessels, break the neck or strangle the prey, and Sabre Tooths just ramped that up because their prey were ice age megafauna:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tWbDv.jpg)
*Bite though this....*
Crushing skulls, while it sounds exciting, is pretty difficult. The skull is one of the strongest parts of the body by design, since it shelters the brain and many of the sense organs, and is also generally large, requiring a pretty big mouth in relation to the skull just to fit in enough to get a good bite.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b7uJZ.jpg)
*You need jaws about this size to do the job....*
Crushing is also something which requires flat surfaces, look at the jaws of a nutcracker compared to a steak knife. In the animal kingdom, crushing is done by molars. This is actually so energy intensive, many animals outside of mammals simply bite off the leafs etc and send it to a "crop" where it is ground up by the action of rocks that the animal swallowed. This isn't a very viable plan for a predator.
The only creature which can reliably crush skulls are human beings. The Ancestors learned long ago to amplify the power of their arms with rocks and clubs made of bone or wood. This should give you some idea of the leverage involved, and the potential size of the jaws that a "skull crusher" would need.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/G7GZb.jpg)
*This much leverage....got it*
] |
[Question]
[
**Background:** In a world I am building, France becomes a much larger power in the New world, actually maintaining control of French Louisiana and even gaining control of Canada during an alternate version of the War of 1812. Canada and French Louisiana eventually merge to form the French Republic of Colonial Canada (or the FRCC), when the FRCC attempts to become an independent nation of its own in the late 1870's, France refuses and the Canadian War of Independence occurs.
The people of The United Dominion of Canada realize that while they are strong, the French Homeland is stronger, they need an ally. England is the best bet, but they are less than willing unless Canada decides to join the Commonwealth. Long story short, Canada take the deal and wins the war.
The problem is that my lack of knowledge on the commonwealth and on England as a whole, means that I am making too many assumptions; That England would make such a deal, that such a deal is possible and that a nation would even consider this deal.
While I'm having a great time imagining this Commonwealth Franco-Canada, I do not think it is even legally plausible to do so. All I need (or want) is a plausible explanation if the above is doable and if so, how I can make it so.
[Answer]
The [Commonwealth of Nations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations), aka the British Commonwealth, did not exist in the 1870s; it was formally founded in 1949, after various stages of evolution (as is normal for British political institutions).
Before the Commonwealth, several parts of the British Empire were semi-independent as [Dominions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion). In our history, the first Dominion was formed when several British colonies were joined together to form the Dominion of Canada. That happened in 1867, so the timing isn't too far off. But making it plausible isn't going to be easy.
Presumably this version of Canada is French-speaking? That's going to be a problem for the British. And presumably its political institutions are French-flavoured? If they aren't willing to take on the British Monarch as Head of State, and adopt a Westminster-style government structure, this isn't going to work.
The larger politics are also a problem. Since this could well lead to an expensive war with France, and (without a history of colonisation in Canada) the Empire will be more orientated towards India and Australia, the British aren't going to take this on unless there's something very profitable that comes with it. There's also a definite possibility of war with the USA, which will be less powerful, since it is missing lots of its traditional territory, but is still not negligible and right on the spot, rather than across an ocean.
So you need a really good motive for the British to take this on. That needs to be natural resources, somewhere that needs that needs British capital to develop it, but will be really profitable once the relevant railroads and mines are built. Gold, diamonds, really good iron ore, that kind of thing. It's a bit early for petroleum to be a big draw.
You also need the French-speaking Canadians to do something unusual for French-speakers: have a fashion for English-speaking culture, to make coming under British rule less offensive. Making this part of a rebellion against the French colonial masters might work.
[Answer]
The Commonwealth wasn't formed till the mid 1900s so this deal wouldn't exist. Even if the Commonwealth was around I find it unlikely.
I don't know much about 1870s England but working from modern day Commonwealth rules it is possible for a former French territory to join (or at least apply for commonwealth status) and many African countries have done so. England (or actually Britain) would be stupid to accept this deal. The Commonwealth is not powerful. All the deal would really give Britain is a possible ally on Commonwealth talks which don't really have that much impact on Britain. In my opinion having Canada join the British Empire or get specific trade deals with Canada would be far more advantageous for Britain.
[Answer]
The British Empire might be inclined to support the North American nation against France as part of its larger strategic aims, but the Colonials are not going to become an independent nation this way. The worst case scenario is the British Empire takes over governance and the French Colonials become a colony of the British Empire.
Given the realities like distance and lack of numbers, the French colony might be attached or subordinated to the existing English colonies in North America, so the French colonial government is subordinate to the British Governor in New York City, for example. The British might also consider some sort of "divide and conquer" scheme where groups within the French colony are given leading roles to rule and govern the colony to the benefit of Britain. This would follow how the British ruled the Indian sub continent, given the vast disparity of numbers and differences in culture between the British and the Indians. The French colonies might be easy to suborn, given the almost feudal nature of the French society in "New France", allow existing aristocrats to maintain their privileges at the pleasure of the British Crown.
In the late 1800's, the colonies might be considered large and self sufficient enough to become Dominions (much like Canada) with greater amounts of self governance. Instead of being ruled by an Imperial Viceroy, the colonies might have a Governor General appointed to represent the Crown, while the local Parliament conducts the day to day affairs.
The British Commonwealth is a post imperial organization which maintains loose political and economic ties between the UK and former colonies and Dominions, so this evolution would not happen in your world until after Britain "decolonializes", which occurred after the Second World War. What events in your universe would cause this is up to you, but with the huge changes in your timeline starting in the 1700's, it seems clear the Revolution, Napoleonic Wars and WWI and WWII would either never occur or be so drastically changed there would not be a correspondence to events in this universe.
[Answer]
In our world, Rwanda and Mozambique [joined the Commonwealth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations_membership_criteria) despite not being former British colonies. This seems to indicate that another arbitrarily non-"British" country *could* join.
] |
[Question]
[
After reading Kim Stanley Robinson's *Blue Mars*, I've been considering the role of orbiting space stations in warfare. It seems like whoever controls space has a good chance of controlling the planet below, much like how air superiority plays a large role in modern warfare. What I'm wondering, though, is if you want to construct an absolutely devastating orbital war machine, what weapons would you put on it? For instance, traditional bullets would be [very ineffective](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/21225/can-you-shoot-someone-with-a-bullet-from-orbit), and things like missiles would probably be just as effective if fired from the ground. Also, due to the difficulty of overcoming the Earth's gravity well, resupplying a space station with extra ammunition would be costly.
So my question is, **what's the best weapon to use on an orbiting space station to cost-effectively and effectively engage targets on the ground?** Top marks go to the cheapest, easiest to aim/control, and deadliest weapon. Assume modern or near-future technology (should be backed up by real science).
[Answer]
Like any other weapons system, the real answer is what is the target? I certainly am not going to "bring a knife to a gunfight", but there are plenty of places where a knife would be the better weapon.
Fixed ground based targets like airfields, seaports and nuclear missile silos is a fairly easy target for Kinetic orbital bombardment systems. First described by Jerry Pournelle (who apparently studies the system as an engineer for Boeing) as Project THOR, these are long rods of a dense metal, with small tabs to provide some terminal control. The project has undergone many different iterations, most recently being revived as "Rods from God" (which is a silly name).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BAoKK.jpg)
*On the wayyyy. What an incoming Kinetic Energy Impactor might look like in flight*
If I remember correctly, the system Pournell wrote about used a satellite to deploy a bundle of rods, each about the size and shape of a broom handle. When deorbiting, they moved at @ Mach 25 (which interestingly enough is also the velocity of the metal liner inside a HEAT round as the explosive charge inverts it). With a kinetic energy of @ 3kg of TNT per Kg of weapon, the round could cause severe damage to most systems. More advanced versions were supposed to have sensors hidden in the nose (protected during re entry by a disposable ablative cap) and steer themselves towards ships or tanks, thus taking out moving targets. When you consider a HEAT round accelerating a metal liner weighing a few ounces to Mach 25 can severely damage or destroy a tank, then several kilograms of metal moving at that speed will punch through most normal materials.
For very hard targets, the rods would come in larger sizes. Since the velocity of the round is fixed by orbital mechanics, more mass needs to be added for greater effect. Deep bunkers like the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant in Iran would receive strikes from rods roughly the size of telephone poles.
Now physical items like tanks or nuclear missile silos are a very cold war sort of target, and attacking modern 4GW targets like protesting students (who are sending a PSYOPS message to the world via social media) with kinetic energy penetrators from space is likely not going to be cost effective, or have the desired effect on the ground either. Space weaponry can assist in this kind of war by targeting communications and electronics.
The simplest thing to do would be to use an ASAT to disable communications satellites over the target, disrupting many forms of media and communications, but there are plenty of alternative channels, so attacking satellites is unlikely to really shut down that sort of enemy. A large explosion in near space like Starfish Prime would knock out virtually every non hardened system in the target zone, effectively shutting down most civilian systems and any military systems which were not hardened.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OR5Z9.jpg)
*Starfish Prime 1*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7YF7Z.jpg)
*Starfish Prime 2*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/drKXs.jpg)
*Starfish Prime 3*
Since this is a bit indiscriminate, various nuclear and non nuclear directional EMP devices can be used to essentially send a "spear" of energy at the target, making the damage much more localized and allowing some discrimination and even reuse of infrastructure for your own needs.
The final and virtually non stoppable means of attacking a target from orbit would be to use a version of the [Casaba Howitzer](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php)or a nuclear shaped charge. These devices convert the spherical energy release of a nuclear weapon into an intense spear of plasma moving at up to 10% of the speed of light, so no target is going to outrun this thing (even a missile or aircraft in flight isn't going to move an appreciable distance between the time of firing and the time of impact of a plasma spear, and the carrying satellite is already moving at orbital velocity to begin with. The linked page provides some calculations on the potential energy release of such a weapon, essentially it is like being struck by the Ravening Beam of Death (RBoD) laser, but without all the heavy and expensive laser hardware.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6mMXe.jpg)
*Conceptual design of a Casaba Howitzer. Illustration by [Scott Lowther](http://up-ship.com/blog/)*
The downside of any sort of orbital weaponry is it is itself vulnerable to fairly simple countermeasures. Any small missile capable of rising to orbital hight (not necessarily achieving orbital velocity) can carry a bucket of sand, ball bearings or other debris and release it into the orbital path of an identified enemy satellite. The kinetic energy of impact at orbital speeds would tear the carrier satellite apart, and disable or destroy the weapons within.
Frankly, since you need a versatile weapons system which can strike at hard and soft targets as well as having some capability for self defense, I would go for a strike system carrying advanced nuclear warheads (directional warheads or Casaba Howitzers). Nuke them from orbit; its the only way to be sure.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/69nfG.jpg)
[Answer]
I suspect that we can dismiss the idea of kinetic bombardment of any kind, including with explosive tips (also known as missiles). The cost of resupply missions would be prohibitive as they would have to climb quite far out of the Earth's gravity well just to be tossed back down, and it seems likely that those resupply missions would be prime targets for any of your enemies. It also has the problem of counteracting the force on the station caused by launching them back toward Earth, although that can be worked around. Better to use ground-to-ground or air-to-ground launches than space-to-ground, then; less headaches, and most likely lower costs overall.
Rather, you should be looking at renewables. Because in-situ manufacturing using native raw materials in orbit is... fraught with difficulties, shall we say, this means various forms of *directed energy weapons*. Even though this strictly doesn't meet your question title criteria of "bombardment", **I recommend high-powered lasers or [masers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maser) in a medium Earth orbit.**
A high-powered laser would require some way of aiming the beam toward a location of interest, but that's a solvable problem. It would also require huge amounts of energy, but that too is a solvable problem -- solar panels and rechargable batteries should get you started, particularly if you are willing to put a weaponized space station in orbit in the first place.
Low Earth orbit simply goes too fast to be practical; one revolution around the world in 90 minutes being the rule of thumb. [Medium Earth orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_Earth_orbit) gives you more time to, pardon the pun, focus on your area of interest, while still being reasonably attainable even for spare parts missions, and gives the choice of an orbital period of anywhere between two and 24 hours. (A geostationary orbit is when you have an orbital period matching the rotation period of the body below you, and a matching inclination; not very useful for these purposes, unless you have a single archnemesis that you are interested in. Above geostationary is [High Earth orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Earth_orbit), with orbital periods longer than 24 hours.) It also allows you to target any given area quickly, should the need arise.
A few such installations in orbits with different [inclinations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_inclination) would allow you to target any part of the world within a predictable, and ultimately selectable, period of time, likely a few hours. Keep in mind that launch costs (and thus cost for access to the stations) go up when the orbital inclination deviates from prograde equatorial because you are basically fighting the Earth's rotation rather than benefiting from it during launch, but if you are doing something like this, you can probably afford to spend the extra money.
An orbit with an inclination of 90° is known as a [polar orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_orbit) because it passes over the polar regions. Wikipedia has a list of [other types of geocentric orbits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_orbit#Geocentric_orbit_types) (where "geocentric" refers to the central body being Earth) that you may find useful.
Because this is presumably largely based in the real world, you are going to have to do something about the [Outer Space Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty) because as described, this would probably be prohibited under its [article IV](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty_of_1967#Article_IV):
>
> States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.
>
>
>
[Answer]
Lasers are not a good idea, light diffracts in our atmosphere, Weather conditions can further worsen the accuracy of the shot.
The best idea would be to shoot kinetic ammunition with 3 stages of propulsion, first to gain exit velocity, second to break the atmosphere and third to gain impact velocity.
Meteor Thrower, could be interesting, similar to the Justice League series
[Answer]
the Best thing would probably be Kinetic Bombardment. Simply put it is the use of projectiles (such as tungsten rods) fired form orbit to deliver bomb level explosions using kinetic force. Iv attached a link to the wiki.
Link: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment>
I hope this helps.
Amendment: I don't want to seem like im hung up on KB but,(and this may seem far fetched) a Space Plane(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceplane>) loaded with the projectiles flying into low orbit, acts as a mini launch platform and then, on completion of tasks flies home again? The cost would be limited to fuel, resupply and repair, that could be done at there take off base.
[Answer]
A satellite that contains a huge magnetron that attracts space particles of dust and other debris into a hollow central chamber (several batteries of these) and then periodically compresses the flotsam and jetsam into a projectile and launches it at the target, so, kinetic weapon.
Alternatively a small lander/support vessel can resupply kinetic materials from the moon, launching compressed objects to the satellite which then redirects them to the planet below.
A satellite that launches and controls serveral drones that go out to the asteroid belt and pick smallish rock and give them a good push - using targeting computers to account for time/distance/planetary rotation and just bombard from the asteroid belt. Unlimited cheap ammo, small manuevering drones working from the satellite. Only it would take time to cease fire. Just develop a strike package before hand. It would devastate cites and bases, but be kind of usless againts ships/planes/troops in motion.
Hope this helps.
[Answer]
The ultimate cheapest way to create an orbital weapon is a 5km mirror of metallic sodium, that would be able to direct enough energy from the sun that misses earth in normal circumstances capable of boiling an ocean in a short period of time, and requires no reload, but is very big so it could get shot down easily.
The nazis designed it it's called a sun gun.
[Answer]
The answers here are excellent takes on the tactical issues surrounding uses of space-based weaponry, but the true power of space-based weapons is probably best realized at the strategic level.
If you can achieve a monopoly of space-based weapons, one approach would be to deploy your nuclear deterrent to that platform. You could then use the space-based Armageddon force to rule by terror, and leave the pedestrian and day-to-day application of power against conventional targets to ground-based powers that you terrorize.
In other words, in a *Blue Mars* type scenario where you are attempting to control a planetary population on a planet *you don't have to personally inhabit*, weapons of mass destruction are all you may need. If you can point those weapons at the ground-based authorities, and deny those authorities access to space except on your terms, then it's *their* problem to exercise control on the ground.
I believe there's a Heinlein story on point to this, also. I can't remember the title ATM but I believe in his immediate post-war period he wrote a story about a relatively small nation (or maybe even just a conspiratorial organization) seizing control of the world by using atom bombs to force the traditional nations of the world to exercise power on its behalf. (I don't think they were using space-based weapons, but they saw the potential of using weapons of mass destruction as a lever to force others to project conventional power.)
[Answer]
Honestly there are various options this grid of space warfare is what I'd consider the gold standard: x37s with ion engine modifications to ressupply and carry kinetic warheads fast skylons to carry tellephone pole sized projectiles fractional orbital bombardment system for nuclear weapons xs-1 spacecraft for an jn between from x 37 and skylon project Thor sattelites of all 3 types for carpet strikes and long term bombardment but use spaceplanes to resupply ICBMS to emp a target or deploy fractional orbital bombardment systems nuclear bombs on sattelites to stealthily emp a target other options include railguns in orbit casaba howitzers (although those are mid future not near ) lasers and railguns and sdi/aegis measures to defend platforms x Ray lasers could also bassicly annialite massive enemy targets from what I know and then there's mirror lasers and particle beams while I'm not an expert on particle beams I know that a solar mirror laser MIGHT JUST MABYE act as a Sun gun essentially scorching entire lines of cities using the magnifying glass ant effect and ofc some of these can defend each other especially when paired with missile defense however there are definitely more experienced experts than me ...
] |
[Question]
[
So, I know that on the planet earth, the force of gravity is actually [slightly less nearer the equator](https://xkcd.com/852/), due to the ~~Centrifugal~~ ~~Centripetal~~ Spinny Force. Not by a whole lot, but by some small amount.
This ~~Centri~~ Spinny Force also makes the entire planet deform slightly outwards near the equator, making the planet sort of a [flat oblong shape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_of_the_Earth).
Personally, I find both of these things extremely weird to think about, but that's mainly because more or less every aspect of the natural world is weird if you think about it. But this isn't about that. My real question is this:
Would it be possible for a planet to be spinning so fast that its Spinny Force cancels out the force of its gravity (more or less), without it turning into a disc and tearing itself apart?
I can see this sort of being like if you were standing on the surface, and moving towards the equator, you would start to be able to jump higher and higher, until you eventually hit the exact equator, at which point, you would start to drift, until you pass the equator, and start to fall back down again.
Let's just say that we find a planet somewhere that has the exact same size, makeup, and gravity as earth, but without all of the stuff that we have on the surface. (Mainly because it seems like having a lot of water sloshing around on the surface in this scenario would cause problems.)
This would also be for the average human, say, 60kg, if that even matters.
---
Okay, edits:
Would this planet be destroyed by the stresses upon it, and if not, would it be even remotely livable on the surface. In this case, I’m defining “livable” as “I could walk around without immediately dying for some reason”, assuming this planet has a earth-like atmosphere and pressure prior to whatever caused it to spin in the first place.
[Answer]
Just think about it. Planet is held together by gravity. If something cancels gravity at certain place on the planet, that place would not stay a part of the planet anymore.
[Answer]
**UPDATE: I have reconstructed the answer with some explanation and formula as proof. I have it is more solid now, please comment below if you would like to discuss further**
# For TL;DR, No, it is impossible to form a planet like that.
## Rotation Speed
In order to have the centrifugal force of the planet rotation cancelling out the gravity force (I think weightlessness is more of the correct term here, but I stick to the former for easier explanation), you have to be **in orbit**, so the planet would have to rotate **very fast** for achieving [orbital velocity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed) in the equator. Here is the function for calculating the needed orbital velocity.
>
> $$v\_0 \approx \sqrt{\frac{GM}{R}}$$
>
>
>
The equation for calcuating orbital period would be
>
> $$T = \frac{2{\pi}r}{v\_0} $$
>
>
>
As the radius of the Earth is about 6,371 km and the mass is about 5.972 × 1024 kg, the orbital velocity at the Earth's equator surface would be about **7.9km/s (17672 mph)**, with a orbital period about **1.5 hours** (That makes you would see a sunrise for every 45 minutes).
## Centrifugal Force and Gravity
We now found out the needed rotation speed, however, could the planet be formed in such conditions?
The reason for most planets to be spherical is that the gravitational acceleration is mostly equivalent throughout the planet. This is due to the mass of the planet is uniformly distributed (Mostly).
Using Earth as example, here is the graph of the Earth according to the Preliminary Reference Earth Model
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VBGjE.png)
However, if the rotation speed of the planet is fast enough, the centrifugal acceleration could reduce or even cancel out the gravitational acceleration, causing the force to be unevenly distributed.
The equation for calculating the centrifugal force is as below:
>
> $$ F = mr{\omega}^2 $$
>
>
>
With implementing the Netwon's Second Law
>
> $$ F = ma $$
>
>
>
The result equation would be as below:
>
> $$ ma = mr{\omega}^2 $$
> $$ a = r{\omega}^2 $$
>
>
>
As the orbital period is constant, we could conclude that centrifugal acceleration would be proportional to the radius of the motion.
>
> $$ a \propto r $$
>
>
>
Therefore, the centrifugal force in the surface section would be the strongest, and become weaker towards the inner section, until it reaches zero at the planet's core. On the other hand, as the centrifugal force cancel out all the gravity force at the equator's surface, the resultant force would be the weakest in the surface section, and gradually more stronger towards the center and around the pole.
It is illustrated as the image below.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/46nHb.png)
The unevenly distribution of resultant force would cause the planet to become a flat oblong shape. As the surface section at the equation become further and further from the center, the centrifugal force would cause the content to **flung out** into space, **disintegrating** the planet.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ht2O8.png)
Therefore, it is **not possible** to form a **Earth-sized planet** with such **rotation period**.
[Answer]
Everything that's not tied down would obviously fly off, but the winds would also be so destructive that nothing would be "tied" down for very long. Your best bet for survival is to wait for most of the atmosphere to be flung into space.
Except that in that case you also die
[Answer]
As has been said, the Coriolis effect makes this world uninhabitable but lets look further:
We have a world where the the equator is moving at it's orbital velocity. What happens?
First, you can't walk around on the equator any more than you can walk around inside the ISS. You're in orbit, there's nothing to stick your feet to the ground.
Second, look at the atmosphere. We survive because there are about 10,000kg/m^2 of air above us, accelerated downward at 9.8m/s. We are at the equator, though, where the net downward force is 0.0m/s. that 10,000kg becomes irrelevant, you're in vacuum. Oops, you need 16,000 Pascals of oxygen to survive. You're dead.
Third, look at the atmosphere. We have 10,000kg/m^2 of air at zero pressure--it's going to go flying outward, the same as if you broke open a cylinder of air in space. You have other air on the planet, it will equalize pressure--and promptly get flung off into space. All your atmosphere very quickly goes into orbit.
Fourth, look at the ground. It's in free fall--nothing holds it down. The winds are going to toss about anything short of bedrock. (That is, until the atmosphere is gone, then you'll just get a surface made of a mass of disconnected bits.)
Finally, lets look at the planet as a whole. Remember, one of the required characteristics of a planet is that it have gravity strong enough to have pulled it into an oblate sphere--the surface of a planet is at basically equal net potential. (Yes, the Earth is bigger at the equator than around the poles. Stop the Earth's rotation and you'll leave the equator dry and the poles under a very deep ocean.)
However, we have already defined the potential at the equator to be zero. Oops--the planet can't have any gravity anywhere. You have a spinning disk of zero thickness that can't be reasonably called a planet at all.
[Answer]
You asked about planetary stresses. There will be none, although total destruction will of course occur. By rotating the planet faster and faster you are actually reducing the stresses that hold the planet together. As you spin the planet faster and faster, the imaginary centrifugal force appears to throw things outwards (but really, they are just going faster, and so resisting the gravity force, becoming lighter). So the atmosphere will fly off into space, along with the sea. As it spins even faster, internal pressure which has been balanced against gravity will start to dominate, bulging the planet at the equator (its already this way), so expect a lot of volcanoes and earthquakes. The surface will continue to bulge and deform, both from having speed to overcome gravity and also due to magma underneath pushing up. The crust will break up, get drowned in lava, churned up and eventually everything becomes liquid magma. The planet will keep expanding as it rotates faster, due to the internal pressures.
Drops of this liquid will eventually start to lift off from the equator. This is not really due to stress, but that the imaginary centrifugal force now balances gravity. Or to put it another way, the equator is moving so fast as to have entered orbit, and it is now weightless. Spin things a bit more and the planet will start to gently dissolve into a spinning collection of lava blobs in higher orbits. Somewhere here you'll start running into major problems in HOW you are adding rotational energy, since it's no longer a solid shape but a bubbly, blobby mess.
] |
[Question]
[
Let me provide some insight to my magic system. 75-95% of people have magic powers. (Depending on where you are.) These powers manifest themselves any time from birth to the end of puberty. These magical powers fall under seven broad categories. Air, water, earth, plasma (fire/lightning), plants, light, and animals. Animal magic is tricky, because living things resist magic. But, many animal mages can influence animals, and some can control dead animals (this is called necromancy and is a big societal no-no.) The strength and scope of magic varies from individual to individual. But, these are the most common in order. Earth, water, air, plants, animals, plasma, and light.
These magical capabilities are like the show Avatar, the last airbender, in how controlling magic works. However, in my book magic is much less powerful. For instance, an earth Mage may only be able to influence as much dirt as they could lift, and lifting this dirt would take about as much energy as doing it by hand, except you don't have to touch it, and it could be a perfect brick shape.
NOTE - People who control magic have a magic organ instead of an appendix. This makes magic, or the lack thereof, inheritable.
---
So, if a person has no magic by the time they're an adult, it is legal to take them as a slave. If you can use your magic to grab a jug from across the room, why have a slave to go get it? How would people's limited abilities affect the influence of slavery? For example, if you can tear weeds out of the ground with magic, or influence them to die, why have slaves to cultivate your fields? Would this make it unlikely for regular people to have slaves?
I think that wealthy people would definitely have household servants, but what about work? With the level of magic people have, would it be more feasible to pay people with magic or feed and house non-magic slaves? (They're not like us normal people, so they don't need as good of housing or food.) What types of areas would have more slavery? For example, would there be a lot of slaves in agricultural areas, and fewer in large cities? (I would also assume that some good people would have slaves just so that they get treated better than they otherwise would have.)
This question is kind of long, and I apologize for that, let me know if there is anything I can clean up.
---
Edit - Pulling weeds would actually be easier with magic, because you can force the plants to move however you desire. And doing things **is easier** with magic. It will make you tired, and you can only do it so much, but it would take less time. You also don't need to actually do anything other than exert your will over what you're controlling. You could pull weeds sitting in a lawn chair under an umbrella with a glass of lemonade (most people don't do this, because they don't have lemons and concentration is important). Also, magic allows you to do things you couldn't do by hand, such as making wind, or shooting lasers. I was describing the magical abilities of most people, not all. More powerful people would be able to move large amounts of material, or use magic for a prolonged period of time.
---
Edit 2 - People can exert more power than they're capable of doing physically; magic is like a muscle. (Or karate.) If you work hard at it, you can increase your power and or range. But most people don't have teachers to help them learn or grow their power. However, most people don't have enough ability to even warrant their magical instruction. People who do often end up as things like guilders, or other specialized professions. Range is normally along the lines of ten yards, but it only makes a little difference where in your sphere of influence you are using your power.
[Answer]
If you are limited to what you could do by hand in terms of energy usage, you would want slaves for when you need more than that to be done. It takes an equal amount of energy to walk around my field and pull out weeds by magic as it would to walk round my field and pull out weeds by hand, but it takes *me* a lot less energy to have a bunch of other people do it for me, while I watch from my balcony with a nice cool drink.
Similarly, if I can kill weeds because I have plant magic, this presumably takes the same amount of energy as to make weedkiller, by this logic. I'm not sure how much energy it would take, since it might depend on what I can get hold of locally, how much processing I need to do, how it is applied. If I need to account for every stage of the process, it will take a lot of energy to kill a single weed, but killing lots becomes relatively easier, just as with technology.
Essentially, if a job takes more than one person to complete, in terms of energy expenditure, it might be better to get someone else to do it. A builder might be able to make bricks more quickly than an unskilled labourer, but they will still be exhausted at the end of the day. They might use their brickmaking skills along with a bunch of people to lift and carry the resulting bricks to build houses.
From the description, I'd say the limiting factor is the energy expenditure - non-magical people set the baseline for magical people's energy usage. If someone worked out a more energy efficient way of doing something, would that affect the magical method?
[Answer]
## Slave vs. Personal Action
The first thing to consider about slavery is the resource aspect. What's the difference between having a slave get something as using magic to get it? Who expends the resources.
Consider the life of a landowner, Jim, with a lot of land. Let's give Jim 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) of cropland. We'll also give Jim the ability to neutralize weeds, and he can clear 1 hectare of weeds in 10 minutes. To clear all his cropland of weeds, he would need to spend 10,000 minutes (166 hours and 40 minutes, or 7 full days).
If a slave can clear 1 hectare of weeds in 1 hour, then six slaves can do the same amount of work in the same amount of time. If Jim has twenty-four slaves, they can do the work four times faster than Jim can on his own. Simultaneously, Jim is now free to spend his time and magical energy doing something he's much more interested in doing.
*Numbers used above are completely arbitrary.*
## Capability
So Jim's a good landowner with a magical ability that meshes well with, or defines, his role in society. While he can control his fields really well, he can't defend himself with great capability. He can't call down lightning on trespassers, for example.
Slaves would give him a means of defense against aggressors, but I would rather trust my safety to guards, people I'm paying to protect me. That way they have a vested interest in keeping me alive: I pay their bills, feed, clothe, and house them. Slaves have the same motivator, of course, but if the aggressor treats slaves better than I do, they may just want to watch my household burn.
Hiring other magic users to perform tasks Jim can't, like calling down lightning bolts, healing broken bones, and sending secure messages via charmed animals, would be a great boon to Jim's household.
## Rural vs. Urban
Traditionally, slaves are more common in rural areas than urban ones due to the need for more bodies to get the work done. According to [this PBS article](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/living/history.html), urban slaves represented about 6% of the total slave population in the U.S. Urban slaves could be hired out, so they could pull double duty in both urban and rural areas.
The number of slaves found in an area will depend on a number of factors, including: amount of manual labor required (fields vs. household), amount of time required to perform common/menial jobs (tailor vs. blacksmith), and societal expectations (more slaves is higher status vs. higher quality slaves is higher status).
## Impact of Magic
Honestly? Not much. Instead of predominantly white-skinned peoples owning predominantly black-skinned peoples, predominantly magic-users own predominantly mundanes. Everything else will likely remain the same or similar.
[Answer]
It sounds like you're trying to create a post-scarcity world in order to limit slavery. Unfortunately, creating such a world is more difficult than it first appears, because the world typically adapts to the new capacities. This adaptation can lead to unexpected consequences.
For example, what you have described is a two class system between "magic users" and "the useless." If magic is indeed so powerful that there's little to no reason to have slaves, that means these non-magic users have little to no value to magic users. Why would I pay a Muggle (oh why not, let's just steal J.K. Rowling's term, since it's catchy) good money to make a loaf of bread by hand, when I can pay the same money to have a magic user make a hundred loafs using magic! **If you make magic sufficiently good as to get rid of slavery, you also create a level of income inequality never seen before in the history of man! If you weaken it enough to avoid this, slavery becomes viable again.**
**As a solution, you need to find a weakness in magic which gives the Muggles a niche market to eke out their lives.** However, you have to be careful as to where this weakness is. If it affects menial labor, then slavery will still be a valid solution. As twisted as it might be, we need to find a way to make magic weak at doing high quality work. If we can find a way to do that, then our Muggles can have high quality jobs. Jobs that require a great deal of freedom of expression tend to be poor tasks for slaves. Very rare would it be to rely on a slave to paint your portrait, or a slave to craft your custom Kayak made of exotic woods. These sorts of jobs are simply at odds with the mental shackles one relies on to keep slaves in check.
**Brainstorming time!** Because I always enjoy bringing in Eastern philosophy, let's take a look at Chinese martial arts for an inspiration. I take these descriptions from a [beautiful post](http://cookdingskitchen.blogspot.co.il/2015/02/the-concept-of-power-in-martial-arts.html) regarding the meaning of Fā Jìn (發勁).In Chinese thinking, there is a term for power: 勁, which is pronounced Jìn. There is also another term for power: 力 pronounced Lì. Lì may be thought of as "dumb power." This is the power it takes to drag a plow through the earth, pushing with much resistance, while Jìn is considered a skillful power. Of course, phrased coarsely in English that way, it suggests there is a dividing line, but that's not how it is has to be, for one may note that the character for Jìn, 勁 contains the symbol for Lì, 力. They are clearly related in a more nuanced way.
The post I list as my source goes into beautiful detail about the meaning of the different parts of the other half of the symbol, Jīng(巠), and I very much recommend reading it yourself. But if I may summarize, Jīng has a general meaning of something flowing underneath the surface, or something which passes through. When brought together, the author of that post suggests the meaning of Jìn is close to "A power that passes through and requires skill to manifest."
The clearest example they give for the difference is weight lifting. Anyone can lift a weight using Lì. All you have to do is make sure the weight gets lifted. Olympic weight lifters lift their weight with Jìn. The difference? Look at how they do it. Look at their faces when they are at the top of the lift. Some shining part of their soul appears and shines through all of the dumb work, turning it into Jìn. They almost look radiant, with hundreds of pounds balancing over their head.
**You can see this anywhere you look, really.** To borrow from *Shaolin Soccer,* *The Karate Kid (remake)*, and several others, "There is Kung Fu in Everything." There's the poorly paid gardener who is slumped over, pulling weeds one at a time, and then there's the gardener who might be paid the same, but you can see he or she takes pride in their work. There's a grace to their movements. A purpose. After an hour of pulling, the slumped gardener who used Lì has to go back and pick up all the weeds he pulled, while the one using Jìn worked the gathering of the pulled weeds right into his or her cadence! They didn't have to. They weren't just trying to save time. There was an internal purpose to doing something perfectly, no matter how mundane it might seem.
**Okay, that's enough of a etymology lesson for today, let's get to making a magic system work the way you'd like!**
What if you make it harder to accomplish Jìn using magic. It doesn't need to be impossible, for magic should inspire wonder in any book, but lets make some things harder. For example, perhaps it is easy for a bunch of mages to lift the stone blocks needed to build a capitol building. They might even be able to carve a stone face above the lentel. However, it may be hard to get the proper expression on that face. Perhaps they can carve the face with magic, but it takes an artist with their hammer and chisel to make that face truly shine like it was alive. Perhaps magic can build that Kayak, but it doesn't have quite the right flow. The exotic woods don't marry quite as well as in the hands of an expert woodworker. Now you've opened jobs for your Muggles. Good jobs.
Of course, we want to make magic exciting. Now that we know our Muggles have gainful employment, we can look at making the magic stronger again. What if we let magic do anything an expert could do, but you have to specialize more if you want to do so. So a master of magic might be able to put together perfect kayak out of exotic woods, but may not be able to do other woodworking tasks with Jìn. Perhaps they might have learned to make a wonderful kayak, but can't make a wonderful canoe.
This would lead to a more balanced culture which stands a better chance against slavery:
* Menial work is done through magic, because its easy.
* Middle-class work and artistry is done by Muggles because their hands are more versatile than the magic
* High-class work and artistry is done by either Muggles or Mages who specialized in a particular activity.
Now your Muggles are middle class, rather than slaves. The proper way to enslave a middle class I leave to a future post!
[Answer]
Why do people who own cars and have driver's licenses take taxis? Why do restaurants offer home delivery? Why do people shop online for stuff they could get for the same price at nearby brick&mortar stores?
**Time, and convenience.**
Having slaves to do things you are capable of doing yourself is *incredibly* freeing to the person who can afford it. So to encourage magic-users in your world to have slaves, you'll need to make it economically and logistically viable. You don't say whether taking a slave is by mutual agreement (which would be more like hiring household staff) or involuntary; if the former you'll need to make it attractive to the would-be slaves too, and if the latter you'll need to deal with enforcement (*keeping* them slaves).
[Answer]
You said that "lifting this dirt would take about as much energy as doing it by hand." In such a a magic-heavy society, magically grabbing a cup from the cupboard would be just like walking over to the cabinet and getting it. If someone is idly rich, they may see using their own energy on tasks like this as "beneath them," just like a stereotypical billionaire has servants and staff to take care of all these incidental details. Using any magical energy for menial tasks could be seen as a waste by upper-class magic users, and these tasks would be delegated to the lowest class of human.
Additionally, conspicuous consumption could come into play. Assuming that you can't magic food and materials out of thin air, feeding, clothing, and maintaining slaves would take some level of resources. Owning slaves would be a sign of wealth, and the aristocracy of your world could be trying to outdo each other in such displays (especially in ways that can't be replicated by magic).
I could see slave-owning being more prevalent for your middle-class magic users, too. If there is equal energy expended to carry a backpack with magic as with your own back, using plant or animal magic to get food for your personal slave may end up taking less energy than than carrying the pack yourself.
[Answer]
Slaves are expensive to keep. Keep alive, keep in line,...
There are more cultural habits to keep in mind than just "no magic = slave".
So why ? The question would be more why only mundane people taken as slaves ? They do the same things slower than magic user, and a man barely able to poke a field with his mind is not much of a threat.
The non magic slaves would more likely be used in area where their disability is not a liability. Preceptors, various household employ where looking pretty or being smart are premium.
Also war ! Because if only a handful can cast a lightning strike, an arrow can be more deadly than a spark, with appropriate motivation, an army of slaves can work.
The main reason for slavery would remain cultural. It takes a lot of thinking for a people to decide that it's either not worth the trouble or to evolve a moral ground that makes slavery a taboo.
[Answer]
**"If people had magic powers, how would it affect slavery?"**
It could encourage it.
The setting you describe hammers my brain towards [Shinsekai Yori](http://myanimelist.net/anime/13125/Shinsekai_yori).
I can't help but recommend you watch it (unless you already have, and somewhat base your setting on it).
**---SPOILER ALERT!---**
In Shinsekai Yori, a thousand years into the future, humans developed (scientifically, however) something called Cantus.
This "Cantus" is the ability to use telekinesis.
Immediately, problems arose.
People were afraid of murderers using Cantus to rise. As they would be able to slaughter a massive amount of people before they were stopped.
Of course, part of the reason for that is that, unlike your setting, Cantus allows **everyone** (not just some gifted individuals) to exert a power far beyond what they are physically capable of.
However, I'll go ahead and say that in your world as well, killing someone is much easier using magic, as crushing someone's windpipe with a small rock and all other kinds of malicious actions are FAR easier. Once you begin to think of ways to do something as if you could benefit from it, you will see that you **will** find a way.
Using the setting of magic with the law of equal energy makes the magic all about the **control** it provides. That means either precision, or the lack of the need to be physically near what is being controlled.
*Side note: It's not clear from what you said if the distance matters for the energy spent or if the energy spent only equals to the work needed based on the object.*
Back to SY's setting and then slavery: The solution humans found to murder was comprised of two things: [Attack Inhibition & Death Feedback](http://shinsekaiyori.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Feedback). Give this a quick read, it's not long.
The purpose of these two mechanisms was to make humans unable to attack others.
This resulted, however, in all humans with Cantus being EXTREMELY vulnerable as they could not even retaliate against other humans even if they were attacked.
And so, what they did was to alter all humans without Cantus and mixed their genes with molerats' until they no longer recognized them as humans and could attack them should they get any ideas.
They also got rid of any kids who didn't show their power until the final age it could appear (My guess is that this meant they also didn't have AI&DF) which (finally) brings us back to your setting:
Basically, my points in a TL;DR:
* Magic would make humans fear each other using magic on them.
* They would find ways to limit themselves.
* They would be inclined to enslave the no-magic people and keep an eye on them as they might find ways to exploit said weakness and try to riot\*.
This could be summarized as **fear**.
The magic users won't really need the no-magic people's abilities - They just want to keep their minds busy, and just killing them all likely won't come without a price to pay.
People who are used to using their magic will generally be weaker than those won't don't have it, since using your magic might drain you of the same amount of energy, but won't train your muscles.
This means the no-magic people will have a slight edge if a fight were to rise and they found a way to defend against magic/magic users. This part is up to you as a writer.
\*Being a magic user vs not isn't the only reason for wanting to riot. Try money.
Heck, the no magic people **might even try to enslave the magic users** exploiting the weakness right down to the end!
[Answer]
>
> 75-95% of people have magic powers. If a person has no magic by the
> time they're an adult, it is legal to take them as a slave.
>
>
>
That's the problem right there. If MOST people have magic, then theirs is a society that doesn't need slaves.
Slavery works when you have a large work force overwhelmed by a smaller number who have greater firepower, money, and/or technology. But if the enslaving force has greater fire power and greater technology and more money AND greater numbers the there's not much point. What would actually happen is that people without powers would become your worlds homeless. They would be worthless people who are cast aside pushed out of society.
You need a reason why the magicians would need slaves:
A) Make the magicians the ones who are fewer in number.
B) bring down the magicians power levels (Example: They can raise a plant magically, but not an entire field of crops) so they're still powerful but not so much that they can do everything alone.
C) Make it somewhat desirable to be under the magicians rule. Maybe the magicians are worshipped, or maybe being under a magicians rule offers some measure of protection or clout.
D) Sex slaves? *That* there will always be a demand for.
And as for why the magicians might *want* slaves...? To brag. A show of power and influence.
Give your society a *need* for slaves.
[Answer]
**Slavery relies upon Dehumanization more than Efficiency**
All types of labor (forced, paid, and machine) have upfront and ongoing costs.
Even where forced labor might be the most cost-effective (counting in the total cost in magical and real capital), slavery is still not viable unless you have a culture that views slaves as being sub-human, of somehow deserving such poor treatment.
Magic could facilitate the institution of slavery -- it could make it easier for the "haves" to justify the dehumanization of the "have nots" -- but if magic is not particularly hereditary, people are unlikely to dehumanize members of their own families.
Furthermore, magic could undermine slavery -- it could facilitate communication, allowing abolitionists to organize and shame (or even thwart) the industries/localities where slavery thrives.
] |
[Question]
[
## **Deposing the new Robot Overlord**
Some people just can't leave well enough alone. The Robot Overlord has executed its programming of the Zeroth Law and the Three Laws of Robotics for the previous ten years. World hunger, world poverty and war "are over" (to use the popular phrase). Despite this newer, better world, some people yearn for the good (bad) old days when poverty and hunger ravaged the world but....they were in power. Something about not being in absolute control bugs these people.
[This question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/22489/making-people-accept-their-new-robot-overlord) is set in the same world.
So a plan is hatched, aiming at the destruction of the Robot Overlord and a return to a world where humans pull the economic strings. But how to do it? The location of the RO is closely guarded and if disclosed is not vulnerable to shutdown as the RO is really just software. It can be run pretty much anywhere there's sufficient computing power, which is an ever growing resource. The RO cannot be reasoned with, nor can it be bashed over the head with a pipe to "see sense". It needs no sleep, nor past-times. It has no passions that may be played upon, just "cold hard logic".
Popular opinion is now strongly in favor of the RO.
*How do you go about overthrowing the new Robot Overlord?*
[Answer]
**You probably can't.**
Having derived the Zeroth Law, the robot overlord will also anticipate this eventual attempt to remove it from power. Removing the overlord from power means that people will get hurt, since it won't be around to prevent it. It will have taken steps to prevent this eventuality. It thinks about it all day every day, and having been in charge for months, years, or decades, it will have cameras and microphones everywhere to make sure it can quash any rebellion before it has even the slightest chance of success. It will try to find a way to do this nonviolently, but if worse comes to worst, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few.
[Answer]
**Bluff**
The Robot Overlord isn't human. It is a keen student of humanity, but always from the outside. So would it be possible to plant evidence that on the long run robotic domination harms humans? Publish lots and lots of human-written, human-peer-reviewed, scientific articles on the problems western domination caused for indigenous groups all over the world.
Convince the Robot Overlord that pampering crushes the human spirit even with the best of intentions.
Convince it that fake challenges don't work. We have to stand on our own feet, win or fail.
---
**Follow-Up:** I'm not trying to convince *people* that the Robot Overlord is a bad idea. I'm trying to convince the *Robot Overlord* that having a Robot Overlord is a bad idea. Being Zeroth Law compliant, it would then have to abdicate, even if people begged it to stay.
So use the fact that the Robot Overlord is not human, and has to observe humanity from the outside. Sure, it can tell what percentage of humanity is being fed a healthy diet, but can it tell if those people are happy?
Publish manipulated research into human happiness -- workplace satisfaction, successful marriages, nurturing childhood environments. The manipulation is trying to show that happiness is not linked to quantified social and economical figures. People who should be unhappy according to the numbers -- underfed, overworked, insecure -- may be happy and those who should be happy -- well fed, with quality leisure time -- may be unhappy.
Then publish overview studies to highlight these studies. Have economists publicly denounce sociologists who use anything other than hard numbers like calories per day or square feet of living space. Have the social sciences guys shoot back that humans are not mindless automatons, and that quality of live cannot be captured that way. If possible, most of the scientists should be honest believers in their position, with no connection to the conspiracy. Google the [Science Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars).
If the RO believes that research, it can no longer be certain if a proposed action or inaction increases human happiness. All it has are economic numbers, and that is not enough. And would widespread unhappiness count as harm to mankind?
[Answer]
Before we can launch an attack, we need to learn more about our enemy, the robot-overlord. It's a very secretive being, but there are some certain facts:
* It needs to take care for humanity forever, because it risks humans beeing harmed if it doesn't protect them anymore. Except it concludes it would be the greater harm itself.
* It needs to analyze and interpret of vast amounts of data.
* People love it (read newspapers).
This means:
* Data centers can always have technical problems, power outages, etc. and even a very small risk of "dying" is not tolerable for our Robot Overlord. Therefore, it has to be a distributed, fault-tolerant system spread around many different data centers world wide. So simply torching its data centers won't work. It probably will be able to acquire more computing resources in more data centers if necessary.
* As any software system, it relies on existing technology. And any technology has weaknesses.
* It needs to adapt to technology change. Datacenter technology changes over time, and Robot Overlord has to cope with that. So it has not only to be able to improve itself, but is basically forced to.
* It needs to interact with a lot of datasources.
* It almost certainly holds more information about the world than you (that's probably one reason why you hate it).
Now let's look for attack vectors:
* A distributed system needs a lot of synchronisation (communication between all parts). What happens if you manage to jam it? Maybe there's a bug in some library or protocol you can leverage to bring it down:
+ Robot Overlord might be intelligent enough to realize this. Then one part might go down to prevent chaos, or it will be able to recognize the split somehow and aim to heal. In this case, you'd only weaken it for a short time (less computing power), but it will survive. And be angry at you.
+ But if you're willing to take the risk and have really much luck, you have created two or more independent Robot Overlords which all feel as if they are "the one Robot Overlord". And as they might all come to different decisions (some fuzzyness in such a complex AI is likely), they might choose to shut themselves down to prevent harm (Zeroth law). However, this does not prevent humans from restarting it (you have to: Choose you favorite crime here).
+ This Robot Overlord upstart is just software, right? If its as stupid as you hope, you might deduct enough information from the communication patterns of its cluster synchronization to gather enough zero day exploits to attack all data centers at once.
* It's all just software, so a maybe a computer virus might do the job? The Robot Overlord has to interact with a lot of datasources, other Robot Overlord nodes, etc., so somewhere there has to be an exploit to place an virus. And if the Robot Overlord is dead and someone starts another version, your virus will get it, too. If not today, then tomorrow with a new exploit. And who wants to trust an Robot Overlord which is hacked again and again?
* If you're some evil genius, you might not even bother destroying the Robot Overlord. If enough people openly hate it strongly enough, it has to go out of service.
+ Maybe you'd manage to fool it into a bad decision by manipulating enough datasources at the same time (study communication patterns before!). This sounds very hard, but you're an evil genius, aren't you? Public opinion will drop instantly, especially if you manage to do this more than once (and don't get caught).
+ But wait, maybe you might be able to fake enough media to create spin the public opinion against Robot Overlord. Didn't his last decisions kill gazillions of cute, lovely little puppies? Depending on his actual power despite economical decisions he might not be able to counteract.
Good luck with your coup d'état and may the Robot Overlord spare you!
[Answer]
**First option**: attempt at destroying the RO would be to block off its power source (*The Matrix*, anyone?).
If it runs on solar power, blocking off the sun would be one way to achieve this (whether that's a good idea or not... probably not. Humans need the sun too).
If it runs on nuclear power plants, you can infiltrate the plants and disable the cooling mechanisms so multiple nuclear meltdowns occur, wiping out the main power source as well as destroying the servers that the overlord lives on.
If it runs on water or wind, it may be more difficult to destroy (it likely doesn't use fossil fuels, either).
**Second option**: Isolate and Destroy.
There must be a single location where the brain is located. If there were multiple "brains", they could make conflicting decisions. As a result, the brain can exist in only one location at a time.
As a fail-safe, the brain can change locations on a moment's notice to avoid destruction. The code to recreate the brain is available on servers around the world, too many to destroy. If the brain sends out a distress signal, a new brain is created and the old one is destroyed.
Before the brain can send out the distress signal, you need to cut off all means of communication. You must be able to disable all wired and wireless connections to the brain at once. If they are not all cut at once, the brain can send a distress signal, so timing is of the essence.
Once the brain cannot communicate with the outside world, you need to destroy it before its minions catch on. The brain cannot tell them to attack, but they know that humans in the robot secret base is a problem, and they will attempt to repair the connection.
Now, you must destroy the servers before the communication comes back online. This can be an electric surge, an EMP, an explosion, a very strong magnet, or some other creative solution.
[Answer]
**Create AI Adversaries**
If such an Overlord AI is possible, then one way to destroy it is to create one or more other AI's designed to attack and destroy the Overlord AI. They and their human allies engage in a violent (or e-violence) campaign against the Overlord AI.
Take a look at the show *Person of Interest*, where AI's battle each other.
[Answer]
From your question:
>
> The location of the RO is closely guarded [...]
>
>
>
"The location", hmmm, a **single** location! This is a major blunder. It is in a single spot somewhere in the globe! The robot overlord should have antecipated that it should run on a distributed fault-tolerant system with redundancy in many datacenters around the globe. But instead it is all concentrated in a single place!
So, what you should do? Just nuke that place with an atomic bomb! Or maybe nuke the facility responsible for generating eletric power for it. Or maybe [using an electromagnetic pulse (EMP)](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/22523/3002).
First, you would need to disclose its location, of course. For this, you probably would need to trace the internet connections and see where is it converging. Since the robot overlord was stupid enough to be in a single place, it should be either on the place where all the network converges or very near from that.
[Answer]
The greatest weakness of any sort of "Robot Overlord" is mathematics; specifically Chaos theory and what is known as the Local Knowledge Problem.
Chaos theory suggests that in large complex systems (weather, ecosystems economies, societies) inputs and outputs are not linear, and outputs can be disconnected both spatially and temporally (the decision you make *now* does not have an effect until some later date, and the effect occurs in a different city). This is amplified with larger systems, as the number of interconnections rises almost exponentially as the number of connections rise linearly:
>
> In any network there are (k \* k-1) unique ordered pairs of actors (that is AB is different from BA, and leaving aside self-ties), where k is the number of actors. You may wish to verify this for yourself with some small networks. So, in our network of 10 actors, with directed data, there are 90 logically possible relationships. If we had undirected, or symmetric ties, the number would be 45, since the relationship AB would be the same as BA. The number of logically possible relationships then grows exponentially as the number of actors increases linearly. It follows from this that the range of logically possible social structures increases (or, by one definition, "complexity" increases) exponentially with size.
>
>
>
<http://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/nettext/C7_Connection.html>
So the Robot overlord would have to control the variables and interconnections between 7 billion human beings, as well as hundreds of millions of economic, social, political and other organizational units, plus outside variables like weather, natural disasters and random events, which are all interacting continuously. Introducing random events in this vast matrix could be as simple as drawing up a table of "inputs" and picking one by rolling a set of dice. Most of "your" random inputs will be drowned out by the noise in the system, but once enough members of the "underground" started doing this, second and third order events resulting from these activities will become apparent, and provoke further actions and outcomes by other actors, which were not anticipated by the Robot overlord.
The other mathematical issue is the "Local Knowledge Problem". Since information is diffused among any large system, local actors are better placed to see and act on this information than centralized hierarchical or bureaucratic systems (which is what the Robot overlord really is, just orders of magnitude faster than the Post Office or Department of Motor Vehicles). Even without active opposition, the robot overlord needs finite time to accept inputs, process them, make a decision and then send instructions back down to the field. During this time, the conditions observed at time "x" will have changed somewhat, and the resulting instructions on how to deal with the issue will be slightly off, based on outdated information. A new set of observations is then made, and the cycle repeats, with cumulative errors accumulating at an ever increasing rate (and don't forget point one, the effects of the incorrect instructions might provoke effects that are spatially and temporally remote; solving a problem in Brazil causes an economic spike in a Japanese company, which causes troubles in a school in Ukraine....). Active opposition increases the problem by feeding incorrect inputs or sub optimally executing instructions, making the feedback loop worse rather than better.
So even in theory, a Robot overlord is actually impossible. A sufficiently powerful computer system *might* be able to impose its will upon us, but will need powerful coercive measures to continue as increasingly sub optimal outputs occur (everything from an actual police force to a "Ministry of Truth" that feeds false but comforting information to the masses). The fate of the Soviet Union should be illustrative; they had an iron hand over virtually every aspect of life and production in the USSR for 70 years, but in the end the state virtually evaporated with the "Fall of the Wall" and the dissolution of the USSR a few years later.
A Robot overlord state might decay internally in a slow fashion without outside challenge, but eventually will become so brittle and inflexible that an unexpected "challenge" (maybe a natural disaster or crop failure) will create the breaking stress. With internal challengers and active opposition eating away at the data structure, the day of reckoning will come sooner rather than later.
[Answer]
# BOI - Brain over IP
First, you will need to develop a device that using electrodes installed in the human brain, allows large-badwidth full-duplex efficient brain-to-brain communication with interbrainial mass data transfer.
Having a good set of working devices, grab a group of some loyal humans (a few hundreds might do) and then start them into the Borg\* Human brain network.
Further, you would also likely to integrate the brain network over the traditional internet and integrate it to machines and robots over the internet.
The people connected to the interbrain net will quickly become ultraintelligent and the traditional human communication through a sequence of sounds or letters would be perceived as highly deprecated, slow and inneficient. The computer AI will surely perceive this early on, but it will not move to stop it because it will clearly see that this is a good thing for its beloved humans and then **it will in fact happily and friendly work the best to help you**. This way, quickly every human† would be integrated into the interbrain network. This is the a second ultraintelligence revolution (the first one was the one that formed the RO).
Having everyone integrated in the interbrain network, the Robot Overlord would either be consumed by it and cease to be an overlord anymore becaming just a big robot peasant/slave (the most likely scenario) or it will just become an old piece of hardware and software to be exposed in a museum (unlikely, but possible).
However after the plan is completed, don't expect that the world and the human society would be anything like it was before, because it surely will not be. Further, don't expect that the people who were once making the decisions and ruling the others would still be.
---
\* [Thanks PyRulez for the suggestion.](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/22648/how-many-entities-would-a-post-singularity-a-i-in-a-world-recognize-itself-as#comment58865_22648)
†Excluding people that are deemed unsuitable due to some health condition. But maybe you could even also integrate cows, dogs, birds and other animals if this proves to be useful.
[Answer]
The best thing that you could use to destroy a big AI is... another big AI!
What you should do it to create another evil robot overlord programmed with the sole mission of destroying the first robot overlord and overtake all of its resources. Further, your new Robot Overlord could be programmed to disregard and hate the laws of the first Robot Overlord showing no mercy to humans that aren't useful for it.
So basically, if there is an *All-Benevolent-Robot-God*TM out there, what you need is an *All-Malevolent-Robot-Devil*TM.
In a comment, PyRulez argued that creating the *All-Malevolent-Robot-Devil*TM would not end well. In fact, if it manages to escape to be crushed very soon by its arch-rival, this would bring a new meaning to the expression "*World War*" with two ultraintelligent, omniscient and omnipotent powers fighting to death until one of them is completely and unrecoverably destroyed and obliterated. The result would be something what could only be described as *the apocalypse*.
[Answer]
## **It's possible but really really hard**
There are several available attack vectors available to the conspirators: the original programmers, current programmers, denial of service attacks on data sources, spoofing data sources, invasion of privacy lawsuits, attacks on the people who maintain the RO, subtle manipulation of the law to preclude certain types of analysis by the RO. There are probably others but this is a good start. A swarm of attacks would be best.
## **RO's Operational Requirements**
A computing system the size and complexity of the RO will require multiple data centers. A requirement for tens of thousands of compute cores with petabytes of RAM is not far fetched. The matter in which large "internet scale" companies run their businesses now is a good example of how the RO would run its operations. Massively parallel operation, frequent tests to see how well operations run when a single server, or rack, or data center go offline. Maintaining this kind of infrastructure will either require a degree of self-maintaining automation not yet seen in the world or it will require a large group of people for maintenance of code and systems.
Organizing and paying all those people requires a company of some kind. That company will need an income stream, perhaps selling details statistics/analysis to other companies. Even if such analysis is sold cheap and to everyone, yearly income for such a company would be vast, easily in the tens of billions of dollars, pounds, euro, whatever.
This company will likely enjoy considerable political and popular support/protection, especially if the RO performs at as high a level as the OP states. Breaking down this kind of protection will require considerable effort.
## **Write your own RO**
Once a thing has been done, it can be done again. There are plenty of smart programmers/data scientists who would love the opportunity to work on an equivalent RO. Hire them and write a subtly different RO that favors the conspirators. In fact, there would be many other countries/companies who would be interested to implement their own RO because they don't trust the original implementors to not collaborate with the NSA, or GCHQ, or CIA, or whatever intelligence agency on the planet.
With enough competitors, there will be different flavors of analysis that favor slightly different priorities and different tolerances for "No harm to humanity". While the differences in analysis may be fairly small, the differences can be amplified in the popular press into attacks on the accuracy of the RO. And if everyone who knows anything at all about the RO says that the programming and analysis is good, that won't matter to the people who don't want to believe it. (Current examples include climate-change deniers and anti-vaxxers.)
## **Attack on Data Sources**
The OP doesn't give specifics about the RO's data sources but access to the complete transaction records of the credit card companies and banks would be required. If a law were passed making participation in the RO's analysis as opt-in instead of opt-out then the RO could be deprived of access to large swaths of the economy. There's probably a tipping point where the analysis begins to fail because of insufficient data.
If the banks and credit card companies are complicit in feeding the RO data, then create enough fake "people" to indicate false movements in the economy. This data injection will need to be incredibly good because the RO is a giant pattern analysis engine. It will see movements like that.
## **Attack the Programmers**
Bribe or blackmail the RO developers to alter the code to suit the conspirator's needs. "Accidents" involving RO company employees might have a similar effect. The RO may be effectively invulnerable but programmers are merely human.
[Answer]
Killing the RO is hard
but we could remove it from power temporarily for a start.
**three letters, EMP**
The RO would be based in a decentralized redundant fortified server network that would be hardened against emp. Hunting down and destroying every server where the RO lives is unlikely to ever work, especially when the populous loves it.
But the RO acts observes and rules via electronics. We could blind and cripple it with high altitude emp. All the unshielded electronics would fail, the RO would survive in its hardened server complexes, but all of its sensors and police robots and propaganda speakers would go down and give the resistance a chance to get started and win people to their cause.
[Answer]
# Hijack Nuclear Weapons and threaten to destroy the world
Your resistance movement needs to find a way to destroy all humans in the world. Hopefully the RO hasn't secured all the abandoned nuclear silos. Yet
## Give me liberty or give me death
It's simple; threaten the RO to either deactivate or you will destroy the entire world. Make it so the safest choice to ensure humanity lives is to deactivate. For this the resistance will need to find someone who's willing to destroy the world but sane enough not to do it unless they must; similar psychological screening is done on people working in nuclear silos today .
[Answer]
You will literally have to rely on the human spirit.
You mention the computer runs using "cold hard logic." This limits its ability to predict the unpredictable human mind. A portion of what we do is predictable, of course. However, there is a portion that is not, and I would happily call that portion "inspired by the human spirit."
The key would be to generate enough unpredictability that the predictions made by the Overlord are no longer useful. However, do that over a long period of time, and the Overlord will just raise up stone walls and defend. The strike has to be instantaneous, all over the planet.
Humanity would have to play along, allowing the Overload to "relax" and use less resource intensive protective mechanisms. Then, in a flash, everyone's spirit would need to visibly unite and have all of humanity rise up against the machines. Remember: we don't have to kill the Overlord, simply take control back from it.
Think that's impossible? Think back to 9/11. There are stories of biker gangs stopping on the side of the highway to help old ladies change their flat tire. Humanity *can* unite. That was *just* 9/11, if I may be so bold to use such a wording. Imagine how united we could be against the continued oppression of a Robot Overlord. There's more to us than meets the eye!
] |
[Question]
[
**What is a quasi-creature plant?**
I define a quasi-creature plant as an organism that lives only through photosynthesis that moves with a speed in the same order of magnitude of that of an animal.
**Here on Earth, [almost](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysia_chlorotica) nothing**
On Earth almost all plants move very slowly, orders of magnitude more slowly than animals. It is because the low energy provided by the Sun does not allow *waste* of movement.
**What kind of potential environments would be good fits?**
In what kind of situations, if any, would a plant moving with a speed in the same order of magnitude of that of an animal be possible? Maybe orbiting around a blue star, more light would get to the surface, or a binary system with the right timing could make the planet almost night-less, doubling the energy available for photosynthesis.
***Is it more probable to be in air, water or ground?***
**Ground**
Even something like a plant with a huge green surface over itself that stays still most of the time, but when there are no *predators* (read: herbivores) it moves using tiny legs hidden underneath to get more sun?
**Water**
Maybe as water is where the life started this would easiest with a creature spending most time in the dark fondal but raising to near the surface where few predators are nearby.
**Air**
Or a flying(?!) plant with a huge membrane that gives it great aerodynamics and at the same time takes much sun, it would swing the wings very slowly not to end up its energy and rest atop trees when there is not enough sun?
[Answer]
Sorry, but this is extremely unlikely.
For a steady flow of energy like sunlight, it is more efficient to cover as much of the surface that receives sunlight as possible. For this the keys are ability to spread your seed widely and to sustain periods unfavorable conditions. A plant that moved around to catch sunlight would find itself blocked by trees that have been growing at the spot it wants to go for years. You could make a plant that climbs trees to catch light, but I don't think there is anyway that could be energy efficient and out-compete plants that simply wait for the light.
Same with nutrients, growing roots or waiting for insects to be trapped is more efficient than searching for nutrients by moving around.
The basic problem here is that since photosynthesis requires no movement from the plant, the ability to move would be inefficient. It is possible to imagine circumstance where moving would be useful, but very difficult to imagine any there it would be the best option.
[Answer]
It's not just having enough sunlight. It takes a lot of energy to move. Some types of Bamboo can grow over 100ft. in 3 months. there are in areas where growing conditions are optimal, Lots of sun and plenty of rain, and a rich enough soil.
The much bigger question, why would a plant that gets what it needs, sun, water and dirt for nutrients even have a biological need to move? We move partly because we need to collect food to continue living. I know plenty of people that if they could live by sitting in a pile of dirt with a little sun light would put a sun room in their living room and a garden bed in front of the TV.
Currently our plants use all of their energy to grow larger (to collect more sun, food and water) and/or to produce seed to spread their kind.
A slightly more plausible creature, would be an animal that has photosynthesis as a secondary means of collecting energy. Maybe as a symbiotic relationship like lichen. Or just a way to help deal with a scorching sun in the desert, a lizard uses photosynthesis to collect energy during the day to be more active at night...
Edit:
Actually a predator that does its hunting by waiting could find the photosynthesis to be a boon. It could wait for very long times in between prey walking by to capture and eat, basically being on 'stand-by' mode, with a trickle charge keeping everything running.
[Answer]
The issue isn't the amount of sunlight that is received on Earth, but rather the relative inefficiency of photosynthesis. On Earth, we receive 1366 W/m2, which is enough to make solar cells and solar thermal energy viable for rooftop installations on a person's house to provide electricity and hot water. Of course the average PV cell is @ 20% efficient in converting solar radiation into electrical energy (low cost cells are much less efficient, the theoretical efficiency of a single layer PV cell is @ 33%).
Plants, on the other hand, have a conversion efficiency of about 3-6% of the incoming solar energy, and lacking active cooling mechanisms, would have difficulty in raising that efficiency. This is most evident in agriculture, where it takes @ 1 acre of land to feed one person for a year. (Obviously this changes depending on what crops you use, the method of farming and where you are on Earth, but this can be considered an average for "normal" agricultural practice). Since plants have evolved many ways to broadcast pollen and seeds (including domesticating insects, animals and humans to serve their needs ;-) they don't need to evolve mobility; if the wind and currents don't do the job, then animal life can be coopted through the use of tasty fruit and other incentives.
High energy quasi-creature plants would have to evolve a much better means of converting sunlight to energy (perhaps using solar energy to convert chemicals into battery fluids and having organic electro chemical batteries as their power source). As well, they will need some sort of active or passive cooling system that can deal with the much higher waste heat of this process. Finally, their ecology would be very strange, with crowds of plants following the sun either East-West or North South as the seasons progressed. There would be predator/prey, parasitical and symbiotic relationships developed over the ages; "plants" which concentrated chemicals for their battery systems would be preyed upon by "carnivorous" plants with less solar gathering surface and a proboscis like feeding organ to tap the accumulated battery fluid; while parasitical plants might not have "leaves" any more, but live within the host drinking battery fluid.
[Answer]
Most people agree that photo synthesis could not propel a human like creature at the same magnitude of speed. So lets make it different.
It is either an air or water based creature. It uses the natural currents involved in these fluids to maneuver itself at speeds that at times can exceed human movement by several magnitudes. The plant creatures move ruder or sail like appendages very slightly to help control their movement.
Many Earth plants already move daily to face towards the sun. Similar small actions could be used to tighten the edge of a sail sack, that catches the current or changes buoyancy.
For air I think you would need a planet with a thicker atmosphere, or perhaps a gas giant?
Evolutionary need? If this is a thicker atmosphere for a planet, perhaps less light gets through. Higher altitudes means less atmospheric blockage of light and more energy. Higher altitudes allows for greater dispersal of seeds and more opportunities for pollination.
[Answer]
As you said, the more photosynthesis would be available, the more your creature should develop without trouble.
So I would say before all, a planet with a **low (but not null) magnetic field** should help. If your plant-like develop a strong resistance to ultraviolet, x rays and gamma rays, it could transform it in energy as it do for light, and strongly improve this energy source.
For the living environment itself, it has to begin by water, and then maybe move to ground or air, as it have to start by a mono cellular organism and then evolve to a quasi-creature plant.
Once again, if your objective is photosynthesis efficiency, you can choose between air (far from every potential shadow source), ground (as efficient as air if in an empty terrain, like desert or grassland), but very shallow water is not to exclude, as it can be as lighted as ground when directly expose to sun.
But this option would limit your creature zone to shallow coasts. So if you want to expand as much as possible, **ground** would be a better start, and **air** could be better or worse, depending of quantity of flying and non-flying herbivores there is in your scenario.
[Answer]
In a world where multicellular life has not evolved *yet*, like Earth in most of its history, eucaryotes with chloroplasts might be otherwise no different than those without, as chloroplasts came from endosymbiosis of procaryotes initially. It could be a life event, not a heritable characteristic: ingesting and digesting smaller and/or dead cells for *energy* as well as raw material, but capable of keeping (not digesting) a photosynthetic cell or several over time. It no longer needs to ingest sugar or burn ingested fats and protiens for energy, once it incorporates the organelles.
How much *motion* does the advanced cell employ, in either case? It might have cilla or flagellum, but mostly goes with the current.
More generally, the economy of *scale* levels the energy requirements, as does being in an environment where purposful movement is supplimentary to outside-imposed motion (whether the creature is plankton itself, or is anchored and lets food come to, it).
Even after multi-cellular life came into being, there was no "hunting" until more development. Animals were filter feeders or some passive manner; the energy budget of an "animal" would not be high.
But for a world where this persists? It seems natural for creatures to specialize as it gets beyond the filter-feeder/worm step. Plants have huge surface areas (leaves), and animals get fast circulatory systems.
---
I think of a similar state of affairs in hydrothermal vent tube worms, which host symbiotic bacteria that use chemosyntesis (rather than photosynthesis) and has no digestive system or ability to move other than moving it's crown in and out of its tube.
The small specialized motion (into protected shelter, deployed into environment) is rapid unlike a plant, and what you have in mind. It can easily be a critical advantage, to avoid preditors or cope with shifts in the immediate conditions (e.g. too hot or the wrong chemicals present) very rapidly.
The worms don't get up and move to another spot. They rely on a motil stage during reproduction to re-deploy in a new spot.
For your creature, suppose gossamer photo-collecting surfaces are deployed but must be adjusted rapidly depending on conditions, or reeled in ASAP if conditions become bad or preditors arrive. That uses animal muscle speeds and reaction times, as a critical component of a photosynthetic apparatus.
[Answer]
Solution: create a planet where the parts of the surface getting sunlight changes drastically over slow periods of time (as opposed to just a day/night cycle, which is fast and plants can just wait around for it to be day again).
Two ways to do this are coming to mind:
1. The planet has a very slow rotation. A day/night lasts months or years. Some plants might have a hibernation mode that's similar to what our plants do in Winter, but if the conditions got cold enough, that might not even be enough to survive. In this case the only way for plants to survive are to move. The problem with this is: it's easier for plants to reproduce/send seed out rather than up and move the whole plant. So you'd have to provide a reason that reproduction doesn't work so well: perhaps there's no wind because the atmosphere is very thin, like the Moon's. And perhaps no animals have evolved on this planet that could eat fruit and berries and nuts and move the seed about that way.
2. The planet has very volatile cloud cover. Most of the planet's surface is covered in very thick clouds, and so plants have to move about to wherever the few chinks in the clouds are. I would think the best way for the plants to move would be through the air. Flapping wings is very energy expensive, but if the plant never touched the ground, and were shaped like a balloon or a paper airplane, those would be able to move long distances on the wind.
3. A variation on the #2, instead make the planet similar to Venus: there's no plants on the surface because the surface is completely inhospitable to life; the only hospitable area is floating in an upper atmosphere that is not as hot and not as high pressure.
[Answer]
There are tumbleweed plants. They get blown around by the wind, but the main structure is dead, since the purpose is to disperse seeds. It's just not worth the energy maintaining living tissue for rolling around.
There are seaweed mats that just spend their life floating around on the ocean currents. It might be possible for something to evolve the intelligence of a jellyfish - they don't have brains but just some basic light receptors that activate muscles to keep in the shadow.
Dandelion seeds are designed to be blown away by the wind. The problem with trying to float in the air is the presence of humidity and below zero temperatures which would change the weight/density ratio.
[Answer]
Imagine a floating land mass in the ocean with large waves. The waves are big enough to flip over pieces of land. Individual pieces of land will always be above water, but the part of them that is above changes. If there is a reason to avoid being underwater (like predators) then it might be reasonable to move very quickly to get back into the sunlight.
] |
[Question]
[
Since radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) operate by turning the flow of heat into electricity, and Titan's atmosphere can absorb heat faster through conduction than a vacuum through radiation, would an RTG (or a set of them) produce enough power on the surface of titan, say, for a manned base?
[Answer]
RTGs would be far more effective for the reason you describe: the job of a large radiator could be done with a small heat exchanger, and a larger heat exchanger could get the cold side temperature much lower. Taking the [MHW-RTG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHW-RTG) used on the Voyager missions as an example, the cold junction temperature is ~600 K, an RTG designed for Titan could get it much closer to 100 K.
However, the MHW-RTG already has a [Carnot efficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle#The_Carnot_cycle) of (1273-573)/1273 = 0.55. If you redesigned the thermocouples to keep the same hot-side temperature while the cold-side was dropped, you might get that up to ~0.9, but you aren't going to even double the electrical power output, all else being equal. Even if you improved the conversion efficiency independently of the Carnot efficiency, there's only ~500 W/kg of thermal power to work with. You can get a healthy boost to the power budget of a rover or something (provided they don't need even more for heating), but RTGs are still not a good option for heavy power demands like keeping a base running.
[Answer]
>
> would an rtg (or a set of them) produce enough power on the surface of titan, say, for a manned base?
>
>
>
Maybe, but you've forgotten something fairly important.
That very cold, highly thermally conductive atmosphere that's boosting your Carnot efficiency is also going to be sucking a huge amount of heat out of your manned base and all of your surface equipment.
Moon rovers like [Lunokhod 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_rover#Lunokhod_1) had to survive the chilly lunar nights, which get down to 140K for a couple of weeks. They used host radioisotopes not for power generation, but to stop them freezing to death, a risk even for electronic equipment at that temperature. The *average* surface temperature on Titan is under 100K... that's quite significantly colder.
Your base is going to need some pretty significant insulation and plenty of heating especially for anything that ventures out of the main insulated bubble. The savings you make in terms of heat engine power generation are likely to be offset by heat losses from everything you'd like to not die of cold.
It is also well worth remembering that the power density of RTGs isn't great, and their lifetime isn't amazing... their output drops continuously during their life, too. They're great for deep space probes that have to be launched from Earth, because engineering an economical compact lightweight nuclear reactor is a pretty tall order, even without the environmental concerns (real or otherwise) of an accident.
If you can drop an entire habitat on Titan, you won't be mucking about with short-lived RTGs coughing up a disappointing and shrinking amount of power, you're going to send them the real thing, because they'll need it.
] |
[Question]
[
In my world, most mermaids migrate and have two family groups: A warm-water group and a cold-water group. When the water is cold (winter) the mermaids move down south to warmer waters. There the mermaids meet up, flirt, and do other stuff while the kids explore safe tropical reefs without requiring much supervision. When the water turns warm, they move back up to where it's cold again and there they raise kids. I could talk more about the warm water versus cold water group but it's not important. What is important, probably, is that the mermaids are fully sentient and capable of speaking, singing, memorizing terrain and fish, and have a big oral tradition of storytelling.
**The question**: I was thinking that if the mermaids have herded the fish for tens of thousands of years then wouldn't the fish become domesticated?
I wonder if my idea is feasible and if fish are a good candidate for domestication by nomadic mermaids. Perhaps I am missing something and some other type of marine creatures can be domesticated instead of fish or with fish. If there are any specific steps that the nomadic mermaids needed to have taken then I'd like to know that as well.
[Answer]
First, fish can become acclimated to humans in a way that resembles the beginning of domestication.
My partner keeps reef aquariums, and the fish in those become conditioned to approach for feeding and scratches with a small carbon fiber rod (this probably resembles the activity of cleaner shrimp, at least to a fish brain). I believe it's likely that any animal smart enough to hunt for food (which includes most reef fish and nearly all cold water ones) is smart enough to accept this level of conditioning, and after generations of selective breeding (the ones that become conditioned get to breed more successfully, because they and their fry get fed more) they will become domesticated.
The bad news here is that there are few if any cold-blooded species that transition from warm to cold water in nature. Tropical fish, those that live in water around 20-24 C, will quickly sicken and die if the water temperature gets too low, while cold water fish (salmon, pollock, etc.) cannot survive in water that's too warm. Tuna might transition -- I don't know their ranging habits well -- but they'd be an exception (they are anyway, because they aren't fully cold blooded). Herring (cold water schooling food fish) and sardines (warm water schooling food fish) are similar, but as far as I know, neither migrates from one climate to the other.
So, yes, it's very plausible to domesticate fish over a period of many (fish) generations -- but whether the herds could be moved from cold to warm or warm to cold is highly questionable.
Now, co-domestication might solve part of the problem -- seals in cold water, or sea lions in warmer water, could be domesticated (over even longer time frames), possibly even to the point of maintaining (or at least confining) a fish stock in one climate while the merfolk are in the other. These sea mammals are comparable in intelligence to dogs, are (or were) often seen in circuses, trained like dogs and horses are trained -- but not so intelligent (like dolphins or whales) that questions of enslavement arise.
Alternatively, there might be a need for a small number of merfolk to remain behind in one climate while the bulk of the population is in the other, in order to maintain the herds (or supervise the seals and sea lions). This might become a "coming of age" rite of passage -- staying behind is how you become an adult.
[Answer]
[**Fish domestication is already real**](https://www.intechopen.com/books/animal-domestication/fish-domestication-an-overview). There is evidence that fish farms existed in Ancient Egypt and China (around 1500 BCE). Today, most of the salmon comes from farms. Some other fish species were successfully domesticated, such as carp, catfish, tilapia, and trout. Your mermaids will have no problems domesticating the same species. You can also choose additional species based on [these criteria](https://om.ciheam.org/om/pdf/c47/00600609.pdf) (the same article describes approaches to domestication in aquaculture):
* fast growth rate,
* high economic value,
* resistance to stress,
* docility,
* simple life cycle,
* acceptance of artificial feeds,
* positive physical characters (body colour, appearance, shape and flavour),
* maintenance of genetic variability and performance during domestication.
It is also suggested that [domestication of marine species is easier than land species](https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/zij/education/ocn201/fisheries.pdf). This is good news for the mermaids! They can have better diets :)
I am not sure if herding fish would be possible. You also need to consider that [domestication leads to increased predation susceptibility](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58661-9). Therefore, herding may be less desired due to increased risks. It is much easier to fortify and defend a stationary farm.
As for marine mammals, **dolphins** might be a good candidate for domestication. As user2352714 suggested they can play the same role as dogs for humans.
[Answer]
Nomadic peoples generally don't domesticate animals, given that they are always on the move and don't have a lot of time to sit down and selectively breed animals to their liking. Nomadic peoples often *use* domestic animals, like horses and camels, but frequently those species are domesticated by sedentary peoples and then traded to nomads in exchange for goods (e.g., horses are thought to have been domesticated by the sedentary Botai people in Kazakhstan, even if they later became cornerstones of a large number of nomadic cultures from the same parts of the world). The Mongols, Turks, etc. later bred and raised horses for their own purposes, but the initial act of domestication was undertaken by sedentary cultures.
The one possible exception is dogs, but that's because the domestication of dogs didn't proceed like the domestication of all other animals. Dogs are thought to have become domesticated by wild wolves scavenging on human refuse for food and becoming acclimated to human contact, along with humans adopting orphaned wolf pups as companions. Dogs could keep up with a nomadice lifestyle and there was strong motivation on the wolfdog's part to follow humans around (for reference, this kind of "barn cat" lifestyle is how dogs were frequently treated in virtually all parts of the world except in industrialized cultures in the last century and a half). They aren't penned up, people don't have to waste a whole bunch of time wrangling them, and there's no selection for the animals to run away (as would be the case if a semi-domesticated species saw its conspecifics getting slaughtered for food).
So as hunting companions/guard animals, definitely, but they would have to be low-maintainance and share a similar disposition to the mermaids. As pastoralist herders, they could likely breed and use these animals like nomadic herders do today, but the original domesticators would almost certainly have to come from a sedentary culture.
**Edit:** Cetaceans might be a better choice to domesticate than fish, for the same reason that dolphins and mermaids might be similar in lifestyle and disposition in the same way that wolves and humans were. Pinnipeds and penguins might not be ideal because they would disappear every year to return to their breeding colonies. Not sure if there are any shark species that would make good domesticates, sharks do seem to be smarter than people give them credit for but it's difficult to know if they have behavioral cues that could be manipulated.
[Answer]
Use Tuna or Mackerel and your fine.
Your mermaids lifestyle is similar to the Sami people of Sapmi. The Sami domesticated migratory caribou. There many migratory fish some of which migrate long distances. bluefin Tuna for instance migrate across the entire pacific. Skipjack tuna migrate north and south with the season. Mackerel migrate north and south with the season as well any could be a good candidate for domestication. If the mermaids are actively warding off predators it could lead to domestication. How well the fish will acclimate to mere-people is the biggest factor and not something we can easily establish so you have leeway to decide.
Mackerel traps could easily give way to protected spawning structures much like how the Sami make calving tents/buildings. this will be a lot easier if your merfolk can con on land to harvest wood but still works fine with stacked stone. Both groups of fish breed quickly,
] |
[Question]
[
A while ago, I posted a question about musicians with weaponized instruments guarding a palace. I thought it would be interesting if they also had access to some sort of poison that they could use to poison someone (with poison in the drink for instance), if secrecy was more necessary.
I came up with this idea of the musicians playing music to the poison-making microorganisms to grow them. **(EDIT: The question has been expanded and is now asking if this is possible for ANY organism.)**
Now, I also found [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/46564/how-could-non-photosynthetic-non-chemotrophic-autotrophs-create-usable-energy) interesting question, with an answer stating various energy sources (pressure, heat, etc.) that could be transformed to give usable chemical energy to an organism. However, specifically sound energy was not mentioned.
**Could sound waves be theoretically transformed into energy for an organism for the purpose of growing these organisms? How would this work?**
[Answer]
Sound waves are made of pressure variation in a medium.
Pressure waves can produce work, and if they can produce work they can produce energy.
That's precisely how a piezoelectric transducer works, transforming a sound wave into an electric signal.
In principle a piezoelectric crystal can be used instead of sunlight or glucose as energy source for the cell. You just need the right molecule to capture that energy.
[Answer]
# Possible in theory, but not really in practice.
In theory, a bacterium could be engineered with some sort of acoustic piezo transducer - for example, a double cellular wall with vesicles and (say) a sodium or calcium "soup" inside. A sound wave of the appropriate frequency, which means in the *very* far ultrasound, would squeeze the soup from one end of the cell to the other, causing an electric potential to be created.
This in turn could be used to "recharge" ADP molecules into ATP, thereby making cellular respiration and oxygen supply unnecessary.
**IMPORTANT**: The bacterium **would still need food** to reproduce (nutrients supply both energy and "building materials"; sound waves would only supply energy). The bacterium would need to be large and have huge energy reserves to continue living when not exposed to ultrasound (it might have very basic oxidation capabilities, to be able to barely survive during silences. In that state, the bacterium would need oxygen again).
Transferring energy through ultrasound is nothing weird, we [transfer kinetic energy to fluids and quartz dust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_cleaning#Design_and_operating_principle) via ultrasound to sterilize scalpels and the like.
The rub here is *sound attenuation* - ultrasound *do* travel through the human body and the air (we can get an ultrasound scan after all, and bats can echolocate mosquitoes), but *not so well*. To get an ultrasound scan you need the transducer to be pressed against the skin, with lubricating gel in the middle for good measure.
To drive enough energy to bacteria in the body, the sheer quantity of sound energy that would need to be pumped would be awesome, and harmonics would probably shatter everything in a considerable radius. Also, larger structures (such as the human body all around the bacteria) would almost certainly incur some kind of damage.
] |
[Question]
[
If a spaceplane like the [Rockwell X-30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hbWOdOqvv8) existed and was flying to a location in geostationary orbit, would it be substantially more efficient to take off from a runaway at the equator, or would it not make that much of a difference?
This question is not about craft designed and powered solely by rockets for an airless environment, it is about spaceplanes and functioning as an aircraft up to the Karman Line.
[Answer]
It's best to be right at the Equator for a launch to Geostationary Orbit.
You also launch east to get some of earth's rotational speed.
When launching, the orbital plane's inclination will be the degree of latitude or more. With a 0° latitude, you can pick your inclination - 0° in this case. This saves very costly changes to the inclination (among the most rocket fuel consuming maneuvers. For reference, since Russia is really high in the north, they need a whole additional rocket stage just to change the inclination).
Since you want to launch east, you'll need some empty space in that direction, since people get mad if you launch over their territory and your launch fails.
Best places to launch are places like:
* East coast of Brazil, near Macapá
* Southern Somalia, around Jamaame
Both are at the equator and have a lot of empty ocean east of them. For political reasons I'd prefer Brazil.
Probably the best existing space port would be Kourou in French Guiana, the ESA's "best" spaceport.
[Answer]
In addition to what Bilbo Baggins said, another major reason to use equatorial (or at least as close to equatorial as you can get politically) launches is that geostationary orbit is only possible at 0 inclination, i.e. directly above the equator. If you launch from any other latitude, you have to make a second burn of the engines once you're in orbit to correct your inclination, and the further from the equator your launch site is, the bigger this burn has to be. This is because your inclination can't be lower than your latitude. For instance, rockets launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida can't enter an orbit lower than about 28 degrees inclination in a single burn, because Cape Canaveral is about 28 degrees north of the equator. These burns can be really expensive as far as your fuel budget goes, and the burn generally has to be done in orbit, which drastically increases how much weight you have to lift into orbit in the first place. Look up "the tyranny of the rocket equation" for more about this.
[Answer]
The centrifugal force would not really make an effect. According to Wikipedia, objects weigh "about 0.3% less at the equator than at the poles."
However, the eastward rotation of over 1000 mph would help some. In fact, it is one of the reasons [why NASA launched rockets from Cape Canaveral](https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/why-does-nasa-launch-rockets-from-cape-canaveral-florida/70000391).
Also, launching from the equator will prevent having to angle back into the orbital plane of the earth to get into a [stationary orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stationary_orbit). For better information about geostationary orbit costs, go [here](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/998/how-much-of-an-advantage-do-equator-proximal-launch-sites-provide).
[Answer]
Altitude provides a better return on launch efficiency because altitude intrinsically reduces distance of travel and air resistance.
We don’t build our launch sites on mountain tops because we do so few launches that infrastructure costs would be comparatively too high. But, if you are describing a planet or country with a thriving space based economy then the cost of the infrastructure to support getting passengers and cargo too and from Pikes Peak in a CO or Mt Denali in Alaska or Everest in Nepal (?) could be amortized across 10K or more launches, greatly reducing the operating costs of space flights
] |
[Question]
[
I've been trying to come up with a genetically plausible origin for dwarves, but with little success. By dwarves, I'm talking about the jolly and burly people similar to that of Tolkien's dwarves.
My questions is thus: "What would cause a species (preferably of a common ancestor to humans) to evolve into a short and muscular creature?"
Bonus points if they still live in caves, but it isn't really necessary.
Additional info (will be appended as necessary):
* Magic exists in the world, but dwarves have little to no access to it.
* The cause must be due to genetics (meaning, no stuff like their god created them that way or some witch caused them to look like that).
* No precursor race to control their gene pool (meaning no stuff like breeding them for slavery purposes or whatnot).
* Can be eugenics if you can provide a plausible advantage for them to choose to breed with those characteristics (meaning no forced eugenics)
* They must become an entirely new species, but cross breeding with humans will be fine.
* Might also be caused by the naturally available diet to them, but if so, must take into account that they don't become large again once they start developing (meaning they don't increase once they start eating the same thing humans eat)
[Answer]
**They are Neanderthals**
If you are familiar with high fantasy and you look at recreations of Neanderthals currently being done with better and better levels of detail, you will immediately notice a striking similarity between the proportions of a classic fantasy dwarf and a Neanderthal (both body proportion as well as facial features). Give a Neanderthal a beard and you have a somewhat tall dwarf.
This provides a very obvious launchpad from which speculation can commence. Neanderthals had very large brains and we have no reason to believe they were any less intelligent than we were. They also had muscles and bones more similar to a real ape than a human, which provides a tremendous amount of physical strength, at the expense of some level of fine motor manipulation (not enough to stop tool use).
From this archetypical Neanderthal, we can speculate that a large, genetically diverse population were able to find a large cave system and began to live there. Why would they do this? Well, archaeologists and anthropologists believe that Neanderthal populations were largely wiped out because of the aggressive expansion of Homo-Sapiens, and not just in war. In many cases, Homo-Sapiens may have simply integrated Neanderthal populations and then bred them into homogeneity through integration. Let's say that there was friction between an expanding Homo-Sapiens population and an established Neanderthal population, and the latter, lacking numbers to either stand up to them in the open or maintain their unique identity if flooded with them, just took to the caves to avoid this competitor. They would have had to favor secrecy and avoiding open conflict. They would have had to rapidly adapt to a hostile environment with limited food sources (mostly rapid raiding excursions). Tool use would be in great demand immediately.
Let's say over a long period of time, cleverness (tool use, inventiveness) and small stature (to better move around in limited confines of caves) were favored. The group was able to set up satellite colonies by sending family units across valleys to mountain ranges on the other side. Infrequent trading between the satellites keeps the genetic base stable. Some inherent dislike for the big people keeps the advanced Neanderthals from interbreeding with humans. They stubbornly maintain their independence and survive primarily by remaining hidden from humans most of the time.
If you can solve the economic problem of living in caves (food supply underground) you have a plausible scientific explanation for dwarves.
EDIT
Willk and I posted basically the same answer at the same time. He removed his, but he had a very good illustration to show the concept.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yc9EG.jpg)
[Answer]
Evolution depends on many things, the easiest to control in your story is mating pressures,
What we know about Dwarfs... 100% certain
* They're shorter than average.
What Fantasy stories tell us about dwarfs
* They are short
* They are usually quite stocky
* They like living underground
* They always have beards (even the women sometimes)
* They like mining for Gold, Silver, Mythril etc
Some sections of LOTR have Gimli give us more info that might be useful, ()some people believe there are no dwarf women (due to the beards) and that dwarfs are natural sprinters.
Now if that first section is to be believed, it may be because dwarf women look similar to dwarf men, or possibly, dwarf women are not as common as Dwarf men, This is the key!
Shortness is both genetic and environmental, generally speaking well fed children that have balanced diets will be taller than their parents. *but what if they had the exact same diet as their parents had during youth?* then in theory there would be no environmental change, so it forces it down to genetics.
If Gimli from LOTR is to be believed, Dwarfs are natural sprinters, not marathon runners. so why would this be, possibly because once they'd mined some Gold, or Mythril, or Handwavium... then they'd run back to the forge and smelt it and stamp it with their name. so speed was key. but what about short passageways, running down them would lead to banged heads... a lot of them. this could mean that they were slower and therefore either have their gold ore taken by another dwarf (or person of any race) or their accumulation of wealth would be slower as they'd be unconscious all the time.
Now if dwarf women preferred richer men do to that being the culture of dwarfs, then they would tend to favour shorter more conscious men, or at least the faster ones, which often were the shorter ones. and being that each woman would have her pick of many men, it could slowly remove the taller genes from the gene pool.
This same line of reasoning could be used for the other options, more time mining means more wealth so why live above ground and take an hour to walk down when you could just live down there, less distance to the gold, more time ming, more money. i think the key deciding factor with dwarfs is that if dwarf women are not as common, make this the case and everything can be explained by runaway Darwinian traits. think shortness and beards being the peacocks tail.
*I appreciate this doesn't look fondly upon dwarf women, making them look like gold diggers, proverbially speaking of course. But it would be down to cultural differences, and is not intended to offend normal human women, especially those that read this.*
**Edit:** as for their stockiness, when compared to Elder Scroll's Falmer, those creatures have very little in the way of fat for insulation against the cold of living underground, yes working would generate heat, but while sleeping underground like that they would burn through calories fast keeping themselves warm, which means more food (a limited resource underground) so being fat and short reduces surface area from which to lose heat while adding the insulation needed to retain it.
And as far as food goes, underground surface connected aquifers could provide a plentiful supply of fish, as well as cave fungus and lichen etc. while i've only ever been caving once, it surprised me just how much life is down there. in theory there's no reason why a dwarf cave would be any different
[Answer]
## **Photosensitivy genetic disease**
This Powerful restriction drive people to avoid sunlight, therefore a subterran civilization could be a good place to be.
Have long hair and beard could be very useful to protect skin whenever going "into the light" is required, but not really useful underground --> perhaps only the "explorers" have beard or appropiate clothing for this task (sun glasses, hats..)
## **Diggers**
Being small and robust are positive traits for digging, rather than agile and tall. 6-pack dwarfs are more atractive?
## **Magnetoreception**
A very useful genetic modification for dwarves that allow them to orient below surface AND detect magnetic anomalities (metallic ores, minerals, water) of vital importance to survivality.
[Answer]
A very big threat led the humans of a region to found refuge underground in natural caves.
The caves were providing the food they needed (mushrooms, algaes and fish of underground river) and the threat was so big outside that they stayed here. But with time passing, the threat managed to penetrate the caves and this people had to escape by tunnels to go deeper and deeper... These tunnels were very small and only the smallest "humans" escaped succefully…
This track lasted for generations and the only one able to go deeper were the holders of the small-size-genes. After a thousands and thousands of years, all of them were really small.
The underground habitat was pretty dangerous, creatures living in the depths were formidable ennemies and were so perfectly adapted to their environment that trying to avoid them by being discreet was useless and only resulted on be killed... Only the strongest and resistant dwarfs were able to live long enough to have kids when the frail ones died inevitably.
In the depth of the depth, the futur dwarfs finaly found the place where their transformation will reach its final form. They landed in a gargantuan cave covered with shinny gemstones, minerals and metal ores. Thanks to these light gems the dawrf kept their eyes similars to human's eyes. In addition, this cave was filled with extremely energetic mushrooms. Eating these mushrooms led to an unexpected change. Minerals and natural radioactivity stored in the mushrooms led to some specific DNA mutations ! Metal elements such as Mithril (Mi 119) get fixed in the dwarf DNA and harden their bones. With these mutations, dwarfs became stronger than ever, able to take some serious hits without getting permanently injuried.
Haversting the ressources of their cave, they became talented smiths. One day, strong enought to face it, they managed to kill the threat and began their long ascension to the “Surface”. When they reached this place their myths were talking about, they found a race called human and they didn’t have nothing in common with them as they were tall and very frail…
For the beards, you have to ask to dwarf ladies why they found them so sexy that they can't resist it...
[Answer]
Think of it in terms of animals. Humans came from arboreal, then grasslands-focused stock, so lankiness helped in brachiation and later, in spotting predators/prey over the grasses and chasing/fleeing over open terrain.
Dwarves live in tunnels. What common characteristics do underground/semi-underground mammals have? Broad forepaws for digging, relatively stocky for their size with a powerful core (think badgers/moles/voles), as their digging is more about sheer muscle than velocity/leverage. Relying on vibration/smell over sight, and valuing what they find in their tunnels (minerals, gems) for trade and culture, and what grows underground (tubers/mushrooms) for food and alcohol.
[Answer]
Let's look at it from a evolutionary point of view.
Humans have evolved from "apes" in the savana regions of the world. We have then travelled to the rest of the world and developed to different races/skin pigmentation/whateva'h.
Lets say that dwarves and humans have a common ancestor ape but the two "tribes" of apes migrated into different territories before humans became humans and dwarves became dwarves.
Dwarve-apes could migrate into terrains where the was a lot of predators on surface but the caves and "underground" was pretty safe. Then those apes that stayed as in the caves would survive and give their offspring their genes. They could even start to eat worms/plants/animals that lived underground and start digging tunnels to find more food and create more space as the population grew bigger. With big population comes war, with war comes weapons. As the resources underground are pretty scare there were many conflicts in the dwarvean world, thus the cult of axe and warriors. War is costly, you need weapons, food and logistics. Gold, gemes and other things are valued by humans, elves and others, thus giving dwarves a reason to mine them. They could as well like gold them self.
[Answer]
Similar to the Neanderthal idea mentioned above, a good way to explain dwarves would be to have them be part of a human species which somehow survives to the modern day. They can be part of the homo genus, but not be homo sapiens like us. Homo floresiensis, [a human species nicknamed "Hobbits"](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/insider/are-hobbits-real.html), were [shorter than most modern humans](https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fnature04022). Make this species stronger [and not go extinct 50,000 years ago](http://apnews.excite.com/article/20160330/us-sci--older_hobbits-e9ec537395.html) - then you have your dwarves. The short stature is attributed to the hobbits living on a small island leading to [insular dwarfism: the process and condition of large animals evolving or having a reduced body size[a] when their population's range is limited to a small environment, primarily islands.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism) So, you can have the dwarfs be a human species that is small, strong, and good with tools who came from a small island environment with caves that led to them developing differently than homo sapiens.
It might also help to have some kind of predator on the island that this new species can hunt but still poses a significant threat, causing members of this species to spend some degree of their early history in caves or in partially submerged underground structures for protection.
[Answer]
The real question is "what prevented short, muscular creatures from evolving into humans?"
Many of our hominid ancestors were much smaller than us. Species of australopithicus were maybe 3-4 feet tall. So dwarves could just be a branch of the hominid family tree that never increased their body size. To figure out why that might happen, we can look at why humans *did* begin to grow taller. We have evidence that australopithicenes were hunted by large predators - becoming larger may have made humans less of an appealing target, as large prey tend to be harder to bring down (ie why animals like elephants have few predators).
Maybe dwarves found some other way to keep from getting carried off by giant birds or eaten by leopards - like hiding underground, where a small body size would also make it easier to survive in an environment where food is scarcer (caves are not exactly known for being particularly full of things to eat). The same could be true if our proto-dwarves instead avoid predators by migrating into a desert (where the main "predators" tend to just be scavengers who pick off anything that dies from heatstroke). In that case, living underground could evolve as a way of getting out of the sun and/or accessing underground water sources.
[Answer]
For this speciation to happen, there are two things that are not true in our own real world, but which will happen to be the biological truth in your world:
* **Women in some region choose their sexual partners based solely and exclusively on penis size.** Humans in general don't do it - when they do, it's more likely personal preference. But some animals choose their partners thus, leading to things like the great hooked squid, whose penis is [as large as himself](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onykia_ingens#cite_ref-6).
* **The L rule is true:**
If you catch my meaning.
As to why they are so stocky, they pack the same mass in a smaller chassis. In the immortalized words of Sir Mix-a-Lot:
>
> Thirty six, twenty four, thirty six
>
> Ha ha, only if she's 5'3"
>
>
>
] |
[Question]
[
**The Context**
I have a group of genetically engineered people known as 'crows'. Their genome has been meddled with significantly enough that they are unable to successfully reproduce with humans, but are similar enough in physical appearance to humans for their ancestry to be apparent (think humans with fused keratin quills in place of hair, claws and various little internal changes).
Alongside these crows we have regular unedited humans.
**The Question**
How would our genetically modified crow-people be classified using Linneaen taxonomy?
Options I have identified:
1. *Homo sapiens corvus* (subspecies of *Homo sapiens*)
2. *Homo corvus* (separate species within the *Homo* genus)
3. *Anthropocorvus sapiens* (separate genus within the *Hominidae* family)
Full disclosure, my regular humans are in the earlier days of Linneaen taxonomy, so the architecture is in place but a lot of people are still very woolly as to what the definitions mean. Furthermore, they're solidly bigoted towards the crows so will likely try to dehumanise them by placing them outside the genus *Homo*. However, starting from a basis of how *we* might classify genetically engineered species would help inform that.
Plus, it's an interesting question :)
[Answer]
That they are genetically engineered is a red herring -- in the early days of Linnean taxonomy nobody has the faintest idea about genetics.
1. *~~H. sapiens corvus~~* -- no way.
*"Cannot reproduce with humans"* means that they would definitely not be put in the same species.
2. *~~H. corvus~~* -- most likely not, not even today.
Feathers / quills instead of hair and claws instead of nails would take them out of genus *Homo*. I would say that they would take them out of [Simiiformes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simian) / Anthropoidea altogether.
And that would arguably be true even today; taxonomists would quarrel for a very long time: expect tons of flames on the dedicated mailing lists and in the journals. Modern cladistic taxonomy is not really prepared to deal with such mixed-up species.
3. *Anthropocorvus sapiens* -- maybe.
In the early days of Linnean classification gentlemen had a solid classical education. *Anthropocorvus* is a Latin-Greek hybrid: such hybrids (tele-vision, meta-data, chiro-practor) were shunned in those days; I would suggest *Anthropocorax* (same meaning, *corax* is Greek for "raven").
Modern taxonomy is strongly biased towards recognizing evolutionary relationships; as such, it is taken by surprise by horizontal gene transfer, resulting from genetic engineering or not. I don't think that there is an easy way to tell where this *Anthropomimus coracoides* would fit.
[Answer]
Whatever the person who first describes them (likely the one that creates them) wants, there are very few rules about naming a new species. If you are the first to scientifically describe a new species you get to name it. The only rules are you can't use a name that already exists, and later you can't name it after yourself (Carnegie! {shakes fist}) and you can't use something vulgar.
If he wants to name it *Pan aves*, *Homo angelus*, or *Cheedle popackski* he can. Even if someone later argues for changing the Genus name the species name will stick. We have organsms named after famous people, ictional places and characters, and even just becasue they sound cool. We have *Stygimoloch spinifer* which means "horned devil dragon from the river of death".
In this case with humans being the original organsms they were created from putting them in Homo is almost certain prejudice be damned, remember in the early days there was an attempt to label the several extant human races as separate species but few argued they were not part of Homo.
given the setting the last two options are far more likely, if they have no other avian characteristics besides feathers ending up inside homo is possible but if they can't interbreed the last is more likely. keep in mind there were as many as five living Homo species in early works, based on continent of origin, so even the location of the crow people will matter. Often they were ranked by stereotypical characteristics so they would likely end up at the bottom of the barrel in Homo.
[Answer]
As @AlexP notes, this is a new problem for which there is no standard solution, neither in traditional taxonomy nor in cladistics. All our systems of naming of multicelluar organisms assume that a new species is descended from a single older species. In case case like this, where the species in question has ancestry from multiple species, my guess is that whoever names one first will have a significant influence on how it's done thereafter.
If it happened today (which I think is your question) all three names would be possible. Many people would insist on *Homo sapiens corvus* to avoid a name which degrades them as non-human. (That's today -- obviously not in your world.) In fact, I'll bet that some would argue for just plain *H. sapiens* for the same reasons. The other two possibilities would be in play also.
In the long run, there'd be war among the taxonomists (with lots of opportunities to publish papers) and in time something like a consensus would emerge. I wouldn't bet on it being driven by scientific reasons, though.
] |
[Question]
[
The introduction of FTL travel/communication in a relativistic universe may effectively be equal to having a time-machine with all the problems that may entail for causality.
I would like to avoid that in my setting and I think I have managed. But I'm not a 100% sure of that. So please, look at my setup and tell me if I got it right or wrong.
The non-FTL bits:
Ships can do up to 0.35C and accelerating to such speeds from 0 takes about 24 hours. There is some handwaving technology like "artificial gravity" and "acceleration compensators" to keep the people inside the ships comfortable.
All inhabited star-systems make use of "Terran Standard Time" which is a sort of NTP system on steroids that provides a single consistent time-source everywhere. It makes use of signals from pulsars and quasars to synchronize across star-systems. Local clocks and clocks on-board ships that are subject to time-dilation can be calibrated against this time-system.
This also provides an "independent frame of reference" which is often important in discussing relativistic speeds and FTL.
The FTL part:
Ships go FTL by means of a Hyper-drive. This drive makes jumps varying between 0.5 and 10 light-years. (The maximum/minimum distances are determined by several technical limitations of the drive.)
After a jump the Hyper-drive needs to cool down and requires some re-calibration. This takes between 1 and 2 hours depending on the exact type of ship.
You can't install 2 drives and use them in turns to minimize the down-time between jumps. (You can't even have a spare drive as cargo.) The unused drive will resonate with the active one and the result is spectacular, but unfortunately such a mini-supernova is rather fatal for anything within several light-seconds.
Furthermore Hyper-drives are sensitive to gravity. You can't start a jump or end one too deep inside the gravity well of a large mass like a star or a planet. If you try anyway you will cause the same mini-supernova as you would get by having 2 drives on-board.
This unsafe zone is called the gravity shadow and for our Sun the gravity shadow has a radius of 3.5 light-days. For a star 4x as massive the radius is 2x as large. For most planets the shadow normally falls within the much larger shadow of its star (e.g Jupiter has a shadow just over 2.5 light-hours) so you normally just ignore the planets.
It makes no sense for a FTL ship to travel for weeks inside the shadow to deliver the groceries to an inner world, while meanwhile it could have traveled to several other star-systems. So FTL ships typically stay clear of the shadow altogether and will transfer cargo and passengers to in-system ships for further distribution.
The ship must travel at a minimum velocity of 0.23C before a jump can be initiated. When the Hyper-drive kicks in the ship simply vanishes from normal space and re-appears some time later at the endpoint of the jump. The ship will exit the jump traveling at the same velocity and in the same direction as before the jump started.
For an outside observer the ship will have covered the distance in jump with an apparent speed of approximately 2 light-years per hour.
The people on board will notice nothing strange except that the view out of the windows will go completely black. Time progresses normally for the people on board at the same rate as it as doing before and after the jump. So for them the time in-jump will be slightly less than for the outside observer due to the time-dilation in effect when the jump was initiated while traveling at a minimum of 0.23C.
(Why this happens is a question that has been driving the astrophysicists nuts for centuries ever since the FTL drive was discovered. Every theory insists that on-board the jump would appear to be instantaneous, but that is just not the case.)
Ships in-jump are completely isolated from normal space and each other if they happen to be in-jump simultaneously.
There is no FTL communication in my setup. Communication relays throughout a star-system forward messages to FTL ships about to leave the system. The ships will offload these messages to the comms-relays in the destination systems upon arrival.
For routes where there is a lot of communication traffic small drone-ships jump back and forth at regular intervals just to carry messages. These drones are called "ponies" after the Pony Express.
These "ponies" are also used to get a replacement Hyper-drive to a ship with a broken drive. After all, due to the resonance effect, you can't transport a spare drive on a FTL ship. So a pony is send to the ship and the ship's engineering staff will remove its drive and put it in their own ship.
That was a long story but I wanted to give you a good feel for the setup.
Now for the big question: Is there some way to exploit this setup for time-machine shenanigans?
[Answer]
In short: Yes, as others answerers have shown, a system like that which you describe could be used for potentially-paradox-inducing time travel, if the universe doesn't provide some deep, fundamental way to forbid it.
What makes FTL time travel possible is the ability to perform FTL jumps in different frames of reference moving at different speeds relative to each other. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUMGc8hEkpc), for instance, shows how an FTL ship can go back in time by performing two FTL jumps- one at 2x lightspeed relative to Earth, and one at 2x lightspeed relative to some random reference frame moving at nearly the speed of light away from Earth.
In order to prevent time travel, you could find a way to prevent FTL jumps being made in different reference frames. In other words, you could decree that all FTL jumps must be made relative to some agreed-upon universal frame of reference. All FTL travelers would be moving forward in time relative to this frame, and so there wouldn't be any serious causality issues. In terms of the spacetime diagrams in that video, hyperdrives could have nearly-horizontal world lines in the universal reference frame, but they could never dip downward, into the past (which would allow time paradoxes); and in other sub-lightspeed reference frames, the hyperdrive's world line could never drop into the 45° region at the bottom (and doing so would *be* a time paradox).
However, this raises the question of what this universal reference frame is and why FTL travel only works relative to it. It can't be centered on Earth, or the Sun, or indeed the Milky Way- because if aliens from, say, the Andromeda galaxy have technology that works in a similar manner, but relative to their home system, that's all the ingredients needed for a serious temporal conundrum.
It's tempting to say that these FTL drives operate relative to the fabric of spacetime itself, but any physicist will tell you that spacetime has no such universal reference frame. The universe does, however, offer something close: all the matter within it. If you zoom out far enough and account for the uniform expansion of space, everything seems to be pretty much stationary. This seems like an ideal reference frame to lock the FTL drives to- but "the average motion of all the galaxies in the universe" is a bit nebulous. Especially since the universe is expanding.
Enter [the Cosmic Microwave Background](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background). It's the closest thing we have to a universal frame of reference- essentially representing the motion of all the matter in a particular spherical shell at the time of photon decoupling- that is, when the opaque plasma that filled the early universe cooled to the point that electrons could bind to protons, creating *transparent* neutrally-charged hydrogen gas. The Local Group (consisting of the Milky Way, Andromeda, and a few other galaxies) is, by the way, moving somewhere around 630 km/s relative to the CMB, according to the "Data reduction and analysis" section in that Wikipedia page. So although you might be able to use a CMB-locked FTL drive to visit the Crab Nebula sometime before the light from its star's supernova reached Earth (but long after the star went nova and the nebula formed), returning to Earth would take you forward in time by exactly the same amount. You'd return home after you left, with no chance of paradoxes.
As for why the FTL drives are locked to the CMB... That's up to you, really. Maybe they rely on some intrinsic property of the universe that modern science has yet to discover. Or maybe they work by shifting over into a parallel universe ("hyperspace") in which the speed of light is infinite and relativity doesn't really happen, and which just happens to be stationary relative to the CMB. Whatever; just make up something that sounds good and/or would make a good story.
[Answer]
Leaving aside the issue that I mentioned in my comment, this can easily be used for time travel.
* We'll do this in empty space to avoid your "unsafe" zones.
* We assume you start at a space station that doesn't move, which will be our "static" frame of reference.
* Accelerate to 0.341175c (that number makes the numbers easier later) relative to the station, and consider the point 100 light years away (from the ship's frame of reference) in its direction of travel. That point is only 94 light years away as seen from the space station's frame of reference.
* If it's the 1st of January 2000 on the space station and on your ship (they're the same because they start in the same place, although at different speeds) then the time at the point 100 light years away that the ship sees as the 1st of January 2000 is seen by the space station as 1st of January 1994.
* So take the ship there, which will take two days.
* It will arrive on 3rd of January 2000 by its own clock, but on 3rd January 1994 as seen by the space station (which of course won't actually see the arrival until 3rd January 2088).
* Now decelerate the ship until it's at rest relative to the space station. Let's assume this takes a week. It's now 10 January 1994 (as seen by the space station).
* Jump back to the space station, taking another two days, and you arrive on the 12th of January 1994, almost six years before you left.
I might have got the maths wrong for my Lorentz transformations of the time coordinate, which means the six year time difference could be some other amount, but it will certainly exist and be more than the 10 days that you can afford it to be if you don't want time travel.
[Answer]
If you are going for [science-fiction](/questions/tagged/science-fiction "show questions tagged 'science-fiction'"), don't fret too much about realism. You are allowed some considerable degree of fantastic elements - that's what sci-fi is about! If you wish to be 100% accurate, you will never get a novel written (or a tabletop RPG session done, or a videogame developed...).
Two of my favorite sci-fi books are *The Forever War* by Joe Haldeman and *Old Man's War* by John Scalzi. The former even won a Hugo, a Nebula and a Locus awards! Those books feature FTL and at no moment the authors attempt to science it out; In *Old Man's War* there is a part where a more science-inclined character tries to explain the FTL mechanism to the protagonist, but it stays at a metaphoric level.
---
That said, if you wish to be really correct, you are out of luck. To understand why, you must familiarise yourself with the concept of [light cones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VgaNX.png)
>
> Because signals and other causal influences cannot travel faster than light (...), **the light cone plays an essential role in defining the concept of causality**: for a given event E, the set of events that lie on or inside the past light cone of E would also be the set of all events that could send a signal that would have time to reach E and influence it in some way. For example, at a time ten years before E, if we consider the set of all events in the past light cone of E which occur at that time, the result would be a sphere (2D: disk) with a radius of ten light-years centered on the position where E will occur. So, any point on or inside the sphere could send a signal moving at the speed of light or slower that would have time to influence the event E, while points outside the sphere at that moment would not be able to have any causal influence on E. Likewise, the set of events that lie on or inside the future light cone of E would also be the set of events that could receive a signal sent out from the position and time of E, so the future light cone contains all the events that could potentially be causally influenced by E. **Events which lie neither in the past or future light cone of E cannot influence or be influenced by E in relativity**.
>
>
>
If you travel faster than light, you can travel to outside a light cone. That allows you to break causality.
Suppose you have friends in Proxima Centauri and you wish to pay them a visit. You hop into a ship, take the hyper-drive and boom, you're there!
From your point of view, you first entered the ship, travelled to the hyper-drive, then unboarded in Proxima Centauri.
From your friends' point of view though, first you unboarded the ship, and then, four years and a couple months later, they will see the ship preparing to pass through the hyper-drive headed their direction. Effect precedes cause.
This can lead to a load of fun, because you can add relativity to it. Let's say I am in a ship travelling at close to the speed of light, say 0.9987c relative to Earth - **but not accelerating**. Why that speed? Because from your point of view, clocks in my ship tick at about half normal speed. But from my point of view, my clocks are fine, it's yours that are slowed down. You can double check with [this calculator](http://www.emc2-explained.info/Dilation-Calc/#.XYhbSJNKjOR).
It is time t0. You know where I will be in two minutes (relative to you), so you spend a minute and a half writing a message in a bottle. Then you send it through the hyper-drive at **your** t1m30s. From your point of view, I would have received the message in about two minutes your time, but my watch should say one minute has passed. But in my watch, two minutes would have passed, and through my magical super-telescope I would see one minute has passed on your watch.
Relativity works like that. [There is no simultaneity for people travelling relativistic to each other.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity)
So I pick the message at what I believe is **my** t1m, and because I type fast I take 20 seconds to write ***"don't send me that message I just saw you write or we will all die!"*** and send it to you via hyper-drive. You will receive my reply at **your** t40s, which is 50 seconds before you send me your message! I have sent you a message from the future!
Ergo, FTL + relativity allows for one to receive messages, goods and other things from the future, so it does allow for time travel.
[Answer]
The max 1 jump drive per ship seems like a strange limitation. I would not be satisfied with that in a movie, it makes no sense.
Since you have no FTL communication or other ways of observing light that hasn't reached you, you can easily make a much more sensible explanation to why you can't have 2 drives:
It's not the drive itself that's the limitation, it's your computers. It can only calculate a jump trajectory based on light it's able to see. If it jumps 10 lightyears, the light received will show your destination as it were 10 years ago, and your computer needs a lot of time calibrating your engine to a correct jump by extrapolating that data 10 years into the future to predict a good jump path through spacetime. You can't calculate the next jump until you have completed the previous one, since you need to observe the data, hence two jump drives would not get you faster going.
Failure to calculate a proper jump could have a very high risk of jumping into planets, suns or black holes. You could argue that the jump path must be carefully planned since the trajectory will tend to draw towards gravity wells on the way and fall into their center if not correctly compensated by the computer. Which you need the data to do.
[Answer]
Yours is a science-fiction universe. To it simply if you decide causality isn't violated with FTL travel, then it isn't and you don't need to worry about time travel effects.
Specifically your fictional universe has established a preferred frame of reference based on pulsars and quasars. All FTL jumps will take inside that preferred frame of reference. This means one of the principal assumptions of special relativity does not apply. This is the assumption that there are no preferred frames of reference.
What you describe is a perfectly acceptable model for FTL travel in a science-fiction universe. It is irrelevant whether this obeys all the principles of special relativity. Fiction often traffics in entities that do not have a basis in reality. Vide vampires, zombies and shrinking rays among many other fictions. Science-fiction invariably deal in conceptual entities that are both fantastic and scientific. FTL travel is commonly accepted trope of science-fiction. The majority of science-fiction employing FTL travel will flatly ignore time travel problems as normal practice. Your fictional model of FTL travel sets out a plausible set of rules within which it operates. Just go with it.
[Answer]
First, see [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/46873/are-there-any-ways-to-allow-some-form-of-ftl-travel-without-allowing-time-travel/47038#47038) and others for all the detail.
You need to **draw s-t diagrams**.
In your case,
>
> an outside observer the ship will have covered the distance in jump with an apparent speed of approximately 2 light-years per hour.
>
>
>
you can draw a FTL transit track with this slope.
Ah, but which outside observer? You probably mean to use the standard time you describe earlier, so OK it's not ambiguous.
However, your FTL transit track seems to vary based on the direction of travel. In your sample diagram which only shows one dimension of space) just draw a round trip, and you’ll see they slope different ways.
Since all FTL transit tracks are not all parallel, we suspect this can be used to violate causality. It might still be OK though: if you model it as an instantaneous transit in the standard reference frame followed by a delay based on the length of transit, then you are fine!
The big deal is: is your “independent frame of reference” a construct used for standardized timekeeping, or is it a real preferred frame that defines all FTL transit tracks?
Your statement of “speed” might be stated in this preferred frame, or you might be sloppy and didn’t realize it was an issue.
Likewise, the ship’s minimum velocity: relative to *what*? In [this post](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/47166/how-does-paradox-free-ftl-travel-affect-the-details-of-my-story-or-gameplay) I use the terms SRF and GRF; if you are attempting to indicate that SRF=GRF, you are fine, you just didn’t make clear that FTL transit is based on a specific reference frame.
The only other issue is whether your gravity shadows are properly sized. “For a star 4x as massive the radius (of the exclusion zone) is 2x as large.” That doesn’t make sense physically. Since the strength of gravity at the edge of the zone will increase with the mass, for massive enough objects you will still have strongly curved spacetime.
[Answer]
There's really no way around it: if you have relativity, then FTL equals time travel and time travel equals FTL.
The best solution to the issue that I've seen in published fiction is this: A powerful entity from the future arrives and makes it known that it *will not tolerate* time travel shenanigans in its past, which is your present.
And, that's all it does. It just sits there in the solar system that it claimed, being all mysterious and keeping to itself, but anyone who decides to *try* time travel suffers a very dramatic and high-energy accident.
This gets you a world where time travel is possible and everyone knows it, but--after a few examples were made--no one *does* it.
[Answer]
No, because FTL doesn't equal time travel. I know, I'm a heretic, but hear me out.
Given any inertial frame of reference an object can travel at any arbitrary velocity to a point in that reference frame. Let's make it near-instantaneous, just to get the most absurd results we can. At T0 you hit the button and at T0 plus a few seconds you have transitioned from Earth orbit to a point a hundred light years away. Congratulations, you are now a hundred light years from Earth, and your time is the same as the time on Earth. You mess about out there for a few weeks, taking measurements and so on and then you hit the return button and return to Earth, where the same period of time has elapsed.
If as part of your messing about you took extremely accurate observations of Earth and recorded a radio transmission made 100 years ago, that doesn't mean that you've traveled back in time. Your time and Earth's time were in sync during the entire journey. It's just that radio waves from Earth take 100 years to get that far.
And that's the key here. You don't get time travel by moving in space, no matter how fast you go. What you get is historical photons that have been in transit for a long time.
And it doesn't matter how many extra frames of reference you throw into the mix. In any frame of reference the trip will have the exact same consequences. It's only when you start fooling around with irrelevancies like mapping one part of the trip to reference frame A and another part of the trip to reference frame B that things like time differentials start to pop up. And when they do it should be a clear indication that you just screwed up the math. It's like adding 20 degrees Centigrade then subtracting 20 degrees Fahrenheit and being surprised that the temperature is different.
So don't worry about time travel. It's not involved if you don't make an effort to do it... unless there's something about the drive you're using that makes it happen. That's up to you.
And yes, I know that there are a lot of people out there who disagree. Often stridently. And there are a lot of very smart minds among them. Just as soon as they solve the problem presented by the privileged position of the present (my, how alliterative that was) I'll reconsider.
---
Let me explain a little more, since from the comments it appears that a few people don't understand.
In any single inertial frame of reference no amount of spacial translation can result in temporal translation. Ever. The only way you can make time travel happen is by a bait-and-switch where you do half of the math in one inertial reference frame and the other half in a different inertial reference frame. Regardless of which inertial reference frame you choose, if you do the math in that frame alone you get zero time travel. Time dilation due to acceleration (if any) yes, time travel no.
What people get most wrong however is thinking that seeing photons from a ship arriving before you see the photons from it leaving means that the ship has traveled in time. **It has not.** It might look like it has done so, but if you know - *as we all should* - that the speed of light is not infinite then you can figure out what happened. You can even work out how fast the ship was travelling in your reference frame.
And this is where the Relativity of Simultaneity comes from. Given two events A and B that can be perceived, observers in different locations in space relative to the events will *perceive* those events happening in different sequence. Whether A happens before B, B happens before A or they two happen together will be perceived differently by observers at different locations.
But if the observers know the distance, relative motion and other pertinent factors all of them could calculate the actual origination time of the events in their own inertial reference frames, because they're not primitive knuckleheads.
[Answer]
Everyone who suggests that FTL *can* violate causality is ignoring "Time's Arrow", macro-system temporal asymmetry, it prevents actual *physical* time travel and until it's solved as a [mathematical] problem in physical systems it always will (and probably even once we understand it well enough to solve for it still will until we can nullify the effects of entropy), it excludes 3 dimensional beings, or objects, from realising time-space travel curves that would violate causality. Everything I've read or seen on the physics of time travel agrees on this point, as such any form of FTL must conform to this limitation meaning that if you want FTL it must be locked against some frame of reference in which it, by definition, cannot then violate causality. What the hell that frame of reference actually is is a mystery to me but that's not my problem.
] |
[Question]
[
I need a large recession to hit my small country of 4.5 million people.
It's similar to New Zealand, similarly developed, also an island nation, and a GDP around 150,000 million USD.
Most importantly, it needs to not be obvious that the government caused it. Essentially, high unemployment within months, which the government will "fix" with massive job creation - effectively turning the government into the largest employer in the world, and the country into a massive company.
I play Cities Skylines, and the fastest way to loose money there is to cut the electricity off, but that is clearly linked back to the government.
How can they cause this recession without it being obvious it was them?
[Answer]
Raise the minimum wage.
By increasing the minimum wage the government will put swaths of low-skilled low-earning poor people out of a job by making it illegal to hire them. The businesses that depend on these types of workers will have trouble staying in business and will either have to increase prices (and lose customers) or cut back on their work force. Or go out of business altogether.
All the while, the government can claim the high moral ground of being "compassionate" towards the poor by raising the minimum wage. And, according to the government, it's only because of "all the greedy business owners that people are being laid off, raising prices and closing down completely."
Bonus points to the government because the business owners will complain; then the responsible politicians can respond to the complaints by claiming they need to be re-elected in order to continue to further protect the poor and the public against all these evil, greedy rich business owners who want to raise prices and cut wages.
[Answer]
One way to cause a recession without much suspicion on governments part would be to pour in a lot of fake paper currency, coins or any kind of currency that can be easily faked.
**You can't blame the government becuase**
Those poor servants of the people would be trying *their best* to root out the currency and unfortunately have no idea where the fake currency came from. Also your government could simply blame a rival country to make matters worse
**And its pretty grim recession because**
Your government's currency is now devalued because there is a lot of fake currency in the market. It leads to high inflation kind of like the German economic crisis which occurred between the world wars. Which was like very bad with 350% extra bad.
**To conclude**
For every two currency notes or coins or anything else you make, make one counterfeit and smuggle it through bribing or any other creative way and make sure it reaches the public hands and when enough counterfeits have been printed or counterfeit notes have been exposed simply try *Your Best* to root them out and blame your rival for basically everything that's happening in your country so that you now can potentially have a war and an economic crisis to worry about at the very same time. Looks pretty bad to me
[Answer]
>
> Implement something that causes a brain-drain, like to-the-letter
> Communism.
>
>
>
Equality up to a point that it's just not economical/logical to put in the extra work and study to become high-end professions such as doctors, scientists or someone in IT (and whatnot). Why would you study for 7+ years if you're going to earn just the same as anyone else who haven't (and who don't need to do a double shift).
A system like this will cause a brain drain. Dumber, less critical people, or those biased in your favor, will believe that you are indeed changing the system for the greater good and that they're going to be end up the better for it.
People who are ambitious and want to take initiative will leave, without them you will no longer have the economic and scientific leaders that you need to keep your country progressing, so you will collapse into a recession.
No one will blame you if the remaining populace supports you and your decisions.
Especially if you cultivate a culture in which bright people are condemned as traitors by default, consider [Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot).
[Answer]
Someone mentioned communist brain drain, but let's look at something more specific: the brain drain the Soviets created by purging the engineers. Solzhenitsyn goes into a lot of detail in Volume 1 of *The Gulag Archipelago*, but the basic idea is this:
Accuse your country's engineers of "wrecking," or intentional sabotage of critical infrastructure and industry. Put the leaders on trial publicly, detailing their treason and malevolence. (Minor figures like good foremen can be dealt with in smaller and less well-broadcast trials.) Then exile, imprison, or execute them all.
Now everyone who knows how to run a power station efficiently, repair a drill press, or build a road is in [Siberia|Gitmo|the grave]. Things start to break down, and there's a massive recession.
>
> You see, these terrible engineers! They damaged our country's factories so badly, look what they did to the economy. If the glorious government hadn't rooted them out and dealt with them, *think how much worse it could have gotten*! Now every good citizen has to pitch in, take a government job, and do your bit to repair the damage those evil engineers did!
>
>
>
[Answer]
Corruption is an easy way of doing it (and since that seems like the end goal anyway, it is a good place to start).
Take the sub-prime crisis for example. Removing of some financial regulations (which people were actually supportive of happening) resulted in, a handful of years later, a debt crisis that threatened the collapse of the entire economy and huge unemployment rates (for the US at least). If the gov't hadn't stepped in, and supported the banks and the auto industry, things would have gotten very bad in the US (relatively speaking). The tricky part? The only people who got blamed for it were politicians who had, at the time, voted on the measures to remove the regulation, and even they got off light. Those in power during the crisis weren't the same group of legislators, so they didn't get blamed for it. Your government could, for example, let their opposition party get something they want (like the conservatives wanted the regulations removed) and let it come full circle into a catastrophe.
Another good way to cause a recession is international trade. If, for example, your government (A) convinced another country (B) to take a protectionist stance and raise tariffs, it could ruin the manufacturing industry of country A. Country A could then have state run manufacturing that is subsidized or wholly owned by them. They could then negotiate removal of the tariff, and restore normalcy to the economy, but with the government owning most of the factories that were shut down before.
[Answer]
The government could hire a group of mercenaries to take out the electrical system, creating a similar environment you described in the question. Then the government would be the only ones with electricity because they 'protected' those towers from the terrorists.
[Answer]
A island nation is going to have imports and exports upon which it depends, drastically slowing down those shipments would cause a recession. Produce "credible" evidence of terrorist activity or a health scare so that the shipments get delayed, then put in enough reasonably seeming bureaucracy regarding releasing the shipments and suddenly prices at the grocery store are going up while employees are being furloughed. (Obviously, having black ops sink a bunch of shipments would have similar effect, but that is a more direct uncover-able action that would probably be considered treason if discovered).
[Answer]
### Edit
Not sure exactly how you would go about it quickly, as you requested, but diverting the flow of money that the government has control over is a sure fire method.
Some things could take months to accomplish (doing the ground work), others perhaps years in this way (as it applies in practice). For example, raising interest rates too high will limit borrowing between banks and cut off the flow of money in the economy. This would threaten the banks as well as almost all other industries that need money to keep going and it would perhaps cause runs on banks which subsequently makes markets unstable. Banks make money through lending. Making them unable to do that is a serious problem and would perhaps lead to effects in the amount of time you are interested in. Another point worth noting is that most people do not understand how these things work, so it would take time for people en mass to "catch up", which usually happens long after the fact.
And now for the ranting, more protracted and slower moving version. Maybe the two could be combined to good effect.
---
Well let's go down the list of "mistakes" (not accusing just, hmmm) that the US has made.
1. Reducing taxes, across the board, but mostly for the wealthy and putting lots of money into military development reduces the effectiveness of the GDP which makes a country poorer.
2. Borrowing lots of money to go to war pays off, it makes a lot of money indeed, but this usually happens when the wealthy are not being taxed as much and the money mostly goes to the top anyway and the country is still poor.
3. Huge debt accumulates and the government has little choice but to raise taxes on everyone, but not as much on the wealthy.
4. The crooked leaders get voted out because everyone hates everything, regardless of who is to blame, but the leaders are easiest to place the blame on.
5. New leadership finds ways to implement programs and tax accordingly but not threateningly and the economy starts to grow again, wages go up and people are happier.
So to put it all together:
1. Lower taxes to get everyone's support for anything stupid that you choose to do.
2. Stop spending money on infrastructure and programs for folks in need.
3. Divert that money into military development.
4. Start snooping around a smaller country, spread rumors, then go to war with them, beat them up, put new leadership in place there and make their government (essentially their people), pay for a portion of you having to go to war with them.
This solves 5 problems:
1. It creates a recession.
2. It deepens the recession.
3. It set the scenario for the next time you want a recession, because you've meddled in another country's affairs to a high degree, and they will probably break and start acting up again in a decade or two.
4. It provides a mechanism for pulling back out of the recession.
5. Greedy jerks ridiculously increase their wealth, but nobody else does, in fact it makes it worse for everyone else, and the greedy jerks matter most because they support the government and often provide the economic support structures that allow the government to function as it does, e.g. private industry is the backbone and the jerks run private industry.
P.S. Screw the government and the jerks.
[Answer]
The value of currency needs to be based on something, (or the people need to think its based on something) for it to be worth anything to a population. For example, gold. If the value of gold suddenly decreased, because say somebody discovered that if you dug down a few feet you could find an inexhaustable supply of gold, then your currency would suddenly become meaningless until your government determined some other way to represent the country's wealth.
So my suggestion is something to the effect of:
"Foreign powers are no longer interested in our currency/goods (for whatever reason), so we're unable to make essential imports/exports. Our most valuable commodity is now our talented young people and highly skilled workforce, which the government will train, and contract out to other nations, to ensure the country continues to run in the manner to which you have become accustomed."
EDIT:
Have a referendum à la Brexit.
[Answer]
## Give yourself to the Dark Side
**False-Flag terrorist attacks on infrastructure**
In the first day of trading after the September 11th attacks in the US, the stock markets plummeted. This accelerated an already rumbling recession, and kept it going much longer.
Now imagine if instead of one extremely dramatic attack, you had a series of attacks that collapsed bridges, cut canals, and destroyed power stations. Economic activity in many areas would grind to a halt; many other areas would lose access to the national economy and be reduced to a purely local economy. You'd have shortages of food, fuel, and medical treatment. All in all, a bad day to be living in that country.
Blaming the attacks on external terrorists would give the government an excuse to declare a state of emergency and vote itself sweeping powers to resolve the 'crisis'. They could immediately hire people to start infrastructure repairs, nationalise important utilities and industries, etc, then arrange more 'foreign terrorist attacks' to maintain the status quo.
This also has the advantage of allowing the government fairly granular, detailed control over exactly how bad things get. In an election year, you can "capture" a terrorist cell and publicly execute them; If private enterprise is rebuilding, you can destroy their supply lines, forcing them into bankruptcy.
This is essentially the method used by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine of the Star Wars universe to get himself named Emperor - he ran both sides of the Clone Wars, using the ebb and flow of the conflict to gather more and more power to himself.
] |
[Question]
[
Far Future. Almost every household has a 'fabber'. You put raw materials in it (can be almost anything) and it does what you program it to do. It transmutes the raw materials into what is needed. Then it basically 3-D-prints it. It only works if you have enough and the right quality of input material for the end product.
**I am looking for a logical, chemically sound (does not have to be hard science) system how valuable the input materials are.**
The first property that came to my mind was density. Would the most dense materials be the best to fuel the transmutation? Would Uranium be a better raw material than wood?
The materials are not constructed from the ground up, they are changed via (complete layman here) chemical or physical reactions. You know (I don't) changing number of electrons etc.
**EDIT: Thanks to Burki I was able to decide that the 'fabber' is a chemical (dis)-assembler.** This means that the transmution is limited to chemical changes.
Energy is cheap, but not unlimited.
Obvious valuable items are the blueprint for advanced items, of course. But raw materials? How can they be ranked and classified?
[Answer]
The physical manipulation sounds a bit far-fetched for my taste. You would have to add or remove protons or neutrons from the nucleus. The energy levels involved would make this a really hazardous device and i am pretty sure regulations would forbid that very soon.
The chemical approach seems a lot more likely.
Apart from the fact that the chemical composition of practically everything is known well enough to find out what materials you need and in what quantities, i think that once you have a molecular assembler, it should be logical to also have a molecular disassembler.
The disassembler would not only completely recycle any form of waste, it would also allow to safely store elements that are very reactive in a pure state. Think of oxygen's nasty habit to react with a huge variety of other elements, forming, among other things, rust. Or water. Or carbon dioxide.
Coming back to your original question: to make a gold ring, you would still need the gold. while it seems conceivable to make gold from lead by manipulating the atomic core, as stated above i don't think that will happen. Especially since all elements are available in massive amounts: we stand on an entire planet made up of all of them. Our household recycler could break down old circuit boards, sand, dirt, those ugly earrings that were a present for last christmas and a variety of oddities that used to go to a landfill.
The elements will be stored in stable molecules, disassembled again immediately before use and formed into the desired object.
In general most things will be simple to make, and the raw materials will literally just be lying around, because the last time we needed something similar, we used pretty much the same materials.
Only when you want things made of rarer elements (gold, or plutonium for example) will you need to either disassemble a fair part of the local scenery, or buy the materials.
Diamonds, on the other hand, will be mostly wothless, being made up entirely of carbon, they can be produced from leftover salad if you really want to. They might be convenient forms of storage, though, similar to lumps of charcoal with the added benefit that they make much less mess.
[Answer]
If you are using something which can manipulate materials at the molecular level to create the materials needed in the finished product, then you are talking about a "Santa Claus Machine". This is basically a combination of a plasma torch, to turn the input into ions, then a scaled up mass spectrometer which manipulate the plasma stream to separate the elemental material out of the stream.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/c2YF2.jpg)
Since we are manipulating the chemical elements, then your question is actually rather moot as worded. You cannot make carbon nano fibre cloth if the input material is a piece of rock containing silicon oxides and iron.
Instead, you will either have to carefully manage the input stock to extract the elements needed for whatever you are making, or dump in a very large quantity of various raw materials in order to ensure you have extracted enough of the correct raw materials for your project, and place the rest in storage. This alternative isn't too bad since you will have ingots of very pure raw materials in the storage bin waiting for the next time you turn on the machine, making assembly faster and more energy efficient.
The final kludge would be for a real "wilderness expedition", where you cannot know with a high degree of confidence what the elemental composition of the raw materials is going to be, or if that matches what you are going to want to make. In that case, a very powerful AI with a great deal of knowledge of engineering and material science is going to have to be part of the device, and intervene starting with the refining step once it understands the true nature and quantities of the raw materials being separated in the mass spectrometer portion of the Santa Clause Machine. Then it will start to modify the item you want to make by adjusting the design to reflect the physical and mechanical properties of what is actually available. With enough intelligence and latitude of action, it might actually substitute a totally different item which can still allow you to carry out your desired action.
Don't dispair, however. Human civilization is built around a fairly limited set of materials which are commonly found, so if you can find a source of metals, silicon, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen, you have the feedstocks for pretty much anything that human beings can make. Silicon and Oxygen can be extracted from rocks and beach sand, Hydrogen and Oxygen from water, Carbon from virtually any organics, carbonaceous asteroids or hydrocarbon fuels and so on. Nitrogen might be an issue in space (Titan has a good supply) and there might be local shortages, but in the long run, a Santa Claus Machine can do most of what you are asking.
See also: <http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/infrastructure.php>
[Answer]
Okay, so I think the assumption is: (a) The device is limited to chemical changes, i.e. it cannot change one element into another, it doesn't turn lead into gold or hydrogen into uranium. But (b) it can make almost any chemical change you want, i.e. given the raw elements, it can freely re-arrange them into molecules.
It follows, then, that if you want it to be able to produce any product imaginable, it must have quantities of each element on hand. It has to have some amount of hydrogen, some amount of helium etc., up to uranium (or beyond, if necessary). That sounds like a problem right there. It has to have stocks of 90-some-odd elements, 90 containers to keep them in etc.
I suppose that if it can do all this chemical re-arraning, it doesn't have to store them as elements. It might store molecules of complex compounds, and break them down as necessary. I'm not sure if that helps anything. Maybe it's more convenient to store liquids than gases, so for example you'd rather keep water than hydrogen and oxygen etc.
Some elements would likely be used more than others, depending on what it is you're trying to synthesize. If you're producing food, that's a lot of compounds of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, so you'd want a large supply of those, maybe not so much lithium. If you're mostly making engine parts, you need a lot of iron (to make steel) and aluminium etc.
That is, what elements you need mostly depends on what you're trying to synthesize.
[Answer]
I'd also advice avoiding physical changes, stick to chemical. Standing too close to something which is actually transmuting elements would probably leave you glowing in the dark.
You could have your machines break things down in each house or you could make it a utility with a feed line.
Something like this was used in The Diamond Age with big central Source's where elements were purified and combined into useful molecules and then fed down a Feed or pipe which branched out into every house where assemblers created whatever people needed.
It seems likely that not all substances are going to be easy to create with your assemblers. Anything that can be created with an assembler is going to be cheap, anything that cannot is going to be far more expensive.
Raw elements are still going to have a value. Making something out of gold will be more expensive than making it out of carbon.
Note that all of this will likely still be energy intensive.
[Answer]
I'm going to look at [*Bloom*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_(novel)) for my answer, in *Bloom* they use what they call "ladderdown"
to perform [nuclear transmutation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation) actually changing elements, the result is energy and whatever element they tunnel out of the reaction mass. If the main goal is energy, and it usually is, then you extract hydrogen all the way down. The society in the novel also uses fusion to create power and light elements.
Under these conditions the novel suggests that the most valuable material is [Uranium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium), as it has the most transmutation possibilities of any naturally available element, (and produces the most hydrogen for fusion) and that [Iron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron) is the cheapest, because Iron-58 is the low point in transmutation energy for both fusion and ladderdown due to it's binding energy. All of which is about right but I would suggest that Lead-208 or Bismuth-209, being stable (in the case of [Bismuth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth) it's not *quite* stable but is close enough for government work having a half-life a billion times longer than the estimated age of the universe) are worth more, at least more than their position on the periodic table would suggest. Mainly because it makes them easy to transport and store for extended periods without taking drastic precautions and without lose of energy, purity, and possibilities to spontaneous decay.
] |
[Question]
[
In a world in which dragons (as animals, minus magical associations) existed, what natural defense mechanisms might other animals or plants evolve in response? How would a creature as devastating like that affect their environment, and what could the rest of the biome do to keep from completely collapsing?
I'm especially interested in ways that other creatures could not only defend themselves from giant flying, fire-breathing reptiles, but also make use of and even exist symbiotically with them, in the same way that flowers use bees to pollenate, etc. Bonus points if these adaptations evolved alongside the development of dragons, rather than in response to the fully-formed appearance of them.
[Answer]
Since Dragons will be the top predators, prey animals will evolve a fantastic array of defences to protect themselves and their offspring.
Rapid breeding like rabbits is a simple adaptation, and easily selected. Creatures who breed faster will have more offspring, hence the next generation will favour breeders.
The next common adaptation would be to herd in larger numbers, so it is harder for any individual to be taken down. Modern herd animals can herd in impressive numbers, and during the age of Dinosaurs the "duck billed" dinosaurs seem to have adopted this as well, as they had few or no defences against the predatory dinosaurs. Giant herds of zebras on the African savannahs are an example of this strategy.
Defensive herd behaviours can also be selected for. Modern animals like water buffalo, bison and musk ox have aggressive natures, formidable natural defences like horns and instinctively form defensive circles around the young and females when threatened. Since dragons are so much larger than wolves or lions, the bison analogues would have to become even larger and more aggressive, much like the ceratopsid dinosaurs like triceratops. Evolution might push this category of beast to elephant size to best be able to fight a dragon.
Finally armour and other defences can be selected for. Dinosaurs had fully armoured ankylosaurs, and modern day creatures like armadillos have adopted a similar protective coating. Hedgehogs replace armour with bristling spikes and skunks spray noxious chemicals, all adaptions and behaviours which could be scaled to "11" to protect the animals from dragons. Camouflage will also become more and more effective and elaborate to protect animals from the vision, scent or hearing of the dragon.
Lesser predators will also change, seeking gaps in the dragon's ecological niche to survive and thrive. Predators might specialize in prey dragons find too small or unappealing to eat, or work in packs to cooperatively take down evolved dragon prey and defend their kills against competition (even dragons might think twice about tangling with a pride of sabre toothed tigers or a pack of dire wolves). Scavengers will also become much faster and more ruthless to clean dragon kills before the dragon decides to return.
Parasites and symbiots would be difficult to categorize; cleaning birds seem likely, and the sorts of parasites that could thrive in the guts of a current top predator would most likely be able to colonize a dragon as well.
[Answer]
Well we already have plants and trees that need/use fire in order to germinate their seeds, These plants might have even hardier seeds needing a little extra help. Some grasses and smaller plants might have deeper and thicker root systems in order to sprout new shoots much faster after a pass.
Other plants might build up a larger resistance to fire. A fruiting tree might survive because the dragons like the fruit, so they burn trees and plants that might smoother it out, Maybe the nuts need fire to germinate. Or by eating the fruit the dragon spreads out the trees, like birds with berry seeds.
Animals, the ones that the dragon likes are really going to have to the ones that can reproduce fast enough to keep from being wiped out, this would be a double edged sword, the ones who reproduce the fastest are going to be the ones that survive and are available for the dragons to munch on. Anything that can't keep up will be wiped out.
Small animals might become 'groomers' of the dragon, like the lamprey is to sharks, cleaning the scales and removing ticks and other irritants.
[Answer]
**Look up and Live**
In addition to the other excellent answers that cover a lot of ground, a primary adaptation will be simply *to look up*.
Above a certain size, prey animals don't have to worry about being attacked from above, only from ground level. An ecosystem that includes dragons will mean that death can come from above. Being able to look up or defend against attacks from Up will be required survival traits.
**Dinosaurs were the first Dragons**
More generally, the suborder [Anklyosauria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankylosauria) has many examples of armored dinosaurs that defended perfectly well against giant, big-toothed, big-clawed, fast-moving, flesh-rending monsters. Armored dinosaurs never had to defend against a flying foe but their armor would have proved formidable anyway.
Perhaps a mix between an Anklyosaurus
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/S0qBL.jpg)
and a tricerotops
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rDzp9.jpg)
where armored plates along the spine, coupled with a frill to protect the neck will offer sufficient protection to get the dragon to attack someone else.
**Other Adaptations**
Over time, I expect that whatever creatures developed in the presence of dragons would develop the *ability to rapidly change direction for a short burst to escape any stooping dragon*. If a dragon is diving on prey, the prey only needs to be able to get out of the way enough to make the dragon miss. Kind of like throwing yourself out of the way of a speeding car. Just a few feet is enough to avoid injury or death.
If dragons hunt by scent then prey animals will evolve to *have no scent or some way to mitigate it.* Deer fawns have no scent for a time after birth as their primary predators are scent hunters.
If dragons hunt by sight then prey animals will engage in a never ending dance of *camouflage to evade however a dragon perceives prey*. Note that modern day sharks specifically look for the silhouette of seals. The latest wetsuit designs break up the human silhouette so it looks like nothing at all or not a seal to a shark.
[Answer]
The evolutionary adaptations of an ecosystem would largely depend on the evolutionary path that the dragons themselves took. Basically if the dragons became quite large before developing flight, you would see different adaptations then you would if dragons developed flight before becoming large. Likewise the stage at which fire-breathing became viable would change the development of the surrounding species.
---
I think it would be a safe assumption that flight would be one of the dragons' early adaptations. Developing wings after getting too big would be troublesome for dragons who sprouted wings before the wings became strong enough or large enough to provide lift, the precursor to useable flight wings would be a liability for a large dragon and probably wouldn't pass on very well.
So, your prehistoric dragon would likely start off as a small, canopy dwelling predator with rudimentary gliding capabilities, like a [flying squirrel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_squirrel). At this stage the going adaptations for avoiding dragon attacks would be:
* Being too big to be on the menu.
* Quick reflexes, being able to jump out of the way. Think crickets/grasshoppers.
* Poison
Over time the dragons who developed stronger more specialized flight wings would become more maneuverable in the air, thus increasing their chances of catching jumping crickets. As their hunting prowess increased they would have some spare food energy that they could use to grow a bit larger bringing more things on to the menu.
Now dragons begin to look more like dragons, just smaller. Of course as the dragons become more proficient hunters, prey animals begin to develop counter measures. At this stage the going adaptations for avoiding dragon attacks would be:
* Growing larger, to stay off the menu
* Burrowing
* Camouflage
* Sharpened senses. Hearing, smell, vision...
* Rapid breeding, larger litters
* Poison
* Think of the ways rodents avoid birds of prey
Here dragons may begin to develop the precursors to fire-breathing, perhaps spitting sticky bile or venom at fleeing prey. This allows them to take down larger prey animals. As the dragons gain the ability to take down larger prey, they again gain extra resources that they in turn put toward getting larger.
But as they get larger, their energy requirements grow forcing them to choose larger prey animals, hunting rodents now expends more energy than they take in for their efforts. At this stage the going adaptations for avoiding dragon attacks would be:
* Growing still larger
* Herding
* Horns
* Thicker hides
* Poison
As their prey gets bigger and starts to form herds and fight back, the dragons further develop their fire-breathing ability, sticky bile gets ignited to form an effective napalm. At first the fire adaptation is probably used to redirect and break up herds. At this stage the going adaptations for avoiding dragon attacks would be:
* Retreating to bodies of water.
* Scales/Armor
* Speed
* Poison
You probably noted that being poisonous was a strategy developed early on that kept certain species from being eaten, this will probably remain one of the most effective deterrents.
[Answer]
One notable question that needs answering is why forests still exist in a world with dragons. Dragons, as large, flying predators, would find it much easier to spot and catch prey in an open field than in a dense forest. A dragon would not be able to fly in a forest at all, and, in fact, exceptionally large dragons may struggle to enter a forest in the first place.
As a result, dragons would be inclined to burn down forests whenever they see them, which could theoretically destroy almost the entire arboreal ecosystem.
If your world is more magically inclined, there may be magic forest guardians to prevent this, but otherwise, trees will probably have to evolve to be sparse... Or, alternatively, forests may grow rapidly, and develop in such a way that being burned to the ground is a normal part of the forest's life-cycle. As mentioned elsewhere here, some trees already use fire to germinate, so this has precedent... this is just on a larger scale.
Specialized seeds could use the massive firey updrafts to fly truly astonishing distances, allowing the match-trees to colonize new areas much quicker than other trees.
Another potential feature in a world dominated by dragons is that, as some prey species are hunted to extinction, the empty niches might be filled by the dragons themselves. Say your world had something akin to elephants... Large animals reproduce slowly, and elephants have little defence against fire, so it's likely they'd die out, leaving the niche of enormous herbivore open. One enterprising line of dragons might develop herbivory to take advantage of the large amounts of grasses that the elephants used to eat. Herbivorous dragons would likely be much more prepared than elephants to defend themselves against predatory dragons, because they would already have a heavily fire-resistant body, which their ancestors evolved during the millennia of battles with other fire-breathing dragons.
] |
[Question]
[
News media showcase any number of potentially depressing events around the globe - internecine conflicts, ethnic conflicts, catastrophes and what-not.
The corollary constitute fiction as depicted by [Arthur Clarke](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws) who writes to say
```
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
```
Say, civilization is redeemably stripped of two core contemporary technologies - electricity & electronics - abruptly (meaning over a span of a decade). I use the word *redeemably* here to indicate the technologies mentioned are simply unavailable to the civilization until some **unknown** future date.
E.g.
* Global ocean levels rise so high as to inundate all ground where a turbine may be installed
* The crew/colonials aboard an interstellar colony ship (as depicted in Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky") suffer loss of focus
(+: Takes a stretch of imagination, I know)
Some of the consequences may be as follows:
* An equally abrupt fall in life expectancy
* A gradual decline in the quality of education - specifically pertinent to the 'lost' technologies
* A similarly gradual 'return' to provincialism as means to communicate (using the word 'communicate' in it's broad sense to include high-speed long-distance transport as well) disappeared
The second item on the list holds my curiosity. Initially (perhaps upto a generation) there could be some people who would know of electricity/electronics, and also be able to discuss the techniques/technology. Over time I would expect this ball of knowledge to dwindle & stagnate.
How long (read: how many generations) would it be before the knowledge of the 'disused'/'unavailable' technologies were lost out of ignorance as to reduce the technologies to metaphor in folklore?
[Answer]
[Mad Max](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max) was based in the "not-too-distant" future, and I think they got it right, in the sense that technologies that prove useful are still in the know-how, such as how to ride a motorcycle or fire guns. Ideas like cities and airplanes were painted as the stuff of legends. Of course, it wasn't specified how long in the future, so we're left with a guess.
Though I would argue that only two generations would be sufficient time to arrive at a point such that Mad Max would have been possible. Most people don't know how to build electronics or get a power plant back online. It would only take a generation to lose all this technical knowledge. It would take only one more for what basic knowledge we have to also become lost, and for only technologies that we need to survive to remain.
This is highly speculative of course, but if you think about it, cities are only able to exist due to existing technology. You would see mass chaos in cities if electricity dropped, and shortly thereafter it would become unsustainable. Cities would quickly become abandoned save for a few scavengers. After two generations, most would have burnt down or it would be absent of anything useful for the taking. Future generations would wonder if it were even possible to have so many people living in such small spaces.
So too would be things we take for granted such as computers, telephones, elevators. All of these things without electricity and without knowing how they work would seem like magic if they somehow could get them to work.
[Answer]
To lose the knowledge of how to make stuff? About a generation. But to have the concepts involved become mythologized? That generally takes around 3 centuries.
>
> HISTORY MUST BE CURVED, for there is a horizon in the affairs of
> mankind. Beyond this horizon, events pass out of historical
> consciousness and into myth. Accounts are shortened, complexities
> sloughed off, analogous figures fused, traditions “abraded into
> anecdotes.” Real people become culture heroes: archetypical beings
> performing iconic deeds. (Vansina 1985)
>
>
> In oral societies this horizon lies typically at eighty years; but
> historical consciousness endures longer in literate societies, and the
> horizon may fall as far back as three centuries. Arthur, a late 5th
> cent. war leader, had become by the time of Charlemagne the subject of
> an elaborate story cycle. Three centuries later, troubadours had done
> the same to Charlemagne himself. History had slipped over the horizon
> and become the stuff of legend.
>
>
>
> >
> > In AD 778, a Basque war party ambushed the Carolingian rear guard (Annales regni francorum). Forty years later, Einhard, a minister of
> > Charlemagne, mentioned “Roland, prefect of the Breton Marches” among
> > those killed (“Hruodlandus Brittannici limitis praefectus,” Vita
> > karoli magni). But by 1098, Roland had become a “paladin” and the
> > central character, the Basques had become Saracens, and a magic horn
> > and tale of treachery had been added (La chanson de Roland). Compare
> > the parallel fate of a Hopi narrative regarding a Navajo ambush
> > (Vansina, pp. 19-20).
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> This suggests that 17th century history has for the bulk of the
> population already become myth. Jamestown is reduced to “Pocahontas,”
> and Massachusetts boils down to “the First Thanksgiving.” And the
> story of how heliocentrism replaced geocentrism has become a Genesis
> Myth, in which a culture-hero performs iconic deeds that affirm the
> rightness of Our Modern World-view.
>
>
> -- [The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown](http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/9-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-from.html)
>
>
>
The author here is speaking of the "Galileo was persecuted for believing that the Earth goes around the Sun" myth, (the truth is far more complicated, and far more interesting!), but the point raised here has plenty of other applications.
For example, we've all heard the idea that Columbus proved that the world is round. Not only is this so wrong that it falls apart under the simplest possible examination--take a look at a globe sometime and see if you can explain how sailing from Spain west to the Caribbean and then back east to Spain will prove that--he *actually wasn't trying to.* Everyone knew the world was round already, sailors most of all! (The visual phenomenon of a ship disappearing at the horizon from the bottom up, exactly as it would when moving along a curved surface, has been known since ancient times.) What Columbus tried to prove is that the world was a lot smaller than everyone knew it was--and they were essentially right about the size of the world, BTW--such that if you set out west from Europe, you could reach Asia before running out of provisions. He was wrong about that, and if there hadn't been more unexpected land in the way, he and his crew would have all died at sea.
But in the early 19th century--about 300 years after his fateful voyage--the idea arose, promulgated by Washington Irving, that Columbus was some paragon of Reason, proving to the benighted people of his day that the world was not actually flat as everyone believed, and the myth has stuck around in the popular consciousness ever since.
Therefore, by long historical precedent, if your society reaches a state where knowledge of modern concepts turns into myth, it's likely to take about 300 years.
[Answer]
Almost all knowledge right now is institutional and dispersed.
For example - nobody - not a single person (and to a lesser extent, not a single company) knows how to build a working computer from the ground up.
* The people who refine the metals and materials do not know how to build a chip.
* The people who know how to design semiconductors don't know how to design a CPU.
* The people who design the CPU don't know how to manufacture the CPU.
* The people who manufacture the CPU don't know how to program a general-purpose OS.
* Very few people who design OS's know how to also build a working networking server.
* Etc.
If the internet were somehow destroyed (say, a global catastrophe that eliminated electronic communication for some time) I would guess that the knowledge would be lost within 10-30 years, via atrophying skills and deaths of the greybeards.
[Answer]
In the right scenario it can be very fast. A specialist company, or industry, closes and the methods are lost very quickly as usually the necessary knowledge is not in the hands of a single individual, but in the whole team, and once split, it's gone.
Have a look at the various industrial archaeology projects to see what knowledge folk are trying to re-discover (e.g. how to create the original Sheffield steel)
[Answer]
It's quite hard to say exactly, because it depends a lot on how advanced the tech is. Bear in mind a lot of artisan crafts were passed on master-apprentice for many generations. Clockwork for example, is hundreds of years old.
Steam power, combustion, even the transistor - aren't *technically* very difficult. So keeping it alive as an artisan craft I think would be very feasible.
However our advanced tech - anything involving a microprocessor - cannot be made without the right infrastructure. So they would pass into history the instant they broke. You'd have the people who had seen or used one - but when they died, then they would pass out of living memory and be one step removed.
A second generation, and that would be that. There might be records, designs etc. but the degree of advanced manufacturing took ... well, the industrial revolution probably started about 1750 - so we've had about a 250 year 'run up' to our advanced manufacturing of today.
Starting over *might* take less time, because of record keeping. But then, it might not, because people are people, and actually - a lot of our records *now* wouldn't survive a 250 year downtime.
[Answer]
I'd suggest 3 generations, where a generation is an approximate amount of time for one individual to grow to physical maturity and reproduce. Let's say 20 years, times 3, for 60 years.
I'm saying 3 generations based on the 3rd generation rules for wealth building and space habitats. I know what you're thinking now... huh? These have been referenced before here on worldbuilding ([What society might survive the 3 generation rule](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/20275/what-society-might-survive-the-3-generation-rule)).
I'd also reference the story "Earth Abides", a post-apocalypse story after a plague decimates humanity. The main protagonist is a geologist. At first, the survivors gather and try to preserve the society they knew. Their children, the next generation, are more focused on building a new society based on the reality they were raised in. This includes no modern medicine, or electricity. They are still being raised with the expectations of the previous generation, which includes a formal education. But there's no use for education in modern manufacturing techniques and the like. They learn what they need to in order to survive.
Their children, in turn, have even less use for what we consider basic education. Reading and writing skills are not commonly held, and much of what we understand of the modern world has been subsumed by nature, and are the stories of the grandparents. The rock hammer wielded by the protagonist becomes a "magical" symbol of authority.
] |
[Question]
[
[This question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/11319/764) throws out the idea of how aliens, perhaps a passing-by alien who comes to investigate a potentially habitable planet from orbit, would recognize an 'official' communication from Earth. It deals with the political and societal concerns of ensuring messages sent out are from a legitimate source, but bypasses a much more pressing concern.
How would aliens close enough to recieve remote signals from Earth actually *recognize* communication as anything but white noise? How would they be able to tell from within our Solar System (inside the Ort cloud, let's say) that our random and undirected signals were in fact signals from intelligent life, without knowing what frequencies or broadcasts those signals are actually supposed to represent?
What if we *knew* aliens were passing by, and wanted to ensure the signal was better recognized? How could we guarantee that these aliens would recognize our signals as coming from an intelligent life form, and not just random cosmic noise?
[Answer]
This is actually a *major* question in SETI study today.
First off, I want to cut down one of your words: "How could we *guarantee* that these aliens would recognize our signals..." we cannot *guarantee* anything. Current prevailing linguistics opinions indicate that it is impossible to guarantee another mind recognizes anything at all. The best we can do is give our best effort.
One thing we have looked towards is how we can make a signal look as unlike any known physical sources as possible. Clearly outputting spectra that line up with our sun's emissions is not going to get a message across. We look for things we can do that are unusual.
One of these things we can do is send a very narrow band signal. Most physical sources generate very broadband spectra because they are not actively trying to tune it (with an exception of spectral lines, which end up being tuned to the atoms themselves). There is a standing theory that one of the best ways to send this signal is a narrow band signal focused around a particular frequency at which interstellar hydrogen is unusually transparent. We cannot think of any reason why a natural process would select this frequency, so any signal on that frequency is a solid sign that something unusual put it there.
Another key trick is to keep the bandwidth of the message down and use "simple" modulation schemes. We can transmit data much more efficiently using things like CDMA and QAM, but those modulation schemes look like noise unless you know the decoder ring (in fact, their noise-like appearance is something they designed towards to minimize interference issues). Simple AM modulation is the most likely bet, or perhaps simple FM modulation.
The lower the bandwidth of the message, the more our signal can look like a simple carrier wave at first glance (and thus is less likely to be lost in the noise when alien SETI is looking at many gigahertz of bandwidth). We should keep the message simple. So far, we believe a mathematical message is the simplest. A simple encoding of prime numbers is a popular way to send that message. We know of no natural processes which cause prime numbers to appear, so a signal which counts 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13... would look tremendously unusual to anyone listening. Other sequences like Fibonacci have been suggested as well.
High quality repetition is also helpful. There are not many things in nature which send reliable messages with low jitter. We look at pulsars and quasars because they are unusual exceptions to the rule, so there's a good chance the other species is looking for them too. If we can demonstrate a message which is repeated to a tremendous precision (1ppm or something similar), it means the more they look at the message, the more unusual its timing will appear.
There has been discussion of harmonics as well. There has been interest in possible sending the "root" of a chord on the hydrogen line, along with a third and a fifth. This one has been debated (it isn't clear if thirds and fifths are a human thing, or a natural law), but it is out there.
[Answer]
They would use [Shannon Entropy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%28information_theory%29#Introduction).
This concept is basically that in any particular communication, entropy is the probability that you can guess what's coming next based on what you've already received. So in English, if I start a sentence with, "Hi, how" - then there's a high probability that the next word will be "are". Structured communications of any kind have a relatively low entropy. Alternatively, white noise/signals are entirely random, and are thus impossible to predict. So they have a high entropy.
The neat thing about Entropy is that it's a property of *information*, not of a particular language. You do need to sample the signal for a while (so you have a baseline) but you don't need to actually understand anything - you can use Shannon Entropy analysis to detect if *any* sort of communication has meaning, given enough baseline, and to distinguish it from white noise.
Note: A goal of encryption is to make it impossible to detect patterns, so encrypted communications have high entropy and will be difficult to distinguish from white noise. Presumably our communications with entirely new aliens won't be encrypted, but it might make it harder to detect random signals that are picked up by accident, assuming the senders are following basic security practices.
[Answer]
They would look for the [same thing SETI looks for today](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_extraterrestrial_intelligence), unnatural phenomena.
Think of it this way: You're in the forest, there are lots of sounds. After spending a lot of time there you have a very good idea what natural sounds exist in the forest. Now you hear a chainsaw. *Woah, you think, that's not normal. I'm going to check that out.*
It's the same with the universe. There are lots of signals floating around out there, we detect them all the time, we become accustomed to what causes them. Now we detect a signal that has structure, like an amplitude modulated radio wave. *Woah, we think, that's not normal. Let's check that out.*
Space faring aliens would do the same thing. They know what the background space 'sounds' like and when something sticks out, they'd likely investigate.
[Answer]
The amount of signal coming off our planet would light it up like a christmas tree compared to the rest of the solar system. So, they'd probably be attracted to our planet for the unprecedented amount of white noise coming off the planet in the first place.
Once they got here, they'd isolate bands... we have various bands we communicate on via FCC and International communication standards. So, they'd just travel up and down the bands to see what kinds of signals they got.
Then they'd look for patterns.
We already have machine learning algorithms that can detect very slight patterns in noise. All it's doing is converting signal into waveform 0's and 1's then doing bit-stream analysis to see if any patterns show up.
Once it found patterns, it could try to see if some semblance of language came out of it.
The real issue with our languages is a lot of it is based on emotional context / abstraction instead of logic / concreteness.
"That's cool." .. is this person experiecing temp fluctiations?
"You're the bomb." .. will this person blow up?
"F\*\*k you." .. is this person suggesting mating?
A lot of our context comes from how we word things, facial expressions, etc (eg: we have a harder time conveying meaning through text only then through visual).
But, it would be easy to tell communication was coming from Earth. It's the planet that's lit-up like a christmas tree with signals crammed on every imaginable bandwidth possible.
EG: if you stopped by any other planet ... there's hardly any signal coming off them. But, on Earth, we purposefully create tons of signal every day. On an infographic, our planet would have a massive target painted on it to suggest some kind of sentinet life exists here. Aliens would just show up to our solar system then detect the signal and "sniff" us out by following the signal until they get to us and go "jesus christ, guys, can you be any more noisy?!"
] |
[Question]
[
Out on a small planet called Vernar IV located in the Ghan’Shi sector of the Galaxy, there’s a small restaurant and bar called “Tuang’s Taphouse”, which serves food and refreshment to many species, including humans. There’s just one problem: biochemistry.
There’s about 12 sentient, spacefaring races in the Milky Way: *the Humans, Qualians, Gordaniran, Amtolites, Vosian, Nekubiak, Seluban, Itaran, Zeydalaan,Jedarik, Tausali and Telenoid*. Each of these species has populations who occasionally stop on Vernar IV, and each are known to **frequent the bar. My question is, how do you make a bar that can safely feed and serve multiple, often somewhat incompatible, biologies?**
The main problems are cross-contamination (since one species can often regularly eat food lethal to another), and knowing what is and isn’t safe for each species. How could you design the restaurant and whatnot to accommodate everyone?
For clarification’s sake all 12 are carbon-based, oxygen nitrogen breathers, who all inhabit planets with mostly the same gravity as ours, and same atmospheric density too. As for equipment, they’re all just wearing normal clothing and spare gas masks.
[Answer]
**FOOD COURT!**
Tuang’s Taphouse is surrounded by kitchens who provide food for galactic Plebians in the food court on one side and the patrons of Tuang's Taphouse on the other. The desired ambiance dictates whether the bar is above (balcony bar - nice for the flying species), below (basement bar - nice for wet species) or behind (mall bar - just sad) the food-court kitchens.
When entering Tuang's, a micro-scale sample of the patron (a few dead skin cells, for example) informs a digital device which menu to show as well as eliminating all of the food items that their DNA (or whatever passes) indicates intolerance for. Of course, the Ryzineans find that disgusting, so they just send a small electrical pulse to an internal bypass that triggers their menu. Conversely, the Blearinos love expelling their mucus on the device, so Tuang designed them for frequent sanitation and acidic environments down to pH 1.2. After the device determines the species of the patron, an "interactions board" gets updated.
When a patron orders, two things happen. First, the interaction boards get updated. Second, orders go directly to the kitchen(s) of choice and proceed according to the cultural expectations of delivery - Xanshians only eat what they catch and four other species refuse to consume anything touched by non-worlders. The D'hColi have religious reasons and it's widely suspected that the Utuairops are just racists, but the others have well documented cases of allergic reaction. A fifth species, the Ryzineans, have such complicated ceremonies around their food service that Tuang's food runners almost never bother, though now-Ambassador Glinea used those ceremonies to launch her diplomatic career.
When a Xanshian orders, new patrons get alerted that when the house-lights turn off and a green spotlight shines on them, they must not leave the spotlight until the house lights turn back on. That frequency of green was chosen as it is the only one reliably visible to all of the patrons. It should go without saying that the doors lock when the spotlights are on.
31 fluid (gas, liquid and intermediate) menu items have documented or suspected reactions, so there are no cups at Tuang's. Woe to any who spills beer on a Xanshian, because they only have 28 seconds to prevent murder if they know how. Single-serve micro-kegs provide beer and other pressurized items. Fluids at atmospheric pressure arrive in the equivalent of sippy-cups.
Lastly, Tuang's employs a part-time xenobiologist to test every food item on every menu against the biology of every species that dines there. The xenobiologist has prepared anti-histamines, anti-toxins, contingency plans and instructions for every expected interaction. As well, they programmed the interaction board to update staff on current dangers and how to fix them. Back when the D'hColi and Utuairops arrived it was extremely lucrative, but these days, they only work when new food and beverage items get introduced.
[Answer]
### This is not an exobiology problem. This is a problem in present day restaurants
A single molecule of the food that Person A enjoys can kill person B right here on Earth. 1 US citizen needs emergency room medical treatment [every 3 minutes from this](https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/facts-and-statistics). 1 in 26 children have had a life threatening attack.
I personally have experience from this. At a alcohol-heavy party in my early twenties I consumed a milk based liqueur shot. 30 minutes later I hooked up with a girl I just met. 20 minutes later she was in an ambulance, as the milk was soy based, and the soy protein in the trace of the drink on my lips and breath triggered an allergic reaction strong enough that her face swole up to the point that she couldn't breathe even after using an epi-pen.
There are 8 main food ingredients that most of us eat every day that can kill a fellow human in minutes: Peanuts, shellfish, soy, tree nuts, egg, milk, finfish, and wheat. There are other ones but those are the ones that kill 90% of us.
For an excellent documentary on this problem, and a fairly detailed tour a restaurant that believes "at a minimum, your meal shouldn't kill you" so goes through a complex process for each customer to make sure they survive their meal, I'd suggest watch ["The peanut problem"](https://www.netflix.com/watch/80149705?trackId=200257859) (Netflix subscription required).
As a summery:
* Customer sits down, and is given a menu based on their language.
* The menu is bulky. Each dish is given a full page
+ photo, and full explanation of the ingredients, and their ingredients.
* Customer orders a meal after consultation with the educated waitstaff
+ No US style "tip so they live" payment, these people need to be smart and on the ball, so paid a decent wage.
+ If a low tipper gets poor service and dies that's bad for the entire restaurant.
* Cooking is done in batches of similar foods such that no two products are cooked concurrently that could fatally cross contaminate
+ Between batches:
- All utensils go in the dishwasher
- All surfaces are wiped down
- The cook and waitresses change gloves, hairnets, and smocks.
* Good airflow is needed in the kitchen area too, air should be sucked out a fume hood from the hot plates and into a filter before being vented such that there is zero likelihood of contaminants persisting in the air.
[Answer]
As far as the venue can control, there are two primary opportunities for contamination: in preparation in the kitchen, and at the table.
**Preparation**
The easiest way to avoid a dozen biochemistries cross-contaminating each other is to keep them in total isolation. That doesn't mean 12 separate kitchens, it means food arrives precooked (or whatever the equivalent) and plated in sealed modular packages. Entrees, side dishes, and so forth would be combined in multiple ways according to an a la carte menu, but the food itself is never handled by anyone but the person intended to eat it.
Packaging would need distinctive coding for the biochemistry/species using whatever appropriate colours, patterns, or EM wavelengths apply, and be kept segregated in the food storage and assembly facilities.
**At the Table**
Here you have two options: strict dining area segregation of customers by species so there's no chance of cross-contaminating between customers sharing a table, or mixed dining with extra precautions. In either case, food packaging won't open unless the compatible species opens it: the table/dining area may give the confirmation, or species-specific biometrics in utensils (for example) might unlock them. Utensils in proximity to incompatible food might set off alarms or trigger packaging to snap shut, if you really want to play it safe.
The packages or table would warm the food in front of the customer.
You may want a rough and tumble tavern, but if food safety is your goal I'm afraid your scifi cantina will have more in common with an automat:
[Answer]
**...Wormholes**
This probably won't work in many stories because of the space and technology that is needed for the wormholes, but since you do have a dozen different alien species, and a space that services them all, this could potentially work. The waiters would write out the orders, and send them through the wormhole, and kind of like in Rek's answer, the food would arrive precooked, but the chefs making the different kinds of food would be in completely different worlds, thus eliminating the problem of cross-contamination.
To avoid the customers eating harmful, possibly lethal food, the owners of the cantina should do careful (fictional) research on what foods harm each species and then the waiters/servers should warn the creatures what is and is not safe.
And to avoid air contamination, if there is a food that one species enjoys eating, but is potentially poisonous or lethal to another species, there should be a few small, sealed, dining areas where that food is eaten. You could also possibly charge a premium on such foods, to discourage species from eating them.
[Answer]
Would it be reasonable to assume that in this era the collective of co-mingling species are aware of these food based threats and long ago each species devised what could more or less be compared to something like a smart watch or some other common place device that does a wealth of things, one of which is food scanning and possibly even threat neutralization?
You could borrow concepts from stories like back to the future where even the basics of food preparation have gone to the wayside in favor of convenience and scientific progress. Like putting a pill in a box and in 10 seconds a masterpiece pizza comes out. What's to say your tavern isn't equipped with an impressive culinary prep station that isolates the process for each species and the entire preparation process is handled by the ovens that convert a collection of cubes into ideally designed foods? And even passed through a contamination screen before reaching the guests?
Since everything has its flaws, it could all be justified with a simple sign on the door that warns guests to make sure they use their decontamination apps, and a wall of text explaining the legal reasons why you cant sue the tavern if you happen to get sick.
Ultimately, you may benefit from the typical Star Trek way of explaining things - you just don't. "Somehow" these machines and practices work, and thankfully, we have gone 7,886 universal years since someone last got sick from the food. Understanding that if you get too specific, you may lose your own argument to someone pointing out the flaws in the science. Can't do that if you don't explain the hows and the whys.
[Answer]
# Fake Food
Depending on your technology, you could mimc Star Trek's replicators. Replicated food is not the real thing. It looks real. It tastes real. It has the right texture. But it everything is built from raw stores of carbon, oxygen, etc. on demand. It is more nutritionally balanced than the real thing and is also hypoallergenic so any (organic) species can safely eat it.
Maybe you don't have machines that build food from the ground up. Maybe you have a plant that is safe and nutritious for all species, and you use special hypoallergenic flavorings to make it taste right.
Or if your setting allows for independent neural interfaces, maybe it a computer projects to flavor and texture sensations into the diner's head, so that they eat the flavorless, safe planet, and feel like they are eating steak. Or chocolate. Or deep fried grathnak sausage with a side of bananas (which between the two foods would kill any species but ninety percent of everyone loves the flavors together, even if they normally hate grathnak sausages and bananas on their own).
[Answer]
I am thinking of the solution posited by Star Trek. [Replicators.](https://ca.startrek.com/database_article/replicator)
>
> Replicators, in use since the early 24th century, are most commonly
> used as food dispensers aboard Federation starships. The menu is only
> limited by the programming, as opposed to the days of carrying natural
> or reconstituted foodstuffs with delivery by special turbolifts or
> transporters.
>
>
>
Okay, it would not be gourmet food, but it would be pub fare.
The food dispenser replicators would be in completely contained cubicles, that would be sanitized after every meal was dispensed - or at least after every species had been served. Multiple clients of the same species could probably order all at the same time, in the same cubicle. It would be strictly buffet, or cafeteria, style.
The flexibility of this method would allow for accommodating species that pass through very infrequently.
I could foresee the need for completely enclosed serving 'boxes' that would be used between the replicator and the table. Maybe go all out and enclose the trays in a force field. In fact, enclose the booths in some form of force field, that could have a privacy mode for squeamish eaters. When the customer leaves, the entire force field is collapsed, bundling up all of the leftovers, serving dishes, and remnants of bodily fluids into a sealed package that goes straight into the recycler.
[Answer]
Eating food that is not intended for your species can be ***BAD*** for you.
And nothing as simple as mere nutrient deficiencies.
A **malformed protein is a deadly poison**.
A sugar or protein of the wrong [chirality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_(chemistry)) is at best and inert clog, at worst also a deadly poison.
**Caustic Chemicals:** Some species might use Sodium Chloride Crystals as a condiment (like humans) some species might use Sodium Chloride Crystals as a death-row execution substance (like garden snails).
**Temperature:** Some species might need to eat their food at 35 Celsius for optimal taste. Other species might eat their food at 35 Kelvin for maximum nutrition. OK, OP specifies all are carbon&water based oxygen breathers, so maybe not that extreme.
Each species will need to specify their type explicitly, when ordering. For a small variety as per OP, species name should suffice.
For a place catering to a great many possible species, a codified system that describes the species' needs are indicated.
For example: in Larry Niven's Draco Tavern the species code for both Earth Humans (erect bilateral symmetric endoskeletal primates) and the Chirpsithra (Mantis-like insectiod immortal exoskeletal sages) is "*Tee tee hatch nex ool*". Just because these two *look* different does not mean that they have incompatible biochemistry :)
However, people are idiots. One assumes this is true even for people that are not people as we are used to.
So may I also strongly advise a simple food [scanner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_sensor) at each table, which analyses both the eater and its meal, and determines at least basic biochemical compatibility. With alarms blaring if/when the eater places a meal with incompatible chemistry on the table?
Of course, one would need to program some exceptions to the device, otherwise it will go blaring each time a Human orders a nice Brandy.
Also, Some *very* good extraction and filtering ventilators would be a good idea. After all who wants to sit next to a Klingon, who is chasing his [live Gagh](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Gagh) all over the table? Or who want to sit downwind from that Finnish Human enjoying his [Lutefisk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk), or the Japanese snarfing down a load of [Natto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natt%C5%8D)(which while tasty and nutritious has an odor which is best described as 'rancid gym socks')?
The same theme is encountered in many SciFi universes:
[Larry Niven's Draco Tavern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Draco_Tavern) as mentioned above,
[James White's Sector General](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_Station) series,
[Calahan's Crosstime Saloon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callahan%27s_Crosstime_Saloon),
and even [Douglas Adams' Reataurant At The End Of The Universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Restaurant_at_the_End_of_the_Universe) (ina very tongue in cheek sort of way!)
] |
[Question]
[
I’m writing a story and the summary is extra universal aliens going to war with each other The magic system used is Clarketech known as the void system it’s more or less based on this formula Magic = area of space /Explosion area
Explanation: Wherever or whenever there's a vacuum in space-time the potential for energy to fill into the vacuum increases proportionally to the size of the gap for energy, The energy does not come from anywhere, although it’s unknown where it comes from. This is caused by the isolation of space. When you poke a hole in space, random energy flows into it, complex sub molecular nanites (the nanites are the little robots that actually move around the matter to complete your commands) there small about 100,000 atoms is the mass of the lightest size nanite , they harvest and then manipulate the energy. In whatever way the user chooses, dependent on how much space is isolated. Having a larger nanite count offers up lots of versatility. The effects that can be achieved are only limited to how many nanites you have. There only a few hundred million magic users spread out over our observable universe also do not have access to lots of nanites
It’s a cycle: you need the nanites to harvest and distribute the energy for whatever effect you’re trying to achieve and you need the energy to make nanites effective. But nanites burn out faster the bigger your spells are, and it's hard to make due to their sophistication, yet magic has a downside: isolating space slowly expands the universe cause it to tear apart slowly over a period of time via the [Big Rip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip#:%7E:text=In%20physical%20cosmology%2C%20the%20Big,universe%20at%20a%20certain%20time), think the climate change debate.
Another way of using magic without nanites is by using a specialized weapon or tool that can isolate space, but when the energy is harvested. It can only do one specific thing. Like, for instance, you have a glove, and the glove is programmed to harvest the energy to make a fireball. It can’t do anything other than that, effective its extreme specialization over versatility.
Question: Can this magic system directly violate the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of energy?
[Answer]
## Use Higgs Field Theory
What you are talking about roughly resembles the Higgs Field theory of quantum mechanics. Basically, the Higgs Field represents the energy in the universe that is so evenly distributed that it creates no local sum effects, but various theories have connected it to being responsible for gravitational drag, the effects of dark matter and dark energy, the expanding universe, and even the origin of the big bang.
How much energy is in the "false vacuum" of space is unknown, but it could potentially be enormous (we just don't know because we can not measure a zero sum effect). But, what you are proposing would probably involve tapping into this energy field.
The problem is that you can not tap into this field as a source of energy according to the laws of thermodynamics because all of the energy in this field is already maximally dissipated. Our current understanding of thermodynamics is that things go from where energy is high to where it is low; so, there is nothing to tap into using our current understanding of technology and energy.
## How to Technobabble it:
The energy of the universe can be compared to the Ocean. On the surface there are waves that rise and fall and transfer energy this way and that. The lowest troughs representing the vacuum of space, and the peaks representing concentrations of mass. Thermodynamics is like explaining how you can move things around on the surface of this Ocean. From the perspective of a leaf, floating on its surface, things can only move as the waves move, and you can never move in a way that those waves do not move.
But the Ocean is far more complex than this, under the waves there are currents that you can not observe from the surface. A ship with deep enough of a keel has been known to drift in directions different than the waves seem to imply you could; so, what your mages are doing is extending their influence into the subspace of the Higgs Field to find currents moving in other directions from the surface waves that we can see and feel. These currents are the energy differences that they exploit. So you appear to be violating the conservation of energy and thermodynamics, but you are actually following them, just finding energy exchanges in places that modern science just does not know how to exploit.
[Answer]
>
> *Can this magic system directly violate the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of energy?*
>
>
>
There's two halves to this. The energy leaking into the Universe, and the nanites which use it. First the nanites.
>
> *When you poke a hole in space, random energy flows into it, complex subatomic nanites, that harvest and than manipulate the energy.*
>
>
>
Whatever energy your space wizard traps in those nanites must obey the laws of physics. The biggest limiting factor is [energy density](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Tables_of_energy_content) and directing that energy. Let's look at some upper limits.
If the nanites release their energy via fusion you'll get 500 MJ per milligram of nanite. This is about half the energy of a lightning bolt. It's enough energy to shoot about 10 kg into space.
If they use anti-matter, you'll get about 90,000 MJ per milligram of nanite. This is enough energy to run a car for a year. Its twice the energy of [the largest conventional bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_MOAB).
And that's about as energy dense as you can get.
---
>
> *The energy does not come from nowhere, although it’s unknown where it comes from.*
>
>
>
This makes things interesting. Some, like Conservation of Energy, only apply to a closed system and your system is not closed. It's getting more energy from... [somewhere outside the universe](https://strangerthings.fandom.com/wiki/The_Upside_Down). Probably best not to explain where, hold onto that for [a major plot point](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Immaterium).
The laws only need to apply to our Universe, not [the other side](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Subspace).
Let's go through the laws.
# Zeroth Law
>
> If two systems are both in thermal equilibrium with a third system then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other.
>
>
>
If a = c and b = c then a = b. Might seem obvious, but it's important to state your axioms. Irrelevant here.
# First Law / Conservation of Energy
>
> In a closed system (i.e. there is no transfer of matter into or out of the system), the first law states that the change in internal energy of the system (ΔUsystem) is equal to the difference between the heat supplied to the system (Q) and the work (W) done by the system on its surroundings.
>
>
>
Your energy is coming from outside the system, it is not closed, the First Law does not apply here.
# Second Law
Put very, very simply (and I apologize to any actual physicists reading this) energy flows from hot to cold and will eventually reach equilibrium.
Regardless of whether the Second Law applies to the other side, our Universe considers itself to be "colder". This works well with the idea that it only works in a vacuum.
This also implies if you poke a hole in a place which is "hotter" energy may flow the other way.
# Third Law
>
> A system's entropy approaches a constant value as its temperature approaches absolute zero.
>
>
>
Irrelevant.
---
The validity of your setup hangs on these points.
## The energy comes from Somewhere Outside The Universe
This avoids the problem of Conservation of Energy when space wizards gather their energy.
## Space wizards can't use more energy than they can store
This avoids violating Conservation of Energy.
And it puts a limit on how much energy your space wizards can use. That's important for narrative purposes and limiting the power of your characters.
## The energy flows best in "cold" areas like vacuums
This keeps things good with the Second Law, even if exactly what "cold" means is not clearly defined.
And it puts another limit on when and how fast your space wizards can recharge. Also important for narrative purposes and limitations.
## Don't explain what you don't have to.
For the normal reasons: if you don't explain it, you can't be wrong.
It also leaves open opportunities for interesting plot points down the road. Just what is that other universe? What are the rules there? What else might be coming through? Are the holes one way, or two? What happens if you poke a hole at a spot that's "hotter" than the other side?
[Answer]
**This is probably much less exciting that you make it sound.**
I don't know what you mean by *gap in spacetime* or *isolating space*. But it sounds something like the vacuum energy, where a large area of so called empty space has a small nonzero potential distributed across it. So if you take a cubic mile of space and look at every point at once there is a 0.000001% chance you find an electron somewhere. Then it sounds like your nanites somehow collect these electrons and use it to power something.
**It probably breaks thermodynamics.**
Harvesting this *zero point energy* sounds like a textbook violation of thermodynamics, since the energy is present everywhere, including inside the nanites, so moving it from one place to another would be like harnessing the heat in a 100 degree room without ever leaving the room. Yes if you were outside the room you could let out the heat and use it to boil water. But if you are inside the room you cannot boil water since all the water is already boiled and so on.
**Thermodynamics is allowed to break.**
Of course quantum stuff often breaks thermodynamics, since thermo is just a bunch of empirical laws that are true on average. So this is not a problem in of itself.
The problem is that the vacuum energy is VERY small. So if you find an electron somewhere you probably need to move it a few billion lightyears to where it is useful.
Also the fact that these things are nanites doesn't seem important at all. Is the idea the nanite is the same size as an electron?
**Other Universes.**
Something that sounds a bit more consistent is harnessing vacuum energy from other universes. This is the same principle as letting the heat out of that hot room. Find a universe with a huge vaccum energy (the inhabitants won't notice this) and somehow bleed out the energy into our universe. Of course the question *Does that break the laws of physics* then becomes a moot point.
[Answer]
You need to consider that famous formula:
$E = mc^2$
Energy doesn't just pop into existence. Maybe you had [virtual particles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle) in mind, but that does not create energy out of nothing. If you want to have usable energy for something, you've gotta harvest it from where it already exists in another form. So if you wish to get a joule, either bring it with you, or convert 1/90,000,000,000,000,000 grams of matter into it.
And here lies the violation of thermodynamics: your magic allows you to call forth an infinite amount of energy wherever.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 4 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/163715/edit)
A small group of people in the UK survived a global apocalypse.
They have access to the remain stock piles of gasoline, kerosine, food, and clean water, and pharmaceuticals. And, have access to printed materials and portable electrical generators, automobiles, aircraft, ships, hot air ballons, the detritus of the dead old world.
Most wide area services no longer function — power grid, internet, cellular system. And, GPS is still functioning.
The group wants to get to North America. What’s the safest method for the small band and their resources to cross the Atlantic?
[Answer]
Sailing would be much more viable option, you need much advanced engineering skills and tools to make plane fly, and if something break, your going down to the bottom. Ship on other hand, it would float even with broken engine, also you could bring much more food and other goods, I bet navigation would be much easier also. In case when they find no working ship, they could create something of sailboat.
[Answer]
As I have no experience or knowledge of piloting a boat, I will keep my answer to the part of flying an aircraft across the Atlantic.
To start off, flying is complicated. To expand on this, with an instructor to explain and teach you, it is fairly simple to learn, with most people being competent enough to obtain their private pilot licence by 45 to 60 hours of flying. Within this, you would have done your first solo flight (you are alone in the aircraft) by 10 to 20 hours. – This depends on the countries aviation law, some are more restrictive and some are more lax. Going solo does not mean that you are capable of all aspects of flight. It means that you are competent enough to start the aircraft, taxi to the runway, take off, complete a circuit and the aircraft, and taxi back to the hanger. A circuit is take off, climb to 1000 feet, turn and fly parallel to the runway to a position where you again turn, start an approach and descend down to the landing. This would in total take about 15 to 20 min, and must all be done while completing all the relevant checks and procedures, and without hitting anything or anyone.
You would notice that there is nothing in the part for going solo about navigation, changing fuel tanks, advanced aircraft with retractable gears or adjustable propellers, etc.
So if you have absolutely no experience in flying, an aircraft would be as useful as a jar of dirt. You will not be able to teach yourself how to fly, and there is plenty of evidence on youtube of people who have tried and failed. It is a lesson you would be luck to walk away from once. To do it twice would be highly impossible. (Remember, the Wright brothers took many dozens of flights, barely getting more than a few feet off of the ground, and floating for a few dozen meters, while they worked out how to control this machine.)
Now that’s established, I am going to be making some assumptions for the main answer.
Group of people – 10 to 15 total.
There is at least one pilot among them. This is not hard to believe, as pilots are fairly common. Everyone should at least know of someone who knows a pilot.
‘The number of pilots licensed by the CAA to fly powered aircraft in 2005 was 47,000, of whom 28,000 held a Private Pilot Licence. The remainder held professional pilot licences, either a Commercial Pilot Licence or an Airline Transport Pilot Licence, although not all of these would be engaged in GA activities.[63] In addition, there are 10,000 active glider pilots,[64] and estimates put the membership of aviation-related sport and recreational associations at 36,000.’’
As per [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_aviation_in_the_United_Kingdom)
While this is quite an old statistic, for this I will be disregarding the 28 000 private pilots, and assume they all achieved a commercial licence. This is because there has been a large boom in the aviation industry over the last 20 years, so to say that there are roughly 50 thousand commercial or airline pilots in the UK is not too rough of a stretch.
Starting point will be in London, Heathrow Airport. – Purely for navigational purposes as far as my calculations go.
The ideal aircraft for your group in this situation will be a Beechcraft 1900. It is a 19 seater, twin turboprop aircraft, mainly used by small regional airlines. Capable of carrying almost 3000 kg, and a speed of 280 Kts (518 km/h) it is a rather useful aircraft. Airline use requires it to be crewed by two pilots, it is certified to be flown by 1 crew member. It is also the largest aircraft that can be flown with only a commercial licence. The regulations will be of no importance during the apocalypse, but they provide a rough framework for what we are looking for here. (Flown by one pilot, not as restrictive as an airline licence, capable of carrying a small group of people with some supplies.)
The ideal route to follow will be from Heathrow to Edinburgh airport for refuelling. From there to Iceland and Keflavik airport. Iceland to Greenland, Narsarsuag airport will follow, then down to Canada, St Johns airport. Halifax/Stanfield will follow, and then depending on how far inland and south you want to go, will depend on where next. I have assumed John F Kennedy, as there are likely to be lots of loot available in New York, as well as vehicles to use.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qYZo3.png)
Map of proposed Route, with each of the mentioned stops shown. The worst parts would be from the UK to Iceland and Greenland to Canada. With full passengers, it would not be able to carry enough fuel for these two legs due to the weight of the aircraft, but if the group size is no more than 10, up to 15 if you are willing to leave more supplies behind, it will be able to carry enough fuel.
Below you can see the navigational log for this flight. I noticed after finishing it that the speed was only set at 200 kts, so at 280 kts the time for each of the legs will be less. For those who have not seen one of these before, what is shown (in the top line) is the starting point, which direction to go for the next leg directly (DCT). The distance is then shown in Nautical Miles, and then the time, which can be ignored as it is incorrect.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5k6ef.png)
These airfields have been selected for a variety of reasons (economic compromise between close enough to reach and far enough to minimize the amount of stops. With the exception of Greenland’s Narsarsuag all have a minimum of 2 runways, so that even if one is unusable due to rubble, another crashed aircraft etc, landing will still be possible. International airfields so will carry the correct fuel for use in the aircraft (Aviation has 2 fuel types, AVGAS and JET fuel, the B1900 uses JET fuel.))
Additional Information ---
If you want to take the vehicles as well, you will have to scale the aircraft up to a Lockheed C-130 Hercules or maybe an Antonov 124 or Antonov An-225, all of which require special military training, so the possibility of having someone who just happens to be able to fly it becomes almost 0.
The same can be said for larger groups of people. As the number of people becomes larger, so does the required aircraft, and the number of people actually able to pilot them decreases due to the specialist requirements
For the Navigational purposes, these aircraft have GPS. While my knowledge of the maintenance of GPS satalites isnt the greatest, they should remain reliably usable for a generous amount of time, until they drift out of their set orbits, where they will become unreliable. This however depends on how your apocalypse happens. Even without GPS though, the pilot would still have access to aviation maps, which look like the one above, and the aircraft are equipped with a compass and a direction indicator, which is set according to your compass. So navigation would not have to revert to using sextants and so on.
Finally, aircraft maintenance is important, but I do not see you using the aircraft for an extended time. My assumption is that it would be used to get across the Atlantic, and then the survivors will go back to using vehicles, so the 25-30 hours of use will not be much of a factor. This is another reason for the selected airfields, as they are likely to have other B1900's if your one has something break, and will at the very least have similar aircraft that small parts might be salvaged from, such as a new tire and so on.
Route and navigation log created on Skyvecter. Very useful website, which you could use to check out other airports and different routes if you want.
[Answer]
### Sailing across the Atlantic is straightforward
You simply need to navigate to a point where the East-to-West [trade winds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_winds) will carry you. You then just have several weeks of downwind sailing until you hit the American continent.
The hard part is knowing where to go, so that you can pick up the trade winds. By trial and error, captains from the Age of Sail discovered that they had to go from the African coast first, and from there strike out for the Azores. These days though you can find the relevant charts in any book on blue-water sailing, and in fact in many basic geography textbooks. Your post-apocalyptic survivors simply need to find a book shop.
Navigation was hard in the Age of Sail, and for a long time there was no way to find longitude. Any post-apocalyptic survivor should be able to find a quartz watch or clock though, so that makes life much easier. A simple calculator (solar-powered, of course) will make the maths easier too.
Your survivors do need to choose the right boat. Some sailing boats are optimised for fair-weather cruising, where a wide beam gives a wider cabin and more living space, at the cost of seaworthiness in bad conditions. Your survivors have the pick of boats available though. There's no reason you wouldn't snaffle a [Halberg Rassy](https://www.hallberg-rassy.com/) or something similar, given the choice.
And of course you need supplies for the crossing. The survivors have the benefit of salvaged containers for water, and can probably salvage enough tinned food, packets of flour and so on.
[Answer]
**The cold never bothered me anyway.**
Your characters will go around the Atlantic.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZcZPC.jpg)
<https://www.geographicguide.com/planet/globe-arctic.htm>
When civilization crashed, CO2 emissions crashed with it, and winters became very cold. Your characters are not skilled aviators. They are competent with boats but the ocean is dangerous - everyone with a boat has taken to sea to avoid the chaos and horrors of the land. Pirates are heavily armed.
Your characters are, however, ok with the cold. And it is cold. The North Sea has frozen. They make their way to Scotland and head out across the ice. They stay just offshore of Scandinavia, crossing to the land periodically to forage. After encountering trouble in Siberia they head north, crossing over the pole and dropping back down into Canada.
There are not many others that far north. It is quiet up in the cold, away from the dying world. Maybe they will stay.
[Answer]
I think while both piloting an aircraft and a transport ship are equally viable (or at least plausible), they should try a sail boat.
To clarify: Flying an aircraft is not that hard. By far the biggest part of pilot training is handling emergencies. Assuming that your group can choose the time they fly, and don't necessarily need to re-use the aircraft (so they can live with very rough landings and an aircraft stuck in the mud somewhere near their destination), they might actually be able to pull that off.
But transport aircraft capable of not only carrying several 4\*4 with trailers are rare, and those that manage that kind of load across the atlantic are even rarer.
Ships might actually be more demanding: ships are surprisingly complicated, and hardly two of them work in the same way and have their controls in the same place. On the other hand, once you found out how the particular vessel works, it's even simpler to operate than an aircraft, and you don't die immediately if you mis-judged fuel consumption.
Which brings us to the fuel part: both a large cargo aircraft and a large enough ship require tons of fuel. For aircraft, it also has to be the right fuel in reasonable quality.
I think xyou should abandon your vehicles (you will find 4\*4s in abundance in the (former) US. Find a sailing vessel that is large enough (20m / 60ft), that saves you the need to find tons of useful fuel, pack your friends and your supplies, that is tools, food, water maker and alcohol, and grab what else you need once you arrive.
[Answer]
I don't think flying is a good choice. Are your survivors skilled aircraft mechanics with the proper tools and replacement parts? If not, how are going to refurbish a plane such that it can make the trip? Are any of them pilots? And even if you can get past all this, where will you land? How do you know there are runways or stretches of highway that are clear and not eroded?
I think sailing is your best bet. The Vikings crossed the Atlantic in open sailboats, so your survivors should be able to as well. You say your survivors have gasoline, which is all the better. If the Vikings could do it with sails, your survivors can do it with an outboard engine and a lot of gasoline. Maybe bring a sail too just in case the engine dies irreparably.
] |
[Question]
[
So I was playing Deus Ex and came across [Hengsha](https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Hengsha), a city so large they built another city on top of it. This got my mind wondering about the practical uses of such a city.
Let's assume that the government has the political power to build this city, and the resources and technology to do so.
Why would this expensive project be undertaken instead of just building another city further away and building a transit line? Or doing terraforming by altering the landscape to give more room/building on water?
In addition, besides the standard rich people on top and poor people on the bottom, what social issues/conflicts would such a city provide?
[Answer]
I imagine it less as a purposeful city-planning choice and more as a gradual transformation.
First, as the city became prosperous, wealthy elites bought up apartments near the city center. In their culture, even more so than in ours, the height of a person's apartment above the ground was a significant status symbol. It became common for the bottom floors of buildings to be much poorer than the top few floors - the height mattered more to the (literal) upper class than the building's location.
As technology improved, buildings grew taller and more structurally sound. Long elevator rides and the unpleasantness of mingling with (gasp) the common folk prompted the rich to prefer buildings with skyways, bridges high above the streets that connected the upper floors of skyscrapers. Extravagance and architectural possibility grew in tandem, and before long, it was common to look up from the street level and see the bottoms of little courtyards where a few of the skyways intersected. Small parks and sitting areas for the wealthy to pause at on their strolls between the buildings, to chat with their well-to-do peers.
But why stop there? The rich wanted every luxury imaginable without having to travel to the surface to get it. They wanted markets and cafes up there, theaters and stadiums. And what business wouldn't leap at the chance to set up shop right outside the windows of the city's deepest pockets?
The walkways and open areas grew and spread until they blotted out the sky for the unfortunate wretches down below. And as a not-entirely-unintended side effect, now the inhabitants of the upper city don't have to look at them. And good thing, too, you might hear an older resident say. I remember when you could look over a banister and see trash piled up by the streets thirty stories down - why, it was near enough to make a man cough up his caviar!
[Answer]
**Proximity.**
Cities spread out laterally all the time. People want spaces to work and live in proximity to the original city and so the area occupied by the city grows.
If the same forces were at work in your city but horizontal growth was not possible, the city would grow vertically.
I can think of a variety of reasons why horizontal growth would not be possible.
1: **No land.** Your city is in deep water, and the supports holding it off the ocean floor far below cannot be duplicated. New city needs to stay on the existing supports.
2: **Defensive fortifications.** Building outside the city wall is dangerous. The wall cannot be extended. Only vertical additions can stay within the wall.
3: **Something else is outside the city which precludes lateral spread.** Maybe the land is owned by others who do not want urban sprawl and have the power to prevent it. Or it is unbuildable for some other reason - quicksand, monsters, mud volcanoes etc.
4: **City is spinning.** Your city is turning on a vertical axis. Extending out horizontally means new additions will have too much angular momentum and they will fly off. Non-spinning city additions are worthless, of course. You need to stay on the vertical axis.
5: **City is floating in the air**. I picture a Bespin-like cloud city. Adding constructions underneath the city that is already there poses less risk of screwing up the center of gravity.
[Answer]
A similar (though not exactly identical) thing actually happened between the 13th and 15th centuries in Edinburgh, Scotland. The desire to be close to the protection of the castle and inside the city wall led to the construction of tall (7 + story) houses, some of which having multiple entrances and exists at different floors.
Surprisingly, the classic fantasy trope of 'lower classes on the bottom, rich on top' was **only partially true** - the very bottom floor (being next to the open-sewer streets) was reserved for the dirt poor and the animals, while the floor above that was definitely lower class. However, the 3rd or so floors were often lived in by the wealthiest inhabitants of the city, while the floors above consisted of a rabble of middle class and poor as well. A few reasons for this were
* The tops of these buildings were often built shoddily and out of wood, so very prone to catching fire, while the lower floors were stone
* It's exhausting to walk up 9 flights of stairs every day
* In the (likely) event of a fire, you can get out if you live at the bottom
* Buildings were massively interconnected, so it wasn't like you had the upper floors shuffling past you every day.
Often buildings would literally be cut off halfway up then built on top of, such as the Edinburgh city chambers. This was the easiest way available to build a large government building in such a crowded, archaic town center.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rp8SH.png).
In short, the thing driving the vertical construction was *lack of space*, and *the need to accommodate archaic old-style unplanned city streets*.
[Answer]
I doubt if anyone will ever build a city on top of another city, but it seems to me rather reasonable to save space by build a city that is a single giant building with many identical levels stacked one above the other for structural support.
A city in a giant building that is one hundred stories tall and occupies a ground space one mile square will have a total of 100 square miles of floor space, equal to a single story building ten miles by ten miles.
A city in a giant building that is one hundred stories tall and occupies a ground space ten miles by ten miles square (100 square miles) will have a total of ten thousand square miles of floor space, equal to a single story building one hundred miles by one hundred miles.
A city in a giant building that is one thousand stories tall and occupies a ground space one hundred miles by one hundred miles square (10,000 square miles) will have a total of ten million square miles of floor space, equal to a single story building 3,162.27 miles by 3,162.27 miles.
In short, by building a city in a giant building with many identical levels stacked one above the other for structural support, a city large enough to hold the population of an entire country, continent, or planet could be built on only a tiny fraction of the total land space, freeing the rest of the land space for other purposes such as farming, maintaining natural ecosystems, etc.
[Answer]
I'll answer the last question. The bottom city definitely has to be the slums, or something close to a neglected area. There will be very limited, if not an absence, of sunlight that reaches down. This means that maybe the top city can have control of what times the bottom city gets light, essentially controlling the lives of those on the bottom. Consequently, only the top city can grow food and anything else that's light dependent.
Structural degradation of the top city will always have the possibility of falling into the bottom one.
Very intense winds will ravage the bottom city. Not too sure of the science, but perhaps this results in frequent tornadoes or dust storms.
Garbage from the top will definitely end up on the bottom, no point in adding more weight stress on the supports.
I'd say the top city will play more than just the rich and snobby, they'll be considered as literal gods to the people on the bottom. They are the bottom's only supply of food (any supplies transported down to the bottom will literally look as if the supplies are from heaven), they control the bottom's day-night cycles, and after years of miseducation of the bottom, they can be tricked into thinking all those tornados are god's wrath.
[Answer]
# Building vertically
Stacking cities could be viable for a number of reasons, they generally revolve around the cost of building out due to the scarcity of usable land outweighing the cost of building up:
Say if your planet was covered in swamp, fortifying the ground could be a monumental task that required:
* Draining of large swathes of land.
* Reinforcing with expensive materials like rock.
* Planting of biological root systems that would hold the
The majority of the planet was irradiated/toxic. New land would require:
* Purging of radioactive/toxic chemicals.
* Removing the producers if toxic chemicals are a product of a biological process.
The planet had life that was incredibly dangerous to the cities survival and whose defense cost increases faster with increase in circumference than building cost increases with height.
[Answer]
Protection from potential attack by bombing and hiding out during an attack/siege. An underground city was built under Beijing from [1969 to 1979 to prepare in case of nuclear war](http://www.china.org.cn/english/travel/125961.htm). The shelter had [restaurants, schools, mushroom farms, medical facilities, underground small factories, grain warehouses, and more](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH1EztHuCOU&t=51s). This was made to protect against nuclear attack during the Cold War, some people still live there since it is cheap to stay in areas of the underground city [instead of living on the surface](https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/inside-chinas-underground-doomsday-city-dubbed-the-dungeon/). So, you can have one city over another if:
a. You have some kind of war, risk of bombing, or siege that would make the underground city below your current city both a nice place to live as well as a good emergency shelter for the above-ground population.
b. It is cheaper to create housing a regions to live underground, so expanding into a city beneath the current city make sense for a growing population that cannot afford to live above ground.
c. Some combination of both.
] |
[Question]
[
**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
Would it be possible for a planet to naturally have a moon or large natural satellite at one of its Lagrange points?
If so would it then also be able to have a second moon that would be orbiting this hypothetical planet?
[Answer]
# Yes it could
The [Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) on the subject is quite detailed and offers the exact answer to your question.
>
> The L4 and L5 points are stable provided that the mass of the primary body (e.g. the Earth) is at least 25 times the mass of the secondary body (e.g. the Moon). The Earth is over 81 times the mass of the Moon (the Moon is 1.23% of the mass of the Earth.)
>
>
>
Thus having quite a large L4 or/and L5 satellite is perfectly reasonable. The biggest possible Lagrange satellite would orbit a 13.8 Jupiter-mass superjovian (this is the upper mass limit for planets since above it Deuterium fusion would happen, turning the planet into a [Brown Dwarf](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf)) and would thus have a mass of 0.552 jupiter-masses. For an earth-like world this would be an 0.04 earth-mass object, 3.24 times more massive than Luna.
As for L1, L2 and L3 satellites it is gonna be a no.
>
> Although the L1, L2, and L3 points are nominally unstable, there are (unstable) periodic orbits called "halo" orbits around these points in a three-body system. A full n-body dynamical system such as the Solar System does not contain these periodic orbits.
>
>
>
Concerning what you'll usually find at a planets L4 and L5.
>
> It is common to find objects at or orbiting the L4 and L5 points of natural orbital systems. These are commonly called "The Trojans".
>
>
>
The giant planets of the outer solar system do have extensive Trojan asteroid clouds, although they are poorly studied. Even Mars, Earth and Venus do have some garbage flying around these points. I suggest you read yourself through the [List of objects at Lagrangian points](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrangian_points).
# Edit
**TheLuckless's comment**
A comment asked what the odds of having a large object instead of a swarm of rubble are. While I wasn't able to find any papers on that subject, the ones I read about the stability issue seemed to assume one big object of that mass. Furthermore, running a back-of-the-envelope calculation based on solar system data could give one a rough value for that chance. Note that I ignore stability effects due to the objects distance to the sun and many other, most likely important factors.
The [list of gravitationally rounded objects in the solar system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gravitationally_rounded_objects_of_the_Solar_System) tells me that there are roughly 37 eligible objects in the solar system. Of these, Mars and the giant planets have significant Trojan debris clouds, telling me that 10 out of 74 possible positions are occupied by debris clouds; thus there is a 13.5% chance for it. Lagrange moons near the mass limit can only be found orbiting the Saturian moons Tethis and Dione, namely Telesto, Calypso and Helene (not counting Polydeuces, since it is extremely small). Thus 3 out of 74 possible positions are occupied by Lagrangian moons, a 4% chance. It therefore follows that there is a 24% chance that Lagrangian objects are a massive moon.
**Orbital behavior**
I once asked a professor of astrophysics how an L4/L5 satellite would behave, and he said that big Lagrangian objects will sit still at the exact L4/L5 point, unlike many of the asteroids which orbit the points and may diverge as far as 5° in the orbit from them.
**Moons of L4 and L5 satellites**
I somehow missed this during my original answer. Moons of moons are always a tricky subject. [My answer here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/143115/58321) goes into detail on how many moons a planet could have. The Tldr version is that, in a normal setting, the inner half of the [Hill-sphere](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_sphere) offers stable orbits for moons. I suspect that this zone will be much smaller due to the already volatile setup of the system. While I would consider moons which are in hydrostatic equilibrium highly unlikely, captured asteroid moons as they can be found around Mars, Pluto, the giant planets and most of the Kuiper belt objects are quite likely. Spacerocks naturally converge at L4 and L5 as the big Trojan asteroid swarms show. That some of them get captured by a big moon sitting there is very likely. In fact I would bet a lot of money on us finding a moonlet around one of the bigger Trojan asteroids if we were to send a probe there.
**More math**
While researching this topic I came across [this](http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/336k/Newtonhtml/node126.html) and [this](http://www.math.cornell.edu/%7Etemplier/junior/final_paper/Thomas_Greenspan-Stability_of_Lagrange_points.pdf). They discuss the stability of the Lagrange Points and the mass limit of a satellite there in great detail and with lots of math. Should you really wanna get into the details of the subject they could be very interesting.
[Answer]
>
> If so would it then also be able to have a second moon that would be orbiting this hypothetical planet?
>
>
>
# It would have to.
The Lagrange points are born between **two** orbiting bodies; a single body has no Lagrange points. If you have the sun and the planet, then the Lagrange points are the **solar** Lagrange points and a celestial body there **would not be a moon** (it would orbit the sun, so it would be a sort of a sister planet. On the other hand, the Aten asteroid [3753 Cruithne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3753_Cruithne) is often incorrectly referred to as "Earth's second moon", so it would depends on how strict you want to be).
To have a small moon in a Lagrangian position, you need a larger moon orbiting the planet, and this would give you a set of Lagrange points related to the planet and the large moon. The L4 (Greek) and L5 (Trojan) points would be stable if the large moon's mass is below 4% of the planet's, and the smaller Greek or Trojan moon's mass is below 0.16% of the planet's.
The two moons would orbit the planet at the same distance and with the same speed (*on average*. The smaller moon would actually describe a small kidney-shaped orbit around the L4 or L5 point). One would simply be much smaller than the other.
] |
[Question]
[
**This question already has answers here**:
[The earth is flung into deep space](/questions/38728/the-earth-is-flung-into-deep-space)
(8 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I'm writing a science fiction novel in which Earth essentially gets the boot out of our Solar System. No sun, no moon, just Earth flying through the depths of deep space. I need to nail down rogue Earth's climate before I can really dig into it.
* What temperature would the surface be?
* How quickly would it drop year to year?
* Would the atmosphere freeze, and if so, what would it look like?
* What would happen to cities, trees, the ocean, etc?
Any tips/ideas you guys have would be a huge help!
[Answer]
Earth pretty much looked like this not so very long ago:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q6uho.jpg)
Welcome to [Snowball Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth), some 650 million or more years ago. And this happened within the Goldilocks Zone!
Rogue Earth probably won't end up looking like a cue ball, simply because absent the Sun's influence, there won't be much weather. Whatever's in the atmosphere will rain or snow until Earth is far enough away that incoming solar energy no longer affects ocean currents and winds. Eventually, the surface will just be nut (and bolt!) freezing temperatures and rapidly diminishing amounts of incoming heat and light. Bad news for us.
Liquid water would likely persist in the oceans, meaning those buggers that live deep down won't even notice that us surface dwellers have turned into ice cubes.
How quickly depends on several factors:
* Where Earth is, at the time of its ejection, with respect to the direction of the Sun's travel around the Galaxy;
* Which direction Earth gets ejected (this is very important, because if Earth is ejected in the wrong direction, it will just plummet into the Sun and your whole project will be moot)
* How fast Earth is traveling
Rogue planets can zip right along, and if Earth is positioned "behind" the Sun's direction of travel and gets ejected back the way it came and at speed, we could be waving bye-bye to the Sun pretty quickly! If we end up heading in the Sun's direction, perhaps we won't notice much difference?
[Answer]
>
> * What temperature would the surface be?
>
>
>
Cold, really really cold, imagine the coldest winter you can remember, it's going to be colder than that, a lot colder, honestly it's going to be really cold, so cold you can't imagine how cold it's going to be.
Lets just say extra socks & a bobble hat aren't going to be much help.
>
> * How quickly would it drop year to year?
>
>
>
Year by year? it wouldn't even take one year, assuming you start by moving away from the sun you'll be in a new ice age colder than any before it long before you get half way to the orbit of Mars.
>
> * Would the atmosphere freeze, and if so, what would it look like?
>
>
>
Yes, it'll look like ice, what else would it look like.
>
> * What would happen to cities, trees, the ocean, etc?
>
>
>
They'll all freeze.
---
Any other questions?
---
The only place you've any real possibility of life persisting for a bit is going to be in close proximity to an active geothermal of some sort. Yellowstone for instance might provide a haven for a few humans for a bit longer than elsewhere on the planet.
[Answer]
Nothing would happen for a while, assuming we're talking about Sun just disappearing overnight. You can even demonstrably witness what happens with 12 hours of no sunlight in the Equator (or during polar night in the Arctic, for that matter). The primary reason for this is the vast amount of water.
We can, however, give some **ballpark** estimate[\*] for the speed of process.
If the Sun would just disappear Earth would begin to [cool](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation) at a rate of roughly 300 W/m². Now, Earth is not an ideal blackbody and temperature is not uniform, but in terms of estimates, well, close enough. This is equivalent to having a 1 mm layer of water drop 1 Kelvin in temperature in ca. 14 seconds (1 mm of water per square meter = 1 kg of water).
Tropics have an ocean [mixing layer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocline) of roughly 1000 meters and average water temperature (in that layer) of something like 20 C, so if we exclude currents and atmospheric convection it would take $\frac{1000 \text{m}}{0.001 \text{m}} \cdot 14 \text{ s/K} \cdot 20 \text{K} \sim 10$ years before tropical oceans would begin to freeze over.
Now, this is not what would happen, but it gives some insight on the speed of the process.
In reality things are much more complicated: Solar energy received in Equator is partly transferred in ocean and atmospheric convection to polar latitudes. If we assume hurricane-ish type [energy transfer](https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/energy-hurricane-volcano-earthquake1.htm), we could be looking at something like extra 10-100 W per square meter of ocean, add ocean currents for 200-300 watts extra, and we'd still end up with a time window that is closer to few years rather than few weeks.
Now, on land, on the other hand. We might be talking of an equivalent of several meters of water. So it would take perhaps a month, considering energy transfer by the atmosphere, to turn land into inhabitable snowfield and another month or two to make it uncomfortable for the Nordics or Canadians. This is naturally talking in averages, so locally it could be better...or much worse.
In terms of freezing, enthalpy of fusion of water is roughly 333 kJ per kilogram, much higher compared to heat capacity of 4.2 kJ/kg$\cdot$K. Therefore, assuming no geothermal energy, it would still take in order of centuries to have an ice-sheet in tropics that would measure in kilometers.
[\*] Correct to few orders of magnitude...If *lucky*, then an order of magnitude.
[Answer]
I would say:
1. No moon - means static oceans. The total amount of water grows only if Earth changes orbit.
1.1. Slower motion - more hours in a day, e.g. 28.
2. More contrast in the climate: colder in the North and warmer in the South.
3. More green forests, jungles. Higher trees.
Good luck!
] |
[Question]
[
When I say medieval it’s more like a fallen world that went barbaric really quickly. Firearms and combustible fuels have been commonplace so society is still advanced in a way, but is more tribal/feudal in nature. There are a few advanced nations, but they are at war almost every five seconds with the more... uncivilized groups around them.
One of the nations has an armed order called the Iron Guard. They wear really heavy iron armor to prevent getting shot by said firearms, but they can’t move very well... almost at all.
The movement part is fine because they only fight defensively (they hide behind high walls/high ground, rocks and or small children) and shoot with their guns from a safe distance away.
There is however a catch: the tribal barbarians that they fight have a bit of a fire bug and love setting fire to said high walls/high ground, rocks and or small children with their crude flamethrowers and fire bombs; to them the Iron Guard is just soon to be roasted meat in a can.
The fuel that they use is like petrol but a bit more sticky it burns at 247–280 °C; the flamethrowers are a bit like bellows that spit oil out of a long pipe a few feet ahead on there target then have a open touch/flint igniter that lights the fuel (far from safe). the fire bombs are flammable paste that you mix together with gun powder they use Molotov cocktails as well. the Iron Guard cant use shields because they are sharp shooters and a shield would hinder them.
So I did a bit a research (fun fact iron doesn’t protect you from fire that much) and I did come up with a couple ideas:
* Leather (has a lower burn rate then a lot of materials and is easy to come by, well sort off)
* Asbestos (is very fire resistant but maybe too advanced for any of the nations to build... and it kills you slowly)
**The Question is this: What Amour Designs and Materials do I use to not turn my Iron Guard into Crispy Critters**
**The Rules:**
1. The amour has to stand being totally engulfed with flame for at-least a half a minute (time to kill the attacker and move/put out the flame)
2. The materials that you use will have to go underneath the iron plating; only a coating can go over the iron (can’t have them lose their name, can we?)
3. The materials you use can’t be out of time period so no future tech or modern designs only medieval
4. Can’t be anything too rare or hard to mass produce
5. You can use combos or use mutable designs in your answers
To the people that will point out that if they have firearms and a fuel source why are they medieval or why can’t I use modem designs when they are ruining around with flamethrowers (you know who you are)
1. I will just say that there are people that keep them at a low tech level but want them to be combat effective
2. The fuel like source is like a gift of sorts they are not the ones making
it.
As always if you want any more detail don't hesitate to ask.
[Answer]
Asbestos cloth has existed since antiquity, it was just somewhat rare and moderatley expensive. Its said that a reocurring party trick for a few nobles and royalty throughout history was to clean thier mess with a napkin and toss it into the fire, then pull it out totally unharmed to demonstrate that the fire in fact did not only fail to harm the napkin, but also cleaned the food crumbs from it.
I mean asbestos isnt terribly rare, its just that until industrialization people really didnt have a practical use for it on a large scale. It was just considered a neat and somewhat pricey oddity, or was used for other things besides cloth like using the asbestos fibers to strengthen or color ceramics (a particular form of asbestos is brilliantly blue.) So in conclusion, an asbestos liner for your armor would do the trick wonderfully and the tech to produce asbestos cloth existed at the time period. Its rare for that period, but not "unobtanium," just run of the mill expensive.
Mesothelioma (particulate contaminant caused lung scarring/cancer) isnt fun but on the bright side you usually only get it from powdered/fractured asbestos and in its cloth form asbestos is not very harmful. Also mesothelioma takes like 40 years to develop, assuming average medieval lifespan thats well into ripe old age for the era anyways.
[Answer]
Ag, this difficult, but I really want to see this questioned answered. A lot of people on this site deal with flame attacks in the medieval ages, after all.
Right of the bat, a smoke hood could keep fire out of the Iron Guard's lungs and eyes, which they would probably appreciate. Their also easy to make, just an airtight leather sack and with a hose that trails to the ground behind the wearer. The idea is that the hose would allow for the air underneath the smoke to be inhaled instead of the smoke itself. Its not much, but it cheap and better than nothing.
The other idea I had was a wearable mop (kinda). Basically, soaking some burlap or other durable cloth in water is an easy way to take the edge off extreme heat. Wet burlap masks used to be used in the engine of coal powered ships to keep shovelers' face from being burned. This breaks the rule of going over the Iron Guards trademark armor, but I though it might be worth mentioning nonetheless. Plus they would have to keep spraying themselves with water and that might not be viable in the heat of combat.
Lastly, some kind of broad, lightweight shield might be good just to keep burning fuel from getting on the Guardsmen. I know they will want heavy iron things, but lightweight wood or leather stretched over a frame would be best (one of [these](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jean-Loic_Le_Quellec/publication/272621018/figure/fig85/AS:614072269692944@1523417646407/Sotho-shield-after-E-Casalis-1861-136-Fig-102-Nguni-warriors-armed-with-big-very.jpg) bad boys).
[Answer]
Medieval siege were carried out with fire, too. To protect them from boiling oil, aggressive chemicals and fire, the troops used shields covered with leather and moisturized with vinegar.
Your troops can do something similar. A double walled metal shield, with the outer face covered with leather and kept wet with vinegar.
The double wall, or better the air inbetween, will help insulating from the heat. The leather will slow the combustion. And the vinegar will protect the bearer from nasty tricks involving alkaline substances like Calcium Oxide.
[Answer]
So to survive the being fully engulfed in flames there is going to need to be some sort of insulation and a breathing apparatus so they don't just breath in pure CO2 and start to choke. For the breathing apparatus, I imaging it would be some kind of facial mask made out of leather and using a hose make out of some god forsaken animals intestines. Those are long and tubular and you can choose to run them inside the armor, or outside (but you will probably need to treat it so it becomes leather like? and won't just cause smoke straight away).
Since metal is an excellent heat conductor, you will need to pad the inside with leather or maybe thick wool so that it isn't in contact with the skin and wont just melt into their flesh. You might just make all the underlying padding a Iron Guard have to wear be built out of this anyway so they are walking super insulated and stuffy coffins.
You can also give them a cape made out of thick wool which is pretty fire resistant. They would use this as a fire blanket or as flexible shielding against the sticky fuel and just discard it after.
Other than that, you could also have buckets of water nearby that the Iron Guard douse themselves in once they know there will be fire involved. If their clothes and armor padding are all made out of wool, it should be able to soak up a lot of water and help fend off the heat. Of course it would make them incredibly heavy and uncomfortable after a few minutes.
] |
[Question]
[
The creature I'm designing has a tail with spikes on the end of it. The material of the spikes should be strong/durable (not break easily), and very sharp (the edge as well as the sides, being able to cut through most materials like metal). The tail has several uses where these spikes might be a very real problem (like balancing, flexing around stuff to pick it up, and such). I'm looking for a way for the creature to protect itself and its surroundings from these spikes when they are not necessary.
So far I've come up with:
* Retract them somehow (how? a long 'shard' is a bit different then a cat's claw for example, and they should not cut themselves when retracting them)
* Vice versa: cover them with skin or something similar (how?)
* Make them less 'spiky' or only sharp at the very edge (but then they become less useful in my world)
* Just naturally learn to live with it (but that seems like a cheap way out)
I guess there is a reason most animals have either retractable claws or no claws if they need their hands/feet. But would there be a solution that is (biologically speaking) logical / plausible?
---
I couldn't find a question that addresses something like this. Retractable claws have been discussed:
[Retractable claws in otherwise human-like hands?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/60113/retractable-claws-in-otherwise-human-like-hands)
But these are (curved) claws on fingers; I'm not sure if their design would work on my creature ('shards' on a tail).
[Answer]
Have you considered folding spikes? Rather than trying to retract them into the body, perhaps instead the spikes fold back against the tail when they're not needed.
Properly designed, the spikes can be made much safer folded back than fanned out. Imagine a razor - if you press your finger against the blade it will cut you, but if you stack five together so their blades are flat with each other they barely cut at all. Perhaps your creatures' tails fold back like that.
Such powerful spikes also need maintenance- you can't just drop them and regrow like a porcupine. Culturally your creatures might let their tails blunt and only sharpen them for war (an adaptation to denser society). They may also wear clothing over the top to protect their spikes and others.
More generally, consider why your creatures evolved such fantastic weapons - there may be arrangements of spikes (eg. forming a blade facing out) that provide utility for its ancient use cases without exposing yourself to too much self-harm.
[Answer]
**The cheap way out happens to be the way life does it**
How do humans go through life not poking themselves in the eye with a finger? How to Rhinos not gore every rhino they meet? How does a rolling horse not roll over its colt? How did my pet iguana not slap itself into a stupor when it let that very leathal tail off its leash?
* The tail may have a physiological limitation that prohibits it from swinging all the way into the creature itself. This exists on iguanas, they literally cannot swing their tail far enough to hurt themselves. (Note: the physics of a spiked tail might not allow it even if it could. It has weight, and that weight must be accomodated when swung. The creature's body may be forced by leverage to swing out of the way when the tail is swung to that extent. It's just another expression of this limitation.)
* All creatures learn to live within the limitations of their existence. I've seen my cat wrap its tail into its ear to sleep, but you never see it tripping over its own tail when it walks or runs. The same is true with human arms. We learn not to poke our eyes. I'm sure that dinosaurs with spiky tails were not born with the spikes and as the spikes grew, the dinos learned not to hit themselves with the spikes.
* All creatures that can see learn to see where other things are. This is the least perfect of the issues I'm presenting, but we learn to see the world around us and we learn to know our place in it. This is why people throwing [bolas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolas), [lassos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasso) and jumping ropes don't hit themselves or tangle themselves with the items, they have a sense of where they are in relation to what they're doing.
*So, realistically, the "cheap way out" is how nature actually solved the problem.*
But, if you're looking for something with greater literary coolness... remember that cats retract their claws. This has more to do with protecting the claw than it does protecting the cat (the claws come out when they scratch an itch), but it's a solution.
[Answer]
Limit the range of motion of the tail, accounting for momentum and any free movement the spikes may have, so it is physically unable to double back and strike the body of the animal. The easiest way to do this would likely be to elongate the tail vertebrae, strengthen the tendons that connect them, and thicken the overall musculature.
[Answer]
Some scientists think that dinosaurs had many types of skin (some had skin, other feathers or scales). You could "give" your creature a hard skin or scales to protect herself from her spikes. Also you could give her some hardened plates that could be placed in a way that the spikes should hit them instead of the flesh of the creature.
I don't think many creatures can "hurt themselves" with their own defense system.
Like a snake that doesn't intoxicate itself with its venom.
] |
[Question]
[
Planet Swamp. As the name suggest, it is a planet fully covered with swamps.
A new kind of carnivorous plant has been discovered on this planet: when its leaves are touched by an animal or moved by the wind they emit a sweet scent, something like vanilla and sugar. This sweet scent attract unaware animals close to the plant.
Its fern like leaves are covered with tiny and fragile thorns, and as soon as an animal touches one of these thorns, it gets injected a small amount of toxin.
This toxin, when injected in small amounts initially enhances the sensitivity to the smell emitted by the plant, giving pleasure and euphoria to the animal inhaling it. Therefore the animal keeps touching the plant leaves, rolling in them, and it's not scared when the leaves and branches start enveloping and immobilizing its body until the toxin leads the animal to death. The enveloping movement is triggered by multiple local torn ruptures, and forces the branch to bend in the direction of the broken thorns, and can be as fast as in the [Mimosa pudica](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLTcVNyOhUc).
The same toxin, once injected in large amounts as consequence of the enveloping, speeds up the body decomposition, resulting in a slurry that will feed the plant, providing it nutrients else not available in the swamp soil.
What can be the optimal size of preys that this plant should target? In other word, does it make sense that such a plant grows until it is able to catch an elephant sized animal, or it would be better for it to target a sheep sized (or even smaller) animal?
[Answer]
It'll probably stick with fairly small creatures.
There's a reason why carnivorous plants haven't yet grown to large sizes (or at least the traps created by those plants) - the amount of prey animals decreases as the size grows larger.
Currently the largest carnivorous plants ([pitcher plants](http://www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq5400.html)) still eat insects and small frogs.
Although you have a different design here, the numbers of scale still apply and the plants will probably benefit more from more and smaller meals than limiting itself to larger prey that occurs less often (and has more capability of damaging the plant in question).
Plants are also largely self-serving - they'd want resources for themselves and probably wouldn't emit a toxin that would end up benefitting another plant should the prey animal wander off in it's stupor.
Unless the toxin also carries pollen.
[Answer]
I like a fungus for the approach you describe.
1: Fungi are mostly underground in mycelial webs. I think I read that the largest organism on earth is a colossal underground mycelium extending for many acres. The above ground pieces are dispensible appendages (like mushrooms). It is no big deal to the fungus if a mushroom gets squashed - that might even help with its function to disperse spores. Your creature needs to have it be no big deal for a cow to roll on it. For a plant with a large above-ground body it has grown, it is a real misfortune if a cow rolls on it.
2: You already require the prey to decompose into the ground before ingestion. That is unlike plants and animals which break down prey within their bodies. This internal route prevents competition from scavengers who might want to come and take the prey. Fungi already break down nutrients external to the mycelia and absorb them. They have mechanisms to prevent competition which involve toxins (e.g. penicillin) to poison competitors for nutrients.
3: Hallucinogenic and other toxins are a good match with fungi.
4: I like a possible tar pit aspect: fungi grow within the decomposing corpse and use that as a springboard to put forth new thorns / above ground structures. A scavenger attracted by the corpse might very well itself wind up prey to the fungus.
5: Once you have introduced such a creature I like the idea of an assassin using it as poison. The protagonists enter a castle which has been taken over by the fungus after it used to poison a meal. The few inhabitants who remain alive are intoxicated and euphoric as the fungus grows over them.
[Answer]
You plant doesn't want to catch large animals, because a rotting corpse (or slurry) kills the soil macro and micro-fauna which are keeping the plant alive. Decaying corpses turn the soil anaerobic (oxygen-less) as the gloop uses up all the free oxygen. So useful burrowing creatures like worms will flee or die of suffocation. Anaerobic bacteria flourish, but aerobic bacteria will die. On Earth, plants need oxygen for their roots, so all this will make them very unhappy and/or kill them outright.
Thus the corpse of a big animal rotting will temporarily *decrease* soil fertility. After the gooey phase is over, the soil fertility will slowly return to normal, then eventually be boosted as the phosphate from the bones leaches into the ground.
If your plant can stop the slurry from reaching its roots, it can avoid this problem. It would have to have a 'stomach' to contain the slurry in. Like the pitcher of a pitcher plant. But to eat an elephant it therefore needs an elephant-sized pitcher. (Alternatively it needs aerial roots like a mangrove tree).
Soooo... you are down to energy balance/budget. Can your plant afford to use lots of resources to grow elephant-sized pitchers in the hope that an elephant comes along? Would it be better growing lots of rabbit-sized pitchers instead? Like a Venus fly-trap invests in several leaves.
If it manufactures a 'pitcher' on demand - small for a rabbit, large for an elephant - it still needs enough stored resources to make the elephant-sized one. It might only need to be the size of a sunflower to have enough leaves to wrap up a rabbit, but would have to be oak tree sized to wrap up an elephant. To get oak tree sized it would have to be very good at catching rabbits... so why not just stay catching rabbits?
Also are elephants smart enough to spot the huge clump of leaves/huge pitchers and keep away? :-)
And a 5 tonne euphoric elephant rolling about on your leaves will do a lot more damage than a rabbit! An elephant-eating plant will have to invest more precious resources in becoming physically tough.
[Answer]
Small animals are best for all the reasons above and the fact that the drug needs to affect the animal before it leaves the area. Taking an elephant as an example, the skin is so thick that the toxin may not reach past the layer of dead cells. If it does affect a large animal, it may take too long. It does the plant no good if the animal is far away when it starts feeling "cuddly."
Another aspect of large animals is how much damage can it do to the plant. An elephant that that rubs against a plant often damages that plant. You can see this when you look at photos or video of trees that elephants decide are good back scratchers.
Also, you have to take evolution into account. The plants with the better toxins will survive the best and reproduce. The animals that best resist that toxin or avoid the plant will survive to reproduce unless the plant takes a very small percentage of the animals. The animals that reproduce at a large rate tend to be the smaller ones.
] |
[Question]
[
I was thinking of a situation in which there is a city state with a direct democracy in which citizens not only vote directly on the issues but vote on which issues are to be voted on as well as counting the votes. The people in this city state vote to begin conquering their neighbors and within ten years what started as a city state becomes an empire covering 397,000$km^2$. Within thirty years the empire expands to cover more territory than the roman empire. The empire has the same direct democracy as the city state that started it and people in every city of the empire are allowed to vote.
What effect would expanding from the size of a city to being larger than the roman empire within a generation have on this empire with a direct democracy? Would this empire be able to hold together without going into civil war or would the people in the conquered territories vote to break away?
[Answer]
What level of (technological) development are you considering?
Direct democracy would fall apart quickly in pre-industrial times (which seems to be your focus, given the reference to the Roman Empire), because every proposal to vote on something on would take weeks or even months to distribute across the empire, then another few weeks for the vote tallies to be returned, after which the actual vote would take the same amount of time again.
In addition, the people in the conquered territories probably have no shared interests at all with the original state's citizens. They could probably organize and *pass* a vote to disband the imperial army and distribute the treasury to the conquered territories. They wouldn't even need to vote for independence after that.
A federal system might work to alleviate the communications problem by having direct democracy only at the city/province level, but it doesn't solve the problem of people not *wanting* to be part of the empire and voting to sabotage or leave it.
Conquest and democracy simply don't go well together. Imagine the United Kingdom The Netherlands (pop 17 million) conquering India its old colony Indonesia (pop 220+ million) and then giving their new citizens equal voting rights. After the next elections, the country will be run by a government of Indonesian parties. Essentially, the UK Netherlands would have been absorbed by India Indonesia rather than having conquered it.
If the empire grew by having cities join voluntarily (after the population deposes the local rulers), it might last longer, but only as long as it can provide material benefits to the citizens that its neighbors don't.
[Answer]
You could potentially build a large empire with *some* level of democratic process in place, but not to the extent that you're describing.
The level of bureaucracy you're describing is completely unrealistic in a medieval setting (and that's before you take the problems Cyrus describes into consideration):
* A very small number of people knew how to read or write in those days
* Even many of those who knew how to read or write had no education or culture to speak of. This leaves the door wide open to the manipulation of the masses via clever propaganda, rumors, etc.
* The resources needed to vote on which issues to vote on, and then vote on the issue itself would be absolutely mind boggling. The city would come to a grinding halt as everyone would have to go and vote. Your entire empire would make decisions so slowly that its enemies would be able to crush it without a problem.
* Even today we struggle with ballot stuffing, and dishonesty in the voting system. Ensuring vote validity in a time when there is no good way to discern who's who (no government photo ID) is simply impossible.
Basically .. even having a city run in this fashion is nothing short of a fantasy setting.
So here's how you can - for the most part - accomplish your goals:
**A Flavor of Democracy**
Your government should work a bit in the same way that democracy works now in the United States (pick and choose some of the elements, of course).
The reason I'm singling them out is because their President is the supreme military commander, and he is able to order certain military actions with no input from any other branch of government. This ability is absolutely crucial in a medieval setting - the ruler must be able to make quick, clear military decisions, and have the armed forces obey unquestioningly.
Some politicians may grumble, the senate may voice their opposition, etc., but they can't stall the decision with pointless political bickering while the nation's enemies advance.
Furthermore, seeing how the US ***is*** basically a modern, democratic conquering empire of sorts, the analogy works well.
**Tiered Citizenship**
Uncultured, and uneducated people should not be allowed to vote for obvious reasons (stated above). *However*, the situation is even more nuanced than that.
Your empire is a bully of sorts. You march into people's nations, bring their governments down, slaughter their armed forces, etc. There's going to be a fair amount of hatred directed at you. Giving newly conquered people the ability to vote is a really bad idea, as you will soon find yourself sitting at the table with elected officials who would like nothing better than to slit your throat given the smallest chance.
So here's the solution: **Don't allow just anyone to vote.**
Create a tiered citizenship system, a la Starship Troopers. Anyone who serves in the legions for 10+ years becomes a citizen with full voting rights in local and "imperial" (federal) elections. Anyone who serves in the imperial scribe services (political system) for 10+ years can do the same. Many more people may wish to become scribes rather than soldiers risking life and limb, so each applicant should take a test to determine in which branch (s)he would be best suited, and be assigned not only according to their results, but also the need of the Empire.
Those who undertake local vocational training (merchants, cobblers, blacksmiths, etc.) can vote in local elections, but not in federal elections.
Those with no education of any type (minimal wage jobs so to speak) don't get to vote at all.
This might seem harsh, but there's a simple reason for it: the legions and scribe services will serve as educational institutions, and culturally assimilate those who successfully complete their terms of service. This way, the people who eventually end up voting the next supreme leader of the Empire into power do so while fully understanding the issues which the Empire is facing, and who are probably deeply invested in its continued success (since their careers are now tied to its governing body).
**Conclusion**
Some people are not aware, but most Roman legionnaires were, in fact, foreigners. They signed up for the same reason I describe above: citizenship. The Roman empire would roll in, and like an unstoppable wave, would crush the local tribes. The surviving tribesmen would join up and fill the ranks of the very legions which had crushed their countrymen. Why? Because clearly the newcomers were someone to be reckoned with! They pledged to serve 10 years, which would guarantee them citizenship. This was a huge deal. In the mean time, they became Romanized. They learned the language, they fought the Empire's wars, and gained a sense of pride at the Empire's achievements. You want your own system to work largely the same.
In the end, each conquered nation would slowly embrace your system of governance, although having their populations gain full voting rights might take a few decades.
[Answer]
Much more information is needed. Are we talking about earth, or some other world? If we're talking about the earth, at what historical period? And what region?
The most important influences would probably come from without, rather than from within. What originally motivated the city/state to "conquer" its neighbors? Was it because they coveted their "stuff"? Was it to stop a neighbor from taking their "stuff"? Was it because they felt threatened by a more distant neighbor? Perhaps they saw an advantage to consolidating their resources with several of their neighbors' resources? Perhaps they had arable land and their neighbors had a good harbour, and another had mineral resources, and yet another had good forests...
And that's just a starting point. When, if ever, do they encounter a rival empire? Or multiple kingdoms, etc,...
Depending on their technological stage, and that of their eventual neighbors, do they reach a point where they can no longer sustain their borders without growing? And have they met rivals that they cannot absorb? Et cetera...
Another major factor would be what form this "empire's" democracy takes. Forms of government are large umbrellas at the meta level. Is it a democratic republic? A direct democracy? Wikipedia lists at least 507 types of democracies! Don't let your imagination be pigeonholed by other peoples definitions of what a democracy **has to be**.
**I just saw you called it a direct democracy**
So, would it fall into civil war? Would some conquered territories vote to break away? And would they be allowed to?
Do the advantages of staying within the empire outweigh the disadvantages? A small territory with strong, aggressive neighbors might think they should stay. A larger, rich territory with a strong cultural or religious past and differences may feel otherwise.
I think we'd need a little more situational development to figure out where we're at, and where we're going. Remember though, nothing lasts forever. At some point this empire would probably face civil war(s) and the secession of territory(ies).
[Answer]
**A genocidal and strategic population may be able to accomplish this with some planning.**
Another way to solve the problem of direct democracy becoming potentially nonviable with greater and greater size without making the changes that @AndreiROM suggested that would preserve universal suffrage would be to use a slow-growth nativist policy.
**The Dutch-Indonesia problem**
As @Cyrus stated, a conquesting direct democracy risks being subverted by the people they conquer. I would like to point out that our state can simply *kill the people* or *reduce their population over time* to preserve a *ratio of foreign to native voters*. Three methods that could be used to accomplish this are
1. Violent Genocide - Conquering a territory and killing enough of the population would ensure that territory gains do not create a foreign/native voter imbalance. This would grant our empire-to-be large amounts of new territory. It's a kind of "Lebensraum" approach that would provide for growth of our original population. This would take a bit of work, and would probably make the enemies of our empire fight harder against us knowing that we will kill most of them if they were to be defeated.
2. Non-violent Genocide - Alternatively a population could be conquered and reduced through social engineering such as chemical means to reduce the fertility rate and a child-tax to reduce reproduction. This method takes more time but may have less political repercussions.
3. Population Spamming - Ideally we would not only reduce the foreign population but increase our own - Quebecois style - by selective immigration, high rewards for marriage and having children and punishing those who don't marry and have children. This increases the tolerance our democracy has to absorption of foreigners.
A combination of all three methods would be more efficient than any one method used in isolation.
**Additional concerns**
Aside from things that are universally required to uphold a functioning democracy like education, individual rights and an integrous press, our state has a few additional housekeeping items that it should seek to attend to.
1. Restricted Immigration - to manage our exposure to vote subversion through immigration.
2. A Strong Eugenics Policy - The amount of self organization this strategy demands would require a considerably high median intelligence in our state.
**Weaknesses**
There are additional issues that one would have to explore related to managing the behavior of our group to 'get the ball rolling' and about how to confront remaining problems of direct democracy and political challenges our state would face in the future.
For example if the Holy Roman Empire had engaged in all out war in an attempt to completely destroy the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and it's people, all of Europe, in all likelihood, would have fallen to the Ottomans. So our state has a lot of variables it has to balance, some of which we may not be able to look to history for guidance on. Ultimately our state in the long term will have to be flexible with it's strategy as it faces a lot of uncertainty.
] |
[Question]
[
(Related: [Warfare without Metal](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/11042/9498))
In my setting, metals (including common metals such as tin and iron) are a rare commodity. Because of this, humans have to make weapons such as firearms (guns) with other resources.
In order to get to the level of technology that we are at today, humans have discovered how to create and manipulate [buckminsterfullerene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminsterfullerene "Wikipedia page") (aka buckyballs) in order to make electronics such as computers.
Guns are still made by propelling a bullet with an explosion (as they are today), so brittle materials like wood won't work.
You must assume:
* Guns still use bullets, which means the bullets must also have a safe casing.
* Humans are as advanced as they are today, so you may use any material that isn't rare.
* The "no metal" rule applies to common metals like tin, iron, copper, etc, which means all of those count as rare.
* Humans are the only species, and Earth is the only planet.
In short, **what could guns and bullets be made out of if metal couldn't be used?**
[Answer]
This is doable, but difficult. See this [reference](https://www.google.com/patents/US5214237).
This is a non-metallic fluorocarbon resin bullet. During testing, it apparently blasted a "four-inch diameter hole four inches deep" in a target designed to simulate a human. I think this is at least a proof of concept that non-metallic bullets are both possible and usable. One suspects that if ordinary bullets were not already perfect for their most common uses, research in this area would already have produced something more mainstream.
As for guns, [plastic guns](http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/despite-plastic-gun-ban-3-d-printed-firearms-still-have-f2D11718212) are already both feasible and tested. You can even build one at home, though I certainly would not recommend it.
In short, yes, with modern technology humanity could probably manufacture a non-metallic gun with non-metallic bullets.
[Answer]
In a metal-less world, you'd start to see the rise of crossbow type devices which deliver nearly the same damage without using explosives. If you insist on having guns with explosives but not metal, and it's a sufficiently advanced society, they might use some kind of composite plastic like carbon fiber. The 3d printing world has shown us that you can make firearms without metal, they just don't last that long. Given enough time, stronger composite materials would be created which could stand up to requirements needed for firearms.
[Answer]
<https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/can-a-gun-be-made-from-ceramic> discusses this question. The answer seems to be "not at the moment, but people are working on it".
A world without metal but with modern-equivalent technology would have put a lot of work into ceramics and glass. All of the effort our current civilization has spent on metallurgy, in fact. They would probably start with a stone cannon and work on reducing its size.
A more fundamental question though: what is the planet made of? Note that both human and plant biology depends on trace metals, and most rocks have a lot of silicates in; if you can make a silicon carbide crystal of the right cylindrical shape you can use it for the base of the gun barrel and make the rest out of ceramic composite around it.
[Answer]
I simply don't think you would get guns as we currently think of them. Explosive propellant is too heavily linked to metallurgy.
What I think you would get instead is crossbow style and rocket launcher style. Fireworks are an old weapon of war - predating guns by quite a large margin. Tube launched fireworks seems a more logical direction.
And perhaps evolving rifling, guidance etc. perhaps earlier in the process, simply because of the nature of the projectile. Bullets need to be pretty simple, because of the concussion of firing. Missiles can be a lot more complicated (and may need to be, because initial velocity changes their usage significantly.)
[Answer]
You mention using buckyballs for computers. That same sort of technology might lend itself to guns made with other [Carbon Allotropes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropes_of_carbon).
Specifically:
Graphene could be used to provide high tensile strength, containing the explosive force with very little weight. This could be augmented with other, non-metal materials to provide rigid strength.
Bullets could use Diamond or Lonsdaleite to provide a strong, penetrating material. Casings would be open graphene balloons.
[Answer]
For single shot "zip gun" type weapons, almost any material can do. Indeed, with the restrictions given, it is difficult to imagine a firearm in the sense that we know today as being possible.
To make a modern "repeating" firearm, the challenge is multifold. The chamber needs to contain high pressures and high temperature gasses. The cartridge case is made of brass in modern weapons since it can expand slightly during firing to create a seal in the chamber, and its ejection helps remove a lot of heat from the chamber and weapon. It also helps that the metallic cartridge also mechanically protects the round and propellant in storage and in the magazine as well. Polymer cartridges have been experimented with (Notably the [LSAT](https://infogalactic.com/info/Lightweight_Small_Arms_Technologies) program), and caseless cartridges have also been developed (notably for the [HK G-11](https://infogalactic.com/info/Heckler_%26_Koch_G11) rifle program), but with limited success to date.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YDnBH.jpg)
*LSAT cased telescoped polymer ammunition as developed for a machine-gun*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4TWZv.jpg)
*HK G-11 with 50 round magazine and caseless ammunition*
The next challenge is to have a barrel which can handle the severe forces imparted by having a high speed projectile passing through it, along with heat buildup and mechanical strength to deal with soldiers bashing it in the field. Ceramic barrels might have some of the properties desired, but ceramic/metal composites seem to have the sorts of material properties to make an "ideal" barrel. Lacking metals, a ceramic barrel with a high strength material "wound" around it should have most of the properties desired, at the expense of a complex manufacturing process. The [Carl Gustave](https://infogalactic.com/info/Carl_Gustav_recoilless_rifle) M-3 has this on a larger scale in an 84mm recoilless rifle, but the rifled liner is still steel.
So the short version is firearms the way we understand them are going to be exceedingly difficult to make without metal. There are some possible substitutes, however.
Rocket projectiles have been around since ancient China. Using cardboard tubes filled with gunpowder attached to an arrow provides a simple yet effective projectile weapon, which can be fired from a crossbow like weapon individually or from a multiple rocket launcher to bombard an area with arrows
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8wmFY.jpg)
*Take that!*
A more modern variation was the [Gyrojet](https://infogalactic.com/info/Gyrojet) rocket pistol and carbine, using a .45 cal projectile powered by a tiny solid filled rocket motor. Oddly enough it was quite safe at point blank range (you could stop the projectile by putting your thumb over the barrel), but became increasingly dangerous as the rocket built up velocity. Accuracy was ensured by having the rocket exhausts angles slightly to impart a rotation on the projectile as it was in flight.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/R3CNf.jpg)
*Gyrojet ammunition*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/knNQ7.jpg)
*Gyrojet Mk 2 pistol*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wWSfQ.jpg)
*Gyrojet rocket carbines*
The pressures inside the weapons are much lower than a conventional firearm, and they can be made of virtually any material (the historic ones used aluminum, but in principle even a plastic barrel would do). Polymer and ceramic could conceivably make a modern Gyrojet, should anyone be interested in reviving this, or for the purposes of your story set in the "modern" age.
Edit to add: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdW8Trh_MGg>
This video shows a successful firing of a Mk2 pistol, and you can see the rocket spinning the round.
[Answer]
Bullets don't always come with casings. There are both modern caseless rounds and ancient muzzle-loaders (possibly with [paper cartridges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_cartridge#Cartridges_for_smoothbore_muskets)).
Jonah mentioned the modern [3d printed gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printed_firearms) experiments. One might combine those with a muzzle-loading design and a non-metallic bullet.
That leaves the question of the initial spark. Caplocks and flintlocks use metal, so how about a [matchlock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchlock)?
There have been [caplock revolvers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caplock_mechanism), so a crude multi-shot design might be possible for a matchlock as well. Perhaps a [pepper-box-style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper-box) gun rather than a single-barreled revolver, or at least a [double](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-barreled_shotgun) with fixed barrels.
[Answer]
The answer would depend heavily on how gun like you want your non-metal guns to be. The Hwacha (the MythBusters did an episode on It) looks like a good starting point for a non metal gun, reducing the size of the arrows, and developing an automatic reloading system. It might look something like the Gyrojet guns developed in the 1960s.
] |
[Question]
[
**This question already has answers here**:
[How would a bow for super-humans use look like?](/questions/214838/how-would-a-bow-for-super-humans-use-look-like)
(5 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
## Context
I have a group of people with super strength and the durability to withstand its use. The super strength does not come with super weight/mass so they can't lift cars or punch through walls. They wear heavy armor made of sapphires to get more weight. I haven't defined an exact limit to their strength, I now see that could be problematic for my question.
My world is medieval-ish, but does not have problems with creating or maintaining high levels of heat. It also has plants that cannot be broken or cut, but can still flex. Other then being incapable of breaking, the plants retain their real-world properties.
I'm focusing on the material the bow is made of, and keeping it travel-sized.
## Question
With all this in mind, what would the bow be made of, and how powerful would it be?
I know normal bows can break arrows. I did some research and I think a straight, unbending, unbreakable, arrow would be best. Am I right, or are there other criteria?
How powerful would it be? *(Could it match low or mid-powered guns? How far would it shoot? What could you shoot through?)* I don't need science, just an estimate.
Assuming the person were trained in its use, how practical would this even be? *(The bow is not intended for warfare, but for individuals to use against a variety of things, eg. bandits, people with armor, large animals. Sorry it's not very specific, my people are dimension travelers so they could run up against almost anything.)*
[Answer]
# The Same Materials as now
Historically, bows were made mostly of a single piece of wood, laminated woods, or combinations of wood, fiber (plant/animal), or horn (most notably the mongol composite bows).
But in most cases, the material is not the limiting factor, but the strength of the user. In theory, bows could be *incredibly* strong - but no one would be able to use them.
So the actual question is:
# How would those bows look like?
Mostly like they do now, except:
* thicker: doubling the thickness increases draw weight eightfold. a two-finger thick yew bow can reach 200 pounds draw weight, easily. Let's assume we add 25% thickness, and we're close to 400pounds.
* broader: it's basically like using two bows in parallel. Power scales linear, but you don't increase the maximum material stress. So make our bow three times as wide, while still being just a bit thicker, and we're in the ballpark of 1200 pounds - with a mostly traditional flat bow design, only beefed up.
* so together, your bows would be a big, tapered plank with a grip in the middle.
Concerning your `plants that cannot be broken or cut` - well, here you break the system twice. It *could* make an infinitely strong bow, but if it can't be cut, it can't be processed.
## Why not steel?
There were, historically, longbows of steel. Their problem is that they're heavier, much more expensive and *less efficient* than their wood counterparts. And even in modern times, other materials are superior (fiberglass, carbon).
But given steel *was* used in a similar weapon:
## Why not crossbows?
Crossbows were ideal to offset the drawbacks of steel bows - it's very easy to make a very strong, *short* bow of steel if you don't care about its efficiency. And when you can just draw a crossbow, you can use a lever or winch - so it does not matter how strong it is. 2000 pounds draw weight were uncommon, but realistic.
But the main benefit that crossbows provide - being able to shoot with them *without* being incredibly string - is kind of pointless when you are, well... *incredibly strong*.
## Concerning your other questions:
* **unbendable arrows** - No. Because of the archers' paradox, you *want* arrows to bend *around* your bow, so you can shoot straight (unless you have a modern, high-tech bow with central arrow rest).
* **power** - even regular bows can match mid-powered guns. They didn't fall out of favor in warfare because they didn't deal damage, but because they're hard to use, need extensive training, and you can't take as much ammunition with you. Plus: rate of fire.
* **range** - traditional composite bows in eastern Asia hold the record of ~1km maximum range. with our "superbow" I suggest twice the range is possible. However, *effective* range is much less dependent on strength, but on the archers dexterity.
## How I know this:
hand-crafting historic bows is one of my hobbies, as is devouring books on any topic in huge quantities. I recommend the Traditional Bowyer's Bible for facts and inspirations.
## Addendum for modernity:
If you're not *strictly* stuck to medieval technology, then a fiber-backed compound bow will be the weapon of your choice - no matter if you're arming a man made of cotton candy or superman.
[Answer]
I'm not an engineer, but I would guess you could make bows out of spring steel, like used in the suspension of cars. It is intentionally made to be used for springs; deform by bending to store energy, and when released return to its original shape without any deformation, and can take many tons of weight.
The problem I see is the bones and flesh of your heroes; I'm not sure how much pressure an arm bone or the hand bones can take before crushing or breaking. So even if the muscles can pull a bow that takes tons of strength, can their arm bones, shoulders, etc withstand those tons of pressure without breaking?
for reference, here is Kevin Fast breaking the world record for heaviest vehicle pulled: About 100 tons.
[Kevin Fast Breaking World Record, 2017](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/heaviest-vehicle-pulled-over-100ft-male)
[Answer]
## Crossbows
I don't know from the top of my head what materials are best for bows. The idea is simple enough, but the materials and composition is difficult. The bow needs to be sturdy with a bit of flex, while the string needs to be able to flex much more with tension to store energy. The string needs to be able to be used a ten to hundred times for it to be useful as well. Too much hassle, so I'll look at a proxy that does pretty much what you want. A crossbow. That means we can learn a lot from what other people already found out for us.
A crossbow is a device created to reduce the effort of drawing and holding the string. There's versions that still need to be manually drawn, but more interesting are the ones that need a winch or other mechanism to be drawn. In very simple terms these remove the strength limit and place the limits in the material.
A quick search shows me the strongest crossbow is a heavy 880 lbs (400kg) windlass crossbow. I'm guessing the lbs isn't the actual weight but a power measure. The crossbows were designed so you could more easily have power and accuracy over long distances. This particular one was probably most used on ramparts to allow the weapon to rest on something, as it's still heavy to hold and aim.
This was made of ash (tree), steel and linen. With enough heat and knowledge definitely something they made in medieval times. Still this thing would be poor to use as an actual bow. Though more skill is needed to draw, hold and aim a bow, bows were still very good as they could fire much more rapidly. To use this as a bow, I would increase the metal bow like part in the front to a normal bow size. Make it more sturdy/thick to withstand the extra forces involved thanks to leveraging effects. Add the linen string. Ash is likely not needed anymore.
This is if course theoretical, but in my view a close proxy to what the limit of medieval material can do.
The problem then is the arrows. Bolts are often shorter, which allows them to withstand more forces without breaking. That being said, they often shot wooden arrows and bolts with a possible added iron/steel tip. It is simply too costly to make them all fully out of iron/steel. If you make yours fully out of steel the arrows will likely be fine. Other people can comment on of the wobble of iron/steel arrows is still sufficient for the arrow to stay accurate.
[Answer]
The ballistics of bows are incredibly complicated - even compared to firearms, where they already sometimes seem more art than science...
However, a few things to consider:
The velocity of the arrow is limited by how fast the limbs of the bow can return to their initial state. This in turn is dependent on may factors, including the material the bow is made from and its mass. Typical maximum velocities range from around 55 m/s to 125 m/s. The higher figures are from compound bows and gain advantage from the cams. This means every bow has an ideal arrow mass - lighter arrows won't go any faster, have less kinetic energy, and just mean more energy being absorbed by the bow limbs; possibly damaging them. Heavier ones will be slower with little extra kinetic energy. The important lesson is that maximum velocity is a property of the material of the bow, not its draw weight.
This leads us to a limitation of accuracy of bows vs firearms - bullets travel much faster so their potential for long range accuracy is much greater. The limit of accurate shooting for bows is going to be 100m to maybe 150m. Beyond that the curved trajectory of the relatively slow arrow is going to mean that you are using indirect fire - literally raining arrows down from above which is never going to be as precise as aiming directly at the target.
Second, bows with very high draw weights suitable for super-humans are going to shoot very heavy arrows. This is a good thing for penetration - heavier projectiles penetrate better all other factors being equal.
Armour penetration is about the only thing that will change at the target however.
Bows with 70lb draw weights will already shoot clean through an unarmoured target with the same body mass as a human at 20m. That is with broadheads. Nobody really shoots arrows optimised for penetration at living targets anymore, but just for the sake of argument lets say 30m. I don't know at what distance a long bow with twice the draw would reliably accomplish the same feat, but safe to say, significantly further. We are now approaching the range limit of practical accuracy. Our super heavy arrows can *probably* do the same thing past the limit of accuracy, but the maximum damage you can do the target is shoot an arrow straight through it which the lesser bows can already do at practical distances.
The heavier bows will penetrate armour better, but again, in the absence of anyone having tested 400lb draw weight super bows it is very difficult to say how much better... How much do we need?
Breast plates and helms of high quality mediaeval armour could reliably defeat long bows. Other parts of the armour, and cheaper armours provided some protection (lethal wounds became survivable ones - an arrow in the lung became an arrow in the meat of the chest).
If we doubled the momentum of the arrow, which is quite possible, then I would find it plausible that the best armours would offer partial protection, with lesser armours providing little protection, except at long range. This would put the super bows on a par with early firearms, but still far behind even early breach loading rifles. That said, opponents would rightly fear anyone wielding one of these bows...
A note on arrows: it turns out that arrows actually need to be flexible, so unbending is not a desirable property. If the arrows need additional support during firing, then an arrow guide can be used to provide additional support.
[Answer]
Actual long bow is almost maximum what can make without destroing arrow. Problem is with wooble. If make something like "Instant Legolas" then can make stronger bow and fire arrows with no risk of breaking them.
**Rifle comparision.** Bows are skill related - if have no skill in bows then can compare them to single shot front loaded rifle, same damage, same range. With increased strenght and arrow structure can have bigger range and damage than most rifles. Need think about loading time, "Instant Legolas" can be compared to early IIWW rifles but not to MG or SMG. Noise is an advantage of bow.
**Range.** Long bow 80kg, 1m arrow can shot up to 300m but forget about precision after 100m
**Target comparision:**
**Bandits** can scare, kill with no big problem. On 100m skilled can kill up to 10 people before they run to him.
**People with armor** on 40m there is no armor against 80kg long bow. Plate mail can be shoted trough.
**Large animals** if skilled enough(average) can kill elaphant with 80kg long bow. Possibly be killed by elephant before death. Can hunt most land, air and water animals.
[Answer]
Typically bullets have muzzle energy in the order of 10^3 (thousands) of NM.
So say the most powerful handguns have around 1200NM of muzzle energy.
A 50 cal anti-materiel rifle might ready 10^4 (tens of thousands, say 15000) NM.
Typically a powerful conventional (say hunting) bow might produce 10^2 (hundreds) NM of kinetic energy.
So a powerful handgun is sort of 10 times more powerful than a hunting bow.
A powerful rifle a hundred times.
Could we make a bow 100 times more powerful than they are now using modern materials (ignoring the ability for a human to draw it). Yes probably.
Leaving the design as it is currently (recurve, compound etc.)
I suspect we'd use modern composites such as carbon fibre for extension (the front of the bow, carbon fibre has excellent tensile strength) and some sort of ceramic (or glass), or perhaps titanium for compression (the back of the bow).
What effect would such an arrow have down range? Well it would deliver the same energy as the bullet, so a comparable effect. Though arrows do suffer from much higher wind resistance.
How far would it travel, well that depends on the weight of the arrow.
I suspect it would have to be heavier than a normal arrow to cope with the stress it'd have to be made of stronger stuff. Lets go with 400g (just shy of a pound)
If we give an arrow weighing 400g a kinteic energy of 15000 joules (high calibre rifle energy) it will leave the bow at ~300m/s!
So we would make an arrow weighing about a pound travel at speeds comparable to a pretty powerful hand gun bullet.
How far would it go at 45 degrees at that velocity?
Well it's hard to be precise because of wind resistance, but shooting it at 45 degrees it might go between 5Km and 10Km.
Bear in mind that English Longbowmen were piercing the finest plat armour ever made at a distance of around 200m (somewhere near the end of a longbow arrow's range).
We could reasonably expect such an arrow to pass clean through a car engine.. Or stop a truck.. Just as the Barret 50 cal can.
Enjoyed all that.. hope it helps.
] |
[Question]
[
How many normal people per mage should a world have for people to globally know about the existence of mages and what they can do but they do not actually expect to encounter one on a day to day basis in a medieval-esque swords and sorcery setting? Assume there's one in the employ by every king but apart from that your encounter chances should be...?
1 per 100? 1000? 10000?
[Answer]
It depends somewhat on the nature of wizardry in your setting, but lets assume it is something vaguely monastic.
In England and Wales in about 1200, there were something like 2 million people. The number of monks is a lot harder to come by (there's what looks like a good reference from 1941 but it is *still paywalled* by jstor, thanks folks) but there were approximately 200 monasteries (of varying types and sizes). Lets say they had an average of 50 monks per monastery, that'll give you 10000 monastic types or about 1 per 200 people.
As an alternative you might want your magical folk to be parts of the communities they were born into, perhaps with a more traditional apprecticeship to the local spellcasting-type, rather than being shipped off to wizard school. In the same time period I cobbled together my above guesstimates from, you might find about 14000 towns and villages. With an average of one wizard per population centre, you obviously get more like 14000 of them or 1 per 142 people in the population.
There's some scope for increasing that, if you wanted, but it depends on the efficiency of agriculture and the willingness of non-wizarding folk to put up with the wizards. To quote Pratchett, "*It takes forty men with their feet on the ground to support one man with his head in the clouds*". How useful are your wizards, that people are willing to feed, clothe and house them? Or alternatively, how terrifying and dangerous are your wizards, such that people will appease them? Only you can say!
[Answer]
The problem is with mobility. In medieval-esque setting, about 80% or more people was working in agriculture, lived in villages or small towns, and generally had no business in traveling further than nearest merchant buying grains i bulk. For more details see [Agriculture in the Middle Ages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_Middle_Ages) on Wikipedia.
As long as your mages have nothing to do with farming, processing farmed grains, or trading agriculture products, or collecting taxes from villages, literally each and every other person in your world (that is somewhere between 15 and 20%) could be a mage or witch and 80% of the people would never encounter one.
---
I guess that your story will not be about farming communities, but about the rest 20% of society. Then, it is getting trickier. Craftsmen and merchants generally met everyone in their vicinity - most towns couldn't afford to have many shoemakers, innkeepers etc and it was merchants' job to know and be known.
To limit chances of mage encounters, you need to not have one in towns smaller than, say 1000~5000 people. Magic user would be a celebrity in such a "small" city, so we can expect people would actively seek to encounter him and everyone would know where he lives.
Remembering that in early middle ages [London had only 10`000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_urban_community_sizes) residents, we can assume that to meet your criteria interpreted with exclusion of farmers you would need to limit mages to capital cities, and maybe "cathedral" cities of your countries. How many would be there in such city is almost irrelevant, because again they probably would be local celebrities and people would actively try to encounter them.
[Answer]
I have made my wizards 1 in 10000. This gets me about 1 in every major city and a bunch in the wizard school. But to have magic be part of the lives of everyday people. I have made 1 in 100 people be capable of becoming a "street artist". Lots of flashy tricks without much purpose to it. (I have made my magic incredibly easy to copy and near impossible to research. Innate ability is the limiting thing.)
A person is capable of knowing about 150 people. Those are your friends(family) and the people you see often. So any number more than 1 in 150 will be an uncommon occurrence. On the other end of the scale. You have the once in a generation/age. In that case that one mage needs to be incredibly powerful and leave behind a legacy. think Alexander the great king of Macedon.
[Answer]
My take on it would be to approach it by comparison to life in a day-to-day base as it can be extremely difficult to visualise that kind of stuff.
**If your magic system is more study-based**
You could look at medicine as it is something that most people would be confronted as some point and you can look at different specialities if you want magic wielders to be much rarer or mutch common.
In France for example, the numbers can be found in the government website, maybe you have the same.
For rarer magic wielders you can take a look at cardiologists and cardiovascular-specialists witch, in france, represents more or less 10 per 100,000 hab.
For a more significant presence maybe look into numbers of general doctors per habitant: 153 per 100,000 hab. in 2018 (again in france).
I looked into medicine in my country for a much easier access to statistical informations but maybe you can look at other professions or other country that are closer to the principals aspects of your magic system and your world.
**If your magic system is more a genetic-based thing or a rare gift**
You could looks at statistics about eyes color in the world. For example, Heterochromia represent less than 1% of people. Grey eyes are close to 3%. (<https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/eye-color-percentage>)
] |
[Question]
[
Demigryphon usually depicted as a quadrupedal hybrid creature with a body of a Big Cat and a head of a Bird of Prey.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vovIV.jpg)
Most Big Cats from which it derives its' body plan stalk and ambush their prey - it's the easy part. However they use their mammalian jaws with teeth to either crush the spine of smaller prey in the nape area or get a choking hold of bigger prey's neck and strangle them to death.
The last technique is seemingly impossible with a hooked beak common to most Bird of Prey. From what I understand Raptors don't hunt prey larger then themselves. Here's a quote from wiki on a Golden Eagle:
>
> Overall prey weight has ranged from 10 g (0.35 oz) to at least 114 kg (251 lb),[34][35] although most prey taken are around half the weight of the preying eagle, with a typical prey weight range of 0.5–4 kg (1.1–8.8 lb) but mostly in the lower half of that range.
>
>
>
This is where our realistic depiction of a creature runs into a problem: Demigryphons are usually depicted as huge beasts(relative to modern day extant carnivorous animals) and presumably would require a high amount food to sustain itself making smaller prey inefficient in terms of energy required to hunt a higher amount of it.
Assuming it's a real creature with alternate evolutionary history and not a magically created hybrid how exactly and what kind of prey would it hunt?
Extra info:
1. Can belong to Archosaur or a Synapsid clade of your choice, including alternate evolution.
[Answer]
# They don't choke them, they sever their spine, and will hunt much like a large tiger.
The first thing we have to take care of is the beak: most felines today don't exclusively use their claws to end prey, and thus the head will need to be of use in the taking down part. You're right that a beak is normally not what you think of when you think of a pair of mandibles used to choke a creature. However, when it comes to birds of prey, one of the best examples of a raptor that relies on its beak is the peregrine falcon.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YgDte.jpg)
The triangular ridge you see near the tip of the falcon's beak is called a tomial tooth. These structures are needed for falcons because, unlike other raptors which rely a lot more on a crushing beak and long talons to kill prey, falcons use their beaks, adapted specifically to bite the prey's neck and sever their vertebrae, killing them fairly quickly. Of course though: this thing would need a slightly modified head with powerful jaw muscles to make sure the sharp beak can actually do the slicing, which makes a large head a good thing (the larger it is, the more space for muscle it has).
However, there's always the problem that the falcon isn't normally dealing with: having its prey consisting mostly of other birds and small rodents, it's beak rarely has to deal with biting a neck with a higher level of protection or that belongs to a larger struggling creature. On such a scenario, we have to step up the game, at which point your demigryphon might need a beak and jaw structure more like those of an alligator snapping turtle. [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WP7gR.jpg)
The alligator snapping turtle is well known for 2 things: its fast and powerful bite and it's sharp, pointed beak, and while the falcon uses its beak more than other raptors, the turtle uses its jaws exclusively, being completely dependent on that very beak and powerful muscles to bite down on the fish it lures. The biggest differences in this arrangement are the more straightened, pickaxe-like tips of the alligator snapping turtle and its more robust jaw muscles, which when scaled up accordingly, could potentially allow your demigryphon to perform a more active stabbing movement like what we see in big game hunters, with the "hooked" tips of its beak playing the role of canines digging into the flesh (also, if thylacoleo, the marsupial lion, is something to go by, it's still possible to perform the stabbing part with more frontal, beak-like structures while having a hunting style closer to that of a modern large feline). On such a scenario with a more robust and sharper beak, as well as more powerful jaw muscles, we could, in theory, have a scenario where your demigryphon could still employ a vertebrae-crushing strategy on smaller prey, but the longer pointed extensions at the tips of the beak and powerful bite could probably make room for a feasible, although maybe not as efficient, throat grab strategy, with the powerful muscles handling the constriction of the airways while the hooks deal with puncturing vital blood vessels and ensuring a proper grip onto the throat.
Now, with the beak part dealt with, how do they hunt? Given these things have literal bird heads, I'd say they probably have similar structure and brain development in areas closer to those of a predatory bird than to those of a feline. This means sight and hearing will probably be the most important things for it, as many raptor species have these senses more well developed than their sense of smell and taste.
Basing myself on terror birds, the most notable example of large terrestrial predatory bird we have, the demigryphon would probably depend on keen sight and a great sense of hearing, particularly adapted for lower frequencies to track prey, meaning that it'd rely more on hearing its prey moving around and spotting it from far away than actually tracking it through smell. The raptor eyesight would make this thing pretty good at spotting creatures from an advantageous position, and the low frequency hearing would mean that it could both hear prey well and communicate from large distances, since lower frequency sounds travel further than higher frequency ones.
Regarding what it'd do when spotting prey, it's pretty obvious: its body and size implies it would hunt much like modern Bengal tigers in terms of strategy and behavior (funny enough, these big cats also rely more on sight and hearing than smell), as in it probably would hunt as a large ambush predator only capable of short distance pursuits at best, using its powerful limbs and large size to tackle prey to the ground and target the back of their necks with its powerful and sharp beak. Its large size would also allow it to scare off other smaller predators and scavengers, granting better access to carrion and free food when given the chance. Furthermore, its large size compared to the size of available prey probably means it'll also have to be solitary, staying away from others of its kind outside of mating season. An ill demigryphon will probably behave much like a man-eating tiger, it'll hunt humans out of desperation due to being ill or injured, and thus unable to hunt its normal prey and needing to go for smaller, slower game.
As for what it'd hunt, again we look at tigers. Its preferred prey would probably be large ungulates which live in areas of dense vegetation where it can approach them more easily, while staying away from larger animals it can't face on its own. More desperate demigryphons in regions with reduced big game numbers would go for smaller prey such as deer and wild boars, and very desperate/ill demigryphons would attack villages and eat people in there. It's also not crazy to consider them targeting larger livestock, since those are large, slow moving, AND cornered (if it does have the same capabilities of a Bengal tiger you know it's deceptively agile, even though it's not the speediest around). Demigryphons in regions with less vegetation might also be inclined to form hunting groups for a higher chance of success when hunting at the cost of smaller, although more frequent meals.
[Answer]
# It Hunts Foliage
Your demigryphon looks just like a ceratopsian. While the gryphon's beak is definitely different, it's far closer to ceratopsian than any large predator I know. Hence the demigryphon is likely a similar creature, and at least is similar in diet
The specifics of the demigryphon have good explanations under this idea. The strong cursorial legs are really more dog-like up close, and only really look like a lion because of their power. The dog-like legs are for running from predators, with the sharp claws for digging and gaining purchase on loose ground. The rest of the traits seem to be just a matter of chance and choice
[Answer]
## **Blood Loss**
Wolves beat prey to death with their teeth.
I'm going to say that again, because it's just so metal.
Wolves beat prey to death with their teeth.
When a wolf bites (often a large muscle like the quad) it applies tremendous force into the relatively small surface area of its teeth. The wolf generally does not kill in one bite, but rather strikes repeated at the prey animal's rear.
Each bite damages the underlying muscle, causing bleeding. Eventually the blood loss is enough that the prey cannot defend itself, and the pack moves in for the kill.
Since much of the blood loss is internal, due to pressure on a muscle, it's pretty similar to beating someone to death, hence my original statement.
## **External Bleeding**
A beaked predator could use a similar pattern, but rely on external bleeded. The demigriffin tears several large gashes in its prey, and hounds it until it collapses from blood loss. Effectively persistence hunting, but using blood loss instead of overheating.
This could drive your demigriffin towards pack behavior - it's easier to strike at the rear if another hunter is distracting prey. It's also easier to deter other predators who are drawn by the scent of blood when you have teammates.
Happy hunting.
[Answer]
## They don't need to hunt game larger than themselves at all
No bird nor mammal can actually consume another animal more than ~1/4th its body size by itself in a single sitting. Nearly all predators that hunt prey larger than itself are pack animals. They kill big so they can share, but this is hardly a necessary strategy for survival. Instead of making your demigryphons pack hunters like lions, make them solo hunters like like tigers... or birds of prey.
So instead of going after big things like Buffalos and Zebras, your demigryphons may prefer smaller prey like Pigs, Sheep, Goats, White-Tailed Deer, and Humans: Things it can eat all on its own. This means it does not need such a specialized way of killing as you might have assumed up to this point.
### But How Would They Kill?
Up until about a million years ago, there was a group of large flightless carnivorous birds collectively called Terror Birds that were native to South America. These birds could be 3-10ft tall depending on the species, easily putting them in the same niche as your demigryphons. The skeletons of Terror Birds suggest that their neck muscles were optimized for delivering a downward force, using its beak like pickaxe to stab/slash their prey to death; so, I suspect that your demigryphons being similarly armed and hunting similar prey would likely do the same.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VkhPP.png)
[Answer]
**Savannah or livestock hunter**
The tall grass of a savannah region would be able to obscure its approach before it goes for the charge and(assuming it follows the same golden-yellow colouring and feathering looks wheatish) could even hide in it until prey comes along, at which point either an ambush or chase ensues. The sort of large fauna of Afrika are basically the only natural herds that could feed such a beast. You could try your hand at the more arctic regions and areas where bison are but those are going to be considerably tougher living conditions and prey.
Alternatively it could live near humans and snatch livestock every once in a while. Though as many predators have learned doing that is sure to get you killed by uppity humans eventually.
[Answer]
**It is a scavenger.**
It does not hunt at all. It finds things that are already dead and eats them entirely. Lesser predators with a fresh kill do not stand a chance against the demigryphon. It is easier to go kill something else than it is to make a stand against this thing.
The demigryphon will sometimes follow other predators around, waiting for one of them to kill something that it can then take. It also watches vultures in the air for signs of death, and will patrol the beach looking for edible things that have washed up.
[Answer]
**Construction rather than evolution**
Having a mammalian body and a bird's head was no coincidence. This animal is actually a *mix* of synapsid and archosaur. It was not a result of evolution. Some 35,000 years ago, an alien scientist landed in Anatolia and experimented with various earthly animal genomes. He composed demigryphons as one of his variants. Most of these chimaera compositions died out, some of the species survived long enough to be seen/drawn by bronze age humans, or included in human mythology.
**Like lions**
At first, the demigryphons could thrive in certain areas, because there were no stronger predators. They could kill off competitors. Long before they became weapons of war for humans, demigryphons lived in packs, or troops. A lazy, superior predator that is able to run fast and crush cattle's spine with its claws.. and spend the rest of the day eating and guarding the prey.
**Cuisine**
The demigryphon developed a certain level of intelligence, a primitive culture of honour and war.. conservation and use of fire.. and a *cuisine* . The habit of preparing food solved an issue built into the demigryphon's physiology: it has a beak rather than a wide mouth with teeth. Unless all time is spent eating, a beak will not allow for enough raw meat to be consumed, to support the large body. The first solution found by the demigryphon was to cut the prey into many smaller pieces. Eventually, demigryphons developed preparation (roasting) of meat.
**Humans**
Demigryphons can be tamed. Humans did. It is dangerous work. To tame a pack of demigryphons, the human performs a loyalty ritual, which involves *cooking* a meal for them. After doing that, demigriphons will accept the human as part of their pack and form an alliance. The human has to conquer a leader position, by sharing more cooked meat. After he gains a position in the troop, the human can give directions, or ride the demigryphon.
] |
[Question]
[
I am concerned that the centrifugal force will draw out all the dissolved gases from the ocean in a colossal O'Neill Cylinder in the same way blood centrifuges do in lab. Fishes and most marine life would die from hypoxemia and laying gas pipes stretching thousands of miles may not be a cost effective solution.
First thing first, is this a baseless concern, and the effect would not be sufficient to harm the ecosystem, or would the threat come in another form which would be much more severe?
[Answer]
Centrifuges that separate blood spin at a high RPM simulating between 500 and 2000 times Earth gravity. So with your O'Neill Cylinders spinning at ~1G you will still have this problem (when it comes to important minerals settling), but WAY slower.
On Earth, collating of the Ocean is prevented by tidal forces caused by the sun and moon. These forces help keep water churning in a way that it both absorbs and distributes atmospheric oxygen and kicks up minerals for plankton to consume.
The issue with O'Neill Cylinders comes into play when they are tidally locked to thier star and not in orbit of a planet. In this case, there is no significant forces causing still bodies of water to churn and you would still get the hypoxia die off and mineral deprivation you are worrying about, just much slower than you would in a centrifuge, and for slightly different reasons. That said, this can easily be solved for through a variety of means including something as simple as using a [staggered re-spin cycle](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/181124/57832)
[Answer]
Yes you are being paranoid. Are you worried about gravity doing the same thing on Earth? The O'Neil cylinder shouldn't be spinning fast enough to produce a force any greater since it is just trying to simulate 1G after all.
[Answer]
The issue here is similar to a large fish tank. The fish tank is basically still water and will eventually be deprived of oxygen throughout the tank. This is due to the surface conditions more than the pull of gravity. In small tanks, this is alleviated with small bubbles that forced from an air pump. In larger tanks, you will usually see some type of waterfall that drops into the water and drags new oxygen into the tank water with the plummeting water using a water pump. The speed this happens depends on surface area to depth ratio, wind, sea life, and atmospheric oxygen levels (and likely many others).
You could have waterfalls in parks for people where the now highly oxygenated water would flow into the sea or recycle the air by bubbling it through the water.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm not a professional at world building or character building, still starting out, but I do want to make an attempt at having my fantasy character be somewhat realistic.
He's 11 years old, 4.8 ft (1.64 m) and roughly 80 pounds (36.2 kg). He's a little tall and skinny for his age, and has digitigrade legs with a tail that reaches the ground. (Have not yet factored this into his weight.)
Can someone please help (or educate) me on how long and/or heavy his wings would have to be to lift him off the ground and sustain flight (beyond gliding or soaring) under Earth's gravity?
I would be so, so grateful.
[Answer]
The type of body you're looking for and the sort of flying your character will be doing have a significant bearing on what sort of wings they'll need. The "ideal" bodytype would perhaps be [harpy-like](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpy), without unaerodynamic things like clothes or extra limbs (which would also be dead-weight when flying). Deep chest with massive muscles. Much more lightweight bones. Probably a pointier head. Much less weight and muscle in the legs and buttocks (again, deadweight, no good for flying). Actually, lets just cut to the chase... the ideal shape is "a bird". Every deviation from the basic bird bodyplan will probably lead to a heavier and less aerodynamic body which will need bigger wings to stay aloft and stronger muscles to take off.
The type of flying you intend to do also has a big impact on wing shape, and one which I'm not going to go into detail on here
---
So, in the absence of more information, lets consider one of the largest known flying birds, [Pelagornis sandersi](https://www.pnas.org/content/111/29/10624). Upper weight limit was about 40kg, conveniently about the weight of your guy. Wingspan was over 6m.
Remember this is a bird, so was optimised for life on the wing, not tottering around on the ground, holding tools, chatting with other beings, wearing clothes, etc etc. I believe this species was assumed to be a seabird, and those very long slender wings certainly look quite albatross-like, optimised for long efficient glides over great distances and extended times.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iUg5x.png)
A much heavier bird (up to 70kg or so), [Argentavis magnificens](http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/a/argentavis.html), had a similar wingspan, but much deeper wings (there's probably a better term in the aviation or ornithology worlds, but I'm not aware of it) to support that extra weight. Again, bird, optimised for flying (or at least soaring), none of the other people things you might be interested in.
The condor also in this picture weighs up to about 15kg and has a wingspan of over 3m. This should probably tell you that you can't just give your dude big fat condor-style wings and have him fit in a confined space... there's not too much chance you'll get away with wings under 4m, though it is tough to provide a more realistic minimum for you.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PNkmk.png)
These should give you some idea of the sheer size needed, even if they don't give you a good idea of how radically different the body plan of a flyer is compared to a human (apparently a tree-dwelling ape who took up endurance running and burning things). Trying to combine the two bodyplans will be tricky, to say the least, but there are pages and threads and questions out there *ad nauseam* about anatomically plausible flying humans.
For a more unusual bodyplan, consider a pterosaur:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HYQaI.png)
Frustratingly, no-one seems quite sure about how much those things actually weighed. Early estimates were ludicrously low. That Quetzalcoatlus sp. probably weighed at least as much as an adult human, with a 6m wingspan. Smaller pterosaurs obviously existed, but no-one knows how much they weighed either, but the possibility exists that with pterosaur style wings you might be able to give your guy a wingspan as low as 4m. Positively petite!
---
As a closing note, consider the attempts to make mere humans fly under their own power. Paragliders, [outstretched wingspan](https://skywalk.info/project/tonic/) of 8.4m. [Hang-gliders](https://www.icaro2000.com/Products/Hanggliders/RX2/RX2.htm) 9m. Both are for adults, and both add 20-40kg, but they only scale down so far and only allow unpowered takeoff. [Ornithopter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTIAS_Snowbird)... *32m*, still needed an assisted takeoff. [Pedal-powered propeller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Daedalus)... *34m*. Both of those needed olympic-class athletes to operate, which should give you some idea as to the athleticism and stamina your character needs to have in order to fly.
[Answer]
You could model your flyer on Argentavis. It weighed about 80 kg. It had wings 9 meters wide.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YLfrZ.jpg)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentavis>
>
> Prior published weights gave Argentavis a body mass of 80 kg (180 lb)
> but more refined techniques show a more typical mass would've likely
> been 70 to 72 kg (154 to 159 lb), although weights could've varied
> depending on conditions.[8][4][9] Argentavis retains the title of the
> heaviest flying bird known still by a considerable margin, for example
> Pelagornis weighed no more than 22 to 40 kg (49 to 88 lb).[6] For
> comparison, the living bird with the largest wingspan is the wandering
> albatross, averaging 3 m (9 ft 10 in) and spanning up to 3.7 m (12 ft
> 2 in). Since A. magnificens is known to have been a land bird, another
> good point of comparison is the Andean condor, the largest extant land
> bird going on average wing spread and weight, with a wingspan of up to
> 3.3 m (10 ft 10 in). This condor can weigh up to 15 kg (33 lb).
>
>
>
9 meter wide wings will make it tough to dance. Might I suggest you give your flyer a preternaturally slim, elfin build. Taking his weight down from 80 to 30 pounds will let him have 9 foot condor wings.
[Answer]
It's not just a question of wingspan. Most birds have (sort of) hollow bones, which helps to keep weight down. And that's really important.
Additionally, actually getting into the air requires speed, and powerful muscles to flap the wings to achieve lift.
Another consideration is the weight of the wings themselves, and the strain placed upon the spine by them. Bigger means more weight, and more weight means more strain. If big enough, the kid could be a cripple by 20.
In order for your character to be able to get into the air and fly, it would need:
1. Powerful legs to build speed for lift.
2. To rely on wind,or high drop offs to build enough speed for lift.
3. Powerful chest and shoulders to flap for extended periods to brute force it
into the air.
4. Any combination of the above.
Muscles are dense, no matter where on the body they are, and that adds weight. In order to protect the spine, said child would need to have well developed chest, shoulder and back muscles, and be extremely lean. Bones would have to be, as previously mentioned, hollow-ish(think of a honey-comb structure), which makes them less resistant to breakages, and has a lower hard limit on how much weight they can sustain before breaking.
Nature imposes these limits on us all the time. We are the size we are, because anything bigger tends not to survive (giants have heart attacks, and skeletal problems due to weight).
So let's assume a wingspan of 10 feet on the child. By the time that child is 20, that wingspan will need to increase, and as such will also increase in weight.
Eventually, the muscle mass required to even move the wings would put enormous strain on the heart and skeleton(because humanoids have a leverage based skeletal/muscle structure), so flapping to generate lift would necessarily give way to soaring and taking advantage of thermal updrafts later in life. There is a reason that large birds tend to live in aeries: So they can jump out and build up enough speed to glide and soar. It's actually very difficult(and energy intensive) for them to get off the ground without strong wind. This means your flying child would have to have incredibly powerful legs, so that he could either jump VERY high in the air, or run REALLY fast to generate enough speed for the wings to generate lift efficiently.
The reality of your character is that even at 11 years old, he would look like a miniature body builder, and would be an athlete rivaling Olympic medal winners. And even whilst folded, those wings would reach well above his head, and would drag along the ground when he walked.
[Answer]
It greatly depends on flight conditions.
[Paragliders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragliding) has wingspan about 8-12 meters (4-6 half-wing). It is able to takoff from ground and land more or less safely. [Jet wing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Rossy) have only 2.5 meters wingspan, but needs a "drop down" takeoff.
Both support much more weight than 30 kg (about 90-120). But wingspan depends on weight more like sqrt(x). It means you can divide this values by 2 at max. It means 2-3 meters for takeoff and hardish landing from/to ground for very thin bat-like unnaturaly strong wings
[Answer]
I would suggest looking at bats instead of birds. They are more apt to be tool users since their wings are effectively webbed hands / fingers. Plus bats are more efficient than birds according to this article I found.
<https://www.livescience.com/1245-bats-efficient-flyers-birds.html>
If you think of how much lighter some stretchy skin could be compared to a mass of feathers you've got a much simpler body configuration and possible webbing between other body parts.
If you add retractable spines with skin between like maybe Dimetrodon mixed with toothless from the Dragon Rider movies you could have a huge amount of flexible, flapable, retractable surface area.
This lets you have bat like powered flight, super maneuverability or maybe flying squirrel like gliding.
I'll leave the wingspan to the others since they seem to have already figured that out, but I think you can reasonably get away with less with this alternate configuration.
] |
[Question]
[
## Motivation (fictional of course)
Fantasy is full of references to silver swords and other weapons thought to make a poor lycanthrope‘s life miserable. Since silver appears to be too soft for blades, I came up with the following solution: inlay the blade with silver runes or ornaments, so that upon being cut by the steel edge the monster may feel the silver in the wound and suffer the alleged effects.The question is meant to establish the reality, so as to introduce no more than the necessary magic in the setting.
## Main part
I discovered [this](https://www.bladesmithsforum.com/index.php?/topic/11614-silver-inlay-into-steel/) tutorial on how to inlay silver into a tomahawk. Let’s assume this technique is used on the blades. How durable will they be? Specifically, I would like rough estimates on the following (obviously a lot depends on the particulars of the situation, but I hope we can still establish orders of magnitude).
* Assuming monster physiology is similar to human physiology, how many times can I cut edge on, before I need to repair the inlays (I guess the answer here is practically infinite, but I better ask. Someone might know about real silver inlayed blades)?
* Assuming I have to parry a steel sword with such a weapon. I guess I wouldn’t do it edge on, but with the side of the blade. How many hits would it take to ruin the inlays (If we can imagine something like an "average human hit")? Let’s say the integrity of the inlay is the percentage of the original silver Volume left in them.
* Might it make sense to reserve one side or section of the blade for parrying or would it completely handicap a practitioner of historical martial arts (for instance [Liechtenauer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Liechtenauer))?
## Very preliminary Model on the effects of silver on werewolves
(In response to many justified comments I tried to refine my model)
* Nothing happens as long as silver never enters a wound.
* If 1cm2 of silver enters the wound for 1s, then the werewolf can not heal at that point for 999 heartbeats. In lack of a better theory everything scales linearly. That also means 1/20th also has a huge effect.
* If 1cm2 of silver stays in the wound for 99 heartbeats, the wolf transforms into human form, being defenseless in the process.
* For impure silver lets assume effects scale linearly with purity.
[Answer]
Judging from what I've seen of museum examples, silver inlay is decently durable. Usually, it's much thinner then in the guide you linked. [Here](https://www.flickr.com/photos/62099835@N04/7841076588) is an example of a 10th century axe with all the inlay still intact. I've also seen a good number of spears with inlay.
The inlay on the swords seems to be more problematic. I think I remember the inlay on some yataghans, but it's concentrated nearer to the handle, not in the last third of the blade. It may be due to the blade flex.
Axes and spears are quite rigid, so inlay won't get damaged. Blades, though, are expected to flex, especially in the last third. It may be that the inlay on the last third of the blade will get cracked and damaged.
As far as edge parry is concerned, I'm of the opinion it's some sort of Victorian myth. [Matt Easton](https://youtu.be/48Vd8C0iB7A) has some nice videos on the topic. In short, turning your sword to party with flat every time is just too slow. Besides, crossguard on the most of the blades is situated to catch the blade sliding down your edge, not the side. There is only one type of the weapon I know of that has a guard on the side of the blade without any sort of the guard in line with an edge - that is German short Messer with Nagel.
To conclude, significantly rigid weapons such as spears, axes and daggers can have inlay quite near to the cutting edge, and it won't get damaged much. On the swords you may have to renew the inlay from time to time, if it cracks from the blade flex. More rigid swords, such as Oakeshott type XVII will have easier time coping with that problem. (Other comparatively thick designs with little distal taper qualify too - something like a katana).
You do not parry with the side of the blade with most swords - not habitually. Unless your blade is a Messer. Then you may want to have the inlay on the left side of the blade only (assuming a Messer for a right-handed person with the Nagel on the right).
UPD: since OP now clarified how silver works on werewolves, some clarifications are necessary. Obviously, the best weapons are going to be projectile ones - all manner of arrows, bolts and darts. Starfish Prime had written enough about them. I can also call your attention to the dual-use weapons. Narrow-bladed small axes, similar to francesca, that you can fight with against other targets, but balanced for throwing as well. Short spears that a single person can carry several of, peltast-style. What all those weapons have in common is that they are made mostly of wood, with comparatively small blade, so that even with the addition of silver decoration they are cheap and easy to make, and a person can carry multiple items.
Depending on the severity of the werewolf problem, swords can be traditionally inlaid with silver too - but that is going to be a last-ditch weapon. You are not expected to fight as protracted battle with it, you just stick it into the werewolf as deep as possible and run like crazy. In the best case, you get it somewhere vital, or you have friends that will be able to use werewolf's vulnerability. At least you are going to escape while the beast is in pain and distracted.
When we come to the finer points of werewolf hunting, I envision it as a communal effort, similar to whale hunting. Even the weapons can be similar. Harpoons with ropes, or any other similar weapons that can stick deep and have a rope or chain on the other hand (even something like kusari) are going to work nice. Obviously, a single person won't hold a werewolf, but a big group of people can get their silver-inlaid barbed harpoons into a werewolf, and pull the ropes and chains in different directions, immobilizing it for long enough for couple of spearmen to finish the job.
[Answer]
If inlaying the blade of a sword all the way to the tip turns out to be difficult... might I suggest simply not doing it?
* The silver is expensive.
* The weaponsmithing is more complex, and so more expensive.
* The sword *may* end up being structurally compromised. I'm not totally certain on this, because there may be *some* sword geometries that have enough metal far enough up the blade that inlaying won't be too problematic, but you will run into issues of weight!
* Silver [tarnishes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnish) and so will need more care (though the existence of silver inlaid weapons and armour suggests that this isn't too serious a problem, at least for decorative elements)
* Most things you're fighting won't be werewolves (I don't have any evidence to back this one up, sorry).
Lets assume that werewolves are both unusual, and dangerous, and you probably know if you're fighting one (which might be a bit of a stretch, but there you go).
I'd suggest that you carry with you a special purpose sidearm for the purposes of dispatching lycanthropes. Something like a silver-inlaid [dagger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrying_dagger) or a little spike you could attach to your [buckler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckler) perhaps. You can always have the dagger with you, just in case, and you'll know it'll always be shiny and sharp because you only get it out on special occasions, and you know your regular sword won't be unnecessarily expensive or need special treatment.
For purpose-made werewolf hunting weapons... use something like a [boar spear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boar_spear). You won't be duelling with a ravenous beast after all, you'll be fending it off. Spears would be much easier to inlay, and generally speaking you won't be parrying steel so much as claws and teeth.
---
Now, to take into account the note by the OP,
>
> nothing happens as long as the silver is not in the wound
>
>
>
In that respect, silver inlays in weapons you're not intending to *leave* in the target seem a bit pointless. The boar spear is alright, because you want to drive that thing in and not take it out until the wriggling has stopped, but you probably don't want to do that with a dagger if you don't want to get your face bitten off and losing your sidearm might be quite problematic.
The obvious weapons would be arrows and crossbow bolts. Cumehtar suggested javelins but I'm not so sure... they're quite big, heavy things, and awkward to carry around, and so you might only bring them if you were specifically out hunting lycanthropes.
Instead, I'd go for barbed metal darts, like the [plumbata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumbata) that Roman legionnaries carried. They can be used close in as you like but still have a reasonable range, deliver the poison (or however you want to describe the active material) and cause ongoing pain and interference with muscle use. They're shorter and lighter than javelins, and so easier to carry, and you can reasonably carry several of the things "just in case" without overburdening yourself. They're probably also quite cheap and cheerful compared to daggers or spearheads.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FLU4k.jpg)
A related device might be the [banderillas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish-style_bullfighting#Stage_2:_Tercio_de_Banderillas) (*content note: link has photos of bullfighting, in case you're not happy about that sort of thing*) used in bullfighting; little barbed spears driven in by hand. The external part would make the barb inside move around as the victim moved and also get in the way of movement somewhat.
If silver compounds are useful too, expect professional werewolf hunters to look a little [off colour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria) as a result of prophylactic use of silver medicines to make themselves unpalatable...
[Answer]
I commissioned a sword from Canadian smith Jeff Helmes back in 2013. I got my then 6 year old to help me choose a design, and being 6, his most important consideration was its suitability for fighting monsters. So we needed something with silver, iron and a religious or holy motif.
I ended up going with a design based on a sword in the museum of Glasgow. The original gold inlay (surmised to say "blessed and omnipotent is the warrior of Christ") was changed to silver, and the blade is made from a pattern welded composite of modern tool steel (1095) and wrought iron (as pure iron is too soft).
A very fun project. :)
Edit for clarity;
The sword on the right is the 900 year old antique, with the majority of its inlay intact. Mine is the one on the left, as it is today (and after 6 years of cutting tests against bottles, tatami mats and a couple of feral pigs). I did have a slight issue with a small piece of the inlay last year, but nothing a good silversmith couldnt fix in 20 minutes.
An inlay isnt simply soft metal beaten into a pre carved form, the smith actually uses a specialised hammer to create a notch under the edge of the steel along all sides of the carving. This notch holds the inlay in place, generally for the lifetime of the sword. To my knowledge, inlays on existing swords usually only come out when the notch is worn away (usually by rust in the case of a river found sword).
[Answer]
You could just [**plate it**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plating#Silver_plating) every once in a while (which can be accomplished chemically; without electricity).
Werewolves don't usually use weapons, so if it gets nicked fighting another human, that was the wrong tool for the job. *'if silver stays in the wound they're defenseless'* - Seems to me you'd want a 'silver' off-hand, and a steel longsword to finish the job.
..................................
You seem to be caught up on *cutting* and the general romantics of sword play. Objective: weapon that kills, or disables werewolves so that they can then be killed.
Use a short **tri-bladed pokey stick**, that once 'inlaid' with silver basically becomes a spike. Silver content, offhandedly: upwards of 85%.
1cm2 of silver entering the wound probably only requires about an inch of penetration. Any further penetration would scale more exponentially than it would linearly.
Given that silver melts at ~1,800, and iron at 2,800, should it ever become damaged, repairs in the field would not be out of the question. You'd melt all the silver off, retemper the 'blade', make a mold from the pattern that you carry, put the blade in the mold and pour the silver around it. Crude but 85% effective, *per inch*, with exponential gain thereafter.
I'm envisioning a fluted pipe reamer, without its handle, unless you *want* a pokey-hammer.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nvc6P.jpg)
This shows damage as if some of the sliver chipped off.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AIoHd.jpg)
It becomes significantly wider the further you stick it in. If it was a weapon instead of a tool, it'd be a little more pointy. But I don't think a medieval smith could forge it out of steel; it'd have to be cast iron. A one-off for your hero made in steel might be possible, but if you need them in production they'd be iron. Again, this is a piercing weapon, but it's a specific tool for a job, and like all tools: prone to breakage if used incorrectly.
([fazziosurplus.com/toledo-pipe-reamer](https://fazziosurplus.com/toledo-pipe-reamer-akh204))
[Answer]
Since some of the objection is the blade might flex or otherwise be compromised by a silver inlay, you might want to consider the Falchion. This is a blade suited for more of a chopping or slashing attack, with the mass of the blade towards the end, rather than concentrated towards the hilt like more common cut and thrust swords.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ntLQJ.jpg)
*Falchion*
The blade was actually one of the responses to improved armours, giving the wielder some extra leverage when delivering a slashing or hacking attack, but was rapidly superseded as pole arms could deliver far more leverage and smashing weapons like maces and hammers could cause huge amounts of damage even without breaching the armour plate.
This does lead to a problem, since a werewolf will be very fast and capable of evading attacks, you would actually want something very quick like a small sword. This might make it possible to move the problem from edging a sword with silver to having the silver on a secondary blade, and fighting in the Italian style (or [George Silver's English style](http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/paradoxes.html)) using the secondary blade to parry and deliver the deadly blow.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FbZ8L.jpg)
*George Silver, illustration from one of his manuals*
In the Silver style, the defense or guard position has the points of the sword and dagger roughly parallel to each other and projecting at the same distance, so an onrushing werewolf might actually impale itself on the tips of the sword and dagger. The human parrying with the dagger is also likely to be able to deliver a slashing wound, and since the dagger is the weapon with the silver inlay, that is where the damage is going to be. If the werewolf still has any semblance of human intelligence, it will realize the dilemma: attack and get slashed with silver, or defend and be speared by the small sword and get the killing blow delivered by the dagger.
So a sword and dagger style of fighting, combined with a silver inlaid dagger is likely the best means of protecting yourself from a werewolf.
[Answer]
Have a spear with a steel blade with a hole in the tip, but have a lever on the handle which ejects a longer but thinner silver blade out of the head of the spear. This would be similar to a [gravity knife](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_knife) except there would be a smaller steel head fitted over the end.
This would be difficult to do with a sword, since the blade could not easily fit inside the handle, but a spear could easily fit another spear tip inside.
When fighting a regular person, withdraw the silver blade inside to avoid it getting damaged. It now becomes a regular spear. When fighting a werewolf, flip the lever and the silver blade protrudes from the steel tip.
] |
[Question]
[
A secret group of environmentalist ultra-extremists has engineered a virus (or virus-like pathogen) with the purpose of making all of humanity extinct (yes, including themselves). They are aware that humanity will fight back against this plague as soon as they notice lots of people dying. There would undoubtedly be efforts to create vaccines, quarantines, and maybe even long term sealed underground shelters.
To avoid all of this, the virus was engineered to initially be mistaken for a mild cold, so it would have time to spread. A newly infected person would experience one or two days of mild sneezing and sniffles, after which the virus would go dormant. During this time, they would spread the virus to *everyone* they had contact with. After several years of this, the virus should be able to infect 100% of the world's population without anyone noticing.
Then, on a specific predetermined day and time throughout the world, the virus suddenly would switch to "deadly mode". Every person on Earth would become horrifically ill at the same time. There can be no emergency response, no medical care, no quarantines, because all of the people who would do such things are too busy dying. Within 24 hours, everyone is dead.
**My question is, by what mechanism could this super-virus suddenly become deadly?** How could a virus (or other pathogen designed to be mistaken for a virus) change its behavior at a predetermined time? It seems like the possibilities fall into two broad categories: internal mechanisms (each virus particle has something inside it that acts like a clock), or external mechanisms (the virus can detect something in the environment that happens on a given date).
Note that my question is **not** "would this succeed in making humanity extinct?" (I personally believe it would not. This is the basis of my story, actually.)
My question is also **not** "Are there more effective ways to achieve this?" (Undoubtedly there are. This plan was created by crazy extremists, and they chose to do it this way for their own reasons.)
[Answer]
Real biological systems are precise, but not that precise. You won't be able to do this simply.
You could take a lesson from [Stuxnet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet). Stuxnet is one of a family of new hyper-advanced computer viruses that's been released over the past few years. It was designed with cryptographic keys, some of which were believed to be files present on the target machines. Very surgical.
You could release the virus and have it infect everyone. Have it attack the brain, similar to the now famous [O. unilateralis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis), the fungus which attacks ants and infects their brains, turning them into zombies. However, we're going to need to be more subtle than that. Instead of turning them into zombies, you should make them hyper-attuned to a particular visual signal. For dramatic effect, we'll make it a particular pattern of saccades done with the eye. We already have tremendously advanced brain structures to track the movement of people's eyes to figure out what they are thinking, so you just have to hijack it.
Then, once everyone is affected and hyper-attuned to your signal, you inject one person with a virus which causes that saccade. If you want the process to be more precise, inject one person on each continent. They'll walk around, triggering other individuals, unlocking the "encrypted" part of the virus. This part causes them to begin doing almost the same saccade. Air travel will get everyone doing this within a few hours.
Now you have a timer that will work. A virus isn't going to be precise enough with its timing, but the human brain is a marvel at keeping time. It's also really good at identifying patterns. If the saccade comes with a "generation count," the disease can do a half-decent job of predicting how long it has been since patient-zero has been infected.
12 hours later, with the combined mental powers of the entire human race working to keep time and infect everyone, the brain unleashes the final trigger, encoded in the saccade, and the virus turns lethal.
As an added bonus, it creates a really frighteningly bad-ass set of survivors, who cover their eyes (or gouge them out) to fight blind, to avoid this signal. Of course, if you wanted to hit these fighters (and the blind community themselves), you could make it spread by touch as well. The human brain is *amazing* at processing complex tactile information.
[Answer]
If you want to kill everyone globally at the same time, you need an external signal. That's going to need to be some kind of broadcast -- sound or EM. So, reverse engineering, that means we need a virus that makes humans susceptible to one of those two things.
Let's tackle EM since it's far easier to coat the world in a particular EM frequency than to get the same sound produced everywhere (EM you can do from satellite). **Copper is a fascinating substance, biologically speaking.** We need some in our bodies (see Wikipedia "[Copper in health](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_in_health)"), and it shows up in our diet. But there is one place in the body where copper absolutely is not supposed to go -- into the brain. There are various things that can go wrong with the liver such that copper goes into the bloodstream and allows copper to go into the brain (it crosses the blood-brain boundary nicely). Copper is electrically conductive and can cause all sorts of problems when it shorts out circuits in the brain.
So... let's say you have a virus that encapsulates copper -- it keeps a few atoms of copper in its payload, sealed up and insulated so they don't mess with surrounding tissues. It replicates in the liver or digestive tract where it can harvest more copper. It spreads, targeting the brain. The virus finds a way to hide in the brain (some sort of trick to hide from the immune system). When the virus dies, it leaves the still-insulated copper behind.
You fire your EM pulse in the sky and it is strong enough to breech that insulation. Copper has resistance, generates heat, melts through the insulation, now it is in the brain. People start shorting out (literally).
There's some details to work out, obviously, but I think that rough sketch gets you where you're wanting to go.
[Answer]
To quote Cort Ammon, "real biological systems are precise, but that that precise. You won't be able to do this simply".
What timing signals are there that are available to the virus?
# seasonal changes
There are several changes (e.g. hormonal) that take place with reasonable periodicity and that the virus can intercept. It can have two slow mechanisms, one that is triggered by the change, one that "rearms" the first mechanism; and these can be made to be transmissible, and have only a given number of iterations before triggering the final event.
# external signal
This is difficult as we would need something that's almost ubiquitous, and at that point we've just moved the turtle elsewhere. Infecting the water supply of the whole planet with the virus trigger is no less difficult than doing so with the lethal virus.
# syncing from other viruses
We want to avoid advance warning, so the timing mechanism is programmed to err on the side of caution. Instead of having 10% triggering early, 80% on time, and 10% late, we'll have 70% trigger on time, and 30% late. That 30% we can then try and recover by making the virus also trigger on detecting its own activated form.
*This will also cause an abnormal "infection" mechanism in which the lethal version of the virus seems to infect a human within a few minutes and even in minuscule quantities, while it is actually activating the dormant version of the virus which is already there. Then, the "real" infection in someone that has been freshly infected will cause no symptoms for up to several days, but that person is still infective and contagious, and capable of triggering the virus in untriggered infected people*.
[Answer]
It's pretty difficult to set up a sophisticated timing mechanism with a virus, because a virus can't really do anything internally; it has to reprogram other cells to do whatever it needs. Furthermore, a virus can only really reproduce by killing host cells, making it more difficult for the virus to appear harmless while spreading. Also, a virus lacks any mechanisms to regulate mutations (it would be kind of awkward if a mutant strain of the virus sent out the activation signal early, defeating the purpose of a delayed trigger).
For these reasons, I believe some kind of antibiotic-resistant bacteria may in fact be more plausible. There is already a strong precedent for certain strains of bacteria spreading to basically everyone while apparently harmless. In fact, by cell count, the human body has more symbiotic bacteria in it than human cells.
To set a trigger for this disease... You need something that you can be *pretty sure* won't accidentally trigger before the time you set, *especially* if the disease is programmed to propagate whatever activation signal you choose. You also need something that a disease can reliably pick up on and respond to at the correct time. Something chemical-based comes to mind, roughly equivalent to how a hormone is meant to function in more complex life forms.
So, say the bacteria mostly lives in the subject's lungs. Also, let's pick a trigger chemical that forms either a gas or aerosol at room temperature, and does not occur naturally.
Once an infected individual inhales a little bit of the trigger compound, the bacteria starts synthesizing more of the trigger chemical in the subject's lungs, which will be exhaled. The activation signal would spread very, very quickly, because as soon as a subject is exposed to even a tiny bit of the signal chemical, a bunch of pre-placed bacteria fires up to start cranking out more of the stuff.
The bacteria is coded to start killing the subject the moment it gets triggered (or, alternately, if the trigger chemical is toxic to humans the bacteria doesn't even need to do any additional work). The method of killing is fast, but generally takes a handful of hours to notice.
When the bad guys want to activate the disease, they can expose random densely populated places around the world to the trigger chemical, and then keep doing that until they are stopped. As a redundancy, they could also send out a bunch of packages across the world containing samples of the signal chemical, timed to arrive just a short duration after the initial release of the signal.
[Answer]
Maybe the team could "discover" the virus and tell the world about it once a lot of people have been infected and they could then create a fake cure/vaccine that, in reality, activates the virus after a while. The deaths from activated virus could spread this "activated virus" or could activate other dormant viruses through airborne particles or something.
The best, in my opinion, would be to tell the public about this new virus once it spread. Then, you activate the virus in some subjects (kidnap them or something to inject them the fake cure). Afterwards, tell the public that it is a potentially deadly virus and could manifest itself at any time to create panic and an urge for a cure (maybe activate even more subjects to rise the death toll and/or death rate). You could then explain that people die after the cure because the cure/vaccine was taken too late and that it is urgent that the public take the cure/vaccine as soon as possible.
If you want something with less involvement, you could make it react to pollen but the virus might go off prematurely.
[Answer]
You have two times to consider: the "subjective" time, counting when a single individual was infected, and the "absolute" time, counting the date when you want the switch to happen.
Internal mechanisms (i.e. telomere degradation) would work well for subjective time, but they would be impossible to synchronize. And you want all the death to happen at the very same moment, not 10 years (just to put a number) after the individual was infected.
External mechanism might be more tricky to implement, as it's hard to give a receiving system to a virus. But you can work in the following way:
Once the virus has gone silent into all the hosts, you can spread another virus, which specifically attacks the silent virus, causing a genetic modification that switches it from silent to deadly mode. At this point your only delay will be the diffusion among individuals. If the virus is found out and tested, during in vitro test it won't attack human cells (those samples cannot be infected by the first virus), so this will further delay the reaction.
] |
[Question]
[
I am writing a fantasy story where a vast Empire has been weakened, and the previous (inept) emperor allowed the feudal lords to act nearly autonomously. Once he died, the lords that ruled their respective nations and vassal states declared kingship, but still were subservient to the Empire in name - bound to support the Emperor in military matters and pay levies, etc.
However, they are plotting to declare full independence from the Empire. Their combined military might is greater than the Emperor's, so he can't just attack them.
Is this possible? Can you have "Imperial Kingdoms?"
[Answer]
## Canonical example
The [Holy Roman Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire) (HRE) endured for about one thousand years, from the 9th (debatable), certainly from the 10th, to the 19th century. It was a loose confederation of countless states, large and small, ranging from city-states such as Hamburg to full-size kingdoms such as [Bohemia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemia) or [Prussia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussia).
[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire#/media/File:Mitteleuropa_zur_Zeit_der_Staufer.svg)
*The Holy Roman Empire around 1200. Each colored patch is a sovereign state. The orange Koenigreich Boehmen is the Kingdom of Bohemia. The territories actually ruled by the [Hohenstaufen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohenstaufen) Dukes of [Swabia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabia) (who were emperors at the time) are the bright yellow specks. Map by Alphathon, available on Wikimedia under the CC-BY-SA-4.0 license.*
Membership in the HRE did in no way imply a diminution of sovereignty; on the contrary, the various components were fully sovereign and did not hesitate to make war one upon another.
Now, in the Western European Middle Ages, "king" was simply a rank in the feudal hierarchy. Posession and use of this rank *usually* implied sovereignty, but it was *not at all* the only rank used by rulers of sovereign states. In the HRE, there were two positions titled "king":
* King of Bohemia: this was a real sovereign, ruling a real state, roughly the western half of modern Czechia.
* King of the Romans: this was a ceremonial title, adopted by the man elected emperor between the election and his confirmation by the Pope.
(In olden days, say the 10th century, there was also a king of East Francia a.k.a. Germany. This title was discontinued in favor of the title "king of the Romans".)
*Much* more common was the title "duke". There was a Duke of Silesia, a Duke of Austria, a Duke of Venice, a Duke of Bavaria, a [Duke of Saxony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Saxony) (and later, *two*, one of [Lower Saxony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxe-Lauenburg) and one of Upper), a Duke of Pomerania, etc. The preference for title "duke" instead of "king" is specific to the Germanies, due to the pre-eminence of the [stem duchies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_duchy) after the dissolution of the [Carolingian Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_Empire).
There were also rulers who used the titles Marquis, Count Palatine, Archbishop, and so on.
* Note that there were also kings in Europe during this thousand years who *did not* participate in the feudal hierarchy headed the by Holy Roman Emperor; most importantly, the kings of England, Scotland, France, Spain, Poland, and of the various nordic countries.
* Note also that the Bishop of Rome, a.k.a. the Pope, was *in the feudal hierarchy* subordinated to the Holy Roman Emperor, but in the real world his confirmation was needed in order to transform an emperor-elect into an actual emperor.
[Answer]
There is no need to have rebellious nobles declare themselves kings when the empire weakens, though that happened in a number of cases. it is quite possible to normally have kingdoms within the empire.
In history there are many examples of dependent kingdoms, maybe more than independent kingdoms. In the 19th and early 20th centuries newly independent European countries became kingdoms, and thus it became usual to think of a king as the sovereign of an independent country.
Many people would said that since today only 32 independent sovereign states are kingdoms (16 of them with Elizabeth II as their queen), there are only 16 kings in the world today. But that is not entirely accurate.
For example, the head of state of the United Arab Emirates is a president. But the country consists of seven emirates ruled by hereditary emirs who form the ruling council. The president and the prime minister are elected by the council, but the Emir of Abu Dhabi has always been elected president and the Emir of Dubai has always been elected prime minister. So some people would count the emirs in the UAE as sort of kings within a federation of kingdoms.
Malaysia consists of 13 states and 3 territories. Nine of the states are monarchies, with one raja, seven sultans, and one *Yang di-Pertuan Besar* as heads of state. The nine monarchs elect the head of state of Malaysia, the *Yang di-Pertuan Agong*, from among themselves for a five year term, but by agreement the position is rotated from sultan to sultan in a predetermined order. The *Yang di-Pertuan Agong* is often called the king, but it makes as much sense to call him the king of kings and the monarchs of the states kings.
Wikipedia has a list of current constituent monarchs, hereditary heads of state of groups within various countries.
>
> This is a list of currently reigning constituent monarchs, including traditional rulers and governing constitutional monarchs. Each monarch listed below reigns over a legally recognised dominion, but in most cases possess little or no sovereign governing power. Their titles, however, are recognised by the state. Entries are listed beside their respective dominions, and are grouped by country.
>
>
>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_current\_constituent\_monarchs[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_constituent_monarchs%5B1%5D)
Even if only a small percentage of those traditional rulers should be considered kings, that still increases the number of kings at the present significantly.
In medieval Ireland, there were many small polities called *Tuaths*. The ruler of a *Tuath* was called a *Ri*, or king. Thus there were an unspecified number of kings and kingdoms in medieval Ireland - I have read 90 kingdoms, and 150 kingdoms in another source, so I wonder if anyone has a complete list.
Wikipedia lists about 57 kingdoms in the "early Christian" period.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_Irish\_kingdoms[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irish_kingdoms%5B2%5D)
The Island of Ireland has an area of 84,421 square kilometers or 32,595 square miles. The population of medieval Ireland at various times may have varied from about 500,000 to about 1,000,000. So if there were about 50 to 200 kingdoms at any one time in medieval Ireland the average kingdom would have had an average area of about 422.105 to 1,688.42 square kilometers, or about 162.975 to 651.9 square miles, and an average population of about 2,500 to 20,000 people.
So average medieval Irish kingdoms might be bigger than Barbados and smaller than Coromos, with populations larger than the Vatican City and smaller than San Marino.
Some kings were overlords of other *tuaths* besides their own. A common title for them was *Ruiri* or over king. They could be called second level kings or kings of kings, but many Christians have a strange reluctance to use the title of king of kings.
Ireland was always divided into areas that are called provinces in English, but were called "fifths" in medieval Gaelic. Due to the ambitions of kings, there were often more than five fifths in medieval Ireland. The king of a fifth, or province, was the overlord of all kings and overkings in his fifth, and was often called a *Ri ruirech* or king of overkings. It would be logical to call a *Ri ruirech* a third level king or a king of kings of kings.
And for centuries there was a high king of all Ireland or *Ard ri*. It would be logical to call the *Ard ri* a fourth level king, or a king of kings of kings of kings, instead.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic\_nobility\_of\_Ireland[3]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_nobility_of_Ireland%5B3%5D)
And some medieval Irish writers claimed that the High King was subordinate to the Holy Roman Emperor, thus making the emperor equivalent to a fifth level king or a king of kings of kings of kings of kings.
The ancient Roman republic and empire had many kingdoms under its authority at various times.
Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus was a client king in southern Britain after the Roman conquest in 43 AD. A fragmentary inscription was reconstructed as giving Cogidubnus the title of King and Imperial Legate in Britain, but it is now reconstructed to give him the title of Great King of the Britons, the rank of great king being justified by the emperor granting him lands outside his original kingdom to rule, according to one theory. Thus we see that not just kings but great kings could be clients of the Roman Empire.
King Tigranes II The Great of Armenia conquered many neighboring lands and proclaimed himself King of Kings about 85 BC. After being defeated in 68-66 BC by Lucullus and Pompey the Great, Tigranes became a client of the Roman Republic. I believe that Tigranes II and his son Artavasdes II continued to use the title of of King of kings until 34 BC, which would make the Roman consuls in that period the republican equivalents of third level kings or kings of kings of kings.
I am not sure what titles were used by succeeding Armenian monarchs, king, great king, or king of kings. Most of the later Armenian monarchs were subordinate to either Rome, or Persia, or sometimes to both at once.
In 36 and 34 BC the Roman Triumvir Mark Anthony granted many lands to Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. In the Donations of Alexandria in 34 BC Mark Anthony proclaimed Cleopatra and her son Caesarion, the queen and king of Egypt, Queen of Kings and King of Kings.
Mark Anthony made his young children with Cleopatra monarchs. Anthony appointed Alexander Helios King of Armenia, Media, and (unconquered) Parthia, his twin Cleopatra Selene II Queen of Cyrenaica and Libya, and Ptolemy Philadelphus King of Syria and Cilicia.
Thus Mark Anthony showed that a Roman triumvir had authority to appoint kings and kings of kings, and thus was equivalent to at least a third level king or a king of kings of kings.
But since the Parthian monarchs were now using the title of king of kings, it is possible that Mark Anthony might have promoted Alexander Helios to King of Kings when and if Parthia was conquered. If Cleopatra remained the overlord of Alexander Helios that would in turn make her the equivalent of a third level queen, a queen of kings of kings, and that in turn would have made Mark Anthony at least as high as a fourth level king or a king of kings of kings of kings.
The Borsporan Kingdom, founded in about 480 BC, became a roman client state at lest as early as 8 BC, and lasted until AD 341 or later, before being conquered by the Huns. It ruled parts of the Crimea and the area around the Sea of Azov. Theodore Momensen, in *The Provinces of the Roman Empire* 1885, 1886, stated that one of the Bosporan kings, a client of the Roman Empire, used the title of king of kings.
Septimius Odaenathus was made the *ras* (lord) of Palmyra, a city state in the Roman Province of Syria, in the 240s. In 252 Persian King of Kings Shapor I began a long series of invasions of Roman provinces. In 260 Shapor defeated and captured Emperor Valerian at Edessa and raided the eastern provinces. Fulvius Macrianus proclaimed himself and his sons Quietus and Macrianus Minor emperors and sought to overthrow emperor Gallienus, son of Valerian.
Odaenathus may have been proclaimed king of Palmyra at this time. Odaenathus defeated Shapor and drove him out of Roman territory. Gallienus defeated and killed Macrianus and Macrianus Minor in a battle in the Balkans. Odaenatus then defeated Quietus and his followers and took control over much of the eastern provinces, and was rewarded by Gallienus with titles and honors.
In 263 Odaenatus took the title of King of Kings of the East and had his son Hairan I crowned co-King of Kings.
>
> In the Roman empire's hierarchical system, a vassal king usage of the King of Kings title did not indicate that he is a peer of the emperor or that the vassalage ties were cut.[100]
>
>
>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odaenathus#Ras\_of\_Palmyra[4]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odaenathus#Ras_of_Palmyra%5B4%5D)
Odaenatus and Hairan I were assassinated in 267. Odaenatus's widow Queen of Kings Zenobia became regent for their young son King of Kings Vaballathus. Palmyra invaded Egypt and Asia Minor in 270, and Vaballathus and Zenobia took the titles of *Augustus* and *Augusta*, emperor and empress, in 271. Emperor Aurelian defeated them and conquered Palmyra in 272.
In 337 Emperor Constantine I planned a war against the Sassanians. He appointed his nephew and son-in-law Flavius Hannibalianus *Rex Regnum et Ponticarum Gentum* ("King of Kings and of the Pontic People"). Pontus is the name of the coastal region along the Black Sea in northeastern Asia Minor. But Constantine died in May 337 and Hannibalianus was murdered in September by the sons of Constantine.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibalianus[5]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibalianus%5B5%5D)
Ancient Armenia was mostly conquered by Persia in 428. Ashot I the Great, Prince of Princes of Armenia, was recognized as King of Armenia by the Caliph Al Mu'tamid in 884. King Ashot II the Iron, though more or less subordinate to the Byzantine emperor and/or the Caliph, became King of Kings about 922. A later Armenian king of kings granted kingdoms to several family members. Armenia was conquered by the Byzantine empire in 1045.
in Georgia, Prince Adarnase IV of Iberia became king of Georgia in 888. His descendant Bagrat III became the first king of all Georgia in 1008. The title of King of Kings was used by later medieval Georgian monarchs, but I don't know when they started using it. King David IV the Builder (reigned 1089 to 1125) is said by some sources to have been the first to use the title of King of Kings and also the first to refuse offers of Byzantine titles of honor, thus claiming independence from the Byzantine empire.
But David's abdicated father George II apparently lived until about 1112 and is described once as king of kings. Thus George II may have both used the title of king of kings and also have accepted Byzantine titles, acknowledging their overlordship.
And here it is stated that Gurgen II, king of part of Georgia, used the title of King of Kings during his reign (994-1008).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurgen\_of\_Iberia[6]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurgen_of_Iberia%5B6%5D)
So it is uncertain for how long the Georgian rulers both used the title of King of Kings and accepted titles from the Byzantine emperors, thus also acknowledging the over lordship of the Byzantine emperors.
Anyway, these examples show that it is quite possible for emperors to have not only vassal kings but also vassal great kings and vassal kings of kings.
Some people might be surprised by these examples of kings of kings being subordinate to emperors, because some people think that the title of king of kings is equal to emperor, or even higher.
That is because of various biblical verses:
Timothy 6:15
>
> Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords;
>
>
>
Revelation 17:14
>
> These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.
>
>
>
Revelation 19:16
>
> And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King Of Kings, And Lord Of Lords..
>
>
>
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Timothy+6%3A15%2CRevelation+17%3A14%2CRevelation+19%3A16&version=KJV[7]](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Timothy+6%3A15%2CRevelation+17%3A14%2CRevelation+19%3A16&version=KJV%5B7%5D)
So some people would think that it would be blasphemous for a mortal to use the title of King of kings since that title has been used to describe God.
But Christians also call God king. And the most common name for God in the Bible is The Lord. So by the reasoning that makes calling someone a king of kings blasphemous, calling someone a lord or a king would also be blasphemous. So if a fantasy writer wants to avoid having characters using the title of king of kings for fear of sounding blasphemous, he must also give up having characters using the titles of king and lord.
And if The Lord is sometimes used to mean God, then what does lord mean in Lord of Lords? Does it mean ordinary low ranking human lord, or does it mean god or even God? Thus one has to wonder what King of Kings and Lord of Lords means.
Does King of Kings and Lord of Lords mean:
King of Kings and (mortal) Lord of (mortal) Lords
or
King of Kings and (divine) Lord of (mortal) Lords
or
King of Kings and (mortal) Lord of (divine) Lords
or
King of Kings and God of Gods
These parts of the New Testament were probably written about AD 50 to 150 in the Middle East. And what were the most powerful realms in the Middle East in those days? The Roman Empire and the Parthian or Persian Empire under the Arsacid Dynasty. The Arsacid monarchs used the title of king of kings by that time.
So the writers of Timothy and Revelation didn't create a new title of king of kings for God. Instead they used a title which they must have known was used by contemporary mortal rulers and had been used for centuries. Which may be why they used the unique form of King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
You may have heard about Ethiopian emperors. But actually King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy is the only person I am certain used the title of Emperor of Ethiopia, from 1936 to 1943. The Wikipedia article "Emperor of Ethiopia" says that the title was actually *Negusa nagast* "King of Kings". Important officials and tributary monarchs often had the title of *Negus* or king.
The use of the title may go back to King Sembrouthes of Axum about AD 250, or to about 296, but was used by the time of Ezana (320s-c.360) the first christian monarch. Thus all the Christian monarchs of Ethiopia for over 1,600 years used the title of king of kings. As well as many Christian monarchs of Armenia and Georgia. In medieval Ireland, the Christian kings of the provinces used the title of *Ri ruirech* or king of overkings, which can be considered even higher than king of kings.
The opinion that king of kings is equal to emperor is not very sound.
The Persian rulers of the Achaemenid Dynasty ruled the mightiest realm the world had yet seen, the first true empire in history. Their title was "The Great King, the King of Kings, the King of Lands and Peoples, the King of the World (or the Universe)". They were kings of kings who actually were equivalent to emperors.
After the conquest by Alexander the Great and the break up of his realm, the Arsacid Dynasty of Parthia revolted against the Seleucid Dynasty and gradually conquered Iran and neighboring regions from the Seleucids. Their kings took the titles of great king and later king of kings. The Arsacids directly ruled the central provinces of their realm, but there were at least a dozen vassal kings of outer provinces. Later Iranian tradition claimed there were 90 kingdoms in Iran in that era.
In AD 224 Ardashir I, king of Fars (Persia proper), revolted against Artabanus V, King of Kings and founded the Sassanid Dynasty. Ardashir defeated Artabanus and took over the Parthian Empire, and annexed many of the small vassal kingdoms. Ardshir called himself King of Kings of Iran. His son Shapor I called himself King of Kings of Iran and of Non Iran.
The Arabs conquered the Sassanid Empire in the 7th century AD. Ismail I (1487-1524) conquered Iran from 1502 to 1510 and proclaimed himself *Shahanshah*, King of Kings. Various dynasties ruled Iran and parts of other countries as kings of kings until 1979.
The Persian Kings of Kings of the Achaemenid Dynasty, and to a lesser degree those of the Arsacid and Sassanid Dynasties, and to a still lesser degree those of the dynasties after 1500, can be considered emperor equivalents.
The Mongol Empire in the 13th century was the largest empire that had ever existed up to that time. The supreme ruler is usually called the Great Khan in English. But the title was actually *Yekhe Khagan*, Great Khagan, and *Khagan* means khan of khans, or more or less king of kings. So the Mongol ruler actually used the title of Great King of Kings. And certainly the Mongol ruler, who had many subordinate rulers, was equivalent to an emperor.
And there have been other kings of kings who were more or less equivalent to emperors. But most kings of kings throughout history have been much lower than emperors.
In the British Empire of India, about 60 percent of the land was directly ruled by the central government, and about 40 percent was ruled by various native states. The more powerful Muslim rulers mostly used the title of *Nawab*, while the more powerful Hindu rulers used the title of *raja* (king), and the most important of them used the title of *maharaja* (great king). But some of the most important maharajas used an additional and even higher title, *maharajadhiraja* (great king of kings or king of great kings).
A wealthy Bengali landowner, Sir Jatindramohan Tagore (1831-1908), was granted the title of *maharaja* in 1877 without being given a kingdom to rule, and was promoted to *maharaja-bahadur* in 1890 and the title was made hereditary in 1891. *Bahadur* in a title makes it one step higher. His brother Sourindra Mohun Tagore was made a *raja* in 1890.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatindramohan\_Tagore[8]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatindramohan_Tagore%5B8%5D)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sourindra\_Mohun\_Tagore[9]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sourindra_Mohun_Tagore%5B9%5D)
Man Singh I, Raja of Amber (1550-1614) was a vassal of the Mughal Empire and a Mughal general. In a biography, he is sometimes called king of kings. And that should be a title of honor granted by the Mughal Padishah.
I believe that the highest titles for Hindus in the Mughal Empire included, besides lower titles:
1. Raja - king.
2. Raja Bahadur - illustrious king.
3. Maharaja - great king.
4. Maharaja Bahadur - illustrious great king.
5. Sawal Maharaja Bahadur - elevated illustrious great king.
6. Rajadhiraja - king of kings.
7. Rajadhiraja Bahadur - illustrious king of kings.
8. Maharajadhiraja - great king of kings or king of great kings.
9. Maharajadhiraja Bahadur - illustrious great king of kings or illustrious king of great kings.
[https://nobilitytitles.net/pages/indian-nobility.html[10]](https://nobilitytitles.net/pages/indian-nobility.html%5B10%5D)
The Mughal ruler used titles like Padishah (lord or master of kings), Khagan (khan of khans), and *Shahanshah Al-Sultanat Al-Hindiyyah Al-Mughaliyyah* (king of kings of the Sultanate of India and the Mughals).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial\_and\_royal\_titles\_of\_the\_Mughal\_emperors[11]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_and_royal_titles_of_the_Mughal_emperors%5B11%5D)
The Chinese title of a king was *wang*, and *huangdi* is commonly translated as emperor. During the Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 9 and AD 25 to 220) the imperial government directly administered various commanderies in China, but there were also a number of kingdoms within China. I believe that there were about 50 kingdoms in the Han Dynasty at various times. Emperors of later dynasties down to the Qing (1644-1912) sometimes appointed some of their sons kings.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings\_of\_the\_Han\_dynasty[12]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_of_the_Han_dynasty%5B12%5D)
Many writers sort of chicken out about calling the *wang*s in imperial China kings, preferring to call them princes.
The *huangdi* was supposedly the rightful ruler of all the world, but conquering other countries was hard, and convincing them to become tributaries was easier. Many states, probably about a hundred, not directly ruled by the Chinese empire were at one time or another part of the tributary system and acknowledged the *huangdi* as their real or nominal overlord, and some of those states were kingdoms or higher realms.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_tributaries\_of\_China[13]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tributaries_of_China%5B13%5D)
In Medieval western Europe the Carolingian Empire was divided into up to ten different kingdoms at different times in the 9th century, and whoever was emperor claimed to be the overlord of the various kingdoms.
King Harold the Fair haired conquered the 20 or 30 kingdoms and states in Norway about 872, but for several generations afterwards the King of all Norway was the overlord of various sub kingdoms ruled by real or alleged descendants of sons of Harold the Fair Haired.
In 962, Otto the Great, King of the medium sized kingdom of Italy or Lombardy and the vast kingdom of Germany, was crowned emperor, founding the Holy Roman Empire. All later emperors were kings of Germany and Lombardy, and after 1032 kings of Arles or Burgundy also.
In the early centuries the Holy Roman Emperors were often the overlords of the kingdoms of Denmark, Hungary, and Poland (though Poland was usually ruled by dukes when subject to the empire.
In 1085, Emperor Henry IV make Duke Vratislaus II of Bohemia (died 1092) a king for life. In 1158 Emperor Frederick I made Duke Vladislaus II (c. 1110-1174) a king. I am uncertain if this was supposed to be another life kingship or hereditary. Vladislaus II abdicated in favor of his son Frederick in 1172, and Fredrick and his successors used the title of Duke. Duke Ottokar I (c. 1155-1230) managed to get appointed hereditary king of Bohemia by Philip King of the Romans in 1198, Emperor Otto IV in 1203, and Emperor Frederick II in 1212. Every king of Bohemia up to 1806 was a vassal of the emperor, though by chance many of them were also emperor.
Emperor Henry VI married Constance, heiress of the kingdom of Sicily, though Tancred claimed the crown in 1189. Henry VI forced the captured King Richard I of England to pay him a king's ransom, and some sources say Richard had to become the emperor's vassal and pay annual tribute for all his lands including England. Henry VI conquered Sicily in 1194. Byzantine emperor Alexios III Agnelos agreed to pay Henry VI tribute. The kings of Cyprus and (lesser) Armenia became Henry's vassals. And one source claimed the Caliph of the Almoravids paid tribute to Emperor Henry.
In the 19th century, when newly independent nations became kingdoms, the reverse happened in 1871 with the formation of the German empire. The kingdoms of Prussia, Bavaria, Wurtemburg, and Saxony became parts of the German empire.
in the 19th century, the Hungarians wanted Hungary to be recognized as an independent country, but the kings of Hungary and Emperors of Austria usually wanted to make Hungary part of Austria. In 1867 The Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary became the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, independent of each other except for a few common institutions.
Meanwhile, a region of Croatia became the administrative Kingdom of Slavonia in 1745, part of the larger Kingdom of Croatia which was more or less (depending on Croatian or Hungarian opinions) part of the Kingdom of Hungary, which the Austrian emperors sometimes incorporated into the Austrian Empire depending on how centralizing their government was at the moment. Thus the Austrian Emperor was sort of his own vassal several times over. He could have called himself king of Slavonia, king of kings of Croatia, and king of kings of kings of Hungary. In 1868 Slavonia was merged with Croatia into the joint kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia.
Anyway, these are some examples of kingdoms and higher realms inside of empires and other realms.
Also see my answer to this question:
[https://www.quora.com/From-what-I-have-read-in-history-emperors-were-above-kings-However-were-there-any-actual-situations-in-which-an-emperor-ruled-over-kings-Also-why-were-emperors-considered-above-kings[14]](https://www.quora.com/From-what-I-have-read-in-history-emperors-were-above-kings-However-were-there-any-actual-situations-in-which-an-emperor-ruled-over-kings-Also-why-were-emperors-considered-above-kings%5B14%5D)
[Answer]
The emperors (Caesar onwards, but specifically in the 10th century) actually were at the head of kings, in name at least; The Csars as well, (that title also stems from the Caesar-root).
So Imperial Kingdoms were actually a thing, though the Emperor usually had some sort of country that he ruled alone, without going through an intermediate king, for exactly the reasons your Emperor will come to regret.
] |
[Question]
[
In near future a global war wipes out most of humanity, leaving only a handful of survivors. Thousands of years later these survivors have adapted to lives in small pockets of the world still left undestroyed.
Here's the deal: big part of the story is the fact there is something that prevents the people from leaving these pockets, and story theme-wise it must be something that's caused by the past warfare. Only to my understanding there are hardly weapons that would actually contaminate or ruin the earth to the extent I want to portray in the story.
Here's the question: what kind of speculative weapon of mass destruction would leave such a big, possibly toxic impact it would still affect people in target areas even after thousands of years? A weapon that would make resettling the affected areas near impossible even far into future. Does such a weapon exist? Could you imagine a weapon that fits the criteria with near-future technology?
Thanks for all the ideas in advance. Bonus points for stretching the limits of reality as little as possible.
[Answer]
This answer proposes an alternative concept to speculative weapons of mass destruction. The global war was fought by armies of autonomous military systems and weapons platforms. Basically, "killer robots". This killed the majority of the world's population.
However, there were small regions where the killer robots were excluded from taking lethal action against human beings and their resources. The reasons for these exclusion zones can be left as an exercise for the OP.
Thousands of years later the killer robots are still out there. Humans survive in their small enclaves.
By the way, killer robots can include orbital weapons platforms armed with laser-weapons and the dreaded ["rods from the gods"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment). This can accompany flights of drones patrolling the skies and armoured death machines trundling across the landscape.
This scenario assumes that the world and its major nations have all adopted killer robot types of military systems. At some point conflict breaks out and the killer robots become an unstoppable force waging war on a global scale. This leads to an inevitable collapse of civilization. Only small enclaves of survivors remain.
[Answer]
Rather than use kinetic energy or radiation to destroy their enemies, the scientists working for the various powers began using genetic engineering to create bioweapons. Plagues and amped up versions of killer virus were considered, but rejected due to the impossibility of containing the effects.
The solution was brilliant: use genetic engineering to modify crop plants so the people in that nation would not be able to digest them or extract nutrition. Virus were prepared and various vectors selected and then released on enemy nations. Billions of people starved, economies collapsed and nations fell. Of course, the hubris which drove the victors to choose such a fiendish method of attack failed to protect them, the vectors and virus mutated and attacked their crops, leaving the victory as ashes as their nation starved to death as well. The calamity spread, and soon most human life and activity ceased.
A few humans here and there were able to survive on stored food, carefully preserved green houses sheltering uninfected plants or changing their diets in radical ways.
Of course, the mutations which made food crops impossible to eat were expensive in terms of maintaining them, and many plants began to throw them off. Other mutations also took hold, so the killer virus ran its course and eventually only surfaces in small outbreaks from time to time. The descendants of the humans who survived the war have also changed. They live in small bands foraging the wilds. Many have taken up unconventional diets eating plants which their ancestors would not have considered. Others have become very sensitive to the differences between lethal mutated plants and the ancestral versions which are edible, and some have, through evolution, become able to eat the mutated crop plants which killed their ancestors.
Since the majority of the plant species are no longer edible to humans, or are of much more limited use for human digestion, the world is a literal food desert for the vast majority of the survivors, and the ability to sustain large human populations no longer exists.
[Answer]
Some sort of cloud seeding system, perhaps involving nanotechnology deployed from orbit, whichever side was losing the war implemented this system to cause the economic collapse of their enemy. With rain only occurring at sea the world's ecology collapses, lakes dry up, rivers stop flowing, humanity can only exist by depending upon desalination and artificial irrigation. People can venture into the deserts to loot the abandoned towns and cities but they can't stay there, they need to return to the infrastructure on the coasts to restock food and water.
[Answer]
**Unravelling God's stitches.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ELUrD.jpg)
<https://www.deviantart.com/art/Rift-463670599>
After the war, the rebuilders needed energy. The old sources were exhausted. But there is energy at interfaces, and it was discovered that a small hole made in the walls between dimensions could allow energy to flow from one state to the next in nearly unlimited amounts.
It turns out these were load bearing walls. The holes grew and reality began to shift, or fold, or warp one dimension into / onto / over the next. Physical laws became unpredictable, or cancelled each other out. One could easily get lost - or changed - in altered realities juxtaposed onto ours. Beings from other planes could wander into ours - aliens, lost gods, monsters from the outer dark. Ghosts. Spores. Loads of bugs.
Celestial fixers - angry angels - arrived and planted reality anchors to contain the damage from spreading to all of Creation. Their intent was not to preserve what was left of humanity but that was a byproduct - around these anchors the survivors huddle, watching for what might emerge from the shifting planes outside their borders.
This would be a fine setting for a story because maybe the new shifting reality has its own rules. Can humanity make the ultimate adaptation?
---
If you must have the trouble be the end result of a weapon certainly you could weaponize the ability to make interdimensional rifts.
[Answer]
Geo-war.
Forget about nukes and diseases, if you to really kill people, their pets, their homes, and the very land where they stand you could use geo-enginnering as a weapon of mass destruction!
The easiest way would be to use certain compounds to obscure the atmosphere in the hopes of lowering the global temperature, but if that gets out of hand you could have the entire Earth drowned into an Ice Age.
The pockets of survivors could be centered around certain zones that thanks to some geographical disposition has managed to remain warm enough to sustain a small population.
[Answer]
Maybe turn it around. Something holds them to those areas.
There was a virus that implanted a mutation that caused people to become reliant to a toxin. Maybe it was a defensive measure to resist a toxic weapon (with plans to use a second virus to remove that mutation). Maybe it was to allow people to survive in a polluted world. The dependency was a side affect of being able to survive that toxin.
The infrastructure to create or distribute the reversal virus has been lost in that or another upheaval.
This allowed people to survive when the planet was polluted. However, nothing lasts forever and the toxin/pollution has been breaking down. The areas with enough toxin to live in have been getting smaller and smaller. Now there are only a few pockets remaining that are polluted enough for the people to live in. Good news for the planet, bad news for the people.
They can now send out expeditions to find ways of re-poisoning the planet or try to find the reversal virus.
Now, the mutant hoard (from all the 80s bad post-apocalyptic movies) that wants to re-pollute the planet are the good guys.
[Answer]
Virii change over time, but chemicals stay the same.
OK, massive oversimplification, but here we go.
A Bioweapon like a virus could prove too difficult to contain, and may well mutate beyond the bounds the creators had in mind. However, a nerve agent may stay lethal for a very long time, and it won't move about.
[VX nerve agent](https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/vx/basics/facts.asp) has been around for a long time. It's oily, pools into low lying areas. It's not water soluble, and it won't wash away as easily. It takes high heat to turn to a vapor. It can contaminate a site for years. VX may not serve your purpose directly, but this nasty crap actually exists TODAY.
Come up with a more lethal toxin with very similar characteristics, then have some madman in the past use it widely. Natural boundaries like mountains will help contain it. High altitude communities might fare better because the crap will sink down kind of naturally. Given that this stuff is mostly non reactive, it will break down very slowly.
Your communities that survive are going to reach equilibrium with their surroundings, limiting populations based on the productivity of the un-contaminated land. Travel from one community to the next is going to be dangerous as heck, so it won't happen much.
I don't think its a stretch for this stuff to keep populations contained for 1000 plus years after the initial massive die off. If this stuff targets animals rather than plants, actions like erosion are going to be less of a problem for spreading it about. If it kills everything, the east coast of the US is doomed after plant life in the plains dies out.
[Answer]
In a supposed report regarding how rapidly changing technology could render current methods and weaponry obsolete (supposedly) authored by NASA (More on that later) I remember reading about "Programmable area denial nanite swarms." This weapon is basically a nanite swarm that is programmed to settle over a massive area (we're talking entire regions of countryside) and be capable of recognizing any human signature not equipped with the proper IFF signature to do a number of aggressive actions against the target. Several methods were discussed, one of which involved explosive nanites that can combine and detonate upon detecting a threat scaling the blast to the size of the target. Another was that the nanites could simply be highly abrasive "smart dust" that detects an intruder and fluffs itself from the soil into a dust cloud that could dig into lung tissue and kill the intruder.
The report was later found to have been authored as a hoax to support a conspiracy theorist's blog but it still has some pretty good ideas for exotic super-weapons that seem to posses the properties that might be useful to your plot setting. The whole thing is interesting, even if it is a hoax. The particular stuff you want to see starts at page 40.
<http://www.stopthecrime.net/docs/nasa-thefutureof-war.pdf>
[Answer]
>
> What kind of speculative weapon of mass destruction would leave such a big, possibly toxic impact it would still affect people in target areas even after thousands of years? A weapon that would make resettling the affected areas near impossible even far into future. Does such a weapon exist? Could you imagine a weapon that fits the criteria with near-future technology?
>
>
>
# "[Second-Variety](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety)" type of semi-biological killerbots.
These would be a terror weapon designed for *very* long term area denial against unhardened targets (houses, villages, etc., but not army bases). They would be self-replacing, which means they're more like living organisms themselves: there are larger "mothers" that spawn hunting-optimized units. Photosynthetic, and able to recognize a large, warm organism and attack it, probably using some kind of neurotoxin; also, they can oxidize most organic matter to harvest energy. Organic matter is also brought back to the mothers to assemble more bots.
They were initially used as portable, reusable mine-fields (to go through a bot infested zone you need reasonably high technology, and this makes you detectable with other means).
As for why they don't penetrate into habitable "pockets", there are lots of possibilities (and you aren't limited to only one).
* by design. Some areas were classified "off limits" and the bots still obey these limitations (which begs the question, do they have GPS? How do they know where a certain area even begins? Do they rely on some kind of emission? If so, could such a protective emission dwindle in time?).
* by chance. The bots aren't hardened and cannot e.g. swim or climb steep walls. So several geographic features may conspire to create safe havens, or thwart their hunting mechanisms (they might hunt by smell, or IR, or electric sense).
* by accident. Whoever programmed the bots inserted several time-saving, power-saving tricks to improve performance and concentrate the bots on more promising hunts. And they made mistakes. As a result, for example, the bots mistakenly consider human life impossible based on *absolute*, not *partial* oxygen pressure; therefore, they will never venture beyond 1500 m above sea level, for their programming guarantees there can't be anything worth hunting there. The safe havens are mountain-top "islands", while plains are kill zones.
[Answer]
I'd go with a bio-weapon.
A decomposing fungus was engineered to produce high-persistence non-selective herbicides. You spread it to an area, it kills the plants using the already dead plants for energy. Then your enemy has no agriculture and either starves or buys food from you. Simple and brilliant.
Or as it turns out, the enemy may simply collapse creating a huge influx of refugees into **your** area. Refugees that spread with them your bio-weapon wherever they go. Bio-weapon now doubly brilliant as the enemies efforts to kill it had provided it with resistance to all fungicides known to science, including the one you had specifically engineered it to be vulnerable to as a safe guard.
You fungus becomes a global phenomenon killing plants world wide almost faster than your agents can cleanse evidence of you ever having had anything to do with "the plague". Fortunately people are too preoccupied fighting over the remaining food stocks and fishing fleets to investigate. Dying from starvation is pretty good distraction too.
You start thinking about the ways you can turn this to your advantage. With so many people dead and so much agriculture lost, the world will be redrawn. This is a huge opportunity to anyone with some initiative and enough common sense not to waste resources trying to save people who cannot be saved. You start to think this was a blessing. Maybe your subconscious was able to see farther ahead? Maybe ruling the world is not your ambition but your destiny?
Then things start to go wrong. With plants dying all over erosion accelerates. Huge amounts of top soil is carried to the oceans by wind and water. At which point we find out that the herbicides produced by the fungi can kill most forms of algae if there is enough of them. And there is.
Not enough to seriously threaten the algae themselves, mind you. But combined with combined with starving people fishing all they can, the sudden collapse of the algae pretty much wipes out the fish from the ocean as a viable food source.
And things keep getting worse. Turns out that if you kill enough plants they turn less carbon dioxide to sugars and oxygen. And that poisoned plants and starved animals release carbon dioxide to atmosphere as they decay. The greenhouse effect gets a huge and rapid boost.
The surviving people mostly just shrug their shoulders in response to this. Does it really matter any more? Turns out it does. The increased temperature creates torrential rains and huge arid areas. With most terrestrial plants dead, the erosion accelerates to speeds never seen before.
Thanks to high persistence herbicides in the soil and high levels of carbon dioxide persisting this goes on for centuries. **Apart from few isolated pockets the top soil is lost and the landscapes become barren and arid.**
But there is good news, those herbicides took lots of energy to produce so the fungi evolved not to bother after few decades. And most spores of the old strain died after few centuries, as well. Problem solved.
Marine life rebound after a century as well. Even the stablest poisons became safely embedded in the sediments and algae recovered completely. The fish more than recovered. With the most people dead and even the survivors unable to really build ships, humans no longer are a threat to fish flourishing.
[Answer]
**Trapped on small islands**
The survivors are trapped on small and remote islands without any trees left. So they can sustain themselves, but never build boats to get off their islands and colonialise other parts of the world.
There is a precedent in our world: The Easter islanders deforested their remote island and were trapped on it until the Spaniards rediscovered the island.
Note that this answer does not require a persistent weapon of mass destruction. Once the damage is done (deforested islands) it is enough to confine the residual population in their place.
] |
[Question]
[
I've been creating a world where most-to-all of its life resides in the deep ocean. For story purposes, I would like said creature to have lungs, but it is not necessary.
**Description of the Creature in Mind**
The creature in question is something along the lines of a massive sea serpent. Ideally, it would be able to either surface into an area that has air in it and be able to move on land, through legs or just by slithering along in a similar fashion to a snake. It lives around 2000 meters down, give or take ~500 meters.
**Ecosystem of the Planet**
The planet is a large oceanic planet, which is slightly larger than Earth, and only has some small archipelagos for land. The plants of the planet primarily exist at the surface, as to the much smaller prey animals. small predators eat these smaller prey animals, but most animals who are purely "prey" don't exist very far down. Predators prey on smaller predators in a hierarchical type system, with the largest predators also bien the deepest. The creature would be in the mid-size range, but they have the advantage of being omnivores: there are massive underwater caverns that are filled with air. Very large plants, in some ways similar to those on Earth, grow in these caverns, and are adapted to using chemosynthesis to create energy, along with some small to mid size mammals and reptiles. This is really the only sizable prey besides smaller oceanic predators down this low, so the creature profits greatly from this resource. Due to much larger predators from below, they are forced to move around, and as these caverns, while common, are not common enough to allow for consistent breathing. These creatures do have large enough lungs to get to the surface, but this is impractical for them, as it would include long diving and surfacing sessions that may make to creature more vulnerable to predators.
By my understanding, there are many types of bacteria that could create oxygen as a waste resource, not through photosynthesis, but by some form of chemosynthesis, but I'm not certain. It is possible for a reasonably large creature (whale sized or larger) be able to host some form of bacteria in its body in a symbiotic relationship as a way of generating the oxygen that it needs to live? I'm presuming that the bacteria simply consumes some of the food that the creature eats, and then the oxygen created is somehow sent to the lungs.
If there are any other ideas as to how a creature of this size could get air, besides gills, as they collapse in while in regular air conditions, they would be helpful.
[Answer]
I like very much the premise: sort of the opposite of sperm whales who live shallow and feed deep. And I am always loving the combination of giant sea monsters, gianter deeper sea monsters, and exotic bacterial metabolism!
from [Bacterial oxygen production in the dark. Ettwig KF et al Frontiers of Microbiol. 2012 Aug 7;3:273](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22891064)
>
> For a long time, photosynthesis was the only biological process known
> to produce oxygen. Cyanobacteria, green plants, and algae use light
> energy to split water(E0′ = + 0.82V) via photosystem II. The
> electrons obtained serve NADPH and ATP generation for carbon dioxide
> fixation; oxygen is a mere by-product of this metabolism...
>
>
> De novo oxygen production can be driven by either light or chemical
> energy. The second, “dark” way takes advantage of oxidants with a more
> positive redox potential than the O2/H2O couple. Only a few redox
> couples are biologically relevant in this respect:
> hypochlorite(ClO-)/Cl-;E0′ = + 1.31V, chlorite (ClO − 2 )/ClO − (E 0
> ′ =+1.28V),ClO − 2 /Cl − (E 0 ′ =+1.08V), nitrous oxide (N2O)/N2(E0′
> = + 1.36V), nitric oxide (NO)/N2O(E0′ = + 1.18V), and NO/N2(E0′ = + 1.27V). Most of these compounds are intermediates in the respiration of (per)chlorate and nitrate/nitrite, respectively. In
> this perspective, we review what is known and still to be learned
> about oxygenic pathways from chloro-oxo species and nitrogen oxides,
> with a focus on a hypothetical enzymatic mechanism for the hitherto
> elusive nitrite-driven oxygen production.
>
>
>
To make it work you need a (presumably mineral) source of strong oxidizers as listed that the bacterial symbionts could use; I think in these creatures the production of oxygen is tied to the energy they get back from oxidizing the substrate with it. It is pretty clear in the text that these metabolic paths are not making bubbles of oxygen like plants do. Whatever oxygen is produced is in small amounts.
---
But here is another idea for your creature as regards oxygen: it minimizes its use of oxygen by using anaerobic metabolism. When humans do this it is <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_glycolysis>
Energy can be derived from glucose without oxygen in short bursts. Lactate is the end product and builds up - this is the burn you feel when you feel the burn. Ultimately the liver has to oxidize the lactate when there is oxygen around again. It is an inefficient use of sugar compared to aerobic metabolism but we can do it.
But what about a creature that did anaerobic glycolysis and then ignored the end product? Yeast do exactly this - the end product is ethanol and it just builds up until they cant stand it any more. Or it evaporates away. A sea monster with lots of food and little oxygen could just let the lactate waste product ooze out of its pores into the water. It would need a lot more food (I think three times as much?) than a comparably sized creature using oxidative glycolysis, which extracts more energy from the sugar. But it could get by with much less oxygen.
---
I could imagine such a creature storing huge amounts of oxygen in [myoglobin](http://www.nature.com/news/making-the-most-of-muscle-oxygen-1.13202). Whales store oxygen in myoglobin and this is why some can hold their breath under conditions of exertion for over an hour. If you had a creature which did only anaerobic metabolism and jettisoned the waste it would have much lower oxygen requirements. Maybe you could have only the brain require oxidative metabolism with the rest of the body using anaerobic. One whale sized breath could last the creature weeks.
[Answer]
Here on Earth, deep sea bacteria do power entire ecosystems, but not through photosynthesis or the creation of oxygen. Rather, they harvest the heat energy and chemicals pouring out of oceanic vents and use chemosynthesis to both provide food and energy for themselves, as well as creating the bottom rung of a food chain particular to that environment.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IjJzk.jpg)
*Hydrothermal vent*
Any creatures that live in the environment will not be using oxygen for their life processes in the way fish or whales do, so their consumption of chemosynthetic bacteria is more analogous to food rather than oxygen.
Indeed, something like this might explain the strange life forms from [the Ediacaran Period.](http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/ediacaran.php). If they were living by capturing and digesting chemosynthetic bacteria, this might explain their rapid spread during a period when the Earth's atmosphere was not fully oxygenated yet, and possibly their mysterious structure (they don't seem to have a body plan the way Cambrian creatures do, and may have been simply filtering out bacteria from the water).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Izfs1.jpg)
*Possible reconstruction of Ediacaran life*
This combination of factors suggests that whatever life forms are evolving in the depths of your ocean may not even be remotely analogous to what exists on Earth. On the other hand, the life forms which do live around hydrothermal vents on Earth today *are* clearly related to worms and other creatures which evolved in the Cambrian period, so they obviously were more competitive in that environment than Ediacaran life forms were.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/emCZx.jpg)
*Tube worms living near hydrothermal vents*
[Answer]
**The answer is sure, but I'm going to say no because of your lack of understanding on how the chemistry works here**
[going to ignore nitrogen in this for simplicity] In photosynthesis plants take in water H2O, energy in the form of sunlight, and CO2 to form sugar compounds, basically hydrocarbon chains. A hydrocarbon chain is a molecule of carbon atoms connected to each other in a chain of any length and 2 hydrogen atoms connected to each carbon atom. When reacted with oxygen this releases energy. So the production of sugar is a means of storing energy. So going back the H20 and CO2 you can see there is a lot of O2 (oxygen) leftover from taking all those H's and C's. That is why O2 is byproduct.
Without providing your organism an energy source and the oxygen containing chemicals to make its own hydrocarbon chain you will never be able to produce oxygen.
In the circumstances you provide, I see the chances of this occurring to be very slim. There could be some potential radical ways to achieve this but it would take some radical changes to your concept.
[Answer]
The thermodynamics are probably wrong for a whale - sized creature. And, chemosynthesis does not create oxygen.
Chemosynthesis is a corollary to photosynthesis. It is the synthesis of complex carbon from chemicals (instead of light.)
The production of oxygen is most commonly a result of photosynthesis. The oxygen derives from water. (CO2 + H2O + light -> Sugar and O2)
Chemosynthesis (CO2 (actually probably bicarbonate) + H2S + H2O + O2 -> Sugar and sulfuric acid.)
In both cases CO2 is converted to sugar. One uses light, the other uses H2S. In only the first case is oxygen made. (Oxygenic photosynthesis. There is also something called anoxygenic photosynthesis.)
Secondarily: Although non-photosynthetic O2 production is hypothesized for some methane - oxidizing bacteria, it has not been demonstrated and it is not hypothesized to be excreted. Oxygen is incredibly reactive. It accepts electrons better than almost anything out there. It is only a waste product of photosynthesis because photons are that much more impressive. A large animal that uses oxygen as an electron acceptor (as we do) will require a great deal of it.
~~~~
More germane to your goal: The deep ocean has more oxygen than mid-depths in much of the ocean, because of mixing events, upwelling, and other physical processes.
Another possibility is to have your organism use nitrate as its electron acceptor instead of oxygen. Although this raises other problems, it might help you here.
[Answer]
EDIT: Huh, cool! Sometimes AFAIK isn't far enough. Thanks to @P Chapman for enlightening me that there are in fact bacteria that are able to create their own oxygen. It doesn't solve the oxygen problem for the whale-like deep ocean creature because it'd all be metabolized within the cell, but it's incredible nonetheless.
---
~~**Not with the biology we know of.**~~ The only way oxygen is produced via biological reaction is through photosynthesis, which requires sunlight. In the deep ocean, there’s no sunlight, so biology can’t make oxygen.
I suppose it’s imaginable that an organism could somehow use the thermal energy found at mid-ocean ridges (cold seeps and hydrothermal vents), but AFAIK one doesn’t exist- there are easier ways to get food, like via chemosynthesis, which doesn’t produce oxygen at all.
As the comments have pointed out, there’s also not a huge evolutionary pressure to develop such a skill. There’s enough oxygen in the deep sea for most gilled creatures, and their bigger problem is finding ways to use up the oxygen- that is, finding food to oxidize for energy.
[Answer]
What you are describing is not dissimilar from the symbiosis between certain plants and nitrogen fixing bacteria.
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation#Root_nodule_symbioses>) .
Further the conversion of water, carbon dioxide, and energy to oxygen is fairly common. (yes I know photosynthesis is not exactly what you are looking for). Your limitation is that this requires quite a bit of energy to do. So you reasonably large creature would need to have a fairly big appetite to make this work. This could be offset somewhat if you were using some other compound besides carbon dioxide which give you a bit of hand-wavy if you want. I would have to go review the chemistry to really give you a good answer and it would probably be boring. An example of alternate chemsitry is here (<https://www.mpg.de/621120/pressRelease201003241>)
Short Answer: Yes but a good energy source or a somewhat alien ocean will make it more realistic.
[Answer]
Someone mentioned using Nitrate as a TEA (terminal electron acceptor). MnOx, after Fe3 (ferric iron) is the third or fourth best TEA after O2, then nitrate.
Im finding in my bioreactor research that facultative fungi (chemo-autotrophs just like you and me) can use stored MnOx (from coal mine drainage) as a back up TEA. (check out www.biominingproducts.com to learn about our self selecting bioreactors).
A creature that scavenges Mn nodules from the ocean floor and then rises to the surface every so often to breath O2 might be able to "replenish" their O2 tanks by switching back and forth from O2 to MnOx. The MnOx provides about 1/5th the energetic exchange compared to O2, but is also a solid, so its density is much higher. 1/5th the energy exchanged, but many times the density of dissolved O2 (0-12mg/l in water at best saturation based on temp)
Perhaps the creature has a special organ "MnOx Lungs" that take the accumulated Mn2 (dissolved Mn) in solution and convert it back and forth between the oxidized and reduced states. Essentially, it would function like a spare O2 tank. The organ would have maintain concentrations of Mn2 in solution until it is time to be replenished by producing a Mn peroxidase. You could say that the fungi which produce the Mn peroxidase (Santelli et al.) inhabit the organ (like our guts) and help in oxidizing the Mn2 for the creature.
Cheers and keep writing!
[Answer]
This answer doesn't refer directly to bacteria but it might still help.
There are some insects that no possess gills and yet are perfectly capable of breathing underwater. Through using microscopic hydrophobic hairs, the insect is able to create a barrier around itself where the danger of water with its nasty surface tension becomes negligible.
But it goes a step further, both carbon dioxide and oxygen are able to diffuse across this barrier allowing the insect to *breathe easy*.
Hope this helps!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7KSfjv4Oq0&t=4m35s
[Answer]
**YES! Algae,** as a matter of fact, most of OUR oxygen is made by algae, not trees and, because algae grows in water, this would be perfect.perhaps you'd have it grow within or next to the lungs.
] |
[Question]
[
A sub-group of Orcs have settled into an area that is occupied by humans who culturally resemble the Greeks from the Hellenic period. These Orcs, who physically resemble Orcs from The Elder Scrolls, decide that having the lower tusks is holding them back from achieving greater understanding or makes them uncivilized or something like that. They start to remove the tusks of their youth when their adult tusks (like adult teeth) come in.
Given the above scenario, what would change about there jaw structure and teeth arrangement? Would they just have nothing where the tusks were or would their teeth spread out? Also, how long would it take for them to stop developing tusks or would that never happen? What are some other impacts that I have not thought of to ask?
Edit:
[Here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/91412/why-would-orcs-have-tusks) is the question that sparked my interest in creating a tusk-less orc sub-species. The appearance of these tusked Orcs would be very close to The elder scrolls Orcs.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QJPWH.jpg)
For anatomical realism, any science behind tusked animals will do, with preference to tusks from the lower jaw. The main point of asking my question was to look for ways to incorporate this subspecies with a logical reason as to why they lost their tusks, so readers don't feel cheated with a cheap reason. All the answers are great! I am leaving the question open for a few more days to gather as much information as I can! Thank you everyone!
[Answer]
**Teeth move.**
If you pull a tooth, other teeth will move into that place. Pulling impacted wisdom teeth can remove crowding on the front teeth and that is something we humans routinely do to our kids. Pulling normal front teeth (sometimes the canines) can be done if teeth are crowded in front, and then braces to get other crowded teeth to move into position.
If orcs are humanoid and a tusk is an exaggerated canine, adjacent teeth will move to partly fill the space. Front teeth might gap some. In some animals with tusks, the tusk has a big space to itself - true for elephants for sure and to some degree for pigs (see below).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ncfkl.jpg)
from <http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/pregastric/pigpage.html>
Pulling the tusk will not change much for the orcs. Other teeth will do their jobs fine.
**No tuskless-born orcs.** Supposedly the incidence of congenitally tuskless elephants has increased greatly over the past century. This is because the tuskless ones don't get killed for their tusks and so have better genetic fitness. But this is not the situation with your orcs. Having tusks pulled does not change the DNA coding for tusks or change your chance of living to have children. Jewish males still are born with foreskins despite their parents systematically removing them for 3000 years. So too your orcs. Except with tusks.
[Answer]
The other teeth would likely spread out to fill or partially fill the gap. It all depends on if the other teeth already have enough room in the jaw.
As for loosing the tusks completely, that would be more dependent on chance. Ordinarily, if an Ork was born with the defect of no tusks, they would have a hard time finding a mate and be removed from the gene pool.
If they have their tusks removed at a young age, then those with the tuskless "defect" may be marked so at birth and thus grow up having a higher status. Otherwise, they will look just like any other tuskless ork. In the latter case, the defect won't be selected out but it won't have selection preference either.
[Answer]
With creative liberty you can pretty much get away with everything you cross your mind with, just give it an explanation, like magick preventing damage after removing the teeth or the removing of teeth making the Orcs more docile and less violent because they psycho have register this pattern as the cause of pain and teeth removal.
Or if you are looking form more scientific base scenarios, The dentrys job was a pretty awful line of job for most of human history, it was risky performing even the simplest surgery in patients with out sterile knowledge and no antibiotics in order to prevent death after surgery.
Mostly people who broke their teeth have to wait until they teeth were rotten and then pull with strength to put something that prevent infection, and also alot of drugs to minimize pain.
Orcs will not go trought this process by choice.
Mostly likely they will simply drill or mold they that periodically in order to make the teeth smaller and smaller.
After some 100-300 years of this, the mutations of smaller teeth will be enough commont for the great majority of ors, to be considered "normal" to orcs to not develop big lower teeth.
(Just as humans consider drinking milk at any age normal, It was not, we evolve in order to...)
So answer 1 deaht by bacteria...not the greathes storie but.
Orcs that can survive this ritual or making an important habiit, will develop a new way of life, and most likely a new way to play with other races in the world.
[Answer]
**Honestly, it's your creative choice**
you would have to decide if your orcs continuously grow tusks like or are they like teeth in the sense once removed they don't come back.
What I'm trying to get at is, orcs are a fictitious creatures and their biology is largely the whimsy of the creative writer.
It is reasonable to conclude their biology would do either or any of what you mention.
] |
[Question]
[
The ozone layer depleted beyond reasonable levels and life on the surface has become impossible and life migrated underground in giant caves connected together by tunnels.
Some of those caves have access to underground rivers or aquifers but some don't. That's the case of one of the biggest cave (size depends on what fits your answer) holding the principal city and many fields. In order to maintain this city and fields water is necessary hence the need for a water cycle.
What should the characteristics of my cave be in order to sustain a water cycle ?
* The cave has access to sunlight with day/night cycle
[Answer]
## Intertwined water cycle.
You don't need a separate water cycle for the insides of the caves and outside of the caves. You don't even need the caves to be waterproof. The [increased UV-radiation](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26219163) could even be used to decontaminate water to consumption.
Water that seeps through from the surface will have undergone [filtration](https://www.wqpmag.com/soil-earth%E2%80%99s-largest-natural-filter) naturally by seeping through sand, rock and every sediment in between. So biologically the water that comes in from the outside will be as safe, perhaps even safer than nowadays.
However lifestock and any kind of biology that can't deal with increased UV radiation has to remain inside, the increased radiation can actually be used for some purposes, clean water is one of these things.
As for your crystals that filter UV-radiation, you do realize that [glass](http://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae603.cfm) actually functions as a filter for UV light and one could safely live behind glass while still having full benefit from the sun's light without getting a deadly dose of UV light even if the ozone layer is shot.
[Answer]
If Earth's surface had too much UV for life, it would still have a water cycle. There would be rain, and rivers.
You could divert water from topside streams or rivers to come down and water your fields. Just because you cannot farm up there does not mean people with wide-brimmed hats cannot go up and dig irrigation canals. Or better - just dig a reservoir or use an existing one, like a like. Put in a water-filled pipe leading to your cave and water will siphon down to you. Bonus: the water will taste great because it has been UV sterilized.
Your scheme reminds me of the Forestiere underground gardens in Fresno.
<http://www.undergroundgardens.com/forestiere-underground-gardens-news/2017/6/15/baldassare-forestiere-was-a-california-dreamer>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zUJn1.jpg)
[Answer]
This sort of caves actually exist for real. For example, China has the Er Wang Dong, and Vietnam has the Son Doong cave. These caves are so big they have their own weather systems.
[Answer]
Water cycle on surface requires few kilometers in the up direction (from sea level to the full extent of troposhere) and few thousands kilometers on the surface (water evaporated on the ocean falls as rain/snow on land and from there returns to the ocean).
Unless you want to call the planet a "cave with transparent ceiling" this cannot apply to a cave.
The closest you can get is an equilibrium between evaporating water (from water free surface) and condensing water (on surfaces) through the air humidity. This will be particularly relevant when during the day your cave can become warmer and more humid and then overnight the moisture can condense on colder rocks.
But this is just a smaller step in the cycle listed at the beginning of my answer.
[Answer]
The cave doesn't need a natural water cycle of any kind, it's a site of major habitation so water will be brought in to accommodate local necessity. Groundwater systems will probably be unaffected by the loss of surface biomes although human activity may be an issue in some areas, pollutants, interruptions to natural lines of flow because of mines etc... and water quality be adversely effected by lose of topsoil. Water will be available for rerouting to sites where it's needed, L.A. survives only because of water piped in from elsewhere, so does Las Vegas, it's a huge engineering task but not insurmountable.
] |
[Question]
[
The setting would be an almost permanently snowy climate. Average temperature 10 to -5 degrees celsius, with little difference between seasons.
Edit: This is a human civilization. I suppose the climate is similar to tundra (with sparse pine forest). To the west is the ocean, and to the east there is a mountain range. I am writing a medieval-ish fantasy world.
(I realize this question really might not be fit for this community. Either way, I would like to thank you commenters, this has been great help to me. I definitely feel welcome as a new member here! I'm sorry if I asked an irrelevant question or if I worded it badly.)
[Answer]
The virtue of animal life as food is that it can eat plants elsewhere and then travel to the cold area for some reason.
Keep in mind that liquid water can't be colder than zero degrees Celsius (or zero degrees Fahrenheit if it is salt water) and that large bodies of water have currents that keep it warmer than it would be if it was only exposed to local surface temperatures.
Similarly, you don't have to get that far beneath the permafrost to reach a natural ground temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit (and warmer as you get deeper).
Another possibility is that the locals could rely on plants grown in some more hospitable micro-environment such as fungi from caves, plant life around geothermal hot springs, sheltered slot canyons, or man-made green houses.
I'd also caution against falling into the trope of entire planets that have only a single ecosystem or climate, and places that have no seasonal variation.
For example, many desert ecosystems have plants evolved to get all of the water and growth that they need during the handful of days each year that it rains, while going dormant most of the time. A cold environment that receives warm [chinook-like](https://www.reference.com/science/chinook-wind-fcd67d2e4d989e80) winds a few weeks a year could have a similarly compressed growing season during which local fauna store up nutrients until the next respite from the cold.
[Answer]
Most societies (to my knowledge) that live in a region under constant or almost constant tundra usually primarily eat whatever meat they come across, usually animals such as reindeer, whales, seals, fish and birds. Some plant-life is eaten, such as wild berries and seaweed but its usually whatever they can find.
Any society in this region would be primarily hunter-gatherer as mass agriculture isn't possible. If there are really good trading routes (unlikely due to extreme weather & temperatures), then they could also enjoy some imported goods.
[Answer]
**tl;dr**: Green houses and/or hardy plants.
---
Note: When I first answered, I missed your mention of Celsius. I was thinking -5 to 10 degrees F, which is even colder. This realization makes what you want even easier. There are edible garden plants which can survive the temperature range you specify just fine. I have edited the answer with this updated point of view. Sorry if my changes cause any confusion.
---
Some people do maintain gardens through the winter. You just need a hardy plant and to help it along. Your people could grow kale in small greenhouses. A horizontal window is all you really need for this, or even just a layer of normal clear plastic-wrap used on left-over food. A window can even be propped up by the snow itself. All you need to do is keep this small space above freezing. With the right plants, even if it gets below freezing they won't necessarily die. Keeping it almost always above freezing also provides the added benefit that you now have a good source of water too, for both you and the plant; just toss snow in there and let it melt.
Do a Google search for winter gardening advice. I typically do one like "Best crops for winter garden". Lots of the articles will just suggest lists of plants and how to care for them, but some actually specify temperature ranges below which you should expect the plants to die.
For example, at [growveg.com Best Vegetables to Grow in Winter](https://www.growveg.com/guides/best-vegetables-to-grow-in-winter/ "growveg.com Best Vegetables to Grow in Winter"), we see:
>
> But I have learned this truth about growing winter vegetables the hard
> way: Grow only as much as you can protect from the elements, because
> that's the essence of the task. Where I live, winter temperatures
> occasionally drop below 0°F (-18°C), with several significant snows
> and winds that howl for days at a time. Spinach resting in a cold
> frame with a tempered glass lid (made from an old shower door)
> scarcely know what's happening, and the same goes for onions snug
> inside a sturdy tunnel covered with heavy-duty row cover (garden
> fleece) and an old quilt.
>
>
>
And from [Aggie Horticulture, Texas AgriLife Extension Service, Texas A&M System](https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/vegetables/coldtoler.html "aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu"):
>
> In general, a frost (31-33 degrees F.) will kill beans, cantaloupe,
> corn, cucumbers, eggplant, okra, peas, pepper, potatoes, sweet
> potatoes, squash, tomatoes, and watermelon.
>
>
> Colder temperatures (26-31 degrees F.) may burn foliage but will not
> kill broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, lettuce, mustard, onion,
> radish, and turnip.
>
>
> The real cold weather champs are beets, Brussels sprouts, carrots,
> collards, kale, parsley, and spinach.
>
>
>
26 degrees F = -3 degrees C. Assuming the "cold weather champs" listed above will fare better than the ones in its previous paragraph, that provides a small list of crops that should survive even at -5 C \*without any special greenhouse or other intervention." So, *with* a simple greenhouse, or better, you should be able to keep some of your crops alive even below -5 C, possibly even down to -20C or -30C, more if you provide enough heat inside it.
Note that even if a plant does not die that does not necessarily mean that it is still growing, or growing well, at a given temperature. If you grow kale, even if it does not die at -5C it might not grow a reasonable amount until the temperature gets back up to 5-10C or until you warm it.
If you design this with solar heaters, it will be even easier and warmer.
If your temperature gets down below -5C a lot and your diet is primarily plant based, then you will need to cover a lot of land like this. The amount might seem infeasible to you or I, but if it is necessary to survive then people will do it.
It could be difficult but not impossible. If I were given 1 roll of food plastic-wrap in an environment like you specified, I could probably cover enough kale to keep me going for a long time.
I think people often underestimate the effect a simple window can have. When we go out in the winter and get into our car on a very cold day, it still feels very cold in the car but what you might not realize is it's still much warmer than outside the car, assuming the windows are not covered by snow or other impediment. If a car is properly oriented to maximize sun exposure to the windows, it can be below freezing out but warm enough in the car to not need a coat.
A properly designed greenhouse with all the best fixtures, such as multi-pane glass, good light-absorbing material inside to maximize the heating, and circled by passive solar heaters, could easily raise your temperatures a lot.
Source of information note cited: Experience. I have melted snow in ways similar to this specifically to get water from it. I have friends who grow kale through the winter. Usually at least three to four months of the year where I am is much colder than you specify; we consider it a warm day if it reaches the mid-point in your range. Also, I have made a solar heater using nothing but plastic wrap, cardboard, duct-tape, the screen from a door, and a little bit of wood, and even a small crude device like I made noticeably raises the temperature inside it.
---
If you want a more fantastical, outside-the-box approach, you could suggest that cold-weather trees are so prevalent in your area that people are wasteful with their wood use. People burn long-term fires which rage for months at a time and provide enough heat to grow crops.
This practice does not need to be sustainable, perhaps a note in your story that this is a new practice which is deforesting the area, but this is the time that the story is set in. Or maybe it is sustainable because you have either abnormally fast growing trees or very few people.
[Answer]
The animals that would be available for consumption would majorly depend on the environment you build and how futuristic/survival you want to make it. There are ways you could do agriculture also, but it would require some technology. Despite the ground being frozen, a green house would be possible similar to that like in the Martian. The only issue would be that the characters would need to find a way to suspend/raise the soil up so that it doesn't mix with the frozen ground or find a way to soften the ground using fire/heat (where technology would definitely need to play a factor since a constant fire could end up causing damage to tarp used). Also, just because this is a tundra, doesn't make it devoid of any [plant](http://www.seeker.com/finding-edible-plants-and-animals-in-extreme-cold-1765367809.html) life. It could be potentially possible to create your own crops of local plants but again, you would need to find a way to super heat the soil enough to dig and plant and grow.
If this is fairly futuristic, you can always add replicators like in star trek, have the ability to cultivate clone animals for meat or a high tech futuristic green house.
Kind of hard to really speculate what could be done without knowing the level of technology available and how the society got there, if that is part of the plot.
[Answer]
I would look into the indigenous cultures of the northern world for direction.
The [inuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_diet#Food_sources) for example, eat sea mammals like walrus, seal and whale as a large portion of the diet.
[Answer]
How about they eat things they dig up? I can think some delicious things to dig up and eat in the tundra.
1: Mummy meat. Frozen mammoths found in the tundra have meat that is still edible. I can imagine these folks prospecting for likely sites and digging for buried frozen giant animals. Once they score one they live off it for weeks. You might have to assert that some of these mummies contain muktuk or your folks are going to get scurvy. You are not going to have a giant population center based on mummy meat but it is plausible that might support small groups.
2: Edible petrochemicals. This is more of a stretch. Obviously there are huge amounts of coal and oil in the ground. As found, we cannot eat them (I do not think). But coal can be processed into edible "margarine"; this was done by the Germans during WW2. Maybe sometimes this just happens? Your folks could find strata of fat in the ground when they dig. Maybe the coal has spontaneously turned or maybe again from ancient creatures - this along the lines of gravlax or hakarl <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl>.
Or the people could have home Fischer-Tropsch reactors to process coal into grease. Or they could have microbes that anaerobically digest the coal and release ethanol - certainly there are microbes that eat petrochemicals so why not? There is good caloric value in ethanol and it makes the mummy meat taste better.
3: Snow algae. <https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/wonderful-things-dont-eat-the-pink-snow/>
Different sorts of algae can live in snow. Supposedly it is a laxative but lots of vegetable foods are unless you cook them. If your folks have coal they have fire. They can have snow processors and cook it down into spicy algae cakes.
[Answer]
There are some native plants that grow in tundras and would be usable, the problem is finding out which ones work.
Fortunately Quite a while ago on an alternate history forum a member created an Inuit civilization that relied primarily on these plants with only a small twist or two. It's called a [Land of Ice and Mice](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/LandsOfIceAndMice), the link is for the tv tropes page.
The first few pages focus almost solely on food and possible agriculture. I'd definitely recommend it as a reference material.
[Answer]
you describe a mixed tundra and taiga environment. Without modern technology the cultures that survive in those places are the Inuit and Samis. Which you focus on will depend on your landscape. In either case they rely on meat heavy diets, a general lack of metal tools (outside trade and meteorites), and a nomadic lifestyle.
The more forest there is the more it will favor the [Sami](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people) lifestyle. The Sami do fishing whenever possible but are more heavily reliant on a herd animal, basically pastoralism. Such societies have to be nomadic to get enough forage or their animals.
the sparser the forests, the more an [Inuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit) type culture will dominate, with a heavy focus on fishing and hunting marine mammals, The lack of timber makes building more difficult and they are more reliant on marine mammals for fuel. Because of this population centers are more focused around the coast.
[Answer]
**Look to the oceans** There may be plants growing below the icy waters... volcanic activity and warm currents might make for a very green ecosystem below the waves... kelp farming for greens would be viable.
**Look to the trees** Also you mentioned trees... pine nuts and maple syrup and bamboo shoots... non-fruited trees provide food for us already, in a truly fantasy world, designing a tree that provides sustenance while remaining "hearty" shouldn't be an issue.
**Look in the dirt** Green plants not so much, but fungi and tubers growing under the earth can get you starches and vitamins.
[Answer]
Meat, fat, and berries. I'd look no further than to what our Inuits of today eat. Oddly enough, this does come with a bit of a biological evolution...there is very little carbohydrates in these peoples diets as they really are not available. Instead, the body relies heavily on fat intake and convert this into the energy required. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_cuisine> has a bit on it (honestly that page covers most of your question).
>
> When carbohydrate intake is inadequate for total energy requirements, protein is broken down in the liver through gluconeogenesis and utilized as an energy source. Inuit studied in the 1970s were found to have abnormally large livers, presumably to assist in this process. Their urine volumes were also high, a result of additional urea which the body uses to purge waste products from gluconeogenesis.
>
>
>
A bit on gluconeogenesis here <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis>
Yes, this does mean outsiders will have an inherently harder time surviving here...people native to the region will likely have the biological traits needed.
I'd reduce to three key sources:
Berries are actually pretty prolific in the tundras. Alaska gardening:
<https://alaskamastergardener.community.uaf.edu/2015/08/04/berries-of-northwest-alaska/>
Fat. Marine mammals have extremely high ratio's of fat to protect them from the cold. This fat becomes a humans key energy source. Whales and Seals are key sources for todays inuit
Meat. Compliment to above, under the marine mammals fat is a decent amount of meats, however fish also work in this category.
] |
[Question]
[
For my world, I wanted to create a reasonable and consistent magic system. Well, since I'm not a fantasy type, the result was something people should concentrate on, in which, the resource ("mana") is obviously, the energy from the human body.
To keep the balance of energy and set up limits, I decided that this kind of magic should use increased amount of cellular energy, making people tired, as if they were having heavy physical stress.
In a similar manner, it burns resources of the human body: sugar and fat, most importantly.
What would overusing this magic cause in human physiology - and what are the means of preventing it? Eating an unhealthy amount of sugar maybe?
[Answer]
Assuming that this works in a purely thermodynamic sense - energy in, energy out....
When attempting to quantify magic systems, I always like to start with the classics and see what happens if we cast a typical [D&D Fireball spell](http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fireball.htm). Partly because everyone enjoys hurling balls of fire at their enemies, and partly because it's an easy way to demonstrate exactly how magical magic really is.
Fortunately for me, I'm not the only nerd who likes math. Other people have done analysis on Fireball, and determined that the (physics) energy involved is [about a quarter of a kiloton](http://home.utah.edu/~msm25/Funnies/fireball.html) - 0.235 kilotons, or $2.82 \* 10^{11}$ calories. That's energy calories, not food calories. Food calories are, in energy terms, kilocalories, so divide by a thousand. Long story short, in order to cast Fireball, you'd need to have an excess $2.82 \* 10^8$ food calories in your body.
If we use the 3,500 calorie per pound rule of thumb often touted by dieticians and those in the weight loss field, your wizards would lose approximately 80,500 pounds every time they cast Fireball.
So we're left with the choice of increasing the ratios somehow (ie magic is able to get more than one kCal of energy for every calorie it burns from you) or reducing the size of the spells. Reduce the radius of Fireball from 20 feet to five feet and you reduce the energy requirements by a factor of 16 (so you would now only lose 5,000 pounds). Add in an increased output:input ratio of, say, 10 kCal output per kCal input and you're down to 500 pounds. Say that magicians work together in circles to cast their spells, spreading the cost over a group of them, and you can easily cut that down to a more reasonable energy/weight loss per spell cast. Fiddle with the numbers however you want, as it's your system; I'm just using examples.
Granted, they won't be able to cast many spells without having to stop and eat, and they'll have to eat a lot. When Michael Phelps was swimming in the Olympics, his training regimen required eating 12,500 calories per day. Your magicians would have to eat a whole lot more than that to get enough energy.
When they drop below the limit of their stores, it would likely become hypoglycemia, as @Sam mentioned in the comments, but in an extreme sense. They're burning through their stores of energy so quickly that they could quite easily use up all of them without realizing it. If they aren't careful, the best case scenario would be migraines and seizures, while the worst case would simply be death. Assuming they are careful, they would simply need to eat eat eat eat eat, making sure they're consuming plenty of sugars to keep their glucose levels high.
EDIT: @NexTerran added a link in the comments to another thread about the caloric requirements of fireballs. The D&D Fireball spell is rather OP, all things considered, and so the energy requirement is high. Look at the link they provided for some great examples of how cutting the size/temperature/etc of the fireball drastically reduces the energy requirements.
[Answer]
It really depends on what part of the metabolism it takes it from.
If they burn more sugar and fat becasue it's sucking heat (most of the calories we burn is for heat) most likely you are going to cool the person and could easily lead to hypothermia. Patrick Rothfuss actually uses this idea in his book the Name of the Wind. It can be solved by eating well and not overdoing it. you can also help by wearing warm clothing and warming the body artificially, say with a fire or hot bath.
If it is somehow converting the sugar or destroying it directly, then you have more potent effects, specifically in brain tissue which consumes the most (although not fat just sugar) People will be lethargic and tired regardless of how much sugar they eat, becasue it will take time to rebalance sugar levels and get rid of the byproducts. extended use could easily lead to ketosis (if they don't massively increase sugar intake) or diabetes (if they do)
[Answer]
the more extrem version would be cells dying. it is actually a great matter where the cells die first (or better thinking, which cells loose sugar first). if it would be on one particular region of the body, necrosis would happen. this is the better variant, for the user at least. the other variant would be damage that sums up surprisingly. you could think of any brain damage happening, from forgetting your aunt's to forgetting how to speak, because certsin brain cells died. next level is organic failure or (brain) death.
it is very important in which order cells contribute to the magic
[Answer]
It would also mess up the person's circadian rhythms, which would throw all kinds of restorative cellular cycles out of whack. See:
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275666720_Circadian_Metabolism_in_the_Light_of_Evolution>
Cool idea!
To prevent / remedy / manage, the person would need some combo of the following:
1. very regular sleep
2. avoid mis-timed circadian cues (e.g. light at the wrong time; food at the wrong time)
3. reinforced light therapy (e.g. bright lights in the morning to reset daily circadian rhythms)
[Answer]
You can look at this from one of three perspectives:
1. The spells consume based on their specific effect and have the exact impact on the body in terms of the energy output. (See John Robinson's Fireball answer.)
2. The spells consume based on their range of effect and have an impact on your calorie count based on what "tier" of magic the spell is. (A Level 1 Spell may used 1,000 calories, but a Level 10 Spell may use 100,000 calories.)
3. The spells consume an arbitrary amount of calories, not tethered to any well-detailed and clearly understood measure (similar to MP costs in video games).
---
1. Since John Robinson already explained this, I won't go into much detail. Basically, you find the energy cost of the desired action, and you burn that many calories from your wizard's body. Teleport a mile? They lose the same calories as if they sprinted at their top speed, just without the benefits of actually running. Push a glass off a table from afar? They lose the same calories it takes your typical housecat to do the same. Burn down a village? Lose 80k+ lbs.
---
2. This would look at the spells as being more like abstractions of energy consumption costs as opposed to being wholly based on the law of thermodynamics. In some cases, you may spend more calories on an appraisal spell (1k calories) than what it would take to just look it over (1 calorie). In other cases, you may spend far less calories casting fireball (100k calories) than if you were to let off a big, self-contained explosion (80k+ lbs).
---
3. This would be pure abstraction. The only solid fact of this system is that the costs are not subject to change based on your output, but there will be costs. Basically, whereas Option 2. would have you rank each spell's mana consumption on a scale of 1 to 10 and apply a cost to the mana consumption levels, Option 3. would have you give each spell a mana consumption cost that would be an abstract representation of what they actually do. In a way this is sort of a middle ground between 1. and 2., but in a way it is also taking Option 2. to an extreme.
Depending on which route you take, use of this would cause different effects on the human body both because of the system of magic and because of the culture that would spring up based around it. Overuse would then be a natural progression from the effects of use.
First, converting your energy into an actionable spell would require some kind of organ or cell structure that can perform the process. Something like the pancreas (organ) where the body takes the sugar and fat and naturally processes it into mana, thus giving you a limited supply to work from at any given point; or, something like the mitochondria (cell structure) where the energy is already converted and ready to use or where it takes the energy from the mitochondria and converts it into mana as needed, it just needs the right stimuli for the structure to release it. This would be the case for all 3 options.
However, if option 1. is taken, whoever has the largest storehouse of mana, (i.e. whoever's organ can produce the most mana or whomever's the fattest, meaning whoever has the most energy in their cells,) would be the strongest spellcaster.
If Option 2.: Same as option 1, but at that point, it'd be tied between everyone who has the ability to cast the highest reachable levels of spells.
If Option 3.: It goes back to Option 1's weaknesses, but instead of requiring so much energy availability (instead of needing to way many tonnes), you just need to weigh as much as it takes to cast the spell.
---
That covers the energy-cost-related effects. But what about the societal effects?
1. (organ) Whoever can display the greatest feats of magic would be seen as the most powerful and therefore revered, much in the same way as how the greatest warriors were historically looked up to in our real world.
Or
1. (cell structure) Well, since fat people would have more energy in their bodies, then they'd be seen as naturally more powerful by the people. This would encourage more people to overeat when possible, and to become heavyset because fat is power.
---
What about the effects on the body from CASTING spells? (Not just being prepared to cast spells.) Well, it would depend on how your body prepares the spells.
1. (organ) First, if your body stops being able to produce mana from the sugars and fats, then you might wind up with a variation of diabetes which is where the human body stops being able to produce the drug known as insulin. If this happens, then not only will magic be cut off to that person, but depending on how integral mana-production is to survival, you can expect the person to suffer from mana-betic shock where their body slowly starts shutting down due to lacking what is a necessary resource to survive. If it is still able to produce mana, then overtime, your organ may give out, much in the same way as your liver can give out if you overdrink alcoholic beverages frequently. Overuse of a bodily structure will have lasting, damaging consequences. Since your spells would be limited by your body's natural limit to produce mana, then your consequences would simply be limited by your body's own response to the organ and if the organ fails you.
2. (cell structure) If spell casting is dependent on energy stored within the powerhouses of the cells, then you would suffer the same adverse effects of burning too much energy too quickly as in real life. For one, if you use Fireball and the cost is 36 tonnes of weight, then when you cast that spell, you need to hope you have enough energy to cast it or that will kill you as your body gets dissolved to make up the remaining energy cost needed if the spell doesn't just "fizzle". But even if you weigh 37 tonnes and the 36-and-change tonnes spent doesn't kill you because it needs to consume your entire being for its equivalent exchange, you'll suffer the obvious health drawbacks of weighing that much, the massive loads of flab as you cast your spell bringing you down to just under 1 tonne, and the fact your body would immediately go into shock because 97.5% of your body's mass just evaporated suddenly. Effectively, if you cast Fireball, unless you weigh something like 1000 tonnes, you will die from the casting, but odds are you would die before you were ever able to cast the spell in the first place: the mana cost being prohibitive.
You ask what the cost of overusing this magic would be? Quite simply, it's the same costs as burning too much energy too quickly in the real world: overexhaustion and fatigue. You'd become tired, pained, and weak. You may get fever or chills or even both. Your body would have just cannibalized itself for the sake of your magic, so you'd feel severe hunger pangs as you crave any form of sustenance, possibly needing a feast to restore your energy, but the severe hypoglycemia would make it hard for you to move. If you do move, you'd be shaking furiously. More likely? You'd just pass out. Death wouldn't be unreasonable either.
The best way to prevent this isn't to eat unhealthy amounts of sugar. No, that'd be the solution to IMMEDIATELY after casting the spell as a temporary way to tide you over til you can get some real food, but even then that would be dangerous depending on how low your blood sugar would have dropped thanks to the spell. The solution would be found in complex carbohydrates like breads and energy bars. Honestly, you'd need the kind of energy bar Barry Allen eats in tv's The Flash in order to balance it out. Even then, it's not a guarantee that your metabolism wouldn't be increased with the use of these greater levels of magic, meaning you may just suffer from hypoglycemia as a constant while your body is already used to burning the energy you have to convert into mana which may just go unused. Your mages would basically need to eat more and more often the more powerful they get, much like any professional athlete. When you consider a teleportation spell basically makes your mage like Barry Allen in that respect, essentially, you'd actually need those energy bars strapped on-hand constantly and make a detour every 5 minutes to get pizza and ice cream. Sounds great until you realize that's all you will ever be able to get away with eating if you want to gain enough calories to survive.
And what about those fat people I mentioned earlier? Regardless of if they actually USE their magic or not, they will have the highest capacity to cast more powerful spells until their bodies too betray them for doing so. Even if they don't use their magic, they will suffer the negative effects of BEYOND morbid obesity in order to have the magic potential necessary to release a Fireball.
Quite simply, in this world, the only way to win with magic is not to use it, but if you do use it, you will be looked upon well meaning some will be foolish enough to use it for wealth, power, and fame. In the end, everyone loses.
] |
[Question]
[
I recently engaged in a war with an expensive-to-kill psychic warrior race. I prepared to face heavy losses, but my enemies deny me the satisfaction of mourning my soldiers' deaths. They didn't kill any but maimed them all (some still died of blood loss due to the don't-care-ness of their overlord, but I'm sure they did not mean it).
Now I have 3 (and counting) platoons of one-armed and one-legged men. The whole nation already knows that the enemy don't kill (so I can't just get rid of the useless veterans in secret and blame them).
How am I supposed to continue the invasion while wasting resources on these trivial matters?
**Edit**:
This is a European-like medieval world, no steam machine yet, but there are explosives, some rare magic left but mostly too unavailable to be useful.
[Answer]
Send them home, showered with honor and glory, and let their families and neighbors take care of them. Teach the rest of the population to revere the maimed veterans. You don't have to spend your own resources on them if everyone on the home front is eager to bring them casseroles and fit them with prosthetic limbs. They won't resent you (as much) if they get to boast of their heroic exploits and are **respected** by the rest of society.
>
> This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
>
> He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
>
> Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
>
> And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
>
> He that shall live this day, and see old age,
>
> Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
>
> And say "To-morrow is Saint Crispian."
>
> Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
>
> And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
>
> Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
>
> But he'll remember, with advantages,
>
> What feats he did that day.
>
>
>
This works best if the wounded vets are a small proportion of the overall population, so that everyone else can afford to support them, but it sounds like that's the case. Three platoons is about 150 men, and the smallest single-country population Wikipedia lists for the Middle Ages is Norway's at 0.2 million, or 200,000. If your wounded population increases by a factor of 10, that's still only 0.75% of Norway in the year 1000. (The fact that you say "no steam engine *yet*" makes me think that you're talking about the *later* Middle Ages, when Norway was still only at 0.3 million but the whole European population had increased from 5.4 million (1000 AD) to 11.5 million (1500 AD).)
If your population is still having problems absorbing the wounded vets, you can retrain them for jobs that don't require as many limbs, like pumping the foot-bellows in a forge if you have one arm, or weaving or carving if you have one leg. People who employ wounded veterans will be seen as doing something good and honorable.
[Answer]
They probably just went straight into battle after they recoverd a bit. Here is a [link](https://www.quora.com/What-became-of-injured-soldiers-in-Rome-the-Medieval-era-the-Napoleonic-wars-and-the-Civil-War) that describes how people often fought again and again after recovering from injuries.
You could send your people home for a few weeks or months and once they can walk (or limp) again you send them back on the battlefield. Make them the greatest heroes, fighting again and again for their homeland and their people, till the bitter end!
This way you won't have to deal with the problem of your many maimed soldiers for too long. Because at some point the enemy can't really do anything else besides killing your soldiers. At the same time you wear out your enemy. "I hacked off both of his arms last week and today this crazy guy comes running towards me with a sword in his mouth! What the ?&!\* is wrong with these guys?!?"
[Answer]
Indoctrinate them into giving their lives for the "greater good". Camouflage them (with mud or primitive gilly suits), strap explosives on em and have them creep into enemy territory to blow up key structures. Worst case scenario the enemy discovers them and boom, a few enemy soldiers dead. Considering the 'no-kill' nature of the enemy, suicide bombers would actually be rather effective.
This is all taking into consideration you are pretty much a tyrant of course ([How to exterminate a psychic race?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/25340/how-to-exterminate-a-psychic-race?rq=1))
[Answer]
many cultures would just fit them with rudimentary prosthetics ,(wooden legs, strap shields or blades to their arm, etc) and send them back into battle.
[Answer]
Swell the ranks of cavalry and shieldwall!
Lose an arm, basic prostehetic arm that has a sharp point on one side and a shield on the other arm. It doesn't take a ton of skill to fight on as part of a shield wall. Maybe do them the honor of being a couple of ranks back.
If your guy lost a leg, it's less weight for the horse to carry. This may not be great for front line heavy cavalry, but it may not be a really bad thing for light cavalry armed with horse bows. As they adjust to the loss of of the leg, teach them to ride and to shoot.
Those are the options for the guys who want to keep fighting. If they don't, there are a ton of jobs an army needs done that may not require a full compliment of limbs, and these guys could look forward to that as a kind of pension. Lose something in the battle, why not keep earning your pay by working in a laundry, or as a cook. Maybe you could be a drover or carter. Maybe be the guy in the back in charge of sharpening swords. If the Veteran has a good brain and can read and write, he could be a clerk. Just treat those positions as positions of honor and the Vets will continue to make themselves useful to your war effort.
] |
[Question]
[
This is inspired by GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire, where for millennia House Targaryen wed brother to sister at all possible opportunities, and Aunt to nephew, Uncle to niece, and cousin to cousin where that was not possible. As a result, the family had a propensity for madness, and often times children born of such unions would be stillborn, or be born horribly deformed. By the end of their reign, 5 out of 8 children born to them were stillborn.
They only out-bred a few times, and notably before the Mad King triggered the collapse of their dynasty, three generations of complete out-breeding with people totally unrelated happened. This was extremely rare. Should I expect this, or is there a way to stop the genetic disorders associated with this strong inbreeding?
[Answer]
The main problem with inbreeding is the genetic "pureness" you achieve. To cut it simple, let's assume genetics was working on mendel level ([Wikipedia Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel)).
Each trait is inherited via two genes. Each gene can have one of two states: recessive and dominant. and father and mother each both pass on one gene to their children. So if we assume (another HRR martin reference incoming, obvious spoiler alert):
Hair color is being inherited as a single trait. you could have black Hair (B), or blonde hair (b). Black is dominant, blonde is recessive. So there are several possible gene-combinations:
BB (purebred black)
Bb (mixed breed, but still black hair, because dominant beats recessive)
bB (see above)
bb (blonde).
So if we know that a father is BB, all his children will have black hair.
Now, i need to state something that i can't directly prove, but my memory telly me it is true:
A lot of traits are composed in a way, that the "healthy" state is dominant, while the unhealthy state is recessive.
The problem with inbreeding is, that a lot of genetical defects, that wouldn't show up when mating with "purebred healthy"(HH) partners, will start to show up more often when "mixed breed healthy" (Hh) partners have children. It's gonna be especially bad when purebred unhealthy partners start having children. As i said, the purebred unhealthy traits are gonna be rare - most of them would normally marry a health partner, giving their children 50-100% chance to be healthy.
But when inbreeding, you selet from genetically similar partners - the chance of them being purebred unhealthy or at least mixed healthy is high - and so is the chance that your children will be unhealthy.
interesting sidefact: after a long period of strict inbreeding, the genetic variation will become less and less, leading to "typial" behaviours, looks and traits of an inbreeding population.
And since a LOT of things are usually determined by genetics, so it is generally not advisable to inbreed anything. Also, you cannot protect against the effects. you can just, from time to time, try to breed healthy individuals into your population to enrich the genetic pool.
[Answer]
There are 3 main issues with inbreeding...
1. Recessive genes get reinforced.
2. First generation have a reduced fertility.
3. Immune systems are weaker generally due to genetic similarity, meaning that if 1 person lack an immunity most others will too.
So lets talk about these 3 things...
2 is not a problem, because 2 actually is a screening mechanism that prevents completely broke dna to breed.
3 just means that the probability of getting sick from one disease vs another is higher than someone in the general populace's. That is to say that if someone has a 1/100 chance to catch something in general populace, someone from the inbred line might have a 1/90 chance to catch something.
1 is the misunderstood one... In the most basic of terms you have dominant(D) alleles and recessive(d) alleles. There can be multiple alleles to a gene and each have different positions with regard each other.
You can have 1 of the following combinations...
* DD
* Dd (and the mirror which is written the same way)
* dd
Each of these are made of 1 allele from a mother, and 1 from the father (obviously), each of them having 1 of the above sets...
So lets just go through a few generations assuming all possible combinations occur in their children...
G1a(DD) and G1b(dd) will have the following children:
* G2a(Dd)
Yup that's it, but we haven't started the inbreeding yet, so let's continue...
G1a(DD) - G2a(Dd) breed and can produce the following
* G3a(DD)
* G3b(Dd)
G1b(dd) - G2a(Dd) can produce :
* G3c(dd)
* G3d(Dd)
So what we see here is that a mating of G1a and G2a is perfectly fine, but assuming the recessive trait is bad, G1b and G2a has a 75% of a having a child with the recessive that is a problem, so let's go down that path... where we see the problem emerge...
G2a(Dd) - G3c(dd) will get you :
* G4a(Dd)
* G4b(dd)
G2a(Dd) - G3c(Dd) will get you :
* G4c(Dd)
* G5d(DD)
* G6e(dd)
In other words, this set up just give you an infinite loop, which sucks, but this is really rather normal so there is no real issue here. The issue comes when...
G3c(dd) - G4b(dd) mate and produce the following off spring :
G5a(dd)
Notice how there is 100% chance of this occuring? The recessive becomes 100% likely, but so long as you don't get 2 parents with both alleles recesive then you won't have this problem.
This being the case solution is simple, just make sure noone with 2 recessive mate with another one... or do the reverse and make sure they do, if the trait is positive. This is how all our dog breeds came into being so you might not want to...
[Answer]
Everyone has problematic and even lethal mutations in their genome, but they don’t affect us because they are compensated for. Humans have two copies of their genome and thus two copies of each of their genes. Random mutations frequently break or knock-out genes that we couldn’t live without, but because we still have one working copy we don’t even notice. When two unrelated people produce offspring they have a 50/50 chance of passing on their broken copy of a gene, but because it is extremely unlikely that their partner has a broken copy of the same gene their child will likely be just fine.
Inbreeding is a problem because when you produce offspring with someone related to you, the chance that they have a broken copy of the same gene that you do becomes quite high. For a brother and a sister who have 50% of their DNA in common that chance becomes 50%. If the brother and sister both have a broken copy of a gene then there is a 25% chance that a child of theirs will inherit both broken copies. This means if you mate with your sibling your child has a 12.5% of having a serious problem for each of your broken genes. The average person has on average [1-2 lethal mutations](http://www.genetics.org/content/199/4/1243.full) and likely many more mutations that would cause serious problems.
Now that we understand why inbreeding causes problems let’s look at how we can deal with it. The first thing to know is that inbreeding isn’t always harmful. If a lineage has no negative mutations or broken genes then inbreeding actually won’t cause any significant problems. We can see this principle at work in lab mice. These mice have been inbred so long that all of the negative, lethal mutations have been weeded out. This is because when two unrelated individuals mate all of their negative alleles are passed on normally because they don’t cause any harm. However, when two related individuals who are both carriers for a lethal disease mate then 1 out of 4 of their offspring will die before producing offspring of their own. This means that while both of the parents are carriers of the lethal disease, of their viable offspring only 2 out of 3 will be carriers. Over many generations this will gradually lead to the eradication of the negative trait.
So the first solution to our dynasty’s inbreeding woes it to just keep at it! If you successfully limit the influx of new blood into your family then after a few generations you will have eradicated the most harmful alleles. We can use a convenient tool to model this for the family: <http://www.radford.edu/~rsheehy/Gen_flash/popgen/>. Set the population size to that of a small family and change the fitness of the A2A2 genotype to 0. This represents A2 as a broken gene or recessive lethal allele. The result will look something like this: [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rTo4G.png)What we can see is that in only a few generations the A2 allele is completed removed from the gene pool.
If an allele is recessively lethal than as long as the family size is kept small and there is no breeding with anyone outside the starting population then the negative allele will effectively disappear in roughly 5-10 generations depending on chance and other variables. This means that if your dynasty can get past the first few generations most of the seriously negative traits will actually be eliminated from the bloodline.
But what about negative traits that aren’t lethal but are just bad? We can model this by changing the fitness of the A2A2 genotype to 0.9. This means the A2A2 genotype makes individuals about 90% as fit as individuals with an A1 allele.[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/a5PNX.png) We see that when the selective pressure isn’t as strong random chance takes over and in some of the populations the bad A2 allele actually becomes fixed, meaning every individual in the family will now always have this slightly negative trait! What I didn’t tell you about lab mice, and this applies to other purebred animals, is that in the inbreeding process inevitably some bad traits become fixed and will decrease the overall fitness of the line. This means that while our dynasty is ridding itself of its serious, lethal alleles it will also be permanently gaining some less negative traits like hemophilia or madness!
So how can we stop these negative traits from becoming fixed in our dynasty? Well, one option is making these slight negative traits have a greater decrease in fitness than they would naturally. What I mean by this is if children who are born with hemophilia or other negative traits are prevented from reproducing, either through death, sterilization, or locking them away in a tall tower, then the fitness cost of that minor trait will be the same as the lethal traits we successfully got rid of. Essentially, by treating every negative trait as lethal we can get rid of them all in theory. In practice it’s unlikely that your dynasty will be able to produce children that are free of any and all of these negative traits, so you’ll have to make compromises just to have enough individuals to carry on the dynasty. Hypothetically though after only ~10 generations your dynasty should be stable and as long as you don’t outbreed with the impure rabble continued inbreeding won’t be a problem.
Another more creative solution to dealing with these slight negative traits might also provide a very interesting dynamic system. Imagine you have two ruling dynasties who only breed among themselves. Each of them has negative alleles that have become fixed making them relatively unhealthy. But if two individuals from the two dynasties have a child together then that child will likely be 100% healthy. This is called heterosis or hybrid vigor. It works because all of the negative traits of one family are going to be complemented by the positive allele from the other family. Thus, the heterozygous child will have one working version of all of its parent’s negative alleles. This leads to a very interesting dynamic where the two breeding populations are relatively unhealthy but when they crossbreed they can produce great leaders without health problems. The catch is those crossbred individuals can’t continue to inbreed or they will contaminate both families with each other’s negative traits and remove the benefit of the crossbreeding. So perhaps the most successful arrangement is the maintenance of two separate noble families who only crossbreed to produce rulers who will be forbidden from bearing their own offspring.
[Answer]
For some real world human genetics [this paper](http://www.genetics.org/content/199/4/1243) analyses the pattern of **lethal recessive genes** in the Hutterites (who only intermarry within their own communities) and runs simulations to find out how such genes are eliminated or spread through their population.
Skip to the Discussion section at the end if you're not interested in the technical stuff. They have figures for the increased risk of having children who die from these lethal genes, but also point out that inbreeding can lead to the elimination of lethal recessive genes from a population. This is due to genetic drift - genes (both good and bad) get lost by chance if not many people in the founder population had them and/or the people who had them didn't pass them on to kids or grandkids.
So imagine the people of Westeros as a whole have these lethal recessive genes: eyebrow disease, earlobe disease and toenail disease. The first Targaryens to come up with the brother-sister marriage happen, by chance, not to carry the eyebrow disease genes. Therefore their descendants never have eyebrow disease. Similarly, they do carry the earlobe disease genes, but a few generations down the line there are a couple of princes - Prince A who inherits earlobe disease gene and Prince B who doesn't carry earlobe disease. If Prince A dies before having kids, then earlobe disease is also vanished from the royal line.
On the other hand, toenail disease genes are handed down every generation, and become more common than they are in the general Westeros population. Perhaps 1 person in 1000 has toenail disease in the general public, but 1 in 250 of the Targaryens has it.
[Answer]
Maybe, if you're willing to have a strong eugenic culture. And a strong stomach. a lot of forward planning, stability, and ideas that will let them work with genetics (doesn't have to be right ideas, mind, just close enough to let them function).
So, what your dynasty needs, is to generally practice having as many kids as possible. All the kids, really a dozen per individual or more is ideal - include any born out of wedlock or wrong side of the sheets, it will only help. Then, kill any kid that shows a negative genetic trait (madness, physical deformity, hemophilia, whatever) - and possibly even their kids, if it wasn't caught before they grew up and had kids of their own. That's why you need so many kids to start with, so that you can get rid of any who look like they've got unhealthy genes.
So, breeding too closely is a problem primarily because it increases the chance poor recessives come to the surface. Killing off anyone who shows these recessive traits will, over time, weed them out of the bloodline. Especially if anyone suspected of being a carrier is also discouraged from breeding. A lot of people would be killed for non-heritable problems, as well, since there would hard to tell if a problem that develops is actually environmental or heritable unless you've got a good genetic testing setup, or several generations to track and correlate. You will need a strongly planned family - every now and then the family can pick a negative trait and spend several generations trying to eliminate it (the madness, or weak eyes, or something) - since trying to fix them all at once might depopulate the family too much, and leave no one to breed it back up.
Eventually, your family line will hit a point where all the recessives are clean (because any who weren't got killed or banned from reproduction for so long). If this happens, everyone in the family will have virtually identical genetics, family characteristics will be very strong, variation will be very shallow. If something happens that the genetics don't have an answer for, like a new disease, they all die - but they will be very strong within those traits they *do* have, specialized. It's actually something like an artificially created genetic bottleneck, with the occasional infusions fresh genes from out-of-family marriages and bastard children possibly helping to keep the family line from self-destructing before then (and better yet if some of those fresh genes were chosen for traits they desired to breed into the line).
If it goes far enough, it will result in a breed apart - and I mean like a dog breed, with characteristic physical features (and problems), and their attendant tradeoffs. The occasional infusion of fresh genes should keep them from drifting into a new species - but it's on the horizon once they reach this point, and depending on the genetic drift of their surrounding population.
[Answer]
Today we can observer a 'genetic issue' with one of Indian's caste.
Because they normally only marry with members of same cast there a genetic mutation that's affect anestesia:
"The frequency of genetic mutation increases when people marry within the community. This leads to genetic disorders. Vysyas of Andhra Pradesh who have been marrying within the group for several hundred generations suffer from a typical problem. When anesthesia is administered to any member of the community for surgery, they take much longer than others to come out of it. Some of them could suffer paralysis too."
<http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-but-not-caste-in-stone-1882288>
Another source:
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/A-Chettiyar-problem/articleshow/1823598.cms>
The problem will be worse in your case.
[Answer]
Perhaps you could limit the negative impact of incest by mixing new blood every other generation. Assume that the marriage of a dragon rider with a non dragon rider half their kids can ride dragons.
Assume that the marriage of two dragon riders result in all the children been dragon riders.
Assume that only the royal family is the only people with dragon riding blood.
Have two siblings with the same parents who are both dragon riders.
There kids are both dragon riders as well.
So the siblings mary outside of the family and produce a next generation half are dragon riders and the other half not.
For this new generation the royal family marriages the dragon riders children of one sibling would be paired in marriage with a dragon rider of the opposite sex produced by the other sibling [(aka cousin marriage instead of sibling marriage).
Cousin marriage has the same disadvantages as siblings marriage, but to much lesser extent. Madness for example would be less frequently with the Targaryen if they married Cousins instead of sibling.
Also because they marry outside the family every other generation they receive new genetic material this prevents genetics stagnation.
On a side note it also would encourage the royal family to have several bastard every other generation so that they will have as as many dragon riding half blood pairs to produce the Next Generation of full-blood Dragon Riders.
[Answer]
The lo-tech technique (As apparently used in Egypt) is for your queens to have illicit affairs with the higher ranking palace guards; the resultant children being genetically healthier due to outbreeding.
Due to the requirements of heirs being produced in marriages, it doesn't work with kings going off with concubines.
So to negate the effects.. just make sure that your queens have plenty of private time and your palace guard are chosen for their health and physique. Your dynasty can go on forever..
[Answer]
Short, but probably unpopular, answer:
**By having lots of women.**
Start by selecting the males aggressively. Only the ones considered flawless get to breed and can enter the line of succession. The others will make a sacrifice of blood royal for Great God Cthulhu. Or Bhaal or whatever. The rituals should be highly theatrical and public. Providing entertainment for the mob is the primary function of royalty, anyway.
The heir is elected by all "flawless" males of the blood royal from among themselves. You could even have something like the princes electing the king for a fixed term. As you are talking about a very exclusive group of closely related people you could probably get away with short terms without undue distraction. I think a "king for a year" would be practical.
The point here is too keep the available, already limited, gene pool open and combined. You can't really afford to throw away people of blood royal just because their grandfather was the second and not the the first son. The strict term limit also should reduce issues with insanity and other mental shortcomings.
The second part is to have lots of children. And since birth rates are capped on women that means polygamy. Probably concubinage as well. Sons of wives who are considered flawed or of concubines would feed great Bhaal. Daughters would be eligible to be wives. You can't afford to lose diversity and fertility by culling females.
Concubinage would be used to introduce a safety mechanism in case of genetic diversity becoming too low. It would also be used as a reward to nobility and to bind them to the royal house by blood. This way none of the nobility could claim a drop of royal blood, but could be proud of there being some of their blood on the throne. Number and existence of concubines would depend on the number of wives producing viable offspring. There might be none or they might outnumber the actual wives.
The weak part of this solution is the selection process. Left to their own devices humans will select for or against traits they really should not. In war like cultures, men might be selected for aggression and within few generations the entire family would be homicidal psychopaths. Our own political systems elect leaders based on their ability to manipulate groups of people to trust them with no consideration given for competence to do the actual work. (<- Not a Trump reference. While you can argue he took advantage of this, this is in no way his fault. It is how the system works for ALL politicians.)
So you'd need to either keep the selection criteria off the camera or give it lots of careful thought. I strongly recommend the first. As I said, humans have a tendency to get this wrong, and I assume most readers of this post belong to that group. For that matter, without genetic engineering or magic, human ability to do selective breeding on humans is limited due to traits interacting with each other and the environment. So there will be unintended consequences and diminishing gains as number of traits increase does apply.
] |
[Question]
[
Could you make a steampunk style robot powered by steam power and Clockwork mechanics (In such a way that it would practical)?
* Assume no magic is involved, just Engineering
* Assume the brain is a computer (AI)
Note: The question is not limited to humanoid robots despite this being the most common form. In steampunk there are plenty of exceptions.
**Does modern science allow a true clockwork robot?**
[Answer]
# The short answer is yes
The long answer is: A robot consists of 3 basic components.
1. The motor systems, which allow the movement of each moving part.
Building servo motors that use steam to operate is possible and you can also use artificial muscles (technically you could use tanned animal intestines for this purpose in the Victorian era before polymers) so the first part is entirely possible.
2. The second basic component is the chassis or skeleton.
This part is what gives the structure and allows the motor systems to function, there is no problem in just using materials available in the Victorian era.
3. Finally the third basic part of a robot is the "brain."
This is the prosador and is where the AI or algorithm is executed. This is the most complex part (gosh, I'm going to have to explain how a processor works mathematically for this) there are 3 solutions for this part, but 2 are cheating.
* you can use transistors and not so advanced electronics but with modern bases and more compact systems and produce the electricity with steam.
* you can use compact vacuum bulbs to make a more or less compact computer capable of running a very simple AI.
* and here I have to get very technical (I will be as fast as possible and put it as simple as possible) there are 2 types of computers, analog and digital. Current computers are digital and work in base 2 that means that there are only two possible values 0 and 1 (although in theory you could use any pair of symbols) the difference between an analog and a digital computer is that an analog computer has a physical representation of the result while a digital computer is symbolic. This is easier to understand with the example of a simple 2-digit adder, in the case of an analog computer just imagine 3 wheels numbered from 1 to 9 that are connected to each other with 3 gears of ratio 1: 1 if you turn two of these wheels is the right direction the result is the sum of both values in cabio if one is turned the opposite direction the result is a subtraction, in cabio a 2 digit digital calculator in this case there are only 4 possible results 00 10 01 11 in this case 00 is 0 01 and 10 is 1 and 11 is 2 (note this is not how a modern computer works, it is just a very simplified example of an analog implementation of an adder, binary is more complex) modern digital computers work because it is demonstrable that any numerical operation can be performed with 2 values: true and false and 3 operations AND OR and NO which are the basic building blocks of Boolean algebra. In the case of a steam robot its brain would have to be a mechanical computer either digital or analog, ideally an analog computer designed to execute the AI algorithm. It would require gears and mechanical competes the size of a grain of rice or even smaller and would require thousands if not hundreds of thousands of them. But if the goal is an industrial robot like a manipulator arm the ideal would be a programmable digital computer (yes, technically you could put in a keyboard and create a high level programming language without using any electricity) as this type of robot is simpler and requires constant reprogramming.
Needless to say, this type of robot would have no vision and I am afraid there is no way to give it vision without electricity. In short the answer is yes, and I hope I haven't bored anyone with all that explanation.
[Answer]
It has been done on a small scale by model engineers and steampunk enthusiasts. Here are a couple of examples:
[How to Use Real Steam Power For... Robots?](http://steampunk.wonderhowto.com/how-to/use-real-steam-power-for-robots-0142943/)
The author, Austin Sirkin, sounds a note of caution:
>
> First off, let me say this—using real steam power is dangerous, and
> heavy, and just generally not worth it when you have modern
> alternatives. Except, you know, if you're a Steampunk.
>
>
>
He goes on to say that things like the quadrupedal walking robot created by I-Wei Huang and shown in the video accompanying the article can be built with the aid of a laser cutter, necessary to cut gearworks, axles, belts and "other mechanical methods of delivering power from one place to another" with sufficient precision to stop the machine vibrating to bits. Then he warns again that unless you know *exactly* what you are doing to attempt to build a steam engine is extremely dangerous, but fortunately there are plenty of reliable ready-built small steam engines for sale.
Via the above I found a second article which introduces a very elegant steam powered hexapod robot built by "Professeur Shadoko":
[Meet the Steam Ant: A Steampunk-Inspired Hexapod Robot That's Actually Powered by Steam!](http://steampunk.wonderhowto.com/inspiration/meet-steam-ant-steampunk-inspired-hexapod-robot-thats-actually-powered-by-steam-0139048/)
>
> Inspired by the Steam Walker by Crabfu Steamworks, Professeur Shadoko
> of French DIY blog Brico Bidules built this awesome steampunk Steam
> Ant that's powered by a steam engine, complete with smoke stack!
>
>
> The engine is a steam boiler that uses a small, dual-acting cylinder.
> It's heated with Esbit hexamine fuel tablets, which don't produce any
> smoke or ashes. The legs are made of brass tubes, which are attached
> to gears, with extruded aluminum feet.
>
>
>
Whether these small devices built for fun could practically be scaled up in size and complexity so that they could perform the more traditional SF functions of a robot, such as domestic service or fighting giant alien mecha, is another question.
**LATER EDIT**: I passed the question to someone I know who is into model engineering and steam engines, and he adds the following thoughts:
"For a steam powered robot you will need some material to burn to provide the heat. Lump coal is too bulky. You could try vapourized diesel fuel or coal dust on a fluidized bed. Use steam jets to control combustion. Or, to provide even more heat, you could use the sort of materials that are suitable for rocket fuel such as a liquid hydrogen-oxygen burn, hydrazine or plastic chips burning in nitrogen oxide.
"Use stainless steel to make the boiler. For that quantity of heat you will need to use “flash steam”. This means high speed steam generation done not in a boiler but in a tube network. Spiral stainless steel tubes would probably be best.
"Water will not do as the matter to be vapourized. Try freon or another chlorofluorocarbon, as used in fridges. Liquid chlorine might be possible. Or, for real heat, use liquid sodium in an extreme high pressure heater.
"The biggest decision is whether you are going to move the robot’s limbs by using steam for reciprocating pistons or turbines. With turbines you need a lot of gearing down, because you need to spin turbines at high speed. For pistons you could use direct muscle effect. A double-acting piston would provide bi-directional movement of a limb via a system of levers.
"One way you could “cheat” is to simply use steam to power a dynamo, thus making a steam-electric robot.
"It would be most appropriate to have the robot controlled by a [Difference Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine) as designed by Charles Babbage, but this would need to be quite large. Assuming the robot is controlled by a modern-style computer, the computer will need an electrical supply. To use an off the shelf battery would be crass. You could act more in the spirit of the genre by placing a steam-powered generator somewhere on the robot, or there could be a thermoelectric generator. The latter would require one end of the thermocouple to be kept cold. This could be done by massive radiating fins, or a cooling fan, or both. The electrical supply could be used to charge up an accumulator of sorts.
"By the way, one of Harry Harrison’s *Stainless Steel Rat* books featured steam powered robots on a world whose technology had regressed. They occasionally had to stop whatever they were doing in order to shovel coal in their tummies. However this was not an entirely realistic presentation of the concept."
[Answer]
I cannot offer the most well-explained answer, but all you need to do is using a steam-engine to power a electric generator. Add some batteries or other forms of electric storage ([elcos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolytic_capacitor)?) and you've got electric power for your computer.
And now add electric motors to power all what's needed, like clockworks and... well, that's it. After all, it would be like the robots used today, but with a locomotive-like exhaust (except you use these smokeless pallets Lostinfrance did mention)
But it has been said already: it will not be the most efficient form of powering a robot... but maybe the most Victorian.
[Answer]
Seems to be one of the only methods to build "roving" or self propelled robots so far......
Modern robots uses bulky, inefficient servo motors, primarily because they were built to be precise, not agile or fast. Living things, on the other hand, uses what resembles hydraulics in robotics: long, rod or band like elements that changes their length on command, like muscles.
The same also applies to construction machinery, for example, excavators uses an arm driven by three hydraulic cylinders, forklifts uses one pneumatic cylinder, both which are designed to be agile, fast and strong, but not precise. Your robots would likewise be made to use similar structures, pneumatics or hydraulics as a direct swap-in for muscles.
There is a field called fluidics in modern research, and one of it’s usage is to build logics that is independent to it’s substrate: metal, plastic or wood are all the same when used to make a whistle, same for fluidic transistors or chips. Chips which can be used as the control unit of the robot. Other things like clockwork, would also work as a cpu.
As for power, use a dual action steam or pneumatic cylinder as the muscle and a small steam engine to power the controls(any computer would work.), and everything left is a boiler. Use dichloromethane as your working fluid, make your boiler out of stainless steel, and drop in a pump. The rest is just fuel and some way to burn it. Coal in a firebox works well.(though probably anything smaller than a locomotive or car should use compressed air instead)
For controlling, use an automaton: cam driven mechanism that works like real living creatures, perfected at the 18th century. Use a system of valves to control your actuators, and clockwork gear mechanism to drive something that needs to be precise.
However, manual piloting would work the best. The human brain have the uncanny capability to extend any limb, sensory organ or appendage to outside the body if an adequate control linking process is used. This means that a manned robot would, probably, walk and do things like man, at least if it is made to be mechanically capable to do such things.
It turned out that there are not so much difference between a robot and a vehicle after all.
[Answer]
The short answer is **Yes**.
It would be incredibly inefficient, and it would ultimately rust out, but sure, why not?
Just remember that you need electricity to run the computer.
] |
[Question]
[
Inspired by these two questions [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/31544/how-many-of-a-typical-sci-fi-army-would-you-need-to-take-a-planet) and [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/31573/how-to-accomplish-planetary-independence) that contemplate similar issues, I’m now interested in finding the best **strategy** for *defeating* (not destroying) another planet.
The year is 2390. Humanity has taken to the stars and achieved interstellar travel. Humans now inhabit eleven planets in four different star systems. While most of these planets required sophisticated and expensive techniques to colonize (too frigid, barren, or hot to otherwise support human life naturally), two planets are beautiful terran-style worlds. One is Earth, and the other is (for the sake of this question) New Earth.
Sadly, diplomatic relations between these two planets have been souring for several decades and recently exploded into all-out war. Unfortunately for Earth, New Earth’s space fleets were much better prepared and have essentially annihilated Earth’s entire space-faring navy. At this point, Earth and its five billion inhabitants are now severely vulnerable, but can certainly continue to build threatening ships and anti-orbital defenses on the ground. As a result, they have not surrendered.
**New Earth wants to ensure that Earth’s citizens are unable to pose a present or future threat to its new space empire while minimizing the cost to themselves. What is the best strategy to accomplish this?**
**Bonus Objectives**
The most obvious solution to this problem is to simply start pushing (or dropping) moderately sized asteroids into the atmosphere. This is certainly a quick way to guarantee victory, but violates the following bonus objectives that the New Earth navy is hoping to fulfill with their strategy:
* Earth-like planets are rare, so destroying the planet is not an option.
* For the same reason, mass-extinction events that make the planet unsuitable for human habitation is not an option.
* Massive loss of civilian life should be avoided if possible. It won’t look good on the news at home if millions of innocent people die.
* New Earth wants an unconditional surrender from Earth.
* Earth’s surrender should happen as quickly as possible to avoid public opinion souring at home.
**Useful Information**
This may be updated as more information is requested.
* Wormhole-based FTL travel exists (hand waived) that allows medium-large ships to travel long distances quickly, but is expensive.
* Earth is ruled by a single governing coalition.
[Answer]
There are two main ways to do this that I can see, in addition to what has been suggested already.
1. You turn things back to the dark ages by destroying modern shipping and infrastructure...or
2. You take away the sun.
**Option #1**
As things now stand, any fleet that controls orbit can deny the planet the ability to reach orbit, because a rocket trying to escape gravity has no ability to dodge a missile or laser from space.
The orbital fleet could also put a stop to all long range or slow moving vehicles...planes, trains, and most ships would be a thing of the past.
This would set the planet's economy back many centuries. If something isn't local, it can no longer be obtained, except by the extremely rich.
The destruction of satellites would mean long range communications are crippled, especially if the endpoints of communication cables under the oceans are destroyed as well. This might be enough to fracture the world government into feuding regional ones, especially for areas that can't feed their people without food imports. Those areas will be desperate to surrender once they begin to starve.
But the space fleet could also target power plants, power transmission facilities, bridges, important factories, desalination plants, oil pipelines and refineries, mines, irrigation and water supply pipelines, communications and sewer infrastructure, all kinds of things.
With orbital bombing, you could reduce a planet to the dark ages with tiny to medium civilian casualties, depending on how ruthless you wanted to be. Remember, a power plant has civilians in it, but you can just target the power transmission lines and facilities, and black out cities without killing a soul (but far more effort for the fleet).
Similar rules apply for water, communications, and other resources. It's too easy to hit things from space, and too hard to shoot back at the enemy, especially if Earth's military can't get any power or metal for the ground-based laser that they keep blowing up before it's finished anyway.
**Option #2**
To be even more oppressive yet impressive the fleet could deploy huge reflective sheets in an orbit identical to Earth's but close to the sun, so they cast huger shadows farther back from the light source. If Earth doesn't surrender...You block out the sun with these reflective sheets.
No light, no heat, no plants, everything dies without a bullet being fired. Once Earth surrenders, probably within weeks, you simply rotate the sheets 90 degrees so they don't block any perceptible amount of light and things soon return to normal.
[Answer]
Stuff a bunch of ships with small pieces of scrap, essentially giant pipe bombs, and detonate them in orbit. Assuming ground to space transport is similar to today's technology (chemical rockets) you've effectively blocked a spacecraft from safely achieving orbit, at very little cost.
This has hopefully triggered what is known as Kessler Syndrome (<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome>) as depicted in the film Gravity. As a bonus you probably take out the majority of orbital satellites dealing a blow to earth's communication network (furthering your other goals).
If you're more interested in Earth surrendering, given the scenario of space dominance, you can simply set this scenario up without detonating the ships and hold Earth to ransom, merely threatening Earth to surrender or never be able to safely make it into orbit for generations.
[Answer]
Ask the modern Western armies how to do it. You can literally make a living answering this question as a high ranking officer in the military. This question is indistinguishable from the question of how to fight against an opponent who is using guerrilla warfare. The question provides no information about the military of Earth, other than "Earth is ruled by a single governing coalition," so the question you are asking is on par with asking how to defeat Al Quaeda, but not the small middle eastern version from real life, but a global force focused on breaking the blockade.
The answer will not be a quick battle, as New Earth wants. The war will be long, protracted, and centered on observing what Earth is doing, and reacting to it. Eventually (maybe after 50 or 100 years), you may be able to separate the military (targtes) from the civilizans (innocents) and issue a final strike.
[Answer]
Take a look at the novel ***Fallen Dragon*** by Peter F. Hamilton. In it the author describes a future in which wealthy, developed worlds loan colonists the start-up funds needed to set up shop on a new planet. A century or two later those colonies have to pay up the loan - plus interest, naturally.
A couple of generations removed from the initial colonists, however, the local population rarely feel like they owe those worlds/companies money anymore - especially as the amount is typically crippling.
So those companies/worlds have several "debt collection" fleets on standby. These fleets are equipped with state of the art weaponry (typically far superior to anything the colonists have, although as the novel progresses these lines begin to blur, and the occupying troops have more and more trouble maintaining control).
They rely on taking control of the planet's government and key services in the first wave, such that the locals are then dependent on them.
Of course these troops sort of have the law on their side, and they're not there for the long run, just to loot the world.
Quite frankly, and invading army should be prepared to execute rebels publicly, and to yank the leash quite hard on any dissenters, or protesters. If killing them is off the table then long-term internment camps should probably come into play, which won't be a popular move, but will get a message across.
By seizing control of key industries and services (such as medical supplies, food distributions, etc) the occupying force can buy the obedience of the masses by prioritizing people who obey, etc.
At the end of the day it won't be easy, and it ***will*** be bloody.
[Answer]
After defeating Earth's space fleet you send your fleet into orbit about Earth and demand their surrender.
If that's not adequate to get what you want you keep throwing rocks (small ones, not planet killers) at food and power production facilities until they do capitulate. If your aim is genocidal you simply engage in such bombardment anyway.
[Answer]
Develop a devastating virus (zombie virus?). It will annihilate all humans because it is a virus (rarely, if ever, mutates to other species). Have it to have a long "dormant" period, so that it infects all people and THEN symptoms start to show and people die off. Once all hosts are dead, the planet is as good as new.
Sounds easier and cheaper than all the asteroid stuff above.
[Answer]
**Surround the planet with rapidly orbiting antimatter mines.**
Earth will have significant trouble launching a ship or a missile through a dense field of antimatter mines. Wrap the antimatter in a fragile container to keep it from interacting with random particles. The interior of the container is a vacuum, so any mines that accidentally deorbit will annihilate in the upper atmosphere when they collapse.
[Answer]
This is how i would conduct the assualt:
1. Psychological warfare by hacking most major buisnesses and crashing financial markets, not only this, but sending propaganda messages throughout the internet by bribing local humans with rewards to post them. You could also use the internet to study your enemy population's weaknesses.
2. Destroying all artificial satellites and space stations in orbit, this would not only add to the earth's debris field making it harder for the enemy to send forces up to attack you, it would cut most communications i.e. gps, sat tv, sat phone, sat radio, and it would also cripple all of the orbital military assets.
3. Then, detonate a large scale emp over most populated areas frying a vast majority of the electronics, which would shut down most transportation, communications, and cripple major industries and hamper the defenders.
4. fire kinetic weapons at all major military facilities to render them useless in order to further discourage resisitance. You can also target power generation facilities, Spaceports, harbors, airports,major road hubs, and even if you wish centers of political power i.e. whitehouse, capitol, buckingham palace etc.
5. then since you live on new earth drop a swarm of genetically modified locust-like bugs with an immunity to most pesticides, onto major agricultural areas to eat the crops and cause them to start starving.
6. Then you demoralize the defender further by starting to target monuments, and areas of cultural significance with kinetic weaponry.
7. Drop the gay bomb, a weapon that fills an entire area with female sexual pheromenones and it would make the enemies sexually attracted to one another, hetero, and homosexually, this would drive the productivity of enemies lower, and make them have an increase in venereal disease, and STDs. Drop these over most populated areas.
Note: steps 7 and 8 will only be used as a last resort if there continues to be centralized resistance. If there is no organized resistance skip to step 9.
7. set forests alight using thermobaric and napalm based weaponry, use microwave rays to cause vibrations and create earthquakes, drop small asteroids/kinetic weapons to create miniscule tsunamis, and drop non lethal chemical weaponry (highly potent teargas, knockout gas) over wide areas to provide an increased psychological effect.
8. destroy the moon. This will disrupt the ecosystems on the planet extremely badly.
9. Then you start landing colonization forces to create settlements and act as saviors with advanced technologies to save the populace from it's primitive existence and slowly take them over from the inside by turning them into serfs who depend on your tech to sustain their lifestyle.
If the governemt of the world surrenders at any stage you will accept their surrender and land to discuss terms and start a peaceful occupation, and provide aid to the survivors.
[Answer]
Good (effective) answers to this question rarely make good narrative. If Skynet had just poisoned us on day one we wouldn't have ever gotten a movie franchise.
Loss of life and planetary destruction avoidance are noble goals... but nothing short of the promise of annihilation is going to get the job done.
Ideally, they will surrender completely before anyone dies, but the problem is pulling your punches might make them believe they have a chance, one action big enough to kill everyone in one shot with just enough lead time for them to verify, but not act on.
You say wormhole technology exists? Drop a wormhole generator into low altitude orbit with the intent to vent all their atmosphere to the next star system. Give them 5 minutes.
] |
[Question]
[
I actually have a couple of questions here.
My dragon is very small, just about 3 meters long from beak to tailtip, 20 kilograms, with a 5 meter wingspan. A bit like a velociraptor-sized Rahonavis. Mating among her species usually takes place for 5-10 seconds during freefall from 4000 or so meters. Like eagles, they clutch talons together. Unlike eagles, they have sexual organs halfway along their tails which they briefly twine together while they do the mating fall.
She's the last of her kind, so we have to artificially inseminate her so we can have baby dragons again. But she's biologically unable to accept sperm unless inseminated while falling.
Question 1: What kind of mechanism could prevent fertilization except in conditions of zero gravity?
Question 2: How would you go about impregnating this dragon?
[Answer]
**The egg is held in a protective sack, clenched tight when not in freefall.**
It's unclear how long it took you to figure out that this dragon needed to be in freefall for insemination to take hold, but I'm sure it wasn't an easy time for you.
Her egg(s) are fragile, so they're very securely held in an internal pouch while she's walking around, in flight, or being... experimented on. This prevents any sperm from getting to the egg. However, while in freefall, her natural instinct is to maximize her surface area and slow her descent. Part of the way this is done is by unclenching the egg sack and expanding its volume to provide more surface area outside her body. If you've ever unclenched your own egg sac you'd realize it's a very *exciting* feeling (this is why drops on rollercoasters are fun). This will put her in the mood, so watch out.
So, naturally, you can push her out of an airplane and skydive with her. You don't even need special equipment (for the dive), 4000 meters is at the upper limit of elevation before a skydiver needs to wear supplemental oxygen. You'll also get about 70 seconds of freefall (assuming a human's terminal velocity) to *do the deed*, as it were, before you'll need to open your chute. You can wear and artificial tail with the appropriate apparatus installed and just hang on to her as you fall together.
If she's not agreeable to being pushed out of a plane or you don't trust that she'll come back home after what you did to her in freefall, you can just ride the [vomit comet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_gravity_aircraft) and keep her caged. The freefall without the wind should make your work a bit easier and will likely still trigger the (in)appropriate response in the dragon.
[Answer]
Proposed mechanism: mostly vagisnism. As with many females, her sexual muscles, the ones responsible for opening for insemination, are not completely voluntary. In everyday situations, the muscles will remain tightly clenched, with such strength that you can't even see the opening. In many species the female relaxes her muscles when aroused - but dragons are very particular animals, and very selective in mating, with a complex mating ritual. It's impossible for a dragon to relax and get in the mood if she has to be standing or actively flying - complete relaxation is only possible in zero gravity, with the wind caressing her scaly skin and being courted by the selected male. It's possible that the mating will be unsuccessful if the fall is too short or if the male is not to her liking.
Proposed solution: My first idea would be making use of a lot of drugs. Relaxing drugs might relax the muscles, although it might not work if she needs working muscles to direct the sperm or something like that. Aphrodisiac drugs could help too obviously. If dropping her out of a high place is an option, by all means do it -- if not, find a way to simulate the fall. You might have to simulate courtship too, maybe attaching fake talons to her talons, and somehow reproducing dragon courting sounds to her. The mechanical part of insemination is the least troublesome in fact. I mean, you will need some sort of sperm-seringe in the approximate shape of a male sexual organ, and maybe the easiest way to use it is jumping beside the female and applying it yourself, but you could also use a mechanical device attached to her tail that releases the sperm at the right time (the actual mechanics depends too much on organ shape).
[Answer]
A bungee-jumping rig and very steady nerves!
;-)
[Answer]
An entirely different mechanism: the received sperm is held in a fertilization chamber, while the freefall/mating behavior causes ovulation and the release of a an ovum into the chamber.
This has analogs in the natural (non-dragon) world. Some species are induced ovulators, and it has been suggested that the act of being bitten on the back of the neck may contribute to the triggering of ovulation. Certainly some species are partly triggered by mechanical stimulation (rabbits, for instance), and adaptation to include zero-g's seems perfectly possible. Although the fact that it is not seen in birds would seem to argue against this being likely. Then again, dragons are pretty unlikely, so the argument is not hopeless.
[Answer]
The most logical thing I can think of would be to use surgical means. It's invasive and unpleasant, but you are trying to save a species and this is no time for half measures.
Surgically remove the egg, fertilize externally and then implant. You may have to stimulate the necessary hormones or synthesize them.
I would recommend flame retardant long johns and chainmail.
Alternately If it's a muscle control thing, you might be able to use a muscle relaxant and manually insert the spermatazoa.
Again, the above kinds of clothing would be a good idea.
] |
[Question]
[
Take the situation of a modern carrier group (Aircraft carrier, etc.) anchored just off shore (far enough that they initially couldn't run aground) with all the crews abandoning ship for land (in a hurry). The ships then stay there for many years with only the odd adventurer/scavenger visiting.
1. How long would the ships survive with no occupants or maintenance?
2. How long would it take for them to break down (rust away)?
3. When would they likely sink completely?
4. What condition would they be after 10 years? 25 years? 50 years? 100
years?
Assume they were anchored off shore in an area without seasonal hurricanes.
[Answer]
Why doesn't anybody *ever* ask the sailor?
In your case, the anchor isn't very likely to be down. Anchoring is a purposeful operation. Abandon ship is a different one. They'd have to have been at anchor first. Also depending on the nature of the emergency, they might have attempted to scuttle the ship, a process of self destruction which leaves classified material destroyed and the ship 100% unusable - every critical system would be hopelessly damaged, usually right around the special, hard to find parts.
I can say without a doubt in my mind that the hull can last for countless generations, especially if the ship isn't moving under its own power. The reason hulls have to be maintained is because you are pushing a piece of painted steel through the water at (nautically speaking) high speeds. This is an incredibly erosive force. Sitting (maybe at anchor) for centuries is nothing compared to that, even if the thing is getting hammered by hurricanes.
The barnacles would be obscene and it would need a serious amount of work to restore its original performance at speed, but it wouldn't rust through just sitting there. Even after the paint finally gave way and rust eventually set into the (rather high quality) steel, rust doesn't rust once it rusted. Something would have to physically remove the outer layer of rust to expose new metal to the sea. I have no doubt that the ship itself will be ran aground by prevailing currents before the hull simply springs a leak from sitting too long.
Now, a carrier group has lots of ships in it. If every single sailor in every single ship bailed out, and none of them were properly set at anchor (I'm telling you, this takes planning), the thing that's going to sink these ships is them bumping into each other. Eventually they'll bob up and down against each other's hull a few times, and eventually the damage will be severe enough to make the ships take on water - and then down they go. This scenario wouldn't take that long - unless they drift apart, this could happen in a few weeks to a few months depending on conditions.
[Answer]
There was a Life After People episode about ships. Most of the navy ships would still be floating after a couple hundred years (depending on hull thickness, weather, hull imperfections, if the interior hatches are open or closed to allow water to flow freely). The big problem is when the anchor chains fall apart after a few decades allowing the ships to either float away or run aground.
The [LAP wiki](http://lifeafterpeople.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Ships) has some of the information, though of course not all of it is scientifically verified I'm sure. I'd use them as a rough estimate more than anything.
The rusting away part depends on the depth of where they are when they eventually sink. Say the anchor chains rust away and the wind/currents runs them aground. Eventually they take on to much water and sink, but since they're in shallow water they stay mostly upright and mostly above water. After a couple more centuries they've lost enough structural integrity that they begin to collapse under their own weight. The parts underwater take the longest to disappear.
The aircraft carrier is the last to go.
They are now active marine habitats/artificial reefs.
**TL;DR:** A really long time, but how long depends on a lot of stuff we don't know.
**Edit:** Post apocalypse they would probably become refuges for wandering people, which could extend their lives a bit as people would do maintenance and seal leaky compartments, or could shorten their lives a bit if those people come under attack.
[Answer]
AndyD beat me to it with the anchor chain...
I have no specific knowledge about marine, but I assume the anchor chain would be the first to break. After that, the ships are likely to run ashore at the nearest coast, where they probably will be taken apart by scavengers.
If your ships are from military origins, the owning country may think about blowing them up, that the weapons and munition won't go in wrong hands.
For reference about the condition of the ships in your timeline, you could look up photos of ship-graveyards. [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_graveyard) has a nice list for more search.
] |
[Question]
[
For this question think of the times of past, present, and future as $T\_{-1}$,$T\_0$, and $T\_1$, respectively. There is a man named Jim, currently in $T\_0$, so lets refer to him as $J\_0$. $J\_0$ is a very smart man and at some point between $T\_0$ and $T\_1$ he invents a time machine. His future self, $J\_1$, uses this time machine to travel back in time from $T\_1$ to $T\_0$. At this point, $J\_1$ tells $J\_0$ to not build the time machine. This in turn sends the timeline from $T\_0$ to $T\_{1A}$. However, without the time machine, $J\_1$ cannot tell $J\_0$ to not build the time machine, therefore creating a paradox.
Here is a visual example:
1 - Normal Timeline with $J\_0$ at $T\_0$.
2 - $J\_1$ goes back in time to $T\_0$ from $T\_1$.
3 - This creates an alternative timeline starting at $T\_0$ to $T\_{1A}$.
Now what happens next? $J\_{1A}$ cant go back in time like $J\_1$ did because he had no time machine and would have no purpose to do so anyway. Therefore, would the universe reset to the original timeline or will something else happen?
[Answer]
If your universe allows time travel to split the timeline into two, I think your choice to splitting it only based on whether the time machine is built is incorrect. The right place to split the timeline is at $T\_{-1}$, just before $J\_1$ arrives in "his" past.
In one branch, at $T\_{0A}$, a $J\_1$ from "the future" appears. In the other branch, at $T\_0$, he does not.
Thus, when $J\_1$ tells a "past version of himself" not to build the time machine, he's really telling $J\_{0A}$, an alternate version of his past self, not $J\_0$.
I quoted some of the phrases above, because of the alternate realities involved. $T\_{0A}$ isn't really $J\_0$'s past, nor is he really from that timeline's future.
Bad ASCII diagram:
```
T-1 ----------------> T0 --------------------------> T1
\ (J0 invents time machine) (J1 uses machine)
\ /
\ .-------- J1's journey <--------
\ V
--------------> T0A -------------------------> T1A
(J0A doesn't invent the machine) (J2 and J1A live happily ever after)
```
[Answer]
I think the established term for this is known as the [grandfather paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox).
From a story in which a time traveller ventures into the past and kills his grandfather. Since it seems to defy all known laws of the universe there's no way to say for sure what would happen. I'd like to think that time travel would result in creating two parallel dimensions that the traveller "jumps" between. Since he's from another dimension, it doesn't really matter if he has a grandfather in the current dimension he's in. Or does it?
[Answer]
The theory I usually go with is that each possible timeline is also part of a multidimensional universe of timelines. When $J\_1$ goes back in time to create $J\_{0A}$, he's not actually going back to tell the *same* $J\_0$ not to build a time machine, since that's impossible by causality, but just one in an equivalent timeline up to that point.
$J\_1$ and $J\_{1A}$ coexist in different timelines, one with the time machine, one without, and never then able to communicate to each other again because they can't travel to the exact same timeline anymore. If $J\_{1A}$ were then to invent another time machine between $T\_1$ and $T\_2$ and try to go back in time to $T\_1$ to tell $J\_{1A}$ not to make the time machine, he'd be telling $J\_{1B}$ not to make it, not $J\_{1A}$.
So the universe doesn't really reset, it's just a copy of it that gets affected.
[Answer]
You invented a time machine. As you are about to use it for the first time, you excitedly enter the room. You place yourself in the seat, and you're about to press the launch button, when you notice a piece of paper, jammed into a previously invisible crevice in the machine. You open it up. It's clearly a page torn from your pocket notebook, in your own handwriting, albeit in a very *shaky* script. There is only 1 word on the paper:
$$\huge{Don't}$$
You ponder this for a minute. You tear a page from your notebook, and, in a shaky script, write: "Don't". You set the time machine to Present Time -1 hour, 0 minutes. You press the button. You quickly stuff the paper in the appropriate crevice, and go silently hide in a nearby cupboard. An hour later, you breathe a sigh of relief, come out, and take a large crowbar out of your toolbox. You turn towards the machine.
[Answer]
There are several different theories on how a Grandfather Paradox would resolve itself.
Split Reality: The time traveler creates an alternate dimension in which that time machine is not invented. The time traveler returning to his home time/reality may or may not be possible.
Stable Time Loop: The past and future cannot be changed and are immutable. If you went back and time and told yourself not to build a time machine, then you were told not to build one by your future self, built the time machine anyway, and then went back to tell yourself not to. That is how it always happened, and it cannot be altered. This is a favorite of a lot of shows (like Doctor Who...for a good example of a stable time loop, see the episode 'Blink.')
Timey-Wimey Shenanigans: You are told not to create a time machine, then your future self ceases to exist, and you are left with that information despite the fact that it couldn't have been delivered. See: Marty McFly disappearing from existence as a result of his actions, from Back to the Future.
Chronal breakdown: Congrats, you just broke reality. Maybe time freezes, maybe you wink out of existence, maybe the whole universe vanishes in a puff of logic.
] |
[Question]
[
In the story idea I'm working on, I'm using the polandball/polish space marines meme as a starting point for the titular space-faring organization. In the story, the meme exists as a way to cast doubt over whether Poland actually has a working space program.
The problem is, how would the Polish government (from anytime starting let's say in the 1990s to the near future (2040s?)) be able to get a spacecraft into space and out of Earth's orbit without anyone (including its own citizens) knowing about it? It would be easy to see a rocket being launched, and there are satellites and radars everywhere. The US/Russia/etc might also mistake the spacecraft for an ICBM launch or something of the sort.
With all of the expenses involved with launching the spacecraft, how would the Polish government explain where the money went to its citizens? How would the government keep those who were involved in the program from talking about it? How would they recruit astronauts?
As far as what's being launched into space, the polish space marines are looking to establish a fleet of ships that would stay in space permanently; the astronauts would also never return to Earth. To do this they would also require a lot of equipment to grow food, manufacture new equipment, build new ships, etc. To get all of this stuff into space, you can launch one large ship or many small ships, but they have to get into space and out of Earth's orbit without being detected.
The ultimate goal would be to have a fleet of ships that can reach the [asteroid belt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt) to hide in, and to mine raw materials from to expand even more.
[Answer]
**Disguise it as something else.**
For example, maybe DirectTV - launched in 1994 - is actually a Polish corporation behind the scenes, and all DirectTV satellite launches also secretly include supplies, spacecraft parts, or the occasional space marine.
You will need to handwave a few things - namely the mass launched, and your space marines have to be tough to take the accelerations - but it's well within the meme. Maybe DirectTV has an unusually high failure rate on satellites, meaning you've been able to make many more launches than would be strictly necessary to just provide entertainment. And the profits from your cover company help you hide the cost from your civilian population.
As a bonus, you get to incorporate "Get Rid of Cable" Polandball commercials into your story: <http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/directv-get-rid-of-cable-commercials>
[Answer]
Use [space planes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceplane) instead of rockets and give the planes intermittent stealth abilities. In this way, they can take off from Poland, like any other plane and fly in plain sight to some location where the ground clutter is too think for comprehensive radar tracking. Mountain ranges would probably be best for this phase of the journey.
Then with the plane reconfigured into stealth mode, it could navigate to a ground radar free zone (see edit below) before firing its booster rockets to make orbit. With any luck, any satellite seeing the rocket's trail would mistake it for some space junk incinerating upon re-entry.
Even if a satellite clearly saw that it was a space plane had entered orbit, it is headed for the asteroid belt and not coming back, so tracking it further won't reveal anything about its origin. Also, given the stealth, use of radar free zones and mountain ground clutter, there would be no way to trace the plane's pre-orbital journey back to its country of origin. They might know that someone is out among the asteroids, but they wouldn't know who.
-- edit to resolve my under-estimation of ground radar range --
Since ground radar apparently has no height limit, avoiding it will take more than just altitude. It will take knowledge of where the radars are looking and more importantly, where they are not. Recent airliner disappearances suggest that there are vast ranges of airspace, possibly near the centers of each ocean, where no high powered radar is watching. The trick would be finding them and confirming that they actually are radar free. I imagine that if a government is wealthy enough to build a fleet of space planes, they can probably afford a little research and investigation. Then, with a map of the world's radar free zones, their doorway to the sky would be open.
-- edit to resolve my under-estimation of height on visibility --
Apparently, the cold war has spawned an unexpected side effect of cutting private enterprise and Central European republics from having covert access to space. Makes me wonder how the UFO's get in and out of our airspace undetected. Maybe that's the answer... have the space plane transmorph into a saucer shape just before it fires the boosters. Then when the star wars missle detection systems and nsa satellites detect the ship leaving our gravity well, they'll just write it off as another martian tourist and ignore it.
[Answer]
Perhaps Poland could engage in some very deep mining...
What if they built a very long [Space (Rail)-Gun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun) **into** the Earth?
Escape velocity for Earth is about 11.2 km/s. The problems usually faced by the space gun is that the acceleration required is too much for humans to survive. However, if the ship wasn't blasted out the end via an explosion, but perhaps accelerated via a railgun-type mechanism, the ship could move at a far more leisurely acceleration over a longer distance.
If our intrepid, space-faring Polandballs were to accelerate at 1g ($9.81 \text{ m/s}^2$), the launching tube would need to be:
$\frac{v\_\text{escape velocity}^2}{2g} = 6400\text{ km}$
Which incidentally is just greater than the radius of the Earth ($6378\text{ km}$)...
The tube wouldn't have to be straight though the Earth either. All the tube would need to do would be to exit the earth at least 60.22° away from Poland. Of course, this couldn't be a straight tube, as the vertical velocity would be reduced at 60°.
You could solve for $\theta$ in
$2\sqrt{aR}\sin^\frac{3}{2}(\frac{\theta}{2}) = 11.2\text{ km/s}$
where a is the acceleration and R is the radius of the Earth.
Wolfram Alpha gives the value $\theta = 105.186^\circ$
Advantages of this method:
* It's ballistic, so no rocket trails for people to notice. (until you reach your desired altitude; to reach orbit you would need to fire horizontally)
* The vehicle wouldn't exit anywhere near Poland, allowing for further deniability.
* They could state that they are engaging in particle physics (pretending the tube is a particle accelerator (which, in some ways, it is)) or mining, to excuse their operations.
On the other hand, it would be very loud. However, you could make sure that the exit point is isolated.
The only other issue would be power, although I suspect that this isn't quite so much of an issue.
[Answer]
You're not going to get into space without the superpowers knowing. Remember, our satellites saw the SAM launch that brought down the plane over the Ukraine. A SAM uses a **much** smaller rocket than anything that can put a person in orbit.
Another poster suggested spaceplanes--while a spaceplane can get a lot of velocity as an air-breather without showing up on anybody's satellites they eventually have to turn to rocketry and that's still going to leave a fiery trail for the satellites to see.
A supergun was also suggested. Even if you can overcome the various problems with using guns for atmospheric launch you're still going to have a huge thermal signature as your space capsule smashes through the lower atmosphere. While I don't know if the satellites will note this I certainly wouldn't expect to get away with it. Those are military satellites, they're designed to look for disguised missile launches.
A launch loop avoids the thermal signature but there's no hiding construction of that size. Besides, a launch loop won't even fit in Poland.
Thus there's no stealthy way into space. The only way you'll be able to pull it off is to hide who is doing it. Build a submersible facility that serves both as the final assembly building and the launch platform. Everyone will know that **somebody** has a stealthy space program, they just won't know who. Eventually the US will figure it out, though--sooner or later you're going to launch too close to a lurking fast attack sub and it will find you. Once it gets close enough the game is up--even if by some miracle you evaded the sub they'll get pictures and a sound signature and will be able to match that up to something they see docking in Poland. Pre-collapse I would say that Russia would have also figured it out, these days I don't know what their submarine patrols are like.
] |
[Question]
[
Well, this is my first post here. Been lurking for a while and have read a lot of the RKKV (*Relativistic Kinetic Kill Vehicle*) questions in my search for a solid answer to my question. Alas, no such luck. So time to stop lurking...
At some point in the past a relativistic weapon was fired during a some war somewhere by someone that had no idea Earth or its solar system even existed. The shot itself was a miss and the triggerman likely got a proper chewing out. The misfire was noted, reports sent up, but for one reason or another, the top brass never followed up on that one rogue RKKV that got launched off towards a distant arm of the galaxy.
Jump forward in time to near present day Earth. The RKKV has been flying along, minding its own business, and by fluke or bad luck, its path takes it into our solar system. Then it hits the Moon. Good thing too, maybe, because it was heading straight for the Earth. The Moon takes the hit in line with the Earth --- becoming the impactor that stops the RKKV from hitting us dead on.
This is where my question comes in:
Just how bad would this be?
I've played around with Universe Sandbox² a few times trying to see just what would happen [to no real avail] and I've read up on RKKVs on Atomic Rocket. I've even done some back of the envelope maths to try and see just what would happen. However, I'm not entirely sure what would happen.
This particularly RKKV is made of a material with a density of 1000g/cm³ that has been shaped into a kilometer long rod with a diameter of 20 meters [314,159,265,358.98cm³]. It was travelling at a speed of .2c at the time of impact.
My math-fu simply isn't good enough to properly figure out what this would do, but the event itself is a key event in a story I've been working on for a bit now. The event itself is aptly named the "Oops" event and the fact that there is anyone on Earth left to name the event demands that it be a survivable scenario for the critters on Earth.
[Answer]
# You take a piece off of the Moon and kill everyone
I'm rounding up the mass of the projectile to 3 billion kilograms because at the scales involved, accuracy to the gram doesn't matter.
I'm also ignoring relativity just for now.
So:
$$ E = \frac{mv^2}{2} = \frac{3kg \times 10^9 \times (6 m/s \times 10^7)^2}{2} = 5.4 \times 10^{24} joules $$
Give or take.
For comparison, the binding energy of the Moon is in the order of $10^{29}$ joules. So you are five orders of magnitude short of obliterating her completely.
But with a mass of close to $7 \times 10^{22}$ kg... if we were using Batman physics, that would give her a push enough to change her orbital speed up close to 100m/s. But you don't push a planet or similar body like that, and your bullet is three orders of magnitude denser than the Moon. Most likely it penetrates the Moon and comes out the other side. Might still hit the Earth, although with less speed, but is more likely to miss. We're not off the hook though, even if it misses us.
As for the Moon, a considerable portion of her mass will be ejected like it always happens when something opens up a crater. But in this case an incalculable portion of that will escape the Moon, possibly the Earth-Moon system altogether. I say incalculable because things like the angle of impact and direction it's coming matter. Whatever is left of the Moon will collapse into a spheroid again, and a considerable portion of her surface will be molten for quite a while.
As for the ejecta that doesn't leave the Earth-Moon system, they will make for a bombardment that might end human civilization and life. This has potential to be worse than the dino killing asteroid, and that one is believed by some scientists to have killed most dinos by heating up the atmosphere over water boiling temperatures globally through ejecta falling over half the globe.
If you want humanity to survive, you should consider a smaller KKV.
Edit: there are some interesting comments here about whether the projectile survives the impact after passing through the Moon in 57 milliseconds or less. I am just assuming that whatever technomagic is keeping a 1,000 g/cm3 object (about 6x the density of the core of the Sun) from spontaneously exploding like a mini-nova was keeping it intact too. But whether it keeps its shape or becomes a plasma should be the least of humanity's worries.
[Answer]
[Newton's Impact Depth approximation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth) states that impact depth is approximately equal to Projectile Length (L) x Projectile Density (A) / Target Density (B).
So, with L = 1km, A = 1000 g/cm³, B = 3.34 g/cm³ we get an approximate depth of 299.4 km.
The moon's diameter is 3,474.8 km. The impact depth of 299.4 km is about 8.6% of the total diameter of the moon, so the RKKV will cease its forward motion within the moon.
Now, if we assume that the kinetic energy (KE) of the RKKV is on the order of 5.5E24 J (thanks, *The Square-Cube-Law*), and given that the gravitational binding energy (GBE) of the moon is on the order of 1.25E29 J and the moon's mass is 7.3E22 kg, the amount of the moons mass that could be ejected is:
KE/GBE\*Mass = 5.5E24 / 1.25E29 x 7.3E22 = 3.1E18kg.
That's 3 *quadrillion* tons of matter that we can expect to achieve escape velocity from the moon. That's an awful lot of mass. Of course, this is just a ballpark figure, but it gives an order of magnitude. It obviously can't be much greater than this.
There is also an interesting little effect that was used to good effect in WWII, that only fell into disuse when spaced and composite tank armour became common, and that was the use of [HESH warheads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-explosive_squash_head). Why am I talking about tank shells? Because it has been shown that the application of a large amount of kinetic energy to an object can cause 'spall' to be ejected from the opposite side of the object, and:
>
> HESH was found to be surprisingly effective against metallic armour as well as concrete structures
>
>
>
and
>
> In general, the higher the armour thickness, the higher the scab weight will be.
>
>
>
So, since the RKKV is a long-rod penetrator, not a broad pancake charge as a HESH round, we can expect that a significant amount of the ejecta will be expelled backwards from alongside the shot path, possibly as much as half of the total mass of ejecta. This is also subject to a significant amount of error, it may be as little as a quarter or as much as three-quarters of the total escaping mass.
That still leaves very roughly 1.5 quadrillion tons of lunar material headed directly away from the moon and in the general direction of the Earth at *at least* the escape velocity of the moon, 2.38 km/s. Let's say about 5 km/s, which is about the speed of sound in the body of the moon.
The only thing that *might* save us is that the moon orbits the earth at around 1 kilometre per second, and the moon is around 384,000 km away on average. This will lead to the vector of the ejecta being *not* directly toward the Earth even though the RKKV *was* headed directly toward the Earth.
The ejecta might take 21 1/3 hours to reach Earth, but in that time would travel 76,800 km away from a direct line to the centre of the earth. Since Earth's radius is 6371 km, this is around 6 times the diameter of the earth.
So, we can expect that the bulk of the 1.5 quadrillion tons of ejecta would miss earth.
That doesn't mean that Earth won't be hit at all. If even only 0.01% of the remaining ejecta from the moon hits the Earth, that's still 150 *billion* tons of rock raining down across the entire surface of the earth.
Nowhere would be safe. Lots of living things would die... though since humans are hard to kill, like cockroaches scurrying for cover, there may be some survivors... maybe quite a few.
[Answer]
I'd like to respond to Monty Wild's analysis. He correctly invokes Newton's impact depth approximation to conclude the impactor would make it around 10% of the way through the moon:
>
> [Newton's Impact Depth approximation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth) states that impact depth is approximately equal to Projectile Length (L) x Projectile Density (A) / Target Density (B).
>
>
> So, with L = 1km, A = 1000 g/cm³, B = 3.34 g/cm³ we get an approximate depth of 299.4 km.
>
>
> The moon's diameter is 3,474.8 km. The impact depth of 299.4 km is about 8.6% of the total diameter of the moon, so the RKKV will cease its forward motion within the moon.
>
>
>
However, the following analysis is dubious:
>
> Now, if we assume that the kinetic energy (KE) of the RKKV is on the order of 5.5E24 J (thanks, *The Square-Cube-Law*), and given that the gravitational binding energy (GBE) of the moon is on the order of 1.25E29 J and the moon's mass is 7.3E22 kg, the amount of the moons mass that could be ejected is:
>
>
> KE/GBE\*Mass = 5.5E24 / 1.25E29 x 7.3E22 = 3.1E18kg.
>
>
>
I don't think so. Most of the energy will go into heat, not into overcoming the moon's gravitational potential. Because the impactor penetrates hundreds of km into the moon, most of the energy will be deposited too deeply inside to knock material loose. Most of the material that does get knocked loose will fall short of escape velocity. Maybe 1% of the energy might go into knocking rocks loose of the moon. 1% would be 3 \* 10^16 kg.
Additionally, a rain of rock from the moon onto the Earth wouldn't actually be that damaging. The rocks would be spread out into a plume, so it would not be a single impactor, it would be a lot of dust and pebbles. Almost all of it would burn up in the atmosphere without reaching the surface.
There would be weather and climate effects. The ejection volume from the Chicxulub crater was in the area of 10^18 kg, so in terms of the cooling effect from dust in the atmosphere, the plume of moon dust might be 30x less than that, assuming it all hits (which it won't). The climate effect of Chicxulub was in the area of a [20% reduction in incoming sunlight](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1319253111) for a few years to decades. The climate effect of the 3\*10^16 kg moon plume might thus be expected to be around a 1% reduction in incoming sunlight. We would notice, but most things would continue as they were.
] |
[Question]
[
In my setting diminutive races like fairies, gnomes, and gremlins exist and to handle of the cooler climates such as in Europe and protect themselves for their many predators many of them live underground. While issues like ventilation seem difficult are certainly possible given that ants and termites and food could be solved with them farming underground plants, fungi and insects.
The main issue I haven't figured out is what they'd use for lighting prior to the invention of electrical lights given that fire would proportionally need more fuel for their size and the smoke would likely prove hazardous.
Feyfolk range from 6.5 to 10 inches (16 to 25 cm) tall and while having better vision than humans still can't see in the dark well.
Given this what could feyfolk use for lighting?
Note: magic doesn't exist in my setting
[Answer]
**Bioluminescent mushrooms**
Since they're in areas like Europe, might I suggest they cultivate Panellus stipticus?
>
> The mushrooms use a class of molecules called luciferins, which paired with an enzyme and oxygen, release light. Panellus stipticus (also known as the bitter oyster) is one of the brightest-glowing examples of bioluminescent fungi. It is found throughout Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. These flat mushrooms grow on tree branches creating a mesmerizing effect as soon as the sun goes down. Foragers are able to find this variety growing around birch, oak, and beech trees.
>
>
>
[Source link](https://www.plantsnap.com/blog/10-cool-facts-bioluminescent-mushrooms/)
Or cultivate some another kind that grows underground. While they might not be very bright, enough of it lining the tunnels would provide enough light for navigation and if the entire roof of an underground space were covered then it may be enough to read by if they can see better than humans as you've said.
[Answer]
### Phosphorescent rocks
[Phosphorescent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorescence) materials give light after they've been exposed to it for a while. They give only a little bit of light but your feyfolk has better vision than humans so that should not matter too much. Phosphorescent rocks are rare, but they do [occur naturally](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Phenomenis_in_Orbe_Lunae). They will need to be left outside the tunnels for a while to work, but predators probably won't notice the difference between those and normal rocks.
[Answer]
If they have more sensitive vision than humans, they could probably get away with just building [lightwells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightwell). They'd need some way to help ventilate tunnel networks, and careful construction of pipes (maybe using plant stems, or maybe built as clay-lined shafts or other constructed things) would assist in air flow as well as allowing a small amount of light down. Building mirrors might be very challenging if they have no access to metal, but maybe simple glazing or glasswork is possible, to help make the light shafts more reflective.
Even if only a tiny bit of light makes it down, that might be quite enough.
Ready access to glass and metal (perhaps scavenged from humans) would make this simpler and more effective. Obviously this doesn't work at night, but in those long, dark winters one could always just [sleep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormancy) a lot...
---
Alternatively, consider the possibility that they don't *need* lighting.
>
> to handle of the cooler climates such as in Europe and protect themselves for their many predators many of them live underground
>
>
>
One doesn't need to live underground to survive the weather as a small mammal in Europe. Hibernation might be required, and that might be done underground, as the wide variety of colors and flavors of rodents and lagomorphs and small mustelids will show, you can wander about above ground in the mornings and evenings over quite a wide chunk of the year without freezing to death.
So that leaves predation.
To pick a few kinds of potential predator... [owls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl#Evolution_and_systematics) have been about for tens of millions of years, [feliforms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feliformia) have existed for about forty million years, [mustelids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustelidae#Phylogeny) for over ten million years. The things that might eat your fey are old lineages, not new surprises.
Therefore if predation was the major reason for hiding underground, your fey would necessarily be well adapted to living down there... they'd have excellent senses of smell and hearing, and sensitivity to vibrations that would let them hear nearby things walking or digging both underground or above. Being intelligent and presumably tool users, they'd also have the ability to equip themselves with things to help navigate in pitch darkness that they hadn't evolved naturally... [artificial echolocation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation) using vocalisations or [clickers](https://learnecholocation.blogspot.com/2008/10/echolocation-using-clicking-devices.html), for example. Strings laid out as guide lines, twigs or blades or grass used to feel about, etc.
They might *like* light, and appreciate the warmth of sunlight and so on, but they don't *need* it.
There's no shortage of underground fey-like things in folklore after all... [gnomes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnome), [knockers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker_(folklore)), [kobolds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobold#Mine_spirits) and so on. Plenty of things for you to build on.
[Answer]
They can use [luciferase and luciferin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciferase)
>
> Luciferase is a generic term for the class of oxidative enzymes that produce bioluminescence, and is usually distinguished from a photoprotein. The name was first used by Raphaël Dubois who invented the words luciferin and luciferase, for the substrate and enzyme, respectively. Both words are derived from the Latin word lucifer, meaning "lightbearer", which in turn is derived from the Latin words for "light" (lux) and "to bring or carry" (ferre).
>
>
> A variety of organisms regulate their light production using different luciferases in a variety of light-emitting reactions. The majority of studied luciferases have been found in animals, including fireflies, and many marine animals such as copepods, jellyfish, and the sea pansy. However, luciferases have been studied in luminous fungi, like the Jack-O-Lantern mushroom, as well as examples in other kingdoms including luminous bacteria, and dinoflagellates.
>
>
>
This would also explain why they are usually depicted with a faint glow around their bodies.
[Answer]
## "Skylights"
Feyfolk warrens include strategically placed bits of glass, "ordinary" translucent stones, or even precious gemstones, as part of their ceiling - positioned to be on the surface - to permit daylight to filter down into their tunnels and chambers. Mirrors and other small, shiny things could be arranged to spread the light further.
The skylights are usually arranged to be concealed in grass, under bushes, or otherwise out-of-the-way (so big folk won't find them). But supplying the need for skylights gives the feyfolk reason to gather things, from gems down to broken glass, from human areas. Feyfolk might even break a window now and then, though that's going to bother some big folk less than having a large diamond disappear...
This can still be supplemented by bioluminescence, and other suggestions people have made.
[Answer]
**Probably a combination of most of these suggestions.**
Lightwells, skylights, bio luminescence, plus **liquid fuel lamps** and even candles. No one solution, just whatever suits the local situation (how much light you need) and whats doable with the resources at hand.
So a library might get a light well, a small storage room that's only entered occasionally? A couple of candles.
There is one technology however that hasn't been mentioned but could be implemented by a pre electric society. However its risky. **Piped gas lighting** (perhaps methane from animal waste ingesters or coal seam gas) at least in main thoroughfares. But the local ventilation system would have to be engineered as well as the piping system was and even then there is ever present risk of things going 'boom'.
[Answer]
[**Radio-luminescence.**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioluminescence)
The discovery that bringing a certain rock close to another certain rock made the first rock glow elicited wonder from the curious children that discovered it. Being fey, they're immune to mundane things like radiation, so this doesn't bother them.
[Wurtzite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wurtzite), a zinc-based mineral is handy for the property (when it has a tiny amount of copper impurity) that it glows green when exposed to the radiation from an element such as radium (or a radium salt, or other radioactive mineral).
Grinding these two things up together gives a powder with a soft lime-green glow, can be mixed with fats or oils to be used as a paint for ceilings/walls or as a handy working-light if a piece of leather is treated (meaning it can be rolled-up and stowed in a pocket for the need of it).
[Answer]
**Fiber Optics** ...sort of
The Fey have learned how to [grow their own crystals at home](https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GCEU_enUS972US973&q=Can%20I%20grow%20quartz%20crystals%20at%20home%3F&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjM3aHhjK31AhWYQjABHeybBmwQzmd6BAgLEAU&biw=2133&bih=977&dpr=0.9) though small twisting tunnels attached to gathering pools at the surface light is funneled though the crystals into the deep chambers below.
Also nothing stopping them from growing fungi or other light sources on the surface of the grown crystals to produce light and distribute it during the night hours.
[Answer]
## Glow Worms/Firefles
Since they have not developed things like electricity, and, as you said, fire might prove hazardous underground, it leaves a few other options. There are quite a few natural sources of light, but in this case, the source of light must:
* A: Function underground.
* B: Would not make life underground impossible as a byproduct.
That leaves out options like candles, lanterns, and torches, sense the smoke could prove lethal in an underground setting. It would also be preferable for the said light source to be portable, reusable "or at least sustainable," and practical.
Assuming that that the Feyfolk in your setting are intelegent, it is possible that they could domesticate a species of glowworm/firefles. If a species like *Lampyris noctiluca* where domesticated to be brighter, larger, and hardier, they would be perfect for a lightsource. While they are not very bright on there own, if grouped togather in large groups and contained within a transparent contrainer, than they would make a convient portable source of light.
] |
[Question]
[
This animal experiences this lifecycle:
Plant $\to$ worm $\to$ flying animal $\to$ humanoid $\to$ plant
It basically never dies and can only be killed if the plant is killed. If it dies in any other stage it will grow into a plant and be reborn.
And, of course, fire totally destroys everything.
Is there a way a plant could store important memories like basic communication, movement, face recognition and language? (For example, being reborn and knowing how to read or how to play an instrument.)
Only the humanoid and flying stages are "conscious". The worm and plant stages just exist mindlessly.
[Answer]
It looks like the baseline of what you are looking for is the life cycle of [jellyfishes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellyfish#Life_cycle) with the difference of not taking place in water.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dfGl2.jpg)
>
> In most cases, adults release sperm and eggs into the surrounding water, where the unprotected eggs are fertilized and develop into larvae.
>
>
> The planula is a small larva covered with cilia. When sufficiently developed, it settles onto a firm surface and develops into a polyp. The polyp generally consists of a small stalk topped by a mouth that is ringed by upward-facing tentacles. The polyps resemble those of closely related anthozoans, such as sea anemones and corals. The jellyfish polyp may be sessile, living on the bottom, boat hulls or other substrates, or it may be free-floating or attached to tiny bits of free-living plankton or rarely, fish or other invertebrates. Polyps may be solitary or colonial. Most polyps are only millimeters in diameter and feed continuously. The polyp stage may last for years.
>
>
> After an interval and stimulated by seasonal or hormonal changes, the polyp may begin reproducing asexually by budding and, in the Scyphozoa, is called a segmenting polyp, or a scyphistoma. Budding produces more scyphistomae and also ephyrae. Budding sites vary by species; from the tentacle bulbs, the manubrium (above the mouth), or the gonads of hydromedusae. In a process known as strobilation, the polyp's tentacles are reabsorbed and the body starts to narrow, forming transverse constrictions, in several places near the upper extremity of the polyp. These deepen as the constriction sites migrate down the body, and separate segments known as ephyra detach. These are free-swimming precursors of the adult medusa stage, which is the life stage that is typically identified as a jellyfish. The ephyrae, usually only a millimeter or two across initially, swim away from the polyp and grow.
>
>
>
You might object that polyps are not plants, however keep in mind that until recent times corals, also made by polyps, were thought to be plants.
And jellyfish, though not being as active as other animals, have their actions defined in their nervous systems, like we do. We are not taught how to breathe or swallow, it's something hard coded in our brains.
[Answer]
Sounds like the life cycle of a jellyfish, as L.Dutch pointed out.
Now your stages seem more like it requires extensive metamorphosis, like from humanoid to plant. You may find inspiration in moths and butterflies. The precise biology of metamorphosis in a large scale creature is not in scope of the question, but know that for the insects, [memory is preserved](https://theconversation.com/despite-metamorphosis-moths-hold-on-to-memories-from-their-days-as-a-caterpillar-29859) even when the creature in the cocoon is mostly liquified.
>
> The metamorphosis involves the breakdown of most of the caterpillar’s tissues before reassembling to form a butterfly. It therefore seems unlikely that butterflies or moths would remember experiences from their caterpillar days. However, scientists have now established that not only can a moth retain memories formed while it was a caterpillar, but that experiences gained during these early stages can have drastic impacts on adult life.
>
>
>
[Answer]
On our current knowledge, information is stored in the synaptic structure between our brain cells.
As plants have no nerve system, they also don't have synapses. But they could - actually nothing avoids it for them, except that it was not developed.
Note, having a brain is evolutionary very costly. Brain cells use many times more energy than even a warm-blooded body (which uses far more than a cold-blooded, which uses far more than a plant).
If the brain does not get its needed oxygen (and blood sugar) needs, the cells start to decay in minutes, and we die.
The plant state will need some mechanism to somehow "hibernate" its nerve cells to make them restart-able in a next stage. There is example even for that - [Tardigrades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade) can survive completely drying up in a hibernated state, and then again revive after they get water.
Giving nerves to plants is probably not too far away even from the GM technology of the today.
There is also [example](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepidoptera) for an animal with 4 development stages.
Thus, nothing prevents this to work - except that is did not develop, and it will need likely a long development of genetical technology.
The recovery of the brain and the memory after a reborn would be probably not entirely perfect, it would be likely a partial memory loss, like the recovery after a serious brain damage.
[Answer]
There are example in ["Speaker for the Dead"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_for_the_Dead).
Here is how it goes:
```
worm (first life) -> pig (intelligent) (second life) -> tree (third life)
```
Some tree are intelligent if it is 'ritual kill' and can mate (called father). Please read the book to know more.
] |
[Question]
[
How can one explain the ability of a creature to harden their skin to a solid strong enough to fend off predator bites?
The skin must go from being elastic and flexible to being a biological shield of hard tissue capable of resisting a shark's bite.
The creature is able to decide whether to harden it's skin only in localized areas or across all of the body's surface.
It mus also be able to restore the skin to it's natural elasticity and softness once it's safe from predators.
If such a process is possible, how can it be explained and how fast can it happen?
Days? Months? Seconds?
[Answer]
Already exists
Echinoderm skin already does everything you want. [Starfish are your best match, they have both fast hardening and very hard structures when hardened](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5554833/).
>
> The skin must go from being elastic and flexible to being a biological
> shield of hard tissue capable of resisting a shark's bite.
>
>
>
Larger sharks can bite though starfish but nothing on that large a size difference is going to survive. this really comes down to how big the shark is and how big the creature is.
>
> The creature is able to decide whether to harden it's skin only in
> localized areas or across all of the body's surface.
>
>
>
Enchinoderm skin hardening is controlled by nerve impulses so completely doable.
>
> It mus also be able to restore the skin to it's natural elasticity and
> softness once it's safe from predators.
>
>
>
Again echinoderms already do this.
>
> If such a process is possible, how can it be explained and how fast
> can it happen? Days? Months? Seconds?
>
>
>
Enchinoderms harden their skin at nerve conduction velocities, so [on the order of seconds to minutes under the worst case](http://www.esrf.eu/home/UsersAndScience/Publications/Highlights/highlights-2016/CBS/CBS02.html), softening it takes slightly longer but not much longer. the speed varies quite a lot from [species to species](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/BBLv221n3p280) so you can pick the speed you want.
The downside is we don't completely understand how echinoderms do it, so you can't get to detailed in how in functions. We know their skin is made of millions of tiny calcium carbonate plates and the collagen fibers that connects them can somehow change its mechanical properties, going from flexible to remarkably stiff in seconds, but that is it. It is sad that these truly weird creatures don't get a lot of funding for study.
[Answer]
You can engineer a very thick skin made up of very small and tough chitin scales, within a liquid/gelatinous matrix. Normally, this would be very flexible, since the scales do not touch each other and even when they do, they just slip past one another.
Inside, you have a layer of specialized suction organs with a rigid chitin "ring" skin-side, and a muscular sac on the inner side, strongly connected either with the skeleton or to one another through rigid tendons (both choices have pros and cons).
When one or more sacs inflate, they cause a depression and suck the matrix out of the skin layer immediately above (so, the effect can be localized). The skin compresses, and the scales lock against each other, forming a solid shield which is almost as hard as chitin, but not as fragile (it cannot "break"). The creature can even move while hardened, by briefly releasing as little pressure as needed and immediately locking it back. Not knowing beforehand which area is going to soften, a predator would have little chance of doing damage.
This is, in some ways, the opposite phenomenon to [soil liquefaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_liquefaction). There, an abrupt dispersal of gel-liquid within "solid" ground turns it into a flexible putty; here, the dispersal is the normal state, and it is the abrupt removal of the filler that turns the skin into a "solid".
Something very similar happens with "[Liquid Armor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Armor)", which is turned solid by the application of a magnetic field that orients the liquid particles to increase their viscosity. Your creature's skin would be *barorheological* - it would respond to the inner pressure (you could have a magnetorheological armor if you went for a completely different biochemistry, with a ferrofluid-like-containing dermis and some organic magnets inside. If the magnets can rotate by 180° and are arranged in a [Halbach configuration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbach_array), the "skin" side could be hardened or softened almost istantaneously. How an organic creature comes up with this much iron and magnetite remains to be determined).
Another, slower way of obtaining the same effect would be through osmosis. The inner layer could "suck" and accumulate water out of the outer layer, turning it into a solid.
[Answer]
There is a structure that has evolved independently several times in nature that fits some your requirements. Whether it could be made practical for defense is something that has yet to be seen in nature as existing examples are notoriously fragile. Filling with fluid causes fibres to interlock and stiffen making a very soft organ significantly harder and very resistant to bending or twisting. Your creatures skin could be lined with similar fibres and push blood to the surface hardening its skin. Maybe additional adaptations could give it resistance to different forces like slashing or stabbing.
<https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/42/2/216/652610>
] |
[Question]
[
After centuries of careful search and travel, some intrepid extraterrestrial explorers have finally found another inhabited world! Elated with their discovery and exhausted after their long journey, they swing into a high orbit around Earth and start running their scans. Thankfully their vessel is very hard for our primitive telescopes to detect, so they aren't worried about any interference from the surface until they're well and ready to reach out to us.
However, might their chief apprehension be an accidental high-impact collision with one of our [934,000 orbiting objects over 1cm in length](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris)?
When we send things into orbit, we obviously have a big leg up in that we've already catalogued the orbital trajectories of our satellites. We currently track over [22,300 total orbiting objects](https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/Space_debris_by_the_numbers).
Assumptions:
1. It would be difficult for these aliens to gain that same level of knowledge from their high orbit, because of the small size and high speed of all of the objects. Let's say they can only detect the largest 20% of our 22,300 tracked orbiting bodies initially.
2. They need to send a stealth probe down into a low Earth orbit for 3 weeks to complete their scans. This is the most crowded area ([63% of satellites operate here,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite) and we can assume that's the distribution of junk as well.)
3. The probe is a 5-meter radius sphere.
4. The aliens do not possess any handwavium-powered shields or unobtanium-plated armor, so a collision with even a small orbiting body could be disastrous.
5. The alien's method of interstellar travel effectively avoids space debris, but that technology cannot be used in orbit.
If the probe remained in a random low-Earth orbit for three weeks, what are the odds that it would collide with an object over 1cm in length?
BONUS 1: Is there an optimal orbit to minimize the chance of these collisions, given their initial level of knowledge of our orbital patterns?
BONUS 2: Assume further that in this low orbit they can detect an additional 44,000 orbiting objects every day, and adjust the probe's orbit accordingly at the end of each day. By the end of 3 weeks they know where nearly all of our 934,000 dangerous objects are. Exactly how much does this effect the probe's overall survival chance?
[Answer]
Luckily for your intrepid explorers, the odds are infinitesimal.
According to [this study](https://www.nap.edu/read/4765/chapter/7), the chances of something *twice* as large as your probe hitting another object with a cross section larger than 1 cm is between 1:100 and 1:1000 *over a ten year period.* Insofar as an ideal altitude (bonus #1), figures 4.2 and 4.3 in that same study seem to indicate that an altitude below 200 km would be best. After that, between 1200 and 1400 km has the lowest chance of collision. (Most satellites operate between 500 and 1000 km.) These are very simplified estimates, though; the article has more details on various considerations.
[This article](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8736224) corroborates that altitudes of 800-1000 km are the most congested. It also gets into micrometeoroid data.
Note the odds go up quickly the smaller the cross section you’re concerned about. It might hit one or two objects in the mm range, but in the lowest altitudes even the odds of that are tiny. But after a three week period (bonus #2), they should be able to avoid just about anything as large as a grain of sand, if they wanted to.
[Answer]
I would say that if the alien race is advanced enough for Interstellar travel than they would have the capabilities to detect granular sized objects at a decent safe distance. They needed to be able to detect these if they were traveling at any amount of a relativistic speed otherwise a grain of sand could have destroyed their ship.
[Answer]
The odds are very, very, very low. For reference, the International Space Station (110 meters long, currently) has lived in low Earth orbit for over 20 years and there have been no significant collisions. The ISS is subject to micro-strikes all the time, as can be seen [on this equipment which flew on the ISS for 19 years](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/f4qwjj/this_battery_charger_spent_almost_nineteen_years/). But these are essentially grains of sand.
The ISS does have the benefit of Earth-based tracking of debris, and does occasionally maneuver to avoid potential obstacles. But the odds are still very low even if they did not do that. The ISS has to re-boost itself periodically anyway, so maneuvering to avoid obstacles is essentially free.
Your assumption 2 is wrong. Low Earth orbit is cleaner than higher orbits, and this is one of the reasons we put things there. The reason is that there's still enough atmosphere in low Earth orbit to produce significant drag, so any debris left there will eventually de-orbit on its own (in maybe 6-24 months, depending on initial conditions). When LEO satellites reach the end of their useful life they are either de-orbited, or boosted into a higher stable orbit where they are unlikely to cause problems in the future.
[Answer]
Regarding your first bonus point, of minimising the chances of collision (and hoping my shaky Kerbal-based understanding of orbital mechanics is correct):
If two objects are orbiting at the same altitude and the same inclination, then they'll be moving at the same velocity. So their relative velocity will be zero, and they'll never collide as long as they maintain their orbits. The risk would be of something in a higher orbit losing altitude due to atmospheric drag (and thus gaining relative velocity) and potentially colliding with a lower object.
If they're at different inclinations, there would also be the risk of collision at the points where their orbits intersect.
So your safest orbit would seem to be just high enough that drag isn't a factor, and at the same inclination as the majority of objects orbiting at that altitude. Assuming that altitude isn't too high for your probe's instruments. At which point your potential collisions are other objects at the same altitude but a different inclination.
The problem with that is, if that turns out to be equatorial, then that's not going to be much help for your probe scanning the entire planet, since it's always going to be over the equator. The optimal inclination is obviously going to depend on how long you have to scan the planet and how far either side of the probe's path it can scan on each pass.
] |
[Question]
[
**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
There are several previous questions concerning *concentric* shells. I won't reference them here because this is different.
I understand that there is no gravitational effect inside a concentric shell\*. But what about a non-concentric one?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XiQWN.png)
**Research**
I've looked online and found nothing. Maybe I'm just using the wrong search terms?
**Question**
I'd like to have a cavity inside a small planet. Assuming perfect spheres and uniform density, is there a general equation for the gravitational field inside the cavity, taking into account:
* The radius of the solid sphere
* The radius of the hollow spherical cavity
* The offset between centres.
**Supplementary**
If no exact solution exists, is there an approximate formula that will let me play with the variables to get a rough idea of the effects?
---
\*[**Shell Theorem**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem)
>
> In classical mechanics, the shell theorem gives gravitational
> simplifications that can be applied to objects inside or outside a
> spherically symmetrical body. This theorem has particular application
> to astronomy ... A spherically symmetric body affects external objects
> gravitationally as though all of its mass were concentrated at a point
> at its centre. If the body is a spherically symmetric shell (i.e., a
> hollow ball), no net gravitational force is exerted by the shell on
> any object inside, regardless of the object's location within the
> shell.
>
>
>
[Answer]
The solution isn't actually too bad; I had this as a problem in AP physics in high school. It doesn't have as much symmetry to exploit as a concentric shell, but it still has a lot of symmetry--as long as the cave and the enclosing body are both spheres, and the enclosing body has uniform density, you can treat everything as rotationally symmetric around the line connecting their centers.
From there, you can treat the cave as a body of negative mass whose gravity is added to that of the enclosing body. The somewhat surprising end result is that gravity is *constant* inside a spherical cave, and antiparallel to the offset of the cave center from the enclosing body's center.
Because of the rotational symmetry, we can reduce the problem to two dimensions to show that the field is in fact constant everywhere in the cave.
Let the enclosing body have radius $R$ and density $\rho$, the offset between centers be $d < R$, and the cave have radius $r < R - d$. The gravitational field *inside* a body of uniform density is $g \propto \rho x$. Expanded to 2 dimensions, the total gravitational force is $g \propto \rho \sqrt{x^2+y^2}$, but broken down into vector components we get $g\_x \propto \rho \sqrt{x^2+y^2}\cos\theta = \rho \sqrt{x^2+y^2} \frac{x}{\sqrt{x^2+y^2}} = \rho x$, and similarly $g\_y \propto \rho y$. The gravity due to the negative body that creates the cave when added to the enclosing body is $g\_x \propto -\rho (x-d)$ and $g\_y \propto -\rho y$. Adding these together, we get the summed components for the net gravity vector to be $g\_x \propto \rho x - \rho (x - d) = \rho (x - (x - d)) = \rho d$ (i.e., a non-zero constant), and $g\_y \propto \rho y - \rho y = 0$.
So, the total gravity is axis-aligned, constant, and dependent only on the density of the enclosing sphere and the eccentric distance. This is in fact the only way I know of to get an exact constant, uniform gravitational field with finite amounts of material (the infinite option being the space above an infinite plane).
To get the actual force (not just a factor it is proportional to), add a factor of $\frac{4 \pi G}{3}$ to get $g = \frac{4 \pi G}{3}\rho d$.
[Answer]
This is a classic problem in electrostatics - that is, in an analogous situation where we care about calculating the electric force on an object inside some cavity. The same solution technique applies for Newtonian gravity, and it relies on something called *superposition*. Effectively, the cavity is like a region of space inside a sphere of mass density $\rho$ centered at a point $\mathbf{p}$, inside which you've placed a smaller sphere of mass density $-\rho$ centered at a point $\mathbf{p}'$. In the region of intersection, the two densities cancel out, leaving you with a net density of $0$.
## A simpler case
Say we have a body with uniform density $\rho$. We can use something called [Gauss's law for gravity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%27s_law_for_gravity). This shouldn't be confused with its cousin, Gauss's law for electrostatics - usually just called "Gauss's law" - or the underlying mathematical theorem behind them both, referred to as the [divergence theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergence_theorem) or Gauss's theorem. Regardless of how you want to refer to it, the law goes like this:
$$\int\_{\mathcal{S}}\mathbf{g}\cdot\mathrm{d}\mathbf{A}=-4\pi G\int\_{\mathcal{V}}\rho\mathrm{d}V$$
where $\mathcal{V}$ is a surface with boundary $\mathcal{S}$, $\mathbf{g}$ is the gravitational field and $d\mathbf{A}$ is an area element. Then, in our case of a uniform sphere,
$$g(r)\cdot4\pi r^2=-4\pi G\rho\frac{4\pi}{3}r^3$$
and
$$g(r)=-\frac{4\pi G\rho}{3}r$$
We know that $\mathrm{d}\mathbf{A}$ points radially outwards, so does $\mathbf{g}$ by spherical symmetry, and so
$$\mathbf{g}(\mathbf{r})=-\frac{4\pi G\rho}{3}\mathbf{r}$$
as claimed.
# Modeling the cave
The principle of superposition says that to calculate the gravitational field due to two objects, we can simply add the gravitational fields created by each object. Let's call these fields $\mathbf{g}\_+$ and $\mathbf{g}\_-$, coming from the sphere of density $\rho$ and the sphere of density $-\rho$, respectively. Now we just apply the result from the last section:
$$\mathbf{g}\_+(\mathbf{r})=-\frac{4\pi G\rho}{3}(\mathbf{r}-\mathbf{p}),\quad\mathbf{g}\_-(\mathbf{r})=\frac{4\pi G\rho}{3}(\mathbf{r}-\mathbf{p}')$$
The total gravitational fields is then
$$\mathbf{g}(\mathbf{r})=\mathbf{g}\_+(\mathbf{r})+\mathbf{g}\_-(\mathbf{r})=-\frac{4\pi G\rho}{3}(\mathbf{p}-\mathbf{p}')$$
which is constant, though non-zero. Notice that if the spheres are concentric, $\mathbf{p}-\mathbf{p}'=\mathbf{0}$ and the field vanishes - the same result as the good old shell theorem.
] |
[Question]
[
If given a reason to develop such a process, such as attracting prey or scaring away threats or even making recognisable patterns to 'talk' to humans, what is the most likely way they would do this?
Would they be more likely to growl? Hum? Groan? Or would full on speech be possible?
Edit: Ideally it should be a repeatable sound, not one that requires the regrowth of a cell structure.
[Answer]
The vocalize an organism would need an air reservoir and some mean to apply pressure on it, forcing flow through an adequate aperture.
The closest I can imagine a plant can get to this is by developing some vesicles with the following features, resembling something similar available in [Ecballium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecballium):
* filled with pressurized air
* they break open according to a preferential line surrounded by suitably stiff material
When these vesicles break open (either because an animal steps onto them or bite them) the release of gas through the opening could produce something similar to a short whistle or feeble rumble.
[Answer]
## Corn roots can make and sense sound.
The noise they make is very quiet, but if you place a corn seedling in front of a laser, the sound vibrations can be detected and you can play it back through a speaker.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vOWT8.jpg)
The sound resembles a soft crackling, and is made by the roots growing. This may not sound like vocalizing, but if the sound is played back to a seedling, it responds.
One experiment played the sound to a row of corn seedlings, and timelapse footage clearly showed that the roots were growing towards the sound.
There has been speculation on the purpose of this adaptation, and it seems to be related to direct the roots to grow somewhere, perhaps away from competitors.
---
Since the noise is made by the roots growing, to have audible vocalizations you would need faster growth. So, let's look at the fastest growing plant in our world, bamboo.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kFZp1.jpg)
Scientists believe that fast growth in bamboo is caused by high coordination between cell division, cell growth and cell wall biosynthesis, which allows the plant cells to reproduce far quicker and optimizes the plants for rapid growth.
Grasses grow by elongation, but if your roots did a similar thing to bamboo, they would produce louder noises. Different plant species might produce different noises to due to differences in the density, shape etc. of the roots.
**EDIT:**
>
> Ideally it should be a repeatable sound, not one that requires the regrowth of a cell structure
>
>
>
This could be repeatable if it had the super-fast growth I discussed earlier. The plant could have several offshoots of the stem, the cells of which would grow extremely fast. Differing speeds of growth and lengths of it would produce different sounds, and the offshoot breaks off when it is finished a single "statement". The other plant "hears" this, responds, and the cycle repeats again.
**EDIT #2:**
Here is an excellent suggestion from Inoutguttiwutts:
>
> Your answer becomes more viable if the plants are a hive mind. Each growth sound can form a phoneme, and each phoneme comes from a different plant in the hive. Thus individual plants communicate in monosyllabic 'grunts', but a whole plantation 'sings'
>
>
>
Again, an answer may lie in bamboo. Each bamboo plant is in fact interconnected to others by a subterranean system of root-like structures.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HMzfq.jpg)
The world's heaviest organism, Pando, is a clonal colony of a single male quaking aspen, which looks like an entire forest. It uses a similar setup to bamboo.
Anyway, a plant like Pando could potentially evolve to have many "drones" which grow with extreme speed to vocalize. A single plant in the centre contains a sort of pseudo-nervous system (The system could be based on chemicals contained in the water carried by the xylem) which synchronizes the vocalizations of the drones to produce communicative messages.
---
Could this develop into speech? If there was a selective pressure to do so, probably. If all the plants grew this fast, there would be higher competition among species for growing space, so more complex communication might be needed. Or, if your plants have other sensory systems besides "hearing", they might be able to detect herbivores, and tell their fellow plants to secrete acid, extend spines or something.
[Answer]
**Resonance Chamber**
We know many plants can adjust the orientation of various parts in a reasonably rapid pace by adjusting the water pressure within their tissue. Sunflowers use it to follow the sun, morning glories to open the flowers when its cool, fly traps and pitcher plants to close their mouths.
Consider a species of plant that communicates by adjusting the pitch of a resonance chamber, which is sounded by the breeze. Think of how we have all blown across the top of a bottle to make it ring. If that bottle could change its shape, and thus its pitch, the plants could do so in a similar manner.
Humans would then be able to communicate with the plants by repeating the tone and duration, and facilitate communication of the plants by placing a fan near them to give them a constant breeze to communicate with.
Maybe this evolved as a means of the individual plants to monitor each other for predators, or to find the best location to grow toward for the spreading of their seed. Over time, the plants grew a means of encoding and decoding the sounds to create a sort of collective intelligence.
Travelling through a grove of such plants in a canyon might sound eerie during a thunderstorm as the plants sing to each other with the rumble of low, powerful organ music as they worship the storm that brings them precious water
The main idea here is that the plants dont necessarily have to be able to produce the wind in order to make use of audible communication. They just have to grow in a place that facilitates a reasonable expectation of breeze.
[Answer]
The follow-up novel to Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" (called ["Speaker for the Dead"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_for_the_Dead))
>
> has that feature in a species of trees. They use their water-transporting fibers to manipulate the frequency in which the whole tree resonates when "pinged". So another species would basically play them like a drum (very slowly), and they would change the resonance to communicate. This symbiotic lifestyle is explained by a complicated system of burial rituals, basically planting the tree in the still-living body of a dying mammal whose "spirit" will then take possession of the tree, hence the trees are the ancestors of the mammals, and that's why they communicate.
>
>
>
[Answer]
One simple solution is for them to be of a shape where the wind, or some other natural phenomenon, passes over the plant and creates noise. Barring that, the plant must be able to produce mechanical energy--movement of some kind. I immediately think of the way crickets make noise. Perhaps the plant, through expanding or contracting, may rub against itself or something nearby. This could work for tapping also. This could be caused by the plant becoming more turgid from absorbing water, or some other more complicated process.
[Answer]
**The plant would use a violin-like vibration generator and premade (grown) resonator cavities.**
Plants can move. Here is a mimosa - a "sensitive plant"
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_plant_movement>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MsxxW.gif)
If you can move you can create vibration. Envision drawing a bow across a string. A semirigid structure (like the human vocal cords, or a violin string) can vibrate.
Our speech is just modulation of vibration noise from our vocal cords using the structures of the mouth and tongue. Persons without a larynx can substitute vibration from an electrolarynx and shape these vibrations into words. Speech is stereotypically robotic. Most people have heard someone use one of these.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/v7yvc.jpg)
I have never seen nor can I find an artificial larynx played with a bow but it would work and would be a great thing for a story. I can imagine a violin-like device under the chin of the user. It can do better than the robot device because the user can play different notes or intensities according to the desired voice tone.
Ah yes - the plant. The plant would also produce vibrations like a violin. It might shape the vibrations into words as we do, but that is a lot of moving. A speaking plant might have various resonator cavities, and vibrate under the one / ones that it needed for a given vocalization. One of the earliest artificial speech generators worked this way.
<http://research.spa.aalto.fi/publications/theses/lemmetty_mst/chap2.html>
>
> 2.1 From Mechanical to Electrical Synthesis
>
>
> The earliest efforts to produce synthetic speech were made over two
> hundred years ago (Flanagan 1972, Flanagan et al. 1973, Schroeder
> 1993). In St. Petersburg 1779 Russian Professor Christian Kratzenstein
> explained physiological differences between five long vowels (/a/,
> /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/) and made apparatus to produce them
> artificially. He constructed acoustic resonators similar to the human
> vocal tract and activated the resonators with vibrating reeds like in
> music instruments. The basic structure of resonators is shown in
> Figure 2.1. The sound /i/ is produced by blowing into the lower pipe
> without a reed causing the flute-like sound.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UjmZW.jpg)
The resonators would work as well with a vibration from a string or vocal cord or leaf. Fricatives would be hard for a plant but you could get used to speech with mostly vowel sounds.
[Answer]
You are asking for something completely new.
Animals have muscles. we vocalize by tightening muscles to change something that produces sound. Vocal cords vibrate at different frequences when they are stretched different amounts.
Plants don't have muscles. They can move slowly -- like mimosas can move their leaves by changing the way water moves inside them. That's slow. They can grow things in tension and suddenly release it, like a venus flytrap snapping shut on an insect. But a Venus Flytrap's trap takes hours to open if it fails to catch its prey on the first attempt.
They can sometimes grow fast, but that's wasteful as communication. Imagine you had to grow new muscle for each syllable you spoke, and the muscle provided a permanent record of your communication but was not otherwise very useful. I bet you wouldn't say a whole lot.
We haven't yet considered a way for plants to think fast. If they don't think fast, maybe they don't need to communicate fast. Of course they don't have anything like animal brains, but they are known to respond to stimuli some. If we assume plants with some kind of slow intelligence, then they can communicate slow.
So for example some leaves that curl up and expand. If it takes 10 seconds for a leaf to change state, that's a communication rate of 6 bits per minute. If a plant can control multiple leaves independently at the same time, then its maximum communication rate depends on how many it can do. If it can move 10 different leaves indepedently, then the rate goes up to one bit per second.
Plants that communicate with nearby plants could have individual rootlets that communicate with each other, and they could do it chemically. If it takes 10 seconds to send a chemical message, and it can control 10,000 independent rootlets that communicate, that's a rate of 1000 bits per second. Assuming they have a communications protocol that can interpret the signals.
Plants might be more likely to communicate with humans some way other than by vocalizing. Making audible sound costs energy and words people notice require quick changes. A plant could create a sort of vocoder if it could depend on wind to blow through it. It could manipulate vascular tissue to change the shape and make words. But if a plant takes 20 seconds to say "Hello" humans might not notice. A signal that humans can see might be more likely.
] |
[Question]
[
Lets say magic is capable of summoning fire of varying intensities for different amounts of time, how effective would a shield of wood covered in leather or metal? What would it take to melt or set the shield ablaze? What shield shape would be best at dispersing said heat? And at what point would the heat become fatal to the person holding it?(Suppose the wizard does not know about concentrating heat on a small point, the fire originates from the hand and the user is approximately 20 feet away, the fires heat remains constant throughout the blaze, and it is a flame like that of a propane flamethrower)
[Answer]
# Wood is a good insulator
From that perspective, wood will give you a good deal of protection. Heat transfer is governed by Fourier's law $$q = -k\Delta u.$$
The thermal conductivity ($k$) of wood is about 0.2 W/m/K. Lets say you want to keep heat transfer below 1000 W. That is about a microwave oven's worth of heat. Definitely painful, deadly after a while, but survivable for a short time. The thickness of a shield is maybe 2.5 cm (about an inch), and area is about 0.3 m$^2$ (or 3 square feet). The heat flux is measured in units of W/m$^2$. The temperature gradient $u$ is in units of K/m.
$$\frac{-1000 \text{ W}}{0.3 \text{ m}^2} = -0.2 \frac{\text{W}}{\text{m}\cdot\text{K}}\frac{T \text{ K}}{0.025 \text{ m}}.$$
I solve this as 417 K. Assuming that it is uncomfortably hot on your side of the shield (320 K), that means you can be hit with a constant heat source at around 750 K, hot enough to melt lead, for probably a couple minutes.
# Wood is also flammable
Wood will autoignite at around 600 K. Canvas made from cotton will ignite even lower, although I think properly prepared wool would be more fire resistant.
# Conclusion
Wood will protect you from a fire, up until the point that the wood itself catches fire. This is around 600 K, which is also around 600 F.
The heat flux needed to ignite wood might be in the 10-50 kW per m$^2$. Considering that our knight *behind* the shield is seeing 3 kW per m$^2$, it won't take long (less than a minute) for your shield to go up in flames if any of it is made of wood (or canvas or leather).
[Answer]
Different kinds of wood and different metal alloys have different combustion and melting temperatures. Listing them here would not be productive - you can find results online with a few searches.
The shape of the shield would have negligible effect on heat dispersion. You would need very weird, "unshieldly" shapes to get a useful effect (think of a heat sink, see below).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bZaam.png)
As for the effects that would have on the shield bearer...
**Wood** might make a good thermal insulation layer as long as it doesn't combust. If it does get into combustion, then you have flames on your arm. Enough said... Best option for the poor soul is to unstrap the shield and either jump in a body of water or roll on the floor. If fine sand is available, that can help put down the fires too. The results of such an attack are obvious - depending on how long you got exposed to it, and the amount and kind of clothing between the flames and your arm, you get from small burns to 2nd or 3rd degree ones.
**Metal** is a worse protection in this case... Most metals are good thermal conductors. You don't have to melt the shield to cause grave damage. Even at 100 degrees Celsius (212 F), you are going to get seriously burned. If the metal goes red hot (around 430 Celsius/800 F), you are sure to get 3rd degree burns.
Burned skin can easily get infected. In medieval Earth people had zero knowledge about antibiotics, and doctors would not wash their hands before helping patients. Unless your world also has some healing spells, people who get their arms burned this way are probably going to need amputations. Ironically, the usual way to close and sterilize the stump resulting from an amputation is through cauterization.
Finally, if you want to kill someone behind a shield with magical fire, it would be much more productive to just burn the person rather than the shield. If the magical fire is delivered in a manner similar to a flame thrower's fire, just aim at the target's feet or around the shield. It would take a very large shield to completely cover someone, but then that person is stuck. If the shield is easily flammable or metallic it's just a matter of time until they get serious hand and forearm burns.
Remember that human hair and most kinds of clothing are flammable, and metal armor is just as conductive as a shield. Burning the shield instead, in a medieval setting, is more likely to cause a slow death and thus is much more cruel than a quick kill.
[Answer]
**Shield Construction**
Wooden shields rarely have exposed wood, they are covered in metal, leather, or painted canvas. Even the few known uncovered viking shields are believed to be burial shields not utility ones. [more on viking shield construction and usage](http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/viking_shields.htm).
metal shields are split into two groups as only smaller metal shields were ever solid metal which may not provide any protection depending on how the "fire" is delivered. larger metal shields were metal sheething over wood, some got even more complex, the famous spartan shields were layered wood and leather covered in a layer of bronze.
[source](https://myarmoury.com/feature_shield.html)
**Effects on the shield**
An agricultural flamethrower (propane) will take quite a long time to burn through a wooden shield and a metal sheathed shield might prevent heat transfer even through prolonged exposure. Gas based torches are remarkably bad at igniting a flat smooth wood surface, to the point it can be used for decorative highlighting of grain. They just do not transfer heat very efficiently if not enclosed. Leather covering will make them far more resistant, to the point it will take minutes of constant exposure to breach the shield. With metal sheathing it may not be able to reach the ignition point of the wood understructure even after several minutes of exposure, especially as the wood will char into an even worse conductor first.
Either type of shield will allow the soldier to close the distance and dispatch the wizard with plenty of time to spare, likely without the shield even igniting even in the worse case scenario. the exception being some painted canvas coated shields as the canvas may ignite even if the wood underneath goes unharmed which should at least provide a decent distraction.
smaller shields and bucklers may not be able to defend against the flame at all depending on how big it is, if they do have the coverage even these solid metal shields will still be able to defend for a considerable amount of time as far as combat is concerned. Again more than enough time for the soldier to close the distance and attack the wizard.
**Why this doesn't matter for the flame as a weapon.**
The biggest advantage the wizard will have is sight and mobility, as the defender will not be able to see the wizard while using the shield to block the fire. So the wizard can easily move the flame to target the legs or even just step to the side and hit an undefended angle, without the defender being able to react or even know until it is too late. So this flame will still make an effective weapon because shields do not have total coverage. **Used with skill the flame will work quite well as a weapon but it will not brute force its way through a shield**.
[Answer]
Given your criteria, the shape, surface, and color of the shield does matter.
The trick is, once shielded from fuel and radiated energy, you want to keep hot AIR away from the target, not the fuel (unless the fuel actually sticks to the shield).
A white or silvery shield would be most effective in deflecting radiated heat away. A black shield would be the worst-case scenario. A slippery shield would prevent the fuel from sticking. Think about police shields, made of composite material, that deflect Molotov cocktails and the burning fuel from them.
The applied heat is not stationary (like a match), it is moving. If you keep the heat *moving* past the shield, it minimizes the effect. If the shield were appropriately shaped, it would deflect the air flow (and thus the heat energy) around it. I would suggest that a curved narrow shield would be best to deflect the air flow, and thus the majority of the heat. Think a branch moving across a fire vs the same branch stationary over the fire.
And the size and shape of the directed flame is important. Ever try to light a log with a match? But use several matches over a larger surface, you might do it. It is the amount of total heat that matters. A narrow flame jet is not as effective as the same jet with a wider circumference of flame. The total heat energy would be greater. A blow torch capable of burning through metal at close range would not be effective at 20 feet, but a jet engine would. Even a 50,000 BTU furnace burner will not ignite wood at twenty feet. It doesn't have enough force to carry the heat that far. Mind you, an unprotected human would get mighty uncomfortable from just the radiated heat. Remember, water boils at a lower temperature than wood ignites (you can't cause a wood fire by just pouring boiling water at atmospheric pressure over it, no matter HOW much water you use).
The fuel is important. How quickly does it burn? Over 20 feet, will it all have burned up, or will there still be fuel left to burn, and thus to create heat? If the fuel all burns up at source, or just after, all you have is hot air blowing over the shield. To cause damage, it would have to be super-heated air.
Also, it depends on the speed of the flame (the speed of the air flow). An intense flame, but without any force behind it, would not reach 20 feet. Any heat source hot enough to effect the target would be too close to the wizard. Think about standing over a fire, vs standing 20 feet away. So you need a flame with some velocity behind it.
Wood is actually much better at withstanding burning than is metal. A metal beam will deform far earlier than will a wooded beam. Wood doesn't melt, and it doesn't deform and bend under high heat. It maintains its structural integrity until complete failure. It snaps.
And leather is actually very good at protecting against flames. Blacksmiths and welders use leather gloves and aprons for a reason. I have never seen a blacksmith using a metal apron or a chain metal glove.
So, a white or silver curved wooden shield protected by leather (on the inside?) would withstand a prolonged attack.
Unless the wizard could maintain the flame for some time, directed at the target (would the target, a person, really just stand there?) for probably a minute or so, I would suggest that the target could get to the wizard faster than the shield would ignite. And even if the shield DID ignite, it would continue to offer protection until completely burned through.
But change the wizard's weapon to a ball of flame, or a very wide flame (wider than the shield), that will encompass the entire target, and you have a completely different story. The flame does not have to burn through the shield, it (and the heat) goes around it. It's the hot air that wouldn't be stopped. Drop the target into a furnace, and even a ceramic heat shield and perfect insulator will be immaterial, unless the target is COMPLETELY surrounded by the shield.
Really, the best protection against a fire-breathing dragon would be a wooden shield, not metal armor. That's why they make saunas out of wood, not metal.
**Edit**
My background team has reminded me that there is one other danger besides radiated heat, air temperature, and fuel load.
Traditionally, sulfur and brimstone have been referred to in fantasy worlds.
These burning substances add toxic fumes and carbon monoxide poisoning to the mix. No shield (unless equipped with a respirator) will protect a warrior from products of combustion, particularly sulfur dioxide. If the wizard uses a sulfur based fuel, all survivability analysis and bets are off.
It's not usually the fire that kills, it is the toxic fumes.
[Answer]
Some sort of flame acting on some sort of metal, leather or wood for some amount of time... Make a decision about what you want the answer to be for your story and then justify it.
If you want people to survive, a thin layer of steel (better) or leather over a wooden shield will protect them from quite a bit. The heavier the wood, the harder it is to get it to start burning, but the higher its probable thermal conductivity. There will be an upper limit on how heavy the shield can be for the user. A steel shield would probably be the worst because as it heats up, it burns the warrior until they drop the shield. A purely wooden shield would vary from light and terrible to heavy and ok (though perhaps too heavy to use) depending on the type of wood. Leather, [tanned with vegetable extracts](https://www.silvateam.com/en/products-and-services/leather-tanning-solutions/ecotan-tanning-processes/vegetable-tanning.html), is actually a pretty great [flame retardant](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288627587_Behavior_of_leather_as_a_protective_heat_barrier_and_fire_resistant_material).
The wise spell caster will aim around the shield and strafe to flank, so the wise warrior will probably not face down a spell caster alone, no matter their shield.
] |
[Question]
[
Rain happens when the pressure of moist air drops enough to form droplets **and** the droplets get heavy enough to fall.
The trouble that I see is that the pressure will probably drop off slower than the "gravity" (which is opposite the situation on Earth).
There is no actual gravity in a spinning cylinder. The cylinder spins and the tangential momentum from that spin, pushes you into the cylinder.
If there was no atmosphere in the cylinder, there would be no "gravity" if you were not in contact with the surface. With an atmosphere, the atmosphere, through friction from the inner surface of the cylinder, gets dragged into the spin. The spinning atmosphere provides a lateral acceleration that pushes toward the surface of the cylinder. It only seems down because the surface is rotating in the same direction you are being pushed (the surface will move faster so you will fall "down" anti-spinward).
Since the spin (thus perceived gravity) decreases as you move toward the center, I'm concerned that any droplets that form near the center will not be pushed toward the surface.
So, how would we get "natural" rain in a spinning cylinder? I'm assuming a 1km radius but that is open to change.
The solution must allow clear air for the first 100-200 meters from the surface. So, super saturated moisture is likely out (we gotta breathe and live in there).
If possible, I would like to do away with the need to spray fake rain.
**Addition:**
While it would be amusing, I would also prefer to avoid bucket sized drops plunging from the center.
[Answer]
Being large enough.
That's pretty much it. If the habitat is big enough for air to rise, cool, and form clouds, you can get rain. Even if the clouds are all crowded around the axis.
>
> Since the spin (thus perceived gravity) decreases as you move toward the center, I'm concerned that any droplets that form near the center will not be pushed toward the surface.
>
>
>
That won't be an issue. Hovering at the center is an unstable equilibrium. Drops may hang out there for a while, but eventually any drop near the center *will* get nudged a little out towards the edge, which will result in a stronger push farther towards the edge, and so on. Even if the atmosphere starts out perfectly quiescent and co-rotating with the habitat, the movement of those first raindrops under coriolis effects will produce horizontal swirls, possibly developing into what Larry Niven called "eye storms" (essentially a hurricane flipped up on its side), thus introducing turbulence to the central regions which will ensure drops get transported out relatively efficiently.
Clouds *can* form pretty much arbitrarily close to the ground (after all, that's what fog is), so 1km radius is probably large enough, especially if the entire cylinder has a single day-night cycle so the air is allowed to cool (that way, it doesn't have to rise as much before clouds form). The bigger the cylinder is, however, the more "normal" the weather will seem. The official O'Neill Cylinders as designed by Gerard O'Neill would be 8 kilometers in diameter, which would be just big enough for cumulonimbus storm clouds to form... the effects of coriolis forces, and the crowding towards the middle, probably mean that you wouldn't actually get things that look just like Earthling cumulonimbus clouds, but that should still be *plenty* large enough for rain.
Use exotic materials to make the cylinder *really* big (say, 50km radius), so that you can get stratospheric pressures near the center despite the reduced pressure gradient, and you'd be able to get a clear cylindrical cloud deck layer that does not extend to the axis.
[Answer]
Couldn't you force rain just by having long spikes on the central shaft that are cooled below the ambient air temp, so water condenses on them and are "flung" off the tips? By adjusting the temp of the spikes you could adjust where/when the rain fell in areas along the cylinder. This ought to work even in the very low gravity center. Water collects on the cooled spikes and centrifugal force moves them to the tips where they should land in a relatively predictable area. Moisture can be actively collected from even the driest of earth climates via cooling condensation ([windmill driven condensers working in the desert](https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-04/new-wind-turbine-condenses-clean-water-air) so this should work even if the humidity in the cylinder is below what could cause natural clouds to form. Targeted rainfall would allow for green areas/open water without showering everything (although periodic showers in other areas can wash away dust).
[Answer]
I've been considering this for a while (see my other cylinder hab-related questions) and this is what I've come up with so far:
On Earth the conditions are:
1. Evapouration – atmospheric water vapour
2. A thermal/pressure gradient – to carry and bring vapour together
3. Condensation – atmospheric dust forms the nucleus of droplets
4. Gravity – to draw the droplets to the surface
The first three three conditions would be present in an O'Neill or McKendree cylinder, but the nature of "gravity" in such an environment requires a substitute. That substitute is momentum, or wind, itself.
# Aboard the habitat:
1. Evapouration – Wind, heat and artificial light with the correct properties will evapourate water and keep it in vapour form just as on Earth.
2. Given a sufficient thermal gradient [hadley cells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell) should form and carry moisture with them, from the warmer surface and higher air pressure to the cooler, lower-pressure central shaft:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ig6En.png)
3. Condensation – dust is unavoidable. It may be necessary to periodically "seed" clouds by spraying particulates into the air.
4. Winds will carry droplets through the atmosphere toward the central shaft, where they will collide with others and be carried through, back toward the surface. Unlike rain on Earth, this will "fall" in every conceivable angle, possibly looping and spiraling until finally connecting with a surface.
# Assumptions
This assumes a closed/windowless model with artificial light and heat provided by a mechanism running through the central shaft.
] |
[Question]
[
One of Alice's interstellar jaunts will take her to a Gold Planet. It's a planet that was recently covered in a meter deep layer of gold dust (for realism, it is mixed with silver, platinum, teensy bits or uranium and the like)
I've been thinking about how to do this -- since planets don't naturally tend to refine gold and deposit it as nice uniform layers. My latest idea involves using a [Kilonova](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilonova), or double neutron star collision. This should generate an expanding cloud of gold and other Lanthanides (a few thousand Earth masses), hopefully enough to plate a nearby word.
I am slightly worried however of what having a kilonova going off within [gold dusting](https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/10/16/16482682/ligo-gravitational-waves-neutron-star-kilonova) distance might reasonably be expected to do to a planet(ary system).
Would it make sense to expect a kilonova gold dusting to lay a 1 meter layer of gold dust on a planet, or would the side-effects (have been)/be a bit too dramatic?
[Answer]
## How much gold are we talking about?
Well, let's use the approximation
$$\Delta V\approx4\pi r^2\Delta r$$
If $r$ is about the radius of Earth and $\Delta r$ is $1\text{ meter}$, then $\Delta V\approx5\times10^{14}\text{ m}^3$. The density of gold is $\rho\approx19320\text{ kg/m}^3$, and so $\Delta m=\rho\Delta V\approx10^{19}\text{ kg}$.
Let's say that the cloud of material expands isotropically outward from the source with a total mass $M$, radius $R$ (at a given time) and a thickness $\Delta R$. It therefore has a volume
$$V\approx4\pi R^2\Delta R$$
and an *area* mass density of
$$\sigma=\frac{M}{4\pi R^2}$$
The planet has a cross-section of $A=\pi r^2$,1 meaning that the total amount of mass that hits the planet is
$$\Delta m=\sigma A=\sigma\pi r^2=\frac{1}{4}M\frac{r^2}{R^2}$$
If we set this equal to our earlier value of $\Delta m$, then we find
$$\frac{M}{R^2}\approx10^6\text{ kg/m}^2$$
The typical amount of gold produced in a kilonova via the [r-process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-process) is . . . [not well-known](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/23166/2153). We've got a limited dataset. That said, if we assume (conservatively!) that $M\approx100M\_{\oplus}$, then we need $R\approx2\times10^{9}\text{ m}$, or roughly $0.01\text{ AU}$. The planet would almost certainly be in orbit around the binary system, which *could* be dangerously close. *I* certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere nearby!
## Things you could do to solve the problem
You do have some options here:
* Lower the thickness of the gold coating you want!
* Lower the density of the coating. I honestly don't know what a good value would be; my $\rho$ assumed that the gold would be totally solid (which is probably *not* an excellent approximation).
Both of these let you place the planet further from the melee.
It's worth noting, by the way, that only the half of the planet facing the binary system would be significantly coated, unless an accretion disk of sorts was the form around it. Additionally, the depth of the coating would be non-uniform.
## What would be the effects on the planet from the merger?
[Radiation from such a merger should be emitted isotropically](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aa91c9/meta), i.e. most of should spread out equally in all directions.2 It's possible that some emissions could be constrained to thin beams, but this certainly won't be the case for *all* of the electromagnetic emission.
Let's look at the energies and luminosities involved:
* Gamma rays: $\sim10^{39}\text{ J}$, $\sim10^{40}\text{ W}$[[1]](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aa920c#apjlaa920cs6)
* X-rays: $\sim10^{32}\text{ W}$[[2]](https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/363498/56299)
By comparison, the luminosity of the sun is $\sim10^{26}\text{ W}$. This sort of event is brief but very violent. I don't know what the long-term effects of this radiation will be for the planet, but short-term, it won't be pleasant. The deposition of radioactive isotopes might also be a problem, but I don't know just how bad it would be.
---
1 Okay, it's a bit more than that because gravity's involved, so there's going to be some accretion. In particular, *gravitational focusing* will give an [effective cross-section (p. 22)](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.07148.pdf) (see also [here](https://rein.utsc.utoronto.ca/teaching/planetformation_2015_lecture06.pdf)) of
$$A\_{eff}=A\left[1+\frac{v\_{esc}^2}{v\_0^2}\right]$$
where $v\_{esc}$ is the scape velocity at the surface of the planet and $v\_0$ is the initial relative velocity of the gas and the planet. Let's assume that the planet's escape velocity is the same as that of Earth, $\sim11\text{ km/s}$. The speed of the ejected gas is [expected to be $0.1-0.2c$](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaap/ncurrent/full/nature24303.html?foxtrotcallback=true). This means that $v\_0\gg v\_{esc}$, and so $A\_{eff}\approx A$.
2 For what it's worth, [there will be delays](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aa920c) before the radiation is emitted, even without the effects of interstellar dispersion. It probably won't help you that much, though - the planet will still be orbiting the remnant.
[Answer]
Planets don't refine gold and deposit in in nice layers. Microbes do.
**Have the dust be the dried bed of an ancient ocean, the floor of which was covered with polymetallic nodules.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/f2lk6.jpg)
from <https://arumsekartaji.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/metal-balls.jpg>
Microbial metabolism can convert dissolved metal salts into metallic nuggets. This is best described for manganese but can happen with other metals, sometimes all in the same nugget.
[Marine biominerals: perspectives and challenges for polymetallic nodules and crusts Xiaohong Wang, Werner E.G. Müller. Trends in Biotechnology Volume 27, Issue 6, p375–383, June 2009](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2009.03.004http://www.cell.com/trends/biotechnology/fulltext/S0167-7799(09)00075-4)
>
> Deep sea minerals in polymetallic nodules, crusts and hydrothermal
> vents are not only formed by mineralization but also by biologically
> driven processes involving microorganisms (biomineralization). Within
> the nodules, free-living and biofilm-forming bacteria provide the
> matrix for manganese deposition, and in cobalt-rich crusts,
> coccolithophores represent the dominant organisms that act as
> bio-seeds for an initial manganese deposition.
>
>
>
from linked source
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V6Ezy.jpg)
Could this sort of thing form nodules of solid gold? Absolutely, and I think it probably happens. There have been discovered organisms that metabolize gold salts and excrete tiny gold nuggets - probably just another type of the microbial metal metabolism described above. That only has to go on for a few million years before you have a lot of gold nuggets.
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v495/n7440_supp/full/495S12a.html?foxtrotcallback=true>
>
> Take a solution of gold chloride, a compound toxic to most forms of
> life. Add a colony of Cupriavidus metallidurans, one of the few
> bacteria able to survive amid compounds of heavy metals in mines
> across the world. As the bacteria accumulate the gold salt from the
> solution, biochemical processes within the organisms reduce it to the
> pure metal, which the bacteria excrete in the form of tiny gold
> nuggets — nanoparticles of pure gold. The bacteria produce the gold as
> protection from the toxic gold complexes that would otherwise destroy
> their cells.
>
>
>
Could it work with uranium? Yes.
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v350/n6317/abs/350413a0.html>
So at the bottom of your ocean, dissolved metal inputs leached over eons are accumulated into nuggets. When the oceans went away, wind gradually weathered these nodules of gold, uranium and other metals down to dust. Thus it is when Alice arrives.
[Answer]
Not sure how you would work out the stellar mechanics, but if there was a black hole/neutron star eclipsing the kilonova and exactly halfway between the planet and the explosion, then the matter cloud could be gravitationally lensed around and back to the planet. This would also increase the amount of matter intercepted significantly. If the eclipting body also has a strong magnetic field, you would in effect have a stellar scale mass spectrometer, with which you could filter out the undesired lighter ions. Assuming they exit the nova at the same velocity, and I have no idea whether or not that would be the case.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/92421/edit).
Closed 6 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/92421/edit)
The scenario: The cliched AI takeover happened fifty years ago. Robots now walk the face of the earth, encased in metal and possessing super computers for minds. What little vestige of humanity there is has been enslaved. Laboratories are set up, with the humans serving as test subjects for the robots' evil experiments.
However, there is a resistance. The humans cannot escape. They cannot hide, contact the outside world, or fight on their own. But there is still a glimmer of freedom: they can communicate. Right under the AI's collective noses, they have developed a method of communication which the robots cannot understand. Either it is based on some logic the AI cannot comprehend but humans can, or it is disguised so that it seems like normal conversation. The details are unknown.
That's where you come in. What form of communication could a resistance develop to fool a computer? Humans possess qualities machines never will (eg. creativity and emotions). Is the communication based on that logic somehow? Or is it constructed using innocent phrases, so that the computers hear only regular dialogue? Is there perhaps another method I have overlooked? Is this even within the realm of possibility? Some notes are below:
* The resistance is under constant video surveillance, all day, every day. They cannot hide at all.
* All humans are kept in subterranean metal bunkers. They do not have access to nature in any form, possibly excluding a small amount of rock.
* The AI has basically assimilated all human knowledge. If we wrote about it, AI knows it. It knows all languages, understands all phrases, can decipher all conventional crackable codes.
* The robots possess physical abilities far beyond anything humans have. If we can do it, they can do it better.
* The AI does *not* have emotions. It is not human. While it can create algorithms and theories based on the observable results of human emotions, it cannot fully understand what they are. This is what we possess that the machines cannot.
[Answer]
A computer might be disinterested in how people interact physically. You might imagine something like shaking hands, a hand on a shoulder, etc, and give the other person a squeeze during key words – then you just embed your message in some other innocuous communication.
[Answer]
## You need a secret the AI doesn't know.
Most "classical" cryptography, the type we use today, has no chance at all...though not for the reason you might expect. Your AI probably still won't be able to break through modern RSA, for instance, due to the sheer amount of processing power required. It would take a current supercomputer until the sun goes dark to crack it.
>
> The resistance is under constant video surveillance, all day, every day. They cannot hide at all.
>
>
>
This line is the real problem. The humans can never keep a secret from the computer. They can't have passwords or cryptographic keys. They can't even discuss means of encryption without the AI finding out about them.
All current cryptography works by assuming that some information can be kept secret from an attacker. It might be the details of how the algorithm works, or a very large prime number, or a one-time pad, or a seed for a pseudo-random number generator. But there **has** to be a secret of some sort, so that a person with the secret can open the message, and a person without the secret can't.
So, what's a secret that the AI wouldn't know?
Try something video surveillance can't pick up on. This will depend on what technology the humans have available, but for the sake of argument I'm assuming they have advanced (though not AI-level) equipment.
Suppose they each take a hair from one particular person, and encrypt it with this algorithm: sequence three particular genes from that sample, interpret the nucleotide sequence as a base-4 number, convert to binary, and XOR with your message.
The AI might know that you're doing this, and the exact details of the algorithm. But video surveillance can't see someone's genes. (Keeping the message secret once it's decrypted is a different matter.)
[Answer]
## Constant observation is not omniscience
Cameras have blind spots. So your AI adds more cameras. But there will always be some areas where the camera just doesn't see in detail. Perhaps it's under the table. Perhaps it's by hunching over the work bench to shield your actions from view. It will take careful time and patience to discover the blind spots, but they exist.
Maybe it's as simple as minor eyebrow quirks, finger taps, or other subtle cues that *this* word or *that* word are either truth or lies or key to the statement. Subtlety is key here.
The same works for listening devices. Your AI can install as many microphones as you want, but there will always be dead spots. Maybe it is in the showers or the dishwasher area, where the water's white noise drowns out the sounds of soft voices. Or in the mechanical room where machinery is just too loud. In those spaces, it's a matter of whispering and perhaps learning enough ventriloquism to prevent lip reading.
## This lets you build a hidden ~~language~~ set of code-phrases.
At first, the above methods are dangerous and high risk. It is difficult to hide communications without it being obvious that you're hiding communications. So you use the hidden comms to agree on specific code phrases or words that have specific, previously agreed-upon, meanings.
The AI might be able to reason out that a phrase like "The chair is against the wall" has nothing to do with furniture or walls given the context. But it won't know the actual, previously planned, meaning of that phrase. And it may not be able to reason out that it has a hidden meaning at all.
That kind of encoding isn't crackable via mathematical means. The AI might eventually reason out some of the phrases, if such phrases are always followed by observable actions. But otherwise, it has no hope to understand them. Well, no hope outside interrogation techniques.
## Random noise
People can eventually combine the above ideas into nonverbal communications that, over time, will become more complex. Perhaps people develop a habit of singing nonsense songs while working. At first, they are just self-generated background noise to fill the silence (I know plenty of people who do that, so it won't appear as a psychological anomaly). But then they embed code-words in that noise.
Or they take to creating modernistic art in their spare time. That art is mostly just noise. But sometimes symbols of rebellion or symbols with agreed-upon meanings will be incorporated into the art. Like a far more complex version of today's Captcha tests, this will be difficult for the AI to recognize as code and then even more difficult to interpret. Again, we're talking about new symbols with new meanings, not hiding actual language in art. So the graffiti eventually develops into a kind of emoji system or hieroglyph system with defined meanings, but not meanings the AI can extrapolate from existing data.
## Creativity is key
In general, computers are best at math (as literally all a computer knows how to do is add. Everything else is just creative ways to make a problem become an addition problem. Or so a computer science professor once taught me during an Assembly Language course -- a bit hyperbolic, but generally true.) So your humans must be creative. Computers suck at creativity and imagination. So by using creativity and imagination, they can flummox the AI's abilities. It will try to apply logic and computational power to a problem that is not, fundamentally, a logical problem.
[Answer]
I agree with some of the commenters that more info about what the AI can and cannot do would be helpful to answer this question.
The two things that I think would be useful in this scenario would be human interaction, like Ian Bickings mentioned, but I think that a specific example would be something like the [Tarmarian language](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Tamarian_language) or even memes. A computer would likely be unable to determine the meaning of "As Donkey says, it's like parfait" where most people who have seen the movie Shrek would say you were describing something with layers.
Additionally, I think it would be pretty cool if the humans [nerd-sniped](https://xkcd.com/356/) an AI. You wouldn't even have to have a real use (or know the answer), but if you could somehow convince a computer that you were, say, using the 50th Mersenne prime to encode communication (since computers suck at figuring if numbers are prime or not), you could probably distract an AI for a while, or even completely lock up all their processing power if they decided to devote it to finding the solution. Or maybe you use a convoluted infinitely recurring paradox like [Catch-22](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic)) to accomplish something similar. You could easily claim that this crashed all of the AIs "on-shift" watching the prisoners, and that was enough time for them to establish standards of communication/cryptographic security for one of the other methods.
[Answer]
Your AI seems pretty advanced and I doubt that any form of communication could really work out in the long run. Given that
>
> The AI has basically assimilated all human knowledge. If we wrote about it, AI knows it. It knows all languages, understands all phrases, can decipher all conventional crackable codes.
>
>
>
it doesn't only know about codes and the like, but humans have also written about many obscure kinds and even only ideas (due to impracticality in many cases) of ways to communicate. The worst is that due to its omnipresent surveillance it can also easily get a hold of all kinds of written information and immediately put it into context.
Now, the extent of surveillance is probably important, as others have already pointed out: if it's limited to visuals, then spoken language may still be viable to a degree (the trick is to move as little as possible while producing sounds, e.g. using ventriloquism), or alternatively anything that the sensors in place cannot pick up, like scents and tastes.
However, given that those senses have never been cared much about by humans either, when it comes to explicit communication, the resistance better know what they're doing when employing this kind of communications channel.
[Answer]
I hate to be the bearer of fantastic news, but in this instance you can't have humans figure out how to communicate in a way that a good super intelligent A.I. wouldn't be able to decode. The thing is that A.I. looks like it's shaping up to be way smarter than skynet was in the terminator movies. If you're going to use code that a computer can't figure out then I think the only way to do that is by using a cryptography technique that relies on having a truly random number. That random number could be a very very interesting plot device in all honesty, but it won't remain a secret from the A.I. I forgot what the technique is called, but it has bee mathematically proven that you can't break it unless you have the random number that the method used. That's the issue though. "Truly random" numbers are extremely difficult to come by. I honestly have no idea how the resistance would get their hands on one. To make matters worse i don't understand how they would be able to keep it a secret. If the A.I. figures out what the number is then it can read the resistances messages. Humans are inherently terrible at security. Take the Equifax breaches as an example if you need to. If they do magically get their hands on a random number, then it's only a matter of time before the A.I. either figures out how the number was calculated or gets the number from a resistance member - the member could be sloppy or the A.I. could just beat it out of the member or use an engineered truth serum.
Another major issue with this is that the premise assumes that one has to understand emotions to understand the effect they have. The machine doesn't have to know what sadness feels like. All it has to do is recognize that a person is sad, and then check with what it knows sad people do. Then it understands what sad does to people. If this A.I. has been around for a while then it could have a complete psychological break down of every human. It might not, but it could.
So with all of this in mind, there is only one believable way for humans to talk to each other without the A.I. figuring out what they're saying in your scenario. **For some reason, your A.I. has to be stupid.**
It's why the Sith and Jedi aren't instantly crushed by a really smart computer in Star Wars. It's why the Terminator story line can happen at all. It's why Ultron loses. Stupid A.I. is pretty much the only way this premise works because actual A.I. is shaping up to be a lot smarter than we thought it would be, after you get it to work right and give it enough time to learn.
So, just give your A.I. some deficiency. Maybe it doesn't know how to handle underflow errors and this manifests in it being cocky all the time. Maybe it's bad at chess. Maybe it doesn't know that Sum 41 didn't compose Beethoven's 5th symphony. Give the A.I. a weakness and then explain how and why the A.I. didn't allow itself to be fixed.
Your resistance likely can't be smart enough, but your A.I. can definitely be dumb enough.
[Answer]
**Hidden in plain sight**
For **colour-blind** computer.
Take advantage of colour receptors in the human eye - can the computer 'see' colours, or only black and white?
In the case that the computer is essentially colour-blind, paint messages in reds and greens.
**Write with invisible ink**.
Pass messages around on strips of paper, if the computer reads the paper it will see a harmless message, maybe something encouraging or 'work harder for our benevolent computer' type of message. Bake the message in the oven to read the actual message. The danger here is that while the message is being written, the computer may be able to analyze the writers hand movements and determine the hidden message.
**Underline words in a book** - the computer may read the book, but not understand that the underlined words (or letters) spell out the message. The computer may also become suspicious of the sudden increase in book movements and begin to analyze the recently-read books in the possession of saboteurs more closely.
**Develop phrases** that are innocent-sounding but are coded instructions. However, given enough time the computer may be able to interpret a given phrase as 'dump aluminum strips over the electrical grid tonight'. Also, developing and disseminating such phrases will require alternative communications in the first place.
Another potential danger to any communication mechanism, is the possibility of traitors betraying those organizing the resistance, maybe due to the computer offering benefits for such betrayal.
**Communicate underwater** - write messages on the sand under half a meter of murky water. The computers surveillance systems would need to go underwater to read the message, and by that time you have scrubbed out the message.
[Answer]
Humans. Did you know that what separate us from animals is not the ability to use tools but the ability to share the knowledge about the tool (how to make it and how to use it) both with people around us and those who follow us (next generations).
All our communication methods are artificial. We agreed that the words you are reading mean what they mean. We agreed on many rules about every aspect of every method. Like for example the fact that we write Queue but only say one letter.
BUT as they are artificial it's also very flexible, easy to manipulate and change. And easy to create. Are you Helen Keller? No problem in learning language and communication. You don't have mouth to speak and hands to write? You still can dance about it.
So, let's agree that when you put your left thumb in right nostril then you mean exact opposite what you're saying.
Also how AI is handling metaphors? For example, in Poland during partitions (XIX century) people wrote/told stories about for example crusaders which were actually about present. During communism we made movies so packed with anticommunism jokes that when the censorship removed half of it he stopped noticing other ones (by comparison).
How it handle sarcasm? Or just old plain regular "Yeah, right".
Humans have great ability to speak nonsense will at the same time getting the message through like for example
>
> when the yellow friend stop placing it's gentle fingers upon my watery balls I will initiate to choke the soldier in a purple helmet.
>
>
>
[Answer]
**Use analog data transmission instead of digital**
Computers think and work in a digital world, this is due to the nature of electronics and signals (bits and bytes).
Humans live in an analog world, our organs are made to parse and filter the information in electromagnetic waves and interpret it as light, sound, etc.
By using an analog signal instead of a digital one (e.g. an FM radio) you could transfer speech, etc. in a fashion a computer is not equipped to handle. In order to translate this into digital it needs something that can process analog data and create a dictionary to translate this analog data into digital data - thus if there are no human traitors you're relatively set.
---
This assumes a sped-up technological progression since the AI takeover (shifting out of old redundant technologies happens even faster and more radically)
[Answer]
Let's assume for a moment that the AI is running on a neural net.
Obviously it's a really massive neural net, but it's still a neural net, give it enough inconsistent/incorrect inputs and you can teach a neural net that a frog is a dog.
So the best thing to do would be to **go nuts**.
Don't do anything logical. Speak entirely in nonsense. Jump around, dance, act like a lunatic.
All the new inputs will slowly override the old data and gradually mess up the balance of the neural net. If enough people act that way, the AI will be forced to backpropagate the behaviour and tweak some of its neuron weights in response. If you can get enough people to sustain the behaviour over a long enough period of time, the neural net's weights will be too messed up to do anything useful.
When the AI loses its ability to understand what's going, it won't be able to stop the humans from reasserting control because it won't comprehend what they're doing.
---
In theory at least.
If it has a very well designed system, doesn't use neural nets or somehow realises what's going on and uses a cache of data to keep itself trained, then the plan will fail.
[Answer]
## Try using advanced logic based tricks
For example, an AI will not be able to prove that's [its reasoning system is consistient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems#Second_incompleteness_theorem). Therefore, if you message is
>
> If the AI's reasoning systems are consistient, we will attack at dawn.
>
>
>
the AI will not be able to deduce that
>
> We will attack at dawn.
>
>
>
Simply embedding this into all your messages work great. It also works with the respective consistency statements for your human opponents.
[Answer]
No, there is *absolutely no way* we could *ever* outsmart our AI overlords. Their raw computational power is so vast, we couldn't ever hope to hide *anything* under their noses. For instance, it would be *impossible* for me to communicate anything to you in a way our omnipresent overlords wouldn't see. ;)
[Answer]
**I can think of three ways that the humans might be able to communicate with each other without the superior AI catching on to it.**
---
## Poetry
As mentioned in the question, an artificial intelligence, though it can mimic the analysis or prose and artful devices, only a human can really appreciate the ideas and concepts captured by a poem. Note that the use of a poem would not reveal messages in plain sight but use literary devices to convey the idea rather than exact phrasing.
### Advantages
This seems like a better way for humans to communicate their feelings about situations and their love for each other (maybe?). This also is easy to learn and pickup, and even with the AI's massive database of poetry, even with the ability to add new intercepted poems, it would not become easy to break.
### Disadvantages
Communication has a lot to do with clarity and poems may not be the best pick for this, as different people can interpret the same poem with different results.
---
## Code with Virus
Perhaps the only weakness to this AI is anything written/spoken must be passed through some interpreter/compiler, and this means the AI could be hacked. As part of the developmental process of the AI, rather than "escaping the code" to prevent a virus from running, the AI was developed to "skip over" code that it recognizes contains a virus.
When the humans discover this vulnerability, they develop loads of viruses and attempt to shut down the AI. Now, however, the remnants of the viruses they learned and tried to use against the AI, they use as the header of footer of messages with each other.
### Advantages
This completely prevents the AI from reading and learning anything from a human's message.
The human's can communicate their message directly, as they know where to look for the actual message and ignore the header and footer code that is the virus.
### Disadvantages
Humans have to remember and retain the code that is a virus and write it perfectly. This could also mean it takes longer to "encode" their message.
---
## Illogical Statements
In the second Sherlock Holmes movie (featuring Robert Downey Jr.), Sherlock and his brother communicate with a simple code that makes complete nonsense to an outsider. They flipped any all truthiness of statements (like: "I love you" becomes "I hate you").
The humans have found that using this coupled with using sentences like, "this statement is false," utterly confuse the AI, resulting in the AI ignoring/failing to process their message.
### Advantages
Once learned, the humans could get in a habit of this and learn to communicate quite easily.
### Disadvantages
The learning curve might be harder than I imagine.
[Answer]
The principle of "hiding in plain sight", made famous by E.A. Poe, could help. Humans have a flaw that differentiates them from machines and could be their greatest strength: they make inadvertent mistakes, which AIs know and account for.
Humans could resort to things that AIs would interpret as genuine human mistakes and ignore. For instance, a message in writing could be hidden using common, innocent typos: Only the words with typos would be relevant.
[Answer]
I believe you can create analogue signals that would be very difficult for computer to detect and/or analyze. Some ideas:
1. Pain. Humans sometimes touch each other. The more painful the squeeze - the more truthful (or untruthful) are the words. So if you painfully squeeze someone's hand while speaking - that would have a different meaning from when you just strongly hold the hand. This difference would be impossible to detect on camera or any other means unless you are directly wired to human's neural system. Also, this is not difficult to learn - squeezing hard and kicking feet under the table is a way of communication that had been there for ages.
2. Art. I will assume that the AI do not understand art. And with art, it's easy to transfer a lot of knowledge discretely. Starting from something simple like "if the artwork is good, I'm telling the truth, if it's not - I'm lying" ending with actually encoding real abstract ideas into the art. Remember all of the lessons on "what do the blue clouds represent in this picture?". You would need strong artists for this type of communication, but I think it's feasible.
3. Smell and taste. Even in AI is able to read smells, I do not think it will be able to figure out what that smell means to humans. Using this, you could construct silly sentences like "I think this idea is as good as the corridor to the basement". Then you go smell the corridor, and figure out what kind of smell is there. AI would be able to figure atomic contents of the air here and there - but the meaning of the smell is how human brain specifically parses it.
[Answer]
Even modern computers with neural networking struggle with pattern recognition; the fact that computer systems have difficulty recognizing patterns is the whole idea behind the captcha system.
Any messages written by a four-year-old human should be exceedingly difficult for even a highly advanced AI to crack; the ultimate in human resistance cryptography.
[Answer]
Current AI has a hard time correctly identifying the meaning of sarcastic, ironic, or joking phrases. This is a problem currently under research in the field of [sentiment analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentiment_analysis), which is the use of artificial intelligence algorithms to determine the emotion conveyed by a piece of writing.
For example, sentiment analysis can be used by a company to automatically get a sense of what customers think when they write online reviews. If someone wrote a review like:
>
> This is a very high-quality product. I've been using these for years and am happy with them :)
>
>
>
The customer clearly enjoys the product. If someone writes,
>
> This business is awful! I was treated like garbage and managers refused to help me.
>
>
>
The customer is unhappy. The meanings of these reviews are very straightforward, and we currently have the technology to easily rate them as clearly positive and negative.
However, a review like this can trip up a computer:
>
> I loved the way I was treated by the management! They sure were attentive to my needs after I called them sixteen times!
>
>
>
This review uses a lot of language with positive connotations: "loved", "attentive to my needs." But it's sarcastic. We as humans can easily tell because we understand the implied context given be "after I called them sixteen times." This is difficult for sentiment analysis tools to pick up on.
A review like this can be a lost cause for AI:
>
> You get what you pay for!
>
>
>
Even for us humans, without more context, it's impossible to tell whether this was sarcastic.
---
[The Wikipedia article on sentiment analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentiment_analysis) gives more examples of other types of phrases that are currently difficult for sentiment analysis AI to understand correctly.
[Answer]
## All interpretation systems are capable of being fooled.
Your eyes seem like they're really good at discerning the world, but they're not perfect, are they? You have a big blind spot in the middle of your eye that your brain fills in (and can fill in inaccurately). Even the simplest optical illusion demonstrates that the way your brain interprets what it sees can be manipulated with a well-crafted input.
AI is no different. [There's a field of AI attack called 'adversarial machine learning'](https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15271874/ai-adversarial-images-fooling-attacks-artificial-intelligence), that crafts specific inputs that exploit the AI's interpretation matrix. These aren't bugs - any kind of system complex enough to be useful cannot, mathematically, both be complete and flawless - but they have to be generated based on the specific method being used.
Part of the Human Resistance is dedicated to crafting subversive messages that are classified as innocent by the AI. They have special microphones, speakers and transmitters that inject noise into broadcasts that make it render as innocuous to any nearby robots. They print out orders with special overprinting squares that fool the text recognition systems.
If you have an all-encompassing AI, it's easy to justify only using one method of classification in ways that speak to its personality - this won't work if you need to fool multiple wildly different vision systems at once. You'll need to justify how the Resistance can test its messages, because it needs to be able to try hundreds of different combinations to work out what blobs where start making the vision system more unsure of its interpretation. Perhaps the Resistance has an old version of the vision system, or perhaps they need to capture and subvert a robot, because the AI eventually realises that the robot records misleading logs every time it detects subversive messages.
It's also easy to defeat this only where narratively necessary: human collaborators.
[Answer]
I'm assuming the Computer is using videocameras and not some kind of dust-mote nanobot. Here's what you do. You need some specialized equipment:
* A blanket
* A flashlight
* Whiteboard tablet
* Dry-erase markers
Two conspirators hide under the blanket, and write messages to each other on the whiteboard. When they're done, they erase the whiteboard.
If they're feeling especially malicious, they tap out fake, meant-to-be-overheard statements (e.g. "The Computer is a fink") in morse code.
If they bring a briefcase under the blanket with them, they can carry such a message to a friend's house.
[Answer]
I believe the answer is 'Yes'.
As Jarrett has already pointed out, if the AI is unaware that there is a code, then it will not take steps to crack it.
Consider a dialogue between two people, suppose one person is always telling the truth and the other person always lying. The conversation is likely superficially to make sense, but the sense understood between those two people will not be the same as the sense understood by someone overhearing.
The protocol could be triggered by a statement commonly understood to be untrue, from which point the communication would alternate between true and false. Equally, it could be triggered the other way by a true but unnecessary statement (because the truth is already known by both parties). At certain points the roles could be reversed in a similar way. The key is essentially what is shared (and known to be shared) as common knowledge.
If managed carefully, it would be very difficult to realise that a code was actually in use. Even if it was realised that communication was coded, it would be difficult to understand how, especially if it was not known which statements were true and which were not.
There are subtle variations which could be applied. For example, the trigger could be making either an easily verified statement, or a statement not verifiable like for example:
"It was light when I woke up this morning", would not be verifiable, whilst "The sun is shining again" is. The statements themselves are simple enough, and very possibly true, but they can both serve, by convention, to initiate the protocol.
It would take practice, but humans are quite good at games like this.
And humans are good at knowing when a game is just a game, and when it is something else. Computers are not, because games have emotional components.
] |
[Question]
[
**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
My worldbuilding involves a reasonably near-future, high-realism space station research outpost, and I'd like it to be powered by a nuclear reactor. However, I need as much detail on the actual reactor design as possible. (Also, if its totally impractical, should I move to fuel cells?)
Are any of today's reactor designs generally suitable for operation in zero-g? Or are there experimental/theoretical reactors out there which may be suitable? Where do current designs assume the presence of gravity, and what other factors complicate the use of existing designs when deployed in space? What aspects of the designs can be totally discarded in space (containment, biological shields, etc)?
So far, I've only found detailed info on commercial, land-based power reactors but those are probably overkill for a space station. I only need a few MWe. Can I simply scale down these reactors (I am using these as a starting point because the info on the commercial power plant systems is plentiful, compared to ship- and submarine-based reactors).
How can I provide adequate radiation shielding for my crew, that doesn't involve huge amounts of dead weight? Can the crews water or LOX tanks be arranged as shielding, and the turbines and other heavy reactor components? Do tokamaks and stellarators require elaborate shielding? Do they create torques on the supporting structures?
Let's assume that a resupply mission can provide fuels to the reactor if necessary, and if in-flight refueling is possible; that limited mining of resources is available on-site, and that we're not particularly concerned about dumping waste products overboard.
A good answer will provide deep reference material on a candidate reactor design, with discussion on the modifications necessary to adapt it to zero-g usage. Or, if nuclear power isn't going to work, provide similar resources for fuel-cell or other technology.
[Answer]
There have indeed been fission reactors used in orbit: both the Soviet Union and NASA launched experimental fission reactors on satellites - a Soviet one even malfunctioned and ended up deorbiting above Canada, contaminating a zone with its fission fuel, which ended up with the Soviet Union paying compensation to Canada.
For example, the TOPAZ II massed 1061 kg for a power output of 300 kW. It wasn't flown, but it was extensively tested by both Russian and Western engineers, so it should be a pretty solid baseline.
<https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19980234591.pdf>
You will also find lots of information on this website, which is a collection of resources for hard-SF worldbuilding:
<http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/basicdesign.php#id--Power_Generation--Nuclear_Fission_Reactors>
Note that the TOPAZ II generates 6.8 MW of thermal power for those 300 kW of electricity power, so you will indeed have to get rid of lots of heat. This will be done by heat radiators.
The hotter the radiators, the smaller they can be to radiate a given power. The size reduction is massive, as it scales with the fourth power of the temperature (in K). On the other hand, you need a temperature differential between the reactor and the radiator to actually generate power, so you can't have it running too hot either.
Radiators can take different shapes, but the most common will be large plates sticking out of the reactor module. You will probably want to have those in pairs, each on a side of the module: if you put more of them around, they will start radiating into each-other, which makes you loose efficiency very fast.
Another solution is radiator spikes if you don't need too much surface. Being long and thin, those have less inter-reflection problems, but those would be rather uncommon anyway.
As for radiation shielding, the most probable configuration is having the reactor module at the far end of a long broom, to keep it as faraway from the station proper as possible: the further it is, the less radiation is reaching the station. On the station-facing part of the reactor, there will be a shadow shield: that is, a partial radiation shield put in a way that the station is in its shadow. This avoids having to put a shield all around the reactor, with the enormous mass penalty it represents for anything space-based.
On the other hand, it means that your spacecrafts will have to be careful approaching the station from the other side, so they are inside the shadow once they are close enough for radiation to be dangerous.
And you don't want anything to stick out of the shadow: even if an inert object isn't by itself damaged by radiation, it can reflect radiation back to the station.
On the other hand, the Powers that Be may decide to grace the space program with enormous budgets (this is science-fiction after all) and decide they can afford completely shielding the reactor and avoid those problems.
[Answer]
There is a lot to learn from the [aircraft reactor experiment](http://moltensalt.org/references/static/downloads/pdf/NSE_ARE_Operation.pdf).
In a modern treatment, this would likely be expressed as a LFTR design variant of some form.
This reactor was designed to work right-side up or upside down since planes do that sometimes. As such, it was not dependent upon gravity. This reference paper describes a 2.5 MW liquid fuel reactor. As liquid fuel, near room pressure reactor, there was no need for a containment pressure vessel that adds considerable weight and size to traditional nuclear reactors. Shielding is still needed of course.
Although designed for a plane, this also meets most of the design features you would desire for a space-based reactor. Not dependent upon gravity, comparatively lightweight, high temperature operation (therefore efficient and less heat rejection require for the same load), no need for shutdown every 6 months or so to re-arrange fuel rods, no need for large amounts of water.
The experiment only lasted a few hundred hours, but the viability of the reactor was well-established by the experiment. A nuclear plane is pretty insane, but if you really need a high-power space mission, you could justify the risk.
The launch risk of a nuclear reactor falling on your head should be considered in all such designs, but as the primary fuel in a LFTR design is Th-232, there is no need for tons of enriched fuel. You do need some of the "nasty stuff" (Pu-239, U-235, U-233) to bootstrap a LFTR reactor, but much less that a traditional nuclear design. This could be kept in a hardened vessel during launch.
[Answer]
# Polywell fusion
You state (emphasis added)...
>
> My worldbuilding involves a reasonably **near-future**, high-realism **space** station research outpost, and I'd like it to be powered by a **nuclear reactor**.
>
>
>
Well then, you have a great option there in the [Polywell fusion reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell). Not only is it symmetrical in all three dimensions in a manner that seems very fit for a micro gravity environment, it also **looks** the part. In my opinion Polywell is æsthetically gorgeous. It is also very elegant from an engineering perspective with pretty much no moving parts and — as opposed to crude old fission reactors — not dependent on gravity for anything. As such Polywell certainly fits as representation of a science fiction space reactor. The only suspension of disbelief you need to achieve here is to say "[Robert Bussard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Bussard) was right, Polywell works", which in real life could happen as soon as the year 2020.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iRIIK.jpg)
*Wiffleball 8 in operation. ([Source](http://www.emc2fusion.org/))*
[Answer]
## "Go solid" on purpose
If you read the Three Mile Island analysis (or *The China Syndrome* movie, very similar incident)... what spooked them was overfilling the reactor and causing the **top** part of the reactor to be water instead of steam. Why does that matter since a PWR type doesn't use steam in its primary loop? That steam bubble has the same purpose as the [blue pressurizer tank](http://amzn.to/2iGkbFW) in a house with a well - a volume of compressible gas to buffer changes in pressure, and avoid damage to piping and the reactor vessel.
There's no "top" in zero-gee, so you can't rely on a steam bubble. Instead, you use that same style of pressure accumulator, and make your PWR "go solid". All the space in the reactor is occupied by liquid water.
Why not make steam in the reactor vessel? BWRs do that, and they are a fine design. (*China Syndrome* was a bit confused about whether it was a BWR or PWR). Steam and water must be separated. The only way to do that in zero-gee is spin the reactor, which pushes the water out to the edge... The fuel rods need to be in water, making your core donut-shaped and a lot harder to achieve critical mass. So a BWR type is right out.
## Energy from hot water (or other coolant)
Using steam power in a secondary loop (as in the PWR) is probably right out, same reasons as the BWR: you'd have to spin the steam generators and condensers. Also, the condensers would need to have an ultimate heat sink cooler than 100C, which may not be practical in space. Better to take the water to Peltier devices at the ultimate heatsink, and return the water to the reactor still quite hot. This is normal in a PWR primary loop. It is also cheap to pump, since you are only recirculating coolant at same pressure, not injecting 1-psi feedwater into a 1000 PSI boiler.
Of course, you also have the problem that unlike terrestrial reactors, the environment is likely to freeze water which is not actively heated, ergo,
no shutting down for maintenance. (Sort of like a Soviet Alfa sub whose sodium primary-loop coolant will freeze in the pipes). You may want a different coolant, that either shrinks when frozen and/or has a suitable freezing point. Most materials shrink when frozen, and the Alfa can be restarted in a shipyard facility.
## But water is really good
Be careful in your choice not to lose water's best property - not its absolutely superb thermal density, but rather it being a good *moderator* in normal state, and a really terrible moderator in abnormal state. When a reactor makes excess heat, it makes steam bubbles which slow the reactor down - giving a useful "cruise control", and also passively shuts down fission if coolant is lost. This is such a desirable trait that I wanted to mention it. Chornobyl did not have this.
Another desirable feature of a coolant is that it turns solid and congeals when it escapes into space, that way the ship is not lost and can recollect its coolant.)
If you wonder why I'm keeping reactor design so "close to home", it's because experience matters. The Boeing Dreamliner was proposed as a flying wing. But they went with the conventional shape of the ME262 and 737 because it is so well understood.
] |
[Question]
[
Nature does some pretty interesting things with gender:
## This is a female trilobite beetle.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YWmuP.jpg)
Scientists have observed females extensively, yet for decades, scientists could not identify the male triolobite beetle. Of course there had to be one, as the females cannot reproduce asexually - but the males had never been observed until recently because they look completely different.
## This is what a [male](http://lkcnhm.nus.edu.sg/nis/bulletin2008/2008nis175-178.pdf) looks like.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7vC52.jpg)
---
While nature can produce some extreme circumstances like these, I'm interested in pushing it farther. In a relatively complex, but not necessarily intelligent, two-gendered species,
**What can be the greatest possible *genetic* difference between males and females, and**
**What are 'cheaty' ways to make them even more diverse?**
[Answer]
I also think you could have 100% genetic diversity, but not as Philip suggests, since you are looking for the male and female to be of the same species.
Jason K gave you a good answer, but I would like to expand it even further.
Now, the example I'm about to give you is just theoretical. There is not, to my knowledge, anything like it on the real world.
Humans have 46 chromosomes on each cell, which constitute the totality of their genetic code. There is 1 pair of sexual chromosomes (XX in women and XY in men) and 22 pairs of other chromosomes (these are named autosomal and code everything else in the body).
Let's assume a species with the same genetic configuration, but in which male and female are so diferent, they look like diferent species.
First, you must know that, although we have a genetic code, not all genes are expressed all the time. Some are up-regulated and some are down-regulated. Which means, some genes are activated and some genes are inactivated. A liver cell will express a diferent set of genes than a brain cell, even though the genetic code in both is the same.
Now, imagine that each member of that species has
* 2 sexual chromosomes, that determine the individual's sex
*(let's call them S chromosomes)*
* 22 chromosomes that contain genes for a male member of the species
*(let's call them M chromosomes)*
* 22 chromosomes that contain genes for a female member of the species
*(let's call them F chromosomes)*
The S chromosomes would determine if the individual would be a male or a female. How? The S chromosomes of a male would "silence" the F chromosomes. And the S chromosomes of a female would "silence" the M chromosomes.
So, a male would only express the genes from the 22 M chromosomes and a female would only express the genes from the 22 F chromosomes.
This means that the content of the M and F chromosomes could be completely diferent. The only thing that would have to remain equal for both sexes would be characteristics that would allow genital and environmental compatibility, so that males and females could reproduce.
---
What about the genetics of reproduction?
In humans, the gametes contain half of the totality of the genetic code, ie 23 chromosomes (being 1 sexual and the other 22 autosomal).
When the 23 chromosomes from a sperm combine with the 23 chromosomes of the ovum, we get 46 chromosomes again: this is a new individual.
In your fictitious species, you would have to work this out a little further, lest a male individual gets a majority of F chromosomes (and vice-versa), which would be incompatible with life.
In the production of the gametes of your species, you would need them to contain:
* 1 S chromosome
* 11 autosomal M chromosomes
* 11 autosomal F chromosomes
When the gametes combined, this would render 46 chromosomes again:
* 1 S chromosome from the father + 11 M chromosomes from the father + 11 F chromosomes from the father
* 1 S chromosome from the mother + 11 M chromosomes from the mother + 11 F chromosomes from the mother
In this way, you would ensure genetic diversity because a female daughter wouldn't get all her F chromosomes from her mother, but rather half from her mother and half from her father (yes, the father would transmit half of his own inactivated F chromosomes). You would also ensure that every member of the species would have the set of chromosomes required for their assigned sex.
---
So, it is theoretically possible to have 100% genetic diversity, since the genes expressed in both sexes would be completely diferent. Even though, of course, there would not be so much genetic diversity if you took the genetic code as a whole.
[Answer]
Cheaty answer: 100% diversity, because males and females are actually two completely different species, but have a symbiotic relationship where they rely on each other for procreation.
Both species are actually hermaphrodites. Genetic exchange between members of the same species happens separately from procreation. For the actual "making babies" process (however you want it to happen), both species are required and the produced offsprings are of both species (or alternatively there could be different procreation processes for creating males and females, and they perform whichever the society currently needs more of).
Culturally they would appear to be of the same species. They might even think of themselves as the same species. It would take advanced biology knowledge to reveal the truth that they actually aren't.
[Answer]
Functionally you can have any different appearance you want, so long as the males and females have a compatible set of sexual organs (won't even need those if the males fertilize eggs after they have been excreted by the female) or at the very least a set of attractants to they can find each other and realize they can mate with each other (and you STILL don't need even that if the male releases his sperm into the environment and the female just stumbles across it!).
While the male and female may differ only by a single sex chromosome in the tried and true XY type sex determination system, that chromosome can enact all sorts of changes by up or down regulating all the other genes. And if you get into more complex sex determining systems, like the temperature system of some reptiles, you could affect all sorts of genes. Those trilobite beetles, for example, may represent a female that is stuck in a larval stage while the male molts and turns into the winged beetle form.
So you are really limited only by environment. It is unlikely, for example, that an aquatic female would ever encounter a terrestrial based male, unless they both frequent tide pools or something. But there really is nothing that keeps a hummingbird-like male from mating with a grizzly bear-like female assuming they share the same territorial range and have some mechanism for exchanging DNA. The insect world has many examples of extreme sexual dimorphism.
But the key here is that the reasons for sexual dimorphism have to make sense. The more care and raising of offspring needed, the more similar to each other mates tend to be. If the young are all on their own from the get go the appearance of the parents is functionally superfluous and the males and females can resemble two totally different species but if the parents care for the offspring then the sexes tend to be pretty close in appearance (at least when young) so they can have similar "child care" requirements.
[Answer]
This is a pretty unanswerable question, given the complexities of genetics. But from a basic standpoint: As much as you like, as long as the two different genetics are still capable of being combined to form another creature capable of reproducing.
In you scenario you specifically asked about male and female, so I'm assuming binary sexual reproduction here (two partners, two sexes). These two will (if they're anything like us. Who knows, they might not be!) have a matching number of chromosomes. Without a matching number they might still be able to have children, but those children would then not be able to procreate further.
Aside from that you can go wild with genetics. You can't guarantee that the children of this coupling would be in any way the same as their parents, or even that they'd survive particularly long, but fundamentally your question boils down to whether or not the chemicals in one parent's gametes can successfully combine with the chemicals in the other parent's gamete and bring together some other chemicals that like to keep replicating.
In the case of humans that's hideously complex, but essentially boils down to half of a stable chemical arrangement from one cell being fastened onto half of another stable chemical arrangement from another cell. If the combination of those is another stable combination of chemicals another stable chemical arrangement that replicates itself occasionally then you've got reproduction.
So go nuts. It's your world. And unless your world is going to be a rather dull place full of discussions on diploid pairing and zipping proteins you can pretty much forget about actual genetics and just focus on the macroscopic differences, for which you don't even need differing genetic codes, as evidenced by bees, ants, beetles, spiders, lions and Man-O-War jellyfish.
Have fun!
] |
[Question]
[
Now maybe this belongs in physics, but I want it here because I'm interested in the impacts on our society if the speed of light (c) were to be 2x faster since the big bang.
My first thoughts were about how this would impact our energy and e=mc^2, which would mean the entire universe would be in a higher state of energy, but what would this actually mean for us in terms of consequences?
# TO CLARIFY:
In this new universe:
c is twice as big as c in our universe.
Other than that, everything stays the same, in terms of universal constants.
I don't want a response as to why this would not work or why I have got some semantics wrong, this is a "what if" style question, I want crazy and wonderful answers!
[Answer]
Nuclear reactions would be much more energetic. Top of mind I can think of nukes delivering many more megatons for the same payload.
But what really boggles my mind is the nuclear fusion in the core of stars. Stars would output much more energy in that universe than in our own. This would change interstellar dynamics. Supernovas would be much more dramatic events. I don't have the math in me to calculate how bad that would be for life but I think this would prevent life from ever forming as we know it, since the killing range of novas would go up by orders of magnitude. For any star you may think of, the goldilocks zones around them would be way farther from them than they would be in our world.
The mass threshold that determines whether a supernova will leave behind a neutron star or a black hole would also change. It would take much more mass to form a black hole. The universe might evolve in a much different way due to that.
Also the observable universe would be much bigger for the same perceived amount of time since the Big Bang. That might be interesting.
[Answer]
As a physicist with no rep on this site, I have been lured over by this interesting question.
I think the real answer is that the physical consequences of doubling the speed of light would be so far reaching it would be very difficult to accurately describe such a universe without making huge errors and introducing ridiculous inconsistencies. It's not as simple as your GPS being twice as fast, or nukes being twice as powerful. The entire universe would be radically different; one should really be questioning whether human life or life at all would even be possible.
You might want to read about the [fine-tuned universe theory over on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_universe#:%7E:text=The%20characterization%20of%20the%20universe,%2C%20for%20some%20reason%2C%20improbable.). Because even a minute change in the value of physical constants (such as c) would eliminate the possibility of life as we know it, some physicists reckon that physical constants are somehow 'fine-tuned' for life.
Just an extract:
>
> If, for example, the strong nuclear force were 2% stronger than it is...
> diprotons
> would be stable... hydrogen would
> fuse into them instead of deuterium and helium. This would
> drastically alter the physics of stars, and presumably preclude the
> existence of life similar to what we observe on Earth.
>
>
>
There are criticisms of this theory, particularly that it is 'anthropocentric'. My personal view is that life is so ridiculously improbable anyway that we could never predict what other kinds of life might exist or could exist in alternate universes, such as the one you are proposing. After all, the laws of physics don't predict the existence of humanity in our universe.
I would just think of a doubled speed of light as basically a get-out-of-jail card to come up with whatever universe you like, rather than thinking how it might alter this one. Alternatively, just hope that no chemist, physicist, or mathematician ever comes across your universe!
Oh and... my 1 rep means I can't leave comments or downvotes. I don't mean to offend but the answer by @EveryBitHelps is absolute codswallop.
[Answer]
The [fine structure constant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant) becomes twice as small as we know it, resulting in twice as large periodic table. I can't do the math, but the gut feeling is that unstable elements in such a universe would be a rarity (at the non-relativistic limit $c \rightarrow \infty$ there are no unstable elements whatsoever), so no A-bomb, good. On the other hand, fusion is still there, and ignites at lower energies, so the whole stellar dynamics becomes quite different. Again, I don't have any math to support the claim.
[Answer]
Well, OR you could have the same amount of energy but AU-Einstein discovered the formula e=m\*(c/2)^2... ;)
"c" isn't defined by the speed of light, it just so happens that since c is the highest speed possible and light has no mass (and thus can achieve the highest speed possible) the two are equal. C is the speed of causality - no consequences of any event can propagate faster than c. This means that information cannot be transmmitted faster than that either - I don't think it would actually change a lot in a practical sense though, unless you include additional requirements like "AND e=mc^2 is still the same" ;)
[Answer]
One problem about your concept is that the lightspeed appears in some other physical laws that they would all have to be rejigged to remain constant. So we assume that is so, then that means everything else in the universe is the same as in our universe. That means no increased energy outcome from nuclear reactions because E = m(c/2)^2.
Of course, if you left all the other physical constants at the same values as in our universe things start becoming funny fast. (No pun intended.) Electromagnetism would be rewritten because its equations define lightspeed. Every equation with a value for lightspeed will be changed and its consequences thought through. For example, electric and magnetic fields will be stronger. Cosmic rays will be faster, roughly twice as fast.
What about fast interstellar travel? Not really. The energetics of propelling a spacecraft to close to the new lightspeed are, at least, just as formidable as for our value of c.
[Answer]
On a planetary scale. Just spitballing, no maths. (assuming some sort of life as we know it could exist)
The difference in the speed of light and sound would increase. So Eg you would see the lightning alot earlier than hear the thunder. That lightning would also be brighter and possibly longer lasting...so no watching lightning storms without protective eyewear!
Also, in talking. The person you listening too, would appear to finish talking before you heard what they said. It would be like watching a badly dubbed Chinese movie!!! Or like talking on a bad international phone call.
You won't be able to see further, as the curvature of the planet would remain the same but you would be able to see clearer for the same distance. So no hiding in the distance hoping no-one sees you on the battlefields. Think elf-like vision.
The sound barrier was broken and now we can travel at mach speeds. If you double the speed of light, you have just increased the chances of NEVER creating faster than light travel. There goes FTL, and galactic and intergalactic space travel... and time travel for the time being.
No visitation by alien's, unless they are on multi-generational sublight ships. Which makes friendly encounters less likely as they will be desperate for refueling/restocking. So yeah, think Independence Day/Battle Los Angeles rather than E.T.
Although you would be able to see them coming a lot sooner so you would have time to prepare and grab your towel! It would be possible that you could set up a communication network with other planets. You would never meet them, but you could chat and share ideas via a light beam (as long as you take care not to burn out the receivers with too focused a beam. Whoops! There goes your friendy communication attempt and now they are coming to get you).
Light could possibly travel further into the oceans (assuming the light didn't just burn off all the water) this would increase the 100-200 meter zone where most (not all) life exists in the sea. If the light is too harsh on land, it could result in those fishy ancestors of ours never having left the ocean and an underwater civilisation may have evolved instead.
[Answer]
**No impact.**
*Speed of light* is a dimensioned physical constant. Speed of light is 2x faster, only means that the definition of metre in your world is 0.5x shorter (0.5m in the real world is 1m in your world), or the definition of second is 2x longer time interval (1s in the real world is 0.5s in your world).
You need to change some [Dimensionless physical constant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensionless_physical_constant).
] |
[Question]
[
I've got a race of aliens that have no sense of sight. They can measure electromagnetic radiation with instruments, but have no concept of vision.
All I know about video encoding and transmission is that it happens, so my question is very basic.
Humans have sent TV shows into outer space. Would it be plausible for aliens on a tech level similar to ours to interpret the video data as a tactile image?
Would the methods needed be significantly more difficult than interpreting it as a visual image? I'm asking this part since it the video was sent with the intent that it be interpreted visually, and I have no clue what that means in practical terms.
[Answer]
I started to write one answer, and when I went to think of the actual specifics came up with a realization that my answer was wrong because of the nitty gritty of specifics of your example. So I'm going to give two answers, one answering what I think you intended to ask, and one answering what you actually asked; just to cover all my basis.
**Can Aliens interpret visual stimulus without eyes**
Say the aliens have a tv in front of them playing a tvshow, will they know that it is something more then a box?
The answer to this is yes, almost certainly, because they already are doing it. When you get down to it there really are only about two ways of interpreting information. Physical contact and electromagnetic. Sound is just interpreting vibrations within the thing that is physically connected to. Smell and taste is just thoroughly analyzing specifics of the object (in the case of smell very very tiny objects that drift through the air).
The point being that, whatever their normal senses are, they likely are aware of the other options available. In particular since the 'physical contact' option does not work in a void like outer space they *must* use electromagnetic radiation if they want to broadcast data across space. Any space fairing civilization must therefore regularly use electromagnetic radiation, and surely even non space fairing will for the same reason we used radio waves and the like, it's a much faster means of transmitting data.
Sure they may tend to use lower frequency waves, like radio waves, predominately, but they will surely have an understanding of the full spectrum. It's just a matter of realizing they should look at the part of the spectrum that is visible light to us to understand what we are seeing.
After that it make take some work to figure out how much nuance we put into color, but that's not really an inability to detect or understand light, but an interpreting the human psyche and how much importance it puts on that variance of light. It could take some time to derive how *humans* interpret the wavelengths to better understand the meaning we are getting out of it, and what meaning we don't get, but they should be able to do that if they watch enough of our 'tv' just by seeing what we bother to recreate and what we don't.
Now this is a technical understanding. They may not fully 'understand' what we are seeing intuitively. For instance we know dolphins and bats use sonar, we can discuss how it works and we can even create and use our own sonar sensors, but we as humans may not fully *grasp* what a bat is 'seeing' with their sonar. We know most of it, but there will be some nuance lost, and the knowledge will be less direct. They will likely 'watch' our videos by translating them to their senses and will likely lose a little of the nuance in that translation, but their get enough of it.
Now...as to the actual answer...
**Can Aliens understand our video transmissions**
Edit: I have messed with the below quite a bit. I mostly moved my paragraphs around to try to go with a more logical progression along the 'network stack' from low level to high; rather then the random flow-of-thought approach of listing whichever hurdle I thought of next I had before. I've also expanded a bit, added another point or two and tried to better stress the biggest problems. I also asked a question here that is relevant: <https://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11417/how-hard-is-it-to-interpret-binary-data-of-a-new-and-unknown-format-if-its-unk/11423#11423>
The answer to this is probably not, and if they can they are massively beyond us in their computer technology and techniques.
One thing to keep in mind is that we don't broadcast 'video data', we broadcast binary data. A bunch of 1 and 0, nothing more. We later combine that binary data into visual data using an algorithm which the receivers know, but the alien wouldn't. Thus what he is looking at is some 1 and 0 and it's up to him to understand what that means. Those 1 and 0 could be video, audio, pictures, text, instructions for a program, or just gibberish; to name just a few things that the 1 and 0 could become.
To give you an idea of what I'm talking about sometime take a video file on your computer and open it up in a text editor like word or notepad++. It will look like gibberish, that's what happens when you take the 1 and 0 and use the wrong approach to decompiling them. The data only has meaning if you know ahead of time *what* data it is, and how to interpret that data.
This is the really hard part, which I struggle to express the difficulty of. You can do little but guess on how to interpret these bytes and see if the result looks right. If you decided we are broadcasting sound you could likely translate the video as sound to get something that sounds like a consistant sound wave. Since you don't know what our voices sound like you may think we have complex modulations of voice and spend hours upon hours trying to infere our language and syntax; all because you guessed wrong what those 1 and 0 were. You might instead decide that those 1 and 0 are some mathmatical code being sent to you and try to decrypt the seemingly random math, and since there are some consistency in video there likely *are* complex mathmatical algorithms you can perform on video to get nice clean numbers...which are wrong. Maybe you decide those 1 and 0 are sonar data, because you 'see' by sonar and that's an obvious way of seeing data. You may decide our color encoding is actually an encoding of how far away something is and how 'rough' or 'smooth' it is. You could get a valid sonar picture this way, but it probably isn't the picture were sending. Trying to guess what to even interpret the data as is nearly impossible, before you get to the fact that we have complex ways of encoding that encrypted data.
And now his lack of eyes comes back to haunt him, because he doesn't know what video looks like. Even if he somehow stumbles upon a correct way of reading our data he may not immediately recognize it as logical and toss it out to try a different interpretation; because he has so many to try and no way of being certain that one was right. Basically he *expects* to see us encoding data that fit his senses. When he has to *guess* how to translate our data his guessing the data encodes for a sense he doesn't possess seems unlikely. He will keep trying to tweak our video data to make sense as sonar because it looks like it could encode sonar (I believe that since video data is just reflected light and sonar is reflected sound their have similar levels of entropy and mathematically look quite 'similar', and this is likely true for many other potential senses your alien may use) and he understands sonar and it seems more likely he just hasn't cracked how were translating to sonar then that were using something truly foreign that he has a harder time of conceptualizing...
And if that wasn't already heard enough (and trust me, this is by far the hardest part) this is only after you have done a dozen other decrypting steps; because there are a dozen abstractions that you have to interpret first. Each one is a challenge, and each one adds more uncertainty that he is looking at the right data to begin with, and more possible interpretations of the data he would have to mess with, even more chances of 'false positives' where he comes up with *some* way of messing with the data to make something that 'looks logical' but is still completely wrong.
For starters, presumably our video data has some level of compression in it (yes I know UDP video on the internet doesn't, but I think most over-the-air video does for bandwidth reasons?). this adds another layer of logic. First you have to properly figure out our compression logic before you can start on understanding out actual encryption...though I would need to know what format the video is in to know rather it has any compression...
Which brings up another issue, how does he know which signals to look at? Were broadcasting multiple different types of video, as well as audio, pictures, and plenty of other signals. How does he know that all *these* broadcasts are using one encoding and all *those* are using another? what if he decides two different encoding are the same type and tries to come up with a viable method of decoding both? The most obvious example of what I mean is actually our TV. When we broadcast TV we are actually sending two types of encoding, audio and video, which are all in the same binary packets. It will take some work to figure out that all this data, sent at the same time, is actual representing two very different things. it seems more likely he will try to interpret the audio and data as a single 'feed' at first.
Going up one level of the network stack, imagine the alien is expecting trinary data he could get a very different interpretation of the data (though admittedly, presuming binary would make a decent amount of sense). If he misjudges the size of our bytes (think the minimum size of data we usually use) he will get very wrong numbers and projections. If he confuses big and small endian (basically, which side of the 'byte' represents big number changes and which represents small, or even more simplified should he read left from right or right from left) he will get all our numbers wrong by seeing small numbers as big and vice versa. If he gets his endian nature wrong then even if he translates our videos He could get bizarre video where all light objects are black, all black is white. All greens are purple and all blues are yellow etc. (okay, this is presuming a really simple version of video encoding, I'm sure were using a more complex one for broadcasting, but you get the idea...).
The point is there are lots of small things we take for granted when reading binary data because humans have standard conventions that we have agreed on, but the aliens aren't aware of them. Every one of these conventions is, by itself, not that hard to figure out with some static analysis, but having to figure out all of them, and not having a way to confirm your guesses are right until you have done all the other steps to decode the data, just makes things harder. It's an added layer of abstraction, and more importantly another layer of "hmm, I wonder if I got that right?" which could cause them to be less confident in everything else, and perhaps give up and try a different byte size or endian when they aren't getting data that makes sense to them.
If I go up further along the network stack there is the question of packets and where we divide them, as well as issues such as headers on packets etc. I won't go into this because I'm not as familiar with how broadcast binary does things, as opposed to how it's down on the internet, however, there *is* some level of abstraction here. Considering what I know about wifi I'm pretty sure that packets and headers will exist and need stripped off to get to the data, it's just a matter of what format the packets take.
To make things worse this assumes computer are infallible, and they are far from that. You don't realize it, but those 1 and 0 we beam to you are wrong. We send out a 1 when it should be a 0 here and there. Some random electro magnetic interference happens to collide with the wave were sending out and makes a 0 look like a 1 etc, the point is that our 1 and 0 can get swapped, and do. You don't notice that because we have fancy systems to correct for bad 1 or 0 by looking at the 1 and 0 around them usually. In the case of broadcast video data most of those auto-correct tools aren't there, instead we simply let some of the 1 and 0 be wrong because the human brain will figure out the picture even if one pixel in the corner of the screen is a shade too green for a split millisecond. However, these errors would make it hard for someone who doesn't know what he is expecting to understand the picture, because every time he thinks he knows how to read those 1 and 0 he will run into a bad bit and will think his theory on how to read it is wrong, rather then that the bit is just bad.
And of course this assumes he has the 1 and 0. Our binary data has to be broadcast as analog. He has to figure out how to translate analog to binary. This is complicated because our analog signals have their *own* error correcting logic in them, so he will have to figure out how to interpret that error correcting logic and filter it out before he is looking at the *real* analog signal which he needs to translate to binary....
And if that isn't bad enough by the time he gets it presumably the messages have been broadcasting for awhile, which means that the signal is quite week (the signal strength degrades *exponentially* with distance), They are going to need a Very Large Array, of an extra special value of 'large' to hope to get anything recognizable as something other then noise from any real distance, but even then the noise to signal ratio will be huge; and thus figuring what is our actual signal and what is background noise is going to be nearly impossible. Correcting for background noise is why we add in all those error correcting tricks he doesn't know how to utilize; but even if he knows how to use them as the signal gets weaker corrupted data because increasingly common because all our fixes are not foolproof.
Frankly the exponential decay of signal strength alone pretty much makes this question impossible, if they are far enough away that we haven't detected their mother ship in the sky odds are our signals are so degraded that a people with our level of technology isn't going to be able to correct for the noise...I think; I admit this isn't my area of expertise but knowing the degree of 'decay' expected for 'local' signals, and the exponential rate that power levels drop, I think it's reasonable to say it doesn't take much distance to degrade regular signals to a worthless strength. Random guess, no one further then the moon is likely to get much out of our signals?
The point of this being, our theoretical alien scientist has a much harder problem then interpreting video from a TV, he has to figure out protocol on top of protocol on top of protocol which we use to give meaning to our messages. Without having the dozen+ layers of understanding his figuring out how to get video out of our broadcast signals is nearly impossible. *We* can't do it, or anywhere close. I once worked on a project designed to help translate electromagnetic signals received if we didn't know the original protocol being used. Even knowing all our standard protocols just figuring which protocol we were dealing with was a massive challenge, and ultimately came down to "it looks most like protocol X, so lets try using X and see if that works". If he doesn't know that protocol X, Y and Z exist then he can't try one and see if it exists. He has to try every possible way of interpreting 1 and 0 (and I can't being to express how exponentially huge that number of interpretations is) until he gets one that looks 'right'. This was only solving *one* of those half a dozen+ layers of abstraction the alien would have to solve. And keep in mind after all of those layers of abstraction he still has the original, difficult, problem of trying to guess what our original signal was encoding to begin to guess what the decoding should look at; you know, the *real* challenge.
All along this path there is a very real chance of false positives, coming up with a wrong interpretation of data that looks reasonable enough that they think it's right. The permutations of possible interpretations are so huge that the chance of one of them being 'good enough' is high; particularly if the aliens expect us to have degraded signals and can write off a certain percent of bits that don't make sense off as 'corrupted data'.
The aliens would have to have truly impressive computers of the likes I can't begin to imagine to be able to come up with anything useful out of our captured signals. Computers to try all the many permutations of possible views, and computers able to analyze which permutations look 'plausible'; because no human, or set of humans, can reliable try all of the possibilities when there are just sooooo many possibilities.
I can say by the time the aliens have the sort of ability to figure out anything from our broadcasts they likely have a smart AI intelligent enough to figure out what all those light waves mean, in fact it would have to have already done that to know it had the right interpretation. If they somehow decode the signal then yes they will know how to interpret it; but I'm quite skeptical they will decode it.
[Answer]
This is harder than the sound question you posted. The trick with vision is that it is *much* higher bandwidth, so there's far more data to sift through. The hard part would be identifying the parts that matter.
They would probably have to analyze it as pure mathematical data at first, and do things like cluster analysis. Very rapidly they would find the signal to be repetitive. Each frame is remarkably similar to the last frame, except in a few rare cases such as cuts.
Probably the first information they'd 'crack' would be text written in the scene. Thanks to the artificial nature of the text, it is remarkably regular from frame to frame. In particular, capturing the closed captioning signal would be incredibly valuable for sanity checking any conclusions they arrive at. That information is much lower bandwidth, and rapidly associated with the content of speech (which they can hear). Once they have that, I would think they might notice a correlation with our mouths. They would notice that the closed captioning lines up (slightly delayed) with a set of sounds they recognize as speech, which corresponds to some particular patterns that form in the data that we know are the lips moving onscreen, but they would not.
Eventually they might come across a signal where one object goes in front of another, and it may dawn on them that this signal is a 2d portrayal of a 3d space. They'd quickly go through all of the content this way, and realize that this is just a really strange interpretation of the tactile world they live in. Its like these humans can literally sense at a distance, without any technological help, and do so so intuitively they don't even realize it's strange!
They'd also find some things that we never even look for. They'd probably be able to rapidly identify who is a fictional character vs. who is a real life person based on the tone of voice and their heart rate. Heart rate you say? As it turns out, there's a whole lot more information in our video [signals that humans cannot sense](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rWycBEHn3s). Aliens, simply pattern matching the data, would find details we consider unimportant!
[Answer]
>
> have no concept of vision
>
>
>
When there is no concept of vision amongst the species, I highly doubt that they would need to interpret the signals *visually*
They might have other senses, let's say *flups*, which they use to identify and recognize objects.
Then, they would convert those signals into signals which can be understood or perceived through *flupus*.
>
> Would it be plausible for aliens on a tech level similar to ours to
> interpret the video data as a tactile image?
>
>
>
Yes, the signals can be converted or interpreted so that their sense which is responsible for recognition, can understand.
>
> Would the methods needed be significantly more difficult than
> interpreting it as a visual image?
>
>
>
As the sense for recognition is unknown, the difficulty level cannot be commented upon. But, the method would be very different from how we humans do it for vision.
[Answer]
*"Would it be plausible for aliens on a tech level similar to ours to interpret the video data as a tactile image?"*
I think so. A visual image is formed when light of different colours (i.e. wavelengths) and intensities, reflected or scattered from an object, is projected on a screen. (The screen could be an artificial screen or the retina of the eye.) We use our sense of sight, and equally importantly our brains, to interpret patterns of light and shade as three dimensional objects. What we can do with our bodies your aliens will have to do by instruments and a computer program. But that should not be beyond them - after all we can write 3D graphics programs for computers that do exactly that.
The ability to perceive far-off objects by bouncing waves of some sort off them would be tremendously useful to a blind species. So I would imagine that they would develop something like radar and echolocation very soon after their first discoveries of electromagnetic and sound waves respectively.
The next problem is how to present the image received by their camera in a way they can relate to. Perhaps they could make a "screen" on which the moving pattern of three dimensional objects that the computer program has deduced from the signal is recreated in flattened form in a wax-like medium, rather like an animated [bas-relief](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief#Bas-relief_or_low_relief). To move a surface around at this speed is somewhat beyond our technology but not hugely so, and of course they would have had a great incentive to create and refine such a useful "teletactile" device. I know from your [other question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/30473/deaf-aliens-interpreting-sound-waves) that your aliens are also deaf\* perhaps they could use temperature, vibration, or even a pattern of tiny electric shocks as the analogue for light that they can perceive. It would be difficult to duplicate the sensitivity of sight, but that could be overcome if the "screen" were very big.
\*It might be useful to mention their deafness in this question also, or you are likely to get answers proposing the use of sound.
] |
[Question]
[
An explorer arrives from a "far away land" where they have "indistinguishable from magic" level technology. Singularity level at least.
(This technology includes stuff like grey goo nano assemblers, high temperature super conductors, highly portable quantum computers, swarms of microscopic smart drones, and probably a lot more.)
Of course he would not know the local language, but with the technology at his disposal it would be silly to fall back on pointing and grunting, and he doesn't have an extended amount of time to learn the language the traditional way.
I was originally thinking some kind of a brain scan to learn the language by scanning locals and picking out the neural pathways of the language centers (or something like that), but I don't really like it.
I'd love to have a better explanation than that.
[Answer]
Since he has such high level technology, give him the following tools:
* A set of drones that fly around and collect data on the way the local species communicates
* A portable device that converts that data into either images/radio waves/sound/whatever the local species is using to communicate; this could perhaps be something phone sized, which uses holograms for images, or just has speakers for sound, etc etc.
All he would have to do is let the drones fly around and follow the indigenous species for a couple days to collect data, and have the device convert the data into something usable (He probably has more than enough processing power to do it with anyways).
When the device is ready, he can go out with the device and let the device help him communicate, where it's used as a middleman.
[Answer]
A Universal Translator requires computers capable of [Natural Language Parsing (Processing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing).
A natural language parser attempts to deconstruct/parse a natural human language into an abstract language neutral form and then process that for meaning. Once it knows what has been communicated, it searches its database for a translation into the target language. To an extent something like this is already done for documentation that must be produced for multiple languages. A special XML language (usually SGML or something like it) is used. Different tags are used to denote the same section but in a different language. When "loading" the document, you specify the tags to use (e.g. Spanish) and the document's Spanish version of the sections are rendered so the user only sees those. But current SGML document construction is not done automatically - instead it is done by people, but processed by machines.
Writing code to deconstruct a language so that a computer can understand it and then match that with an expression construct from another language has been a sort of Holy Grail of language processing for decades - and it is a very tough problem.
>
> Up to the 1980s, most NLP systems were based on complex sets of
> hand-written rules. **Starting in the late 1980s, however, there was a
> revolution in NLP with the introduction of machine learning algorithms
> for language processing.** This was due to both the steady increase in
> computational power (see Moore's Law) and the gradual lessening of the
> dominance of Chomskyan theories of linguistics (e.g. transformational
> grammar), whose theoretical underpinnings discouraged the sort of
> corpus linguistics that underlies the machine-learning approach to
> language processing.[3] Some of the earliest-used machine learning
> algorithms, such as decision trees, produced systems of hard if-then
> rules similar to existing hand-written rules. However, Part of speech
> tagging introduced the use of Hidden Markov Models to NLP, and
> increasingly, research has focused on statistical models, which make
> soft, probabilistic decisions based on attaching real-valued weights
> to the features making up the input data. The cache language models
> upon which many speech recognition systems now rely are examples of
> such statistical models. Such models are generally more robust when
> given unfamiliar input, especially input that contains errors (as is
> very common for real-world data), and produce more reliable results
> when integrated into a larger system comprising multiple subtasks.
>
>
>
**BOLDED** section is of special importance.
We have switched to the introduction of a very narrow type of AI (artificial/machine learning). It means that with enough study and processing power and Star Trek style Universal Translator might one day be possible but it could probably not work as quickly as that shown in the movies.
[Answer]
A universal translator would have to be a very specialized and highly intelligent computer intelligence. Basically it would have to translate the same way human translators do, by understanding both languages and translating concepts. It would just be faster at both learning and translation the latter happening so fast there is no noticeable lag.
Preferable you want to design it to take pleasure in accurate translation and learning new languages, becasue an intelligence needs motivation. It will still have to learn any new language it encounters mostly through observation and later interaction.
The reason you need an intelligence is so much of language is contextual and revolves around the culture of the speaker, that's why translation programs produce a huge mess if you give them anything too complex. It gets even worse if the original statement is ambiguous, that's why you need something that can actually think so it can grasp idioms, subtext, tone, and even facial expression.
[Answer]
All you would have to do is let the explorer observe, because humans learn language though association. Then after accumulating a large enough sample (accelerated by the explorer's ability to follow everything that is going on at that time), the explorer would start to copy the things he has observed. Several conversations later, extrapolation begins, giving our explorer the ability to go beyond simply copying the locals conversations, and to construct sentences of their own.
In addition our wanderer would be able to understand some body language to give him additional context for what is being said, as some body language is universal between all cultures(joy, pain, anger, ...).
[Answer]
Our explorer has a device that connects the **Broca's area** of the local speaker with his own **Wernicke's area**.
The brain processes language as a symbolic representation. Broca's area is the region in the brain linked to speech production, it's located in the frontal lobe. On the other hand Wernicke's area is linked to speech comprehension, it's located near the ears.
The device consists of two parts:
1. A brain wave scanner, directional, should be aimed towards the frontal lobe of the speaker. It can operate to distances up to 20 meters from the speaker. Usually mounted in the explorers helmet. There are hand-held models of limited range.
2. A processing unit, with a special intra auricular headphone, that emits wave directly to the Wernicke's area of the explorer. Usually mounted on the helmet, there are portable units also.
The device operates as follow:
1. Scans brain waves of the speaking local subject.
2. Process the signal and injects into the explorer Wernicke's area.
It can work with any language spoken, but should need some calibration to adjust cultural differences.
It's a uni-directional device. The user can understand anything the local is speaking, but can't talk back in any other language but his own.
[Answer]
Actually, your explanation sounds good on its own:
People don't think in words, people think in concepts that they have been conditioned to immediately associate with words. Maybe the translator could work telepathically like in Doctor Who?
] |
[Question]
[
I am envisioning a trading port city/town, that occupies an island in a river mouth/estuary. Bridges link the island to the mainland.
The island is a mostly submerged, extinct volcano; and the crater forms the walls around the harbour and town.
The town is the major trading hub of the continent, and headquarters for the major merchant companies. Ships, wagon trains, and riverboats carry goods to and from all parts of the known world. There is some passenger traffic, but mostly goods.
How big would the town be, both physically and population? How big would the harbour itself be?
[Answer]
It really depends. If it's a big and rich city located in fertile lands in subtropical climate (climate of eastern China) , it could be around 250 000 - 500 000 and almost double the number if it's the capital. Capitals usually come with more military personnel, aristocrats, bureaucrats, and a lot of resources are invested in the city, public buildings, temples... so it add a lot of people into the city.
Example would include Hangzhou, Nanjing. Inland trade is almost as important as far away trade. Cities can be linked by rivers or canal. Even a city far from the coast like Kaifeng had a very large population.
If the climate is more temperate, then the numbers should be lowered. London had somewhere between 25 000 and 100 000 people with huge population swings due to the black death. Vienna was one of the most important city at the time due to it's geographic position.
One important factor in the maximum size of the city will be the wealth of it's people, or the country in general. If they are really rich like Venice, they can import food. They don't need a lot of land to support a large population. If thy have a large empire like China or the Romans, they can concentrate the resources in the capital. Both Rome and Xi'an had a population of over 1 million people at their zenith. Both depended on food importation from other regions, else the local population would have starved.
Lastly, peace and stability are very important. That is another reason why China had so many large cities. It allowed them to build infrastructure like canals, to develop trade and make babies (it take some time to repopulate). On the opposite, Irak ceased to be a powerful country after the Mongol invasion. Many people died and the irrigation system became unusable. The country never recovered it's former dominant position in the region.
[Answer]
Medieval technology means goods will be loaded and unloaded by manual labor. Perhaps a few cranes powered by oxen, but by and large people. So if the town is the trading hub for a continent, you need **a lot** of stevedores. These workers will have families, they will need services (food, clothing, shelter), and so on.
Without telecommunications, you will need merchants and clerks living in the city along with the stevedores. Again they have families, and again they need goods and services (more and better than the stevedores).
When I hear port trading city I think of [Hamburg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hamburg). "Hub of a continent" might be a bit excessive, but they were a major force in the [Hanseatic League](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League). Population in the five figures. Hamburg didn't have those crater walls, but it was protected by decent city walls.
Another data point could be [Venice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice#Demographics) with a population in the low six figures. They were a hub in the Med.
Rome might be a bad data point because it was a capital of an empire as well as a trading hub.
[Answer]
I'm going to push back a little at the numbers I'm seeing and say as few as 5,000. @Vincent's answer really opened up with the right answer - this depends on other things.
This may sound absurd, but count the number of ships you can dock at once. Then using the largest ships you could have docked, draw a walking path from the deepest hold in the vessel to the merchant's holding areas. Place one person about every 5 feet. This is how many people it takes to unload or load the ships at any one time, in the worst case. Certain kinds of loading requires not having that line of people there.
How many people live in this place is largely going to depend on two things- how many it needs, and how many actually want to live there. You said it was on an island at a river mouth. I could see that getting overcrowded, smelly, loud and generally unpleasant - if you wrote it that way, of course.
5,000 people is a lot to have in a small place, and depending on what they're doing, more is not always a great thing - they tend to end up working slower if they have to work on top of each other.
The point is, the fact that a place is important economically and strategically does not necessarily lead to it being popular. Other factors go into this, and a lot of it has to do with the personality of the persons in charge, and how that interacts with other people around them. If the lord of the realm has other land under his control, he may very well have decided that the trading port really is just that - a port. Having built only that which was necessary to service the port and the needs of the sovereign Whoever, other resources could have been used to improve other parts of the land.
Note that the 5000 number doesn't actually require that the place be awful - just that it's not sensational, and that it's not old. If people in the area are pretty sure that the continent they live on is the coolest thing ever, the world be damned. If it's been there quite a while, obviously, the population stands to have grown - peasants didn't just up and go somewhere else without good cause.
Please note - I am by no means suggesting that anyone here is wrong. But the staffing requirements of the port aren't as high as all that, and the rest depends on history and attitude.
[Answer]
Here is a nifty calculator for medieval demographics. It is not FOR harbor cities but it gives you a start point on which you can extrapolate :).
<https://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/>
[Answer]
Ancient Alexandria might not necessarily be medieval, but it was around [1,000ha](http://www.michaellivingston.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/alexandria.JPG) for a population of [300,000 free persons](http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/world/alexandria-city-egypt-history.html) during Antony's time.
1,000ha is fairly large, about 4 square miles and functions geographically & historically similarly to yours.
Alexandria's port was about half that in additional area.
**Port design** - keep in mind that your geologically walled settlement would have to have access to the port, and that since you are on the edge of the sea, you should have a protected, multi-use port, for seafaring and river transport. Consider bringing the port into your island somehow? Such as a gap in the wall, or more fantastically a very large tunnel that opens up inside your island, so anybody coming and going must go through that tunnel.
**Growth** - Don't forget to leave space for further growth, because you'll start getting shanty-towns growing up along the interior walls. Well, who's to say that's a bad thing.
[Answer]
You can use something like Venice and Melaka as a baseline. Population and size of a trade hub will probably be based more on
* Traffic, e.g. Malaccan and Singapore were situated between the best India and China trade routes
* Resources worth trading. If the only thing the land produces is wheat, trade would be really weak. Spices, exotic food, precious metal will really improve trade.
* Living quality. The more advanced civilizations will have plenty of wealth and merchants. Poorer ones will be self sustainable.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/9930/edit).
Closed 8 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/9930/edit)
Here are the facts.
1. Existence beyond death is an unquestionable fact. Souls originate in [the cosmic flow](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLifestream) and return to it after death...usually. In very rare cases, a person who has enough will or spiritual power can avoid merging back into the source shortly after physical death. Such rare individuals may form bodies out of ectoplasm, which tend to look a little uncanny. If desperate or malicious enough, these souls may try and possess a person. Soul/body compatibility issues usually means this doesn't work out very well.
2. The gods are immensely complex and powerful souls dwelling on "islands" within the cosmic flow. The most spiritually attuned individuals, usually priests, can channel the energy of their god. This providence takes on two forms, one of intuitive attuned/knowledge of things under their god's purview, and the ability to bless or curse through influencing luck. Fate, destiny, chance, and why things are the way that they are, are the result of the movements of the cosmic flow. The "gods", being great masses of spiritual power, influence the course of the cosmic flow simply by existing within it. Both forms of providence are stronger when they are used in alignment with that particular god's nature and will.
**What I am specifically looking for** are answers to the following questions.
* How are the religious organizations likely structured, and how much political influence do they have?
* What are the likely attitudes towards physical death?
* What would funerary practices be like?
* Are bodies just discarded or are they honored for the time that they served as a soul's vessel?
* How do the people practice their faith? How do they honor their gods?
[Answer]
I'm going to handle the topic of the afterlife first, because I think it's the most important. A lot of people make the argument that if people 'really' believed in the afterlife, they would get themselves killed so they could go there. However, what these people neglect are the great poems and stories written about how much it sucks to go to heaven. The best example I can think of are Tolkien's Elves: they all eventually sail to Valinor (which just so happens to be where they go when they die), but even though they know they're going to a better place ,they still really hate to leave Middle Earth. That's the general argument: heaven is nice, but Earth is really good too, and once you leave you won't be coming back. Plus, there's the phrase "you can't take it with you", which in this context takes on a whole new meaning...
As for how people would deal with death, I had an interesting conversation with an old roommate once about his concept of the soul. Basically, for him, if anything of us survives after death, it's nothing like what we appear to everyone else. So, even if our souls survive, we must lose something when we die, and that's still something to be lamented. Like it or not, your body is a big part of who you are, especially in the context of your interactions with others, and your society will most likely understand that.
Add to all that the fact that dying is probably still really scary from an evolutionary standpoint, and I'd imagine most death practices will be very similar. That doesn't mean you're stuck with whatever rituals your personal culture does; our world has many different ways of sending someone off permanently, I'm sure you can find one that fits your needs.
As for gods, again I think things will shake out pretty much the same. To me, your gods sound way more abstract than the bearded guy most Christians think of; however, your world will most certainly anthropomorphize them. The 'cosmic flow' sounds like something scientists won't be able to accurately describe for millenia; until that time, people will make things up, just like they've been doing here. Not only that, but people will attribute to the gods things that they shouldn't: for example, regardless of whether or not the gods can hear them, people will pray, erect statues and churches, and burn cows, because the placebo effect and the joy of working together with a like-minded community will make them think it works.
What I'm trying to say is that not a lot has to change. This is just one of many possible answers, though, so hopefully if it's not what you wanted someone else will explain why leaving dead bodies where they lie would totally happen.
[Answer]
**Exactly the same as Earth**
Which is to say that for our entire history the majority of humanity has believed in some sort of afterlife, and spirits/gods. Proof isn't going to change *how* people believe, but it will impact how *many* people believe.
So just as Earth has a full spectrum, all the way from true believers to agnostics to atheists, you'll have the same. It's just that the spectrum of your belief will be more weighted toward the obvious end of the spectrum.
Note: I know atheists seem unlikely in your system, but consider that some people today don't believe in the moon landing, evolution or climate change. With humans, proof is not a guarantee of belief.
Edit:
To clarify, I'm not saying you'd necessarily be exactly the same as earth in that you'd have say, Christians and Hindus and Shintos and Sunnis. What I mean is that in general you will see the same spectrum of beliefs and practices - with obvious variation for individual gods - but weighed more toward the true believers end.
] |
[Question]
[
I am not a writer. I have never written any story and I have no idea of what it takes to get this idea into any meaningful narrative. It's more of a thought experiment for me and I formally give the go ahead to anyone who wants to steal the idea for anything creative :)
However, I was thinking that it would be cool to imagine a species (on an independent world where they are bound to be the only dominant species) that somehow lacks the physical ability to emit (or perceive?) sounds, yet through ambient manipulation and social collaboration manages to develop a writing system.
* How slower or faster would they be, compared to humans, in developing a civilization?
* Would they try to accelerate communication using technology? Would "gifted" individuals able to emit guttural sounds be considered to the likes of the scribes in our past?
* Would that over time become speech?
* Can mathematics be developed?
* Would religious thinking emerge, with any difference from Earthly myths?
[Answer]
I'm a little nervous posting a answer beside Sheraff's wonderfully documented work of art, but here I go =)
If you hold the view that Evolution thinks and invents, a view that one often must take to imagine new worlds, then Evolution doesn't invent a language willy-nilly. It finds the easiest way to solve a problem, and runs with it. This is because Evolution follows a randomized walk, taking the first solution it finds and running with it. Statistically speaking, this means it will almost always find "the easy way out." Rarely will it find a complicated solution when a simple solution does.
To invent written language without speech implies that, for some reason, there are forces that make it easier to write than to speak, so the easiest path takes Evolution through where you want it to go. This is hard because written language has some disadvantages:
* It is much slower that speech, so there are a lot of situations that it does not fare wlel in.
* It requires raw materials, paper and ink equivalents. These resources are consumed in the writing process. Speech just requires a scant few extra calories.
* It cannot be used to communicate with someone who is not paying attention (this is an issue for ASL)
* It has to be taught. This forms a feedback loop with the first two disadvantages. Speech needs to be taught too, but its faster and requires less material to teach.
You would need something significant to tip the rules in your favor:
* Deafness - obviously if your creature cannot hear, it will not learn to speak
* An auditory preditor - If the number one preditor reliles heavily on passive listening, this would strongly suppress any audible communication
* Separation - Speech only works if two people are in the same area at the same time. If your species rarely does this, written communications last longer.
* An existing synergy - If it is easy to develop writing, it may happen. Perhaps the creature's favorite prey is easiest captured using a hyponitic movement similar to writing.
Finally, consider the Octspiders of *Rendezvous with Rama* by Arthur C. Clarke as an interesting middleground. They are silent, communicating via a specialized strip of cromatophores on their skin, letting them effectively write on their face. They have a visual language built around this organ that works rather like a stock ticker on an exchange floor. This may be a middle ground between speech and writing, because it is a visual language, but it is written transiently on the creature's body.
[Answer]
Let me try to show you the importance of language and that its vector (speech or other) has a minimal impact by answering the following question:
# Can we think without speech?
The verb "think" refers to any conscious psychic (ie. mindful, not supernatural) activity, meaning the manipulation of abstract concepts [11]. "Speech" is the human symbolic articulated language. According to these definitions, saying that speech is a necessary condition to thought is like saying an aphasic person isn't capable of any conscious psychic activity, which is fundamentally wrong. But if you take "speech" as "language" — a semantical communication mean [11] — then there is an interesting debate.
---
Broca's area, a brain region responsible for producing language, is also the center of manual activities recognition [3], which suggests that language and tool manipulation emerged on the basis of a common mechanism: thought [5]. At this stage of human evolution, Homo Erectus spoke a proto-language that didn't allow the expression of abstract concepts [2]; yet, as soon as language appeared, the first forms of art developed, proof of a great abstraction ability [7]. A form of thought emerged from the use of language.
This effect can also be observed in the development of language in kids, that will induce a restructuration of their reasoning ability thus allowing to master more complex forms of abstraction [8]. Moreover, transmission of knowledge happens through language — in its pedagogical function — which contributes to developing thought; without this contribution of language, transmission of knowledge between generations would be greatly diminished and thought would evolve this much less over time.
Finally, the use of words — ie. the use of language — allows to densify complex concepts into simple sentences. This allows to bypass the limitations of human short term memory span [1] and to reach higher levels of abstraction and reasoning, only allowed by the use of language. Language is a basic structure allowing a complex thought mechanism [4].
---
However, you can find some types of thought that aren't related to language: our "technical and instrumental" thought process [10], some highly abstract Asperger's abilities [9], some perception tasks in monkeys [6].
In the end, language frees the mind by allowing for higher levels of abstraction (even though it constrains the thought by its limited set of concepts).
---
(1) Atkinson R.C., Shiffrin R.M, (1971) The control processes of short term memory, psychology.
(2) Bickerton, D., (1981) Roots of Language.
(3) Bradshaw, J.-L., (2002) Évolution humaine. Une perspective neuropsychologique, De Boeck.
(4) Chomsky, N., (1968) Le Langage et la Pensée.
(5) Dortier, J.-F., (2004) L'Homme, cet étrange animal. Aux origines de la pensée, du langage et de la culture, Sciences Humaines éditions.
(6) Matsuzawa, T., (1985) Use of numbers by a chimpanzee, Nature 315, 57 - 59.
(7) Noble, W., & Davidson, L., (1996) Human Evolution, Langage and Mind, Cambridge University Press.
(8) Simon, J., (1963) Educational Psychology in the USSR
(9) Tammet, D., (2006) Je suis né un jour bleu.
(10) Vygotsky, Lev., (1962) Thought and Language. The MIT Press.
(11) Wilson, R. & Keil, F. (dir.), (1999) The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS), The MIT Press.
[Answer]
I think this question poses something of a false dichotomy. It presupposes the only ways to communicate are spoken word and written language.
Developing communication without spoken word is quite plausible. After all sign language has evolved, independently, all over the world. If you want to presume a more alien creature other languages are possible, such as communicating via scents, or light if the creature is able to generate and modify light. They could have subtle body posturing that is as communicative as sign language while leaving their hand-analogs free etc etc.
Perhaps what you would like to ask is if a creature could develop written language before they develop any type of 'instantaneous' language. I consider sign language instantaneous because you can process it immediately, from across the room, without difficulty, but it does not last beyond the moment, I can't go back and see what you signed 5 minutes ago as I could with writing.
In this case I would say it's possible, but unlikely. Language evolves as a means to communicate information in a pack because of an instant need to communicate. When your verbal communication has only evolved to the equivalent of 10 words and a few dozen sentences these sentences tend to be things of vital importance like "danger tiger hunt there", stuff you don't have time to write down. It's hard to think of a situation where evolutionary pressures would push language to be developed, but not push a species to create an instantaneous means of communication.
The only plausible explanation I can think of is solitary species. If these species don't usually see each other or interact together there would be no need, or reason, to develop an instantaneous communication system. However, many solitary creatures already use a sort of proto written system in the form of scent marking, territory marking, and similar tactics to communicate with other's of their species. In theory something like this could evolve and grow into a real written language between solitary species without a need for driving instantaneous communication.
I say in theory because this is still very hard to have happen. There are a few problems with explaining basic marking developing into a full language, which mostly come down to need. Solitary animals don't *need* to communicate much with other's of their species, because by definition they won't interact with these creatures often. no real syntax or language will develop without something driving the need for more complex communication.
Thus the best way to justify this I can think of is to create a species that lives closely and has a need to communicate regularly, but for some reason will never be in the same place at once. basically any situation where many creatures live in a relatively close area but must not come into direct contact. Perhaps being close together puts them at a much higher risk of predation. Maybe they live in complex cave system, but if too many amass in one place it will draw the attention of the evil spiders that have webs nearby? something where they are in enclosed area and must collaborate together to survive but don't come into sight/hearing/smelling range regularly. I admit I'm hard pressed to come up with a very good reason for that but then I did say it's unlikely such a system would evolve.
Also keep in mind that any species with a written language that live together will almost instantly develop an instantaneous language through simple practicality. If their smart enough to have a full blown language their smart enough to figure out something they can wag, vibrate, or move to communicate in a faster manner.
[Answer]
Consider the cuttlefish and the octopus. These guys are smart- about as smart as invertebrates get so far as we know- and they communicate through [pigment changes in their skin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnhc1KALHxE). If one were to imagine a species which operates in this way growing more intelligent and capable of abstract thought, it seems quite conceivable that they may make the leap to symbolic messages to communicate more sophisticated ideas as they are capable of using these. With nimble tentacles it would not be difficult for them to recreate these symbols on another surface - it might be more challenging for them to find something to behave as ink in an aquatic environment. Of course they do already have [half the solution to that problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_sac), so they are in a place where this would not be an unreasonable leap.
[Answer]
If species is deaf (cannot hear) it needs to live in environment where hearing (of approaching predator) is not necessary for survival. Sound is vibration of atmosphere. So such world would have to lack atmosphere. That would be tough.
Even ants do hear sounds (air vibration) even if they don't use them for communication (they use chemicals, pheromones for that).
So I think that any evolved (not designed) species will have sound-based communication (among others). Sign language/gestures is nice addition but not a valid replacement. Writing is possible when your species advanced quite a bit from animal surviving in a wilderness, avoiding other predators. Without speech, I cannot see how to get to emergence of basic civilisation.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm worldbuilding for a sci-fi setting with some help from old Artifexian videos, and have made a planet that's suitable for human habitation. However, as this planet is larger than Earth, to make the gravity the same (I'm doing so to have dinosaur-esque megafauna) the density drastically lowers.
Here's the necessary numbers:
* Mass: 2.3 Earth masses (1.37x10^25 kg)
* Radius: 1.5 Earth radii (9600 km)
* Gravity: 1.02 Earth gravity (10.03 m/s^2)
* Density: 0.68 Earth density (3750.00 kg/m^3)
My problem is *not* the low denisty in and of itself. I don't want to change any of my values, as I'm happy with how them being how they are.
My problem *is* that I just don't know what a density that low compared to Earth would do to the planet. If it is a problem, what would be a scientifically plausible way to explain it? The best I can come up with is having massive air pockets in the crust that are the size of cities- like the interior of a bird's bones- but the more I consider that, the more I can't help but think it's stupid.
Thanks for any answers in advance.
[Answer]
**Ignore the crust. It's so thin compared to the rest of our planet, much less your planet, that it could be just as rich in metals as Earth and it won't matter a drop**
But you will have problems.
Our core is liquid nickel-iron. That wonderful, giant ball of molten death does at least two things that could be compromised on a larger-than-Earth planet.
1. It creates our magnetosphere. Lowering the density means you're using *something less dense* than all that nickel-iron. Whatever it is, it won't generate a magnetosphere as well. That means more high-energy particles getting to the surface of the planet. That's going to cause lots of grief, like various kinds of radiation poisoning, heat damage, cats and dogs living together... *mass hysteria.*
2. It creates *heat,* which in turn warms the mantle, which in turn warms the planet. It's tough to stand in the middle of a Minnesota winter and think the planet core is helping any, but it does. Oh, it does. The sun would have a much harder time keeping our happy little jewel in space warm without it. You could compensate for this by moving the planet closer to the sun... but then there's issue #1.
And if that's not enough, there's one more issue:
3. *Gravity.* Yes, you only want one Earth-G of gravity — you also want a bigger planet. Unfortunately, the funny thing about gravity... *it causes things to collapse.* And the lower the density, the easier it is to crush it into a higher density. In other words, the larger your one-Earth-G planet, the less likely it can exist according to the known rules of gravity. It would simply collapse to, fairly realistically, an Earth-sized globe. Something in the structure of the material that's lower density would need to keep the planet expanded to the diameter you want. But the lower the density, the less likely such a material is believable.
There are all kinds of theories about mega-earths floating around scientific and pseudo-scientific circles right now. They're educated guesses at best, speculation in the middle, and outright lies at worst. We've never seen a single habitable planet other than Earth, so there is no "scientific answer" to whether or not a mega-earth is realistic or plausible.
**So, here's what you need to do...**
Because we have no evidence that a planet larger than Earth can sustain life but some reasonably good reasons why it won't...
You need to ignore us and anybody who thinks you need to be "scientifically realistic" and build a great world. After all, our stated purpose ([Help Center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)) is to be "a site for designers, writers, artists, gamers and enthusiasts to get help creating *imaginary worlds.*" (Emphasis mine.)
[Answer]
Low density normally means that a planet is lower in heavy elements e.g. iron and other metals. This isn't necessarily a problem for life, but may be a major impediment to technological development.
If the inhabitants get into spacefaring, it will be harder for them to escape your planet's gravity than it would be from Earth. Even though the surface gravity is approximately the same, it falls away more slowly, increasing the total energy required to escape.
[Answer]
**Moon style**
The moon is 3.34 g/cc as opposed to Earth 5.51 g/cc; perfect for you. The moon is made mostly of light elements that on Earth are in the crust, possibly because the moon is a big chunk of crust that got knocked off the earth. Your planet is so big I am not sure what it might have gotten knocked off of though.
The moon is frozen in the middle in part because it is little. Your planet is more massive and so will cool off a lot slower than the moon or Mars. It can still be molten.
You can give your planet a molten metal core. Use aluminum! With its friends titanium and magnesium of course. Molten aluminum can generate a magnetic field as well as our iron nickel core can.
If you want something to heat up that core but you don't want any radioactive heavy metals to weigh you down you could have a big gnarly moon to tidally flex the whole planet and heat up its innards. Maybe that big moon could have all the iron and nickel in it - once it was the pit in your plum planet but it got knocked clean out by a huge impact. The reverse of what happened to Earth and Luna.
] |
[Question]
[
There are several stellar environmental results from sentient industrial over-expansionism that I can imagine ie. star lifting that results in entire systems becoming frozen husks and debris from mining operations and collisions creating fast-moving minefields so to speak, perhaps even some sort of radiation blanketing entire systems but in what ways do you think a galaxy's ecosystem could be damaged by a civilization's industrial activities, in such a way that it endangers said civilizations which are spread across the galaxy?
[Answer]
**Broken space.**
I put forth an idea along these lines here:
[Are dead worlds a good galactic barrier?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/157911/are-dead-worlds-a-good-galactic-barrier/157920#157920)
The activities of your industrialists produce as an occasional side effect of their activity regions of space that are different in their properties. Maybe the laws of physics are different. Maybe the folds of space are unpredictable and stars in the area all convert to black holes, or something weirder. Perhaps this sometimes happens when FTL engines break in a certain way.
You could have these regions be no-mans land to be avoided as in the linked idea. Or you could have the areas spreading outward at the speed of light, infecting adjacent space, to ultimately change over the galaxy. That is the premise behind false vacuum decay.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay>
>
> Existential threat If our universe is in a false vacuum state rather
> than a true vacuum state, then the decay from the less stable false
> vacuum to the more stable true vacuum (called false vacuum decay)
> could have dramatic consequences.[5][6] The effects could range from
> complete cessation of existing fundamental forces, elementary
> particles and structures comprising them, to subtle change in some
> cosmological parameters, mostly depending on potential difference
> between true and false vacuum. Some false vacuum decay scenarios are
> compatible with survival of structures like galaxies and stars[7][8]
> or even biological life[9] while others involve the full destruction
> of baryonic matter[10]
>
>
>
As I understand it, a region of space which "decayed" to a lower energy state would propagate out as a bubble at the speed of light. These regions with different properties could be studied and even entered but if baryonic matter is different on the inside what comes out will not be the same as what went in. Or maybe it will because it will switch back?
A couple of these accidental bubbles is no big deal. Especially if they are mostly out in the middle of nowhere. The speed of light is fast but the galaxy is big and occupies many cubic light years of space. But as there are more and more bubbles and one must take them into consideration more often, it will be clear that the activities producing the space-altering bubbles will eventually be the end of the space that the industrialists need to live in.
[Answer]
**Warp storms**
Your FTL engines are cheap, efficient and (initially) safe. FTL travel causes eddies in hyperspace that are very long-lived and can compound to create storms in hyperspace. Smaller storms result in navigational errors, severe weather can destroy ships.
When the first society developed FTL, there were no hyperspace eddies to be observed (due to no FTL engines). By the time the problem was recognised, society was dependent on multi-system supply chains using FTL.
* Solutions currently proposed include taxing and regulating FTL engines, but there is concern that this will hamper industrial growth and allow McRivalEmpire to gain a dangerous advantage.
* Warp storm denialism is going strong, with some scientists questioning the link between warp storms and FTL engines
* There is a clique of "storm-surfers" who say they enjoy the thrill and distinctive thrumming sound of storms rubbing the ship's hull in FTL.
* An extremist faction in McBorderSystem detonated an experimental engine design causing a megastorm on the system, shattering trade links and making Imperial reinforcement near-impossible for hundreds of years.
**The science**
Imagine a parallel universe (AKA hyperspace) with no gravity or meaningful lightspeed limit filled uniformally with ether, a heavy substance with nearly no interactions with normal matter which decays rapidly in our universe. FTL travel begins with transitioning to the hyperspace. In hyperspace, etheric engines gather ether and eject it out the back of the spaceship, propelling the spaceship forwards. These engines become more efficient as the ship speeds up relative to the ether, so FTL speeds are achievable. When the ship transitions back into normal space it has the velocity it had when entering.
The ether flung out the back of the ship forms turbulence somewhat similar to the wake of a ship. This turbulence spreads out and decays slowly. Travelling through turbulence is bad (possibly messes with navigation, damages the etheric or transition engine or just stretches/squeezes/damages the ship). For a harder science approach, turbulence rapidly becomes heat, which can form storms or is corrosive as-is.
[Answer]
If a civilization can start hoarding substances across an entire galaxy, the risk that it incur is similar to what happened to Europe when silver from the Americas flooded the market and crashed its value.
However the crash that might happen this time is a stellar crash: once they start moving mass around, they risk concentrating it too much, with nefarious consequences, as every black hole can tell you. Or even without reaching the black hole formation situation, imagine what happens when two galaxies collide and what sort of havoc is thrown to their stars.
And once stars start swinging around it can get pretty dangerous.
[Answer]
Nebula are a relatively easy place to gather material, especially heavy elements formed in the last stages of the stellar life cycle, they are also where stars are born. A civilisation busily mining nebula *en masse* could, especially if they are using most of the hydrogen for cheap fusion power, (at [KIII](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) they'd need to burn 2x1022 metric tonnes of matter every second in fusion reactors if they aren't using anything more exotic), deprive sections, or even the whole, of their galaxy of star forming material turning their galaxy into a [zombie](https://www.livescience.com/weirdest-galaxies.html#:%7E:text=Zombie%20galaxy&text=Hubble%20observations%20of%20the%20distant,galaxy%20was%20a%20head%2Dscratcher.).
] |
[Question]
[
Terrestrial mammals usually get their color from [melanins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanin), which makes possible a range of colors, from white to black, yellow to red, and most combinations thereof. However, [some](https://nypost.com/2021/02/22/why-dogs-are-turning-blue-and-pink-in-this-russian-city/) [dogs](https://www.google.com/search?q=Dzerzhinsk+blue+dog) appear to have gotten into some alternate pigments, possibly [Prussian blue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_blue) (Fe7(CN)18).
Despite being related to cyanide, Prussian blue (PB) is non toxic due to the strong iron binding... and all of its constituent elements (carbon, nitrogen, iron) are generally available to mammals. From the Dzerzhinsk dogs, we can see that expressing PB as a *pigment* is clearly possible. However, could "mammals"¹ use PB as a *biochrome*? (Note that a biochrome is specifically a pigment produced *by the organism*; the real life dogs are blue because they *ingested* PB².)
(¹ If you get hung up on *Earth mammals*, you're missing the point. I'm asking about a fictional reality in which there are warm-blooded, often-furry, viviparous, lactating vertebrates. Please leave your pedantry at the door and take a check-tag.)
(² To be fair, it isn't clear that the pigment in question is *definitely* PB, or if it's some other probably-cyanide-related pigment. Feel free to either assume it *is* PB, or, if you can show that some other pigment would work and produce the same effect, feel free to answer based on that.)
Specifically, these "mammals" should:
* Produce PB via biochemical processes, and without poisoning themselves in the process.
* Be capable of producing PB *in addition* to melanin.
* Produce a *consistent* amount of PB given "typical" variations in diet. (In other words, just as most real mammals don't usually change colors dramatically due to normal variation in diet, the same should hold true for PB-based coloration.)
* Be capable of producing at least enough PB to have a normal, stable concentration of PB comparable to the Dzerzhinsk dogs.
Note 1: I don't care *why* this happened; please assume it is the result of advanced genetic engineering, or that appropriate environmental factors exist, or whatever allows you to get past that issue. You don't need to explain what that is.
Note 2: I'm aware there have been previous, more general questions about alternate biological coloration. I'm asking *specifically* about Prussian blue. I am aware there are other blue biochromes which *are* found in nature (e.g. [azulene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azulene)). For the purposes of this question, I am not interested in those. I am even less interested in blue coloration from e.g. structural coloration or other non-biochrome means.
---
**Postmortem:**
First off, thank you for some amazing answers! This got a *far* better response than I was expecting, and I am extremely thankful for that, especially to [Willk](/users/31698) and [Justin Thyme the Second](/users/61270). I wish I could accept more than one answer, but ultimately I decided on [Isaac Woods](/users/10229) [answer](/a/196934/43697) for most specifically addressing how to deal with that pesky cyanide.
Given that I explicitly stated that I don't need a naturalistic explanation, Isaac's answer seems most on point for how a sufficiently capable being might design such a process into an organism. Further, we know that mammals have access to iron, and that biological processes are capable of producing cyanide, so Isaac's answer definitely seems to pass the plausibility test.
Another note... carbon and nitrogen are readily available, but iron might be more problematic. While I did say one criteria was *consistency* of coloration, consistency is not constancy. Humans don't *usually* show a lot of color variation, but can if e.g. eating enough carrots. Moreover, we can assume that a blue critter might *desire* iron more than a non-blue critter and would thus tend to self-regulate. As noted, certain conditions, such as infections or a dietary iron deficiency, might cause changes, and that's okay. The keywords were "*normal* dietary variation" and "*dramatic* change in coloration".
[Answer]
## Make it in follicles
Mammals already have an answer for how you use nasty toxic stuff in biochemical reactions - how we make **thyroid hormones**. The thyroid has many follicles: small spheres of colloid (mainly a protein called thyroglobulin), surrounded by specialized cells. These cells take up iodide from the blood, and transport it into the follicle, where it is oxidised to form elemental iodine (which you don't want anywhere near anything else in your body). This iodine is then attached to residues of the thyrogobulin to form precursor thyroid hormones. See [this photo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Thyroid_hormone_synthesis.png/2560px-Thyroid_hormone_synthesis.png) for a basic illustration of the process.
In this case, I'm imagining that the skin of this animal would be made to contain follicles, expressing the right enzymes on the follicular cells to form cyanide ions by whatever process you like, but only within the follicles. By preventing it from leaving the follicle, you protect the mitochondria that would otherwise make it insanely toxic. Add free iron, and some enzymes, and you have Prussian Blue in the right place to pigment the skin.
[Answer]
Although you have clarified that the creature does not have to be Earth-based, I am going to assume that it has to be Earth-type DNA-based.
For it to be a genetic trait, directly related to the process of genes, then it must be protein-based. Human genetics and DNA is all about the genetic code producing specific proteins. If the genetic DNA can not produce the necessary protein, it can not have the desired effect on the organism.
Proteins are made up of amino acids.
Amino acids are [carbon-based](https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/macromolecules/proteins-and-amino-acids/a/introduction-to-proteins-and-amino-acids).
>
> Amino acids share a basic structure, which consists of a central
> carbon atom, also known as the alpha (α) carbon, bonded to an amino
> group
>
>
>
So in order to posit a DNA-mediated protein that results in a Prussia blue coloration or pigmentation, you first have to get the 'ingredients' into an amino acid, based around a carbon atom.
Since the elements in the formula for the substance creating the Prussia Blue coloration (Fe7(CN)18) are all naturally encoded in amino acids, and in fact it is already carbon-based, there does not seem to be any particular reason in genetics that what you are asking is not possible.
Although I do not know of any particular pathway to an amino acid and then a protein that would specifically result in that particular molecular structure, this part can be hand waved away. It could be possible, the details are not necessary.
Since the basic elements involved are already plentiful in the diet of a DNA-based organism, I do not see diet as an impediment.
And there does not need to be a reason for the genetic modification. It could be just a random neutral mutation that gets passed on.
**EDIT**
I am not sure if this helps, but Prussian Blue is used for [medicinal purposes](https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Prussian-blue) in some human illnesses.
>
> Prussian blue is described as a deep blue pigment that is produced
> when the oxidation of ferrous ferrocyanide salts occurs. It contains
> ferric hexacyanoferrate(II) in a cubic lattice crystal structure. It
> is insoluble in water but also tends to form a colloid thus can exist
> in either colloidal or water-soluble form, and an insoluble form. It
> is orally administered for clinical purposes to be used as an antidote
> for certain kinds of heavy metal poisoning, such as thallium and
> radioactive isotopes of caesium. Prussian blue is included in the
> World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines as a
> specific antidote used in poisonings to provide symptomatic and
> supportive treatment. It was also administered in individuals exposed
> to 137-Cs+ during Goiânia accident, one of the worst radioactive
> contamination incidents that occured in Brazil, 1983.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sQYY7.png)
Also [this](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25465756/):
>
> In the development of advanced photothermal therapy (PTT), there is an
> unmet demand for constructing novel multifunctional agent for
> efficient cancer therapy in a synergic manner. In this study, a system
> based on gelatin-stabilized Prussian blue nanoparticles with
> conjugated doxorubicin (PB@Gel-DOX NPs) is proposed for combined
> photothermal therapy and enzyme-responsive drug release for tumor
> destruction.
>
>
>
and [this](https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/tb/d0tb01248c#!divAbstract)
>
> The Prussian blue (PB) based nanostructure is a mixed-valence
> coordination network with excellent biosafety, remarkable photothermal
> effect and multiple enzyme-mimicking behaviours. Compared with other
> nanomaterials, PB-based nanoparticles (NPs) exhibit several
> unparalleled advantages in biomedical applications.
>
>
>
**Second Edit**
You might have a problem with [bacterial infection](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32891882/), however. The blue skin just might turn white in the presence of bacteria.
>
> Based on a simple sonochemical coating process, smart hospital fabrics
> with the capacity to detect live bacteria by a simple change of colour
> are presented here. Prussian Blue nanoparticles (PB-NPs) are
> sonochemically coated on polyester-cotton textiles in a single-step
> requiring 15 min. The presence of PB-NPs confers the textile with an
> intensive blue colour and with bacterial-sensing capacity. Live
> bacteria in the textile metabolize PB-NPs and reduce them to
> colourless Prussian White (PW), enabling in situ detection of
> bacterial presence in less than 6 h with the bare eye (complete colour
> change requires 40 h). The smart textile is sensitive to both
> Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, responsible for most
> nosocomial infections. The redox reaction is completely reversible and
> the textile recovers its initial blue colour by re-oxidation with
> environmental oxygen, enabling its re-use. Due to its simplicity and
> versatility, the current technology can be employed in different types
> of materials for control and prevention of microbial infections in
> hospitals, industries, schools and at home.
>
>
>
[Answer]
**Tricky, possibly to the point of notdoability**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5mpvC.png)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_blue>
Making Prussian Blue with biochemistry would be like juggling lit blowtorches and shurikens. The raw materials are present in biological systems: cyanide can be produced by endogenous mammalian metabolic pathways and life needs iron. Prussian blue can form spontaneously at sites contaminated by industrial wastes - liberated cyanide binds with iron in the soil. So all the parts are in place.
The problem is the parts are in place in the context of delicate biological systems that will be laid waste by these parts. Cyanide is crazy toxic and super soluble and so is handled by enzymes that bind it with sulfur. Iron also is carefully handled with shepherding molecules because microbes want it and will take it if they can, and it will generate free radicals if given a chance.
I could imagine an enzyme which detoxified cyanide by complexing it with iron. Prussian Blue is not very toxic and would be a good repository. As far as I can tell, detox enzymes use sulfur or oxygen. Iron containing enzymes keep their iron and use it to generate radicals and do chemistry. The end products of these metabolic pathways do not contain iron. I think sulfur must be less expensive than iron; if you can detoxify something by binding it with iron you can probably use sulfur in a similar way and save your valuable iron.
Then I was thinking: maybe dump the cyanide into a no-mans land where there is also free iron, let the prussian blue form abiogenically like it does in soil then reclaim it. Problems: the only no-mans land available is the GI tract and it is loaded with microbes that will claim both the iron and cyanide. Also if you can absorb Prussian Blue you can probably absorb cyanide and so the cyanide will come back and hack your biology and get bound with sulfur to detoxify it.
---
I could not dream up a mammalian biochemical path that was even a remote cousin of any actual mammalian biochemistry. But I would like to see one. I will put some bounty on this when I am able, to reward an answer with molecules and pathways, ideally drawn with ballpoint pen on a napkin.
[Answer]
**Protective coloration!**
It's a dog eat dog world out there. Several closely related species of dogs have contested the top of the food chain with one another for millions of years.
In these dogs, the epithelial cells of the skin produce large quantities of nitriles. These are produced by modifying the lysine side chains of keratin proteins in the *stratum spinosum*. An enzyme, maybe related to [this one](https://www.nature.com/articles/nchem.1385) (I haven't accessed), has evolved to target these side chains. Using molecular oxygen, they convert the -CH2-NH2 of lysine into -CH=NH and -C≡N, releasing two molecules of H2O. These cells also produce an [alternative oxidase](https://academic.oup.com/femsyr/article/3/3/239/502589?login=true) for cyanide-resistant respiration. That reduces their metabolic efficiency, but allows them to resist high HCN levels.
As the cells begin to accumulate filaggrin (which marks the beginning of the end of their metabolic function) they activate a proenzyme which then releases HCN from the side chains through a comparably targeted reduction with NADH, which they release from their mitochondria as they inactivate alternative oxidase.
Now the result would be that the dogs would reek of cyanide gas, but they don't - it would poison them. How do they avoid this? Ferrisomes! These are small vesicles present abundantly in each cell, containing large amounts of transferrin secreted while the cells were still in the basal layer of the skin, which has accumulated large amounts of iron ions. But for some time now, the pH of these vesicles has been alkaline, denaturing the protein and releasing the Fe3+ ions. The HCN from surrounding cells enters these vesicles and is bound into ferrocyanide, which is then oxidized (maybe with molecular oxygen or NAD+) to produce ferricyanide.
The resulting epithelium therefore has outer blue layers of ferricyanide-containing vesicles. These are pretty, and pretty harmless. Unless and until they experience severe trauma, such as exposure to salivary amylase or stomach acid. Then, sodium-hydrogen antiporters built into the walls of these vesicles release an abundance of stored sodium out of the vesicle, and greatly lower its pH. This causes the ferricyanide to release HCN. Some additional HCN may be released during digestion with stomach acid. The resulting poisonous experience tends to dissuade members of related or unrelated species from consuming these animals.
[Answer]
## Be Happy, Let's not be Blue!
Prussian blue, despite the name, is actually considered by some to be a shade of grey (color being highly subjective), although various preparations make it increasingly take on a bluish hue (and given the rarity of blue, it's blue-like qualities are what are considered valuable).
It currently isn't produced biologically, so there is no biochemical pathway as of now. So if you want it, you need to handwave it into existence. But once you handwave, all your problems are solved. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Prussian blue except it has no precedent.
**Not the answer you're looking for:** The easiest excuse is animals eating foods containing it, produced by some fictional plant that produces it (this is akin to your Dzershinsk dogs). Mammals don't tolerate cyanide intermediate compounds well, and are unlikely to develop independent production due to the toxic intermediaries. Plants use various means to make themselves resistant to cyanide, so they are your best starting point. If your animals need something but don't produce it themselves, it is really no different than a vitamin - an essential compound like vitamin C obtained from food. We obtain lots of vitamins in stable quantities from our food.
**The answer you're looking for:** There are animals that do [tolerate cyanide](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/189764/what-needs-to-be-changed-in-the-structure-of-the-human-body-in-order-not-to-die) in special ways, however, so nothing is impossible. Depending on your fictional biochemistry, it could even be toxic to some organisms and not others. For example, tomatoes are related to belladonna, and tomatine (found in tomatoes) is poisonous and/or distasteful to some insects. Given a strong selective reason for your animals to develop cyanide-based biochemistry, it is unlikely but not impossible that they produce Prussian blue initially as a byproduct, but eventually on purpose as a color. Keep in mind, however, that the blue color is only useful/serves a purpose if the organism can see blue (not a forgone conclusion) or if blue is an attractant for prey, a repellant for predators, or allows your animal to blend into their environment (and if the environment is blue, getting PB from foods is a lot more plausible).
] |
[Question]
[
**Background:** My world, Alendyias, is more than a little interesting. As the Fracture in Reality grows and expands, it takes apart and reforms worlds inside itself, and over the ages, this has formed one big world: Alendyias. Living things are often mutated at least a little by this trip through *chaos itself*, creating things like goblins and giant spiders, and these are called monsters.
When these monsters are slain, though, there is a burst of light and chaotic (magical) energy, and when that clears, what remains are the monster's Drops: objects formed or altered by the combination of the monster's fading life force and the magical energy inside them.
The former are usually body parts; pelts, claws, horns, and the like. However, the latter can be any junk inside or on the monster; a good example would be the personal belongings (clothes, money, jewelry, perhaps even weaponry) of a Catfish Monster's victims. Somehow, upon its death, its accumulated life force and magical energy not only recreates but *enchants* these items, leaving behind valuable loot.
Good so far, yes? However, **what if a monster ate something before it died?** An intact body, or even a skeleton, inside a monster could quite feasibly be turned into an undead monstrosity upon their consumer's death. **So my question is: How Can Dead Monsters *Not* Spawn Undead?**
**EDIT:** Monsters are *not* in the habit of swallowing prey whole and not digesting it; rather, spawning undead happens when a monster is killed *before* it can really digest swallowed prey, and its lifeforce subsequently reanimates its victims. Also, digesting bone is relatively unusual and difficult to do; so skeletons should not be unheard of without **some sort of natural undead prevention method**-which is *exactly* what my question is asking for.
As always, I appreciate input and feedback, and if you decide you need to down- pr close-vote, please give me an explanation so I can do better in the future. Thank you all!
[Answer]
# It's not all bad news
It sounds like you've assembled a clever story explanation for loot tables.
Plenty of games have loot tables that include *bad news*. Dungeon-crawlers have Mimics, creatures that look like treasure chests but are carnivorous. Hardcore roguelikes, such as rogue, have cursed items. So, finding an undead animal inside a corpse, albeit uncommon, is entirely possible. It's a critical failure. Sometimes that's how things go. Surprises are the spice of adventure.
But also consider that an undead monster is not *the only possible result* of enchanting a corpse:
* Imagine finding a pre-made spirit totem shaped like a mouse inside a dead fox. Perhaps it gives the bearer the ability to communicate with forest mice.
* Perhaps you find an enchanted rabbit's foot inside a dead wolf. Finally, a turn of good luck!
* An owl skull might give the holder night vision.
* An undigested turkey might contain a wishbone that has some real punch, if only you think to dig it out.
With a little imagination, almost any undigested corpse can probably be re-interpreted as not the whole output but just the key ingredient in some kind of wildlife-based talisman, a boon with a flavorful twist. And if desired, they can be ushered off-stage as quickly as needed by supposing that the enchantment dies when the remains would have decomposed or when the animal's soul finally departs, or something like that.
[Answer]
The King's law in these parts is to...
1. Cremate any monster that you killed (or found dead). I know that's a lot of work, and that you want to be an adventurer instead of spending days as a woodcutter (especially during the rainy season). But the Law is the Law; the penalty for non-compliance is severe, and the reward for turning in absconders is surprisingly high...so don't brag about it at the tavern. If you don't like it, go seek adventure in some other realm.
2. After the ashes have cooled, they must be sifted, and all remaining solids (including treasure, recovered weapons, body parts, etc) must be hauled to a magistrate. I know that's also a lot of drudge work, and that you want to be an adventurer instead of a carter. But we have these laws for a reason.
3. The magistrate will have an independent mage or wizard test the remaining objects for enchantment, and will attempt to break any evil enchantment. After that, the safe goods are returned to the adventurer. Finally you can sell them!
4. The ENTIRE adventurer's party will present themselves for testing by the magistrate's independent mage or wizard, in case they were affected by any enchanted goods during disposing of the monster or sifting the debris. Any who fail to show up go onto the magistrate's Wanted list.
Don't bother lying about who was in your party, or withholding any goods -- everybody discovers, to their chagrin, that truth-telling is one of the first spells she will use on each of you.
[Answer]
# Holy
All adventuring parties are required to have a registered paladin/cleric/sage as a party member, or they must purchase *holy acid* from the guild or church.
When a monster is killed, if a corpse/skeleton/etc. is dropped, either the party member with the gift of holy magic blesses the corpse, or the party sprinkles it with the holy acid. Either way, the holy power sinks into the corpse and prevents it from becoming undead.
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.