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[Question] [ Zombies are popular, they are the 'living' embodiment of death themselves, but it seems that other than simply increasing the number of zombies, they become an easily handled threat after a few years. What attributes and changes can I apply to a plague of the undead in order to make it more deadly. The only rule is that the virus cannot be unbeatable, so no adding things like radioactive walkers or making them explode [Answer] ## Punch them in their empathy * The one thing I've noticed in any zombie show, movie, game, etc is that unless it was once a family member the survivors are easily able to kill the zombie without a second thought. This is because almost every depiction of a zombie is of a mindless, cannibalistic force of chaos and rage. Now since there is no to make a survivor only find people they love (unless you with point 2) there is only one way to make a survivor feel conflicted over killing a zombie, don't make the zombie mindless. Instead of having the zombie only growl or moan, make the zombie want to talk to you and plead for it's life, some people may not fall for it but a lot of people would feel sorry(at least at the beginning). This is made even deadlier the because you can't tell they're infected until they attack or start to show signs of decay. * Make it so that chemical pheromones expel off of the infected that cause a survivor to hallucinate images of loved ones, I find this less realistic, but if you want to have a zombie that is mindless this will be the way to go. ## Other strategies The problem with the above strategies is that cold hearted people and loners will not be effected. While those are, in my opinion, the most effective strategies, there are many other choices; * Make it based on cordyceps, fungal and airborne, certain species of cordyceps even have spores that bore through exoskeleton (or in our case clothes, skin and gas masks). * Have it be both airborne and waterborne, this would have it so that only rainwater if safe and gas masks become a requirement. * Have them run. This one seems obvious but I don't know if you've added it or not, you didn't give us a base model to work off of. * Make it so they heal. The classic zombies main weakness is that as they bones and skin decay they become easier to kill, even just having the bones remain just as strong would cause most melee weapons to become useless or stuck in the skull. In response to AndreiROM's notes I feel I need to point out that while they do decay, their body still heals the wounds, and since only a headshot kills them, you can't let them get away * Make the reanimation time quicker. Think of the most deadly zombies in media; 28 weeks later, world war Z, etc. What do these have in common? The process of bite-death-reanimation takes less than a minute. While in things like walking dead or last of us the process can take days. * Finally have the zombies able to communicate with each other. If the undead can plan and ambush, you can't even safely take down one zombie, because 50 could be waiting for you. [Answer] Make it affect all animals. The biggest weakness of zombie viruses is that the only affect humans. If all animals can be affected, you go from something that can be contained and eliminated to something that will wipe out almost all animals on Earth and drive humans into sealed bunkers. Think you can deal with a sea of zombies? How about a sea of zombified rats that can crawl through holes and over walls? How about zombie mosquitoes? One bite, which you might not even notice, and you're a zombie. How about zombie ants? Once you're out of flamethrower fuel, there are few weapons that could be effective against a horde of creatures that small. [Answer] # Have a long, asymptomatic, contagious incubation period. Imagine you're in a small group of survivors venturing out from your secure bunker and you meet a living human. You can't just check them for wounds; they could easily have been scratched, infected, and already healed. Any potential ally is also easily a potential death sentence for the whole group. The only way to safely add new members to the group is mutual observation over an extended period of isolation. Doable, but the psychological effects would be disastrous. Just when you get to know someone... [Answer] ## To make it more effective, make it less deadly. To go for an unorthodox angle... one of the main weaknesses of the classic zombie plague is that it is 100% virulent and 100% deadly. Once a person is bitten, they are already dead; once a zombie wakes up, it is no longer human. This is good for certain kinds of stories, but is it unrealistic (even the most deadly plagues have a small subset of the population immune or resistant). And because an infected human is no longer alive, survivors can slaughter them without a second thought. But what if the infection rate was lower, say, 95% chance of infection per bite? Moreover, what if there was a tiny possibility for the infection to regress naturally after the infectee goes through the 'mindless and aggressive' phase? All of a sudden, you've put a new spin on things. A bite victim is no longer completely selfish for refusing to take their own life. Since zombies can potentially revert, many people will be a lot more reluctant to go around killing them. Fights will break out among the uninfected as people protect their zombified friends and family but are willing to kill others when it is "necessary". To make things even more complicated, what if it had a small chance of transmission through the air? Perhaps the air-transmitted strain has a long incubation time, or can even be carried by certain people who remain unaffected themselves, making it nearly impossible to quarantine. At any moment, any person in a crowd can suddenly go crazy, biting everyone around them. [Answer] Zombies are terrifying, but if you think about it, they're not really smart. They see a target, they run for it, they attack it. Throw them in an empty room with no other people/animals, they'd have no idea what to do with themselves. They might try to escape, but they'd probably just try to bash their heads against the walls or door. What you might need is a virus, where it zombifies people, but doesn't instantly turn them into mindless savage beasts. So they can think their way around us normal humans who are trying to kill them... [Answer] A large number of "Patient Zero"s scattered across the planet. If a single outbreak can be contained 90% reliably, then 10 outbreaks only have a $0.9^{10}≈0.35$ chance of every one of the being contained, leaving a 65% chance that at least one of the outbreaks will go the distance. ]
[Question] [ > > The fleet is in orbit around the planet. The enemy is in a similar orbit, and they vastly outnumber the allies. The allies have a plan, ‘invisible’ bombs, incapable of being seen will float in orbit to collide with the enemy fleet, crippling them. > > > Just how ‘realistic’ is this? Could I theoretically conceal them (EM Radiation, etc.) so that against cosmic standard levels, the bombs don’t show up? Said bombs are about 4m in radius and a sphere. Never mind how I’m ‘floating’ the bombs over, orbital dynamics isn’t relevant, they just will be on a crash course. [Answer] ### Velocitas Eradico You don't even need to make them into bombs. Just put 4m spheres in an eccentric orbit that intersects with the expected locations of the enemy ships at the correct time (fortunately, orbits are very predictable). A solid stainless steel sphere 4m in diameter masses about 268000 kg, if I did my math right. At a LEO velocity of 7.8 km/s, that's 8,152,560,000 kilojoules, which is around two kilotons of TNT. That'll make a pretty nasty dent in anything made out of matter. As for detection, just coat them in stealth-bomber paint and let 'em fly. They're small, incredibly fast moving objects. They're pretty naturally stealthy. [Answer] #### The problem is actually scoring a hit in the vastness of space, more than stealth Stealth is not hard to achieve. As others have mentioned, have the bomb exterior consist of flat, angular surfaces, and the enemy won't pick it up on radar or from reflected sunlight. Also make sure the object is fairly cold, so that it does not have much of an IR signature. What is harder to achieve is actually making contact with the enemy ship. As long as your bomb is stealthy, it is in free fall and cannot maneuver. Space is freakin' huge, even in orbit around a planet. If the enemy ships are moving around even a little, then you don't know exactly where they're going to be when the bomb gets there. What enemy fleet would sit there motionless in their orbits, just waiting for you to blow them up? They'd have to be pretty dumb. So, you should not plan on having the enemy ship actually physically make contact with your bomb. At best, the bomb might pass within a few kilometers of the enemy. But! The bomb can have its own (low-power, passive) scanners, and can detect when it is about to be near the enemy. From there you have a few options. * The bomb suddenly shoots thousands of hypervelocity rounds at the enemy, using perhaps a railgun or some other type of gun. * The bomb blows itself up weakly, creating a cloud of shrapnel. If it does this late enough, and the enemy's drives are not powerful enough, the enemy may not have enough time to get out of the way of the cloud, and some of the fragments might hit them. (Remember this shrapnel needs to be spread over an area of multiple square kilometers, so you still have to get lucky.) * The bomb was "pre-blown up" and was already a cloud of shrapnel. The problem here is that it's not so stealthy. Some of the shrapnel is going to be angled to reflect the sunlight or radar, and the enemy could see it. * The bomb is a thermonuclear device, and blows itself up to hit the enemy with mostly radiation. This can work over fairly large ranges. A 100 MT bomb will deliver 7 tons TNT equivalent per square meter, at a range of 1 km, which is probably a kill depending on how thick the enemy armor is. At a range of 10 km it drops to 70 kg TNT per square meter, still probably a kill. This would be almost entirely in the form of radiation, not shrapnel or a shock wave, so it's not super clear how much damage it would truly do. Based on [this article](https://history.nasa.gov/conghand/nuclear.htm), thermonuclear weapons in space might give lethal doses of radiation to unshielded humans at a range of hundreds of km. * The bomb shoots a bomb-pumped laser, like [Project Excalibur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur). This might help focus the energy of the nuke to be effective at greater ranges. A [nuclear shaped charge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_shaped_charge) is a similar concept. The explosion might also be used to propel a hypervelocity bullet at 100 km/s. However, note that this concept would only work with relatively low fission yields, not thermonuclear. * The bomb has a powerful short-burn rocket in it, and when it's about to pass within 10 or 20 km of the enemy, it suddenly accelerates closer to get in 1 km range before detonating with one of the above methods. The enemy, of course, sees the bomb as soon as it moves, and can try to shoot it down before it gets too close. [Answer] If the bomb is perfect pyramid in shape, radar will almost never detect it (similar to stealth bomber but much simpler shape due to no aerodynamics needed). Such bomb may be indeed launched on a collision course and would likely hit the target unless it moves. It can even have engine for late stage trajectory correction. [Answer] To be stealthy means to not be detected. To be that you would need to know the enemies detection methods, and outplay them. You are the author and you only know which sensor systems are used onboard the enemy ship*. So here is the general gist of, which i can think of right away. > > Telescope \| Camera \| Luxmeter > > uses visible light. > > > If manned by a human a black color, against the general black of the universe could suffice > * If manned by good machine it will detect lights going black, cause while the universe seems to be black, there is always still something very marginally lit there. [Hubble Deep Field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Deep_Field) is the very definition of that. > > Avoidance is later written > > > > > Other detection 'meters which i cant think about > > Coming from Space the radiation either: > > > 1. passes through the bombs body (like neutrinos, although they are a bad example) and is of rather no concern > > > or > > > 2. is stopped by your bombs body. > > In which case you: > > > a. channel the radiation around your bombs body (hard and being tested around the world) > > > b. replicate the radiation. even harder under normal conditions, but the bomb is being looked at from one direction, which is almost like a 2D plane => a picture. > > With a couple (thousand?) radiation emitters the bombs can act like the starry sky behind them. > > > > > So what about Radiation coming from the enemy ship e.g. lights, radar? > > typically (Maybe your world has cooler non-realistic stuff) detection methods send out something to receive that exact something back. We send light to reflect back into our eyes, or send radio waves for bounces of surfaces. > > typical methods for avoidance are: > > > * send the radiation further > > by not interacting the radiation or channeling it around you, like that invisibility point a. from before. > > (by having a special form, like [stealth bombers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit)) > * cancel the radiation. > > (you know in those stuffy wavy wall stuff in recording studios? afaik that cancels sound waves (radiation) to not create a hall effect) > > > I have written 'radiation' synonymous with 'emission', which may not be entirely accurate Edit: Know what you need to outplay: Sensors which want to detect cosmic radiation, can sometimes be very satisfied with seeing an enormous amount of background radiation. Every human would be weirded out by that and notice it. Humans will in general look for something seeming right: not noticing small changes, only huge ones. Maybe you can confuse the radar by sending same waved emissions back at their sensor, confusing the enemy humans, thinking the radar might be bugged out. Be creative, thats what people like to see! Hope this helps you ^^ TLDR: 1. identify detection methods, by which radiation they pick up. 2. Channel radiation around you or replicate a normal radiation (or confuse enemy detection methods, by overloading them with radiation of that type, also called [jamming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFRbZJXjWIA)) [Answer] There is no stealth in space Anyone capable of building a fleet of ships is capable of detecting your space mines. If nothing else by detecting the black body radiation those mines will emit (like literally every other object in existance). You don't need active detection like radar to detect them, so proposed shapes/stealth-bomber paint or other nonsense will make no difference whatsoever. One other thing you have to keep in mind. Even if you magically make your mines invisible, unless this is the first usage of this weapon (with nothing similar being deployed before) the enemy WILL have countermeasures. A screen of small drones would counter that strategy as an example of cheap low tech solution. [Answer] Radar-absorbing bombs would be very hard to detect. Your idea is feasible. Also consider a similar missile launcher instead of a single bomb. The missiles could be actual rockets, homing in on nearby ships, or they could be a missile in the alternate sense - anything flying through "the air". In the latter case, the launcher could start flinging out stealthy .5 kilogram kinetic penetrators by the hundreds. If the enemy ships are using fuel for maneuvering, versus, say, a magic force, then making them expend their maneuvering fuel yields tremendous tactical advantages. Eventually, they'll have to leave orbit or risk destruction. [Answer] Even if your "stealthy bombs" were not suspected, opposing fleets orbiting a single planet will be constantly adjusting their positions to avoid being hit by space junk (sand, paint flecks, bolts, etc) being deliberately released by the opposing force. Both sides will be constantly calculating the possible location of "chaff" released by opposing spacecraft and avoiding those lanes. That your "space junk" happens to be invisible bombs wouldn't change the strategy to avoid such dumb ammunition. [Answer] Forget about bombs, use sand. Even if you are using invisible tsar bombas, space is big and you'd need a fleet of bombs to maybe cause some splash damage. Enemy ships will be far enough from each other that they're not visible to each other without powerful telescopes, so even powerful nukes would take at most one ship each. Also notice that if an enemy ship changes speed by even a fraction of a meter per second, non-guided bombs will miss them. [A kinetic weapon as suggested by Daniel B](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/249371/21222) is preferrable, but here is the deal: a collision in space against an object of mass $x$ is the same as two collisions against of two objects of mass $\frac{x}{2}$, or four collisions against objects of mass $\frac{x}{4}$ and so on. If you move your ships to a higher or lower orbit, and spam the original orbit with powder going retrograde... anyone crossing paths with that powder is doomed. Supposing a grain of your powder has a mass of 4 grams, and its coming at the enemy at 16 km/s (remember, you set the grain in retrograde motion), then each grain will have a kinetic energy relative to the enemy of about: $$\frac{mv^2}{2} = \frac{0.004kg \times 16000^2 m/s}{2} = 512000j$$ That's about the detonation of 100 grams of TNT. It may look like a very small value, but consider that enemy ships will be bathed in this. If a billion grains of powder hit a ship in a second, it would be like all the electric energy that the US consumes in about forty eight minutes compressed into the surface area of the ship and in an instant (napkin calculation using a table from [this wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent) and some estimates, i.e.: 512kj approximates to 0.1kWh). With this energy amount, even an apartment building sized ship made of steel should be vaporized. You can then make the powder as fine as you want to make it hard to detect. ]
[Question] [ The underwater people are humanoid beings that live underwater. In place of arms they have flippers: These flippers vary in shape from more humanoid to closer to that of a penguin or whale. All of them have hands at the end of the flipper. Their neck has a similar range of motion to humans. Their torso is somewhere between humanoid and the torpedo shapes seen in free-swimming animals, and they typically wear clothing. This clothing rarely has pockets and they do not carry bags. Given this, how would the underwater people keep their watches on them? Ideally the watch should be visible without removing it from anything, and if it is possible they shouldn't need to touch the watch to see it. They shouldn't have anything extra besides the watch, and a strap for the watch if needed. [Answer] ## Nurse fob watches Nurses are typically not allowed to wear anything on their wrists, hands and lower arms for infection control reasons. To calculate a patient's heartrate, however, they need a timepiece; typically this is an externally worn fob watch attached to the front of their uniform and designed with the face upside down to be read by looking down. You can lift it to get a better view (which your creatures could easily do with their flippers) but you can also quickly glance down at your chest without really needing to touch anything. [![Nurse wearing a fob watch and close up of the watch by itself](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WMwjL.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WMwjL.jpg) [Answer] ### Adhesive Patches Wrist watches are soooo human. No, the fashionable swuman simply applies a peel-n-stick gel adhesive patch, such as you might expect to be treated to during the administration of an EKG or when wearing some kind of medical device on the skin. One side sticks to the watch, one side sticks to the skin. They last quite a while, even in wet situations. Swumans get them in different colours, shapes and patterns because they are disposable and aren't meant for long term wear. [![Medtronic](https://i.stack.imgur.com/POIiI.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/POIiI.png) [Answer] ## Use Hearing Instead of Eyesight A watch on a flipper would probably interfere with swimming. It might also be hard to see. I'd go outside the box and come up with a different way to tell the time. Sound travels really well underwater, and dolphins and other sea mammals use clicks and buzzes for echolocation and communication. Why not have a watch that uses either haptic feedback or audible clicks to tell the time? Mount it anywhere the creature can touch to activate. Make it part of their jewelry to have a watch on their chest where they dan tap it with a flipper. When they do, they get a burst of clicks that identifies the time. [Answer] I wear two kind of watches, one is already mentioned in an answer, a pin-on fob, the other is a finger ring. Depending on the way their hands are formed, rings can be worn and make great places to have a watch. An other alternative to a pin on fob watch is the traditional early style fob watch, kept in a pocket, on a piece of string/chain. [Answer] I suppose that depends on their flipper anatomy. I'm no professional, but assuming they have hands, seeing as they seem to be advanced enough to have clothes and functional watches, the watch would likely mount around the wrist area with the hand to stop it from sliding off when it is properly attached. If they don't have hands for some reason, it could be harnessed around their body for stability, or simply lack a band and be a stick-on where it attaches adhesively. [Answer] Maybe not the best answer, but my first thought was as a piercing much like an earring or tracker tag. Could be a great "Coming of Age" gift much like earrings are with young girls in America. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pw7nx.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pw7nx.jpg) [Answer] You did not specify how technologically advanced this species is. They wear clothing under water, which means that is produced somehow. Presumably underwater as having things made on the surface for import seems like it would be world breaking. Hands, with watches, but no mention of wrists or what exactly those hands are and how they function. It seems like the watch is the least of your worries so far. So off the bat we have some obvious hurdles that may demand more explanation than a watch. But let's suppose the under water peoples have managed to escalate the realms of their available technology to a point where we might as well be making up far out science fiction beyond the realms of plausibility in our own world. That much we can call fair game. Why not use imposed gesture based holographics then? Who knows how they managed to isolate electronic tech under water safely, but let's suppose this tech has some kind of hermetical barrier that allows these beings to interface without the threat of obvious shortages and physics and chemistry based conflicts. Why not just have them turn their flippers inward and a holographic, gesture based watch appears before them? Who cares about the hows and whys of this anymore since we're already way off anything we might conceivably see on our own world? Our own smart watches keep their screens off until we gesture already. This tech is low level by this point. So perhaps it is not beyond plausible that some being developed something like a photonic resonance that projects illumination from something more static, like a badge, that acts as the interpreter for all of the beings' computing needs. Think of it like a relay. Turn the flipper inward, think "time" and a watch appears over the hand-ish thing. Same for things like opening locks or whatever else is going on in your underwater realms. Centrally based, possibly non-submerged computers relay to the badges and project what they need to the user. Handwavium up the a\\ but you're going to need to adopt that as a necessity for anything from our world to exist in this one. Officially, I always suggest people avoid over explanation. If you need a watch, just give them one. Like a barnacle based adhesive outer garment pseudo-pocket watch thing. If the watch is what flips your story from believable to unbelievable, then there are problems elsewhere already. You might benefit from incorporating something along the lines of "alexa, what time is it" and just have a phantom voice answer in whatever means of communicating these beings use. That would at least be relatable. ]
[Question] [ Werewolves are predatory wolf-like humanoids. To be more specific, they have an upright, plantigrade frame like an ape, with a doggish snout and paw-like structures instead of hands. They have no language or inventive power, but can collect wood and start fires for cooking. How could they cook their food without needing to hold it over the fire themselves and potentially getting burned? [Answer] As the L.Dutch's answer says, the cognitive ability to connect "I do this" with "I get nicer food" is what I would say is inventive. However, as you ask the question I assume you are allowing them sufficient cognition to light a fire to use for cooking which requires similar mental abilities. I will assume you mean they cannot invent a complex mechanism to make up for their lack of opposable digits, but can perform tasks they are physically able to achieve the aim. The easiest way for about anyone to cook with a fire is a pit roast. Dig a hole (dogs manage this), place meat in hole, cover with something (rocks, wet wood, soil) and light a fire on top. When the fire has burnt out carefully uncover the meat and it should be beautifully cooked. It will involve getting the timing right. [Answer] They don't cook their food. Even the most elementary recipe is an inventive act, because it requires the capability of abstracting the consequence of different steps on the final result, as well as learning from experimental results. E.g. "a raw potato placed into a fire for some time becomes sweeter". Since you state > > They have no language or inventive power > > > they lack the very basis for reaching the point of cooking. They might accidentally eat something cooked if it happens to fall into their fire or hot ashes, but not because they did it on purpose. [Answer] They would cook their food using the exact same methods, tools and motivation as normal wolves. I.E. Not at all, using just their teeth, and why on earth would they cook their food? Until you allow them better cognitive abilities, they will not use fire at all. [Answer] They bury their food an inch below the surface, then start a fire on it. Once their instincts tell them the food is ready, they throw dirt over the fire with their back paws and dig up the cooked meal. [Answer] Spitroast and cooking pots How do you hold it over a fire is something quickly solved. Out of practical standpoint you don't want to hold it for a long time. Impale it on a stick and put the stick in the ground so it'll lean over the fire. Or impale it and have it strung over the fire by some other sticks. Otherwise a cooking pot. They serve the purpose to prevent the oxidation (fire) to directly start in the food, protecting the nutrients. It also allows to more easily be hanged over a fire. Both allow food to be put on and off the fire without burning paws. [Answer] If having food cooked was a necessity (for instance, the food is poisonous before cooked to a certain extent), and these werewolves have no 'inventive power' as L.Dutch pointed out, then it would make sense that a possible reason werewolves end up cooking their food is because their natural environment has elements that can naturally cook it. Perhaps they store their food in an underground dugout near an active volcano. Perhaps there are radiation sources that have a larger effect on 'dead' meat which in turn cooks it after a period of time. In both of these proposed situations, the werewolf would be acting instinctually, namely: it can't eat the food immediately, or it must bring its food back to the 'hive' before it can eat it. A third potential situation, (not quite 'cooking', but I could argue that it's a type of cooking), is some kind of bacteria, algae, or insect contaminates the 'dead' meat and changes the properties of it before it is consumed. [Answer] I would imagine that if the werewolves can do all that you describe they could probably also carry people? You've probably seen depictions of how heretics were burned at the stake in some times and places (do an image search for "bloody mary burning protestants" for an example). The werewolves could do that, except, impale their prey on the stake instead of tying them down (do an image search for "Dracule waide" if you're not sure what I'm talking about) to lower the dexterity requirement. It would be super crude, but I think it would basically work and you can really add to the horror factor by having people be impaled and then burned alive as part of the process. [Answer] Cooking their food is really just a side effect of killing their food with fire. Firehawk raptors have been known to carry flaming branches from bushfires to unburned areas, as a means of flushing out prey. Perhaps your werewolves do something similar, except rather than merely flushing them out and swooping in when they're in the open (a tricky manoeuvre for a presumably flightless mammal), they trap prey in an inescapable fire and feed on the crispy remains when the fire dies down. It's not going to win any plaudits with food critics, but it is cooking. [Answer] Most obviously either skewers, or clay… skewers as for any food, clay as for hedgehogs. All canines are known for their love of digging. Is it a giant leap from that, to wrapping the meal in clay and dropping the package straight into the flames? That both helps to stop the fire from burning before it cooks, and when it's pealed off, leaves all the prickles and much of the skin stuck to the clay. Further, "ordinary" werewolves don't need to cook their food. That's part of the "wolf" side of their being; wolves eat raw meat. Being a predatory, wolf-like humanoid of upright, plantigrade frame like an ape, with a doggish snout and paw-like structures instead of hands, should make no difference… except to leave their creator a hard task explaining how they start fires. ]
[Question] [ Lets say you had a state, technologically around the mid to late classical era, using a hard coinage. There are four types of coins: * The smallest coin is a paulum. * The second smallest is the radix, worth 12 paulum by law. * The third smallest is the decim, worth 12 radix, again by law. * Finally the aureus, worth 12 decim. This would be set to a hard weight of perhaps half an ounce of gold. Is this a practical/realistic monetary system? Would this be stable economically, assuming the regulations are strictly adhered to? How does it interact with (particularly w/r/t trade) other realms? [Answer] There is nothing wrong with these denominations. If your culture uses duodecimal math, go with it. However, if you want this system to be stable over a long period of time, you need to think about common issues like gold/silver price fluctuations, coin clipping and, for the authorities, eternal temptation to reduce metal amount in the coins. [Answer] ### You may want more precision You may want another coin or two. Whether its 1/12 a paulum or 12 aureus or one of each is open for debate and subject to how these coins are anchored to real value. I'm assuming you've chosen 12 here because it divides nicely, implying you don't want to see prices like "3.126 paulum" or "1 and 78/144 paulum". The paulum should be the smallest useful chunk of value. Currently your smallest coin and your largest coin are 1728-fold difference in value. That's sounds like a lot, but mapping it onto modern economics it doesn't seem like it has both enough precision at the low end and enough convenience at the high end. To explain - I'm just going to assume I'm using your system in modern day Australia and am just mapping your coins to different value pegs. If we map 1c AUD to 1 paulum - large scale transactions are impractical Even though the minimum coin here is 5c, and we want to take it out of circulation because it isn't as useful in modern economics as it once was due to its popularity and inflation, you are still billed to 1c level of accuracy in the modern world. I can buy or sell shares at an accuracy of $0.01, and if my 50c each shares go up in value 2% I want to keep that value. Some of my shares paid a 3c each dividend last year. The casino still has 1c slot machines. Currency conversions are performed accurate to usually 0.1 cents, and my pay rate is set accurate to 1 cent per hour. Working with this accuracy floor them the paulum maps to the penny, the smallest representable value, the largest modern value I can represent with one coin is $17.28, below minimum wage here. If your currency is multiples of 12 and your low skill workers are taking home 12 of the largest coin after a full days work something isn't right. The cost of buying a nice house in this system would be 40000 auerus. That's a lot to count at settlement. Transporting an armies pay to them would require significant logistics. If we map the aureus to a large amount, we don't have enough small change. Going of your example of 1/2 ounce of gold, you can buy a house without a wheelbarrow to carry your payment, but you don't have enough small change to deal with day to day transactions. Gold is currently trading at 1,806.38 AUD / ounce. Dividing that out, a paulum is worth 52c. That's pretty large for a smallest denomination. A $1.04 loaf of bread can only be sold at full price or half price. Your choices for tipping on a $3.12 cup of coffee is 0%, 16.6% and 33%. A "premium" product could not retail for less than 52c in value above that of the "economy" product. I hope your car doesn't need premium petrol, as if normal petrol is 3 coins per litre (1.56/L), premium would have to be $2.08/L, otherwise it's the same price. So what to do? My suggestion is add a "twelfthum" or something, a 1/12th chunk of a paulum allowing for more precision in small values. Because this turns a real estate transaction from 40,000 coins to 3,500 coins (which is still a lot). My second suggestion is a higher value coin so real estate deals and bank to bank settlements and company pay deliveries etc. don't need heavy haulage. [Answer] There are a couple of issues I see with the proposed system. The first is the possibility of a scale mismatch, and the second is that it leads to lots of spare change. The first is relatively nicely covered in Ash’s answer, so I won’t do more than summarize it here, but it comes down to the simple fact that unless the roughly 4 orders of magnitude difference in value between the highest and lowest value coins roughly corresponds to the difference in value between the highest and lowest value goods traded in everyday commerce in your world, you’ll run into issues (either people splitting coins to pay for small stuff (this actually happened historically), or needing to have absurd numbers of coins to pay for big stuff). The problem of spare change is a bit different. The issue that arises is that the more change you have to make for a purchase, the more room for error there is and the longer it will take, and in your case your system tends to produce a lot of change. As a baseline for comparison, assuming a merchant can always provide minimum change, the decimal system in use by the US and some other parts of the world, with 1, 5, 10, 25, and 50 unit coins and bank notes starting at 100 units is actually reasonably optimal because you will never need more than 10 total coins to make change, and any given denomination will not be needed more than four times. Various other decimal systems (such as the Euro system with 20 Euro cent coins instead of 25) are marginally different, but still similarly close to optimal. It’s technically possible to make even more optimal systems, but they require really wonky values for the coins that don’t divide into each other nicely. In your system though, things get a bit crazy. With four coins in a duodecimal relation like you have, you may need up to 33 coins for minimum change, and may need any of the denominations up to 11 times. That’s a lot of coins compared to 10 and 4 for the two-tier decimal system mentioned above, and that, in turn, means that your merchants may need a nontrivial amount of time for each transaction simply to count change. For a duodecimal system like this, there are two practical options for minimizing number of coins needed for minimum change: thirds and sixths. Using thirds as your subdivision would give you coins with values of 1 unit and 4 units for each unit type. This translates to 8 different types of coins (assuming you do 4 aureus coins), needing no more than 15 for minimum change with any coin needed no more than 3 times (the worst case minimum translates to three 1 paulum, two 4 paulum, three 1 radix, two 4 radix, three 1 decim, and two 4 decim). This keeps your total number of denominations down while still doing a pretty good job cutting down on coins needed for minimum change. Using sixths as your subdivision would give you coins with values of 1 unit, 2 units, 4 units, and 6 units for each unit type. THis translates to 16 different types of coins (assuming you do 2, 4, and 6 aureus coins), needing no more than 12 for minimum change with any coin needed no more than once (the worst case minimum translates to one each of every coin below 1 aureum). This is the absolute lowest you can get your minimum change requirements with a duodecimal system such as you have outlined, but gives you a lot of denominations to worry about. [Answer] Too few denominations, which lead to huge gaps between them. If I want to buy something that costs 2 paulum and I have 1 radix, I get back 10 coins. If I have a decim, I get back 21 coins. That means that people spend a lot of time counting coins that they give and receive. Additionally, sellers may need to carry huge amounts of spare change. Without adding the base denominations, you need additional coins to make things easier. At the very least, one half-radix, half-decim and so on. You could also take advantage of the duodecimal system and issue coins that are a third of the base value, in exchange (or addition) to the half values. So you would have 1/3 radix and 2/3 radix coins, and perhaps 1/2 radix coins too. Also, keep in mind that even basic mathematical literacy was not common in old times, so probably people would have a easier time with these new coins having different names than just describing them as "1/3 radix" or "4 paulum". Incidentally, IIRC at least some of the denominations of the old (pre-decimalization) UK currency system worked like that. [Answer] You monetary system mimics the former [British pre decimal system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C2%A3sd) of pounds, shillings and pennies, where one shilling was 12 pennies and one pound was 20 shillings, thus one pound was 240 pennies. The British system had coins of intermediate value to make things, like change easier. There was half a penny, a three penny coin (threepence), a sixpence and a florin was two shillings. You need some intermediary coins or worth 3 & 6 paulums and 2 and maybe 6 radixes. [Answer] ## Needs more denominations Four denominations are nowhere near enough to cover the entire span of one currency, especially if you're dealing with a powerful economy that would enable large transactions. As it stands with four denominations you could easily end up with a scenario that would require a buyer to haul an entire carriage with half a dozen oxen just to provide a payment for a single valuable commodity. Buying on bulk would be an obscenely nightmarish thing under the circumstances. The number of denominations is directly proportional to the buying power of the currency in question. Most modern currencies have 10 denominations and the ones being chosen are the ones most often found in circulations. 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000. Naturally, common sense dictates that any transactions that would require an amount of denominations that couldn't be physically held within a single hand should be concluded with a sale contract. [Answer] There are plenty of historical precedents, including in late classical antiquity, for a mixed system of coins that are actually made of precious metal, and others that are just tokens. In developing how your system works in practice, you could consider "[Gresham's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law)" that bad money drives out good. If people have a high degree of trust that both kinds of coin are acceptable, then they may tend to hoard the gold for themselves (or trade it with external parties, or melt it down), and do most business using the lesser denominations. That's because they can get the same practical day-to-day trade value either way, but only the gold is valuable for external trade or making into jewellery. Conversely, if there's a lack of trust that twelve decim are just as good as an aureus, then people may prefer to use gold coins (or snipped fractions of them) - assuming they are wealthy enough to use that amount of money. Effects may be different for different regions of your polity, or different parts of society. Switching to the government's-eye-view, consider how they might enforce the desired equivalence of coins. Do they pay their workers and suppliers in gold, or deliberately choose lesser denominations? Perhaps some people who deal with the state get preferential treatment. Do they attempt to fix prices of various commodities (as various historical governments have tried)? [Answer] I will make a few assumptions here, feel free to clarify. In terms of stability, there are at least two things to look at: 1. Intrinsic Value / Scarcity On tying an enumeration of money to a fixed amount of scarce and precious resource, good. You've just hedged a little at least against the primary financial crisis of the modern world. Intrinsic value (and by implication, scarcity) is one of [the Aristotelian properties of money](https://omniequivalence.com/monetary-properties/). A better standard would be to have the money be the precious substance; that way hoarding the gold to conceal the true amount of value and printing arbitrary amounts of worthless paper or trinkets would not be possible. In order to be sustainable as a standard, the rare substance itself must be in circulation. 2. Counting and Numeric Efficiency, and Divisibility The numeric efficiency of the coinage is related to a second and third of Aristotle's four criteria, namely, portability and divisibility. As mentioned in another answer, you've chosen a counting system that is cumbersome, because large amounts of coinage will be needed to make change for almost any purchase. The most efficient number system is an augmented binary counting system\, where the general rule is that each coin denomination is worth twice that of the next lower value. The basic value set could be something like 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32. When the sum becomes an amount where the total number of coins becomes excessive, a second summary value of coin can be introduced, which is equal in value to the sum of a certain run of preceding coins. For example, you could have a 1, a 2, and a 3, since 1 and 2 combinations are common. For larger sums, you could have a 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 16, and 32, plus a coin valued at 31 (for those $9.99 purchases). The maximum number of coins required for any amount 1-32 is therefore 4, one less than the logarithm base two of the number. The summary coins can be kept sparse, thereby preventing doubling the number of coins required, and keeping in general the number of coins required to make any amount of change logarithmic in terms of the amount, with an additional reduction for very common amounts. (Imagine having a dime+nickel coin 25 years ago; how often that would have come in handy). Time to count coins will be greatly reduced because any amount requires at most* one of each value of coin. The efficiency gain of this greatly increased portability is most notable when portage costs are high, such as in a civilization where the item you purchase must be carried home on a human back or using only small draft animals, when distances are long and travelers are on foot, and every gram of coinage costs them something dear to lug around. So your coinage system will not have those advantages. It is more likely that it belongs to a decadent civilization having advanced technology for transportation or else the money articles are very small and lightweight; that the people of this civilization are soon going to be subjected to a standard change for the value of their currency since (as I understand it) the currency itself is not a precious substance; they may already be seeing the effects of inflation as gold is being hoarded and relatively worthless trinkets are being mass-produced in lieu of precious materials in order to pay government debts, and the inefficiency of purchases and exchanges with that coinage is pushing them towards a digital or otherwise more convenient currency. The lack of higher denominations also means that the base-12 system devolves into unary for amounts greater than the largest; if the smallest denomination is close to a cent than the largest will not be much more than 17 dollars. Counting large sums, including a day's wages, quickly becomes burdensome and perhaps even prohibitive in this case, although the granularity is perhaps feasible for coarse-grained purchases, but does not perform well at the extremes of high or low value. Other realms will be pressuring this civilization in that direction on account of the exchanges; the burden of exchanging vast enumerations of minor flotsam greatly increases their accounting expenses without enriching themselves commensurately. \*[This coinage system was borrowed shamelessly from [here](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/alma/11?lang=eng).] ]
[Question] [ I have a scene where a humanoid monster tries to swallow another being alive, only for them to die when the smaller being rapidly increases in size through shape-shifting and tears its way out of the larger one like a xenomorph chestburster. The larger character is about nine feet tall or so but has a mouth capable of swallowing very large prey whole like a predatory fish, whereas the smaller character being eaten is about the size of an average human. After shape-shifting the character being eaten is about seven feet tall, and the character increases in size fast enough that they assume full size between being swallowed but before they get digested. Indeed, the whole reason they increase in size is they are trying to prevent themselves from being eaten, and end up ripping their way out while being swallowed. My original plan was that the shape-shifter expanding in size to avoid being eaten would end up killing the larger character as part of the finale of an action scene, in keeping with some thematic motifs of gluttony and hubris the larger monstrous humanoid has. However, it almost seems like even if such an action was lethal, it wouldn't be immediately lethal, and the larger character would still have some time to move and fight back before they died of shock, potentially killing the other character in the process (which is not what I am aiming for). Given this, I am trying to figure out how fast it would take for someone to die from another organism bursting from their body in such a manner, assuming that the monstrous humanoid doesn't have any special anatomy that makes them more or less vulnerable to such a tactic. My primary concern is making sure the injury is lethal enough to avoid having the larger character keep fighting for a bit and kill the smaller one before dying. For example, would bursting out of the throat be more lethal than the stomach, since it could potentially damage the windpipe, jugular, and carotid? [Answer] # Death is instantaneous. The damage comes not from the ingested creature clawing or bursting its way out through the larger creature's body, but from this bit: > > when the smaller being rapidly increases in size through shape-shifting > > > The ingested creature rapidly expands, compressing the larger creature's lungs, heart, and internal organs. This causes blood pressure to spike to many times normal safe levels, causing instant ruptures throughout the big guy's vascular system, including the arteries of the brain. The big guy promptly dies of many,many massive simultaneous strokes and aneurysms. If it was more like the original chestburster in Alien, that took several days to grow and inflicted its exit damage via jaws, claws and acid, then there is even a chance the victim could survive, with prompt medical intervention to stem bleeding. But your chestburster is a size-metamorph, and that shines a totally-different light on the matter. [Answer] Exit thru the back. Chest bursting. SO tired, you know. Been done, been done. Rather than exit from the front Alien style, have your shape shifter exit through the back of the organism that ingested it. A vertebrate body plan usually has the spine and aorta behind the digestive organs. Bursting thru those would be unusual, spectacular and very quickly lethal. [Answer] If you punch a large hole in an organism, they are going to bleed out pretty quickly. The bigger the hole, the more vascular tissue they damage, the faster they will bleed out. You get bonus points if your chest-burster grows spread out instead of in a big single ball. Imagine the chest-burster growing inside the host with its legs spread open rather than curled up tight, then violently pulling them together before making an exit, causing internal lacerations all along the way. An additional benefit is a single large growth would be more noticeable than a distributed growth. Massive bleeding can rapidly drop blood pressure and make it hard to do anything other than stumble to the ground and lose consciousness. EDIT: It is also worth considering that your chest-burster can have a mechanism to paralyze the host to minimize the risk of damage while being born. Perhaps your chest-bursters could release a neurotoxin when they jump out? [Answer] If you are alive inside the guts of any vertebrate, and you have the strength to burst out of a rib cage, then you can kill the "host" pretty much instantly just by ripping up its heart. Loss of blood pressure gives the host time to look surprised, clutch it's chest and fall down before losing consciousness. The main limitation on this process is the time it takes for you to find and destroy the heart. Ripping your way out of the GI tract is going to cause extreme pain, so from the outside the likely scenario is that the host screams in pain, curls up in a ball, and is unconscious before anyone nearby can bend down and say "What's the matter?". Don't come out through the ribs because that is definitely doing it the hard way. The easiest way out is through the abdomen below the ribs. However unless you are very careful you will find yourself coated in the semi-liquid contents of the large intestine, the primary job of which is to scavenge water from the waste food before it is excreted. You will also have to fight your way out from whatever clothes the host was wearing. If you are still small enough you could avoid the clothes by coming out through the neck or mouth. [Answer] > > How fast would it take someone to die from another organism bursting from their body? > > > ## Have you heard about something called mammalian birth? It happens all the time. A child is not part of the mother, contrary to some folk-beliefs. The child gets half its DNA from the father and half from its mother. It is not an exact copy of either and has its own unique identity. A child is an extremely efficient parasite that grows inside another creature after being implanted by a virus called "sperm". It feeds off its 'mother' and like a cuckoo gets fed and brought up by its 'parents' by a very clever strategy of manipulating their hormones so that they 'love' it. It's survivable for the mother but there is always a risk of her death if things go wrong. [Answer] It really depends on the relative sizes. It would be horrifically painful having a creature rip out of your stomach, but women routinely survive similar things with a caesarean section, and go on to walk about. If you want them to die, have them rip the humanoid in two. That would cause enough trauma to disable most people. [Answer] What goes through the whole abdominal cavity? The aorta. Cut that and their blood very quickly ends up everywhere rather than going to the body. Blood circulation stops, the brain shuts down a few seconds later. Fast enough for you? ]
[Question] [ I came across one space weapon, known as the Sun Gun, which uses a concave mirror on a satellite to concentrate sunlight onto a small area at the Earth's surface, making a hot beam of death. Apparently, according to a German scientist, 9 km^2 of reflectors are enough to burn oceans and cities, but that is not the point. Assuming that the contraption even works the way it should, we should also find a way to turn off the weapon when not in use. After all, we only want to cause mayhem when we need to, and we don't want a weapon we cannot control. So, just what is the best way to deactivate the Sun Gun, to stop it from forming a heat beam when we don't need one? [Answer] Just deform it and lose focus. The problem with your death ray is that if you don't have a quick way to turn it on and off you can't just take out a city. You have to take out an entire swath leading up to the city. The solution is to build your concave mirror with variable geometry. Once the mirrors are not forming a perfectly concave mirror that focuses your death ray on New York City the rest of the state will just receive a little more light, no burning. In fact it doesn't have to be concave. Just line up as if it was. It's called a [Fresnel Reflector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_linear_Fresnel_reflector). Looks like this: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AnmBU.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AnmBU.jpg) [Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector technology by CNIM - Concentrating solar power plant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP48pAb8sec) Just that easy. Please don't use your death ray for evil. [Answer] Nope, sorry. Your Sun Gun is permanently disabled Because the Sun is not a point source of light, the mirror will not be able to perfectly focus its light on one spot. Indeed, no mirror reflecting a real-world light source can achieve a greater apparent brightness than matching the temperature of its source. See [conservation of etendue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etendue#Conservation_of_etendue) for the technical details of this. The mirror as proposed by Oberth's "Sun Gun" proposal would be no more than a nice flashlight in the sky. At 9km^2 surface area , the mirror will have a diameter of just 3.4km 3.4km at 8500km altitude is a mere 0.023 degrees. The "Sun Gun" will be able to illuminate at most 1/475 as bright as noonday sunlight. Even if we change Oberth's design, and put the reflector in VERY low orbit (120km), it will only span 1.6 degrees, and provide at most 10.2 times solar illumination. This might, might be enough to start fires. Remember that the light focus will rapidly diminish from this hottest center focal point, most of its light will be a diffuse spot about 5km wide, and that the mirror would be zooming past at more than 7.8km/s thus requiring very rapid adjustment of the focal point to keep one spot targeted. But, assuming you set up a sufficiently large reflector with suitable controls: All that is needed to "safe" it is to minutely de-focus the beam. If instead of focusing on the ground it focuses 1/10th of the distance (still an almost perfectly flat mirror), then the light intensity on the ground is less than 1/1000th the peak achievable level, and your sun gun is only a tiny bright spot in the sky, from the minute fraction of its surface that manages to reflect the sun towards you. [Answer] # Direct the Mirror Away from the Sun Spacecraft routinely have systems to keep their solar panels aimed at the sun for maximum power generation. You would have to have stationkeeping and actuators to keep the mirrors pointed at the sun at the appropriate angle to focus light on earth. When you want it switched off, redirect the mirrors so they aren't reflecting the sun's light. Done. [Answer] Make the mirrors transparent. Perhaps by rotating them so they do not catch the sun, perhaps by using "smart glass" and running an electric current through them, which causes glass to become transparent. The light has to transmit. Turning them non-reflective would burn up your sun gun. [Answer] # Polarized Glass You ever take 2 pairs of polarized glasses (like you get in a 3D movie screening) and overlay them on top of each other? If they're lined up you can see through them just fine. Rotate one of them 90 degrees and it becomes completely opaque. So what you need is 2 layers of polarized glass over your mirrors (one of them can be the glass of the mirror itself). One layer is fixed and the other is on a rotating actuator. Simply rotate the glass filter 90 degrees and your mirror becomes non-reflective. (You can also rotate them partially to attenuate the reflectivity - give the city a taste of the heat you can produce before you turn it on full-blast.) Now ideally, you're also following some of the other advice and making a large array of small mirrors rather than one big mirror, so rotating a bunch of small polarized filters can be done fairly quickly. To avoid any side effects of rotating elements affecting the attitude of your satellite, alternate the rotations of each filter between clockwise/counter-clockwise, and the total angular momentum will cancel out. (90 degrees in either direction works equally well for blacking out the mirrors). ]
[Question] [ I, Rey Skywalker, am officially the greatest Jedi in existence. I successfully took down the remnants of the empire single-handedly, defeated my arch-enemy Kylo Ren, and killed Sheev Palpatine, the one time ruler of the galaxy. With my work completed, I set about making money from my exploits by allowing a movie company to base a trilogy around my life. The films were great, with the third movie being critically acclaimed by fans and critics alike and cementing it's place as the greatest trilogy in movie history. However, they revealed a number of strange things about me, one of which is that Palpatine was my father. Not only that, but he was also a failed, degenerating clone of himself. Now, the one bad things about clones is that they are imperfect copies of the original. Their cells break down more quickly, and their chromosomes have many flaws in their genetic makeup. If this thing was my father, then it would make sense that these flaws would be passed on to me, yet I have not suffered from them. I attributed this to my force based abilities keeping the effects of this disease at bay, but that doesn't make much sense upon closer inspection. Force powers come from midoclorians, intelligent microscopic life forms that live symbiotically inside the cells of all living things. If cells are dying sooner, it would make sense that these life forms would also be breaking down. Yet I am far more powerful in the force than any who came before. How can this be the case? [Answer] Actually, this is a common failure mode of the real-world modern cloning techniques. The cells have limited number of divisions and you have to find a cell that is divided fewer times in order to make a sucessful clone. The sexual reproduction resets the "division counter". Search for "telomeres" for longer explanation. [Answer] Clone is a clone. His degeneration was a feature of being a clone, not of being Palpie. In other words, Dolly cells behaved like cells of the source material. Regarding the age, its abilities, etc., it's not possible to pass those specifics to offsrping as it's not genetic characteristic. Futhermore if any part of the source material is damaged or flawed we can fix it in pre-, during, and post-production. Your chromosomes are wibbly-wobbly? We can fix it in your sperm. Embryo have potential to have third arm? We can fix it by making that trait regresive. Side-note: it seems that your whole problem derives from the fact that Palpie forgot that you SPEED UP the aging of the clone. We had this issue since Clone Wars. We speed up "Mystery donor" clone maturity for him to have them sooner in "adult" state. It seems the emperor not only stole our technology, didn't read the manual, sped up the process even further (he what? hit 60 in 20 years?) and complained that his knockoff machine doesn't work as ours. Even kids know that you need to bake the cake by the book. [Answer] I always took Emperor Palpatine's physical degeneration to be a side effect of using force lightning, not some clone side-effect thing. He looked fine in the first trilogy (I'm sorry for even bringing it up), until he started zapping the Jedi that came to arrest him. That may or may not have been his first body. I'd guess "not" simply because he was able to send Yoda packing, and that's not the kind of skill one can develop in a reasonable amount of time. It's quite possible that other dark-side powers, when used at the levels the emperor did, could cause similar damage. Or maybe he just liked throwing around zaps a lot. There's probably some Dark Side version of "7 Effective Habits" that recommends killing minions who fail to do your bidding in a timely fashion. Vader was all about force choke. Palpatine is clearly more of a "lightning" guy, and screw the consequences. That's what cloning vats are for. We're out of clones? Fuck it, old habits die hard... "Where'd that granddaughter of mine go anyway? I'll totally be more careful with my next body." [Answer] Cloning shouldn't automatically mean that the resulting person is going to be less fit than the original. It's true that the telomeres on a cell's DNA get used up as the cell divides but animals also naturally generate a chemical called "Telomerase" that continually regenerates these telomeres. You can get a healthier clone by selectively destroying cells that aren't copying properly even after those cells pass through the body's own validation. Normally after cells get too worn out or damaged, they're supposed to self destruct. If they don't, the body's immune system will try to destroy them. One of your biggest risks is old and worn out cells not properly being recollected. But there are already drugs that can adjust the collection threshold in an animal body. You should be able to ensure that your clone gets healthy by making heavy use of these drugs at the start of the process.. and insuring that your original sample is from a healthy cell and not one that's already been extensively damaged. But you should never even have this problem in practice because... Even if there are no healthy cells at all, you could take 10 samples of DNA and then compare them to find the sections that are common to most of them. Damage will be random for each strand but the good sections will be identical across multiple DNA strands. After some analysis you will end up with a very good idea of what an ideal DNA sample of your subject will look like, even if you don't have any actual sample of this on hand. At that point you could pick the best one of the lot (and you have as many tries as you want) or if you have the technology, make a completely perfect sample from scratch. [Answer] Kamino shows that the Star Wars galaxy has extremely good genetic engineering, as they are able to use growth acceleration and target behavioral traits(though this might also be the control ship from Clone Wars, it uncertain which effect is which). Assuming Rey were made using this technique, it would have been trivial to avoid genetic disorders As a side note, while I generally disagree about Timothy Zahn's perspective on The Force, his idea that cloning Jedi drove the clone insane because of the effect on The Force was a good one that would have been interesting to explore. If only he didn't come up with actual Jedi kryptonite. [Answer] You are, after all, your mother's daughter. You see, only half your DNA is from sickly Sheev Jr, and not every chromosome he possessed will have been corrupt. The Force only needs to isolate an intact 50% of his DNA, and pass that on to you. The midoclorians can then patch up any remaining issues in the 1-cell gamete, ready for them to propagate as your embryo develops. (This would be far more difficult to do to a finished clone, because there would be far more cells to repair) Plus, what constitutes a "failed clone"? Our Evil Ex-Emperor would have discarded a clone who lacked sufficient malice, a substandard connection to the Dark Side of the Force which would have weakened his powers. Everything else may have been in perfect working order - including his conscience (notably absent in the original product). So the midoclorians identify a suitably un-corrupted clone (and perhaps patch up any major defects early in development), and then vacate premises until the "failure" is abandoned for apparent Force Insensitivity. At which point they direct their new herald to escape and locate a suitable female, so to prepare a flawless conduit for their gifted power. ]
[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/158873/edit). Closed 4 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/158873/edit) It would obviously utilize a much more powerful substance than simple electricity. Maybe plasma could constantly be siphoned from the infinitude of stars in the universe to keep the battery charged constantly? This question was inspired by L. Ron Hubbard‚Äôs story ‚ÄúRevolt in the Stars‚Äù, which tells of an alien dictator named Xenu. He ended up being condemned for genocide on a cosmic level, and was locked away in a force-field prison. Said force-fields were powered by an eternal battery. [Answer] Yes. It's called a "betavoltaic" battery (there are also theoretical alpha- and gamma-voltaics devices, but betavoltaic batteries - or rectius, unreachargeable betavoltaic cells - are [known to already exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacel)). To build an "eternal" battery, you'd use a very large quantity of 128Te (or any other ["barely radioactive"](https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/barely_radioactive/) element) surrounded by substances that react to its double beta decay by generating photons, and suitably doped semiconductor layers (essentially a photovoltaic cell). The tellurium will decay very slowly, supplying energy. Since 128Te is unbelievably long-lived, the energy generated is minuscule. So, you will need a lot of tellurium. On the other end of the spectrum, plutonium 238 decays in less than 90 years, and its activity (more than 600 GBq/g) and energy output is high enough to keep a nugget of PuO red-hot. A large enough deposit of uranium ore should be enough to keep Xenu locked for the foreseeable life of most current generation's stars. The quantity of material required is probably pretty much constant with the power requirement over the same period of time; that is, if you double the decay rate you do double the power, and require half the quantity, but then you need to double that again since otherwise it would burn in half the time. # Raw calculations for 235U From Wikipedia I get uranium 235's half life, about 700 million years. So if I have a kilogram of 235U, in 700 million years I'll have half a kilo, after 1.4 billion years 250g, after 2.1 billion years 125g, and so on. Activity: 2.12 microCurie per gram. What does this mean: since one Curie is 3.7 x 1010 atoms per second, and one gram contains 2.12 microCurie, so 2.12 x 3.7 x 1010 x 10-6 = 78440 atoms per gram disintegrate each seconds. Each of those gives out 4.39 MeV, or 1.60217733 x 10-13 J. 78440 x 1.6E-13 J each second is 1.25 x 10-8 W, which is very little (this is spontaneous radioactivity; of course were we to enclose the metal into a neutron reflectant material, such as beryllium or tungsten carbide (you might want to google "Demon Core"), the radioactivity would increase sharply, and the half life go down accordingly. Assuming an advanced enough technology we should be able to recover a good 50% of that energy, so we can extract 6E-9W from each gram, 6E-6W from each kilogram, 6 milliwatt from each ton, and 6 W from a block of one thousand tons. A million tons of U235 (divided into subcritical masses separated by neutron absorbers, to avoid uncomfortable nuclear explosions) would supply initially six kilowatts, down to 3 kW after 700 million years; and so on. Given a density of around 19, one cubic meter of uranium weighs 19 tons, and one million tons of uranium are one cube with a side of 37 m (given the need of subdividing it into subcritical masses and gather energy, I imagine it would be more like 50 or 60 m). If the field generator requires one hundred kilowatts (100 / 6 kW = about 17 million tons) and we want it to be running for twenty billion years (20,000 / 700 = 28 half-lives), we need (100/6)\228 = 4.5 billion* millions tons, or about 220 thousand cubic kilometers; a sizeable asteroid of about 75 km diameter. Such a mass would significantly distort the planet's local gravitational field, so if that's how the eternal battery works, I feel some confidence in telling you that good ol' Xenu might currently be doing time somewhere in the vicinity of Manaus, Brazil. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gwk0U.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gwk0U.png) # The battery is not the problem As user @Hobbes noted, the problem is not a battery running for billions of years - the problem is maintenance. The field generator, and the battery itself will degrade over time (all the more so since radioactivity plays hell with electronics and semiconductors). Even with self-recycling and self-repair, chances are that after a paltry few million years, Xenu is going to get free. [Answer] With the [reality-check](/questions/tagged/reality-check "show questions tagged 'reality-check'") tag, there is no such thing. The [first law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics) of thermodynamics says that there are no [perpetual motion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion#Classification) (or perpetual power) machines. You tried to get around this by tapping stars, but even stars are not eternal. [Answer] I'd suggest a substellar mass black hole. Given that we're dealing with science fantasy silliness, the safe anchoring of the black hole to the planet is left as an exercise to the reader, but it'll probably help if your black hole is [charged](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reissner%E2%80%93Nordstr%C3%B6m_metric). Good luck! Black holes evaporate over time due to [Hawking radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation). This can be captured by various means such as photovoltaics or even a heat engine, given that you can use the rest of the earth as a heat sink. Lets be less optimistic than LSerni, and assume the prison needs about a megawatt to run. The Hawking radiation power of a black hole with mass $M\_0$ is $P \approx 3.56345\times10^{32} / M\_0^2$, so if we need a megawatt we'll need a black hole with mass of 1.9x1013kg, or about 20 billion tonnes. This compares favourably with LSerni's millions of billions of tonnes, and provides more power and by way of a bonus black holes develop more power as they shrink... no half-life issues here. A black hole with initial mass $M\_0$ will evaporate over this timescale: $t\_\mathrm{ev} \approx 8.41092 \times 10^{-17} \;M\_0^3$. For our initial megawatt power source, we get a lifetime of 5.6x1023 seconds, or about 18 quadrillion years, vastly outperforming LSerni's and Gloweye's suggestions and when the black hole runs out of mass it goes bang spectacularly rather than just turning off and letting the occupant of your prison escape. Not that it will matter because the [universe isn't guaranteed to last that long](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe). Aha! I suspect people will say. There's no way your prison equipment could last that long! They're probably right of course. I'd just throw Xenu into the event horizon of a larger black hole (such as the regular, natural stellar-mass ones). If they're genuinely immortal (and they'd have to be, if imprisoning them for eternity is a worthwhile punishment) then I'm sure a little thing like [spaghettification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification) won't bother them too much and not much gets out of event horizons. Problem solved. --- edit: to counter the "the black hole will eat the earth!" argument, consider than the event horizon of a black hole is found at the [Schwarzchild radius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius) which for this miniscule object will be significantly smaller than a single atom. It cannot eat the Earth quickly enough to make any difference to the lifetime of either the black hole or the Earth itself (which will of course be [eaten by the Sun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#After_core_hydrogen_exhaustion) in the future). Have a read of [this related answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/74816/62341) for a bit more on the matter. Obviously, the most sensible thing to do is no not drop the black hole, hence the usefulness of it being charged. You might need a lighter, more energetic black hole if you wanted to get enough energy to electromagnetically levitate it against Earth's gravity, but maybe you should just keep the whole assembly sensibly in space instead. The OP, of course, did not mention planets or gravity at all, merely eternity... [Answer] ### We already have them. Since it's cosmic-scale stuff we're talking about, a star can last a pretty long time, and 10 billion years is very possible. The vast majority of that time (like 80% or something), it'll have a pretty constant output, much like our own sun. And if you have FTL travel, then you can even abandon one star and head to the next if you're close to running out. It shouldn't be that much of a burden to do that once every X billion years. ]
[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/66232/edit). Closed 7 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/66232/edit) Overnight in excess of 7 billion humans (current entire human population) are struck by a curse, the passive ability to read the mind of anyone within close proximity (10m radius). Since then privacy is broken and so is banking, no secret is safe nor are any safes. Would banking still work? If not, how to remedy this? [Answer] Privacy is broken, but safes are not. Combination locks can no longer be used, but good old key locks would still function. Computer passwords will be broken, but key cards and other physical dongles will still protect you. Modern computerized encryption is built on keys so long humans cannot remember them, so nobody can steal them. The good old-fashioned guard is also working. In fact, guards will work better than before since their employers can find out if they are loyal, and the guards can find out if other people are honest. There will be a period of chaos where things protected only by secrets will be stolen, but I think we will sort things out quickly. Also remember that thieves will have a hard time hiding. They can't sell the stolen goods without the buyer knowing they what they are buying. Those buyer can't show off their new stuff without radiating "This is stolen goods." I think the criminal underworld will have a very hard time surviving in this new world. Most people have a vested interest in society working as normal, and we will conspire to keep things going. Having banks and money is so useful that we will all continue pretending nothing has changed. Consider a locked glass door. Anybody can break the glass and enter, but very few people will actually do that. The new society will have a lot of "locked glass doors". And very few of them will be broken. (I think) Some rich people are probably going to isolate themselves and only speak to people by phone. Their loss. [Answer] No. Let's talk about money. The main purpose of money is to serve as a medium of exchange. Basically, if I am a farmer and you are a butcher, but you want clothes today, we can't do business through the barter system. Instead, we do business by paying each other in money and then we can purchase whatever we want from third parties. Money does nothing more than make transactions easier. The value of money, therefore, is not based on what that money is made of, but rather, what you can buy for your money. That doesn't change in this situation. Foremost, most simplistic economic models which people learn in introductory and intermediate economics assume perfect information. This is basically that. Issues with adverse selection, used-car salesmen hiding information from others, and swindlers would go down dramatically, because people will know exactly what they are buying. Money secured by computers and combination locks might be less secure, but quite a lot of money (circulating currency) is secured not by those computers, but rather, 'rough men [who] stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm'. If you want to steal someone's wallet, you will still have to wrestle that wallet away from them. [Answer] I don't think banking will be affected at all. Let's assume that now this curse is applied to everyone around me. I use credit card and internet banking. They know the password of my credit card, but I still have the card, so the password is useless without the card. They also know my password for internet banking. When they try to login to my account, my bank still sends my phone which I still possess a one-time code for authentication, and without that one-time password, my login password is also useless. Their only option is to impersonate me. To do that, they need a valid paper( my personal ID) and they still need my face(Face database of the government). Also now this curse is applied to everyone and everyone is aware of it, extra cautions will be taken to prevent impersonation (Also I know your evil thoughts about stealing money from someone). Banking system won't have any threats other than it has now. Unless you beat me up and steal my card or my phone(I know that you will because of the curse , so I break my card or phone before you touch it), there is not much to do. [Answer] Despite all the marketing, when I go to the bank office I know that it is not that they care about me, but about the money they can make with me. Yet I keep going. There is no need for privacy for banking; economical data is (usually) kept private for other reasons (people who do not want other people knowing how well/bad off they are doing). In fact, telepathy would bring us closer to the ideal capitalist setting, in which the consumer/investor is supposed to have perfect information (and also be rational, whatever that means). If I know that the bank clerk can offer me up to 1% and the bank clerk knows that I want a 2%, we can before wasting anybody's time. And just a few fast visits to the other banks in the city will tell me which one is willing to give me more, which would lead to increased competitions from the other banks. Switzerland and other tax evasion/money laundering havens would end being hurt most for this measure, but regular banking would not. At most they would have to stop ending password protected internet business and use identification by biometrics or by hardware tokens. [Answer] No, banking isn't rendered worthless, circa 2016. However, people would need to spend a bit of an extra effort to not be victims. * 2-factor authentication takes care of (lack of) privacy attacks. Anything from physical cards/tokens, to push notifications to trusted device creating one-time temporary second factor. * Biometric authentication can phase out passwords. iPhone can already use your fingerprint to authenticate Apple's wallet systems. Iris scanning is feasible. * Blockchain technologies help with ensuring authentication as well. ]
[Question] [ Assuming current technology, is there any catastrophic event from space/earth that humanity are able to see/detect/calculated it coming. (Would prefer a space event but earth ones are welcomed) This event should be able to wipe out at least 90% of living things. 1. We are able to detect this event 1 year before it strikes OR 2. We are able to detect this event 5 year before it strikes [Answer] if we go for the less classic solutions (meteorites, comets, asteroids and so on) there isn't much we can actually predict. Stuff coming from the sun usually comes without warning and it takes very little (compared to astronomic times) to reach earth. Other things are: 1) not very visible until it's too late (Aliens? ) 2) Visible enough that we can know it in advance (Comets or even incoming planets) 3) Too sudden (Solar Flares) 4) The information of the event comes with the event itself (Gamma Ray Bursts, which travel at the speed of light so you get a visual of the event at the same time of the damage being done) An idea could be a Rogue Black Hole (yes, they are a thing): a black hole wandering around the universe and ends up in our solar system. Since the black hole is not "eating" anything at the moment it's undetectable (It should be emitting Hawking Radiation though, but i don't think it's that much detectable, it should be very faint actually). All of a sudden it gets close to Neptune with catastrophic results, and everyone is aware of that black hole now. The black hole has now matter swirling around it (an accretion disk) and it would be very bright because of the heat emanated by the disk, probably it could even be seen with naked eye (it mostly depends on the disk size at this point. But we can safely assume it'd be easily visible at a certain point) Now we have 2 scenarios, depending on the black hole size: 1. The black hole is very tiny and almost at the end of its life (we're talking the same order of magnitude of atoms, if not tinier. A black hole of $1\10^{-9}$ nanometers, way less than an hydrogen atom which is 0.053 nanometers, will have a 673468.0 metric tons mass and a lifespan of 813 years) 2. The black hole is big enough to influence other celestial bodies (a coin sized black hole will have roughly the same mass of the earth, so i think that'd be enough) In the 1st case the black hole won't have a long life span but it can have a direct effect on the earth by evaporating next to it, emanating a lot of radiation. So our scientists might calculate that in a few years the black hole that perturbed Neptune will get close to the earth and end its life close to it exploding with terrible force, emanating gamma rays which will kill most of the life on earth The 2nd case is more catastrophic. The black hole can't reach the earth or it will completely destroy it. The best course of action for a not-so-catastrophic catastrophe would be if it hit mars and then the debris would hit the earth or if it passed so close to the earth to perturb its orbit causing earthquakes and possibly a new ice age, or even move the earth closer to the sun (and/or tilt its axis) and make it hotter. In any case this will do a lot of damage to the current life on earth This video might give you an idea on how catastrophic a coin sized black hole is (and also how a very tiny black hole might "affect" life on earth on evaporation): <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nHBGFKLHZQ> I haven't said anything about the black hole's speed but that can be arbitrarily set to suit your needs (depending on how much "sciency" you want to go, you might need to do some calculations). Just remember that you need to make it go quite fast to not be caught by the sun's or other planets gravitational field, becoming part of the solar system and ending up in a stable orbit before unleashing its wrath on the earth Also remember: Black holes do not suck things! they have a huge gravity pull but no bigger than the thing they formed from. If the sun would instantly turn into a black hole, planets would still have the same orbit (well, we would die because of no more heat but that's not important). The only difference would be in the area which was previously occupied by the sun, that's the point where a black hole's curvature of space time (which is its "gravity") does the weird things. This is just to say that what i wrote is kinda plausible with today's knowledge of black holes. More on Black Holes lifespan: <https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-a-black-hole-last> Black Hole features calculator: <http://xaonon.dyndns.org/hawking/> [Answer] Ruling out the classic meteorite, an interesting option can be a big and opaque cloud that cross the solar system between sun and earth blocking the sun for some decades, let say a century, and thus fast driving earth to a ice age. While we can discover the cloud 5 years beforehand, we cannot prepare to an ice age so fast and moreover, with no light (or 80-90% less) all life on earth are basically doomed, except, perhaps, some niche where some extremophiles can survive. [Answer] The problem with global warming. The scientists assume that [Venus or Mars looked similar to Earth](http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2014/06/-venus-and-mars-hold-priceless-climate-change-warnings-for-earth-todays-most-popular.html), and they also assume that it is the global warming that turned them into hell. The temperature on Earth rises slowly, and nobody knows when is the critical point of no return, but it is going to come. In such scenario, no living organism would survive. [Answer] Humanity can calculate that World War III is coming in advance. If the war goes all the way to the nukes for any reason, such as a group of extremists that hid themselves within the ranks of both sides turns them on, they can wipe out most of the living things overnight and then the fallout will do the rest, killing out things for the next few decades. We can, more or less, detect the possibility of it happening before the war even starts. If we go for the real world example, then I should say that I am already getting vibes that a new global war is coming and it might bring nukes with it, or maybe even weapons that are more horrible. When it comes to space, we can only detect a disaster beforehand if it moves slower than the speed of light. For example, as luck would have it, one of the Voyager probes might detect an asteroid coming towards Solar system and the scientists can calculate that it is on a collision course with Earth in five years. [Answer] From the [setup for Arthur C Clarke's The Songs of Distant Earth*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Songs_of_Distant_Earth): > > Scientists in the 1960s discover that the neutrino emissions from the > Sun – a result of the nuclear reactions that fuel the star – are far > diminished from expected levels. At a secret session of the > International Astronomical Union it is confirmed that the problem is > not with the scientific equipment: the Sun is calculated to become a > nova around the year AD 3600. > > > Easily adaptable to your desired shorter timescale. [Answer] How about the solar system enters a galactic high density dust cloud. The reduction in radiation would invoke a severe ice-age but, apart from spectacular dawns and dusks, not much else. Would that work? [Answer] There's a 3% probability that the whole solar system breaks down. But for an unlucky butterfly effect, the disintegration of Phoebes (Mars' satellite) caused this probability to become a fact. Earth's orbit around the sun is being pushed further and further, causing the planet's climate to veer slowly into a perpetual Ice Age. Luckily enough, the Earth's new orbit allows for some fortunate species to survive. Including a bunch of human beings. [Answer] I'm thinking biology rather than astrophysics. The Tasmanian devil is facing extinction because of an infectious cancer-inducing virus. Could that happen to humanity? It would have to be extremely infectious and very fast spreading so medical science does not beat it. Something like a flu pandemic. It would initially not cause any life threatening symptoms, so the CDC and similar agencies would not be very alarmed. By the time a global epidemic of highly aggressive cancer was noticed it would be too late. Almost everyone would have been infected. Nature might spring something like this on us but prob ably only once in a billion years. But we might do it to ourselves. Research by some crazy scientists working for an equally crazy government with the aim of creating a doomsday weapon. They don't realize their latest brew is a success because their lab is destroyed by a natural disaster or insurrection the next day. Or their insane leader decides that because he is dying then everyone else must go with him. By the way, if 90% deadly in one year is sufficient for your plot then all you need is nature, in the form of a particularly virulent pandemic flu that makes the Spanish flu look like a dress rehearsal. Or some other virus mutating across the species barrier in one unusually successful mutation. It could happen. The human species went through a genetic bottleneck about 80,000 years ago and has less genetic diversity than most other species. We may be spectacularly vulnerable to a particular new mutation of an old virus. Like smallpox in the Americas, but global. ]
[Question] [ I know water is required for life on a planet so I got to thinking, is it possible for a world to be a functional planet (plants animals etc.) without polar ice caps and if so, how would it work without the equator being overwhelmingly hot? Also, would this affect the planet's water bodies if they were similar to Earth's oceans? [Answer] As [@Green](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/27085/13845) says, a slightly warmer planet than earth would prevent ice caps from forming. Although this largely depends on your planet's composition, there are several ways that you can warm your planet to prevent ice caps from forming. 1. Move it slightly closer to its star. This would warm it up, but it might have unexpected consequences, like heating some parts of the planet too much. 2. Give it a thicker atmosphere. This will insulate the planet more, warming it up and protecting the poles from getting too cold. 3. Have some sort of wind / ocean current that cycles between the equator and the poles. This will help to even out the temperatures. These all work in conjunction, so you can mix and match freely. [Answer] A slightly warmer planet than earth won't have ice caps. Part of our worries about global warming come from the fact that the polar ice caps might melt and flood the coastal regions of the world. Depending on the atmospheric composition, albedo, solar intensity, water content of the planet along with the shapes of the continents and oceans, a planet may not have any permanent polar ice caps. The lack of polar ice caps won't prohibit the evolution of complex life forms at lower latitudes. The oceans currents may be interesting but you haven't specified any continents and it's a computational complex thing to figure out too. [Answer] It is definitely possible. Like for example [the earth at the time of the dinosaurs.](http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/dinosaurs-of-the-south-pole) Quote (from relatively far down on the page): > > As the world entered the Cretaceous Period, Antarctica was very much situated at or near the South Pole. But at least during a major part of this period, there were no polar ice caps anywhere on Earth. And forests penetrated all the way to the South Pole. > > > [Answer] It's not only possible, but it's the normal state here on Earth! Throughout the period for which good fossil evidence exists, there has never been ice at sea level on Earth except when there was a continent at or near a pole. Even with such a continent, ice is not guaranteed. If there's no ice, the planet is indeed warmer than today. The tropics become too warm for large mammals (but great places for giant crocodiles). The poles become Mediterranean. The planet's temperature is stabilised by a negative feedback mechanism. Increasing heat increases water vapour in the atmosphere, which increases cloud cover. Clouds reflect sunlight, reducing warming. [Answer] One might also consider the possibility of a horizontally rotating planet that exists within its star's habitable zone. I'm not sure if life on one with an axis tilted that far would even be possible, but if so, then it is likely that the equator of the planet is not a solid ring of ice. [Answer] [Axial tilt](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/orbtilt.html) is crucial for climate (and polar caps). If Earth's tilt was 90 degrees (like Uranus), equator would be covered by ice, and poles would be (in right season) warm. ]
[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/180409/edit). Closed 3 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/180409/edit) Set in the medieval time, overnight a giant meteorite strikes the pacific ocean and then a bright green glow sweeps the entire globe turning all human invisible to mammalian sight! Note that this is an illusion whereby the mammalian brain refuses to recognise or register a human being regardless what s/he is wearing, I wonder how would people find mate and rise their young when they can't see each other? Note: the condition is similar to human being blindness but much worst, the brain will experience excruciating pain when there is any attempt to trace out the silhouette of a person even the suggestion alone would bring about a concussion. Basically the brain develops a fear of sight of a human being including sketches of a hand or eyes, under a normal circumstances the mammalian brain filter out people which would otherwise had dire consequences. [Answer] Humans regularly have sex without the lights on. Blind people do successfully bear and raise children -- even when both partners are blind. There is (demonstrably from real-world cases) no requirement to see a partner in order either to procreate or to raise children. [Answer] They would simply rely on other senses. They can still hear each other. They can still smell each other. They can still touch each other. How do you find a mate? You talk to people. How do you raise your kids? Well, a lot more easily than an actual blind person. You may not be able to see your child, but you can hear them, you can reach out for them, and once you are holding them you can see everything else that you need. [Answer] I assume only vision is blocked. As mentioned by Logan R. Kearsley and I read between the lines with Paul TIKI, they would still get relationships and such. After the first shock, they probably try to figure out ways to communicate and know who's who. Then build social interactions on that. I would imagine that for social interactions they will get something in front of their eyes that you can only partially look through. A cloth you can barely see through for example. This will give focus to other senses while not completely removing your ability to navigate. It would also reduce the anxiety people may get talking to visually disembodied voices and such. As said before, you can have "normal" relationships afterwards. Area's designated for whoring and other physisocial activities would get marked even better. If everything and not just vision gets blocked, you have some options until a big roadblock. To seek out each other, music instruments would be perfect. They are items and not people and can be used for new forms of speaking. Melodies can help get messages across and types of instruments can assist in identifying things like station or their profession. Smell, taste and touch are out. Smell and taste are difficult to reproduce and convey, especially as it's generally difficult to have the correct area of effect. Touch is even more difficult. Clothes and such would be ignored, so maybe planting things on you that are so outlandish or far away from the body it wouldn't be seen as clothes is trickly and leads to a lot of difficulties explaining what is allowed and what isn't. But the roadblock is the worst. A man can't climax without stimulation. How can that be if touch of the other is ignored? Save for inserting things, there are precious little options to still procreate. Humanity would be doomed. [Answer] # "Life, Uh, Finds a Way" I anticipate fewer changes than you think. Other answers have proven that people can have sex without seeing each other (given the cost of candles in your era, this was probably the norm). What about courtship? People tend to meet each other through shared activities. These activities will still exist. For example, medieval churches were very influential and not being able to look at other people wouldn't change the church's religious and social importance. I met my wife in the campus church. One of the first things I noticed about her was her beautiful singing voice. We started talking after church and at university events. Our story would be similar even if we hadn't been able to look at each other. If looking at humans caused pain, they could wear some kind of face mask that still let them see where they were walking without letting them see other people. They'd also be able to read hymnals and use tools and whatnot. Just such a device exists in the modern world for student pilots who are learning to rely on their instruments. [![IFR hood](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gcNe6.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gcNe6.jpg) [Answer] Population growth would falter, but not stop. Remember, we have five senses to go along with all of the rest of our urges. And love that goes along with procreation does not solely require sight. Smell and Touch are what I'm mostly talking about here. Hearing to a lesser degree, although that would be important for more long term arrangements The Sense of smell lets us detect pheromones, and though we tend to mask them now, it would be important for the survival of the species if you can't see one another. Touch is also, obviously, very arousing to most humans. Heck, there are people who blindfold one another in the bedroom, so that won't interfere with the mechanics of the situation. So to deal with the problem, maybe establish "mating centers". You go into a building with rooms that keep you isolated, put on a blindfold, a potential partner comes in, also blindfolded, and then let touch and smell take it from there. Another option might be elaborate costumes. Think of Queen Amidala from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. She had the elaborate headdress and huge robes that totally altered her silhouette. That could be enough to allow people to "see" each other. The biggest problem will be with raising children. If you can't actually look at the kid, it becomes very hard to take care of it. Perhaps a blinder arrangement that forces one to only look at parts of the child instead of the whole kid. It kind of depends on what you mean by not being able to look at another human. If all you see is the hand, that is a very different silhouette than the whole person. [Answer] So, if your brain will make you not see a person carrying a stone, I presume it would just make you see the stone levitating, while the person will be ignored. The person's clothes will be ignored as well, falling into the "the silhouette of a person" part. So where do we draw the line between a stone and a pair of trousers? At the silhouette? Maybe I'm looking for loopholes, but if the problematic part is human silhouette, why not try to address that directly? My first thought was a full set of plate armour (probably made of something lightweight, cardboard maybe?). But that's probably still too human, so perhaps just a few cardboard boxes on which you write your name! (for recognition, I imagine people becoming much better at recognising others' handwriting quickly!) And just as well as you wouldn't see the human carrying the stone, you won't see the pair of arms sticking out of the box, driving your bus, fixing your road's potholes, typing at the desk next to yours, or doing their homework in your living room. But you'd still see the box, with a recognisable handwritten name (or drawn personal symbol or what not)! Impractical? Oh, yes. Still better than not seeing where your co-workers or family members are at all? Definitely. [Answer] There's so much wrong here. Mating, as others have noted, is no problem. Voices, smells, or carrying odd objects all make everyone's position visible when that's wanted. It's the social aspects that are mind-boggling. I can go invisible just by taking off my clothing? Imagine the crime rate when people can hide from sight that easily. And frankly, mating isn't going to be a problem, but involuntary sex will be - strangers could ravish with impunity; you'd never know who did it. Not to mention the enabling effect on warfare. If you don't see attackers coming and you don't know who to retaliate against, war becomes the simplest way to get anything done. This is going to be a VERY nasty civilization. Do people with very visual imaginations have problems running their hands over other people, because they can visualize the shape of what they are touching? Sex is possible without caressing (if less fun) but if you can't scoop up your child without passing out, that's a problem. Human development is affected when there is little or no physical contact. It's been tried (websearch Romanian Orphans) and it doesn't go well. Disease might be a problem if you can't see who is sick and avoid them. The premise is frankly weird, but the question you asked is the least of the problems it generates. Widespread invisibility will cause so much social damage that I don't think the reproductive rate is the problem. Other things will cause civilization-threatening problems first. ]
[Question] [ In my fantasy world, there's something called the Darkness. It isn't real in a physical sense. It's more like a living idea. It embodies all of our dark emotions—fear, anger, hatred. It is drawn to and fueled by these emotions, and it has a stronger presence wherever these emotions can be found or where the emotions are associated with. If you've got a lot of really angry people in one place, or a single place that everyone's afraid of, the Darkness will have a strong presence there. How could you remove the Darkness after it comes to dominate a place? Simply fighting it only fuels it, so you have to find other ways. The main people who would be equipped to handle the Darkness would be mages, whose magic I discussed in part [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/59605/magic-system-balance-question/59615#59615). I'm trying to think of something between psychological manipulation and some sort of magical ritual to banish the Darkness from an area. [Answer] My first recommendation would be to create grades of Darkness. Not everything we deal with is the epitome of anger hate and fear. There's anger towards specific things. There's fear of the dark, or fear of drowning. Each one would have its own flavor, and inherently have a weakness which the mages can leverage. The inky blackness of true Darkness is trickier. What do you do with the case where the Darkness doesn't seem to have a weakness, and attacking it only makes it stronger? There's a huge body of content within humanity for approaches to combat darkness, so I wouldn't say "here is the one true way to combat darkness." However, I will make an observation. Fear, anger, and hate all have a common trait: they are willing to consume their own energy to expand themselves. Fear rapidly propagates, generating rigidity. Anger burns brightly. Hate often expands its domain, trying to hate more things. Perhaps the best way to combat the Darkness is simply to smile. Smile at it, hold your ground, and never actually oppose it directly. Of course, it will naturally spawn off lesser Darknesses, but as we discussed before, those can be banished, and each time the Darkness is using up energy. In theory, it can run out. Thus, you don't banish the darkness -- the darkness eventually banishes itself. Never forget to smile. [![Smiling at demons](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TkNhN.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TkNhN.jpg) [Answer] Music. The entire crowd is exposed at once and resets their frame of mind. [Answer] This sounds like the setup for a cliched "[love conquers all](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePowerOfLove)" moment. In the end, your mages just have to remember that... friendship is magic :P [Answer] There is something called the Light. Darkness cannot stand against it since Darkness is not real in a physical sense. Some even claim that Darkness is simply a lack of Light [Answer] If "The Darkness" is a concentration of all the negative emotions, then the logical step is to counteract that with positive emotions like love and hope to nullify the hatred and despair. Perhaps the mages could harness and somehow store positive vibrations from many people in a happy place and unleash this energy into the areas of the darkness. Maybe this energy could be stored in a crystal or liquid or such, which when touched/drank balanced out the negative emotions leaving a person calm and emotionless for a time? If you still wanted to have a physical confrontation then the mages could shoot crystal tipped darts or arrows to subdue people infected by the darkness. [Answer] The obvious answer is, as many have already said, to counter darkness with light, balance positive feelings with negative. But I think there's an angle that hasn't been covered yet... When matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other. When cold air and hot air meet, the result is warm air. You can't cancel out negativity with positivity and end up with the same amount of positivity you started with. An interesting tack would be using up whatever goodness you use to cancel out the darkness. If you try to counter hate by singing of love, your singers should end up drained and unable to feel either emotion. Light should be used up when it shines through the dark. A party held in the dark place leaves the celebrants exhausted and hung over. It adds an interesting element of resource management to the 'love conquers all' trope - how much love can you afford to sacrifice to defeat the hate? [Answer] This sounds like a job for a dedicated team of hope-ers or super excited fans. It's possible you have a group of people who enter this place with candles and chant uplifting chants and hope it all away. Or you have some kind of animé/cartoon /(really fun and uplifting media) convention there. Excited fans flock to it and all their giddy excitement makes the darkness sick to its non-existent tummy. [Answer] Whatever you use to break up the darkness, music, light, hope etc you need to know how to place it to full effectiveness. A single ray of light or beam of happiness will dissipate the darkness in the immediate vicinity but the remaining darkness will contract and condense making lots of smaller nasty quagmires, that may been even more potent than the larger mass. Smaller yes, but if It does end up being more powerful, then It will be that much harder to dispel (almost like cutting off the head a Hydra, only to have two heads grow back) I recommend you have multiple sources of (insert darkness banishing idea here). like a lattice. While this will break the darkness into smaller puddles as well as a single source would, the puddles will be that much more diffuse and that much easier to handle. * multiple rays of light, from multiple sources criss-crossing and giving the darkness no place to run. * Multiple sources of music, positioned to reinforce the sonic vibrations. * Wizards, Mages, do-gooders, pacing up and down through the darkness spell-casting, chanting, sprinking holy water or burning incense etc as they go. ie. Not a single concentrated beam of 'goodness'. [Answer] If the mages are allowed, simply (magically) dispersing drugs that can alleviate anger/anxiety can fix the problem for a few hours. You can add music and celebration to further enhance the effect. This is a solution with 100% chances of success because the dark emotions are ultimately biochemicals in the brain that we're physically getting rid of. Mass hypnosis is another solution if the Mages are capable. The chances of success will depend on the skill of the mages and predisposition of people to be hypnotized. Yoga is another very good solution that doesn't require any magic. Just get people to start deep breathing. It's pretty much impossible to stay angry or anxious when breathing slowly and deeply. Food and other sensory pleasures will do it as well. People are usually happier when they're eating their preferred delicacies or experiencing other sensory pleasures that they're in mood for. Blue color is also known to calm people a bit, so using an appropriate color scheme with calming sounds/music (perhaps supernaturally amplified by magic) can help. [Answer] I don't want to be judged by this answer, but here it goes: If your problem is that bad feelings make and feed the darkness, and fighting it also make it stronger the simple answer is to stop the darkness at the root. Have a group of specially raised sociopaths wizards so they nuke the area and wipe the entire population of the affected area without feeling even a bit of guilt and you got yourself a fresh start, just be careful with how you communicate it to the rest of the population. hint: saying that the darkness suck them all in and disappeared seems like a good option. Bonus point if they only wipe the people and not the houses and stuff. If the people believe that their kingdom have a foolproof way of dealing with the darkness then they wouldn't be so afraid of it, won't they?. Couple that with low-density settlements, a life without too much hardships (some is necessary to strive), regular celebrations to lift the people's spirits and a nice prison for people with bad thoughts (the kind that its really close to the border with that kingdom you don't like and also gets wiped out regularly) and you have a recipe for a low darkness kingdom. Or you can have a lot of monks trying to purify the area by sending thoughts and prayers. Your call [Answer] Assuming a simple magic spell is between psychological manipulation and a magic ritual, try just knocking people out. It would render them unconscious, causing most emotion to fade or disappear until the person awakes (why 'sleeping on it' is a solution to anger or helps remove emotion from decision-making, and why when a patient is agitated the patient is sedated to bring vitals back to normal). It's a temporary solution, but would likely be enough to overcome the evil incarnate. For the time being... [Answer] If it is indeed an idea inside the mind, there is no real way for it to be destroyed. But, Love and life can thrive even in the most unlikely of places. Hope can exist where you would expect there to be none. Just look at history to see the futility in fighting Ideas: Wars against the spread of certain political doctrines, aka ideas, where both sides end up slaughtering each other but neither sides ideas die. I guess one could always institute some sort of mind altering program that clamps down on the emotions that lead to evil....but that in and of itself could be its own form of evil, as it removes from people that which makes them who they are. [Answer] You build giant choaches/carriages with folks inside that want to "party." That might be a feast, carousal, revelry, orgy or whatever creates positive energy. Every such coach is manned by some mages who keep the darkness away from the coaches and the horses while letting the positive emotions out. Drive such coaches to the locations dominated by darkness. There the party gets off the coach, places some kind of memorial, gets back on the coach and drives home. Now every time those people involved remember the good time they had the memorial is instilled with their positive feelings towards that place and over time darkness is weakened or even banished. But beware! Everyone should be able to take part in such activities or envy will set in and strengthen the darkness. [Answer] Children Children are innocent, and when they are young enough, they do not know anger or hatred. If the most fearless children were trained to wander about where the darkness is strongest, they could destroy it. Can the darkness retreat ? If it cannot, it will spend as much energy as it currently has to destroy the innocent child. If the child is truly pure, the darkness will empty itself. Side note : that solution could add a dark secret to your story, where in fact, the darkness origin is linked to these children's innocence being sacrificed to fight it. [Answer] By eliminating the ego? Most eastern philosophy has, in some way or another, the darkness resulting as a product of the ego asserting itself. When the practitioner works to dissolve their ego and id, through selfless acts and meditation, the darkness dissolves too, leaving the practitioner free of the dichotomy of good vs evil. Kali would be a one nice way to name your darkness, going by the brief description in the question. According to legend, Kali goes on an angry rampage and is about to destroy the universe, but is stopped by her husband, Shiva, who is passive and lies down before her. Kali steps on him, and gets embarrassed, and stops the rampage. Or another way, if you get into an argument with someone and both of you are irritated and grumpy, you can "win" simply by genuinely saying sorry. This leaves the other one powerless and feeling embarassed, and they usually apologise too :) But the passive side who backs down first is actually dominating and controlling the situation. That's kinda neat. In practice, you cannot decide to just eliminate the darkness, since that is a type of desire for control, a coersion and asserting your will on them, whch is only spreading and generating more Darkness. You just need to change the one thing you can change, yourself, and hope the rest of the world finds it inspiring and follows suit. Your mages could fight as best they see fit, but they'll end up only replacing the darkness. Have them educate and guide the population instead, so they become light. [Answer] You could attack it with the opposite force like light (e.g., happiness, joy, etc.) or if you don't want a one-sided story then perhaps you can fight fire with fire, for example, sadness and depression can get in the way of anger and hatred. And eventually have them neutralised each other or at the very least minimise the effects. Sometimes the same thing is better than the opposite for example, in math, + multiplied with - or - multiplied with + will always equal -, but + multiplied with + or - multiplied with - will always equal +. ]
[Question] [ The world has lost its atmosphere. It has flown away, because the magnetic field is weakened and solar flares are making everything slowly fly away in space. NASA has its own rockets and shuttles and all these nice things but... they do not work anymore! They do not fly, they stay on the ground, or they fly a bit and then crash. The question is: why? Which is a possible (sound) explanation for this? [Answer] Since before 1940, there has been no plausible explanation for a failure of rockets to work in a vacuum. Simply put, rockets work better in vacuum than in thick air. Now, your solar flares and magnetic storms that accompany them could still ground NASA and other spacecraft -- but not in a way related to the ongoing loss of the atmosphere. Rather, the electromagnetic effects of the flares are very bad for microelectronics, and every spacecraft more sophisticated than a basic sounding rocket is critically dependent on computer electronics for functions like guidance. Without guidance, it doesn't matter that the rocket engines still work (we'll handwave getting, say, an RS-25 Space Shuttle Main Engine to operate without its electronic controls) -- the rocket can't be kept on course well enough to reach even Low Earth Orbit, never mind navigate anywhere further from the Earth. A pilot aboard wouldn't be able to communicate with ground control well enough even to manually (and inefficiently) fly a rocket into a particular orbit -- and once in some kind of orbit, unrelated to any intended mission, she'd be doing well to be able to do anything other than deorbit (that, at least, is thankfully simple: you can see your motion relative to the Earth when in low orbit, so you just need to thrust against it by an amount any astronaut going up in these conditions will have memorized). End result: launching rockets wouldn't come to an end -- especially solid fuel rockets like most modern sounding rockets. But launching spacecraft would be done, because the computers that make it possible would all be fried. [Answer] *They fly, but landing...* As @Zeiss Ikon says, rockets fly better in vacuum than in atmosphere. Getting a rocket to a set altitude or into an orbit is much easier than it was. However, they cannot get back down to the surface of Earth without either: 1. an atmosphere to use for aerobraking and eventual slowing during landing (heat shields, wings and/or parachutes) - now that this is gone the only alternative is... 2. just as much delta v as they needed to get into orbit in the first place. Given the limits imposed by the [Tsiolkovsky rocket equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation), this makes Earth-to-orbit-to-Earth missions prohibitively expensive for most payloads. To give an impression of just how bad this is - assume that a well-designed rocket that doesn't need to punch through the atmosphere can deliver 5% of its launch mass into low Earth orbit (LEO). (For comparison, the Space Shuttle could deliver <1.5% of its launch mass into LEO.) If it wants to land on an airless Earth safely, then only 5% of the payload that reached LEO can land - the rest is expended decelerating to a soft landing. So a spacecraft with a launch mass of 4,000 tons will get 200 tons into orbit, of which only 10 tons will make it back to Earth. This assumes that all goes well - if any of the rocket firings fail during the initial launch or during the de-orbit and landing then the payload (including humans) is hamburger because, again, with no atmosphere there's no fallback option to eject and parachute to safety. [Answer] ## Kessler Syndrome There's no physical principle that would prevent a rocket from functioning in a thin atmosphere, in fact, as others have mentioned, it would actually make things easier. What might prevent spaceflight, however, is what's known as "Kessler Syndrome." This can happen when the destruction of one or more spacecraft or satellites produces a hail of high speed shrapnel, which in turn destroys other spacecraft or satellites, producing still more shrapnel, eventually leading to the destruction of everything in orbit. With only the thin atmosphere at the edge of space to slow the fragments down, low earth orbit is ultimately filled with a cloud of shrapnel that could persist for centuries. Realistically, this would only make staying in low earth orbit suicidal. As long as space launches passed through low earth orbit as quickly as possible the risk of collision could be minimized. However, if the scenario you are proposing is in the far-future, perhaps by that point in time there will be enough material in orbit that Kessler Syndrome would make transiting low earth orbit truly impossible. Alternatively, perhaps none of the space agencies of this setting have a powerful enough rocket on hand, or cannot afford (whether due to a shortage of material resources or funds) to build a powerful enough rocket to dash through low earth orbit with a useful payload. [Answer] There are no rockets that fly completely automatic, there needs to be at least someone to program a course and start it. Since there was some cataclysmic event that robbed the earth of its atmosphere, all humans are dead, and no one can start the rockets. [Answer] Electrical failure The magnetic field has weakened, so solar flares will have a larger influence on the world. One way they can do this is EMP. All systems are simply fried. If the systems aren't fried or placed just before launch, they quickly fail when they meet the now seemingly more abundant solar flares as they go up. [Answer] The design of the "bell" end of the rocket is based on the air pressure under which it is operating. Thus, rockets that operate in vacuum are different than those used for launch. You can learn about this from Scott Manley's videos on YouTube, for example. This affects the efficiency and may or may not reduce the thrust below the point of usability. And it's easy to change out the nozzle. Rockets made for launch may also use aerodynamics for steering. Moving a little fin is easy compared to vectoring the main thrust; likewise fixed little fins are used for stability and there is no mechanism to do the kind of careful balancing needed in any other way. I think this is your best bet to be believable and understandable. The priming and ignition systems may be tuned for or fundamentally rely on ambient pressure outside the rocket. Rockets designed for launch stage may rely on air for cooling! ]
[Question] [ The scenario: In the not too distant future, someone ran just the right genetic algorithm and figured out how to make a warp drive. It can travel to distant stars! The only problem is that optical technology hasn't really caught up, and the sky is big, so really the crew is only vaguely aware of the position of the largest planets in the system they are warping into. They are on a mission of exploration, dammit, and explore they will. Presume that they show up somewhere about Earth distance away from the approximately sunlike star. Presume that there are planets similar to those in our solar system floating around (so sure, there can be a rocky planet around where Mars is, and why not a large gas giant or two out in the outer reaches, but not much further than Saturn and not much larger than Jupiter). Presume that the warp drive makes it possible to reach all of those worlds. Finally, presume that they don't have access to "planet scanners". They've got what we have - optical and radio telescopes. How do they know where the worlds are, and how do they localize themselves with enough precision to navigate? [Answer] 1. Observe the star, particularly its spin. That will tell you where the debris disk (planets) are most likely to be. The star's equator is likely to be close to the plane of the debris disk. 2. Jump to a spot well above/below the expected debris disk. Mask out the star's light. Take a 6-hour photographic exposure (or equivalent). The lines (not dots) on the photographic plate (or equivalent) are the planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and other assorted reflecting debris. Now you know which objects to study in detail, and roughly where they are. A second exposure a couple days later will provide enough information to rough out each object's orbit so you can find it again. Since few planets are exactly on the same two-dimensional plane, a third observation from an acute angle to the debris disk is a pretty good idea. 3. Your growing ephemeris of objects in orbit should be checked by a gravity model. If an object's observed orbit doesn't quite match the model, you know that you have missed something that you should probably investigate. 4. Look at the spectrum reflected by each object that you want to study in order to plan and prioritize detailed investigation. "Hey, this absorption pattern matches carbon dioxide." [Answer] Navigating around the star and planets could be done simply with optics. They would be able to compute their polar coordinates very accurately with respect to the local star by observing the star's new location relative to the background stars after each warp. They would also be able to easily use the inverse square law to compute their new relative distance from the star based on its new brightness. That would be aided greatly if their warp drive technology allowed them to control the distance travelled during a particular warp, within say at least 1 AU accuracy. (Presumably, this is the case since "the warp drive makes it possible to reach all of those worlds".) In which case they would only need to make a few triangulating warps to know their precise distance from the star from that point forward. With their precise solar system coordinates knowable it then becomes a straightforward matter of discovering and fixing the planets. Full sky optical scans after a few warps around the star should be able to easily fix the interesting bodies again using triangulation. [Answer] The ship would consult its star map. We already have telescopes and other devices to observe and detect distant objects. By using this method, we have been able to gather plenty of data about not only our own system but others as well. If the warp drive existed, the logical next step is to strap it to a huge telescope designed to detect in-system objects (the same way we observe planets in our system), then have the telescope jump to each star system, observe the planets, come back to Earth with data (it's faster than beaming radio waves!) and repeat. The information can be packaged into databases and sold to ship captains. There's no need for individual ships to go into uncharted space and reinvent the wheel. [Answer] Stereoscopic view of the system, and triangulation. Arrive in the system. Take one high-resolution optical image of the system. Jump in any direction by a distance of a few AU, not directly towards or away from the sun(s). Take a second high-resolution optical image of the system. The difference between the two images are the suns, planets, moons, and larger asteroids. As you know the location of your two observations very exactly, and the number of object will be relatively low and usually visually distinctive, it is a trivial case to use triangulation to determine their exact position, and a rough estimate of their size. Now sit at your second location for a while, and take a third high-resolution image of the system. This will give you a very good idea of the current motion of the detected objects. You may miss out on the very distant and faint objects this way, for example the same technique used in our solar system with current (portable) telescope and computer tech, would easily detect the planets from Mercury to Saturn, but might miss Uranus and Neptune(they are so far out that the motion may not be enough) and will almost certainly miss Pluto and all but the very largest of the asteroids. You may also miss anything that was obscured by the Sun(s) in either of the first two images, but you are rather likely to know that you missed something (it will be in 1 but not both of your first 2 images) , just not where it was. One more observation from a suitably picked third viewpoint should clear this up. ]
[Question] [ Witches are broken down into three classes. Class A have a limited supply of Mana, and must work in tandem with other witches to combine their power in order to pull off many spells. However, their spells can be done quickly, and their Mana recharge rate is fast. This allows them to do multiple spells a day. On the other side of the spectrum is Class C, which have a larger supply of Mana than normal. This allows them to perform powerful spells singlehandedly. However, their spells take much longer and their recovery rate is very slow. This affords them only a handful of spells a day. In the middle fall the vast majority of the population, class B, who have a general mix of both affinities. For centuries, this has kept different classes equal with each other in the magic system. Powerful witches didn't become broken character badasses that could dominate everyone else, weaker witches would not get pwnd, and most would fall somewhere in between. However, the March of technology has led to a new product becoming available: synthetic Mana. This is an artificially created form of Mana sold in the form of potions. This has managed to revolutionize witchcraft. Synthetic Mana doesn't add power to the witch, but rather recharges an individual's Mana after being used. This returns a person to their original state by bypassing their natural recovery rate, allowing them to return to full power in a shorter amount of time. Artificial Mana was at first difficult to produce, as it required massive machines with expensive batteries. Today however, it is cheap to manufacture and easily produced in high quantities. This has allowed society to enter it's industrial revolution phase, in which items can be easily made much quicker and cheaper than before, making them relatively inexpensive for the average consumer. A powerful individual with a high Mana account can buy these potions in bulk and use it to return to full power quickly, overcoming their disadvantage and disrupting the balance of power that the magic system has created. How can I prevent this from happening to keep the system stable ? [Answer] 1: Potion Abuse. At the moment being a Class C witch with potions is strictly better than being a Class A witch. Especially if the potions are cheap enough to chug one, cast Create Lace, sell the lace, buy another potion and repeat. To keep the balance you need some extra downside to Class A + Potions. I suggest potions are damaging in the long term. They clog up the leylines with articial mana that takes a while to declog. So you get a short term boost but then there is a recovery time. If you chug too many then you might ruin your leylines completely. It's similar to sugar addiction. You get a burst of energy in the short term but then you crash. Overuse leads to obesity and diabetes. Inabulity to produce your own insulin/mana. Also both compounds are addictivee, and this leads to a stigma on overuse. 2: Potions are Produced by Class A Witches. Class A witches are still valuable because they are what produce potions in the first place. These witches have a small mana pool. Once the pool is full they start leaking mana into the environment. This mana is harmless but can be harvested: Each Class A witch carries an amulet that absorbs the overflow mana. From here it cannot be used directly. But the amulet can be cheaply processed by grinding it up into a potion. 3: Class C need more Training. All people produce mana at the same rate. The difference is their ability to hold it within their body without it leaking out. Class A witches can hold onto some mana and release it by casting spells. Class C can hold onto a lot of mana but this makes it harder to release the mana since their body naturally wants to hold onto it. Thus they need more training but have higher potential. Don't even ask me about Class Z witches. . . . [Answer] ### Few ideas: *Artificial Mana is, cheap, mass produced, available everywhere, but also pretty heavy.* A dose suitable to recharge a C back up to full mana would weigh about 40kg. But for an A it's only about 4kg. You can realistically only carry so much with you at once. Using a spell on mana causes it to explode violently, so no "Bag of Holding" or "Wingardium Leviosa" to help with the extra weight. This puts an upper limit on how much you can carry into battle, but you can still use it in factories for your industrial revolution. *Artificial Mana is fragile in high quantities* Your society only has fragile glass to store the potion in, meaning you can't easily keep 50 in your backpack and expect them to still be when you look later. The potion is highly acidic and needs to be stored in glass or plastic only. Or it could be like plutonium, where if you put 10kg of it together it blows up. *Artificial mana has a short "Use by" date* Once you get it out of the shop, a bottle only last a few days before it decays. Perhaps its the UV light. Perhaps its the loving surroundings of the factory which made it. Maybe it needs refrigeration? Who knows? But if you bring 100 bottles of mana into a battle and only end up using 5 of them, you're going to end up pouring 95 of them down the drain, at considerable expense. *Diminishing returns* Your bodies mana system gets less and less efficient at absorbing the mana. The first bottle gives you 100 mana. The second 99. Then 97. Then 94. Then 90. Then 85. Etc. Eventually you get nothing from them. The only way to reset the counter to 100 is to wait 24 hours for your body to break the cycle. *Its a weak poison* Acetone or Methanol is part of the ingredients. Your liver can metabolise it, but only at a limited rate. Drink more than a few mouthfulls per hour and you'll get sick. *Its intoxicating* Its only absorbed when mixed with high proof alcohol. A shot of vodka-mana will recharge a C's mana, but 3 shots and you'll be unable to aim, and 10 shots and you are going to wake up with a magically-sharpied-face. A's only need a tiny sip to fully recharge. [Answer] Why would it make it better for the class C witches? Its the class A's that will benefit! A class C witch not only has a longer recharge rate, it also has longer times to cast spells. A class A witch has short spells and short regeneration. Lets say class C witches require 10 potions to refill their total mana pool, and a class A witch could do it in half a potion. The class A with is still able to cast faster and regenerate faster than a class C witch. Then consider having to down 10 potions in quick succession, assuming one potion is the size of a drinking glass (about 300ml where I'm from) you've now downed 3 liters of potion in a short time! That's not going to be a pleasant experience any day. Even if you assume the mana component is absorbed, any residue will remain in your intestines. Results: * all class witches can drink about the same maximum mana per hour as their bodies have to deal with the residue and absorbtion rate. * the class A witches can regen fully and cast spells many more times a day similar as before as they reach full mana more quickly. * after the mana chugging match the witches all rely on their natural regeneration rate again. * class C witches still have the same long duration spells keeping them from dominating. * class A witches working together can combine their mana-chugging rate, giving them the ability to absorb much much more mana per day than any class C! [Answer] *Taking Artificial Mana is Like Taking Anabolic Steroids or Opiates:* In biology, you can produce all sorts of compounds that miraculously allow people to make their bodies do what they normally do, but on your own terms. Opiates to relieve pain, estrogen to overcome shortfalls, erythropoietin to stimulate red blood cell productions, ect. So why doesn't everyone take this stuff constantly? The body is lazy. If you give it tons of something it normally produces on it's own, it stops producing it. Or it becomes insensitive to what you are adding because it increases the number of surface receptors needed to activate for an effect, or decreases the number of receptors to make your cells less responsive. Excess testosterone is broken down into what is functionally estrogen, leading to feminization. The body seeks to maintain itself as a system at homeostasis. Medication at it's best adjusts for a failure of homeostasis, or compensates for an acute crisis the body can't deal with on it's own. The exact way your witches respond to overwhelming synthetic mana could vary, and most of these answers touch on them nicely. The opiate model is one where the body no longer produces enough opiate to give an appropriate physiological response compares to synthetic. A person can no longer even feel normal without the synthetic opiate, requiring it to do as well as they did before. Your mana users would stop regenerating mana on their own all together, so your C class witches would come to be dependent on potions. Your A class witches, with little benefit from potions, would not use them and would be like they always were. B class would fall in the middle. This fits well with the model where some people are naturally prone to substance abuse, while others are relatively resistant. The hormonal model would be like taking anabolic steroids. You push the performance of your person, but unintended side effects occur as you twist the bodies natural homeostasis out of whack. Things in your body (like behavior) you may not want altered are altered, and your body trying to restore homeostasis and deal with unwanted excess may fight your intended effects and result in paradoxical effects on the body than those intended. So look no further than how the body deals with drugs for a model of synthetic mana. Be sure everyone reads that long list of side effects carefully. Hey, what's this about anal leakage, bleeding, and increased risk of cancer? [Answer] Look at similar situations for an answer. Looking in non-magical terminolgy, it feels like "recovery" can be very similar to the rcovery period atheletes must undergo between periods of training to recover their strength. There are natural differences that allow some people to recover more quickly than others. And there are synthetic solutions, steroids, that allow consumers to bypass their natural recovery limitations for faster artificial ones. Why aren't steroids used more often? Actually, in medicine and under physician control steroids are used a lot to quicken recovery following surgery or to help fight off infection. In private use, theres an entire market for unregulated or loosely regulated steroid-equivalents that help recovery. Protein shakes, protein bars, power drinks, and similar kinds of products. These are giving a lot of people who want an athletic lifestyle, but lack the time and money to exercise as a day job, access to that way of life at an almost-competitive level. Even professional atheletes have been given access to a range of performance enhancement that is deemed legal or legal by each sport in a variety of contexts. The principle that seems to guide making a boost illegal is discovery of some terrible long-term health effect. [Answer] *Using too much mana in a short time is dangerous* The reason Class C witches don't regenerate mana very rapidly is a form of natural protection their body has evolved to protect them. Channeling a large spell puts strain on the body (and/or mana system). Due to natural selection, the mana recovery time roughly equates to the minimum time needed for the body to recover from the strain from casting a large mana-intense spell. Artificial mana allows the witch to bypass this limit and refill their mana reserves instantly, allowing them to cast large spells repeatedly in a short period of time. Unfortunately, this can cause major damage to the witch if done too frequently, causing injury in the short term, and possibly killing them or rendering them unable to cast magic if they persist. A rough analogy might be a strained leg muscle, you can continue walking on it, but if you try running or doing any heavy exercise with it, you're likely to damage it. Artificial mana might be a local anesthetic (or steroid, as others have proposed), allowing you to work through the pain, but it doesn't actually heal the muscle, and you can cause major (potentially permanent) damage if you don't let it rest. [Answer] # Stability is unlikely It is exceedingly unlikely the balance of power around "mana recharge time" would stay at the same stable point after an industrial revolution scale change in how mana is recharged. Any mechanism would have to be extremely contrived. It would be like the balance of power between ranged and melee combat being maintained after people invent the AK-47 (or even a more primitive firearm). This doesn't mean that the system will become unstable; the system will find a new stability. The transition period will often not look very nice. Warfare still exists post-AK-47, it just doesn't look at all like pre-modern warfare. And people still own melee weapons. For the longest time they even mounted them on their ranged weapons. But the pre-gun balance between melee and ranged combat is completely gone. Now, in that bloody transition, a form of stability could occur, where both sides still have weight. Inertia is a strong thing. # Real-world example We can look at the industrial revolution itself. Prior to it in Europe, the primary wealth production was by a plague-ravaged depopulated populations with subsistence peasants whose surplus was harvested by the ruling classes. On this surplus the rest of the economy floated. Stability was produced by the Malthusian trap, where more peasants increased production but produced less food and surplus food per capita. The plague depopulated lands had a higher per capita surplus, allowing greater non-farm worker populations, and efficiencies of various non-farm productions grew (the practice effect, basically). Land owners, able to produce almost as much food with fewer peasants (or other resources; highland grazing of sheep, for example), and with demand for production in urban areas, would kick the peasants off their land for them to migrate to the cities and join the industrial efforts and/or starve. Over time this did lead to increased agricultural productivity per unit land and the increasing urban industrial productivity led to higher standards of living, but in the short term it was a bloodbath. # Fictional world effects We'd expect a massive shift towards the economic power of class C witches, which often results in a shift in political power. Such a shift is resisted, leading to a bloodbath of violence. Either class A surrenders, or class A sees this coming and contains class C before it is too strong to stop. This may not play out as class warfare, but as a proxy; sub-societies that that values C over A or A over C will have their relative power shift pretty rapidly. As an example, suppose you have a country where all 3 classes have equal power, and a backwater where C has more power for legacy reasons. In the before-revolution, the first country is 3 times more powerful than the 2nd, and the 2nd only holds on because of geographic advantages of its position (defensive ones), or is a client state. Then this revolution occurs, and the economic strength of the 2nd nation starts growing year after year. At some point is starts to enter into the same "class" as the first nation. The first nation will have placed restrictions on the 2nd nations powers (colonies, resources, whatever). The 2nd nation will chafe at these, and start violating those restrictions. The first will respond. And the conflict will escalate. Typically it comes to a head with violence; the first nation will draw a line in the sand, the 2nd will cross it, the first will back down and draw another. Eventually the first nation will hold its ground and conflict will result. If this happens early enough, the first nation will win (at political cost). If it happens too late, the second nation will win (and treat its former oppressors impolitely). If the 2nd wins, we have a new dominant power, and the world switches over to its economic model. If the 1st wins, we instead get a period of brushfire oppression, as other areas start mimicing 2nd nations economic model and out pacing the 1st nation's "balanced" approach. It then has to go in and smack it down. Odds are a 3rd party nation, with a "balanced" approach, will be less zealous about maintaining its "balance" between the 3 classes of witches. The 1st nations adventures in oppressing class C-dominant witch societies will drain it, and the 3rd nation's relaxed approach to its society leaning towards class-C dominant will strengthen it. Eventually the 1st nation falls apart from its failing economic performance, or there is a war between the 1st and 3rd nations over the 1st nation's over stretch, and it collapses. (Alternatively, the 1st nation ends up stealing the 2nd nation's class-C dominant economic model over time, "becoming what they fought to defeat"). # Pseudo-stable possibility Now, in a story, you could maintain "balance" in a period after the first war above. The 1st nation was the dominant one prior to (or in the initial parts of) the technological revolution, where all classes of witches are equal. Call this one Empire. The 2nd nation was a "dark power" whose "cabal" tried to take over the world with "dark magic" fueled by mana potions. In this nation, class C witches are dominant (Propaganda or not, this is what the 1st nation would claim in order to encourage sacrifice). Call this one Upstart. Empire wins the war over Upstart, oppressing the "class C first" dark magic philosophy of Upstart. Since then, they are fighting "dark witch" infestations world wide, and even domestically, as people start using the "dark magic" fueled by mana potions to generate more economic power (cast by class C witches). Empire has no problem with the "grey magic" that class C witches can cast; this is the traditional balance, where class C witches cast different kinds of spells than class A witches. That grey magic is the things that class A witches cannot (who cast what I'll call "white magic"). It is only when the class C witches use mana potions to replicate class A witch magic -- what the nation calls dark magic -- that they step in and stop it. What they call it exactly doesn't matter. In order for you to have a pseudo-stable situation, you need a force suppressing this new, economically powerful strategy of replacing class A witches with class C witches + mana potions. As there was a war against an Upstart regime that used this tactic, they will have villianized it somehow (to justify the costs of the war), and continue after the war. This results in a social structure backed by violent oppression that maintains the monopoly of class A witches on a certain kind of magic. By blocking class C and B witches from doing that kind of magic, we maintain that class A witches have unique economic value. This preserves the balance between A and C (and hence B) witches. The class A witches are the majority of the dominant countries population, and control a lot of the economy and politics. So this state-enforced monopoly is popular, and justified by claiming that the "dark magic" is evil and wrong. The oppressed "dark magic" witches (in country) are forced to act like a criminal organization; sort of like drug dealers, if you are divorced from the enforcement mechanisms of the state, you have to do your own brutal ones. Every such "organized dark magic" crime is more evidence that the state is right in killing/imprisoning every dark magic witch. (Any powerful economic activity, like class C witches replacing A with cheap mana potions, is going to generate a black market. If it is officially illegal, those doing it will form a criminal organization in order to enforce rules and protect themselves from the state. The worse the oppression, the bloodier the criminal organization.) Overseas, Empire will support nations oppressing dark magic, and overthrow nations that are soft on it; in many places, the penalty for even reading about it is death or worse. If they don't, dark magic economies will grow and overthrow Empire; they have to be burned out before they grow. Meanwhile, experiments in dark magic are done in controlled fashions, or hidden, at various institutions within the Empire; dark magic is going to be economically powerful (hence useful) and probably able to do things that conventional magic cannot. A rival similar-scale nation to Empire is probably going to experiment more with dark magic than Empire is. Rumors about it will swirl, and the villianization will raise tensions. (This is one of the reasons why this isn't a stable situation, even with really brutal oppression; but you can pull it off for a medium long period of time). And meanwhile, the bounds of "grey magic" leak into dark as the state uses it to maintain its power (against internal conspiracy and external threats). Characters in your fiction, even the "dark witches", might take this framework as a given; that "dark magic" is evil. Despite there being noting "inherently" evil about dark magic. Many of its practitioners will be doing horrible things in order to form the required social bonds while being treated like criminals, which in turn is used to justify the oppression, which feeds back on itself. # TL;DR: A Solution The main power of your world engages in violent oppression of class C witches who infringe up on a monopoly granted to class A (and B) witches. This violation was only economically feasible after mana potions existed. This monopoly maintains the economic balance between A B and C. Those that openly violate this monopoly are villianized and delt with extremely hashly. Nations that don't maintain this monopoly are invaded, overthrown, and (as a last resort) destroyed in righteous fury. All powers actually violate this monopoly, because the economic advantages are large enough, and there are going to be strategic applications of mana-potion fueled class C magic that no state can afford to ignore. Each top-tier power has rumours (believed by their enemies) that they are engaging in the oppressed form of magic. Meanwhile, "edge cases" are moved from unacceptable to acceptable in some areas, backlashes occur, and blood flows everywhere. Presuming mana potions continue becoming more efficient, the pressure to contain the new advantages class C witches have will eventually grow to the point that entire social structures crumble. But in the meantime, you can have a pseudo-stable situation. [Answer] I'm not sure I have enough information on the setting itself or the narrative purpose you're after to provide the most well-rounded answer, but I'll offer a couple of possibilities that seem reasonable in your setup: 1. Regulation This is a pretty easy an plausible one, depending on a few broad assumptions about your setting. Some person or group with the ability to enforce regulation of mana potions chooses to design and impose such regulation. Their reasons don't really matter, only the will to do so and the ability to follow through. By controlling the production, distribution, and/or use of the potions the regulator can establish a balance of power to their liking-- including maintaining the balance that existed before. 2. Class takes a backseat to potion access Before the potion industry existed the most meaningful distinction of witchy-ness may have been the class rating system described in the question: how much mana can you make use of at once, and how much time needs to pass before you can do so again? Since these are directly related to one another, it appears to me that the operational distinction is how much magic can you perform per day? Potions don't change what you can do per application of magic, they only change how many times per day you can apply your magic. If the potions are cheap to produce and generally available, there isn't much reason to think that their use won't scale with magical ability as well. For example, if Class A witches can cast 10 small spells per day and need one potion to recover their power, while Class C witches can cast 1 big spell per day and need 10 potions to recover their power, they might consume the potions at proportional rates with proportionally similar results: Class A people drink 10 potions per day and can therefore cast 100 spells, while Class C people drink 100 potions per day and can cast 10 spells. It's the same ratio of 10:1 all the way through. The efficiencies the potions offer just make their consumers more productive than they would otherwise be. Total magical output increases, maybe a lot, but relative output between groups doesn't. Or at least doesn't have to. To the extent that things are unbalanced, it seems more likely to me to be due to potion access. A Class C person and Class A person, neither of whom can get potions reliably, might have more in common with one another than with a person of the same magical class that does have easy access to potions. It's the lack of relative productivity that divides them, not their inherent properties-- they aren't any stronger or weaker than before, they just fall behind. So there isn't any unbalancing with respect to magical capacity or application, though there is social and economic division relating to the new key constraint on magic-applied-per-day. It's like a print shop that employs calligraphers to hand-produce books versus a shop that has a newfangled printing press. 3. It's all about what you can efficiently do that others can't Conversely, society is going to care about what witches can do with their powers more than anything else about them. If 10 Class A witches can produce the same effects as a single Class C witch, and vice-versa, then the potions are likely to be seriously destabilizing. Class C people used to be rate-limited in what they could do, regardless of other factors, while Class A people do not have that limitation (and can work together to overcome their lack of power relative to a Class C witch? I don't know the details). So Class A people could work faster, and accomplish just as much through working together as a lone Class C person. The potions would disrupt that, because the rate limitation that before really only applied to Class C people no longer matters. If both classes of witch can do the same things, this is a massive advantage for Class C-- they can work more quickly, perhaps as quickly as a group of Class A witches, but without any need to coordinate with others. But that disruption might play out in ways other than an emerging overclass of Class C witches. If each extreme class enjoys a different comparative advantage, their activities can differ without diminishing either group. It could easily be the case that Class C people were sometimes "wasted" on small tasks, and large groups of Class A people were cobbled together to do something big because there weren't enough well-rested Class C people around. With the potions, those inefficient situations can be less common. Class C people specialize in big magical works, while Class A people corner the market on smaller-bore tasks. It's not a direct competition, it's a more efficient application of magical ability that makes everyone better off (in aggregate and on paper, at least). ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- This question does not appear to be about worldbuilding, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help). Closed 3 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/171348/edit) Last night a white owl flew into my furniture shop with a note tied to its feet. The message said King Arthur wishes to order a big portable roundtable that he and his men can bring along into a battle which is due to take place in a month's time. When I realised the importance of the roundtable I quickly sprang into action, after I burnt the note as well as BBQing Merlin's little messenger. The task appeared difficult to accomplish, so how can I construct a big roundtable that can seat 16000 people so that King Arthur can see each of his men's micro expressions clearly? Note: only 2 people in Avalon can do magic, Merlin and the Lady in the Lake. [Answer] You have a brilliant flash of insight. You drop up plans for a simple three legged stool, and subcontract the work out to the kingdoms stool makers. When you meet with the King, you ask him to have his 16k men to take a stool and form up into a two concentric circles about 1 m distant from each other. Each man sits down on his stool, holding his shield out in front of him. placing his shield on his knees and his opposite number’s knees, you explain to Arty Baby he now has a portable round table that will accommodate his number no matter their number [Answer] Consider having Merlin construct the thing in a non-Euclidean pocket universe. A [circle in hyperbolic space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_geometry#Circles_and_disks) has a circumference that grows with the hyperbolic sine of its radius (roughly exponentially fast), so you could have your men only a few meters across the table from each other and jam them all into a kilometer-around disk if your local pocket universe's curvature is sufficiently negative. This isn't actually a very good solution if you'd like to see across it, of course - light disperses equally fast and it'd be just as impossible to get a close look at anyone from that distance - but if Arthur's willing to walk a few meters to get to anyone, it'd be far easier for him than to traverse the mile-wide table necessary in Euclidean geometry. (The other side effects of such a universe - like getting ripped apart perpendicular to your motion - are inconsequential, of course.) [Answer] > > a big portable roundtable that can seat 16000 people so that King Arthur can see each of his men's micro expressions clearly > > > You are victim of a prank, or Arthur should stop sending messages after the third pint of Merlin's ale. If you stitch to the specs, you need to accommodate 16000 people. Assuming you give 90 cm to each seat, you will end up with a circumference with a diameter of $0.9 \times 16000 \over \pi $$=4584$ meters. That's not portable, that won't allow seeing anybody's face after a few couple of meters, let alone talking. If Arthur is not yet recovered from the ale fumes and insists in the request threatening the structural integrity of the bond between your head and your body, your hope is to bribe Merlin into abducting from the future some engineers and software developer and build from scratch a communicator (with the attached infrastructure). Someone already took [a Yankee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Connecticut_Yankee_in_King_Arthur%27s_Court) back to the court, remember. Mind that having 16000 user on the same video conference is challenging even for our present infrastructure. [Answer] Nobody said that all the $16000$ people should sit at the table in the same time. So, you build a round table for $81$ people (king Arthur and $80$ of his men). Have king Arthur and $80$ of his men at the table in rounds of say $13$ minutes plus $2$ minutes to allow everybody from the previous round go away and everybody from the next round to come in and take their seats. You will need $200$ rounds to have all the $16000$ men to seat with the king ($\frac{16000}{80} = 200$). You can have $4$ rounds per hour. Considering that it must be done in daytime (at night, light from torches and candles won't allow a clear perception of microexpressions), then the king takes $10$ hours of each day with that job, giving $40$ rounds per day. So, in five days, the king would have had everything done. Consider that everybody has a seat of $50\;cm$. This is tight and somewhat uncomfortable (specially for the king), but except for a few of the most fat soldiers, easily doable. This gives $\frac{0.50 \times 81}{\pi}\;m \approx 12.89\;m$ in diameter. Enough for the king to see the microexpressions of everyone and to have everyone's talk at the table heard by everyone else. You can make the king's seat be larger, with $84.1\;cm$ to make it very comfortable for him and it will be $13\;m$ in diameter ($\frac{0.50 \times 80 + 0.841}{\pi}\;m \approx 13.00\;m$). Creating a round table with $13$ meters in diameter isn't that hard if you just assemble it from a set of smaller tables, specially if its center is hollow. Among all of that $16000$ men, surely you would have more than enough with woodworking skills to be able to create the parts of the table and assemble it in one or two days. You could have $12$ or $13$ hours of daylight, but we shouldn't make the schedule too tight to have some space for adjustments and have the king be allow to take a break and have a lunch around midday, so $10$ hours per day is enough. If something goes wrong (like having a bad weather in one of those days), you can simply add one or two days. Since the battle will be in a month, we have enough time. [Answer] The same way you bring a lot of tents: in pieces. You simply build dozens of table pieces that can be made into a singular massive round table. As already mentioned this table is HUGE! How could you see the micro-expressions on people's face? Let alone hear them? Well you place binoculars (or the equivalent they have available) in front of everyone, and anyone too far will pick up the binoculars to look. To make him audible you are probably better off using people who listen and repeat the message as a sure-fire way that everyone will eventually get the message, as opposed to using an enclosed space (tent) with the right acoustic floor (limestone in correct configurations, water), or magnifying devices (cone-shaped horns). Those could still help ofcourse but some would require far too much logistics. ]
[Question] [ Here's the intended situation: There's a religion based on the premise that the priests are protecting the general public from evil magic. Use of magic is taboo. What they call magic is actually leftover technological artifacts — mostly weapons — from an ancient, very advanced period. Now magic is extremely rare and the majority of people have never experienced it in their lifetimes. This has lead to the majority of people no longer believing that magic actually exists. Now the problem is, why would people stop believing (but without actually leaving the religion entirely)? In our world, it's usually science which causes people to lose belief in religious dogmas (and while some lose faith altogether, others simply adapt their belief system to fit what they know from science). But in that society, there is no science whatsoever; they are essentially back to medieval thinking, and in medieval times, lack of evidence certainly didn't make people disbelieve. So my question is: Is there a way to make this setting believable? Edit: I do not want the religion to be replaced by another one. I want the religion to be dominant, and in particular the values of the society to be based on that religion. I just want the majority of followers no longer to believe in the basic claim that there's magic and that the priests protect them from that magic. Also, by “science” I basically mean the scientific method (and in particular, the way of thinking that comes with it). [Answer] A lull before a [schism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schism). The main problem here is that people should become non-religious without any alternative. It is in human nature to demand answers about the world, and if a religion does not provide those answers, people would inevitably turn to other religion, or atheism. So the solution here is the decline of original religion. While clergy still keeps hold on most social aspects of human life, ordinary people no longer respect the priests and no longer truly believe that the world works according to the tenets of religion. Priests had become too corrupt and self-centered, and miracles are no longer seen. Still, speaking against the religion is blasphemous and would bring severe reprecautions upon the dissenter. Thus, ordinary people are just grudgingly follow along without raising their voices and without expecting any boons from the heaven. Superstitions and "witchcraft" is on the rise, but no one has stepped up openly yet to confront the religion itself. This situation can not last for long. Eventually, a new prophet like Muhammad or religious activist like Martin Luther would rise, and people would rid themselves of the old discredited priesthood. But new (or reformed) religion would blossom, and people would once again become more religious - not less. [Answer] The batteries have been depleted in the artefacts. People are naturally curious, scientific method or not. Someone, somewhere, is going to sneak into a chapel, pick up one of these technical artefacts, push buttons et al and realise nothing is happening. This can be explained by the priests; you don't know what you're doing. It only works for us. You're really lucky nothing DID happen; you could have blown yourself up without understanding how to work things. So, the next best thing is to wait for (or possibly engineer) something serious happening that the priests would normally intervene on. When they don't bring out the artefacts, the excuses continue, but the reality is that unless we see it for ourselves, it's very hard for us to believe that something really special and out of our normal range of experiences can actually happen. What, in essence, you're asking is whether or not people can adhere to a religion without any proof, and the answer is yes. Jesus is documented in the bible as having raised people from the dead. Modern Christians have never seen this happen in a faith context but that doesn't stop Christians from believing in Jesus. Most modern Christians I know will tell you if pressed on it that Lazarus was probably in some form of coma, that Jesus didn't really raise him from the dead, but that doesn't stop them being Christian. Let's take that to a more logical extreme. The bible also tells you that the earth is only 6000 years old or so. But, with the exception of a few notable cases, again most Christians I converse with simply don't believe that and consider a 'day' in the first chapter of Genesis to be a metaphor of some kind. Regardless of what you might think, this is only partially the result of science; modern religion doesn't exercise miracles and therefore people begin to doubt the existence of the miraculous. The entire universe and the Earth being created in 6 days, well that would be pretty miraculous. Your question is therefore the wrong way around. What you're describing is the natural order of life, scientific progress or not. We don't tend to believe in things we've never seen that would contradict the things we have. The more interesting question would be what would it take for people to maintain their belief in the face of never having seen these 'miracles' you describe - that's the far less likely circumstance. [Answer] Studies have shown that the fraction of the population that is highly religious is only something like fifteen to twenty percent of the people. This is an area where in the internet isn't your friend. Any check only throws up census data about the professing believers in a wide variety of countries. What this answer discusses are those people who are devotely inclined to be inclined. The majority of any population simply fits into their dominant culture. Interestingly there has always been a fraction of any population who lack any capacity to believe in a religion. We can them the irreligious. They are natural born atheist and agnostics. Human brains generally very susceptible to accepting religious beliefs. This fact alone explains why religions are so widespread and often culturally dominant. This explains why the small fraction of the strongly religious can impose religion on societies. Now if the irreligious fraction of a population had both grown large relative to the rest of the population, and become dominant in the ruling classes of a society, then their culture could readily move in the direction of losing faith in their religion. Essentially this is a reversal of the normal situation where the religious are able to propagate religion to become part of a society's cultural norms. Please note there will remain that core percentage of the population who are religious believers. Basically all that is required is sufficient conditions for religion not to continue as a society's norms and values. This answer proposes this could occur if the irreligious are the dominant drives of the society's cultural vales and norms. Increasing education certainly helps the decrease in religion in society when more people are encouraged to think for themselves. [Answer] # Someone comes across a hoard of ancient tech. \\\\\* They don't need to understand it, just understand its potential. * A single encounter between an individual who defies the orthodoxy of the priesthood, with a fully functional tech device - in front of witnesses would sow the seed. * Gatherings, distribution of parts of the tech to disgruntled supporters willing to defy the Priests and their supporters (i.e. the oppressed fight back) could lead to a more major confrontation. * Word would spread, whispers heard in every quarter, the priests would be stunned, meet in their councils and plan a response. * A confrontation would occur, the priests in their arrogance would assume certain victory. The desperate populace carefully plan their part of this - their knowledge of the priests ways - their passion for survival overcoming their fear, they win. * The priests are shocked, they hold up in their place of power, fortified as they can be. * A final confrontation occurs, Through overwhelming numbers, ingenuity - but most of all willingness to self sacrifice overcomes the priesthood. That's a familiar pattern or trope found in fiction. [Answer] Bad luck Take a look at this <https://lifeafter40.net/the-1755-lisbon-earthquake-the-start-of-atheism/> In 1755 there was a major earthquake. It happen when most people were in church for service. Lot's of people died in the process of praying to god. This is one of the seeds of modern atheism. People could just not understand that if there is a god, and he controlled earthquakes how this could happen. Imagine this magnified. Maybe the pope of the religion in the most important religious event of the year, surrounded by thousands of followers mid prayer is stuck by lighting and killed. Maybe this won't create atheists, but it sure will make most people think that this religion is not the right one. The organisation will fracture and crumble. It will take a long time to rebuild to a world accepted religion. [Answer] A shift in theology. As the priesthood runs out of actual "magic" to find the part of the priesthood that was in charge of the inquisition starts to make problems for the rest, by increasingly trumping up charges against the innocent just to justify their jobs and their power. Eventually they have to be purged before they create a backlash and/or try to forcibly take over the church leadership and after the purge the new teaching was that "magic" used to exist but was extirpated by the power of the god, it's source destroyed. So the public at large still believes in magic to a mild extent, but not as something they'd ever expect to see in the present tense. Alternatively the inquisition won and the religion has become so pestilentially oppressive that people only observe it out of fear. Such a religion is of course ripe for a backlash and replacement by a new faith. [Answer] This is a very interesting question! Have my updoot! I can only come up with CURIOSITY as my answer. Back when I was a child (maybe 7 or 10), I remember that my parents and godparents warn me not to cut myself, or a big truck will sprout on my wounds causing severe bleeding. So I stabbed my palm with a blade, watched myself bleed, showed my parents and god parents I am bleeding badly and asked them "Where is the big truck? Severe beating issued after that, no joke. Curiosity will somehow grasp someones mind following that religion, they'll be asking what are we actually protecting, what are the dangers lurking in those artifacts? Can only the priests control such power? etc.... etc... Curiosity doesn't need science, it just needs a simple question, and when people start asking questions, they'll do anything to get their answers. [Answer] ## People stop believing because of availability of information I come from a Mormon background and no longer believe. The most common reason why people leave Mormonism is discovering troubling information. (typically historical in nature and often related to how things are run in the religion) Science and new discoveries doesn't really influence much because you are trained from a young age within the religion to put faith first. People begin question the religion itself and come to realize that the outside world we were taught to fear is not so scary and that the religion and its leaders were not who they claimed to be. Upon leaving, people become free to embrace science without having to fit it into a framework that doesn't always match, but science isn't really a core factor in most ex-Mormons' disaffections. I can't imagine it's much different for apostates from other high-control religions, but I can't speak for them. It wouldn't be much different for this type of society. People would discover the corruption of the priests and historical issues that invalidate their authority. They might also find spellbooks, cast spells, and discover that they aren't so scary or worth being superstitious over. They would likely do so in secret due to the taboo. ## Social consequences and tradition make it hard to leave a religion This religion would have to be very high-demand and extremely dominant where apostates are severely punished or shunned by society to the point where it would be next to impossible to survive. There would be a number of people who are "Physically In, Mentally Out" (PIMO) who simply keep up appearances so as to not starve. They might form small tight-knit communities, but it would be extremely risky to tell anyone if the religion also includes a duty to narc. Most high-control religions do. It would look a lot like rural Utah or an Islamic state. ## There would be an eventual breakdown of the religion itself The religious elites can't hide their corruption and problematic history forever, neither can PIMOs pretend to believe forever. As the number of PIMOs increased, an underground network would begin to form that would provide the backbone for people to safely apostatize. Once apostates reach a critical mass, the religious elites would lose most of their power and the religion will go into decline, especially as spellbooks become more widely available. Having been raised in a highly controlling environment, the network of apostates is very likely to be a decentralized community, so this wouldn't be the replacement of one religion by another. They would also likely be atheistic for life, though some would find solace in mysticism and other religions. [Answer] The simplest answer is that the old religion is overtaken by a new one. This has happened many times in history. In terms of numbers the best examples are Christianity and Islam. What you need is a charismatic leader who is determined to start a new religion (perhaps cynically like Scientology was) or through a revelation from God - like Moses. [Answer] The old religion is outcompeted. <https://www.history.com/news/inside-the-conversion-tactics-of-the-early-christian-church> This is a fine article on the tactics of the early Christians. Over 400 years, they turned Rome, the most powerful empire in the world, into a Christian state. The article is worth reading. I summarize: 1. Christianity created a need for its services. This was the idea that you got eternal Heaven or eternal Hell based on how you worshipped and believed in this life. The Romans were all on the way to Hades before that, good or bad. The Heaven option looks promising. 2. Miracles, and good ones. Jesus did some fine miracles. But every saint is a saint because he or she also worked miracles 3. Grassroots conversions, starting with the lowly. 4. Exclusivity. If you are a Christian you can't be something else too. Islam takes the Ten Commandments a bit further: "There is no god but Allah". You could take a page from Islam also. When the conquering Muslims showed up they did not convert everyone. People converted of their own accord because if you were living in muslim controlled lands, it was good to be a Muslim. Plus these Muslim folks clearly had a good thing going on - so maybe they were right about Allah. In your world that is how the magic religion is set aside. It is outcompeted by more modern, timely religions that have more to offer their adherents. [Answer] Religion today didn't decline due to science. It declined because of Communism, women and welfare. The largest source of religious decline today is Communism as interpreted by Stalin and Lenin, an ultra violent variant of socialism that seeks to crush religion and destroy temples. You could have that- a widespread anti religious revolution with the church buildings being burnt and the priests burnt to help spread the joys of socialism. In the west other factors were key. Women entering the work force en masse, was a major factor. Women are more likely to be religious, and are more likely to get their family involved, and with work have less time for religion. Wealthier people are less likely to need religion, as they no longer need the charity of a community. Welfare, therefore, tends to reduce and replace religion. As such, I suggest you combine the three- have a worldwide socialist revolution fighting back against the perceived corruption and cruelties of the church, one which promotes welfare and female equality and aggression to priests. As such, with less women leading their families into religious services and alternatives proposed by their influence people wouldn't believe in the mystical claims of religion as much. The elite bourgeoisie of course would have better records of how bad it would get if all the priests were killed, and so you'd have an active class struggle between the radicalized peasants who believe that religion is simply a tool for the elites to extract money and fealty from them and the bourgeoisie who want to extract money and fealty from peasants and promote a religion that they know stops terrible evil things from happening. ]
[Question] [ Pretty much what it says on the can. I'm trying to imagine a world where one small nation of about 20 million people is facing impossible odds against a much larger foe, and 99% of its people (over the age of 6, say) choose to fight to the death over surrender. It is perhaps relevant to explain that they are not fighting an enemy bent on exterminating them war or peace (i.e. they would likely survive if they surrendered). I'm trying to determine if the concept passes the smell test. Is it too ridiculous, or are there realistic cases where (more than one small ancient town) would fight to the last man, woman and child? [Answer] This would require certain cultural preferences on the side of the defenders. The example of the Japanese fighting to the last man on Okinawa is certainly one historical example, and going farther into the past we see the example of the Jewish Zelots committing suicide rather than allowing the besieging Roman army to capture and enslave them. So the defenders must believe that being captured by the enemy is an existential threat (either through their own propaganda, or by virtue of their belief system) and that death is a far better alternative than to be captured and defiled. OF course even then , it takes a very highly indoctrinated and motivated population in order to achieve the results of fighting to the death. The various peoples being genocidally exterminated by ISIS are not fighting to the death (even though the result of capture is almost certain death), for example, although some groups are responding differently. The Yazadi women freed from sex slavery are collectively forming a fighting group called [roughly translated] "The Sun Women" to seek vengeance on their attackers. We also see cultural differences between Europe and America; Americans will indeed tend towards fighting even at very long odds (look at the American civilians who tried to take back the fourth aircraft during 9/11; or the Americans who attacked down a single lane (the aisle of a train) to defeat the attempted massacre on a French train not too long ago (<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/world/europe/americans-recount-gunmans-attack-on-train-to-france.html?_r=0>), while in Europe people often wait passively for the gunmen to execute them (November 2015). This isn't 100% certain; on 13 June 2016 another ISIS attacker killed 50 people in an Orlando Fl nightclub and did not encounter resistance from the 300+ people within... So culture and indoctrination makes a huge difference. IF the defenders are taught that the attackers are an existential threat, that there is no other alternative and if they are already culturally set to fight heroically to achieve their aims, then they will be much more willing and able to fight to the death. [Answer] The closest modern historical analogy would be the [Battle of Okinawa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa) in which [nearly 95% of the defending force was killed (roughly 100,000)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Japanese_losses), and only about 5% were captured. [This included teenage boys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Military_use_of_children). [About a third of the island's civilian population of roughly 300,000 died in the battle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Civilian_losses.2C_suicides_and_atrocities) either as civilians, or as militia. As in your scenario, the invaders, the US, were not out to exterminate the Japanese and treated prisoners well. Here's where it diverges from your scenario. The population was told the US invaders were barbarians who would torture and murder anyone they captured. While some fought out of nationalism, or to defend their homes, many fought out of fear. They did not know the US soldiers would show mercy. Then there's the idea of the Japanese population fanatically fighting to the last. Many did, but many of the civilians were pressed into service by the military. I can think of no time when the entire population of even a major city, let alone a nation of 20 million, voluntarily fought to the death against a merciful foe. To make your scenario work, I believe you need a population which... 1. Cannot escape. 2. Has to choose between fighting or being shot by their own army. 3. Believes their entire civilization is in danger. 4. Believes the enemy will brutalize them if they surrender. 5. And cannot easily find out otherwise. That last one is very important. If the US and Japanese could talk on the Internet, neither side would have gotten away with the depths of propaganda and dehumanization that they did. To a certain extend this happened in Germany. Once the German population had contact with the American invaders, their shared cultural heritage ([there are a lot of people of German descent in the US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans#Demographics)) allowed communication and often lead to surrender rather than fanatical resistance. In your scenario it could be... 1. WWII era technology. (ie. no internet) 2. Nigh insurmountable language and cultural barriers. 3. Tight government control on outside communications. Even then, I believe it implausible the entire civilian population would wipe themselves out in defense. Most would hide, surrender, or be bypassed by a merciful army intent on winning control of the island, not wiping out the population. What could happen is their infrastructure is completely trashed. The defenders might use every building and structure as a strong point, or load them with traps. Rather than risking casualties by infantry assault, a lavishly equipped invader would rely more and more on artillery and heavy weapons to reduce every point of resistance. Ignoring the moral implications, using all your 6 year olds as soldiers is impractical. They can barely lift a serious weapon. They won't be able to march miles and miles a day. They cannot comprehend complex orders. And I'd think fighting alongside their own children would freak out their own soldiers. If they must be put in harms way, they might be doing light labor and administrative tasks within the combat zone, or (if we've already sunk to these depths) simple suicide missions. [Answer] It probably doesn't make sense. An act so unanimous would have to come with a reason. You wont randomly just find everyone in a nation decided to die instead of live peacefully. Natural selection works that out of the gene pool pretty quickly. They need to believe they are accomplishing a goal. More specifically, they need to accomplish a goal which is better served by them all dying than by them doing nothing at all. An extreme theocracy might fit the bill. Think about the best religious nutjobs you know. Think of Heaven's Gate. They all committed suicide over a passing comet! An equally nutty nation, 20 million strong, might be able to be convinced to fight to the last person. You chose to draw the line at age 6... I would expect part of the religious quackery to include the ritualistic homicide of all those who are too young or weak to fight. Another scenario where it might be reasonable is if they are, themselves, their own worst enemy. Perhaps it is better to die than to live without doing an action. Pulling from the world of far fetched ideas, maybe they are a nation that found something. Something sinister. Something that they knew could not possibly ever be unleashed on the world. A C'thulu would work, or perhaps some really exotic nanomachine based virus. They must do a certain action, their entire life or unleash this plague upon the rest of the world. In such a circumstance, it may be valiant to fight against the greater nation, to the last man, for their own good. Failure to fight might mean they all get infected! Realistic? Well... I won't hold my breath. Bioterorism isn't that powerful yet, but it's the kind of situation where one might choose to die valiantly to stop an enemy from within. [Answer] It could be plausible, under the right conditions. Some factors that could produce such an outcome: * Extreme isolation and domestic homogeneity versus a culturally repugnant invader * Extreme (and tragic) misinterpretations of overt signaling (For example, smiling at a wild gorilla) * A strong honor/shame culture that values aggression physical/moral dominance * The belief in death as a positive (consider the natives in Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card) * Widespread limited intellectual capacity, or a cultural norm that tends toward hive-mind or deification of authority * The belief that those too young to fight WILL be killed along with everyone else, thus creating a mindset for self-sacrifice for the ultimate preservation of society + As a corollary, the opportunity for self-sacrifice now is a diversion to ensure the escape and survival of the young, with a select group of caretakers [Answer] It's very unlikely. Somebody has to take out the trash, farm the lands, teach the children, cook the food, heal the sick, manufacture the bullets and weaponry, etc. Even if you exalted the military to the highest degree where everyone wanted to fight and die, ultimately only a relatively small percentage would actively be fighting. Most would, at best, be doing ancillary toward the war effort. [Answer] Here's a possibility. If there were a certain percentage of the population who belonged to a fanatical resistance group and were willing to assassinate anyone who DIDN'T fight to the finish, they might be able to induce the population to fight to the end. I think the SS in Germany are an example (along with much of the military establishment) who prevented towns from surrendering even when the outcome of the war was inevitable, by assassinating "deserters" and surrendering authorities, [for example](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Oppenhoff). [Answer] Reglion Give the nation an environment of suffering, and a culture of fighting. The people barely have hope, scraping together a living. Then give them an inspiring prophet that proclaims the paradise of [Valhalla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valhalla), to all those brave enough to die in combat. The end result is similar to that in Mad Max: Fury Road, where to die is not a bad thing, but a glorious honor. [Answer] As others pointed out Religion is always a good way. There were incidents of [mass suicides in religion and cults](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown). But maybe it is hard to think that will work on a scale of an nation. Two other solutions could be: Non fighting genocide If the people mustn't die by fighting to the last man (woman an children) it could be enough if the religions fanatical people are in the right positions. So after the nation is going to lose, the higher ups could think it would be better for every one to die instead being ruled by alien forces. After that decision releasing gas or radiation that kills almost everyone. It wouldn't require all the population to be fanatic, just the leaders. Actually fighting to the death If normal indoctrination is not enough for all people to fight to the death, depending on the setting you could use advanced technology or magic to brainwash or control the masses. Some form of hypnosis since early age could lead the population to do anything they are ordered if needed, until there death. The same goes for cybernetic implants that turns everyone regardless of age in a mindless killer, if activated. ]
[Question] [ Ok, so I have an unfinished/W.I.P world (may turn it into story) about a sapient civilization of cockroaches called Roachins that are pretty much German Cockroachs, but most/many can fly and can stand on 2 legs and use their 1st and 2nd set of legs like we use our arms. Anyway, they have pretty much the same tech as modern humans have, vehicles like cars, helicopters, and ships. Also tools like ladders and the like. Now, irl, most roaches are good or decent runners and fliers, and can swim to an acceptable level. I handwaved it by saying that at least a certain country of Roachins got too 'domesticated'(human-like), and now they cannot run as fast, fly as well, or swim as well. This has also effected their climbing abilities. Basically, I got to thinking about how some insects and spiders take damage from falling like tarantulas and big beetles, while most/many do not because of their size or build, and thought that having this group of Roachins take fall damage because they kind of got a bit fatter for their size, and maybe their exoskeleton a bit weaker, would be an interesting touch. So, could a Roachin from this country feasibly take fall damage without having to fall like from something like a human scale skyscraper? Maybe more so a Roachin scale skyscraper, so like 6-7 (maybe 8) feet fall. Would it kill or at least hurt them badly? [Answer] Small creatures do not get damaged from falling because they quickly reach terminal velocity and thus do not hit that hard on the ground. The only way to get away from this and get falling damage is to either make the falling thing more chubby, therefore having more mass will also have higher terminal velocity (which would be in line with being domesticated and therefore less lean), or to make so that the landing happens on an unfortunate configuration; think of landing joint first or not using any protective reflex (like a man stumbling and not using their hands to protect their head). [Answer] Not feasible Even if you scale them up to the size of a mouse, terminal velocity is only about 15 m/s, which is generally survivable by all but the most fragile creatures, especially since the squared-cubed rule makes smaller creatures proportionally stronger. Rule of thumb provided [here](https://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/what-is-animal-research/a-z-animals/rat/rat-10-facts#:%7E:text=Terminal%20velocity%20for%20animals%20is,human%27s%20%7E50%20m%2Fs.) is that: > > Terminal velocity for animals is approximately 90 d0.5 m/s, where d is > the diameter of the animal in meters. > > > The only way to make a creature that size take damage from any conceivable falling distance is to have it fall on a very delicate body structure while unconscious (as per the answer by L.Dutch), or to fall onto a dangerous chemical or electrified surface. With even vestigial flying ability, an out-of-condition, office-working cockroach will still be able to land on its feet without taking damage. [Answer] Yeah, pretty much the same as everyone else has said ─ insects and other surface-heavy animals barely take damage from falling at all. [cockroachzone.com](https://cockroachzone.com) notes that "Cockroaches don't get injured, let alone die, from falling [...] irrespective of the height they fall from." If the cockroaches were larger, or had a lower surface area, they could conceivably take some falling damage, but not significantly. Also, it may be relevant that adult cockroaches can glide/fly for short distances. ]
[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 2 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/218685/edit) Once upon a time, a world parallel to ours inhabited by magical creatures alongside human beings. But these aren't ordinary humans, they have magic. Everyone does, from the humblest farmer to the imposing king. Their kingdom is still new, they discovered the dimension a few decades ago and soon afterwards they establish the monarchy. But currently a crisis afflicts the kingdom, many people are losing their jobs as their bosses replaced them with golems, familiars and telekinesis. The king needs to fix this, but the question remains: how to avoid unemployment in a magical world? About magic: It is not possible to create things from nothing. Gold coins are enchanted using a type of magic that only the king can do. Spells are divided into three: commoners, nobles and royalty. The spells are passed from mother to son (because if it's a father and one of them has children with several women, capable of royal magic not being so rare for a long time), then only a royal could forge coins (if they learn the right spell the king uses, if not, he makes coin for coin himself), so even if someone turns something into gold coins, only the king's direct magic would make them official, otherwise they're just discs made of beautiful metal( and gold itself is worthless because anyone who studies it can transmute it). The nobles' magic is good for combat (attack, defend, strengthen, etc.) taking into account that the nobles of the medieval era were often soldiers, so this duty is also passed on to the nobles of this world. The commoners' magic is good for taking care... taking care of the house, taking care of the plants, taking care of the animals, taking care of health, entertaining people, etc. Despite the natural predispositions of spells, it is not impossible for a commoner to learn to use combat magic and a noble to use healing magic. or plant, for example, although both take twice as much effort to do this. Royal family magic is good at everything. Note: You cannot use spells that involve interfering with people's free will, such as mind control or a spell that blocks some of their magic. That would be a bit totalitarian/authoritarian in my view. If it's to use magic, it doesn't involve controlling people. There are no races other than humans, so there is only one society. [Answer] # Make work for them. You can just make up jobs for them. Have a bureaucracy, make a police force, make social workers, make artists, lots of things. If you have the spare cash, you can afford to spend it on things not directly relevant for survival. You can hold regular festivals and religious ceremonies for morale boosting, and hire lots of people for each one. This has the disadvantage that it involves a conflict with the rich for access to resources, but the advantage that it should make people happy. # Do a grand project If everyone has magic, everyone is a resource. You can have one or several grand projects where you experiment with magic to do see what more expansive things you can do. This has the advantage of you getting more powerful magic, but the disadvantage that you may automate away even more jobs. # Cut people out of the workforce. Can men or women be persuaded that their gender roles say they should take care of the kids? Can religious people be convinced to live in monasteries praying to gods? Can disabled people be convinced to become story tellers and wisdom spreaders? This will cut down the number of people seeking jobs, and make a more solid society with more people helping out others. # Colonize new dimensions or lands You can conquer or colonize places. This means you can send away people, especially people who complain about unemployment, and have them make you a new kingdom. This does carry the risk they'll rebel and conquer you back. # Ban or tax fields of magic If golems are putting people out of jobs, ban them, or tax them. This can reduce how common they are, and it can give you a powerful faction who are the only ones who can use them who will work to enforce their monopoly. # Eliminate surplus populations An unethical option, but one popular in history. A war or a plague can help end a lot of lives, and increase the need for people, and managing that can help make more jobs. [Answer] Why do they need jobs? Do they not have magic? Can they not just supply themselves with food, clothing, and shelter? Build their own golems and conjure their own familiars to act as their servants? [Answer] From the beginnings of human civilization up until about 1800, roughly 90% of all labor was devoted to producing food. By 1900, that had dropped to 50%, and by 2000, it was a mere 10%—yet we produce so much excess food now that even the poor are often obese. In our world, the direct cause was the Industrial Revolution. In yours, it was the Magical Revolution. The practical effects are the same. Rather than worrying about 80% of workers being unemployed, as many did a century or two ago here, imagine all the wondrous new things and industries and jobs that will be created by and for your people now that they have been freed from the bondage of perpetual starvation. [Answer] # First of all, who's unemployed? This depends on the kind of creatures that exist in your world. Specifically, it depends on what these creatures are better at than the humans living in the unemployment-ridden kingdom. ## Labourers: You've already established that there are golems in the world, that are (presumably) stronger and more endurable than humans, and therefore they outcompete humans in the manual labour section. So, laborers will have higher rates of unemployment. ## Scholars: Are there creatures smarter than humans? If so, how much smarter? Do these creatures have societies of their own? These three questions are essential in finding out whether scholars, and the like, will be unemployed. I find it hard to believe creatures vastly smarter than humans would bother to be employed as scholars for humans, if they have their own society. In this event, they'd either ignore humans, sell knowledge to them or be hostile towards them. However, why the heck would they bother to work for humans, trying to help them solve questions they're forefathers figured out long ago? If they don't have their own societies, then they might want to work for humans in order to have a place to stay, and maybe, something to do. However, why wouldn't they have their own society? I can think of two reasons: (1) They're nearly extinct, and thus their past societies are gone, and they're too few to form new ones. (2) They're anti- or asocial creatures, and thus never formed societies. In the first case, then they wouldn't affect the unemployment rates of scholars that much, since there's less of them to outcompete humans. In the second case, they'd probably not want to work for humans. However, from an evolutionary standpoint, it's unlikely they'd become so smart if they're inherently anti- or asocial. What if they're forced into working for humans, through magical or other means? Well, given their intelligence, I think they'd probably be able to remain outside of the captive of comparably dumb humans. However, let's say they don't possess magical abilities; then, humans may be able to hold them captive and work for them. Another possibility is that these creatures aren't that smart, meaning they're smart enough to enslave for scholarly work, but not smart enough to evade/escape this enslavement. However, I'd say this too would require them to be without a society. If there was a society of these smart creatures (one probably more advanced than human societies), then they'd probably not allow humans to enslave their kind. So, this leaves us with three cases for when it makes sense that scholars would be experiencing heightened rates of unemployment: (1) There are smart creatures that for some reason are willing to work as scholars for humans. (2) There are creatures smarter than humans, but not smart enough to evade/escape their enslavement. (3) There are smart creatures that don't posess magical powers, being magically enslaved by humans and forced to do scholarly work. Cases (1) and (2) probably require the creatures to be without a society. Case (3) would require the government to allow for the enslavement of conscious beings. Not sure if the "no authoriatarian/totalitarian" clause is a product of plot necessity or a product of the government being somewhat similar to modern morals, but if the latter, it is unlikely that the enslavement of such beings would be okay. In that case, it would have to be an illegal, hidden practice, which would be hard to pull off given that the scholars would often need to do observational work out in the world. In this case, due to the decreased utility of illegal enslavement, that's additionally hard to hide due to the nature of the work, these creatures' effect on unemployment rates would be lower. ## Servants: Basically, servers, babysitters, etc. People in non-scholarly lines of work that aren't primarily characterized by manual labour. Golems would not outcompete these people, as you wouldn't have a hulking golem serving your wine, would you? Furthermore, any creatures that look scary, would not be favorable for jobs involving social interactions. So, if there are any employable/enslavable creatures in your world that conform to these restrictions, and if they're better at the job than humans, and/or are cheaper to employ/enslave, then this would leave more humans unemployed. # So, how to alleviate or stop the unemployment? Let's look at the solutions case by case. I'm assuming the perspective of the king here. ## Labourers: Invest in tools, making them better, but also harder to use for non-humans. If golems are dumber than humans, then making more complex tools could achieve this. Otherwise, I think golems are probably not the most dexterous creatures, so creating tools requiring high dexterity would also achieve this. However, doing this successfully would make unemployment rates heighten for golems. I assume the king is concerned with the unemployment of humans. ## Scholars: A solution possible if these smart creatures are an endangered species; commit genocide, driving them into extinction, or driving them away. Other ways to drive them away would be to install and cultivate systemic and cultural discrimination of, and racism towards, the smart creatures, making their lives within human civilization terrible. Given that their superior intelligence might make a lot of humans envious and make them hard to understand for a lot of humans, causing further resentment and lots of conflicts due to misunderstandings, as well as a lower empathy due to diminished social interaction, I think this kind of racism might just evolve on its own. However, what if these creatures are enslaved and not extinct? Then they don't have the ability to leave the human societies, and extinction via genocide isn't realistic. In the event that this enslavement is illegal, the king could just allocate a lot of resources to apprehending the slavers and freeing the slaves. Given how smart these creatures are, this task could probably be benefitted a lot by asking the freed slaves to help, which they'd likely want to do (unless they're anti- or asocial). Then, after having freed them all, the king kindly tells them they cannot stay in his kingdom (given that he wants to alleviate the unemployment rates), or, he could find something else for them to do. Given that in this case, the smart creatures aren't extinct, they probably have societies (given they're not anti- or asocial, as said). So, the king could also gain resources and help from those societies as well. ## Servants: Here, the same kind of solutions as mentioned above could apply. Genocide, the cultivation of discrimination and racism of/against the creatures, or stopping the enslavement of the creatures. ## Solution that applies to all three occupational groups The king could allocate lots of resources to the education and training of humans, so as to make them as good, or better, than their non-human competitors. The king could also pass various laws and taxes that makes practices leaving humans unemployed harder or impossible to maintain. Notes: I want to say that in the case of human scholars being outcompeted by smarter non-humans, I think the benefits would be greater than the downsides. If they're really smart, their contributions would propel the kingdom's science and technology far ahead, which would in turn create new jobs and new areas of study, thus alleviating the unemployment. Also, the advances in tech and science may just solve the problems of unemployment, making it a non-issue in the first place. Furthermore, I'm not sure that these smarter creatures would even cause a lot of unemployment in scholars. In a kingdom, I'd think a lot of scholarly work is done independently, by more wealthy individuals, or as service to the king/church. The latter means that the king can limit the unemployment of humans by not hiring the non-humans for studies funded by the crown. If the church is under the king's control, this applies to that as well. As for the former, just because a few smart non-humans are publishing more interesting, better, and more relevant work, doesn't mean that these self-employed, human scholars still won't make a living. There's countless of things that need to be studied, and if these creatures are an endangered species, they can't cover it all. Furthermore, if they're so smart, they're likely to be more occupied with harder topics and questions, leaving lots of less complex stuff for humans to study and publish on. That less complex stuff will also be more digestible to humans, meaning it may have a greater appeal as well. [Answer] ## How to avoid unemployment in a magical world? Why avoid it? If everyone has magic enough to meet their needs and desires, no one need work. If you can conjure your own clothing, shelter, food, water, tools, entertainment, etc, what need do you have for employment, or an economy? I don't see a problem with this. But if you want to mess with this people's paradise, then either (1) you need to invent more extravagant needs and desires for your people which magic alone cannot accomplish, or (2) the magic of your world must be made limited in some way. (1) In the first case, your humans -- even though they are all humans -- can belong to different tribes, cultures, traditions, religions, political structures (for example, democracy, not just monarchy) and societies. And some of these might not all agree on the rules for how magic should be used. (Conflict!) For instance, some might take special delight in the creation of works and arts with their own hands, without the cheat of using magic. Or, conversely, they may revel in the design of particularly elaborate magic that is not easy to reproduce by unskilled users. On the other hand, since magic makes everything too easy, some evil people may find that the only way to alleviate their boredom is the subjugation or torture of others. You might need to hire an army to defend against such people... (2) You already have some limitations in how magic coinage cannot be forged, and how spells are passed down through families. But you can also make it so your world's magic requires some kind of physical, expendable, non-transmutable ingredient. If this ingredient is limited, and requires harvesting or mining or some amount of 'work' to acquire it, then there will always be more demand than there is supply. People won't be able to use unlimited magic. They will have to work for this ingredient. ## In conclusion If magic is unlimited, and seen as preferable to non-magic, then all other resources are worthless, because magic can conjure and do everything. If magic is limited in some way, then non-magical resources (gold, wheat, labour) suddenly regain at least some of their value, because you can always make use of the real resource if magic is not available or not preferred. [Answer] In general? There should not be unemployment in a "Magical World(tm)" In the world that this website exists in, unemployment is a consequence of having the choice to be unemployed. There is never "zero jobs", just jobs that people do not want to do. If land was free, everyone would revert to farming if they had no other skill, because that's how it was up until the 1940's. In a Magical World, the same is true. People will simply refuse jobs that they feel are beneath them, uninteresting, or unsafe. Presumably you would create "soul-less" golems to do all the jobs that are demeaning and unsafe. This means that people are free to entertain themselves if they have no pressing need to make money. This answer presumes for the sake of argument that a Golem is "not a living being" and "not an intelligent being", more akin to a toaster than a smartphone. It does only one thing, and does it well. Perhaps a familiar with intelligence might find it demeaning to do things, but comply because they will be denied existence otherwise. As long as the "Magical World(tm)" does not hit a population boom where more people come into existence than the rate of renewable resources are depleted, there will always be some kind of job that people can do making or refining materials, producing consumables, or recycling unwanted materials. People are good at determining what is "good to eat" and "creative", where as "programmed" golems can only make/use the things they know about, the way they were programmed, and nothing else, not even more efficient ways. If people reproduce at a rate fast enough to exhaust resources, then there will be conflicts over remaining resources (such as food) and that may very well result in golems being targeted for their resources, or stolen outright. On the flip side of that, if populations are crashing, then there will be a demand on artificial labor such as golems to maintain an economic output. So the answer you probably want is "exploration" and "big projects" Surely every square inch of the world has not been explored? What about underwater, or even attempting to leave the world for another star? Have the Kingdom build large projects. If neighbors are far away, or maybe do not exist, have them expand outwards, downwards, or upwards. Maybe there are other civilizations out there. If there are neighbors, then you have potential trade or conflicts if one Kingdom has what another does not. Ultimately, it's a very open-ended question with no one-correct-answer. The more different the world is, the more challenging it will be to have a familiar analog to the world this website exists in. Blue-collar workers would likely go into business for themselves producing higher-quality products and services than "golem" technology on commission. White-collar workers would on the other hand likely switch from office-work to creative work (writing, painting, etc.) The thing missing from the question is scarcity. If it's very expensive to do anything, then the population would naturally decline, as people will not want to have children when they need their money for themselves. If it's very cheap (or free, as in socialized services) then there is no backstop to population growth except food and space, and you may have more unemployed people just doing nothing but reproducing, contributing nothing to the economy. [Answer] # Do nothing Golems are their version of robots. Your society needs to go through an Industrial Revolution and learn Mass Production techniques. ]
[Question] [ I need a mechanical way to make my soldiers who are combat explorers in a forest to be able to jump higher than normal. They will be equipped with a variety of weapons from normal hand held weapons up to rocket launchers, and grenade launchers. Most soldiers will be armed with a normal rifle or smaller weapon platform plus a choice of light rocket launcher or a grenade launcher, not both. No soldier will have more than that weight wise other than reserve ammo, and a backpack containing basic survival necessities. The time period for equipment is our normal history up to the end of ww2, but there is also the inclusion of dieselpunk (it also doesn't take place on Earth, but the planet is similar enough). The main area this would be used would be in a thick forest where movement at the base could be near impossible at times. Ideally there would also be a combat application to it as well where it would allow soldiers to reposition across the battlefield quickly. For our band of soldiers the battlefield is 360 and there really is no real frontline. Something that would let them hop over terrain, let them hop from tree to tree like a monkey, or scale the sides of a shallow mountain, or slowly hop down from a large height using their environment. The absolute MAX jump height would just need to be 3 meters, if they want to go any higher they would need to make successive jumps and make a path using their environment. I am totally fine with elements of handwavium/unobtanium so long as there is a mechanical component to the equipment and sort of grounded reality to it (so no hardened skeleton system + better muscles and that's all). A dedicated resupply squad also joins the team, so replenish able sources are totally fine. Note that jumping in this case doesn't have to mean only mechanical motion from legs or springs. Something like a jump pack/jump kit from Titanfall or star wars would also be considered a jump device (jump packs from both of those settings just seem a bit to futuristic for this setting, but the use of fuel or gas is valid so long as it doesn't toast the buns of our gang to much). If one needs an idea for weight, think of something like a US paratrooper during WW2 with all their combat equipment strapped to them, including their extra equipment. [Answer] ### Kangaroo boots [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7P1DL.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7P1DL.png) I had a set of these years ago, they're basically a spring extending down from your calf to about 30cm below your feet. With practice, you can run faster and jump much higher than you normally can. I was having so much fun I never stopped to measure how high my jump got, but I could touch a gutter with my hand that I later measured was ~3.6m off the ground (I'm 166cm tall normally). They work best on concrete or brick or similar, but I was able to use them "off road" (as in packed dirt or grass) with success. Your are vulnerable to tripping if your not aware of the surface your manoeuvring on, (and when you fall, you need a lot of energy to get back up without help or undoing them), but practice could make perfect. [Answer] [Ash's](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/78800/ash) kangaroo boots are a great option, but if we really want to lean into the Dieselpunk style, consider something like the Soviet ['rocket boots'](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/business/worldbusiness/17gazshoes.html). These were essentially a pair of two-stroke pistons on either side of each foot connected to a platform under the sole. Stepping down compressed the fuel-air mixture in the piston, and when ignited they would push the user up, up, and away. The inventor got up to 10 mph in them, and a test runner reached about 22 mph. No mention of maximum jump height, but according to Google the average person's top speed when running is somewhere around 5-6 mph. Assuming they manage a 2-4x boost to your jump along with your speed, that takes the average person's jump height from ~16 inches (again, a Google 'rich snippet' value) to 32-64 inches, or a little over 1.5m at the upper end. This was with real-world 1970s technology, so the amount of handwavium to punch these numbers up to get your 3m jump height is probably minimal. [Answer] I here shamelessly recycle my old answer. Shamelessly! [A clothing material or other method to slow free-fall descent down walls](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/175682/a-clothing-material-or-other-method-to-slow-free-fall-descent-down-walls/175709#175709) Super pogo stick. [![super pogo](https://i.stack.imgur.com/am9M9.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/am9M9.jpg) <https://www.pinterest.com/pin/554576141587551724/> Your soldiers carry pogo sticks on their backs. The unobtainium springs capture the energy of their descent, and when they are in a hurry give it right back; when they hit the ground they decelerate over a split second then bounce right back up nearly as high as they were. For long drops you need an exosuit on because it is still a lot of work for the quads. The super pogo will be good for other things too. Of course you can move quickly on it although the exosuit itself is about as good; mostly this is useful if your exosuit is damaged or you don't have it, but you have the pogo. A changed setting will keep the spring coiled and after jumping down the soldier can stay on ground level; the pogo will gradually uncoil the spring if desired or (more dangerously) stay coiled until deployed. A soldier can gradually coil the spring by making a lot of little jumps and storing the energy. That can be used for an ascent, or punching open doors. --- I note that the super pogo stick also finds use as a nonlethal weapon. A boxing glove might be placed over the foot for this use. [Answer] Short-burst jetpack mounted on the back. The exhaust can be directed to the sides for safety or further to the back to also give a strong forward push and not endanger the wearer. There can also be special heat resistant trousers for jump crew. The need to have it compact would stop you from flying around for longer as carrying a larger fuel pack would make you less nimble. There is [a really nice dieselpunk design by Safdar Ali Mirza](https://safdar.artstation.com/projects/NxND5) which shows how a jetpack could look like in that genre: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gtq9b.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gtq9b.jpg) [Answer] I would recommend a combination of the super pogo stick, Soviet diesel boots, and kangaroo legs. Basically, do an image search for "digitigrade stilts" and use those pics as a starting point. Also check out the video game Valley and their L.E.A.F. suits. Basically, though, take some digitigrade stilts, extend them upward to connect at the hips; maybe incorporate a torso element with a pack frame. Paint them olive drab, of course. Now add some beefy-looking coil springs or volute springs--components that will visually remind people of tank suspensions--to the thigh section and maybe the calf section as well. Think about adding some lightweight armor panels to protect the knees and thighs, or maybe the knees and shins or just the knees? Throw in some small diesel pistons (like on the Soviet boots), and presto: you've got a combat engineer's load-hauling frame. The Load Bearing Equipment, Individual, Engineer's (LBEIE, commonly called "Elbies") were, of course, originally developed to give combat engineers the ability to carry heavy loads over soft, muddy terrain. Once they reached the fields, trouble with the speed and force limiters led engineers to routinely disconnect or remove those devices, and they discovered that with practice, a skilled user could run at competitive hundred-yard-dash speeds while carrying a hundred pounds of gear, and have a vertical leap of around six feet. [Answer] It might not be as instantaneous as a jump-assist technology, but what about a hot-burning material, and a personal hot air balloon? All that's really necessary is something to heat /fill the air inside the balloon fast enough, and they'd have as much vertical as they need-- until the material runs out. Something similar might work for lighter-than-air gases, and a blimp sort of structure. ]
[Question] [ In space, boarding parties could be used to effectively take over ships without severely damaging them. Piracy would be much easier. But what about weapons? Your average pirate will have a slug thrower not some sort of marine ship safe laser. In a metal hallway bullets will ricochet a lot. With a 0g environment using ballistics at all is dangerous. How can pirates exist due to the risks of ricochet? Is their anyway to board a ship and take it over using ballistics safely? [Answer] In an environment like a space station overpenetration and hull breaches are a greater concern than ricochets. The smart pirates deal with this in two ways. Encourage their targets to surrender without a fight, and use frangible rounds that break up on impact instead of continuing on as a solid projectile. No-one wants a fight. Ammunition, and medical care are expensive and replacing experienced crewmembers can be difficult. If merchant vessels are given the option to avoid a violent boarding action by handing over their cargo it may be in their best interest to do so peacefully. Similar to [how pirates operated in the 1600s and 1700s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YFeE1eDlD0) space pirates would leverage their fearsome reputations to discourage merchants from putting up an armed defense. [Answer] Some comments are suggesting massive rounds to knock the target back. I thought it might be helpful to compare the momentum of typical weaponry & a human: * 9x19mm; `0.008 * 360m/s = 2.8 kgm/s` 5.56 NATO; `0.004 * 993m/s = 3.9 kgm/s` .50 BMG; `0.042kg * 928m/s = 38.976kgm/s` Human; `60kg * 1m/s = 60 kgm/s` Only in Hollywood do guns knock the target back, unless you get into the anti-tank rounds, at which point getting knocked back is the least of your worries. These hypothetical pirates with massive rounds aren't carrying pistols or assault weapons, they're carrying artillery. But that ignores the real killer for massive rounds, Newton's Third Law. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Any massive projectile capable of knocking back the target is also knocking back the shooter. The shooter must anchor himself against the wall to fire this beast of a weapon. But if the boarders are firing these weapons, then the defenders are as well, as well as anchoring themselves to the wall. As for an alternative suggestion, well, it depends. From a worldbuilding perspective, pirate victims should surrender on sight (if they didn't, piracy would be too bloody and expensive to be worth it). From a narrative perspective, combat is exciting and we find reasons to include it, even if it's rare in the world. Perhaps the captain is too stubborn to surrender. Which raises another point; combat should highlight character. Are the pirates clever? Then they're suited up on the outside, threatening to cut power and radiator lines. Are the pirates ruthless? Then they're shooting bullets inside the hull, regardless of over-penetration and hull breaches (fuel/oxidiser tanks explode, but mere hull breaches just slowly leak air; shooting guns inside a spacecraft is a very bad idea but probably not instant suicide). Are the defenders clever? Then one of them suited up, went outside, and has a knife to the power lines of the pirate ship. [Answer] In a microgravity environment everybody knows that momentum is a nasty mistress (or master). Instead of firing lead/metal bullets, pirates fire gooey bullets, which splatter on impact transferring their momentum to the target without piercing it. If the target is hit close to their center of mass they will start flying backwards, else they will start spinning around. In both cases coming to a halt will be a struggle, allowing the pirates to have less nuisance while they do pirate things. In case the bullet hits the walls of the place, it will splatter there, and a spaceship is much more massive than a human, thus won't be appreciably disturbed by it. [Answer] Don't attack the crew, attack the systems* It might sound boring, but you probably won't attack the inside at all. Unless you go full sci-fi, the spaceships are most likely quite exposed with their systems. You'll attack life support physically or digitally. As an example, removing the air or changing the mixture can kill or incapacitate the crew, or make them move to safer compartments, essential locking them out of the rest of the ship. The moment they try to get out in spacesuits you'll cover those with certain weapons, killing or capturing them. Whatever was damaged or changed might be easily repaired, leaving the spaceship and cargo largely in tact. This way you’ll minimise risk and maximise value. Of course you can also go overboard and blow a door/segment to expose everything to the vacuum of space. But pirates, especially modern ones, are more economically astute than you might think. They understand very well they risk their lives and freedom by attempting this, so they often try to maximise profits. The risk/benefit is assessed greatly. Are you after highly valuable cargo that is able to survive in space? Blow half the ship and take the cargo. Is the value in the ship and crew? Spike the air and incapacitate them to take it over. You just don't want to get on a pressurised tube in space and actually battle other people. [Answer] [sphennings's mention](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/192146/23645) of frangible rounds is a great way to preserve lethal rounds while avoiding hull breaches. The use of intimidation and resource preservation to avoid a fight altogether is also very pragmatic. [Curtis](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/192182/23645) brings up very good points about both Hollywood bullet momentum and suggesting shifting emphasis to characters. Building on these answers and a few comments, I'd like to shift back to the technical aspects since you asked about "safe" use of ballistics. # Soft Projectiles ## Recoilless weapons Conventional projectiles' transfer of momentum to the shooter is indeed a problem, as others have mentioned. However... You can have almost-conventional firearms that don't impart equal and opposite momentum to the shooter and the projectile. These exist in the real world as [recoilless weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recoilless_rifle). The basic idea is that a countermass is ejected rearward at the same time that the projectile fires, negating most or all of the recoil. The most straightforward way I can imagine doing this for small arms is to essentially make each cartridge a very small rocket with its own propellant. The propellant -- and not the shooter -- is the reaction mass used to set the projectile in motion. ## An ill-timed nudge can be devastating The projectiles in question don't need to carry much momentum to cause an unprepared (e.g. floating) target to tumble wildly. A beanbag fired at much lower velocities than those used in modern crowd control weapons would easily do the trick. (Watch how effortlessly [this astronaut](https://youtu.be/06-Xm3_Ze1o?t=155) can propel her whole body down a tunnel in the ISS.) The target would only need to tumble a little bit to completely spoil their aim, and hence, ability to return fire. That target would effectively be out of the fight until they reach a bulkhead, stop their tumble, re-orient themselves, reacquire a braced position, and re-engage. Without covering fire, they're a sitting duck for attackers to dart into melee range for a killing/disabling attack with a close-combat weapon. Observe how helpless [this astronaut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC64gk117cc) is when he can't reach a bulkhead. Imagine how well he would be able to defend against something as simple as a knife if he was tumbling. ## A fighter that can't move can't fight Even braced targets aren't immune to slow-moving squishy bullets. Effectively engaging in a firefight requires some freedom of movement. Bracing against a bulkhead may keep a fighter from being thrown into a tumble, but that also means she has to stay in place, braced against a bulkhead. Unless she can maneuver to keep the pirates from reaching the cargo hold/bridge/engineering/whatever, there's little she can do to actually deter the pirates. To maneuver, a combatant has to forfeit their braced position, making them vulnerable to beanbag bullets. The exception to this is choke points, where the defenders can simply hold position and keep invaders from breaching, which is no different than choke points on land. ## Asymmetry forces action The home-field advantage -- combatants on a ship being boarded in a universe with pirates likely have some kind of remote-operated high-powered weapons mounted internally to protect vital areas from boarders. Being remote-operated, harming friendly defenders isn't a concern, so overwhelming force can be used... ricochet and debris be damned. That means the pirates can't simply go toe-to-toe with the ship's primary defenses without being turned into Swiss cheese. They must first disable automated defenses, requiring them to take initiative. What boarders have going in their favor is that there's a lot of ways to disable a remotely-operated system without physically approaching it. That allows them to take initiative in an unpredictable way. Since the boarders' movements through the ship will be difficult to predict, the defenders must be able to react and move to counter the boarders' actions, meaning they can't just hunker down and wait out the boarders. ## Combat doesn't require lethality The whole point of combat is to degrade an opponent's ability and/or willingness to resist to the point where they can no longer do so effectively... ideally as quickly and decisively as possible. Throughout most of human history, that simply meant "deal physical trauma as quickly as possible." Combine the points above, and you have effective means to use small-arms projectile weapons in space combat without needing magnetic boots, bullet-proof hulls, or vacuum suits. Moreover, neither side can simply hunker down and out-wait the other; both sides are required to be dynamic and respond to changing circumstances, even if all small-arms weapons are very low-powered. As an added bonus, scenarios like this would ensure that the victors of a battle would be likely to take a lot of prisoners, which opens up options to escalate the stakes of a fight as needed for the story. I'm not sure if being shot and bleeding to death is any worse than choking to death in a ship whose CO2 scrubber has been disabled by sadistic pirates... # Hull Breaches [sphennings](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/192146/23645) is absolutely right: hull breaches are a much bigger concern than ricochet. With that said, if metal-piercing projectiles are used, hull breaches during a firefight are practically inevitable, meaning loss of atmosphere is a problem. As [Ryan\_L mentions](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/192201/23645), a single hole is actually pretty tolerable. The trouble is, a firefight is going to involve a lot of bullets that miss their target, and each is likely to punch its own hole into empty space. It won't take long for any ship to turn into an oversize cheese grater. Explosive decompression isn't an issue, but hemorrhaging air during the entire duration of a firefight means combatants will eventually be fighting in vacuum. Moreover, all a pirate has to do is punch a decent-sized hole in the hull and wait. Similarly, defenders can just hole up in a sealed compartment, dump atmosphere from the rest of the ship and wait. For any side: fighting without wearing a suit that can protect against vacuum would be utterly suicidal. With that said, having a suit with a hole in it is only slightly better than having a hole in the hull, so any suit intended for use in vacuum should be rugged enough to not accidentally tear open under any reasonable circumstance, including stray debris flying around. This applies to any vacuum suit, not just those intended for combat, which likely have armor that would further protect from debris. In other words, unless a combatant is literally trying to die, they'll be wearing a suit that will protect from small-arms ricochets and [spalling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spall). [Answer] Low velocity projectiles. Because everything is valuable in space. Your pirates fire massive, slow moving projectiles. I here assert they are rubber ducks full of gold shot (gold being cheap in space, and it matches the duck). These gold ducks pack a wallop and will bounce (and quack) off of surfaces but have no penetrating power. The idea is to incapacitate persons offering resistance. Just as the ship is valuable so are the people. Space is big and everything is scarce. If the brave folks offering a fight get a concussion or a few ribs broken by a gold duck they will be more tractable. Also it is easier to surrender if you know your captors are going to give you a hat with their logo and put you right back to work, doing your old job for a different boss. Your captain might make more of a stink because they are going to evict him from his swanky quarters, but he washed space dishes for several years and he remembers how. [Answer] This is a solved problem actually. The answer is [frangible bullets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frangible_bullet). These are softer or more brittle than the skin of the average spacecraft, so misses don't puncture the ship. But they're sturdy and heavy enough to still pierce flesh. US Air Marshals use bullets consisting of powdered copper in a nylon shell. If they hit a bad guy, he'll still be injured/killed because the projectile weighs about the same as a normal bullet. But they don't need to worry about overpenetration because the nylon shell will break on contact with the target, and powdered copper will basically never make it all the way through someone. They don't need to worry about a miss puncturing the skin of the aircraft because, once again, the nylon shell will break on impact and leave just a puff of copper dust. There's no reason your space pirates couldn't do the same thing. Further, even if they do puncture the skin of the spacecraft, that's unlikely to be an instant death sentence for everyone on-board. The International Space Station had a [leak in 2018](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maintenance_of_the_International_Space_Station#2018_%E2%80%93_Leak_in_Soyuz_Orbital_Module) that was found to be a 2mm hole that had been accidentally drilled through the skin of the Soyuz module. It didn't suck everyone through it or cause explosive decompression, it was just a leak. A bullet hole isn't much larger. [Answer] Energy weapons like electritcity throwers, Cyro cannons, flame throwers, fragmenting rounds, lasers, sound waves, microwaves etc etc. Basically if you want specialist boarding teams then that's the way I'm going. The cool thing is those weapons are damn nasty to the poor bastards on the receiving end of them. ]
[Question] [ Assume a distant future where all humans have nanobots in their bloodstream that keep them alive indefinitely. Now let's say there is a way to override those nanobots so that they can instantly be triggered to kill their host. What would be the quickest way for the nanobots to kill their host? Would it be to attack the heart, the brain, or all organs at once? Is there another quicker way? For the sake of my story, it would be best if the death looked peaceful to the outside observer, but it doesn't necessarily have to be painless. Although, bonus points for anyone who can also give ideas for how the nanobots could kill someone in the most painless way possible. [Answer] Don' do the same thing twice: I am guessing you want something subtle, where people appear to die of natural causes, yet quick so there is little chance of reversing the effects. There are a million ways to kill people like that, but the world is full of nanites that should be preventing just this kind of thing. If even dozens of people start dying from their heart's natural pacemaker cutting out and stopping their heart from beating (my personal favorite quick kill) then authorities will investigate, and HARD. Even the nanite manufacturers will investigate if their products appear to consistently malfunction. Make every kill unique, or at least different enough to avoid suspicion. In this person, the nanites form a series of clot-like structures and cause a massive "stroke" where the "clots" dissolve immediately after death. A second person loses motor control in heavy traffic and dies of an "accident." The third has their nerves all stop firing while asleep and has no discernable cause for death at all - dying in their sleep (about as painless as you can get?). * Be fun and creative; your readers/gamers will want to be entertained. novel causes of death can be a fun storyline, and they'll never be sure if the person really died from natural causes or foul play. [Answer] Simultaneous Nerve Termination If the nanobots truly operate on a small enough scale and are numerous enough to circulate throughout the body, just having them simultaneously interrupt and block all the nerve transmissions in the body will cause instant brain death. No pain involved whatsoever. [Answer] The nanobots can invade the brain and heart, and activate the "emergency shutdown" controlled by the [solitary nucleus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_nucleus) in the brain. Immediate loss of consciousness will occur, together with a fall in blood pressure and bradycardia. At this point, control of the [sinoatrial node](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinoatrial_node) allows completely stopping the heart. Painless death will occur in a matter of seconds, leaving no traces. Something like this occurs in the so-called "sudden death syndrome" which is usually the outcome of a QT cardiac anomaly - the victim will just suddenly drop dead with no warnings, usually after a physical effort or light trauma to the breast (e.g. a hit by a soccer ball). [Answer] Poison. Many physical ailments and symptoms involve an imbalance of chemicals in the body, and so to cure them, the nanobots should be equipped with a system for creating chemicals (either in each individual nanobot, or in a central implant the bots can distribute it from). And because our knowledge of pharmacology advances over time, it would be ideal for the bots to be able to be able to generate arbitrary new chemicals. Of course, there are countless substances that would be less than ideal to have in one's bloodstream. The benefit of this method is that poisons are an extremely broad class of substances. Want it to look like an accident? There's a poison for that. Painless? A whole variety. Extremely painful and ostentatious? Can do! [Answer] There are obviously a lot of situations in which killing someone in the quickest way possible is necessary. However, this technology is extremely suitable for assassinations. In that case, you'd want to do the opposite, give a kill command which is not instantaneous. You'll have time to get away, and it would be difficult to trace down exactly when and where the attack came from. My choice of death would be to block the blood flow to the brain. This would mean the victim would be deprived of oxygen in the brain, slowly reducing brain function until it fully stops working, similar to how a stroke works but on a larger and more devastating scale. This method of suffocation is not only painless for the victim, they are unable to figure out they are dying as well, as the brain doesn't have enough function left to reach that conclusion. For outsiders it would simply look like the victim fainted or was having a stroke, only to find they are dead. [Answer] There's a lot of ways to kill some one within their blood, you could have clots form to cause heart attack and/or stroke but those are survivable. You could take a page from Ebola and cause tons of internal bleeding by destroying tissue and cells as a bonus leading to a loss of clotting factor so even a pinhole can become life threatening making a blood transfusion risky. Another quicker method would be to destroy the alveoli in the lungs (the part where blood lung gas exchange commences ) causing the user to drown in blood or suffocate from lack of O2 CO2 exchange. However, as for painless and fast, the best option may be the release of tetrodotoxin well known as the ever so lethal puffer fish venom (and is actually synthesized by a symbiotic bacteria,) as it is known to cause a sense of euphoria similar to opioids and blocks sodium ion channels responsible for transmitting signals between neurons for pain, leading to an all around happy, painless, and quick death. [Answer] # Disconnect the brain from the body I'm assuming someone is hacking these bots and they are already inside the target. Once the brain and body are separated, the body just lies there dying while the brain can be doing anything during the time it takes to expire without any signals making out to the body to be able to alert others. If the target were alseep, died in their sleep, if they wake up during, they'd essentially have locked-in syndrome until everything went dark (can't breath, heart stopping) To go a step further, you could have the nano-bots feed the brain and keep it alive while the body died, should you wish to extract information, torture, all within the brain directly, etc before they expire. The nano-bots, if they wished not to be detected and blamed could even be programmed to reassemble the brain stem to look like nothing happened before resuming normal tasks. This is the fastest way to kill with nano-bots that looks like a peaceful death, but also adds some additional options during the kill. [Answer] Once inside a person, nanobots start replacing natural organelles and tissue. That's how you live longer: the little bots are better at repairing themselves and working properly for decades. Eventually they will replace all the enzymes and proteins involving synapses and proper neuron functioning. The user is thus immune to diseases ranging from Alzheimer to rabies. The downside of this is that you are now bound by an EULA. The moment you skip a monthly payment of your nanobot licensing, they shut down. That is death in a millisecond. You won't feel a thing - because feeling itself is a function of the bots now. That is the most swift death short of being vaporized by a nuke or a supernova. For the outside world, you are braindead. Your organs will last a few more minutes - more if urgent care can be provided on short notice, allowing for them to be harvested. If Metasoft - an Applebet Company TM wishes to be particularly cruel, they can project a mental image saying "We are sorry, but you don't have enough money to live" for the user a moment before deactivating their account. Within this context, a hacker could trigger account removal by emptying someone's bank account; They could also cut someone off the network so the nanobots are not notified of the latest payments. Or, you know, the user simply lost their job and outlived their usefulness to the eyes of a society that values capital over human life. ]
[Question] [ There is an advanced civilization that spans multiple galaxies. The civilization has learned to tap every available source of energy within the volume that it has colonized. The civilization flourishes, expands, and advances in knowledge and technology for billions of years, before experiencing a disaster that is so devastating that it takes them more than 2 billion years for them to fully recover. What type of natural or artificial disaster could cause such devastation to a multi galactic civilization? [Answer] Ennui. The disaster is millions of years in the making, but for a civilization that has lived billions, it's as nothing. People have conquered every challenge available. They turn inward. Population growth is negative because nobody cares to do anything about it. War spreads as a means of entertainment. Even that grows old and the survivors give up. They carry on their extraordinarily-long lives in mechanistic fashion until literally dying of boredom. There is no joie de vivre. The civilization dwindles to practically nothing. The remnants live bitter lives. They pass this condition on to the few children born to deviants who backslide. It is millions of years before one newborn deviant breaks the mold. She is the start of a new subculture that clings tenaciously to ambition. These youngsters spread slowly back amongst the stars. Over two billion years, they recolonise all the old worlds, relearn all the old tech, and displace all the old farts. [Answer] ## Computer virus Any civilization close to or above K1 is going to be heavily automated. Your administrators are computers, your farmers, doctors and technicians are robots. Everything is networked for most efficient operations. If a virus, or a bug takes out 10% of your infrastructure for couple of months you may experience total collapse of stargate/wormhole network, heavy disruption of energy production, etc. Significant fraction of your population lives in megastructures that require huge amount of energy for life support or maybe even structural support. Disruption of energy production makes your people literally suffocate in their beds, and the cities physically collapse. Your databanks, communication arrays, and command centers get buried under kilometers or rubble for centuries. 50-90% of population is dead. The rest lives in isolated pockets, the civilisation collapses. [Answer] Reality rift. My answer from this question: [Speculative weapon of mass destruction](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/105551/speculative-weapon-of-mass-destruction/105578#105578) Someone in your civilization, possibly as an art project, starts unravelling God's stitches. The barriers between dimensions and alternate forms of reality get shaky and loose. Monsters, gods, different physics, strange weeds. Angels and bugs and angels with bugs and all of that. Stuff gets unpredictable, to say the least. The artist is pretty stoked though. [Answer] Civil war of some kind is the usual answer. The enemy will have the same level of technology and access so being advanced or large does not protect. The civil war could be ethnic. Many science fiction universes include past empires that end with a revolt by subject species. The rebels usually have less advanced technology and fewer resources but have the huge advantage of it not being their empire that gets wrecked by the conflict. This might feasibly lead to burned Earth tactics and genocide. Rebellions by AI or artificial or artificially modified lifeforms are a common trope. AIs can make the advanced technology turn against its creators. This naturally leads to much of the infrastructure being destroyed and the population turning away from science and technology. Artificial life is generally something that has insane adaptability and biological war forms. This typically has the horror aspect of being able to assimilate defeated enemies or civilians who get in the way. A variant of this is technological life that assimilates our hardware. A cyborg variant like the Borg from Star Trek is also possible. Such war will directly destroy thru assimilation much of population or hardware which will result large scale devastation. In effect the empire will get eaten from the inside. A variant of this is religious or ideological collapse. An idea spreads among the population and makes it turn away from the empire, which then collapses. People might abandon physical existence for spiritual or virtual one. People might reject advanced technology. People might reject sentience itself. This type of conflict might be largely peaceful without any actual fighting. Or it might involve lots very intense fighting and brutality. In any case, the empire will go away and its works will be largely erased or hidden to avoid unfortunate accidents when somebody stumbles on the "pocket size supernova catalyzer" without knowing that the pushing the red button will destroy the entire solar system. [Answer] A multi-galactic civilization is pretty well impervious to any conceivable NATURAL disaster. Nothing short of the complete collapse of spacetime throughout the universe is going to have effects on that scale. However. Civilization is always built on social and technological structures that make it possible, and the easiest way to create the kind of chaos that you're talking about is to kick one of them over. Make your civilization completely dependent on a particular technological tool or process, and then have it stop working for some reason. The best example of this I can think of offhand is from the Hyperion novels by Dan Simmons. In this case it's just a single-galaxy civilization, but the principle is the same. The civilization has spread and built its entire social and economic infrastructure on a technology that allows instant teleportation anywhere in the galaxy. It's so cheap and easy that nobody travels or moves goods any other way. It's been like this for so long that nobody CAN travel or move goods any other way. Then it stops working. All communication between planets and even cities is cut off. Nobody can move food. It's not even that far Out There as far as Science Fiction is concerned. IN 1859 the Earth was hit with a massive solar flare[enter link description here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859). This caused aurorae to be visible as far south as the tropics, and so bright that people in temperate latitudes could read by its light. Telegraph wires were collecting so much eccess current that they were starting fires. A similar event occuring today would be [MASSIVELY](https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-would-happen-if-solar-storm-wiped-out-technology-geomagnetic-carrington-event-coronal-mass-ejection) [disruptive](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science/), because modern society is completely dependent on electricity and wireless communication. A solar event of this magnitude would knock out GPS and satellite communications entirely, potentially to the point of destroying the satellites themselves. Power grids worldwide would go down, potentially for months due to widespread damage to transformers. Distribution of food and fuel would be severely impacted. Depending on the time of year, loss of power would cause significant loss of life due to the sudden loss of the ability to heat homes. And that's not even taking into account the damage that humans might start doing themselves at that point just out of panic. So, TLDR. Destroy your multi-galactic civilization with panic. [Answer] # Collapse of the social order There aren't many natural events that can affect multiple galaxies, but a civilisation that size will struggle with one of two key aspects. It's either centralised, in which case a little corruption at the heart will go a long way to causing a breakdown or decentralised, in which case the regions may feel disconnected from the civilisation as a whole. Either way the peripheries may err towards claiming independence after some real or perceived slight from central government and the whole system breaks down. # Stagnation with lack of budget to expand to new galaxies They've tapped every energy source and they're using it all, but the push to expand to a new galaxy to get more resources is greater than the budget the politicians are willing or able to put into it, trapping the civilisation under current energy constraints and causing inevitable collapse as consumption continues to increase. Note that I don't have much faith in politicians, incompetence and failure to plan for the future over surviving the next election cycle are the most likely causes for collapse. [Answer] A variation in the value of one or more fundamental constants The universe is defined by a set of [fundamental constants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_constant) (the best known ones being the speed of light, the gravitational constant and the Planck constant). If the value of one of them was even slightly different, the life as we know couldn't exist. The problem is that the idea that these values are immutable is just an assumption. In truth, nothing assures us that their values are really constant: they could be different in some zones of the universe, or could change through the eons. So, in case the gravitational constant or the speed of light abruptly changed, it would have unpredictable effects on everything in the universe, included the multigalactic empire: for instance, if the gravity abruptly became too weak to keep the planets together, the empire could cease to exist in less than one femtosecond (together with all life in the universe). Other changes in the constant values would have very disruptive effects altogether, for instance rendering impossible all the biochemistry, or (in case of a more limited impact) rendering useless all the exotic technologies that allow the empire to exist. [Answer] Understand that we would need very hypothetical science to make it work, but here are a couple of idea: 1. Scientists create a baby universe in a lab, but rather than expanding in a separate universe, it expands inside our own, engulfing or pushing aside stars and galaxies as it expands at the speed of light (or possibly faster). After a billion years or so, this new universe reaches its apex and begins to collapse again, and after another billion years or so, it is gone. As it collapses, it draws galaxies into the void it leaves, and the civilization may start over. 2. The civilization is based on a network of wormholes, which collapses, suddenly or fairly quickly. All planets are left on their own, with the closest being able to maintain some contact with slower-than-light communication ad possibly spaceships. After two billion years, a new network of wormholes is born, and intergalactic civilization can start again. Possibly, some smaller, pocket wormhole networks survived the collapse, and these start growing slowly and ultimately reconnect. John Scalzi's novel [The Collapsing Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collapsing_Empire) deals with such a situation on a much smaller scale. [Answer] One amazing example of an interstellar civilization brought to it's knees by natural causes is in the transformers lore. It was called the [Age of Rust](https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Age_of_Rust), and it was devastating. It was an incredibly virulent and incurable plague that spread rapidly and almost lead to the collapse, only being stopped by complete quarantine. Have something like this, but with a longer incubation period. Many people will die, and those that don't will close themselves off completely. While you can read more about it in the linked wiki, it is a really great chapter in a book called Covenant of Primus. While it involves robots in the book, you can easily transfer it to humans. It could go something like this. > > From a far distant world, your homeworld gets a distress call. Garbled by the distance, they can only hear short snippets, but those that they hear are disturbing. Horrible... falling apart... close ports. Shaken, they issue orders to quarantine that planet, but it has only begun. Messages start pouring in. Refugees from infected planet coming in droves. The disease popping up seemingly at random throughout the systems. And all through it, the terrifying march of an incurable disease. It spreads through touch and air and water. It lies quiet, asymptomatic for days. And then all at once it starts to steadily turn the infected person into virulent spores. They dissolve into a fine dust, bit by bit. And the plague is coming. The next day, the infected number in the hundreds. The next, the tens of thousands. High command order to close off all planets, ships, but those on infected worlds are already fleeing. They desperately try to make it through blockades, and the whole system watches in sickened disbelief as battlecruisers are forced to fire on unprotected civilian ships. And it isn't working. And so the people of the homeworld rise to a civilization with trillions of people infected, and on the news they hear the impossible. All across the galaxies spaceflight has stopped, as a small bomb inserted in every engine capable of spaceflight ever made detonates. The stargates, the only thing capable of bridging the gap between the galaxies are destroyed and the plans burned. And now all they can do is watch. Watch and realize that they are the only planet left unscathed. Watch as all that they have achieved over billions of years, the progress of their species... turns to dust. > > > Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the OC. [Answer] Ever played a video game in God mode? You would probably stop after a few hours cause it's just NOT FUN anymore. A society with BILLIONS of years worth of technological advance would be a disease to itself. It would know everything, experienced everything and be almost God-like. There's no more challenges. You know how people hunt for fun instead of for food now? Why? Because we crave the challenge (I am not defending trophy hunting, just stating why) and not just the result. So in a society where everything is easily achieved, people will get bored and tired of living. Eventually, a splinter group will understand that only way to be happy again is to destroy everything they built. They basically destroy all the technology until it goes back to a time where living is a challenge and "fun". [Answer] Didn't yet see aliens which are on a similar level and which may be strong enough to cause a lot of troubles. Also, what would happen if the species overused a resource and it eventually became unavailable? Fissionable material, an element used (up) in some technology, stellar objects suitable for slingshotting becoming unstable through too many space ships, and so on. If the galaxies were very close together and there were a few very large black holes in the center of that cluster, an unexpected collision might be able to damage the technology they use. Which might cause a chain reaction of resource issues, resource fights, civil war and collapse. ]
[Question] [ A demigod is a mortal being infused with divine energy. This essence comes from a divine spark in their soul that activates due to some external traumatic event. This spark is very rare, and most people with them go through life never realizing their potential. These gods are super-human in a way similar to Captain America, and are smarter, stronger, longer-lived, and tougher than regular mortals. On the rare occasion that a god dies, through murder, war, etc., their soul departs to the afterlife. However, their bodies are incapable of rotting, and remain in perfect condition. Their organs and genetic material are still super-charged and continue to remain viable. Because of this, there is an black market that trades in these organs and other body parts. An individual can use these parts to replace their own, gaining the benefits of those supercharged organs, such as kidneys, liver, eyes, etc. A human will never be able to achieve the full benefits of these transplanted parts, due to the divine essence being dissipated. Nevertheless, they will be leagues ahead of any other mortal. Ignoring law enforcement and cost, I need a reason for why the sale of these organs in the underworld isn't more widespread. A god's superhuman body parts and organs are fully compatible with other mortals. Anyone with the money to pay for these illegal transplants would be able to supercharge their own bodies with them. While it has been outlawed, there will always be a black market for them. Despite the benefits of their use, they are not widely preferred compared to mortal organs. There is a significant failure rate to the process, even though most transplants are successful. Why would this be the case? [Answer] ## Cults. Not the modern meaning of that word where "cult" stands for "abusive organization that takes your money and saps your free will." I mean the cults of old that were extremely dedicated individuals coming together as adjuncts to religious organizations. If gods die infrequently, there wouldn't be that many of them. Each dead god would have its own cult of caretakers. They would build a monument (or at least a small shelter) to protect the body and guard it day and night. An entire religious community would spring up around each god's body, just like various Catholic communities organized around having relics (pieces of the bodies of people later deemed saints). While theft wouldn't be impossible, there's a huge difference between getting ahold of a body lying in a basement vs managing to get to one that is the center of an entire church. The most vulnerable point is the transition between death and establishment as relics in a new church. The existing religious establishment would step immediately and guard the body while figuring out what to do with it. They would provide funds for the new church buildings and staff. Years later, the new church would be self-sustaining and able to contribute funds back to the larger religious organization. [Answer] An elaborate black market would be inevitable. What also would be inevitable would be the backlash from the demigod community. 500 year old supermen will know each other and keep tabs. Loki knows at some level Thor will have his back and vice versa. They show up at each other's funerals, shared pain of watching friends die. When one of them dies under mysterious circumstances, and the body isn't fit for burial, one of them is going to be curious enough to look around. When they figure out what the mob was up to, it's simply a matter of getting the gang back together. When they win, they will find the leaders of the organ ring and do things that would make Marcellus Wallace say "That's a bit too much." In hundred years it will be rumors, but it will be enough to keep people honest. [Answer] 1: Graft vs host disease. Of course if I have a kidney transplant, I might reject the kidney. My immune system must be suppressed to some degree to prevent this. But in some circumstances and especially bone marrow transplant, it is the graft itself that is the threat. If I take on a bone marrow transplant, that foreign immune system might reject the rest of my body. So too these god organs. The organ might object to the circumstances it finds itself in. But a semi divine organ is more subtle than an immune system. It might attack. Or it might start remaking and revising the rest of the body to suit its preferences. At first that might seem like a good thing. But the personality, inclinations and other aspects of the new host are on the list too. The recipient of such a graft might find that he or she was gradually becoming someone other than the person who initially agreed to receive the graft. --- 2. Ascension. When demigods die, the body heads upwards. The bonds holding them to earth are gone with their lives, and the divine stuff of their bodies has kinship with sky and heavens more than earth. Hercules is a good example - a demigod who on death physically ascended upwards from his pyre. If you want a piece of a dead demigod you need to be ready when he dies, because his body is going to move upwards at a good clip. Even parts cut loose from the bodies experience a sort of antigravity and need to be kept in lead boxes. Presumably there are accumulations of the dead demigods somewhere high in the sky, indestructible, immutable, floating around forever. [Answer] Well, it's the old "everything has a price" saw. Compatibility I know you said they are fully compatible, but if you want a bar to doing it, that's the way to do it. Ever try to use an American plug in England? It's just a completely different system. Ever try to put car engine spark plugs in a lawn mower? It's not about full benefit, it's about compatibility, so it might not work at all, and most people might actually die in the process, with a very few being able to benefit. The organs might be supercharged, but people AREN'T. In fact, some unscrupulous folk might just sell an organ more than once, as it keeps killing recipients. Put that in the contract... Weaknesses/Shorter Life Span If a God's heart is much stronger, by a huge amount, wouldn't that put stress on all the other systems? You might be God-like, but you also might have a shorter life span or your super-organ might put stress on everything else. If the heart beats harder, maybe your veins can't even handle it. That's just one example. But you can do it with literally any organ. Transplant Rejection/Dependence Goes along with compatibility. In this case, your recipients NEED something to keep the organs from being rejected. Study real-life organ donation. Recipients are often on a drug cocktail for the rest of their lives just to keep from rejecting the organ. Can be magical instead or something like ambrosia. God delusions/Hosting a GOD You say the genetics are supercharged. OK. So maybe there's an extra problem. You want to use the organs, but instead, the organs use YOU! Basically, the god genetics and such now have a living HOST. Little by little, piece by piece you are being replaced. Maybe, eventually (if magic allows for it) you begin to have their God memories and begin losing yourself in the process. This might not happen all the time, and it might not happen fully, but if the God was killed for good reason, that might be enough for people to be motivated to destroy it or lock it away, especially if the transfer in the past has resulted in "growing a new God." So insanity might be an issue... Energy Requirements Might not be a bar but is an extra thing. More food is needed to power it all, so anyone using these organs has to be on an extreme high-calorie diet, otherwise they could starve to death. When it's altogether in the God, this doesn't happen, but as it's only ONE organ out of many and only one thing in a HUMAN (or animal) system, the god organ requires more to run. Without this extra energy, the human's own system will be taxed to run the organ. Taint With the supercharged genetics, there's a chance that you will stop looking like an ordinary human. Your skin might turn blue, your eyes might change to an unnatural color...in short, people can SEE that you've done this and you have to hide it as it is illegal.. [Answer] The supply is limited. There is only a limited amount of these demi-gods and not all of them end up in the market. At least not fully. Whatever killed them might have outright destroyed large parts of the body. The body might have been lost. The body might have been "acquired" by the people responsible for the death. Or by the government sponsoring the hero. Or it might have been reserved for scientific study. As such the fair market price for such body parts would be fairly high. If we then assume they are "single use", that after being implanted the divine power dissipates as part of the organ becoming part of the mortal body and the organ cannot be simply recycled using them as an implant becomes expensive. It becomes more profitable to keep the body part than to use it. The value of the organs should be high and fairly stable or even rising. After all, they are eminently collectible. It is not a "hand, left, of a demi-god" it is the "the left hand of Captain America, the famous hero who..." They are all unique artefacts with an unique background. There is actually a historical precedent for this in the form of the highly profitable trade of religious relics during the middle ages. I'd expect you could make lot more money by building shrines around the bodies or their parts than by implanting them. Or simply by collecting and trading them like people are doing with other collectibles. Reasonably with the parameters you give you'd have a mix of both. Given that these body parts are literally divine and "metaphysical", scientific study of them would almost certainly have high potential for fundamental scientific breakthroughs. Even if you hand-wave that "the divine" is beyond science, careful observations of it interacting with your experiments would give you an entirely new way to test things that are well within the reach of science. These two factors combined with the limited supply mean that if implantation spends the part, the market value of the part, unspent, will almost always be higher than the value of using it. Seeing better than mortal is nice and for the right people it even has high value but that value is limited and "the right people" for whom the value is higher than the market value are rare. Note that if the market value of the part is not higher than the value of using them people will use them until it is. So as long as the supply is reasonably limited and the parts are single use, implants will always cost more than they are worth and will be limited to the very rich with excess money to burn and people with specific and rare needs. Which is more or less what you wanted. [Answer] The Brightest Candle Burns Half as Long Sure god parts will supercharge you but just like a supercharger in a car, it adds additional strain on the of the body. * A god's eyes will allow you to see much more but the extra sensory input will drive you slowly insane. * A god's heart will allow you to run and exert endlessly but increase your chances of a stroke * A god's liver detoxifies everything perfectly which means you can't take drugs to treat other ailments or even get drunk. Basically there is a cost which offsets the benefits foremost is a shorter lifespan and not many people want to live less. [Answer] Divine Retribution. Pretty much every Demigod sees this act as sacrilege - they only allow organ donation to other Demigods under extreme and unusual circumstances, and a Mortal claiming a Divine Organ is the sort of thing that can make even the fiercest of Nemeses put their conflict on hold to "honour their brethren" and engage in a bout of cooperative smiting. So, trafficking the bodies could make you a lot of money - if you can find a buyer. Because, the transplant will turn you into "Humanity 2.0" - but in doing so you'll become the target of a very hostile "Humanity 2k" [Answer] Borrowing from Chinese web novels, Heavenly Tribulations. Someone going against the law of the heavens(universe) has to go through the tests of the heavens to be able to fully wield the power of a God. The tests can be physical or mental. I think this could create an interesting dynamic in your world where there are some who have surpassed the Tribulations and many who haven't. [Answer] Misinformation Perhaps people of this world have specific beliefs, such as a body needing to be whole to enter the afterlife, or that tainting it with that of another would have significant consequences, even if it does not. It could be simply 'common knowledge' that these drawbacks exist, so that few consider the idea, and most are horrified at the suggestion. People, even smart people, believe all sorts of things that aren't true. Da Vinci once claimed that salamanders ate nothing but fire, simply because he had read it somewhere. Predators If the gods can defend themselves, then maybe eldritch abominations (or whatever) don't risk eating them when they are alive, but are happy to do so when they are dead, even if their bodies are being guarded by lesser creatures, like people. Such a creature might have its own form of divine spark, predate modern humanity, or simple be so alien that its motives are unknown. Perhaps it is sentient, and chooses not to attack gods for its own reasons, such as kinship or curiosity, but harbors no such restraint against normal people. Or it could even be a person, or organization, or different type of god. They don't need to eat the meat to hunt it. Perhaps they collect it to protect it, or use it as fuel, or dispose of it, to prevent normal humans from getting power they are unworthy of. [Answer] Total destruction I'm actually puling from Doctor Who on this one, but I think it's a fair extrapolation. When a Time Lord dies, his body is cremated. "A Time Lord's body is a miracle, even a dead one. There are whole empires out there who'd rip this world apart for just one cell", says River Song. Presumably, a similar process would render a (demi)god's body inert and useless. Of course, even the ashes would likely be seen as tremendously important to a follower of said god, even if their no scientific data to be retrieved from it. [Answer] A demigod glows with mana (or insert name of magical energy here). All gods, demigods, and even high level mages can track this energy. The will of a demigod suppresses the emanation of this energy. When the demigod dies, the suppression stops and they start glowing like a beacon to anyone with the right sense. The demigods have a pact that they will truce until all the remains are properly dealt with. This truce can be dictated by the gods (only our children are allowed a part of our energy), self interest to prevent competition, or to prevent calamity (the human with divine energy may be like a nuclear power plant without control rods). Heck the pieces themselves may be volatile and be dangerous to the world (like radioactive waste). This would have the effect that every living demigod would know that one of them died and maybe who (based on the energy signature). [Answer] Because the mortals' body is not prepared, compatible is not necessarily suitable. I find it almost the same that you put the main battery of 16-inch guns of a battleship on a small fishing boat. I'm aware that human body could reject donated organs, even if complex matching procedure is been done before the transplantation to ensure best match. Our immune system will simply hate exogenous organs (sometimes even our own body parts!) and attack them, so we usually suppress its power to ensure the transplantation to be successful. However, OP is talking about a world that 'most transplantation is successful', so the reason why demi-god's organ is not widely used that I can think of is more of compatibility with other organ/system, not just the immune system. For example, a demi-god's heart can pump hundreds of liters of blood in a blink of an eye, while our puny blood vessel will completely be destroyed; a demi-god's eye can collect light of all wavelength than no human brain can process properly; kidney of a demi-god might filter human blood so well, that after going through the kidney, the blood basically becomes pure water; and do you remember how Clark Kent was disturbed by his super hearing? Not to mention their organs might have a very different metabolism process than ours, so glucose is not necessarily the energy source for those transplanted organ. Even if it's the same, with great power comes great energy consumption, so unless the digestive system is also capable (demi-god's intestine?), this single organ will starve, and so will the mortal. TL;DR: Put an engine with insane power on a normal car will probably just ruin the car; it might not have the same fuel requirement; and even if it's a FTL engine, the energy consumption might be ridiculous for people to actually use it. [Answer] God meat?.. no thanks The process of acquiring super powers through using the organs involves physical and psychological hazards, it involves a painful transformation that very few are willing to undergo. Failure of this process can result in insanity, death. The akira anime comes to my mind, but foremost,this reminds me of how in some ancient asian alchemy texts the consumption of mercury was advocated; but secret alchemical preparation processes and spiritual advancement were necessary (to achieve the superpowers and avoid death/insanity). \\ Operation cognitive dissonance \\ It would be logical that the powers that be don't want the populace knowing all this stuff that gives a john doe superhero status. So layers of disinformation hide the truth. This doesn't stop the black market since the elite-related people and conspirancy theory investigator types could eventually find about it. [Answer] ### Supply and demand Can't sell what you don't have. ### Tracking is easy. Any form of handling will leave traces. Everywhere a body or organ goes leaves an indelible and easily tracked and somehow timestamped trace on people, places and things. This doesn't make it impossible, but certainly makes it expensive and tricky, which will reduce who is willing to try it, or even receive it. ]
[Question] [ In my world there are mechanical semi-humanoid automata. Would it be possible to make them speak in a fashion that sounds natural (i.e. human)? How might it function? The mechanism should be capable of (in order of priority): 1. Pronouncing English sounds. 2. Simulating intonation. 3. Simulating changes in pitch (frequency). 4. Simulating changes in timbre (waveform). 5. Simulating changes in volume. 6. Pronouncing non-English sounds. Note that I wouldn't mind the contraption having 'quirks', such as the /s/ always being pronounced a little quieter than the other sounds through some odd side-effect of the mechanism, or that there may be a tell-tale hiss before each word from the pumps depressurizing. These mechanical voice-boxes may be constructed from materials available in the late Victorian era, with precision parts (such as watch mechanisms) freely available. Controlling the mechanism should not be of concern. The more compact, modular and more alien the system, the better. EDIT: I had researched [the human voice on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_voice) and the tweeting of [cuckoo clocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock), but found the actual human voice too large and spread-out for practical usage in machinery, particularly because of the involvement of the tongue (being quite a large organ) and it's distance from the lungs. The cuckoo clocks are very primitive and I couldn't think of anything inspired by them. I was wondering whether something more like a trumpet could be used, allowing the great distances to be coiled to preserve space, but I have a great lack of knowledge when it comes to topics of more advanced acoustics. [Answer] This is Thomas Edison with his second [phonograph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph) in 1878. ![Tommy E.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U3kRQ.jpg) The Victorian era ended in 1901 as far as I am aware. All you need is a set of pre-recorded phrases and a random-access needle or head. The Sexy British Accent™ is up to whomever is dubbing it. [Answer] There's a team of japanese researchers constructing an [artificial mouth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmSYnOvEueo) with the purpose of emulating human speech. It consists of a pump that pumps air through the mouth, a vibrating membrane, a silicone rubber tube with an integrated tongue and a nasal cavity. I persoanlly find it hard to actually understand what it says (since I don't speak Japanese), but you can hear it articulate different sillabies. The japanese team is not finished yet, the mouth lacks the capability press it's lips closed to pronounce B, P and M and teeth to pronounce F and S. --- In your story, you could construct an artificial mouth out of rubber, leather, oilcloth, waxpaper and whatever you deem appropriate. The construction of the first "[speaking machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_von_Kempelen%27s_speaking_machine)" by Wolfgang von Kempelen started in 1769 ([see it in action](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_YUB_S6Gpo)), so the materials required to build one are available in your world, too. And then there is the [Euphonia device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphonia_(device)) by Joseph Faber, of which I couldn't find a video > > [S]ixteen levers or keys 'like those of a piano' projected sixteen elementary sounds by which 'every word in all European languages can be distinctly produced'. > > > The actual forming of words is the problem here and requires some handwaving. I immagine the voicebox in the "head" of the automaton and a transmission-like gearbox in the chest cavity. Strings connect the gearbox to the mechanisms that deform the mouth. It's stacked full of cogwheels that each pull on different strings to deform the mouth in different ways and produce different sounds. The word "hello" would be formed by successively activating the gears H E L O, while the word "hero" would activate the gears H E E R O. [Answer] ## BACKGROUND (setting the context for my answer): I actually used to be a researcher in a university lab that created the software for voice synthesizers back in the 1980's. At that time, all the synthesizers used recordings of human voices and edited examples of each phoneme (the sound you might associate with a letter, but it's not letters). Then the software would grab the sounds it needed and put them together. Very choppy and awful output. The professors I worked with (I was an undergraduate doing this as paid full or part time depending on my school schedule) created a brand new system. They made a list of every two-phoneme combination (for example "b-ah" or "sh-ew") and some common multiples (like st-ah) and then used a recorded human voice for the examples. My job was to cut each pairing at the exact middle (second half of the "b" and the first half of the "ah" for example). The point was to keep all those important transitions. I had both the sounds and a graphic depiction of the recordings on a computer. The results were gorgeous compared to anything that came before it. Much more lifelike. But there was still no intonation. Changing pitch, volume, and a few other tonal things was possible then and is even easier now. But intonation is HARD. To create intonation you need extensive rules on which tones to use when. You might think this is easy (just like you might think my other job, writing the rules for text-to-speech that translated written words into lists of phonemes, was easy) but you'd be wrong. It's hard for humans speaking a second language to get right and it's insanely hard for computers. But that was over 30 years ago. All that stuff I did by hand is now partially or completely automated. It's easier now than before. But it's still not easy. I mean have you heard an electronic voice that does intonation well? Siri? Alexa? Yeah no. At best you get a rising tone for questions. Take all this into the near future and, sure, it's gonna happen. Already the electronic voices are worlds better than what I was working on, and that was lightyears ahead of what was out there. Electronic voices are used every day now and it's just going to increase. There are entire companies (and departments of larger companies) working on these problems. ## YOUR QUESTION: You have two differences from what I was talking about. 1. Your electronic speakers may be intelligent. In that case, you don't need software to determine which phonemes to use or which tonal variations. 2. You're stuck with Victorian-level tech. It's unclear to me if your "mechanical semi-humanoid automata" are indeed intelligent. If not, they need to be programed in some manner. Even if it's just setting keys to utter various phonemes. You still need to have a way for the brains of the machines, or the programming, to transfer to the "mouths." This is really hard for that era. If you use artificial mouths to articulate sounds, you'll need to break down every phoneme into its component parts. These are: * Voiced or unvoiced (if the vocal folds vibrate during the sound). * Position of the tongue and/or lips. For consonants there are just a few choices but vowels are very complex and some vowels require movement of the tongue in a particular way. * Method of articulation (stop, fricative, liquid, etc). Then you need to pump air through the entire mechanism and somehow get everything to coordinate. Seriously, something like this would take a long time to build. And that's only for the version that takes 3 seconds to say every word. If you use an electronic voice, you'll need to have a stored inventory of phonemes (or the cut phoneme pairs like I describe above). With modern computers you can use electronically generated sounds, but it's the same basic idea: create a string of sounds that come together as words. English vs non-English? Easy peasy. That's just about which phonemes and/or phoneme pairs you have in your database. Can you change volume or pitch? Maybe. It can be done mechanically, but you need to either have a human do this, an intelligent machine, or figure out some way to program it. How about intonation? No. Freaking. Way. If only the rudiments of intonation can be done with modern technology, it's not going to happen with Victorian-era tech. > > [Intonation is] extraordinarily complex. "Although intonation is > primarily a matter of pitch variation, it is important to be aware > that functions attributed to intonation such as the expression of > attitudes and emotions, or highlighting aspects of grammatical > structure, almost always involve concomitant variation in other > prosodic features. [David Crystal](https://books.google.com/books?id=1ptcAAAAMAAJ&pg=PP1) for example says that "intonation is > not a single system of contours and levels, but the product of the > interaction of features from different prosodic systems – tone, > pitch-range, loudness, rhythmicality and tempo in particular." ([ref](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intonation_(linguistics))) > > > What if controlling the machine was really not an issue? The OP claims this but it really depends on the frame of the question. How much handwaving and "alien tech" is there? Even with "software" that's really an intelligent brain able to produce perfect control, you're still dealing with the slowness of Victorian-era machines. If everything is truly built locally, I don't see any way that speech can be a normal speed, let alone have all these nuances. With [44 phonemes in English](https://www.dvusd.org/cms/lib/AZ01901092/Centricity/Domain/3795/Sound_Spelling_Chart.pdf) ([Ju\|’hoan](http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-many-phonemes.html) has about 130) and hundreds to account for all the world's languages, the database of recordings alone would take up too much space, even if done very small and even if you could build the tiny player & a machine to move it around. And that's assuming that you only record phonemes, not the edited combinations that will give you much smoother and better results. [Answer] It's going to sound a lot like an automated train announcement. The reason being is that we're going to use the same principles. Individual words recorded on separate wax cylinders selected and played back by your automata mechanism in the appropriate order. Not entirely human, not entirely inhuman, but entirely in keeping with the technology of the era. Of course that gives you a fairly limited vocabulary, but you should be able to work out no more than a few thousand words to be able to express something on most (socially acceptable) subjects. Your harder option is that rather than recording whole words, you record syllables to construct words. That could allow you a wider vocabulary in exchange for a more complex mechanism and slightly more broken speech. [Answer] Depending on what level of computation your automaton can perform, and the level of complexity your mechanism can have, you could do a sort of micro-pin system wherein a needle runs across a series of tiny pins that are placed at different heights, just as a record has teeth in the grooves at a microscopic level. The resolution of such a device would be lower than an actual record, but that might be one of the quirks. You'd certainly be able to change intonation by this method. For reference, take a look at how the wheel of a carillon is set up, or Wintergatan's Marble Machine. Then, scale it down far enough that instead of merely triggering a note, it becomes a simulation of the ridges on a record. [Answer] Just to point out the obvious... the modern speaker was invented in the victorian era (1870s). The only major difference between the voice synthesis of today and 150 years ago is control. Depending on how advanced your automaton's "brain" is would be where any quirks would come from. If it just doesn't have to processing power to mimic the hertz rate of human perception, it would be kinda like talking to Stephen Hawking. If you assume the automaton has the ability to control the speaker with the precision of a modern computer, then the voice synthesis should be nearly flawless. Talking to it would feel more like talking to Alexa. It would not be how it talks that would give away it's lack of humanity, but its choice of words and inflection. If the thing is of Human or Superhuman intellect, then with your eyes closed, it would be indistinguishable from talking to a person, but the lack of a moving mouth may be disconcerting to ppl who are not used to interacting with it. ]
[Question] [ A light-year distant from Sol saw the collision of a massive space-born battle fleet against an awe-inspiring dreadnought. At one point in the battle, the flotilla fired rail-guns with 100 metric ton slugs and nuclear missiles. ...And a lot of them missed their target ...And kept on sailing through space, generally toward our beloved Sol. Eons later, while eating an Italian custard at a French bistro whilst admiring the visas in my American passport, I look up to see an odd reflection in the early afternoon sun. Hours later, Earth becomes collateral damage in a battle fought long before Gelato ice cream was invented. * Ignore the scattering effect of objects sailing through space. Assume that the rail-gun slugs and missiles (their fuel long since exhausted) are lined up to pass through our system, parallel with the ecliptic, 15 degrees above the ecliptic referenced from the sun, and 2 AU from the sun. * Assume the missiles are similar in size and mass to a Minuteman-III missile. * Rail-gun slug: 100 metric tons, muzzle velocity of 2.5 Km/s. Question: Is it possible for these munitions to become captured in our sun's gravity well, thereby making them a believable catastrophe-in-the-making? [Answer] Virtually none of them would be captured and it's unlikely we'd notice anything whizzing past. Basically, an object that falls into a gravity well from infinity (and a light year off is pretty close to that) will, unless it hits something while passing through, fall right back out again. By definition it picks up escape velocity as it falls in and loses it as it falls back out. So it passes through the solar system on a hyperbolic trajectory. And if the projectiles were moving at high speed before falling into the solar system, it will be a very flat hyperbola -- i.e., they'll hardly be deflected at all by the Sun's gravity. If the slugs are aimed to pass through at 2AU, there's basically nothing there to hit and all they do is think to themselves, "Here comes the Sun...there goes the Sun...hello interstellar darkness..." (I'm not quite sure what you mean by "to pass through our system 15 degrees above the ecliptic." It you mean they are aimed to pass well above the plane of the planetary orbits, then there's still less likely to hit anything or even be noticed.) The planets -- even Jupiter -- would have little effect on the projectiles since most of them would not come near enough to be affected, and the rest would only be deflected a bit. (Remember, they're passing by at greater than escape velocity. The deflection a body can provide depends on the projectile's velocity (the slower it's moving relative, the bigger the defection) and on the impact parameter (the closer the projectile passes the bigger the deflection.) Hitting the Earth accidentally is hard. The Earth occupies .25(r/R)2 of a 2AU circle, where r is the Earth's radius and R is the Earth's orbital radius (the AU). That fraction is about 5\10-10. So less than one in a billion of the projectiles would hit Earth even if they were aimed to all pass through the ecliptic within 2AU of the Sun. Finally, if they did hit the Earth we'd probably not notice them. A 100 metric ton slug of metal would be about 10 cubic meters if it's iron, less if it's something denser. That's a sphere less then ten feet in diameter. It would produce a nice bolide, but would come down pretty much intact, making a 50 meter crater with about a 4 kiloton explosion. Nothing you'd want to be next to, of course, but basically unnoticeable more than twenty miles away. Tunguska was close to 100 times bigger (though probably mostly ice) and its explosion was around four thousand* times greater, and it was nearly missed. Had it hit water, it would have been missed. [Answer] To be captured by the sun's gravity well means to end up orbiting the sun. If a projectile is fired from outside the solar system, it may do a flyby around the sun. Its speed at any altitude (relative to the sun) will be greater than the escape velocity at those points. Scientists believe this is exactly what the [Oumuamua](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua) object did. For the flotsam to be captured, it must be decelerated by a planet. Jupiter is the best candidate to do so, but the odds are against it. Even if the flotsam does a flyby by Jupiter, it is more likely to either hit the planet or be accelerated even further, causing it to exit the solar system earlier. If it does get decelerated by a planet, the flotsam will be locked into an orbit that is unlikely to cross the Earth's own. It will cross Jupiter's orbit during its perihelion, which means it may crash into Jupiter eobs later, and it has an astronomical probability of having an orbit even more inclined relative to the Earth's than Pluto. All this makes an encounter with Earth very unlikely. [Answer] Short answer is a space weapon fired at any sort of realistic speed will never be captured by the Sun's gravity well. Consider that mere human technology has created nuclear pumped weapons like project [Prometheus](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php), which captured a small fraction of a nuclear explosion to fire a stream of pellets at 100km/sec. Changing some elements allows you to use similar equipment to make [shaped charges, Explosively formed projectiles](http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2017/05/nuclear-efp-and-heat.html) and even [streams of star hot plasma](http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-nuclear-spear-casaba-howitzer.html) moving at speeds measured in percentages of the speed of light. In short, your space armada would be sliced to pieces before they get a shot in using weapons with velocities of 2.5km/sec. In fact, orbital velocity around the Earth is already 7km/sec. Realistic space weapons will be moving so fast that they will never be captured, while extremely slow moving bodies like you describe will likely not reach Earth at all, but either drift harmlessly past, or be captured by some of the Gas Giant planets in the outer Solar System. [Answer] Muzzle velocity seems less important than projectile velocity as seen from Sol. Give the weapons provided, it seems likely that fleets in motion, starting from bases also in motion, would need to come to (relative) near-rest with each other to have the fight at all...else their weapons would not score at all as the fleets flashed past each other in a fraction of a second and then spent weeks shedding velocity for another attacking run. That point of relative near-rest-for-the-fight is still moving, from the perspective of everybody else in the galaxy. It orbits the galactic center, and it has a vector from the perspective of all the stars...including Sol. And if that apparent vector, from Sol's perspective, is [greater than about 7km/s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity) at closest approach of 2AU, then Sol will probably not capture it at all. Flotsam just below that limit would likely go into comet-like hyperbolic orbits and may not return to the inner system for millenia. Flotsam really slowly drifting toward Sol would be captured and become a minor menace to inner planets...but only during the two times each orbit that they intersect the ecliptic...and only until their crazy, unstable orbits dump them into Sol. [Answer] They are most likely to end up captured by Jupiter's gravity well first. If they manage to survive that long. Jupiter is the second biggest object in our solar system after the Sun and possess a vast gravity well. There's a reason why it is used for slingshot maneuvers and accelerations by many of the probes sent throughout the system by the various space agencies. They even sent a solar probe to Jupiter to alter it's trajectory so it could fly by the poles of the sun. 2 AU is a little under the distance of the Asteroid Belt to the Sun, so they would definitely be in the gravitational influence of the Sun. As for hitting Earth, which is, all things considered, an orbiting mote of dust around the Sun, it seems very improbable. The path of the flotsam would have to intersect Earth's orbit at a point in space and time that is also occupied by Earth at the same moment. I do not know how to calculate or model the path of your piece of flotsam given the parameters given, but I would rather expect it to either fall into Jupiter or the Sun, or be sent into the depths of interstellar space, than hit anything else in the system. ]
[Question] [ An absolute madman of a scientist tractors the Moon from it's orbit, and carefully lowers it through the Earth's atmosphere and gently brings it to rest upon the Earth's surface. There is no reentry, there is no impact. What happens? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PyWkK.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PyWkK.jpg) So we have two spherical 'planets' that are in contact with each other. Does the Moon slowly disintegrate due to the gravity, or would it be consumed rather quickly? How would this affect objects near the Moon? How would the shape of this new Earth-Moon *potatoid* affect things? [Answer] The maximum height of a peak which can self sustain on the Earth surface is a bit more than the height of mount Everest. The Moon diameter is way more than that. Therefore, assuming the mad scientist could really swiftly place the Moon on Earth, our satellite could not self sustain, and would spread on the surface. However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind: [Roche limit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit) > > it is the distance in which a celestial body, held together only by its own gravity, will disintegrate due to a second celestial body's tidal forces exceeding the first body's gravitational self-attraction. > > > For the Earth Moon the Roche limit is around 9500 km. This means that once the Moon gets closer than that to Earth, it would start break apart. The Scientist would have a hard time holding together the pieces falling from the Moon. The slightest failure would result in a meteor shower, which from 9000 km height would be quite energetic. Momentum of inertia Even assuming that the above could be avoided, the potatoid resulting from joining the Moon and the Earth would put the rotation of Earth off balance, resulting in quite some vibration while the system rearranges in a new equilibrium position. Both of the above are highly unpleasant for those tiny things on Earth which we call "life forms", which, being close to the Moon, fall under your question > > How would this affect objects near the Moon? > > > [Answer] The Moon would collapse for two reasons: * Its own weight: It's obvious that Moon's weight is too much in order to make a big mountain. The Moon will crash itself due to Earth's gravity and Moon's weight. * [Roche limit won't let it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit): The Earth's gravity will break the Moon's body into pieces because it won't be able to bind itself with its own gravity. Just an illustration in my opinion: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0zlg3.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0zlg3.png) All its weight and the Earth's gravity will crush and squeeze the Moon, producing a lot of heat and earthquakes, and after some time, that part of the planet would be a lot higher than the rest, but not too much. Also, there will be a bit of [gravitational anomalies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth) (a bit exaggerated in my image). Also, the Earth's rotation and angle will be affected due to the new Moon mass added to it. We could expect an important change in angle (with will affect stations and temperature) and day time. P.S: Maybe I also exaggerated a bit the red and orange part, it will be hot, really hot, but no so hot. [Answer] The moon would collapse under its own weight this would be 'quick' moon standards but would take quite a while for humans a few minutes or so ( I can't give you a precise time as there is no clear end point really, the moon just turns into a giant mountain which gradually flattens out until the earth seems slightly bigger.) Objects near the moon would experience its gravity but since the gravity of the earth is so much bigger you wouldn't be pulled up or anything it would just feel as if down was slightly off (though whether you'd notice that given that 'holy smokes the moon is over there what the hell' is up for debate). The newly added weight on the earths crust from the collapsing moon is probably causing earthquakes and volcano's to pop up everywhere. That being said you do probably have a nice view for your last few minutes until its obscured by collapsing moon dust. Finally all life on earth dies of course the moon is big and as it collapses a lot of debris falls a very long way inputting a lot of energy into the earths ecosystem. Think asteroid that killed to dinosaurs but instead of 15 km across its well over three thousand (it's going much slower of course but that is not nearly enough sadly. Oh and most of the earth 's surface gets buried in moon rock) [Answer] Some very nice answers. I'll add one more that as the Moon was slowly lowered to the Earth, it's tidal forces on the Earth would have an effect. You'd get tides hundreds of feet high moving towards the moon. In some parts of the Earth you might see oceans withdraw from their shores to the point of no longer being visible. Other parts would find themselves entirely under water. Even before the Moon touches down, Earth would likely experience several large earthquakes from the tidal forces. Upon touching down and being released to gravity, things would get much worse. It would take only about 15 minutes or so (1/2 a t^2 for the diameter of the moon) for the Moon to push its way into the Earth and that pushing would not be pretty. Even touching the surface the Moon would still have enormous gravitational potential energy, enough to probably leave half the Earth a molten lava mess and the other half shaken and broken and flooded beyond all recognition and the air would be unbreathable and a wild guess, the sky would be black - for a few years. And enveloped in water vapor for many years after that until the surface cooled. Lets not actually do this. It wouldn't be a good day. A final point, it would be loud, and incredibly windy, but I'm not sure the loudness would matter as the Earth was shaking like you'd never seen it shake before. [Answer] Other answers described how this would destroy both Earth and Moon in short order. Assuming the mad scientist wants to avoid that (it would destroy the tractor beam, those aren't cheap!) there is a way to limit damage. The tractor beam is able to change the orbital and rotational speeds of the moon. This is necessary to have the Moon immobile compared to the Earth surface. Any of those changes has to be acted on the tractor beam itself, as per Newton's third law. Assuming the tractor beam to be on Earth, it is probably acting on Earth at the same time to avoid being shot to outer space like a cosmic ray. With careful changes of Earth orbital speed, possibly pushing against passing asteroids or distant planets to gain or loose momentum as needed, you may end up with a special configuration: a contact binary planet aka. Rocheworld. In this case, the Moon is orbiting around at normal orbital speed for its altitude (1737 km, Moon radius), which is a tiny bit more than 7 km/s, completing one orbit in about 1 hour 35 minutes. To avoid friction between the Earth and Moon surfaces now in contact, Earth is orbiting at the same angular velocity. That is, one Earth day is now also 1 hour 35 min long. Which itself would have some interesting effects on climate and geology (and by "interesting" I mean "apocalyptic") That way, the Moon doesn't fall on Earth as it is in orbit, and is kept in one piece by its own gravity. Similarly, it isn't gouging Earth at the contact point because Earth and Moon are moving in concert. This will still cause massive earthquakes as the pull of gravity suddenly changed intensity pretty dramatically at places. Both Earth and Moon will also slightly reshape, meaning apocalypse-level earthquakes and landslides pretty much everywhere. Atmosphere will also rush to cover the Moon, as atmospheric pressure is everywhere more or less the same on a Rocheworld, and there is suddenly a 1 to 0 atmosphere difference to equalize. Longer term, atmosphere starts evaporating on the Moon side due to the weak gravity, I am not sure a Rocheworld is stable with such a big difference in mass between the two parts, so the Moon may end up partially break apart to form a ring and partially fall down to Earth, which would reshape back as a sphere. Or it may stay as it is, with enough ground moving to the contact point to make a big contact circle - as matter settles until everywhere points down, that is with gravity being perpendicular to the surface, the contact circle would point sideways compared to either center. It would still kill about every living thing on Earth and flatten most of its features, but at least the mad scientist would have more time to pack the tractor beam on a spaceship. [Answer] As [LTK](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/10000) points out, the moon would lose its shape in minutes. (For example, the outer rim of the moon would take about 11 minutes to slam into the earth). Effectively, the underside of the moon would start as a giant undercut cave. The shear strength of the moon rock would be incapable of holding the cave roof up -- especially since there would initially only be a tiny contact area to carry the weight. The moon would slump down toward the earth. The outer rim of the slump would slam into the earth as a giant ring of kinetic energy weapons (with an energy density about 3 times that of TNT). The inner portions would hit the earth as a series of hammer blows. The outer rim would splash. The aggregate effect of these hammer blows would be a magnitude 17 earthquake, lasting 11 minutes. Next, the nearly vertical sides would crumble downward and outward, away from the center of the 3500 km high mountain. The bottom side of the moon (and the surface of the earth that it landed on) would melt. The liquid layer of the moon's core would be subject to a race: Would the extra pressure (from the weight of the "top" of the moon) squeeze out the liquid core before the extra pressure caused it to freeze? Whatever got squeezed out would (re-)melt. If the top of the moon fell in a balanced way, whatever did not get squeezed out would freeze. But the top of the moon might tip over, perhaps kicking out the solid inner core. As the squeezed-out blobs from the liquid core cooled down, they would gradually re-freeze. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- This question does not appear to be about worldbuilding, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/68530/edit) Is it possible to transplant cancer from one individual into a human and have the cancer still viably propagate? Could this be done cross-species, or would the source cancer have to also be human? Would similar biology between individuals (blood type, etc.) increase the chances of the cancer continuing to spread in the new host? If this is possible, what's the best route to take to increase the chances of the cancer being successful in the target's body and decreasing the possibility of the target being curable? Ideally, just the cancer itself would be needed, but if transplanting a cancerous organ would do it then that's also an option (though I imagine in that case you're going to need an organ that would have been a viable transplant when healthy, right?). I'm guessing this is more difficult and less reliable than just causing new cancer in a target (via radiation or something)--that's irrelevant for what I'm considering though. The person attempting this operation in this situation is more concerned with the use of a specific instance of cancer than with the efficacy of such a method (which could be for several reasons: some sort of revenge, a weird religious cult preserving the cancer of their founder, some surgeon who is aiming to be a bit more twisted, etc.). [Answer] Although it is extremely rare, there have been cases of cancer being transmitted from [one person to another](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonally_transmissible_cancer) through surgery or organ transplant. But in people with healthy immune systems this is extraordinarily rare even in whole organ transplants to such an extent that only a few cases are known. So it unless your villain also somehow weakened the victim's immune system, the chance of this actually working in practice is so small that it wouldn't be an effective strategy. A better approach might be to get some of the victim's own cells, induce cancer in them (such as with a [cancer-causing virus](http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/infectious-agents/infections-that-can-lead-to-cancer/viruses.html)), and implant those cells back into the victim. This would allow the villain to select healthy cells from a tissue that develops into hard-to-fight cancer. Since the cells are in culture, the villain would avoid the subject's immune system that would kill off many of the early cancer cells, allowing the cancer to develop more quickly. It would also allow the villain to inject [metastatic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastasis) (mobile) cancer cells directly into the victim's lymph nodes, which is pretty much a guaranteed death sentence for many types of cancers. If the villain wanted to get fancy, he or she could apply additional carcinogens (cancer-causing compounds) to speed up the process, and screen cells for particular cancerous mutations to further speed things up. The villain could also apply a bunch of anti-cancer drugs in increasing quantities one after another, allowing the cancer cells to develop resistance to the drugs. This would likely all seem natural to doctors, there shouldn't be any overt hint that foul play was involved. It would just seem like doctors missed the cancer until it was too late. However, if the villain didn't care about it seeming natural, he or she could directly genetically modify the cells, inserting cancer-causing genes and disabling genes that protect against cancer. Such genetic engineering would be obvious, but would also be faster and more reliable. Edit: added more details about using victim's own cells [Answer] Essentially you'd just need the right kind of cancer! There's a [type of cancer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease) that is transmitted between Tasmanian Devils by biting. Here's also [a list of other instances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonally_transmissible_cancer) of a similar type of transmission. It's incredibly rare that cancer passes on to other species, but it has happened (tapeworm to human wit HIV). So if the cancer cells were aggressive and adaptive enough, it certainly would be possible. [Answer] Yes, it's possible, with buts There are experiments in immuno-oncology (the branch that tries to combat cancer by nullifying whatever the cancerous cells use to avoid extermination by the immune system) research that graft (aka transplant a little bit) human tumors to mice. So it's not impossible to transplant cancer, even cross-species. However! The problem with all transplants remain in the way: Rejection. The immune system does not take kindly any foreign object, so transplanted people have to take immunosupressants so their immune system doesn't kill the transplant and them. Your murderer needs to find a way to immunosupress their target or induce the cancer by other means, or the poor victim will die sooner with an unintended cause of death. [Answer] This is a very real possibility in organ transplantation and blood product transfusion. [Here is a nice article about it](http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/columns/straight-dope/article/13045187/can-cancer-be-transplanted-what-happens-if-organs-carry-tumors). Cancer cells by definition are endlessly propagating cells of immortal lineage, so if they can get nutrients they will continue to divide. The body has an "ID code" for determining self versus non-self called Human Leukocyte Antigen system. The closer a cells HLA is to the host, the less likely those cells will be targeted for an immune response. In transplantation or transfusion we are already trying to get as close as possible to the hosts HLA type to prevent rejection. It is very rare to have a perfect match, thus the need for immunosuppression in most transplants. This would hinder the hosts ability to mount an immune response to foreign cancer cells, even if it could recognize them as "not-self". It is quite common for donor white cells (leukocytes) to survive in a transfused host (transfusion associated micro-chimerism). But rarely these white cells are a close enough match that they won't be destroyed by the host, but they WILL see the host as foreign, setting up what is called Graft versus Host Disease, where the transplanted white cells survive and proliferate in the host and attack the host, causing auto-immune-like diseases and possibly death. This isn't quite cancer, but is very similar. It also occurs with stem cell transplants and bone marrow grafts (especially in this case since the hosts entire bone marrow is killed, totally wiping out their immune system). Cancer cells pre-existing within a closely HLA matched organ can do the same thing, thus any history of cancer is usually a permanent deferment for transplantation. There are also areas of the body that don't get a lot of blood flow (like joints), so the immune system has poor "visibility" of that area and any cancer cells introduced can proliferate for a while without triggering an immune response. In your question, this applies to human to human transplantation, where it is possible for the HLA system to be closely matched. For animal to human usually the HLA analog is totally different and humans would easily reject any foreign tissue, but there are some animals with a very similar system (pigs for example, which is why porcine organs for human transplantation are early candidates for genetic modification). For totally alien cancer cells, they may not express ANY surface antigens that a human immune system would even know how to recognize. So these would be considered a foreign body and generate a foreign body reaction (cancer cells engulfed by macrophages, the cancer gets walled off by fibrosis, much like shrapnel or tattoo pigment). But it is also possible that the alien cancer cells wouldn't generate ANY immune response whatsoever and could proliferate with ease until they blocked something critical that led to the death of the host. But if you want to use cancer as an assassination tool, by far the easiest way is to expose the target to a highly carcinogenic substance that will cause them to develop their own cancer. But this can have a lengthy timeline and they may get successful treatment. The second option is to get closely HLA matched tumor cells from an aggressively growing metastatic cancer that has ineffective treatment, like malignant melanoma, and injecting them into the target. Metastatic cells are key because these tumor cells have "learned" how to survive as individual cells, land someplace and invade into tissue, and spread quickly. Even this will have a pretty slow course, probably months, but with the right cancer there can be little treatment and an unfortunate inevitability of death. As an aside, transplant patients (and immunosuppressed patients in general) have a much higher risk of cancer because their immune system is unable to stop NATURALLY OCCURING CANCER. Our immune system zaps cancer cells regularly, but it only has to fail once. [Answer] In general, no, it is not. The reason why cancer is not immediately destroyed by the immune system is precisely because cancer cells belong to the same organism where they originate, which makes the immune system recognize cancer cells as their own. To transplant cancer cells to another host would be like transplanting any other cell to another host. You would have to immunosuppress the host for the cancer transplannt to take hold. Which means that you'll need to keep your host immunosupresed if you want to succeed. As soon as the host's immune system recognizes the cancer, it's game over. I only see 2 options: 1. * Your host is immunosuppressed by definition. (i.e. The host has a medical condition that makes him constantly immunosuppressed) 2. * You may transplant a cancerous organ to the host. Livers are one of the most easily transplanted organs and also organs that are easily methastasized. After transplant, the host will need to be kept on immunosuppressive drugs in order not to reject the organ. This will also decrease the likelihood of rejection of the cancer from the host. Even if you get another liver, the host will need to be maintained on immunosuppressants in order not to reject the new liver, so if the cancer had already disseminated, there would be nothing else to stop the cancer. --- There is another alternative: one of the most recent and promising cancer treatments available are immunotherapies. These have been discovered recently and have been revolutionizing Oncology since 2011. Now, immunotherapies basically stimulate the immune system to act against the organism's own tumor cells. Basically this is based on the finding that the organism's own tumor cells inhibit the immune response against them, by expressing surface receptors that turn off any immune cells that come in contact with them. Imagine that you could genetically engineer a cancer cell line that would express every kind of immunosupressant receptor possible, so that no immune system could be able to fight it. Then you could certainly transfer cancer cells from organism to organism without problem. Heck, you could even have contagious cancers. This technology is not available right now, but is it certainly near future tech, if someone took the time to develop it. [Answer] > > Is it possible to transplant cancer from one individual into a human and have the cancer still viably propagate? > > > No. The cancer would be recognized as other-than-self and killed by the immune system. The cancer might or might not include an oncogenic virus which could then cause the same type of cancer in the victim. But you would be implanting the virus, not the cancer. > > Could this be done cross-species, or would the source cancer have to also be human? > > > In the case of viruses, it can be done if the species are similar enough as far as the target DNA is concerned. Simian Virus 40 is believed to target the TRP53 tumor suppressor protein both in monkeys and in humans. While the research is somewhat controversial, no-one disregarded it on the basis of the species barrier. > > Would similar biology between individuals (blood type, etc.) increase the chances of the cancer continuing to spread in the new host? > > > Probably. Again it depends on the virus target. > > If this is possible, what's the best route to take to increase the chances of the cancer being successful in the target's body and decreasing the possibility of the target being curable? > > > We're considering intentional infection here. In that case, the best route would be to get hold of some stem cells from the victim (or any nucleated cell, which then be forced back to the totipotent stage). If the victim has a monozygotic twin, that also will do as cell source. Then, engineer them into a cancer, [progressing them to the anaplastic stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulating_tumor_cell). Low-tech ("natural") method: expose those cells to known carcinogens. Resulting cells might display some telltale antigens as a result. High-tech, much more effective method: directly splice their DNA. Then inject them back in the victim. You get what amounts to instant metastasis, but the host immune system has not been alerted, and if the injected cells have been carefully forged, they will not show any telltale antigen to which the immune system could cotton up. Bonus points: if the resulting tumor does not grow too quickly, it will still diffuse in most of the body and therefore be incurable. But in addition to that, its cells will also be not as vulnerable to most chemotherapy approaches using cell-cycle-specific drugs. ]
[Question] [ As always, important parts are in bold, other details are non-bold, for those who like or dislike longer/shorter. So, a couple of just intro disclaimers and whatnot: this is sort of a “black and gray morality” world, in addition to exploring very deeply the implications of a “perspective flip,” where what you were maybe expecting to be good is bad, what you were expecting to be bad is good, what you were expecting to be up is down, and so on, you get the point (as compared to what is typically “expected” in these kinds of fictional universes). Both of my main warring factions have their flaws. Neither faction is completely perfect or 100% evil, and even the worst among these factions has at least some adherents who believe they are doing what must be done, out of loyalty to their race, their creed, their nation, their ideology, their religion, etc., all that stuff. My attempt here is to be a bit more even-handed and fair in my approach, in the interests of a more realistic portrayal of war in my world. That being said, it's like World War II, where both sides murdered, both sides committed genocide against civilians (Holocaust, Nuking Of Japan) the objective case could be made that the Allies and the Axis were both evil, to some extent; yet still, we can all agree, that the Nazis and Axis Powers were certainly *more* evil, and are portrayed as such, and that America and the Allies were certainly *less* evil, and more good. *So the one faction is basically this numerically inferior breakaway civilization of rebels who are uprising against… the other faction, the numerically superior “establishment” faction, so to speak. The setup here is similar to Star Wars* or The Matrix. You've got this little seceding civilization, and they're up against this big, bad, ugly, demon-worshiping, hegemonic, monolithic dystopia, like the Galactic Empire from Star Wars, or the Machines from The Matrix. My rebel faction, like in the other examples given, are essentially fighting a guerrilla war, albeit that their skill as warriors, their belief in the righteousness of their cause, and in a few instances, even, more sophisticated tech, helps to give the rebels at least a fighting chance. My biggest concern is that my designated “good” faction may well be perceived by all too many readers/players as more like the bad guys, while my designated “evil” faction may well be perceived by all too many as the relative “good guys” in this whole equation.** I mean, if you had to put it in D&D Alignment terms, you would have to say that my designated “good” faction is characterized as aligning with the Chaotic side of things, whereas my designated “evil” faction would fall under a very Lawful alignment. People tend to look at anything associated with Chaos as necessarily being a big sea of evil, especially the more law-and-order types, especially of the last decade or two. How do I drive home the point that they're into freedom and personal autonomy and all that groovy stuff, they're the good guys, at least by comparison to the evil dystopia? And, to make matters worse, like the Resistance from The Matrix, like the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars, my rebellion has a very religious aspect to it. It is this zealous, fervent belief in this god-figure who will lead them to victory against seemingly impossible odds that gives them the strength to keep fighting, that gives them a foundational myth around which to organize their nascent civilization, should it survive. And this, too, I know will not really jive with the weltanschauung of a lot of the increasingly atheistic people today, even though it's not a real religion, obviously. But how would you advise I could help to emphasize these points to those who might not want to see it that way? P.S. If you have more questions about the details of this world, there are multiple posts around. Here's one that might be particularly germane to this question specifically: [What species, if any, would survive this kind of apocalypse, and what would global environment be like?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/3138/what-species-if-any-would-survive-this-kind-of-apocalypse-and-what-would-glob) Thank you, fellow Worldbuilders! [Answer] ## Right, stick to the tropes You've correctly identified that any modern story must stick to the tropes. Evil corporate-fascist state is a great start. Everyone from their Disney cartoons to their video games to their college education gets shoveled fed nothing but images of evil corporations. If Disney and Chomsky both say Stalin's interpretation of Fascism is the right one who are we to argue. (I mean who knows what happened to Dr. Junker or Carl Thyssen?) Not a single popular entertainment or education depict corporations as anything but evil. Break that trope and you get filed over next to Ayn Rand. So, you're off to a good start. But religion is very, very tricky. The only people allowed to be religious are people from primitive cultures, someone whom the reader will never regard as an intellectual equal. In modern popular culture, African-Americans are allowed to be religious for the same reason. All religious people in industrial culture, especially white Christians, must be portrayed as viscous, bigoted irrational, selfish and never right about anything and never been. You can't mention their hostility to Eugenics, Freudian psychology or any of the dozens of other intellectual failures of the secular over the last century. You can't show religious people being far more generous and self-sacrificing and less violent than the non-religious population, no matter what the social research shows. To make an acceptable religion, it must be non-traditional, having no history and thus innocent as new born babe. It needs to focus on the happiness of the individual but not require any sacrifice, obligation or self-restraint on the parts of the adherent. The religion is all about making the adherent feel good about themselves. I'd suggest basing it on one of the Hollywood religious fads. Maybe Hollywood Buddhism (no vows of poverty, no requirements of charity like traditional Buddhism) combined with some kind of matriarchal clergy. One must play up to female chauvinism after all. The real key, as I cover under Chaos below, is that the religion cannot restrain sexuality in any form or to any degree. You can't suggest that obligations to the religion, society or children requires sexual self restraint. Otherwise, you’re a redneck bible thumper aching to set someone on fire. As a crowning touch, make them the real nature worshipers, who worship a biosphere most of them have never seen. That should make the religion acceptable to the target audience. ## Now for shades of grey. The best way to make a shades of grey story is to get inside the delusional world view of the "bad" guys and show how they sincerely believe they are doing the right thing. Look at the Nazis, the Imperial Japanese, and the Communist. Most of the people who fought so hard for all three regimes where not bad people. Quite the opposite, they were people who cared and loved deeply, people who believed in making a better world for those they cared about. Hate doesn't make a man a monster, love does. Hate fades, the sociopath will not sacrifice himself. To make a monster, find a loving man and threaten what he loves. He will come for you, unwavering and uncaring for his own fate. That was Hitler's secret. People tend to concentrate on his hate mongering but that's not what made him effective. Instead, he created an elaborate fantasy narrative in which the German people as both a "race" and a culture, were under threat of genocide from a World Historical Conspiracy on the part of the Jews. Threaded all through the fantasy was a lot of truth but connected or bent to make them lies. Germany got unjustly blamed for the war, true. The Treaty of Versailles was unjust and harsh, true. Communists inside Germany were trying to cause it to collapse either so it would adopt communism or be unable to defend itself from Soviet invasion, true. A disproportionate number of Jews were communist, true. The Jews had created Communism and American free-market capitalism to destroy the German people, false. Americas commerce centered culture, its popular culture and pacifistic leanings were Jewish tools for destroying Germany, false. Stalin was planning on attacking into Europe, true. A lot of people became fanatical Nazis because they believed that the German people faced genocide and had to fight their way out of "encirclement", seize the resources of the Soviet lands, knock out Communism and ship off the Jews to somewhere, or everything and everyone they loved would be destroyed. Communists believed they were murdering for a utopia, a utopia so grand and inevitable that it was a sin not to kill for it. If you want to make a future totalitarian state that sounds plausible up front, I'd suggest one based on environmentalism. Since everything every individual on earth does affects the environment in some negative fashion, environmentalism give the pretext to regulate absolutely everything that anyone does. Even worse, environmental damage might actual require a great deal of control. (If Communism hadn't been a real threat then Fascism would have never got off the ground. Anyone who questioned fascism, got accused of being soft on Communism.) But no matter how pure the goals at first, centralized power always corrupts. The corporate-fascist state could arise because the government has to force people to use expensive and less effective technologies in order to protect the environment. That would devolve to the government dictating which technologies could be sold and thus what corporations prospered and which failed. Business success would not be about economic or technological creativity and testing in the market, but about government connections. The entire economy becomes a military-industrial-congressional complex. (It worked for General Electric big time.) Any one who raised accusations of corruption, would be accused of not caring about the environment. (Wrapping in the flag.) To further protect both the environment and the government allied corporations, the state will suppress all new technology under the doctrine of "precautionary principle" all technological change is assumed to be more of a threat than a benefit. Of course, the definition of threat and safety will be done by the state which will only allow those technologies whose sale will benefit the allied corporations. Because of stagnated technology, resource creation stalls and they must use the resources that the frozen technology used. Instead of replacing metal with graphemes, ceramics, etc. they founded space colonies to bring in metals that the frozen technology can use. (Space refining and perhaps manufacturing might solve energy and environmental problems as well.) So, you have a "green" tyranny that looks perfectly fine to a lot of people these days. If it had a gloss of democracy and disguised the symbiotic relationship between government leaders and the allied corporation as regulation and high taxes, then it would look very plausible to most modern readers. Behind the scenes things could get even more ugly with mass killing to eliminate "individuals excessive to the environment's carrying load" and murdered by others who believe they absolutely must do so to protect the environment and thus the future of the human race. Nobody would know because everyone on Earth would be so immersed in the ruling narrative that they regard as heresy any questioning of the current political order as the same as being hostile to the environment, a green version of wrapping one's self in the flag. People would be indoctrinated to only accept news from certain specific sources. Enough doublethink and you don't need active censorship. ## Meanwhile, in the outer colonies... In the real-world, workers sent out into dangerous and isolated environments are well trained, well paid and have their grievances quickly addressed. That's because one pissed off, untrained, exhausted or sick worker can cause millions of dollars in damage. Not to mention the cost in capital that it cost to get them and their gear out there. But that's not the trope so we forget that. That would make corporations economically rational which isn't allowed. Instead, the corporation must act like communist, sending workers out into the space gulags. The workers, mostly political prisoners, will be shot into space with little care how many of them survive as long as enough do to get the archaic resources back to earth. (Ignore how easy sabotage would be in space. Perhaps sending their families along as hostages to maintaining the facilities would work as would separating food production into other facilities.) But desperation causes them to develop new technologies, possibly biological so they can disguise it from the Earth authorities. The war would come when a failing out among thieves happens between the various alliance between specific political leaders and their allied corporations. Formally, insiders would find themselves pushed out and failing. At that point, they begin to turn to the outer colonies technology to try and prop themselves up. All evilly of course. They won't trade for it or pay for it, they'll steal, kidnap and torture to get it. The outside corporation-politicians begin to gain, not more power, but more possible military power. A kind of war of economic sabotage breaks out. (They can't actually fight, that would destroy the environment, although killing people inside cities is probably okay.) The insiders then decide that the way to end the problem is to cut off the technology at the source then attacks the outer colonies either to destroy them or to place them under harsh and close supervision. That's when all hell breaks loose. The Earth regime has the overt power, the spaceships, the millions of military personnel, and billions of potential brains to turn to solving problems. Plus, they have a stable ecosystem to fall back on. The outer colonies have to devote a lot of time and energy just getting air, food and water. But Earth technology has stagnated and they've likely forgotten how to innovate. Their internal divisions make them hostile to anyone who does innovate. Earth propaganda depicts the outer colonies as both starving Earth of desperately needed "natural resources" while at the same time flooding Earth with dangerous technologies sure to destroy the environment. Believing they sally forth to protect the economy and lives of Earth's human population while protecting the environment from sinister unknown technologies, Earth's military heads out with the belief that the desperation of the situation justifies any ruthless extremity. Meanwhile, the outer colonies have little to fight back with. It's unlikely they would have been permitted large spacecraft and of course no overt weapons. They would have to fight dreadnoughts with laser and nukes using rail launchers and perhaps bioweapons. Their only real advantage would be that the Earth powers wouldn't want to destroy the facilities and kill the workers unless they had to. They just want to regain control, especially of the technology. So, they'd only use the hammers when they had to. Otherwise they would just occupy. This would expose them to infiltration, bioweapons and computer hacking. A lot of their attacks will resemble terrorism (but won't be if targeted at specific military targets or specific individuals carrying out operations.) But most readers won't understand that so you can add some moral ambiguity on the part of the colonist. ## Chaos Politically, chaos merely means freedom. Freedom means that individuals can make decisions that others would not make. When there is no freedom, everyone has to make the same choice. The problem is today that for people on the left, political freedom boils down only to matters of sex. You don't have freedom in jobs, business or any economics, housing, transportation, education, communications, reproduction no freedom. It used to be leftists were big free speech advocates but no longer, so not even that. Just sex. So, to make your colonials the good guys and the advocates of "freedom" just make their religion indifferent to or even actively promoting sexual promiscuity. Meanwhile, ease in an awareness of sexual restraint on the part of the Earth government. Perhaps an attempt to control population. Maybe they give people drugs to kill their sex drive so they lose interest in loves and family, just have loose friends and devote themselves to work and the friends they make there. That's what a stereotypical fascist-corporation would do, right? Arrange for the perfect workers. As long as the colonials have sexual freedom, they will be seen as the good guys even if they drop asteroids over half the earth. As long as their religion doesn't interfere with their sexual freedom or impose other restrictions on individuals it will be seen as a "good" religion. People might at first see the Earth government as the good guys, protecting the environment and regulating the corporations but once its revealed they don't allow sexual freedom, bang, instant bad guys. ## Remember, making your story "understandable" means appealing to their existing prejudices and using common tropes. I think you're doing fairly well, The "religious good guys" idea is daring but just make it a self-esteem religion with no strictures and judgements and it'll be "understandable." [Answer] I'm going to answer this from a designer's perspective rather than a writing one (as if you're looking for writing techniques you're off topic). As you've stated in your question no nation is inherently evil, evil is (at least until reviewed afterwards) often a point of view. Were the rebel alliance freedom fighters or were they terrorists? They stole secrets and blew up a military facility killing thousands of people after all! My point is that if you find your nation veering off into evilness you need to decide on the motivations for creating these deeds, very few people commit evil actions for evil's sake and bureaucratic nations even less so! * Is your nation conducting experiments on prisoners of war? Are they trying to cure a disease ravaging their own population? * Did they wipe out a small town? Perhaps that town was filled with kidnappers and pirates? * Did they unleash a biological weapon? Perhaps they didn't want to risk the lives of their soldiers when they had an alternative. * Are they spying on their own population? Maybe their worried about spies infiltrating their country? Make sure you understand the motivations for each act which may be deemed as evil - if you don't know why atrocities are being committed then it will be very hard to convey a balanced view to your readers/players/watchers. [Answer] The goodness, or evilness of a group is portrayed by the people in the group, so being able to show the goodness/badness of a group is best portrayed in the actions of characters...this doesnt have to be super strait forward. Maybe a guy on the good side bombed a neighborhood and killed lots of civilians because there were weapons of mass destruction being stored beneath. He did his duty, it was for good reason...but that doesn't mean he can't feel bad about it...or refuse to do it next time. In war, both sides will do things that are not good. Civilians will get killed, people will snap and commit atrocities, morals will be bent often and occasionally broken. So. For an army at war to be considered good, we are now talking about just war theory. Is the war being waged just in the first place? If it is not, the morality of the soldiers fighting is irrelevant (that doesn't make the soldiers inherently bad). My personal favorite is Aquinas, but if you prefer someone else check this wiki out, it covers it pretty well. [Just War Theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory) > > Thomas Aquinas[edit] Nine hundred years later, Thomas Aquinas — an > immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of > scholasticism — used the authority of Augustine's arguments as he laid > out the conditions under which a war could be just:[13] > > > * First, just war must be waged by a properly instituted authority such > as the state. (Proper Authority is first: represents the common good: > which is peace for the sake of man's true end—God.) > * Second, war must occur for a good and just purpose rather than for self-gain (for > example, "in the nation's interest" is not just) or as an exercise of > power. (Just Cause: for the sake of restoring some good that has been > denied. i.e., lost territory, lost goods, punishment for an evil > perpetrated by a government, army, or even the civilian populace.) > * Third, peace must be a central motive even in the midst of > violence.[14] (Right Intention: an authority must fight for the just > reasons it has expressly claimed for declaring war in the first place. > Soldiers must also fight for this intention.) > > > If your good army abides by these conditions, and the bad army does not, it will become quite clear who is on what side. [Answer] Often times, people identify good guys/bad guys based on how they are introduced. If you want to introduce someone as a good guy, immediately humanize the character. Show them saving a neighbor from a flaming building. Readers will then have more of a tendency to be lenient about future immoral acts committed by the character. Even if it's something simple like playing with a puppy, you identify the character as a real person, and therefore as someone worth sympathizing with. This is a fairly common trope called [pet the dog.](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PetTheDog) The contrary is also true: to make someone seem more evil, leave them as a more faceless character and show them doing some 'bad stuff'. Burn a village, kick an animal, do something cruel to a child. Introduce some likable character and then have the bad guy kill them. It doesn't really matter that this killing could be a perfectly legitimate action in the context of a greater struggle/war, if the bad guy is a faceless killing machine, he will be more likely to be identified as bad. The actions of an identified 'good guy' also shade our view of a potential bad guy. Consider Harry Potter, in which we hear quite a bit about Voldemort before he ever shows up. We know to boo and hiss when he does because the good guys have all told us that's what we're supposed to do. Often times, this presentation of the character can matter more than the policies and practices of their organization. If the organization is filled with good characters, then they become good by default, and their actions are more permissible. Consider Starship Troopers by Heinlein, for example: the good guys are shown blowing up a neighborhood in one of the opening scenes in the book, but since we're show the characters as the 'good guys', it's something heroic, or at least excusable, rather than an atrocity. [Answer] Let me try to tackle some of your concerns on both the religious tendencies of your smaller faction and the alignment issue. Alignment: As you've noted `Chaotic` and `Lawful` do have certain considerations semantically, but both generally have greater connotations within the D&D style rule set. `Chaotic` alignment tends towards flexibility in morals and decisions, they tend to view more disputes as "shades of grey" then lawful characters; Robin Hood is a typical example of the `Chaotic Good` character, he steals (against the law) to help the poor afford basic things like food and shelter (charitable to those less fortunate) and victims of his theft are members or a corrupt government (booo!). In short laws are only useful if they serve some good purpose or help protect people. `Lawful` on the other hand refers to a strict adherence to the letter of the law. Both `Good` and `Evil` characters can be strictly lawful imposing laws on everyone regardless of the conditions that led to the breaking of those laws. The typical example that I use when explaining a `lawful` demeanor is a poor man stealing to feed his family. To a Lawful character the reason is immaterial and he is guilty of theft! Religion may be important to your small faction but what are the tenants of that religion? It's fairly easy to see where some of our modern religions get into conflicts based on their scriptures and modern interpretations of them. However some religions have simple and general guidelines rather then all encompassing rules; look at the Orks from the Warhammer 40k universe. Orks have a belief that "Might makes right" and so any and all disputes are solved with violence and conflict. The winner is obvious since the loser is usually unconscious (or dead) and the spoils are easily claimed. (Disclaimer: I'm making a fairly large inference that ork behavior/"kulture" is indicative of their "religion" "Might makes right." so bear with me). It could be that your religion simply encourages things like toughness, strength, and ingenuity (like space marine MacGuyvers) the enemy may see your creative use of toothpaste and paper clips as terrorism; but to a chaotic struggling group of underdogs that is pure heroism. Further you say "god-figure" but a zealous following doesn't need to be based around a religious concept it could be based on scientific advancement or like the space Orks it could be a sort of blood/war-thirst. [Answer] One thing I have noticed is how one illuminates a character/civilization. We as an audience tend to distrust secrets - parts of the character that we are not allowed to see in any light. If your good characters are fully illuminated, so we can see all sides, we are more likely to accept them as good. If your evil characters always have a shadowy side that we cannot see, we are more likely to accept them as evil. One less obvious way of doing this is to have the good characters be very smooth, while the bad characters have obvious facets. A good natured rogue may have something to hide, but the audience will be given hints that what is hidden isn't so evil. A good natured paladin, with a strong faceted "I am good" attitude will have to be illuminated fully to ensure he doesn't have a secret dark side. A evil natured anti-paladin will have clear facets, so that he appears to be hiding something, even if he looks to be good on the surface. The hardest character I find to write (in my personal experience) is the evil manipulator, who doesn't have obvious facets, but for the life of you you can't pin him down to see on all sides at once. He constantly has the feeling like he's moving his secrets as you look at him, and you wish another audience member would work with you so you can observe all 360 around him at once. My favorite example is Russel Crowe's character in 315 to Yuma. He is so unbelievably shifty that it is almost impossible to tell if he is good or bad... but you assume he's bad just because he seems to be hiding something. [Answer] Determine a target audience by political leanings, then cater to their preconceptions. It helps vastly if you are (or have been) of the same leanings. Look at Cyberpunk genre material, it tends to be 2 or more of: Libertarian, Anarchist, anti-corporate (American) Leftist, and/or Eco-Mentalist. Proceed aiming at your target audience's political/social values and accept that it won't appeal to everyone. Perhaps, once completed, approach the other faction from the opposing viewpoint, but beware: This can fail hard if you are not/have never been of that view (qv rural people in most movies). [Answer] Disregard for inherited advantages vs awareness of low level procedure A good way to portray a society as being crueler (ergo more evil) is to emphasis its disregard for wealth handed over by older generations (3+ generations) [1] and a wide spread obliviousness to the lower level societal structures which enable their way of life [2]. Just don't make the mistake that humans are descendant from angels as opposed to self aggrandizing monkeys. Civilization is built on a mountain of human skulls and we not quite done yet - and its even harder to find methods to break communities out of poverty then it is to get a culture to agree to do it. Some examples: [1]:If your great great grandfather was a rich slave owner and your neigbour's great great grandfather was one of his slaves, guess who's mowing who's lawn. Depending on your ideology, you not necessarily responsible for being at an advantage over your neighbor, if on average your wealthy class actually believes they do better because the poor don't try hard enough by failing to make life choices the wealthy never have to make themselves, there is a certain ambient narcissism to that culture - and a narcissism that can only maintain its standard of living through the suffering of others is on the evil side of the spectrum. [2]:America invaded Iraq and several other oil rich states to ensure the arab nations could not skyrocket the price of oil through their monopoly on supply. The decision to destroy these countries is "evil", just be aware that the nature of the worlds economics and politics would be alien to the current positions if America hadn't - with the Arab princes probably being the world super power instead of America. This choice is so grimdark its hard to pin American citizens as being evil for not protesting this cosmic level path of bloodshed. What could better be described as "evil" would be a disinterest by the American public in the atrocities committed by their government on their behalf and a disinterest in trying to understand the complexities which underpin their quality of life. For the state vs for the children Does your state believe that the strength of the nation uplifts its citizens or does your state believe that uplifting its citizens strengthens the state. Nations which believe individuals should sacrifice for the sake of the state are problematic because sacrifice is never handed out equally, the poor will always carry more of a burden with less opportunities for rising in society and if the strength of the state is reliant on the continued sacrifice of the people, expect more hardship to be forced on the people at gunpoint when the going gets tough. If a state believes its duty is to uplift its population, in the long run it will usually reap the rewards of higher taxes from higher educated citizens. Very importantly to this sort of approach is that just because one societal system is more "good" then the more "evil" philosophy of its neighbor does not make it more viable or even viable at all. Even if your more "good" faction has a more benevolent manifesto, that does not mean they will be able to set up a prospering society upon those lofty ideals :p ]
[Question] [ So I'm working on a sci-fi setting, a scorching hot desert planet where colonists live in canyons. The problem is, canyons are naturally formed by water- something this desert planet is very lacking in. So that got me to thinking of ways of making an artificial canyon. I don't wanna go with nukes, asteroid bombardment seems difficult- but I was thinking about masses of orbital mirrors, focusing their reflected light on the ground, like a magnifying glass. Concentrated sunlight, carving channels around the surface of a planet like epic scrimshaw. My question is: is it actually feasible that this could be used to dig deep canyons? Like, 500 meters + deep? [Answer] # No. I'll assume here that the planet is like the Earth, and its star is like the Sun. ### Beam spread The Sun has an angular width of about 0.5334 degrees, or 0.009 radians. That means that the light reflected off a flat mirror will also spread by about 0.009 radians. Given that a mirror in low orbit is at least a hundred km up, the reflected spot on the ground will be blurred to at least 0.9 km wide, plus however wide the mirror is. That would result in a wide valley, rather than a canyon. This might be overcome partially with curved mirrors. However, see [this physics stackexchange post](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/409495/is-it-possible-to-focus-sunlight-from-space-on-a-tiny-spot-on-earth). The consensus is that even with a focusing curved mirror, the spot will still be about a km wide. ### Limited time over the target site In such a low orbit, the mirror will orbit the planet every couple of hours. It will have a speed of over 10 km/s. If the hot spot on the ground is 0.9 km wide, then it will be exposed to heat for 0.09 seconds every hour or two. This assumes, by the way, that the target site is on the equator so that the mirror keeps passing over it with every orbit. Otherwise, with a non-equatorial site and a non-equatorial orbit, you'll get one or two shots every day, maybe - forget about it! There's a limit to how hot the light focused on the ground can be. See [this xkcd post](https://what-if.xkcd.com/145/). At most, you can use lenses and mirrors to focus sunlight to about 5000 K, the temperature of sunlight. This would require practically the whole sky filled with thousands of square km of mirrors. So you momentarily expose the spot on the ground to 5000 K heat for a tenth of a second, and then give it an hour to cool down. That's not going to work. The rock's not going to have enough time to melt before it cools down again. If we imagine the mirror or mirrors are spinning with exactly the right timing (a big engineering problem probably involving flywheels and counterweights), then perhaps it could start aiming at the target spot when it's 100 km away from it, and rotate to keep aiming at the target spot for 200 km of its orbit. This means you have 20 seconds on target, once every hour or two. Maybe that would be enough to start melting the rock, but I'm still very skeptical. One thing that would work would just be to have many, many huge mirrors in orbit, encircling the planet, so many mirrors that the target site is always getting hit with sufficient heat. This would just be an absurd expense. ### Disposing of the lava If, against all odds and at a truly unbelievable expense, you somehow do start to melt the rock, the lava doesn't go away - it just sits there. So you're limited to carving 0.9km wide channels in the sides of mountains, so that the lava can run downhill into nearby natural valleys. The mountains have to be on the equator, by the way, as mentioned in the previous section. ### Cheaper and better options Dynamite. Excavators. Heck, even picks and shovels and muscle power would be far more feasible than orbital mirrors. If you really want something in orbit, then perhaps you could use a really big solar power satellite in geostationary orbit with a laser. This solves both the beam spread problem (lasers can be much better collimated than reflected sunlight), and the time-over-target-site problem (because of the better collimation, the laser can be effective from geostationary orbit, which is much farther up). You'll still be limited to melting holes in mountains, though the mountains don't have to be on the equator since you can aim the laser. The mountains shouldn't be too far north, however, because the laser has to travel through more atmosphere at higher latitudes, which diminishes its effectiveness. [Answer] ## Don't Excavate -- Accumulate You can't "dig" a hole from space using lasers or light. You'd need to not just melt the land, but vaporize it. Even if you could somehow manage to focus the energy onto the spot of interest, -- and causative makes a pretty convincing argument that you can't -- you'd end up ejecting non-trival portions of your atmosphere into space as you pump ridiculous amounts of energy into it's upper reaches. Better to build up. In a desert planet, you would expect lots of sand. Gather it up, and use a [Fresnel lens 3d printer](https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/25/3d-printing-with-sand-using-the-power-of-the-sun/) to melt it into shape. It should be pretty easy for a space fairing civilization to automate that kind of thing and just let it run with whatever plan you program into it. Build in whatever intricate canyon shapes you want! Bonus points: now you have towering crystal walls all over your planet, which is pretty sci-fi. [Answer] ## Mining Byproduct Because many people have pointed out why it would be stupid and unnecessary to use orbital mirrors, instead of explaining why it wouldn't work, I will give an alternative with the same effect. ## You populated the trenches left by mining out ore veins. Let's say your planet has some weird geological history, putting massive veins of copper, nickel, lithium or some other useful something-or-other along fault lines that plate tectonics formed billions of years ago. It wouldn't be a stretch to assume your colonists or their ancestors mined out these chasms years, maybe centuries ago. It took about 2 seconds for your strip-mining engineers to figure out that these trenches make fantastic homes. Put a layer of canvas over the edges to block out the sun, dig into the sides and line it with homes. After a while they decide to upgrade to a dome over the top and BAM! [The Neom Line](https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline)! Lush futuristic megacities in the side of chasms! This idea is so good I actually want to write a story based around it! ## Advantages The rule of cool already more than justifies it, but there are some actual advantages to doing this. Space efficiency: Not only are you using surface space more efficiently, which probably isn't a concern considering its a desert planet with scorching dunes, your also condensing the city, thus having to maintain life-support in a smaller area, and increasing the general efficiency of the city by making it denser and cutting travel times. Ease of construction: building on the fact that the city would be denser compared to building a "traditional" city which sprawls out in all directions, it also makes construction easier compared to the above-ground equivalent, as there is no need for towers or sub-structures, as you can build right into the walls, which act as the foundation. [Answer] Here's a rule-of-cool solution to the problems outlined in causative's answer. Your canyon-loving colonists are bent on using their space mirrors to carve their serpentine abodes. It is the way of their ancestors. An eon is measured as a thousand generations. The end of one eon and the beginning of the next is marked by the latest fleet of migration ships, complete with their sacred mirrors. Natural canyons will not do for your colonists. They will only dwell within the canyons carved by a Finger of God. A Finger of God is hard to find: it is a picoquasar, the final stage of some shrapnel from a supermassive black hole merger. These oddities are trebucheted far and fast, and they produce an intense, narrow beam of radiation in the final years of their lives. The source is small enough and the radiation powerful enough that the mirrors can carve suitably narrow canyons. Throughout the eon, your colonists have listened for the mergers that will grant them their next Finger of God. They find one, harness its power, and carve their next home. Their sacred mirrors are reduced to dust, forming a Great Arc across the sky: a sign of God's approval of their sacrificial mirrors. They begin the next eon, listening for the merger and pointing their children to the Arc. It is said that the Arc is itself a canyon where God may dwell. [Answer] ## Yes its possible but not in the way you think. You use the heat of your beam to heat an ice cap producing water which flows away carving your canyon. Maybe your aliens were harvesting water or CO2 or something else frozen in the ice. the water flows away carves your canyon, empties into a large basin and refreezes. They could keep this up for as long as you need. it also gives you a convenient source for water, well ice anyway. If you want a really huge crack you can just have it from from the planet cooling we have several examples of those, Valles Marineris on Mars being the most popular example. We don't get them on earth because the earth is still too hot and soft for it. Even better you can combine the two, It started as an ancient cooling crack which is why the meltwater started and kept flowing down such a chokepoint, this will give you the biggest canyon. it can even give you a canyon that is wider at the bottom than the top. [Answer] A side remark in causative's answer inspired me: Yes, it's possible Reflecting light has it's problems in terms of focus, but the short on-site-time that that answer mentions isn't a problem: It's the solution. By quickly super-heating small spots in a generally rocky area we can either get the stone to explode (just small flakes on the very surface) or vaporize (again, just a tiny bit per pass). This gas or flying debris thereby removes itself from the work site [in case of explosive flakes, the debris randomly lands in the vicinity] and disperses in the area. Some of that will end up in the rest of the to-be-dug canal, but some will not, so it just takes more passes. The short nature of this also means that total energy injection is limited, reducing potentially negative effects on the planet's (or areas) climate ]
[Question] [ So I have this idea for this unique species of jumping spider. Basically it is around a foot long/medium sized hat size and has pretty big fangs for its size. It jumps on to people's heads and uses these fangs to bite through the skull of humans(and maybe other similar creatures like gorillas) and injects a mind control venom into the head. Somehow, this allows for it to maneuver the host like the rat from Ratatouille. Then it uses the host as a tool to gather and in some/many cases cultivate fruit for the spider and a home for its young(they are laid in fruits like pumpkins, also they reproduce asexually). They also use in to defend themselves from harm and from others things stealing its food. Now at first, pretty much any fruit at least as big as an apple was game for it. But then I thought that it mainly going for avocados would be a better idea as it has both the fat and protein(I think they have a decent amount of it) that other fruits lack or are low in since an IRL mostly herbivorous jumping spider eats something similar. My only real doubts about this is that avocados probably take a while to grow and that the host has its own needs. These are not really a naturally occurring species, whether they are a GMO creature gone wrong or a freak sudden mutation brought on by some kind of bizarre incident, I have not decided. How likely is this species method of survival going to work out given that they are somewhat similar to other jumping spiders barring their size, diet, and behavior? [Answer] # The spider wouldn't thrive The spider has two weaknesses. First is the fruit. If the fruit supply is halted, the species is in grave danger. The second is angering humans. As so many species have learned, often enough by selective evolution, you do not f\ck with humans. It is thought that this is one (of several) reasons why many larger predators do not attack humans. Any that did engaged the wrath of humans. They were generally removed from the gene pool before they could reproduce. Animals of such species that did not attack humans thus had a larger chance to succeed. If such a spider would attack humans it would be noticed very quickly. Humans are a social species that often check on each other and knows the specific behaviours. If someone was missing, turned up with a big spider on their head or did some weird stuff it would be noticed and acted upon mear instantly. The spiders are likely outnumbered and will be killed in short order. The defence of the fruit is also a big indicator how they reproduce. It wouldn't be unthinkable that humans start burning any and all fruit related to the spider. If not destroy it, they will restrict access and control who can cultivate it. This will lead quickly to a no win scenario. Finally the humans will also protect themselves. As FluidCode mentions in the comments, humans will find ways to protect themselves. A simple helmet might suffice. In the end you have a relatively big spider, dependent on humans and a fruit, to keep humans in control for the time they try to reproduce on that fruit. Numbers will barely matter. Taking over a few secretly or trying a whole town at once is too fraught with danger. Other humans will find out. They will be horrified. They will go to arms. They will obliterate the spiders, the fruit and if needed the hosts swiftly and harshly. Sure it'll make for excellent drama, but the spider will barely manage a second generation. [Answer] True jumping spiders are [araneomorph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araneomorphae) spiders, which has certain consequences for their biology. Araneomorph spiders' fangs point toward each-other, allowing a powerful but shallow bite, that on larger prey would tend to pinch up a small part of the prey's skin rather than making a deep bite. Unless this spider was considerably larger than suggested, it wouldn't have a sufficiently large bite to be able to penetrate a human skull - its fangs would just graze off and envenomate the scalp. Araneomorph spiders live for only a single year, which limits their maximum size to much less than that of 'a medium-sized hat'. All of the world's largest spiders are [mygalomorph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mygalomorphae) spiders, which live for multiple years and can attain larger sizes, though none achieve the required size. So, an Araneomorph spider of the [family Salticidae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_spider) would be unable to achieve the necessary size, and even if it could, it could not penetrate a human skull. If we presume that "jumping spider" does not* mean an Araneomorph spider of the family Salticidae, but instead means merely 'a spider that can jump', we could have this spider be a mygalomorph which could achieve the necessary size. However, Mygalomorph spiders fangs face downwards, and while the fangs may grow to the size and apparent orientation necessary to penetrate a human's skull, the spiders would lack the necessary strength to drive them through that much bone. Because the fangs face downwards and not inwards, the spiders must use a tactic of rearing and plunging to drive their fangs into their target, that relies on the sharpness of the fangs and the weight of the spider to penetrate the target. It would not be possible for a hat-sized spider to drive its fangs all the way through the bone of a human skull with its body weight alone, and it would not be practical for it to attempt to repeatedly attack the same spot to attempt to drive its fangs through with repeated blows. Now, assuming that despite the biology of non-GMO spiders, we could have a spider capable of leaping onto a human head and injecting a substance through a human skull into the brain, we then run into the problem that venoms typically kill or paralyse, they do not 'control the host like Ratatouille from the movie', unless we venture into the realm of magic. Even if we assume that there is a spider capable of biting through a human skull and magically controlling it, as Trioxidane has posted, unaffected humans would quickly notice and exterminate these spiders with extreme prejudice, and potentially include their hosts in that programme of extermination. Hence, the answer to the question is: It's really not very practical or even feasible at all. [Answer] Same likelihood as all other animals larger than the head of a pin that specialize in killing humans. Zero. Humans are not safe targets in the best of circumstances. All the animals that specialize in preying on us either do so in ways that don't permanently harm us, are too tiny to easily notice, or most often, both. And even then, being a louse or one of the types of mosquitoes that specialize in humans is a very hard life. But, it could be a fun monster of the week type thing! It would never survive long term, but it could cause some serious chaos in a small town for the month or so before the species is eradicated [Answer] Why have a antagonistic relationship? Two book series come to mind - the [children of time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel)), with genetically/nanotech modified (I forget) spiders which form complex societies and eventually ally with a 'post apocalyptic' human culture that's recovered some tech and others. The other is the [Honor Harrington Series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse) and its sphynx cats. I think there's a few things to consider - I suspect giant mind controlling spiders would probably be wiped out pretty quickly. A symbiotic relationship makes more sense - maybe sitting on the human 'host's head allows for communication. They might communicate via 'vocal' language, with the spider 'feeling' human speech through her legs, and the human feeling spider vibrations or taps. Or psychic spiders - which take control of humans with permission and are long lived or can pass on skills, so a human can 'learn' a task with the right spider on their head. They could also be a way to communicate silently or across distances. As for the fruit - maybe its a valuble produce, with both human and arachnids benefitting from it, and needing both to thrive. Humans have better agriculture, and an aracnid species which co-evolved and relies on a specific plant to survive might play a part in its ecosystem. Maybe they were co-developed by some made scientists. Something that comes to mind is the [dodo tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideroxylon_grandiflorum) apocryphally they relied on dodos to germinate. Maybe the process of laying eggs in the fruit of this specific plant allows more reliable germination of the seeds for planting. The Arachnids on the other hand know which fruit are ripe (or even poisonous, and not good eatin), and in exchange for protection of their eggs and such work with the humans. [Answer] Frame challenge: ### Make these spiders more similar to cats. If these spiders behaved similar to cats: * Eating mice, insects, etc, (large bonus if it is things people don;'t want around) * Don't poop all over the place * Somewhat social. * Bite/attack avoidance of humans People would start considering them as pets, and help provide them with food, shelter, protection. This would be done by their own choice, so the whole pitchfork and torch scenario isn't triggered. I can imagine a person waking up to seeing their pet spider noshing on a scorpion declaring "who's a good boy!, who's a good boy!" [Answer] It should probably be much smaller (probably about 2-4in) and attack while the host is asleep when the host shouldn't fight. It also shouldn't try to bite strait through the skull because its completely implausible, the bone's to strong. It should most likely attack in numbers each going to a different place on the body where they communicate, with thin webs or vibrations or some other way, with each other for collaboration of moving the body. To move the body they could use electric shocks or inject a chemical that temporarily activates the muscles in that area. At the head of the host, one would most likely bite in the back at the base of the skull and inject a chemical that keeps the host asleep while the spiders work. To the person they might have nightmares as a side-effect and wake up in a new place and could be written off as sleepwalking. The spiders would have a longer run at life, especially if they avoid other humans while controlling the host. To be possible one should be on top of the host's head to steer the other spiders, which is probably why it looked like it was controlling through the skull and and being a foot long/big is most likely an exaggeration ]
[Question] [ One of my characters is a bit of a romantic, he also have a post singularity fleet of spaceships at his disposal which he plans on using to scour the galaxy to find what he considers the ultimate romantic gift: He plans of finding, claiming, then gifting an habitable planet with 2 suns that is in just the right orbit so that each day one sun sets at the same time the other rises, ideally he'll also want a nice tropical climate to view said sunriseset but that's bonus points, the question is it physically possible for such a planet to exist? P.S. Please don't ask what he plans to do when popping the question, that entire plan revolves on surprise and going back in time to delete that data is how he accidentally deleted space Gandhi out of existence last time. [Answer] > > an habitable planet with 2 suns that is in just the right orbit so that each day one sun sets at the same time the other rises > > > For this to happen, the suns and the planet need to be on the same line, with the planet between them. If this has to be a constant behavior, the system would need to have twin stars with same mass and the planet precisely at their center of mass. Such configuration would be highly unstable, and would result in the planet being flung out of the system very soon. On the other hand, if the planet orbits a single star of the two, with the second being further away, it would happen only once in a while, but it would be less spectacular, because the farthest star would be also more faint in the sky, looking at most more like a very bright and larger star, not like a sun. [Answer] # L1 Lagrange point is not stable, and neither is the barycenter What you're asking about is the L1 Lagrange point, which is not a stable location. <https://ke.gsusigmanu.org/3669-could-there-be-a-planet-at-the-barycenter-between-tw.html> The L1 Lagrange point is the gravitational equivalent of being at the top of a slippery hill. If you parked a space station there, it would have to use station-keeping drives to keep it in place. The barycenter is essentially identical if the stars are of the same mass. If one of the stars is larger than the other, then the barycenter is definitely not stable, and the L1 point drifts off towards the smaller star. So a super-advanced race could engineer such a thing, but it won't form naturally. [Answer] Frame challenge: a synchronised sunset/sundown would be really underwhelming. The reason why sunsets and sunrises are romantic and dramatic is because they a) cause the sky to change (relatively) quickly in colour and luminosity, due to the occlusion of the Sun by the horizon, and b) change the quality of the light in pleasing ways (the “golden hour” of photography), due to the angle of the Sun relative to the observer which causes the rays to pass through a thicker atmosphere (hence high particulate pollution leading to redder, more dramatic sunsets). Your double suns would pretty much abolish a), because the surface would be getting constant light at all times, just alternating between the two suns, and even b) would be much less dramatic against a sky that never goes dark. The mere fact of the sun circles going up and down into the horizon isn’t really impressive in itself - moonrise and moonset, since they affect the visual nature of the sky only very mildly, are nowhere as striking as sunrise and sunset. There may be something you could do with two suns with very different visual qualities to their light, but the colour of stars is linked to their physical properties in a way that would add even more untenable constraints to your already unlikely planetary system. [Answer] After considering many different configurations of star systems, I have decided that the most stable system where the two visible stars would always be 180 degrees apart as seen from the planet would have to be an artificially constructed one with an intermediate or supermassive black hole at the center, with the habitable planet orbiting close to the black hole, and a ring of an even number of dim white dwarfs stars plus two mai n equence stars of the same mass orbiting the black hole at a significantly greater distance. See parts seven to twelve. I consider this a great question, because it asks for something almost but not quite totally impossible, and so I can explain how to make it possible. Part One: Climate. You may need someone more expert in calculting the climites of planets to figure out hte climate your planet might have. A planet whichorbits too close to a small dim star might be tidally locked to the star (one side always factng the star) which may have bad effects on the planetary climate. A planet with constant sunlight might also have climate problems. Part Two: Relative masses of planets and stars. One of the first and most obvious facts about orbits is that much less massive objects orbit around much more massive objects. Actually two orbiting objects will both orbit around their barycenter, their common center of gravity. But if one object is much more massive than the other one, the barycenter will be much closer to the more massive one, and often inside the body of the more massive object. You desire a star system with two stars and one planet along with optional other possible objects which are not required. If the planet has to be habitable for Earth humans then it should probably have at least 0.25 the mass of the Earth and less than 10 tmes the mass of Earth - quite probably less than 2 times the mass of Earth. A giant planet would not have a solid surface or be habitable for humans. Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar, has 317.8 time the mass of Earth, and many planets in other star sytems are more massive than Jupiter. Theoretically, the dividing line between the most massive planets and objects called brown dwarfs should be roughly about 13 times the mass of Jupiter, or roughly 4,131.4 times the mass of Earth. The dividing line between the most massive brown dwarfs and the least massive stars should be about 75 or 80 times the mass of Jupiter, or about 23,835 to 25,424 times the mass of Earth. Since the Sun is about 330,000 times as massive as Earth, the least massive stars would have only about 0.072 to 0.077 the mass of the Sun. The most massive stars know have about 100 times the mass of the Sun, making the most massive stars about 1,390 times as massive as the least massive stars. However, stars which are capable of having planets which are naturally habitable for humans have a much narrower range of possible masses; say between 0.5 and 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, to be generous. That is about 165,000 to 462,000 times the mass of Earth. So if your planet has to be naturally habitable for humans with a mass of 0.25 to 2.0 that of Earth, in a system with two stars in the range of 165,000 to 462,000 times the mass of Earth, each star will have about 82,500 to 1,848,000 times the mass of the habitable planet. So the stars can not orbit around the planet. The stars would have to orbit around each other, and the planet would have to orbit around one or both of the stars. Maybe the planet could stay in the barycenter between the two stars as they orbit each other. As others have written in thier answers, such a configuration would not be stable for geological eras of time. How long would it take for a planet to naturlaly become habitable for humans after the planet formed? If Earth is a good sample, about four billion years, which is far too long for the planet to stay in the Barycenter. Part Three: Planetary orbits in binary star systems. So in a binary star system the two stars would orbit around each other. There are two types of possible orbits of planets in a binary star system. In an S-type or non-circumbinary orbit a planet would orbit around one of the stars at a distance whch was a fraction of the distance between the stars. In a P-type or circumbinary orbit a planet would orbit around both of the stars, at a distance greater than the distance between them. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability\_of\_binary\_star\_systems#:~:text=Habitability%20of%20binary%20star%20systems%20is%20determined%20by,more%20of%20all%20star%20systems%20are%20binary%20systems.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability_of_binary_star_systems#:%7E:text=Habitability%20of%20binary%20star%20systems%20is%20determined%20by,more%20of%20all%20star%20systems%20are%20binary%20systems.) Obviously a planet in a P-type orbit would never be exacly halfway between the two stars. The two stars would always be much less than 180 degrees of arc apart in the sky of the planet. During a planetary day one star would rise, and then later the other star would rise and both stars would be in the sky and then the first star would set and then later the second star would set. Then there would be night until the first star rose again. You could never have one star rising while the other star was setting. Continued later. So what would be needed would be an S-Type or non circumbinary orbit where the planet orbited one of the stars at a fraction of the distance between the two stars. > > In non-circumbinary planets, if a planet's distance to its primary exceeds about one fifth of the closest approach of the other star, orbital stability is not guaranteed.[2](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf) > > > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability\_of\_binary\_star\_systems#:~:text=Habitability%20of%20binary%20star%20systems%20is%20determined%20by,more%20of%20all%20star%20systems%20are%20binary%20systems.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability_of_binary_star_systems#:%7E:text=Habitability%20of%20binary%20star%20systems%20is%20determined%20by,more%20of%20all%20star%20systems%20are%20binary%20systems.) So the closest the two stars get should be at least 5 times the distance betweent the planet and the star. If the two stars had equal masses and luminosities, the nearer star would give the planet at least 25 times as much light and heat as the farther star did. Suppose that the planet orbits a K2V class star with 0.82 the mass and 0.37 the luminosity of the Sun. Suppose that the farther star is a F2V class star with 1.46 the mass and 5.13 the luminosity of the Sun. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-type_main-sequence_star> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-type_main-sequence_star> If the two stars were at the same distance the F2V star would give the planet 5.13 times the heat and light that the K2V star did. If the F2V star was at least 5 times as far from the planet as the K2V star, it would give the planet no more than 0.2052 times the heat and light that the K2V star did. If the planet orbited one star, and if the other star had the same mass and luminosity and was at least 5 times as far away. the farther star wold give the planet less than 0.04 times the heat and light that the nearer star did. And it might not be a problem if the farther star gives the planet much less heat and light than the near star gives it. That would make the days when only the far star was visible much less hot than the days when only the near star was visible. That would give the planet a temperature cycle much more like Earth's cycle alaterantely heatng up in the day and cooling down in the night. I note that from Earth the Sun has an apparent magnitude of -27 (lower numbers are brighter) and the full moon has an apparent magnitude of -13. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitude_%28astronomy%29> According to my rough calculations, the Sun is approximately 399,367.08 times as bright as the full moon. So if the near star appeared about as bright as the Sun appeared in the sky of the planet, and the farther star was only 1/631.95, or 0.00158, as bright as the near star, it would still be 631.95 times as bright as the full moon. I think that the farther star could be less than 1 percent as bright as the nearer stall while still being bright enough to make the sky blue, and thus appear to be a "sun" when rising and setting. Part Four: Getting the rotational period correct. If your planet is going to be habitable, it has to have a rotational period and day length compatable with habitability. If the planet rotates too fast and has too short a day, it will become unstable and might fly apart. If the days and nights get too long plants might die during the long nights without light, and the days can get too hot and the nights too cold for life to survive. Stephen H. Dole, in Habitable Planets for Man, 1964, discusses the conditions necessary for a planet to be habitable for humans 9and for life with similar requirements). <https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf> He discusses planetary rate of rotation on pages 58 to 61. On page 60 he says: > > Just what extremes of rotation rates are consistent with habitability is difficult to say. These extremes, however, might be estimated at, say, 96 hours (4 Earth days) at the lower end of the scale and 3 to 3 hours per revolution at the upper end, or at angular velocities where the shape becomes unstable because of the high rotation rate. > > > So those are limits to consider while choosing a length of day for your planet. Part Five: Sidereal and solar days. A sidereal day is the period in which the Earth rotates exactly 360 degrees of arc with respect to the distant stars, but not with respect to the Sun. A Siderial day is approximately 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds, or 86,164.1 seconds, long. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_time> While orbiting the Sun, the Earth travels almost one degree of arc along its orbit around the Sun each sidereal day. So after one sidereal day the line between the center of the Earth and a spot on the Earth's surface that pointed at the center of the Sun will be pointing in the same direction. But because the Earth has moved on its orbit, the line will be parallel to the previous day's line and will miss the Sun. It will take a little longer for the line between the center of the Earth and that spot on the Earth's surface to once again be pointed at the center of the Sun. Thus a solar day, the time between a point on the Earth having the same position relative to the Sun, is a littler longer than a sideral day, being 24 hours or 86,400 seconds. A difference of 235.9 seconds or 9.829 minutes isn't much of a difference between Earth's sidereal and solar days, but on some planets there could be a big difference that could be important in designing a solar system. I note that when Dole wrote that a planet's day had to be more than 2 or 3 Earth hours long he meant the sidereal day, and when he wrote that a habitable planet's day should be less than 96 hours or 4 Earth days long he meant the solar day of the planet. Part Six: Orbits. I thnk that it would be necessary for th eorbital period of the planet around one star and the orbital period of the stars around their center of gravity to have the same length, and thus the angles change at the same rate, for the two stars to constantly have the same relative position in the sky of the planet. Suppose that your planet orbits a G2V star with the mass of the Sun and the Luminosity of the Sun at a distanc eof 1 AU and thus has an orbital period of 1 Earth year. Suppose that the other star is also a G2V star with 1 solar mass and 1 solar luminosity and there is at least 5 AU between the two stars. According to this planetary orbital calculater if a "planet" (in this case one of the two stars) with the mass of the Sun orbits the other tar with the mass of the Sun at a distance of 5 AU the orbital period will be 7.90453 Earth years. <https://calctool.org/CALC/phys/astronomy/planet_orbit> So the orbital period of the two stars would be 7.9 times as long as the orbital period of the planet around one of the two stars, so that would not work. Suppose that your planet orbits a K2V star wiht 0.82 the mass and 0.37 the luminosity of the Sun and the K2V star more or less orbits a F2V star with 1.46 the mass and 5.13 times the luminosity of the Sun, at a distance 5 times the separation of the planet and the K2V star. If the planet orbits the K2V star at a distance where it gets as much radiation from that star as Earth gets from the Sun - I call that the Earth equivalent Distance or EED - it will have about the same temperature range as Earth. Since the K2V star would have 0.37 the the luminosity of the Sun, and 0.60827 is the square root of 0.37, the EED of the K2V star would be about 0.608 AU. If the F2V star was 5 x 0.608 AU from the K2V star it would be 3.01435 AU away. Putting the mass of the planet as 1 Earth mass, the distance as 0.60827 AU, and the mass of the star as 0.82 solar mass into the planetary orbit calculater it give the orbital period of the planet around the K2V star as 0.523797 Earth. Putting the mass of the K2V star as 0.82 solar mass, the orbital distance as 3.0 AU, and the mass of the F2V star as 1.46 solar mass into the calculator, it gives an orbital period of the K2V star around the F2V star of 4.30116 Earth years. That is 8.2115017 times as long as the orbit of the planet around the K2V star. So let's make the larger and more distant star an A2V star with 1.98 times the mass and 23.99 times the luminosity of the Sun. The orbital period of the planet around the K2V star will remain 0.523797 Earth years. And according to the calculator the orbital period of the K2V star around the A2V star at a distance of 3.01435 AU will be 3.71864 Earth years, or 7.0993915 times as long as the orbital period of the planet around the K2V star. And I guess if you made the nearer star less massive and the farther star more massive, you would eventually get a combination of masses, luminosities, and distances which would make the orbital period of the planet around the near star and the orbital period of the nearer star around the farther star equal in length, so the two stars might possibly constantly remain in the same positions relative to the planet. But you would run into the problem that less massive and less luminous stars would start to tidally lock planets in their habitable zones. Thus the smaller stars would always appear in the same position from a spot on the side that faced them, them and would never appear to rise or set, and would not be seen at all from the other side of the planet. That problem could be solved by giving the planet a very large moon, or make the planet a double planet, or make the planet actually a planet sized moon of a giant planet. In that case the planet would tidally locked to its companion world and not to its star and the star would appear to rise and set on the "planet". And that could enaable a possibly habitable planet to orbit a much smaller star than otherwise. Andother problem would be that as the nearer star got dimmer and the farther star got brighter, eventually the planet would get as light and heat from the farther star as from the nearer star, and if the trend contnued the planet would get more radiation from the farther star than from the nearer star. And as the more massive star gets more massive and more luminous, its lifetime on the main sequence of steller development before it becomes a red giant will get shorter and shorter. The F2V star, for example, would only have a main sequence period of about three billon years, probably not long enough for its palnets to naturally develope oxygen rich atmospheres, and inreasingly massive stars would last for shorter and shorter periods. A writer could psssibly get around that by having an advanced society terraform a planet in the system and inhabit it for one million years, and then abandon it as the red giant phase of the larger star approached, and sell the planet to another society who might inhabit it for ten thousand years and then abandon it as the red giant phase got nearer, and sell it to your romantic protagonist with a habitabiity guarantee for only one hundred Earth years, which the protagonist might consider long enough. Part Seven: A more complicated star system. I imagine a more complicated star system where a planet, perhaps artificially terraformed for habitability, orbits around a black hole, and probably is tidally locked to the black hole, which would not emit any radiation or be seen in the sky of the planet. And there are two stars obiting the black hole at the same distance, but 180 degrees apart, and those two stars provide light and heat to the planet. Being 180 degrees apart i ntheir shared orbit, one star would rise while the other star was setting as seen from the planet. But unfortunately that type of orbit has been imagined before, in the situation where a planet described as a "Counter-Earth" orbits on the oppsite of the Sun from the Earth, and so is always hidden by the Sun from detection on the surface of Earth. > > Furthermore, a Counter-Earth would eventually be visible from Earth because the gravitational forces of the other planets on it would make its own orbit unstable. Venus has 82% of the mass of Earth and would come within 0.3 AU of the location of a Counter-Earth every 20 months, providing considerable gravitational pull that over the years would move its orbit into sight of observers on Earth.[18] If a Counter-Earth was much smaller than Earth, its location at the "Sun–Earth L3" Lagrangian point (see diagram) would mean the combined gravitational pull of the two large masses of Earth and the Sun would provide "precisely the centripetal force required to orbit with them". But a small planet would be influenced more by the orbit of Venus, Mars and Jupiter, making it even more unstable. > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Earth#Scientific_analysis> So if you imagine the invisible black hole in the place of the Sun, the two stars in the places of the Earth and the Counter-Earth, and the planet in the place of another planet in our solar system, eventually that planet's gravity would perturb the orbits of the two stars so that they were no longer exactly 180 degrees apart in the sky of the planet. The sometimes one star wuld be visible, sometimes two stars would be visible, and sometimes no stars would be visible from the planet. So calculations would have to be made to see if the two stars could remain 180 degees apart for long enough for the purposes of the story. And I have an idea to improve the situation which I will describe in a later continuation of this answer. Part Eight: Rings of stars or stellar mass objects. The blog PlanetPlanet by Astrophysicist sEan Raymond has a section called the Ultimate Solar System about designing imaginary star systems with as many habitable planets as is physically possible. <https://planetplanet.net/the-ultimate-solar-system/> In this post <https://planetplanet.net/2017/05/03/the-ultimate-engineered-solar-system/> he mentions a paper by Smith and Lissaeur discussing planets sharing the same orbit around a star (which can also apply to stars sharing the same orbit around a much more massive object like a very massive black hole). The calcuations of Smith and Lissaeur showed that a number of equally massed objects equally spaced could share a single orbit around a larger object, and their orbits would be long term stable. Their calculations cover systems with between 7 and 42 objects in the orbiting ring. <https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010CeMDA.107..487S/abstract> So naturally Rayond was inspired to design a solar system with several rings of habitable planets orbiting their star. With seven orbiting planets they would be spread out 51.428571 degrees apart along the orbit. With 42 planets per orbit they would be seperated by 8.5714285 degreees. As Raymond says: > > I can only think of one way our 416-planet system could form. It must have been purposely engineered by a super-intelligent advanced civilization. I’m calling it the Ultimate Engineered Solar System. > > > And in <https://planetplanet.net/2018/05/30/the-black-hole-ultimate-solar-system/> Raymond designs solar systems with rings of planets orbiting a giant black hole, the planets being illuminated and heated by one or more rings of stars also orbiting the black hole. And like the previous example, such a system would have to have been constructed by an advanced civilization instead of forming naturally in such a convenient way. So you can imagine a system with a giant black hole, with the mass or hundreds or thousands of stars at least, and your habitable planet orbiting close to the black hole, and farther out from the black holethere is a ring of stellar mass objects sharing the same orbit. But only two of those stellar mass objects are actually luminous star illuminating the planet, and those two stars are on opposite sides of the ring 180 degrees apart, and so when one star is rising the other star will be setting. If you try making a diagram of the system you will see that the more times the radius of the Stars' orbit around the black hole exceeds the radius of the planet's around the black hole, the less difference the movement of the palnet around the black hole will make in the apparent directions to the two stars as seen from that moving planet. So you will wantto make the two stars orbit the black hole at many times the orbit of the planet around the black hole. This may be a complicating factor. The planet will be tidally locked so one side always faces the black hole and the other side never faces the black hole. So the planet will rotate on its axis once in every orbit around the black hole. But the planet will have to orbit the black hole far enough to beoutside the roche limit of the black hole, and also within the distance range where it has a day of the proper length. If the planet turns on its axis too fast it will fly apart and never be habitable. So a planet tidally locked to the black hole would have a rotation period equal to its orbit around the black hole, which thus has to be long enough for the planet not to spin apart. And if the planet is orbiting the black hole far enough to have a slow enough spin, and if the orbit where the stars orbit is several times as far from the black hole as the planet's orbit, the stars might not be close enough to keep the planet warm enough for life. Another problem is that the number of stellar mass objects in the shared orbit has to be even in order for the two stars in that orbit to be 180 degeess apart on opposite sides of the orbit. So the number of stellar mass objects would have to be 8, separated by 45 degrees, or 10 separated by 36 degrees, or 12 separated by 30 degreees or 14 divided by 25.714285 degrees, and so on. I see that 180 degrees can be evenly divided by 45, 36, 30, or 25.714285 degrees, so presumably any even number of objects up to 42 in the orbit would enable the two stars to be 180 degreees apart. So now the question is, what would the stellar mass objects be, to share an orbit with two stars of the same mass as them without also being stars? Part Nine: Stellar mass objects in the ring. So one way to get a bunch of stella rmass objects in the ring but make only two of them stars, is to make each object actually a binary of less than stellar mass objects. To recap, I earlier suggested that a habitable planet would probably have a mass between 0.25 and2.0 Earth mass. The Sun has about 330,000 times the mass of Earth. The planetjupiter has 317.8 times the mass of Earth. And theoretically the dividing line between the most massive planets and the least massive brown dwarfs should be about 13 Jupiter masses or 4,131.4 Earth masses or 0.0125193 Solar mass. The dividing line between the most massive brown dwarfs and the least massive stars should be about 75 times the mass of Jupiter or 23,835 Earth masses or 0.072222 Solar mass to about 87 times the mass of Jupiter or 27,648.6 Earth masses or 0.0837836 Solar mass. So imagine a ring of objects each with a mass of 140 Jupiter masses or 44,492 Earth masses or 0.1348242 solar mass around the black hole. Except that only two of them are actually single masses, stars with a mass of 0.1348242 Solar Mass. The other objects in the orbital ring can each be binaries, each having two brown dwarfs each with a mass of 70 Jupiter masses or 22,246 Earth mass or 0.674121 Solar mass. The brown dwarts would look like stars or planets in the sky of the planet orbiting the black hole. Stars with only 0.1348242 Solar mass would be very dim red dwarf stars. They would be more massive and luminoous than spectral class M6V stars with 0.102 Solar mass and 0.001 Solar luminosity, and less massive and luminous than spectral class M5V stars with 0.162 Solar mass and 0.003 Solar luminosity. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_dwarf> And there might be problems with having the planet orbit far enough from the giant black hole while the dim red dwarfs orbit far enough beyond theplanet's orbit to always seem to be separated by 180 degrees while still being close enough to the planet to keep it habitabley warm. Part Ten: White dwarfs in the ring. Or the ring can have more massive stars, including two main sequence stars and a bunch of white dwarfs stars in the other positions. White dwarf stars were once main sequence stars which have lost much of their original mass and are now very small and dense and emittonly a tiny fraction of the light that main sequence stars of the same mass emit. Calculations indicate that all white dwarfs must have between about 0.5 and about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. A M1V class star would have 0.5 the mass and 0.041 the luminosity of the Sun. A main sequence star with 1.4 times the mass of the Sun would be between a F4V with 1.38 the mass and 4.17 the luminosity of the Sun and a F3V with 1.44 the mass and 4.68 the luminosity of the Sun. The white dwarf stars in the system would appear as very bright stars in the night and even the day sky of the planet. Part Eleven: A ring of neutron stars. Possibly you might find the white dwarfs stars in the ring too bright for your planet. A neutron star is the remnant of a once much more massive star. Neutron stars, much denser and smaller than white dwarfs, have masses in the range of about 1.1 to 2.16 Solar mass. A star with 1.1 times the mass of the sun would be a little less than an FOV class star with 1.13 the mass and 1.66 the luminosity of the Sun. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-type_main-sequence_star> A star with 2.16 the mass of the Sun would be a little less than an A0V class star with 2.18 the mass and 38.02 the luminosity of the Sun. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-type_main-sequence_star> The luminosity of neutron stars varies a lot. Most detected neutron stars are pulsars emitting pulses of radio waves. > > Pulsar planets receive little visible light, but massive amounts of ionizing radiation and high-energy stellar wind, which makes them rather hostile environments. > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star#Planets> So Neutron stars might be too dangerous for life on your planet. Part Twelve: Black Holes. Maybe the intermediate mass or supermassive black hole that your planet orbits closely has a ring of stellar mass black holes orbiting farther out. Two of the objects can be stars 180 degreees apart with the same mass as each black hole. The least massive known stellar mass black hole has about 5 times the mass of the Sun. The most massive stellar black holes should have about 45 to 60 times the mass of the Sun. A B4V class star would have 5.10 the mass and 776 the luminosity of the Sun. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-type_main-sequence_star> And a star with 45 to 60 times the mass of the Sun would be a class B star thousands of times as luminous as the Sun. So while the black holes in the ring would not be visible, stars with the same mass would be very luminous and short lived. So you would probably be better off using a ring of six white dwarfs and 2 main sequence stars with the same mass as the white dwarfs. [Answer] Several answers have already dealt with whether or not this is plausible with two true suns, but assuming your romantic spaceman is mainly after the ambience of two suns appearing to set/rise at the same time then there are other options for him to create the desired effect. Perhaps a specially crafted ultra-reflective moon could provide the desired result, bouncing the light of the real sun with enough intensity to provide a convincing double. [Answer] If we accept just enough of what we know about science, the result would be mega-cool suspension of disbelief According to an [answer on our sister Stack, Astronomy](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/40997/18065), it's possible (and known) for a planet to orbit retrograde to its star. Granted, all of the examples are both retrograde and highly eccentric orbits (meaning they're at a whomping angle compared to the rotation of the star or the flat plane bisecting the star at its rotational "mid-point"), but assuming such characteristics are all we'll ever find in the universe is both boring and statistically improbable. (It's amazing what we've discovered in just the last few years). So, the stars are orbiting around themselves with the usual barycentric orbits and the planet is orbiting between them in retrograde, which not only can get you what you're looking for, but technically could get you simultaneous sunrises (or sunsets) in both the East and the West. When any event would occur would depend on where the planet is positioned in relation to both stars for any given rotation of the planet (rotation, not orbit). [Answer] It's possible, with both suns similar brightness in the sky. How? A binary star, with a planet in the L5 Lagrangian point of the binary, which is stable. Ah, you say, but the suns will then be 60 degrees apart in the sky so you will never have simultaneous sunrise and sunset. Not so fast. The planet has axial tilt, and you are quite near to a pole. So your "winter" day for Sun 1 lasts about 1/6 of a day (4 hours). Just as that sun is falling below the horizon, Sun 2 is rising, for another few hours. On the plus side, you can see both suns at once. On the minus side, the axial tilt is not going to be long-term stable and so life on this planet is going to have to survive pretty extreme temperature ranges (if it evolves at all). Also because you have to be quite neat the pole, it's going to be chilly (unless the rest of the planet is far too hot for comfort? ) [Answer] If the binary stars are wide enough to allow the existence of a goldilock zone and the planet is located jn the goldlock zone between both stars then it could be possible. It would be an exotic view considering that your stars are bright enough and are not very far away apart. 15 - 20 AU of distance between the two stars is a good distance considering that the two stars are sun-like. Then when a person is standing on your fictional planet at the end of the afternoon you would see the sunset of one star and the other star is beginning to rise in the sky causing at the same time an end of a day and the beginning of another day( visually speaking of course). ]
[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. I was thinking about the concept of [Utility Fog](https://www.kurzweilai.net/utility-fog-the-stuff-that-dreams-are-made-of), programmable matter that can replicate a physical structure. They can be made to form air, furniture, and even entire buildings, with sufficient programming. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0HYMC.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0HYMC.jpg) Given the case that they are mass produced to be able to create relatively anything, like the stuff I mentioned above, the next issue would be about how they can be controlled. Looking at the description from the site above, it seems that people have a direct interface with the Utility Fog, as if the Utility Fog was mind controlled, probably with a brain cap that allows for such an interface. So, when people think they want to have a couch rather than just a chair, the Utility Fog will respond to their thoughts and make just that. However, I have realised a problem, that does not seem to be addressed. If people no longer actively think about what they want the Utility Fog to be, or turn off the brain cap, won't the stuff just collapse back into a bunch of nanomachines in the air? So, I wonder, what sort of mechanism or programming might help to solve this issue, keeping the furniture in place even when the person does not actively think about them. [Answer] boolean permanent = true It seems a rather trivial question. You've made something that can shape, colour and add properties (flex, conductivity, etc.) to itself to your desire. How difficult would the next step be that you consider an object finished or permanent and the fog to obey? Probably you barely need to spare the thought. Only if you would actively think of changing the object, the fog would change shape again. [Answer] Hacking Given that the fog is remotely controlled, it will be very susceptible to hacking. You might wake up one morning to find that a prankster has turned your bed into a skip, complete with garbage. Or your house might now be in the middle of the street and look like a Swiss chalet complete with snow but no bathroom. Creativity As in virtual worlds, some people would specialise in creating objects and the rest of us would pay good money for the designs. As for the materials; we would order fog online. It would arrive in the shape of a human that would deliver itself to your door and then dissolve into a shapeless mass on command - or into whatever you wanted to purchase. It would be the ultimate Lego for kids. Keeping shape With regard to staying in the required shape, this stuff would stay where you put it until ordered to change. The connectors would be spring loaded to stick together and would require power to disassemble. [Answer] We have tons of machinery which has the very same "issue" when they are not used: printers, computers, cars, ships, rockets. Basically everything! In your case the utility fog will still need to have a power supply to stay idle. If that power supply happens to be a RF source, the emitter of the can be configured in such a way that the power supply only extend to a certain volume. Anything that goes out of that volume will be powered off, and the buffer energy it has will be used to try to return back. [Answer] Fog does not stay together. Like a robot servant who turns off the light when you leave the room, the utility fog would slump into inert particles when not needed. Everything in the room made of fog would dissipate into drifts on the floor. What would be left would be a non-fog AI - some Alexa like Argus entity which watches everything and knows where its masters are. When one of them approaches, Argus prompts the fog to reassemble the foosball tables, pinball machines and bar stools. If you are not one of its masters, you would find yourself in the empty space. When you enter, Argus might ask who you are. Or it might already know. The fog is ready, and there are options for the fog in this space that are not as hospitable as the game room. [Answer] I would say the fog stays together using magnetic flux pinning. This link explains the phenomenon: <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_pinning> Now I don't know all the equations and stuff, because I'm but a layman but in principle it's when a superconductor gets enveloped in a magnetic field it shields it from all other magnetic fields and causes a repulsive force that pins it in place. And since electromagnetism is stronger than the other fundamental forces, you could postulate that you could provided you had enough power use this phenomenon to create connections stronger than any normal matter. However I'm not sure as I don't know the math. Now to make this possible you would make your little nano fog particles little spheres with connection points, half of them made of room temp superconducting material and the rest are miniature electromagnets. Basically when power is applied they stick together like a magnetic Velcro and you can vary the strength of the field to vary the strength of the attraction. ]
[Question] [ My version of vampires were created by powerful mages during their experiments-they sought immortality, so humanity would never end up without someone to save them from the eldritch horrors or creatures of chaos that would otherwise destroy them. However, these vampires have the following problems: 1. Blood Dependence-They need blood to sustain their life; a minimum of a liter for every two months. The average person contains 4 to 6 liters in their body (men generally have more than women), and someone can die from losing 2 1/2 to 4 liters of blood (exsanguination). Now, a liter is 2.1 pints, and it takes four to eight weeks to regain just one liter of blood (plasma, platelets and red blood cells alike). Vampires just need the blood to sustain their life force; for nutrients and calories, they can ingest regular food for that. 2. Blood Dependence (Continued)-Vampires get weaker over time, as the life force (AKA essence, spiritual energy) inside ingested blood is depleted. For this and other reasons (seriously, could you perform your best when giving your body only the minimum amount of calories and nutrients it needs?), vampires really need regular blood meals (at the end of every month? I'm open to change). 3. Blood Hanger-Going off of 2, did you know a 1% drop in your bodily water reserves may cause a proportional drop in cognitive function? Combine that and hanger (hunger-driven anger), and you know exactly why a vampire who's gone without blood for a while is a potential danger. The more blood deprived a vampire is, the more primal and ferocious they become. 4. Imprinting-The essence contained in the blood causes vampires to form a very close connection to those they've fed on for twelve months or more: they can sense their presence (and by extension, their location) and emotional state. This is called 'Imprinting,' and it makes it perfectly likely that a vampire can hunt down (and quite possibly stalk) a former donor. 5. Picky Bloodsuckers-Vampires only Imprint on certain people; they just can't take blood from anyone, unless they're dying from blood deprivation. They seem to sense the traits of the person who the blood came from and judge it by that; in simpler terms, a vampire's choice of blood says a lot about the kind of people they like to be around (and them by extension). The exception is vampires that can't (or won't) Imprint; they don't really care who their blood comes from. 6. Even Pickier Bloodsuckers-For some reason, vampires tend to seek donors that can also be partners; male vampires have an innate drive to seek out female blood donors around their age (no more than 4 years difference; see below) and vice versa for female vampires. The difference in blood drive is dramatic; most male vampires would never even think about taking blood from a male unless they had to (and once again, it's vice versa). The Good News: 1. Vampiric Healing-Vampires have anti-coagulant agents in their saliva, but they also have healing agents in special glands they can pump into a donor to heal the damage (of the fangs puncturing the skin and blood vessels) and replenish blood cells 4x as fast as normal. This prevents scarring (AKA fang marks) and helps the vampire get more frequent blood meals without hurting the donor. 2. Imprinting-And even just donating blood to a vampire once-creates neural links in a vampire's mind, making them much less likely to attack, steal from, or dominate you (sadly, 3% of vampires have mind-control abilities) and more likely to help you. Generally, a vampire will do anything to help their Imprinted. However (see 4 above) this also causes a vampire to very quickly develop relationships with people who give them blood. If an older individual acts as their donor, the vampire will soon see them as a paternal figure. If a member of the same sex, as old as them or younger, acts as their donor, the vampire will soon see them as a sibling (brings a whole new meaning to 'blood brother,' now doesn't it?). If a member of the opposite gender, around their age (no more than 4 years difference) gives a vampire blood, they will likely develop romantic feelings for them. 3. Imprinted Food-No, it's not what you think. After a vampire has Imprinted, food made or grown by that Imprinted are as good as blood for them (well, about; the caloric value of the food determines the amount of BV, or Blood Value, a food has). So food made by an Imprinted can be better than blood, and it's a whole lot easier on logistics. However, vampires often take blood now and then, out of habit or, y'know, the fact they're vampires. The vampires are legal citizens, the governments knows they exist (regular politicians are kinda-sorta bloodsuckers anyway, and since these vampires are better allies (and taxpayers) than enemies...) and is willing to turn a blind eye as long as they don't start enslaving people, causing crimes, or draining them dry. However, in order to survive, the vampires need blood (and it can't come from blood banks; vampires don't usually need medical aid, so the government has reserved that for the regular people who end up hospitalized and lacking blood) from donors. Even worse, due to all the anti-vampires crazies (and those who suffer from a fear of all that sucks blood, and those who would not take the news of vampires being real well), the vampires have to keep their existence a well-kept secret or deal with an awful lot of prejudice and discrimination. My question is, simply: How Can Vampires Get Enough Donors To Keep Themselves Alive? Specifically, what would be the best method to obtain a donor? I feel like a dating website could work, but I'm not sure how effective that would be. The best method won't just attract crazy people, will incentivize nondisclosure (of the vampire's existence), and will get people to willingly give blood to the vampires. EDIT: As pointed out by DWKraus, a vampire should only need one donor, due to math (a full vampire taking frequent small meals should never leave a donor more than a pint down) and modern medications that can stimulate blood production. If more details are needed, or if there are problems with the OP, please let me know. As always, I appreciate your input and feedback. Thank you! EDIT: In the end, I found DWKraus's answer the most helpful, but each of you had an important contribution (except Ash...sorry, but I just can't go that route). [Answer] ## One: You said that for your math, a person regains a liter of blood in 6-8wks, and a vampire needs a liter every two months. You do understand that means one person is all you need? If the vampire starts full, and takes frequent small meals, the person is never more than a pint down and the vampire is always full. If the vamp can increase a person's blood volume, then even less - the person wouldn't even notice the effect. The more blood a person loses, the faster their body produces red cells to replace them. So the vampire only needs to find a human spouse. If we're talking modern era (and you mentioned a dating site) then there are medications like erythropoietin to stimulate red cell, white cell (although immunology says white cells are probably not good for the vampire) and platelet production. Plasma is replaced quickly and mostly by drinking fluids and maintaining a healthy diet. Plenty of red meat and iron supplements might help. Someone with polycythemia vera requires regular blood donation due to excess RBC production and might be happy to do their civic duty to a fellow citizen. You might want to consider if the vampire's healing ability might have a useful function in this equation. If, for example, it was a treatment for common blood disorders like sickle cell anemia or thalassemia, then the people and doctors would seek out vampires and arrange "private arrangements" so they could trade a little blood for a normal life. Sickle cell is quite debilitating and the medications to treat it are less than effective. When talking about volunteering, the loss of blood is pretty minor. If you ran a plasma center, they can pay people to sell their blood for research ant to make drugs. If a certain donor was found suitable, they might be simply paid to donate frequently and told their blood had "special antigens" or something like that. A binding non-disclosure agreement would be perfectly ordinary. If the vampire works in healthcare (specifically a phlebotomist), the only problem would be the pickiness. There are endless opportunities to collect "just a little extra" blood from someone, and if the vampire were doing it, they would know if a random donor was acceptable to them and be able to collect "one extra red-top" to meet their needs ten milliliters at a time. It doesn't sound like much, but it would go a LONG way towards meeting their needs or filling in any shortfalls, and you might draw six patients an hour. If "old" or anticoagulated blood was okay, get a job in the lab - I'd say a liter of test samples is probably discarded each day in my hospital just in getting rid of samples that are no linger needed. Again, pick and choose what is good. It might also be a way to find good donors, since all the tubes have detailed patient information on them. [Answer] ### Firstly; polyamory A vampire needs: * Minimum 1 (1L per 8 weeks), but ideally 2 or more donors. * Who they form intimate connections with (imprinting) This has polyamory written all over it. 2 or more imprinted individual intimately connected to you; Ethical non monogamy is basically required by these conditions alone. ### Secondly; BDSM How does blood donating feel from the donors perspective? It depends on the scenario, but I've heard from someone whose done bloodletting in BDSM that its a high like taking drugs: Some power play. Submission. Trust. Woozy mind. Pretty hallucinations. Epic sex. And then bandaged up for a few hours on the couch with ice cream and hugs. Your vampire goes to their local BDSM community gathering, is open and honest about what they're after, and listens to others about what they're interested in trying. Within a few gatherings they will find someone interested in trying bloodletting. If they respect consent, help other people explore their interests, are decent people, and keep socialising within the BDSM community they will probably find a second. With the blood imprinting magic happening, they'll be able to maintain a kinky polyamorous relationship easier than normal humans. --- After your edit: one is now enough. Isnt your source of life essence important enough to justify having a backup? If they're sick I'm going to get hungry, then hangry. If your single partner dies, or dumps you, you'll be dead in 8 weeks. In which case you're needing to keep an eye out for plan B all the time or directly cheating on your partner on the side. I'm not sure I could find a new partner from scratch in 8 weeks, even if my life depended on it, especially if they need to have a bloodletting kink, as that's not the most common kink. Having two isn't excessive; It's not excessive to leave some spare blood in the human, it's not going to rot or need to be thrown out, but if not donating their blood does cause an issue somehow, polyamory comes to the rescue again. Between 1 (no backup) and 2 (excessive apparently) theres other numbers like 1.5; 2 vampires can share 3 partners between them. (Having personally been in long term 2 on 3 heterosexual poly relationships before I can confirm they are workable.) [Answer] # There is an app for that > > (and it can't come from blood banks; vampires don't usually need medical aid, so the government has reserved that for the regular people who end up hospitalized and lacking blood). > > > You are talking about government-controlled blood banks there. Private blood banks are another thing. But then again, that is so 90's. We're in the 2020's now. All a vampire would need is a smartphone. They could order blood through Uber Eats. It would work like this: special restaurants for vampires would hire volunteers for vampire-specific blood donations. If you are such a volunteer, you would periodically go to such a restaurant and have your blood collected and refrigerated. The restaurant is legally not a blood bank because: 1. It is not connected to the public health system in any way; 2. The blood there does not need to go through all the same treatment that it would usually undergo in a blood bank. In fact you could not use this for a regular blood donation. You get paid fairly for this. Then vampires order their meal through an app. They could order, for example, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese combo, substituting poutine for the fries, with a 700 mL blood shake on the side. That's not 700 mL of blood, as there are other things mixed in it, but it will keep a vampire going for a while. # Go "vegan" In the Twilight series of books, a family of vampires spares the local humans by draining blood from animals instead. They call themselves the vegan vampires. Apparently they don't know what vegan means, because [for vampirism to be vegan, the blood must come from humans](https://vegetarianism.stackexchange.com/q/1820/554). # Carnis data vermibus not People who have just died could be a source of blood. Lots of people die everyday in modern cities[citation needed], a vampire could feast on the blood of still warm bodies. If you think that won't do because they would have no vital energy, drain the braindead instead. [Answer] Adding to what has already been said. > > Imprinting-The essence contained in the blood causes vampires to form a very close connection to those they've fed on for twelve months or more: they can sense their presence (and by extension, their location) and emotional state. This is called 'Imprinting,' and it makes it perfectly likely that a vampire can hunt down (and quite possibly stalk) a former donor. > > Picky Bloodsuckers-Vampires only Imprint on certain people; they just can't take blood from anyone, unless they're dying from blood deprivation. They seem to sense the traits of the person who the blood came from and judge it by that; in simpler terms, a vampire's choice of blood says a lot about the kind of people they like to be around (and them by extension). The exception is vampires that can't (or won't) Imprint; they don't really care who their blood comes from. > > Even Pickier Bloodsuckers-For some reason, vampires tend to seek donors that can also be partners; male vampires have an innate drive to seek out female blood donors around their age (no more than 4 years difference; see below) and vice versa for female vampires. The difference in blood drive is dramatic; most male vampires would never even think about taking blood from a male unless they had to (and once again, it's vice versa). > > Imprinting-And even just donating blood to a vampire once-creates neural links in a vampire's mind, making them much less likely to attack, steal from, or dominate you (sadly, 3% of vampires have mind-control abilities) and more likely to help you. Generally, a vampire will do anything to help their Imprinted. However (see 4 above) this also causes a vampire to very quickly develop relationships with people who give them blood. If an older individual acts as their donor, the vampire will soon see them as a paternal figure. If a member of the same sex, as old as them or younger, acts as their donor, the vampire will soon see them as a sibling (brings a whole new meaning to 'blood brother,' now doesn't it?). If a member of the opposite gender, around their age (no more than 4 years difference) gives a vampire blood, they will likely develop romantic feelings for them. > > > All of this sounds incredibly rapey. Specifically, it sounds like a lot of the attempted justifications IRL stalkers and rapists throw out to try and justify their actions. So the vampires will only drink blood from certain people, who are almost always individuals of the opposite sex from them, claims to have a "connection" to the donor that gives them the right to stalk them, and are much more likely to harrass or attack them. This sounds *exactly* like an IRL stalker or rapist's motivation (see: Twilight). What happens if a vampire only wants to drink from someone who doesn't want to give blood, and ends up stalking them, pestering them, or even attacking them? Sounds like IRL cases of how stalkers (both male and female) become obsessed with certain individuals and try to badger them into sex, first by flattery and positive methods but eventually escalating into violence, blackmail, and rape. To put it another way, say a vampire is being fed off of blood bags and finds they like the taste of "Sophie Jenkins, age whatever from Staten Island, NY". Do you really think if they say "hey the blood from this one person is really good, can you get me more of this" the government is going to do so? No, they're going to say "screw you, you'll drink the blood we give you". Refusing to drink blood unless it comes from a specific person is an incredibly creepy thing to do and requiring some rando civilian to give blood whether or not they want to is very unethical. Most governments would balk at this idea. If anything the government is going to deliberately randomize blood so that vampires can't feed from any one person for more than 12 months and get "addicted" to that person (and make no mistake, the humans will see this as addiction). [Answer] It sounds like a mix of old style feudalism and modern sects could work. Your vampires can grant protection and resources to their underlings, thanks to their network and powers. In exchange for this protection, the underlings will grant the master a periodic taste of their blood. It can be a periodic ritual, let's say once a week, where the priest/priestess of the underlings will offer his/her neck to the master as a pledge of submission and renewal of the alliance. The priest/priestess is selected by the vampire master based on pickiness and imprinting (of course the criteria are not known to the underlings), and the underlings make sure that the priest/priestess is protected and well fed, as he/she is the living seal of their alliance with the master. The chronicles are generous of examples of what happened when, lacking a seal, the master went on a rampage. [Answer] The UK alone could immediately support roughly half a million vampires with no change to anything except the law and social attitudes! In our 2021 society, corpses are drained of blood by undertakers as part of the embalming process. This is literally an everyday process for them. This blood is thrown away. A scalpel is used to cut underneath the skin to find the carotid artery and jugular vein to begin processing fluids. A drain tube is placed to drain blood from the vascular system. [What Does an Undertaker Do to a Body? ][1] A massive population of vampires could be sustained in countries where embalming is common. In the UK for example there are 9 deaths on average per 1,000 people, or 9,000 per million. Thus out of the 68 million population of the UK, 612,100 people die on average per day. One body per vampire per day should be enough. The blood could be bottled and sold chilled. --- [Answer] How about a mutually beneficial relationship? The vampires should seek out hemochromatosis patients. Someone with hemochromatosis must have blood taken every so often, neglecting this will eventually kill them. Furthermore, the law is stupid, such blood can't go to the blood banks despite it being perfectly safe (as much so as any blood is) for anyone other than a hemochromatosis patient. Thus such patients have to pay for their periodic bloodletting. Furthermore, it seems that your vampiric feeding might be preferable to the conventional way of drawing blood. It seems like an ideal pairing. Do your looking on a forum for hemochromatosis patients. The only problem I see is that diagnosed hemochromatosis patients skew towards the older end of the spectrum (it's a genetic condition that actually exists from birth but is usually only diagnosed when symptoms show up. When young people are diagnosed it's usually because they realize they might have inherited the genetic flaw.) ]
[Question] [ If you take real physics, you could travel to the next star in moving cities. Imagine independent, self-sufficient mining outposts attached to an asteroid. While the asteroid is being used up, the youth will start to search the next target. People will follow when one is found. Latest when the last scrap of material is used, also the most stagnant family will move on. You can live that way, in a few generations, from asteroid to asteroid to Jupiter's trojans, to Saturn's rings, into the plutonoids, from there into the Oort cloud.... well and at the end of our Oort cloud, the next star's gravity well begins. From snowball to snowball, in a few 100 years you arrive at Proxima Centauri. It is doable with today's technology or very little advancement from here. But you have to say goodbye to the dream of going there, taking some photos and coming back to show them your wife. Instead you have to develop an entirely self sufficient life style which is religiously or philosophically focused on moving on to the next snowball, you have to take your entire family with you and you have to say goodbye to earth. ### Question What tech would be needed that is absolutely not available today? For the sake of this question, I would understand rotating hammers or rings for artificial gravity as existing technology: even if it has not yet been built, the concept is understood and technically feasible. Which prerequisites are missing today? What problems could those space faring families encounter? [Answer] > > It is doable with today's technology or very little advancement from here > > > Not at all. We are still struggling to find a way to protect the astronauts on their way to Mars, which as compared to what you describe is just the grocery store around the corner! Few months of permanence in microgravity, as seen with the astronauts living on the ISS, just to cite the most recent examples, severely weaken the human body, by weakening bones and immune systems among others. And the ISS orbits under the protection of Van Allen belts, meaning that the astronauts are not showered in highly energetic particles, which would further damage a living organism. And then the people living on ISS can rely on constant cargo supplies from Earth, they don't have to grow their own food, do their own laundry and so on and so forth. We don't even know if a woman can successfully start and complete a pregnancy in microgravity! If you really want to enable ice hopping, as you call it, you need to: * mitigate microgravity damages to human organism (pregnancy included) * mitigate high energy particles damages to human organism (pregnancy included) * find a way to locally produce food and other needed supplies * find a reliable energy source to supply the stations * find a suitable propulsion mechanism: moving all that mass around will require a huge lot of rocket propellant! I highly recommend reading this [NASA informative site](https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/bodyinspace/) [Answer] Short hops cost more fuel than long hops L. Dutch has succinctly pointed out some of the big ticket reasons why humanity is not equipped for long duration space travel yet. There is another key concept though. To quote Douglas Adams yet again, "Space is big. Really big." Proxima Centurai is over 4 light years from Earth. To get there in even 400 years would require that the average speed during the trip was over 1% of lightspeed. We are not even close to being able to accelerate a spacecraft to that speed, yet the question assumes that most of the time would be spent settling new rocks. Travel on Earth is fundamentally constrained by friction in a way that space travel is not. Friction (primarily [drag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics))) increases with the square of speed, so for a given shape, doubling the speed requires four times the power, tripling the speed requires nine times the power and so on. Most vehicles on Earth can reach their top speed within a few minutes at most and will remain at that speed as long as their thrust equals the drag at the speed they are travelling. So it makes sense to break up long trips into short hops - drive for a couple of hours, stop at a service station (gas station for those who don't speak Australian) for fuel and to stretch your legs, then drive for a few more hours. Repeat a dozen times with some overnight stops for a long trip. While the time spent stopped may add up, the act of stopping consumes very little fuel overall. Space travel is completely different. Let's assume that there is a spacecraft that has made it out of Earth orbit and wants to go places with a low thrust, high efficiency ion drive or something similar. It has performance far exceeding anything currently proposed - it has enough fuel to accelerate at 1 ms^-2 for 100,000 seconds, this fuel being an insignificant portion of its total mass (yes, this is unrealistic). The spacecraft needs to reach an asteroid ten light minutes (180,000,000,000 m) away which is at rest relative to its current frame of reference. The spacecraft can either travel directly there in one hop or it can stop at a service station along the way. 1. Express trip: The spacecraft accelerates for 50,000 seconds, reaching a speed of 50,000 m/s and covering 12,500,000,000 m. The spacecraft then cuts its engines and coasts for 3,100,000 seconds before turning end for end and decelerating for 50,000 seconds, during which it covers the remaining 12,500,000,000 m and comes to rest relative to its destination. Total travel time is 3,200,000 seconds (or about 37 days.) 2. Pit stop trip: The spacecraft accelerates for 25,000 seconds, reaching a speed of 25,000 m/s and covering 625,000,000 m. The spacecraft then cuts its engines and coasts for 3,550,000 seconds before turning end for end and decelerating for 25,000 seconds, during which it covers the remaining 625,000,000 m and comes to rest relative to the space-going service station. Then it has to repeat the entire process again in order to reach the destination asteroid. Even assuming that the service station is the super-deluxe-instant-service version and no time is spent there, total travel time is 7,200,000 seconds (or about 83 days). In other words, even one stop of zero duration along the way in space will more than double the travel time. Stopping ten times along the way will slow the trip by a factor of more than one thousand, even ignoring the time spent stopped. Even if humanity can build ships that can accelerate up to 1% of light speed, figure on the slow migration route taking hundreds of thousands or millions of years to reach the nearest star. [Answer] There are many interrelated problems that we are not currently able to resolve. Chemical propulsion limits the speed achievable regardless of the mass of the space craft to a minuscule fraction of the speed of light making journey times of the order of tens of thousands of years and stopping off at a range of locations on the way does not help. Energy becomes an increasing problem as you move away from the sun. Beyond the orbit of Jupiter solar power is hopelessly feeble. Nuclear fusion fuel would only last a few decades and fusion power is still not with us. Another major issue is production capability. It is one thing being able to easily produce a spacesuit or rocket engine on Earth, but it is quite something else to produce the same item in orbit, on the Moon or on some distant icy comet. This point in particular deserves to be emphasised. If we can make it on Earth it does not mean we can (with current technology) make it elsewhere. Modern technology relies on a globe spanning network of industry which simply would not exist in the remoteness of space. If more Titanium plate was needed all manner of other technologies and materials would need to be provided. It would need cutting and forming and those machines would need repair and replacement, chlorine would be needed which in turn requires electrochemical processing and brine. It would be no good to say that we can use other technologies instead of those I have mentioned because ultimately they all have similar issues of interconnectedness and complexity. And it would be no good to say that there is salt or frozen brine at the location, because in most cases we won’t know how much there is, and how accessible it is and what level of what other impurities are present. An even better example might be reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods or prospecting for Uranium. Think of the myriad of subsidiary processes required from nuclear enrichment to protective clothing, where will these come from and where will the machines that produce them come from? Sorry to be so pessimistic I wish it were different, but such is life, perhaps in the decades and centuries to come we may slowly overcome some of these obstacles. [Answer] That sounds really easy and funny in your description but I don't think it is. It is not that easy to generate a self-sufficient base up in space, as you need to produce all resources, every little bit, by yourself. The first problem you will come into contact with is fuel. Our technology is mainly propulsion-based and you will not find that much materials in space you could generate acceptable fuels from. Solar sails as a drive could be a solution but our knowledge in this technology is not advanced enough at the moment. Another problem is food. We are able to grow plants in space, yes, but not on the long term. Especially soil (or fertilizer) still have to be brought up from earth and your asteroids and most of the planets/moons will not give what our plants need to grow. These two problems alone forbid to try this with our current technology-level, still not thinking about getting the vast amount of materials and humans you need for a community living for generations (so at least a few thousand humans) up in space. And keeping them living (body degeneration in zero gravity.) Still gave you +1 for the fresh idea of humans doing the grasshopper on a interstellar scale. [Answer] The key critical requirment is a clossed Life Support System. Essentially you are going to create closed ecosystems in space colonies that can last for centuries, while in the present we have no idea how to do this. The "Biosphere 2" experiments eventually failed as the people inside the dome needed to have outside materials imported (like oxygen) as the various biomes destabilized and outpust became erratic - all in less than a year. Compounding the problem, the experiment was ended and no real follow up has ever taken place (I believe the entire Biosphere 2 compound was later sold). Some issues were not even really known at the time (the concept of "microbiomes" was barely understood in humans, much less the idea of microbiomes in plants, the soil and virtually everything else. We still don't have a clear understanding of that even today). So with enough money, you can currently get to Mars and even live there for a while with a huge import pipeline, the knowledge to build and sustain a closed life support system is lacking. Until that cam be addressed, long term survival in space is going to be diffficult and expensive (and perhaps a workable CLSS will be equally difficult and expensive - we just don't know). ]
[Question] [ Part 1 of a series of questions. Generally, in fantasy humans are always disadvantaged when compared to other races (short lives, less fighting skill, weaker with magic, etc). I want to avoid this, by having all the races have some advantages, and some disadvantages, when compared to humans as a frame of reference. World information: There are 7 sapient races. These are human, elf, dwarf, orc, goblin, reptilian (lizard men) and avian (bird people). The races were created by the gods as entertainment, and as a competition of whose race is superior. As such, no race should be completely advantaged. The world is set within the medieval ages, different races and cultures can be more or less advanced, but none are more than the 13th century level. There is also a medium amount of magic present. Magic System: Magic comes from the echos of creation, similar to how we have Cosmic microwave background radiation. When passing through the Soul Reservoir into this plane of existence, some beings are affected by the Creation Echos, and will be capable of using magic. The use of magic is powered by an individuals willpower, and belief in the effect. All races use the same magic, but with different methods and purpose. Orc shamans for example draw out their magic through war dances and songs to make themselves stronger. That is how their ancestors taught them to do it, and it is as the great god Durnak decreed it, which has worked out so far. A human uses magic by chanting in an ancient language, and a fireball shoots out. The Order of the Great light taught him so. However a human that is brought up in an Orcish stronghold, will use magic with dance and song, to strengthen the troops. Info about humans: 1. Lifespan of 50-60 years. 2. Height of 5.6 to 6.2 feet (1.70 to 1.89 meters) 3. Human tech is based on European 10th century. 4. Humans capable of using magic are born approximately 1 per 1000. 5. Population type is typical of the time period, large capital cities, medium towns and small farming villages and homesteads. Info about elves: 1. Lifespan of 500-700 years. 2. Height of 6.5-7.5 feet (1.98 to 2.13 meters) 3. Elven technology is around the 9th century of East Asia. No gunpowder and explosives. 4. Elves capable of using magic are born approximately 1 per 100. 5. Population is comprised of capitals with 1 to 5 thousand inhabitants, and small communities of 50 to 300 elves. These are spread out through several large forests. The advantages that Elves would have are a long lifetime in which to improve and perfect their skills, making them deadly warriors. They also have a great amount of magic users and power. The elves are also bigger and stronger than humans, as well as being faster (more dexterous). While number balancing can work a bit, it does not always mean a disadvantage. Real life examples are how the British empire ruled a fairly large portion of the world, in South Africa at the Battle of blood river, 470 Voortrekkers defeated an estimated 10-15 thousand Zulus, while during the Anglo Boer war, 600 000 British troops where held off for a long time by 55-60 thousand Boer forces. One method of nerfing the elves a bit, is based on a previous Q/A I read, which is that elves are only able to reproduce after 100 years. After giving birth, a female will only become fertile after another 50 years. Another nerf I am giving them is that due to their long lives, they do not have the same rushed and frenzied mindset that most humans have. They are more than happy to spend a whole day collecting herbs and berries, because they have so much time to do other stuff. The Question: What other methods and disadvantages could I use for balancing the elves to a human. This does not have to be one elf equals one human, but rather, in a battle between an elven nation and a human nation, neither side should have an absolute advantage. [Answer] Role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons generally take great care to balance all races. You could look to them for inspiration. Typical advantages conferred on elves are night vision, longevity, superior dexterity, and the ability to hide in natural environments. Typical disadvantages are physical frailty (they aren't as strong and tough as humans), low fertility, and less flexibility (in D&D, humans often get an extra skill and feat (broad ability) to compensate for the lack of special racial abilities). Longevity may confer as many disadvantages as advantages. Being very long-lived, they stand to lose more if they die, possibly making them more risk-averse, even timid. Longevity is also typically married to low fertility, with few new elves born every year. This means that losses incurred in a war will take far longer to replace, making elves very reluctant to go to war. Smaller youth generations may lead to less innovation, since young people tend to be more open-minded and inquisitive than older people. Elves might not be very fond of change, either, given that they live for hundreds of years. Both these factors may slow technological development, with a greater focus on refinement than radical innovation. Having all the time in the world (or so it might feel) may make elves rush less in learning or building new things. Better to do it right than do it quickly. Elves may hence have fewer skills than a human, but will be very good at the skills they have - which may be artistic skills rather than survival skills. Similarly, elves may be slow to make decisions - they don't rush things, especially important things. This can be a disadvantage in a crisis situation. As for magic: There may be more elven magicians per capita, but their magic could be of a different sort. Human magicians may cast fast and deadly elemental spells, while elven magicians may deal in fey magic, which may be just as powerful, but subtler and slower. This could e.g. putting a glamour on a piece of land that make people avoid it without being aware of it, or make plants grow more densely, making passage more difficult. They may summon sprites to perform light tasks like delivering messages and playing tricks on invaders, but they will not (or cannot) summon destructive fire elementals. Misdirection may play a bigger part than walls in defense. [Answer] The longevity issue is a disadvantage to elves (in this context). An orc (lets say) lives to 20 years... is going to go out in a blaze of glory with little regard to himself. live fast, die young because he's going to die young anyway. An elf, who'll live for hundreds of year, has better things to do that fight and die. There's art, sculpture, romance, food, wine, all the things that make life worthwhile. Fighting puts all that at risk, and you have a lot to lose if you live a long time. You can see this in real history, ancient peoples wiuth shorter, unhealthier lifespans were more concerned about their memory than those of us living today who would rather virtually fight from the comfort of a sofa than on a real battlefield. So how many elves will become expert warriors? Hardly any. A few might out of a sense of patriotism or some sort of madness, but the majority will not want to fight at all, and will do all they can - in terms of diplomacy and similar - to ensure they never have to. So elves are more likely to be expert musicians than bowmen, diplomats than warriors. Their approach to physical conflict would be more defensive. That makes the competition between the races much more interesting, they're not fighting in a "which is better - axe or sword" for example, but using totally different ways and means. So maybe Elves are diplomatic, dwarves are traders, orcs are warriors, humans are adaptable. Makes for more differences than treating the races like a Top Trumps card game. [Answer] There are numerous things you could do. When someone is stronger than you like an Orc that strength has to come from somewhere. Comparing humans to Gorillas for example the Gorillas have a higher strength per muscle quantity than humans. But this comes at a cost. The muscles of Gorillas are less precise and also tire out faster. So when orcs and humans fight the humans want to extend the maneuver phase as long as possible to ensure the Orcs are tired, while the Orcs have to be their typical hyper aggressive murder machine both because they will tire quickly and because it is a good demoralization to their opposition which could cause a route. The humans might lose out in the opening moments of the fight but the moment the Orcs start tiring the humans will be able to press their advantage. Against elves its a matter of resiliance to lost members of their society. A hundred lost humans is a small loss compared to a hundred Elves with all their experience and the length of time it takes to get new children and raise them to adulthood to replace the lost members. The humans could simply outbreed the Elves and use the industrial capacity of the extra hands to outbuild the Elves in large scale projects like building fortifications. Great job Elves, you just build the best fortification ever designed! But it took you a massive portion of your society to do so and its very small due to the lack of people to man it. The humans in the meantime build several fortifications of much larger size and a large amount of siege and anti-siege equipment to boot! And what about food consumption? Elves are bigger and stronger, but would undoubtedly require more food to keep the same amount of soldiers alive as humans. And with a more limited amount of elves available their supply trains are much more vulnerable to attack. Arson and industrial sabotage of elf foodproduction would also cause much more famines and problems for their soldiers than if you did the same for humans or Orcs who might be able to live off basically garbage or spoiled food more easily. This way you can easily balance things out. Maybe the humans are more inventive than more morally bound elves? Lets say the Elves never came up with the idea to dip your arrows in a pit of dead animals and feaces as an early form of biological warfare, or that dumping boiling tar from a rampart would be too cruel for Elves while humans have no problem using it. Maybe a species limits itself like the Dwarves that have lots of precious metals to work with but no woodworking to support themselves easily in the field by building simple palisade walls or something similar? [Answer] Quantity verses Quality The elves long lifespan is a blessing and a curse. If you think what a human can achieve in half a century, just imagine what an elf can do in half a millennium. A bowman with the practice of numerous human lifetimes can outshoot any mere man. An elvish bowman is worth a hundred human bowmen. An elvish swordsman is the same and the quality of his weapons and armour surpass anything made by men. The curse is every elf lost is virtually irreplaceable. Human civilizations rise and fall in the lifespan of a single elf. Elves in stories also have the ability of superior eyesight and the ability to see in the dark. Human might try and burn them out of their forests but when they come at night, human can do little to stop them. The advantage humans have is they get ten generations of offspring to every elf. [Answer] I don't think you need to introduce any other balancing factor on top of the characterization you have already done. Humans are better then Elves in technology, they reproduce faster and have more developed social skills. Come back to your world in a few centuries and they will have likely taken over the world while the stronger but bored elves live in reservations. [Answer] ## Long lifespans allow for a lot of procrastination Many fantasy settings assume that, because elves have long life spans, they will be far more experienced as they have more time to learn. However, you could also argue that their long lifespans would allow them to delay things far into the future. Where as a human might delay something for a couple of weeks or months, elves might delay something for a couple of years or decades. Their philosophy may be something along the lines of “our lives are so long that theres no point burning yourself out trying to do everything now”. Humans on the other hand may take the approach of “our lives are so short that we need to fit as much into them as possible”. What this leads to is human militaries having strict training regimes where soldiers spend months at a time continuously training. Human society develops deadlines and schedules where things must be completed on time for fear of punishment (“this building must be constructed this date”, “the delivery needs to be here at this time before this day” etc.) Elven militaries however may train their troops over much longer periods of time, a few weeks here, a few weeks there, but nothing continuous or adhering to a tight schedule. The same can be said for their societies, there is not a specific date something must be done, instead its “within the next few months” or even years. You could amplify this contrast further with clocks. Humans develop sundials and clocks which show the hours, minutes and even seconds of the day. Elves however may not even develop clocks or sundials, “our lives are so long, whats the point in worrying over something as small as minutes or seconds?”. They instead may be content with things like sand timers. If they do develop clocks, they may only have one hand to show the hour, they may even have less numbers on them. --- So, linking this back to your question, elves and humans can be balanced out as: * Although elves theoretically should be better warriors as they have more time to train, the elves train less often and less regularly than humans do. * Young elves are less concerned about leaving a legacy as they have hundreds of years to do that yet, making them less willing to die a hero in war, reducing the number of recruits. * Builders do not adhere to strict deadlines, meaning many fortifications are half built or have not even been constructed yet. * Officers and generals on the battlefield may take weeks or months to make decisions. All of this and more would easily balance out elves against the humans who are substantially better at getting the same things done in a shorter period of time. Whilst one might argue that, in times of war, the elves would drastically speed up their training time, decision making, construction efforts, etc., by the time the war has started, its too late. For a modern day analogy, its like only revising for the test the night before it starts, by that time its too late and any revision will hardly affect the outcome. [Answer] Senility/forgetfulness for elves and endurance for humans. Two separate ideas here: First, you could have the elves get a little batty as they get older. Which would be kind of funny to be honest. As an and/or you can also factor in forgetfulness. Over time, elves my simply get rusty and lose some of the skills that they were once masters of. An elf might be a master sculptor, poet, warrior, and politician during their long life, but not all at the same time. "I used to be able to take a human's head clean off with a single stroke... but that was 300 years ago and my skill with a blade just isn't what it used to be. Ah, those were the days." etc. The second idea is a "buff" for humans. I came across a silly manga called "delicious in dungeon" which has much better world building in it than I expected. In that setting the dwarves are short but powerful and strong, however, they tend to overheat and get tired quickly as a result of their dense musculature. The humans are stronger than say elves or halflings because of size, but can't compete in terms of magic or enhanced senses. Their real advantage is the same one as real-world humans: endurance. Compared to the other fantasy races they don't tire out as quickly and can last in fights longer or travel farther without needing to rest. I really liked this idea because endurance is one of the few physical advantages real humans have over other animals. A well trained human can [outrun a horse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon) over long distances. Well, if it's hot out (being hairless and sweaty is actually good for something!), otherwise the horse will still win. But it's surprising that it's a close race either way. [Answer] Elves are not creative. Humans are. Elves have ritual and learning. They practice the basics their entire lives. They know the routines. They are masters of method and they do it the same way every time, because that way has been proven over the centuries to be the best way. Elves appreciate familiarity because their ways are the best ways and any change must be for the worse. Their songs are amazing and beautiful and all of them are thousands of years old. Humans are scramblers and inventors. They learn the basics and then riff on the basics. They know the routines and they break them routinely, in unexpected ways. Humans appreciate innovation and novelty. Humans like the elf songs, and then they improvise on them and mash them up, which the elves find abhorrent. And the humans find that hilarious. --- I think a corollary to this is that elves would have stone age technology, and their only domestic animal would be dogs. They are not innovators and not adopters. But they would have really really good stone age technology, and really excellent dogs. [Answer] Elves are Superhuman Generally speaking, I agree with the other answers which come down to the fact that Elves are practically "better Humans". They're stronger, faster, eat less, can see in the dark, have better aim, and live a lot longer. However, they have much lower fertility than Humans, so their numbers are far smaller than the ever-reproducing Human species. Elf Disadvantages are a Choice What I'd like to add to this, which could stand believably on its own, is culture. Elves are super-human, but only by like 20-50% (otherwise they'd be demigods). Their disadvantages seem to almost always be cultural decisions. Culture plays a large role in the typical "fantasy races", which are in lots of ways just representations or interpretations of existing (or previously existing) Human cultures. Elf culture is traditionally described as standoffish and disconnected. To add to Elven disadvantages, their culture can be described as standoffish and isolated with a disdain for outsiders. A superiority complex toward other races and general cultural and technological stagnation can make for an interesting faction of otherwise "good" characters. A rigid caste system can also restrict fertility (and therefore balancing out the races) by forcing certain castes to adhere to strict reproductive rules. Useful references: Byzantine nobility, ancient Sparta, the Sivlan Elves (Lord of the Rings), High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy), Dwarves (Dragon Age), Altmer (Skyrim) [Answer] Elves are hedonists and esxapists who easily get addicted to whatever. Poor self control will take care of preventing elves from taking over the world. Take a page from the Overlod series of videogames, wrotten by Rihanna Pratchett (yes, she is related to Terry). Some elves are into weed, so while they might have been bright someday, they are not so smart anymore. ![Florian Greenheart](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y2iip.jpg) Seriously, look at his battle stance. Some elves indulge in saturated fat instead. So they may have agility in their blood, but their overall health prevents them from using it. ![Elven priestess](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kipBq.jpg) [Answer] Make elves dumb It is not a problem for elves to have to repeat a quatrain a hundred times to memorize it - they have hundreds of years to study! So they can accumulate experience, but a 500 y. old elf is no more experienced than a 40 y. old human. And a 100 y. old elf can just barely do math and reading (but a 600-700 y. old elf is a wise old elf). It will be a funny setting after all. :) ]
[Question] [ The question This question has a few parts: 1. Is it possible for a river to naturally form in the shape of a spiral? 2. If not, would an artificially-formed river, in the shape of a spiral, realistically maintain this shape? 3. If this is possible, what sort of a landscape would be necessary? The scenario In the world that I'm building, a small group of people make use of magic to travel to a parallel universe and build a new society. The new planet that they land on has one circular land mass surrounded by water. I was imagining medieval or renaissance level technology for the world that they come from, but I'm open to changing this. Unfortunately, I don't know very much about rivers, except that they flow downward, generally toward an ocean, so elevation is a huge factor. I guess my biggest concern is how this world's landscape would have to be shaped in order for a spiral river to exist. I'm especially interested in this because, for the purpose of the story, I want the world to appear as utopian as possible (i.e. minimal rough terrain, no crazy/jagged mountains, etc.). Necessity of magic? Even though magic exists in this world, I don't intend on it being widely used by the inhabitants, as it's almost impossible to wield. But, I'm wondering if the only way for my beloved spiral river to be formed and maintained is through the use of magic, and some fantastical hand waving. I haven't developed my magic system very much yet (as you can probably tell), and I'd like to get a sense of how much of my world can be formed 'naturally' before I decide what its magic needs to be capable of. Any insights are greatly appreciated! [Answer] 1. No, there is no way to get a natural downhill topological river spiral. 2. Not unless it is made very well 3. Extensive use of concrete and stone and a lot of upkeep. First, rivers change shape continuously. A river's shape is rarely stable for long, since the outer part of a curve undergoes some very strong cutting forces, while the inner parts often undergo deposition. Even if you get a shape with spiral shaped depression (it can't simply be a bowl), it will not exist for long as the the water cuts it apart. Second, rivers occasionally flood, and in doing so a spiral river will cut across its bank and stop being a spiral instead following the downward slope. As the water drains, this new shape will cut itself into the river, as it will experience far stronger cutting force than the spiral. People seriously underestimate the sheer cutting power of flowing water. The stronger the slope the better at cutting it is, and cross cutting a spiral will have a lot of power, thus it will not exist for long even if you somehow got it to form. this is why rivers can cut through uplifting mountains. You can make a man made one as easily as you can make any man made river, it just takes, time, money, and maintenance. Maintenance is key such a shape will need significant maintenance over the long run. [Answer] I guess it all depends on how circular you want your spiral to be and how many turns you want your spiral to have. For a natural river, which is admittendly not very circular, with 3/4 turns I offer the [Brahmaputra river](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmaputra_River). It starts north of the Himalayas, far west of the river mouth, flows eastward far east of the mouth, then south through the eastern end of the Himalayas where it takes a turn to the west in the valley between the Himalayas and the Meghalaya mountain range before turning south again to get lost in the Bangladesh delta system. [![Brahmaputra and tributaries](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5PpTc.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5PpTc.jpg) It would have flowed more to north, making it more circular, if the Tibetan plateau above Sikkim and Bhutan would have provided more of a bulge and the mouth would have been further to the west, making the circle fuller, if the Meghalaya range would have progressed further to the west. More than one turn seems hard to do naturally, given plate tectonics and weathering of older ranges. For instance, for the Brahmaputra this would have meant going west until the western end of the Himalayas, then turning north again (there would have to be a major fault/rift valley in the Himalayas at this point) where it would loop round the northern end of the Tibetan Plateau, turning south east of the Himalayas again, perhaps through the course of the upper Mekong, providing 1 1/2 turns. But this is worldbuilding so it possible to posit a central mountain range with a succession of older, lower mountain ranges north and south of it and series of shear rifts and gorges east and west of the central mountain range, much like the [Three Parallel Rivers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Parallel_Rivers) area east of the Himalays. The river would then originate in the central mountain range, flow through each trough between the the younger and older + 1 mountain range to the north and south, cutting through west and east to the north and south through the shear gorges. Unlikely, yes, but impossible, no. [Answer] An artificially formed river leading into an open pit mine could follow the spiraling road (perhaps concrete reinforced & water resistant) down to the bottom of the pit, where it enters an underground cave to become an underground river. [![open pit mine](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8iR5w.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8iR5w.jpg) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/15Lss.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/15Lss.jpg) If the pit had a water-vulnerable rock only at the bottom, like limestone or chalk, the pit itself might survive for longer. And if it were on the side of a mountain or valley the water could have a short trip to emerge from the cave. Even without an exit to the cave, if there were extensive mining done at the bottom of the pit, it might take the river a while to fill everything in with water. Like in the image below, if a river started to flow down into the pit mine and filled the underground mine below it: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wv7D6.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wv7D6.jpg) [Answer] Sure it is. Very unlikely, but still possible. Possible reasons might include: A giant [fossilised spiral whelk](https://www.google.com/search?q=fossilised+spiral+whelk&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjDxd3Dso3eAhWEDywKHSDiDrgQsAR6BAgEEAE&biw=1022&bih=585). Since this is an alien world, such a thing could exist, with the river forming due to rainfall collecting in the central lobe and following the shape of the shell out. This would have to be a very small river, more of a trickle, as a strong current would quickly dissolve the limestone. A freak accident when a lake of lava, just out of a volcano, ran into a cyclone. The eye of the cyclone settled in the middle of the lava lake and forced the surface into a spiral shape, while the cold wind and rain solidified the lava before it could settle. Again, very unlikely, requiring a very strong cyclone that held its position long enough, near a volcano, whose heat would try to push it away. [Answer] Rivers usually flow straight down gradient but there is a phenomena called something like "structurally bounded flow" (I'll put a link in when I can remember the exact name), in which the underlying bedrock has an unusual impact on the way rivers form and flow. Usually this is in the form of rivers that are unusually straight or have sharp 90° bends because they're following fault scars in the ground but I can think of a possibility for a spiral from. Consider the [ring-dike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_dike) this gives an essentially circular structure that water will erode slower than the surrounding rock. Now consider a series of nested ring-dikes, which does occur in nature; if there is a spring in the centre of the nest, like the waters of [Emi Koussi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emi_Koussi) the water will flow outwards pooling within the circles until it finds a weak spot to break through the successive walls. If the weakness were supplied by a fault formed after the nest it's possible, though not naturally very likely, that the water would spiral out rather than cutting straight along said fault. [Answer] Perhaps. Not for long in geological timescale, but long enough in human terms. You would need to start with a spiral valley that starts high in the centre of a landmass and descends outwards. You couldn't have the river cut its own valley because it would never follow a spiral path, so you'd need a geological event that did this for you. Something that pushed up a central massif and simultaneously twisted it around. I doubt that normal plate tectonics would do something like that, but you could imagine a shield volcano caught between two geological plates that move past each other and create a shear force that in turn twists the volcano into a swirl over geological time. I doubt any self-respecting geologist would give me the time of day after this image, but hey, we're the world-builders. [Answer] Here is real river spiral from the headwaters of the Murrumbidgee in Australia! Water coming off a ridgeline saddle at -35.671290°, 148.616018° runs east at 90° for 100 metres, where it then forms a proper recognizable watercourse running at 45° North East. Over 2.25 km this watercourse curves to the left for 135°, exiting into McPhersons Creek running west. McPhersons Creek then runs WSW for 4.3 km to exit into the Murrumbidgee River. The Murrumbidgee runs south for 13.5 km, then tracks South West [bar a couple of northerly indents] for 70 km to a point 9 km north of Cooma. Here it sharply turns to the north, traveling this direction for 82 km to the southern suburbs of Canberra. Here it turns to the north west, then travels northerly again for 70 km to enter Burrinjuck dam. From this point it effectively tracks 840 km west to Morgan in South Australia, where it turns south and exits into the Southern Ocean after traveling a further 190 km. Within this 190 km southerly track there are many turns and loops that head back to the east or north east. The most northerly flowing of these bends is Big Bend, 70 km south of Morgan where the river flows 30° east of north for 3.5 km, however as this is well north of the starting latitude it could be argued it is not spiralish. A much less controversial end would be the 14 km Monteith to Talem Bend section that flows 125° south East. This ending at Talem Bend gives a spiral of 685°, whereas if the Big Bend turn is accepted there is 780° spiral. So spiral rivers are definitely possible!!! This image is of the spiral. It excludes the final 800 km. The starting 100 metre easterly flow exaggerated to be 1,000 metres. [![spiral River](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Hq8H.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Hq8H.png) [Answer] It may be feasible on a large scale and only with human or magic intervention. Let's imagine the circular land mass has a more or less regular dome shape (like a volcanic island, just bigger). Whenever it rains, the water flows directly from the center of the island to the nearest shore and into the sea. Now someone gets the great idea to hold some of the water back in short-term reservoirs. They start digging channels in parallel to the shore line to keep the water from flowing directly into the sea. The logical thing to do is to increase the size of those reservoirs. If that's not possible, you dig the next reservoir some kilometers closer to the shore to hold back the water that escaped your first reservoir. Now let's say that for some reason the people don't want bigger reservoirs, but redirect the water into other parts of the land instead. They continnue digging their channels longer and longer, always trying to stay in parallel with the shore line. If they cooperate to connect and elongate their channels bit by bit, they could end up creating one gigantic channel spiraling over their entire land mass, but only: * if there is no natural river flowing directly to the sea or deep valley redirecting the water directly to the sea * if the channels are continnuoisly maintained or made out of strong, corrosion-resistant materials and there are no sudden, strong rainfalls flooding the channels and changing their path * if the soil everywhere on the land mass can support a river (or is magically moulded) or the channels are lined with water-proof materials * At some point the people building the channels have to come together and plan how to connect their individual channels to form a spiral [Answer] ## How far from the source to the sea? There are certain constraints to the length of the river and the way it will flow. > > Meanders change their shape perpetually. The current state of the meanders is categorized by the numeric ratio between the length of the river bed (the water course length), and the length of the river in air-distance measure (the distance between its end points). This ratio is called: "The meander-ratio". The most common meander-ratio is approximately 3:2. - [[source]](http://www.academia.edu/2619483/The_Mathematics_of_River_Meanders) > > > It goes on to say that the river Jordan has a ratio of 2:1 which is unusually high, so you're looking at an upper limit of twice the air distance from source to sea as the crow flies. The ratio of a spiral is of course considerably higher than that. --- There may be a brief period where your river does a full loop of a hill without artificial assistance, but it's unlikely to last more than a couple of flood seasons before straightening itself out. [Answer] Two potential solutions; a river that wraps around a mountain, and a spiral in which the centermost point ends in a waterfall. ]
[Question] [ Imagine a world like Earth (same size, distance from a sun-like star, gravity, atmosphere, that went through similar geological periods) but which was truly created by a creator (aka a God). Due to fossils being discovered very early - the people of this world believed strongly in evolution and the idea of a creator was seen as ludicrous. That was, until, the Charles Darwin equivalent of this world decided to classify all the species into a taxonomical tree - Because if evolution was a thing, that would mean all animals would share a common ancestor. Due to the animals of this world being created by a Creator and not by evolution - what he got wasn't a tree, but more or less of a collection of created kinds. Now the question is: What is be the best scientific way to create taxonomical ranks for "collections" of living things rather than a " branching tree" of living things? Example: We use a branching tree of taxonomical hierarchy - Life - Domain - Kingdom - Phylum - Class - Order - Family - Genus - Species But that sort of taxonomy doesn't seem to work when things don't share common ancestors, because branches would come out from "nowhere". Here are a couple of rules of the world that might be useful: 1. Species can evolve from a created kind (aka their DNA can mutate) - So there can be both Created and Evolved snakes 2. A new Created species simply "appear" and the first generation has non-existing genetic "ancestry" (aka a genetic material of a created species will only lead you as far back as the first generation of that species - you won't be able to trace it any further because there is nowhere to go to) 3. A collection is not like a genus (aka, two species in it will not always produce viable offspring, a collection is more like a " divine cookie batch" of (not always, but often) similar lifeforms. Like fish - In this world sharks wouldn't be "a fish" per se - they would likely share no links which fish and would be all classed in their own "shark collection" - Note: To be clear, this question asks what form of Taxonomy hierarchy system would better suit a world in which life is created, not evolved - Because a branching tree wouldn't be suitable if A) complex life can "spring" at any moment. B) Almost no life form shares "genetic relatives" since they were created uniquely [Answer] In general, we classify things according to how we perceive them being similar or different. Fish, sharks, and whales, for example, are quite similar. They're cylindrical swimming things that live in the water and use fins for propulsion. Fish and trees, on the other hand, are quite different. One swims in the water, the other is practically dormant on the land. ## Just Use Standard Taxonomies (Mostly) Genetic taxonomies on Earth would actually suit your world pretty well, if your world basically has a bunch of Earth-like life on it. Things in one taxonomic group, because of the genetic similarity, tend to be suited to similar behaviors in similar environments, and therefore tend to survive that way. You don't see very many mammals flying or swimming because that's quite an evolution to get from walking on land to those places. Of course, bats and dolphins put a kink in such classifications, but it's not hard to just call bats "birds with teats" and dolphins "weird fish". ## Aliens Have Categories When you start getting into stuff that's very alien, you'll have to use your imagination. But it often becomes easier to create overlapping groups than hierarchies once you start getting too much weirdness. A bat might be a mammal-bird, while a snake is a land-eel-fish. You go can hog-wild if you want, or just create a couple dozen primary classifications based on Earth life that you shoehorn all your alien things into. ## Just Extend Our Taxonomies Since your world still has evolution with all its charms, the obvious taxonomy is actually the one we already use with one extra at the head: Variant, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. This "variant" rank categorizes according to which creation event the given species originates in. You might label them by date, location, or both. If creation events happen a lot, it probably makes sense to trim several ranks off, because most things end up being unnecessary: [![Taxonomy with one species in each of two phylums with a lot of unnecessary intermediate steps.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NHWJv.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NHWJv.png) So you end up with a lot of variants that each have two or three ranks. On the other hand, if only a handful of creation events have ever occurred over millions to billions of years, evolution will be the driving force behind speciation, so you'll end up with a few variants that otherwise have normal-looking taxonomies. ## Re-Use of Rank Names Your scientists will likely be split about whether to re-use common ranks (do multiple variants have an "animal" kingdom) or to use different terms for all of them. It's more convenient to call all animal-like entities "animals", but less precise. The debate may have inadvertently caused a fire in the opposing group's printing press. I mean, it was clearly caused by magicoso->aldfey->pixies. However, maybe the creation events spit out a lot of lifeforms, but it actually re-uses a lot of them. The hound from Psinog147 is compatible with the coyote from Barple39 and the fox from Crenatia952. In this case, you'll start getting a lot of creatures that basically are in the same family, so you'd see the classification take that into account. ## Your Variants Aren't Genetically Compatible You mentioned that each creation event has non-compatible species. If you just meant the species can't naturally produce viable offspring (like a wolf and an ostrich), I wouldn't change too much. If different species can be entirely different forms of life, so even the genetic code is made of different proteins (or even different base elements), you'd probably want more classification ranks. Anything that's got the same base proteins is in a group together and anything with the same base elements is in a group together. So you could potentially have Variant -> Elemental Group -> Base Proteins -> Kingdom -> Etc. At this point, the "variant" group might more academic than practically significant, and might get dropped as a taxonomy rank, instead being a category of some kind. As Spitemaster points out in [another answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/222377/11879), your creatures with different proteins or base elements might have some weird interactions you can use for flavor or plot points. For example, silicon-based lifeforms could be toxic to hydro-carbon lifeforms, so non-adapted HC "predators" could end up eating an SI "prey" that ends up digesting the HC dude from the inside out. ## Closing Notes You can mix and match all of these methods as you see fit. You can also use different methods for different kinds of life, or for different cultures in your world. The biggest thing is to come up with a set of rules on how you want to classify things then stick to them as best you can. When it gets weird, improvise, and don't be afraid to make things that seem wonky. Real life is sometimes wonky too. [Answer] Taxonomy was started by Linnaeus way before any concept of evolution was developed by humans, actually in a time where a creating god making the world was the firm belief. Taxonomy doesn't require evolution to work: it just classifies organisms based on similarities. It can get help from genetics to assign elements, but it can work fine also without it. At the end it is just a labeling system which poses no constraints on nature. [Answer] ![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WnyYx.jpg) Its Called The [Great Chain of Being](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being) In Scholastic Philosophy, all creation was taxonomically organized on a hierarchal framework with God at the very top and descending from Angels to Humans and from Humans to more complex animals all the way down to inert matter. In other words people already did this in the past. [Answer] A bit of a frame challenge: Why do living organisms need to be different than in the real world? All you need to do is interpret the data differently, as many people do today. As there's no reason why creatures with similar-looking skeletons need to be from related creatures, the problem ultimately comes down to what a world created recently would look like. Your creator could have buried hydrocarbons (oil) for the use of his creations. Radioactive materials could be found in steadyish-state concentrations to help people learn about physics, if that aligns with your god's purpose. You can essentially always come up with explanations as to how the world got to be the way it is, and in many cases it requires advanced science to determine that getting from state A to state B is impossible without active intervention. This includes biologically. To have a "forest" of life rather than a tree, the changes would be subtle. Having irreducible complexity is perhaps the big one - but again, people are very good at coming up with possible ways things could happen, and there'd be doubt as to whether there actually is irreducible complexity. --- For a more direct and obvious forest, you can have them biologically incompatible. Have some creatures DNA left-chiral and others right-chiral. Maybe some are silicon-based rather than carbon. Maybe chirality of amino acids is also in play (you could have some creatures be left-DNA and left-protein, others right-DNA and left-protein, etc). There'd be big consequences of that - a left-protein creature eating a right-protein creature might not get any usable protein, and it would thus be less nutritious. Silicon-based lifeforms might have significantly different characteristics than carbon-based ones (but maybe that's a separate question). [Answer] According to plenty of people, you're describing *the real world. The "tree" works because some animals are similar, because thermodynamics means that originally created kinds tend to separate into species, and... because God just made animals in a way that's conducive to being classified according to "levels" of similarity. (Possibly for reasons of physics, like how there's a size limit on critters without lungs.) Assuming you want* the tree model to not work, what you'd do is have the categories be less well-defined. Large, endothermic invertebrates with lungs. Furry, placental exotherms with avian respiratory systems. Fish with lungs and gills. Mammals that lay eggs. Basically, instead of being able to classify animals according to a hierarchy of features, you have a set of features that are mixed and matched at random. At best, you get something that's still vaguely "tree-like", but rather than staying separate, the branches split and recombine all over the place. In short, you don't just have one [platypus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus), you have lots of them. [Answer] ## Life is named by Properties, not hierarchy Since there is nothing in this world keeping a bird from having a turtle shell or a dog from having gills, there is no point in classifying animals in a hierarchal way at all. In our world, taxonomic names are breadcrumbs of that animals linage, but where intelligent design is at play, the closest thing to taxonomic naming that would serve any purpose would be about identifying the organisms properties. Think about how we use words like Producer, Decomposer, Herbivore, or Omnivore to describe an organism's diet. Or Solitary, Pack, or Hive to describe its social structure. Since a lifeform could have any number of properties, we would not have taxonomical names, just fact sheets for tracking things like size, speed, habitate, diet, etc. ]
[Question] [ I'm imagining a setting with 16th-17th century tech level. In this era, there's the rise of guns and blackpowder, and slavery too. Slavery was used mostly for agricultural reasons, but there were a few with artisanal skills. Imagine an empire that wants to mass produce guns in order to wage war and trade for more slaves. In this empire, some wealthy individuals made a contract: if the empire gave them slaves, they could mass produce guns. The guns produced might require the least skill possible. Gunsmithing is an art, like blacksmithing and woodworking. I don't thingk you could get any slave to make a flintlock, but maybe a simpler lock: a matchlock. I could imagine too, that this practice lower the prices of guns. So, what do you think? Is possible to mass produce guns with slave labor? [Answer] In that time period, firearms (and every other complex product) were handcrafted by an artisan. It was certainly possible to train slaves as artisans, but you had to treat them nearly as well as free laborers to get a similar quality product. Also, having dozens or hundreds of artisans working in parallel does not reduce the unit cost appreciably. Finally, teaching slaves how to make firearms this way seems likely to be bad for your health. Mass production, which means unskilled labor producing high volumes of identical standardized parts, or assembling same, is what will deliver the cost reduction you are looking for. More importantly, you don’t need to train factory workers much or treat them well, so disposable wage slaves will be cheaper than your valuable chattel slaves. And since the product process is distributed across hundreds of workers who only know one tiny piece, and they can’t follow it without your factory and tools anyway, there is little risk of them making guns of their own on the side. This change was a distinct (and enormous) step on the tech tree, which unfortunately had not yet arrived (at least in the West) in your time period. The first mass-produced firearm with interchangeable parts was made by Eli Whitney in 1798, just a few years after his (in)famous cotton gin and roughly the same time as the idea was applied to thousands of other products. Could a time traveler from our time pull it off? Probably. But if so, the idea would be copied and applied to literally every field, moving the start of the Industrial Revolution forward to whatever time period they arrived in—and all the social and economic changes that came with it, both good and bad. [Answer] # If mostly willing indentured servants, who like their lives, yes. Being a prisoner doesn't make you any less able to make stuff. Slaves can certainly manufacture stuff. # If they are brutally treated slaves it's a bad idea. Slaves with guns can rebel and kill their masters. Being a slave doesn't make you less able to make stuff. [Answer] The Ottoman empire had a very strong artillery, made out of the cannons built by their [Ungarian underlings](https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/medieval-renaissance/ottoman-super-cannon-the-bombard-that-built-an-empire/) at the end of middle age. The key point is that you need to provide sufficient reward and incentive for doing this, meaning not only letting them live to the end of the day. So, rather then "slaves", you better treat them as "highly skilled immigrants". [Answer] I believe that the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia was one of the most important factories in the CSA. <https://www.nps.gov/articles/tred.htm> > > By the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, half of the 900 workers were slaves, including many in skilled positions.[5] By 1860, Anderson's father-in-law Dr. Robert Archer had joined the business and Tredegar became a leading iron producer in the country. > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tredegar_Iron_Works#Management_under_Joseph_Reid_Anderson_(1841_%E2%80%93_Civil_War)> > > Its wartime production included the iron plating for the first Confederate ironclad warship, the CSS Virginia which fought in the historic Battle of Hampton Roads in March 1862; credit for approximately 1,100 artillery pieces during the war, about half of the South's total domestic production of artillery during the war years of 1861–1865, including the development of the Brooke rifle;[4] a giant rail-mounted siege cannon. The company also manufactured railroad steam locomotives in the same period. > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tredegar_Iron_Works#American_Civil_War> So apparently a weapons factory can operate ehere a significant fraction of the workers are slaves, and in a conflict where the specific goal the weapons are produced for is to keep the slaves - including the slave workers in the factory - enslaved. [Answer] The Chosen by S. M. Stirling, showed guns and other military equipment being manufactured by state-owned slaves in factories. The tech level shown was roughly 1920s-30s. This worked for the state that did it, in the short term, but eventually contributed to its downfall. I agree that with artisanal production the use of slaves does not really gain mass production. Artisans must be trained and trusted, and treated at least somewhat well. Only if something like interchangeable parts is introduced does one gain mass production. There were some slaves used in what was essentially factory work to produce military equipment during the US Civil War but this of course is at a tech level significantly higher than the question proposes. ]
[Question] [ So we have a space-saving species that build an space ark to survive a cataclysmic event on their homeworld and save their species. They have successfully terraformed the new target planet but now have a 3 space arks to maintain. Assuming they don't want to colonize another planet what are potential uses for these spacecraft? [Answer] ## Strip it for parts Your ship is going to be large and will be made up of many processed pieces: support beams, shielding panels, appliances, computers, plumbing, conduits, electrical and data cables, generators/engines/reactors, etc. Strip it for parts. Even if you have to dismantle it in space and then shuttle the parts to the surface, doing so is probably faster than all of the steps necessary to build those things on the ground: locating raw materials, digging mines, building processing/refining plants to process the raw materials (without the processed materials to do so)... So repurpose anything and everything you can from the arks to start your colony on the surface. Shields become walls and roofs. Appliances and computers are reused as-is. Generators too. These won't last forever. But they should last long enough for your colony to build out the infrastructure necessary to create their own. ## Recycle Even the materials you can't reuse as-is can be recycled into the raw materials for other things. Melting down the steel to make new materials is going to be faster than mining, refining, and then making new materials from local resources. ## Space infrastructure Maybe some parts of the ship are left in orbit. Why not keep some parts of the original ship up there and build it out as a science station? Or as a weather observatory? Or to build/deploy satellites? Explore other planets in the system? Maybe the stripped-down arks become mining vessels, sent out to recover asteroids because that's more environmentally safe than surface mining on your new colony world. ## Some combination Probably, you're going to end up with a mix of all of the above. Much of the ships are brought to the surface to serve as first-generation dwellings while everyone works to start food production and the critical industries necessary to become self-sufficient. But some parts will be just melted down / torn apart / etc. to make raw materials. And the left-over skeletons become ships capable of exploring the new solar system and/or mining non-habitable worlds/asteroids to supply the new colony. Think of it like this: Why worry with the additional weight of packing flat-pack shelters and furniture and appliances when the ship will be full of them? Much easier to keep using what you have than to build new. [Answer] Colony ship, again x 3! The thing about getting your homeworld cataclysmed: it induces a certain fear that you could get cataclysmed again. And fool me twice, shame on me. Putting all the eggs in one basket is not the best strategy. And here are these low mileage arks, good to go and with plenty of tread left on their space tires. Also: their terraformer teams learned a ton doing up their New Target Planet, but now just sit around talking about the glory days, collecting their pensions. Getting that crew off world would be good. And there are a bunch of young folks who are keen to make a new world of their own, with a name more hip than New Target Planet. Each of the 3 arks is sent off to three new potential homeworlds, with the goal of replicating their initial success. There is a bit of a competitive fraternal spirit between these three. But also a lot of love and as opposed to the first time when all there was back home were radioactive zombies, this time each of the 3 can support each other, and also be supported by their folks on NTP. [Answer] I think CaM is on the right track with the infrastructure bit. Why waste 3 perfectly good, ready made space station/mining platforms? As they are arks, even with the space-saving nature of the people (or am I interpreting that wrong?), they would still be fairly large which could be good for an orbital hub of some sort. Obviously the tech base is there, so regular space travel could be a thing (or possibly not, is civilian space flight a factor?). Turning one into a mining hub near the whatever counts as the main resource area and another into a transit hub orbiting the planet could work well. Depending on the drive emissions and size of the resource haulers, you might not want them entering your atmosphere. If your people haven't yet discovered the virtue of pacifism or, conversely, have discovered that the universe will do it's very best to kill them, then perhaps a large, mobile, military command and control/emergency management facility is warranted as well. [Answer] History Why not keep it as a monument or even make a museum out of it? The future generations will surely appreciate that. It will stand for a new beginning. A first step. But it will also remind the people that they had to leave their old planet and whatever mistakes led to that, they have to be better. [Answer] Live in them Your colonists have just spent generations traveling to, and then terraforming this new planet. They've lived on the arks all that time, and the arks don't suddenly become uninhabitable just because you no longer care to use the engines. Many(all?) of your colonists have no idea what living on a planet is like anyway. Some would prefer to stay in space, they can always visit the planet, after all. [Answer] ## Manufacturing There's lots of things that can be done in microgravity that are more expensive/difficult to impossible in a planet's gravitational field. Growing many types of crystals, making "perfect" ball bearings, etcetera. Plus, getting rid of waste gasses and heat is trivial. ## Health Care Burn victims, cardio-pulmonary issues and the like will be easier to live with and provide lower risk settings for recovery in weightlessness. ## Max Security Prison It's a lot harder to escape and "blend in" when you have to leave orbit in a small shuttle. If the prisoners riot, just start lowering the oxygen level. ## High Risk Research Say you want to play with space warps, nanotech or genetics. Here's an isolated place to do that with lower risk of it endangering the population. [Answer] So you’re all done terraforming and probably feel like having a bit of a symbolic gesture to celebrate you’re done and not going anywhere else in a hurry - so how about some really good fireworks to celebrate. Feels like option, 1. Bring some/all of them in on a steep (enough) reentry (after all we don’t want another cataclysm on our hands) 2. Presumably there’s also a sun. Oh and if you haven’t met your new inter-planetary neighbours yet - maybe keep a spare. [Answer] Frame challenge. > > They have successfully terraformed the new target planet but now have a 3 space arks to maintain. > > > Actually they have successfully terraformed the planet BECAUSE they scrapped the ships. Just like Hernan Cortes in Veracruz, at the beginning of his conquest. Why did he do it? Because retreat is easy if you have the option. Because having an exit strategy means being able to not really commit to the project. Because after generations of comfortable living in the controlled environment of the ship it is scary to go down to an unknown, hostile world and work hard there to make it habitable. But what is needed is exactly acting with determination, in spite of fears. This is an extremely dangerous action for a whole population, aye. But completely needed. How you do it is up to your story. The leader(s) could just issue orders if they were to have te authority Cortez had (he had to hang and lash to get his way) or simulate an incident or (even better) a terrorist attack. Why the last is better? because it gives the population the threat they need to gather around the leader(s) and be guided down to the planet towards a bright future.... ]
[Question] [ I want to create a world where there are large airships, but the technology available is still basically pre industrial. I don’t think there is any way to achieve this without using magic (if you can think of a way please let me know extra points!). The world is an Earth analog. But I’m not a fan of magic so I want to minimize its use. What is the best way to incorporate a little essential magic to enable my airships whilst preventing widespread industrialization by magic? I also want to make it as easy as possible to suspend disbelief so a simple magical effect that ties in with the real world seamlessly would be good. The ideal set up would minimize the use of magic and maximize the use of real world non magical mechanisms as far as possible. A poor solution would involve extensive, varied and arbitrary magical interventions to make it all work. Such as a magical lifting force, a magical moving force with a magical fuel supply and so on. [Answer] You don't need magic to explain pre-industrial airships, just more abundant and accessible sources of naturally occurring helium than real Earth has. [Hot air balloons](https://balloonfiesta.com/Hot-Air-History) are (arguably) pre-industrial; certainly they require only Renaissance-level technology to manufacture. Your limitation there is the fuel; to get a big enough hot-air balloon to consider it an airship, you need a fast-burning fuel which means having a patroleum industry, or at least an advanced coal industry. [Thermal Airships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_airship) also have a number of drawbacks. However, helium airships remain desireable, and are limited mainly due to [current shortages of helium](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a4046/why-is-there-a-helium-shortage-10031229/). But if your pseudo-Earth had multiple natural gas pockets with large reserves of helium, and some of these were close enough to the surface to be reachable via pre-industrial mining techniques, then you could have a source of helium for airships. There are some handwavy aspects to this (like, an Earth with more helium would also have more radioactive elements near the surface, which would have numerous other effects), but IHMO it beats inventing a whole system of magic. This also gives you some story hooks, because control of the helium mines would be a source of wealth and politically contentious -- likely even a cause of wars. There's three other aspects to the airship. One is a frame, which is the easiest part. Laminated woods were quite advanced by the late 17th century, and work quite well for light but strong frames, so much that the [largest airplane in the mid-20th century](https://www.evergreenmuseum.org/the-spruce-goose) was built that way. So, likely fantastically expensive because of the amount of work involved, but possible. The envelope is more of a challenge. Helium leaks fast, and we're talking cloth here. Rubberized cloth existed late pre-industrial, but would be quite heavy. I don't know enough other materials science to say whether other cloths available in the 18th century (like silk) would have been able to retain helium sufficiently well. Although again, losing altitude can be a story hook. (per Sebastien below, Goldbeaters Skin would have worked, although would have required slaughtering huge herds of oxen) The final bit is propulsion, which would most likely be fan-shaped "oars" driven by humans, unless you want to advance the invention of the rotary fan by quite a bit. This would effectively make your airships "floating triremes", and they wouldn't be able to go very fast, or take on any kind of headwind to speak of. That's the "no magic" solution. If you want "minimal magic", you'd be applying it in 3 places: the extraction of helium, the gasproofing of the envelope, and propulsion (like making those fan-oars more powerful than they really are). [Answer] If you compare pre-industrial ships to modern ships you might scream in horror, even for those used when cruising the oceans. Why not using the same approach with your airships? There is no OSHA or similar safety-worried entity around. Hot air balloons were invented at the dawn of industrial revolution, just go big on those, and have them pushed around by winds. Maybe allow some very limited maneuvering with hand or beast propelled propellers. Again, not too different from those ships which in case of necessity could be moved by rowing sailors. [Answer] Quite a challenge: You need large quantities of lightweight metal (aluminum, usually electrolyzed from bauxite), motors and fuel for the powered flight, lifting gas, and long-distance communication for the weather reports and distress calls. * You could keep bauxite electrolysis a tightly guarded secret. Nobody knows how that mining town in the valley does it, but they somehow get aluminum out of their worthless clayey rocks. It's a real head-scratcher. * Driving motors seem a bit far-fetched for pre-industry, and steam engines (with fuel) are simply too heavy and fire-prone to seem plausible, so you might need to push a bit more magic here. Wind-summoning charms or some such. Cool change: If the airship is using controlled-wind ballooning (instead of powered flight), then it need not be sausage-shaped anymore. Without the weight of motors and fuel, the passenger and cargo capacity increases. Finally, reasonable temporary control of wind makes takeoffs and landings much safer. * Lifting gas can come from alchemy or chemistry instead of electrolyzing water. Might want to add a charm to improve the gasbags...and to make them fire-resistant while you're at it. * Long-distance communications (weather reporting) can be done through some flavor of telepathy or sorcery, short-distance ground-to-air can use heliograph (day) or lantern (night). Distress calls can use good old signal rockets. In real-life history, bad weather shredded more WWI airships than combat did (that's why weather reporting is on the list). Fire from both causes was an ever-present concern. All of this does mean that airship travel will be expensive: That mining town charges a lot for aluminum, chemists need to acquire tons of hydrogen-generating chemicals, reliable wind-charms aren't cheap, and weather-stations and heliographs need to be staffed regardless of the traffic. However, that also means some your characters can have interesting-sounding careers as charm-sanitizers and journeyman heliographers and alchemists. [Answer] Lift them with hot air balloons powered by coal or wood fires? (probably multiple per large ship) That's not really very high tech. The only problem is that it takes a whole lot of balloon-volume per unit weight. Another solution is to use large rigid containers and actually pump the air out of them to make vacuum, which could be done with 1600s technology on Earth (noting that "vacuum" really just means significantly lower air pressure than ambient in this context). You can also, of course, use the classic Zeppelin method of pumping a light gas into a balloon, which will have a lower density for a given pressure than air. In a fantasy world, this could be something that doesn't even exist on Earth, but, even on Earth, hydrogen is much easier to get than helium. Helium is super rare on Earth and mined from radioactive uranium deposits where it gets trapped underground, whereas hydrogen was isolated as early as 1671 by reacting acids with iron, and can even be made by reacting iron with steam (as Lavoisier did in the late 1700s), and is readily makable now by electrolyzing water, but is mostly made by heating up natural gas in the absence of air. It's also worth noting that methane, the main component of natural gas, is significantly lighter than air (as is water vapor/steam, which is probably more useful, so a steam balloon is actually more powerful than a hot air balloon, though has the problem that the temperature in it must stay above boiling). Another classic fantasy solution is to have some kind of antigravity rocks that occur naturally in the world. That is technically "magic", and such rocks would have lots of uses and require some world-building explanations, but it doesn't really require anyone involved in making the airships to have actual magical powers, just to use available "magical" objects. This second method should probably be used in combination with the first if one assumes that the weight of antigravity rocks cannot be controlled in-flight, since you would want your ship to fall down and not up, and it's unclear how you could make up-falling ship go back down when you wanted it to. Materials with either negative-weight, 0-weight, or some other fantasy response to gravity, space, and time could be used to make large structures lightweight, maybe only slightly above 0-weight so that the temperature (and therefore density) of the air in comparatively small balloons would control how fast it moved up or down and to what altitude it would settle. (Air density of both ambient air and air in the balloons drops as you go up because air pressure drops, so that affects things.) It's also possible to make building airships easier by saying that the air on your planet is heavier. (I don't think lower gravity would help if balloons are used, although that does make powered flight, like what birds, bugs, planes, and helicopters do, easier.) [Answer] Looking at this, and depending on the type of large airship you'd like (real dimensions like the [Graf Zeppelin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin) or pure fantasy types with full up sailing ships attached), the magic you want (IMHO) would be something along the lines of weight manipulation (for obvious reasons) and some sort of air magic (to actually steer). The fins are there on real-world Zeppelin, but to my knowledge they actually steer with the propellers. Though Lockheed Martin and HAV are both working on hybrid designs that look promising ([Lockheed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_P-791), [HAV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Air_Vehicles_HAV_304/Airlander_10)) To minimize the use of magic, it could be a crazily complex ritual, or they have to have specialized people physically carve complex (and highly secret or forgotten) runes onto the craft in order to achieve the desired effect. They could still need the gas cells to achieve lift but require the reduced weight magic to get the sizes you'd like. You could even use it as a theme, "Remember the Santa Catalina? The company skimped on the re-up for her runes, now she's gone down with all hands." [Answer] ## Sea Breeze Make the story fit by having it around the coast of a huge Island. Then hybrid-airship gliders can be kited into the air and surf the updraft of the sea breeze. At night they could drop ballast and negative surf the downdraft of the night sea-breeze. [Answer] Can you alter physics? For example, you can introduce some mineral that has negative mass, so that when set free, it does not fall down to Earth, but instead rushes up. Obviously it is found in mines, where a thick layer of normal materials prevents it from leaving Earth. Basically, this is similar to helium balloons mentioned in other answers, but does not require large hull, does not have leakage problems etc. Another approach may be the classical idea of a material that blocks gravity. --- Or, if you'd better have minimal magic, you can have magic that works only as certain altitude. For example, due to some magical field any solid object would float in air when brought to a specific altitude. You can even invent some explanation why the magic field does not extend down to ground level — e.g. because its power is dissipated due to too many solid objects here, so at ground level the magic field simply makes objects weight slightly less than normal, and nobody notices it. Then you launch your planes with hot-air balloons (or maybe from a high tower, especially because the same magic field can make building high towers easier), and after reaching the needed altitude the plane will fly by itself. You can even attach a long rope to the plane, and then have some person (or a team of slaves) on the ground that will simply pull your plane (though probably this is not really efficient). Or you can have oars, and note that you probably do not need strong oars, so you can have a large-area oars made akin to hand fans. Landing will be done by moving the plane to lower altitudes (using same oars, for example), and then the plane will fall down. To make descent slow enough you can use also use hot-air ballons, or you may attach wings to the plane that will make it glide down (probably possible with middle-age technology), or you can use a parachute. ]
[Question] [ Pardon in advance for the formatting, as I am writing this on mobile. In the world I'm building, I'm exploring a new idea for a species. I would like it to have a long gestation time, and to be particularly vulnerable while pregnant, so that it needs to be protected by others of its kind in this period of its life. For the gestation time, I've found that most animals with a long gestation time are the largest creatures living on earth (with exceptions), and having a complex/developed brain help. Those are merely observations, since I didn't find any scientific explanation behind that. I tried, in the same way, to find information about species that would be especially weak during pregnancy, and/or scientific evidence as of why a species would have such problems, without luck. Any ideas or source that could enrich me of such knowledge ? Edit : By weak I mean physically weak, not being able to defend against a predator, moving slowly (if at all) not being able to do concentrated effort for a given period of time. I don't have an exact idea of "what quantity of weak" but enough so that a pregnant individual would need supervision most of the time. [Answer] There's two variants I can think of. Herd animals Herd animals have more luxury to be vulnerable. They have more security from the group to protect them. Humans are a good example, as you can't get much more secure than us. We live in groups, have little enemies and our food supply is very stable (at least in parts of the world). Morning sickness, long pregnancies, pregnancy dementia, lower mobility and even after pregnancy depression among other things all make us weak. We can afford it, as our strength comes from numbers (and intellect). Swarm animals Queens of swarm animals aren't necessarily weak. They are larger and stronger than anyone outside their caste. Yet they are uniquely vulnerable when pregnant. They often move little and are hidden and protected as far away from danger as possible. Again, the strength flows from the rest of the hive/swarm, giving enough protection and food that they can afford a "weak" pregnancy. Conclusion Lessons learned from this you might find a species less relying on numbers, but still so secure they can afford "weak" pregnancies. Otherwise just grab from the above lessons. Advanced species are near certainly animals that rely on others. If more primitive, maybe they're just the highest in the food chain and a partner can already provide all other necessities. That way they'll still be able to afford a weak pregnancy. [Answer] ## Simultaneous Hibernation and Gestation Many of Earth's more intelligent species adapted to subarctic climates follow a cycle of hibernation or semi-hibernation (bears, raccoons, etc). This is where they hide away and conserve their energy through the cold season because it is either too cold or food to scarce for being active to be advantageous to their survival. This conservation of energy leaves the animals quite weak from lethargy and vulnerable to predation if they do not hide themselves well. These species' reproductive cycles tend to line up such that Gestation and Hibernation happen at the same time. This leaves the females of the species freed up to hunt and forage when food is most plentiful, and lets their body rest and focus on a less hazardous gestation when they are stuck inside all day anyway. So, if you had a species adapted to a subarctic climates, but living in the tropical zone or climate controlled homes, the males of the species may not be triggered to go into hibernation since they would never get cold enough for that, but the hormones associated with pregnancy may still cause a vestigial hibernation response. [Answer] (Inspired by a comment in [Trioxidane](/users/77012/trioxidane)'s [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/181267/43697)...) I'm not sure how actually practical this would be, but I'm going to ignore that because of Rule of Cool... Take a page from insects (or, perhaps more accurately, [Xenomorphs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(creature_in_Alien_franchise))): the fertile female doesn't carry her offspring like mammals or even reptiles. Instead they develop in an external and immobile (or at least, too big/awkward to drag around) organ which is attached to the female. The female may not necessarily be "weak", but she is definitely vulnerable by virtue of, at best, having to choose between near immobility (she can wave her limbs around but can't get up) or aborting her offspring. This would work especially well if you have a small number of brooding females that gestate a large number of offspring. Such an arrangement also negates many of the inherent problems with this arrangement; since few females are brooders (but produce a lot of offspring), the community as a whole can afford to feed and protect the brooders... who may, indeed, spend almost their whole lives as immobile baby factories. Emergency mobility can be solved in a couple ways. One would be, as previously noted, that they can get up and move if they need to, but they lose their brood if they do. Another would be for them to just not care. Few things will make a species more obviously alien than a casual disregard for the brood queens' lives in an emergency; after all, there are plenty of drones that will escape and can become queens once a new home is found. (What's this "family" thing of which you speak?) (It should go without saying that there is going to be some serious dimorphism going on here...) [Answer] You're going to need a good reason why this species is able to survive being incapable of defending itself for significant periods of time, because that sort of glaring vulnerability tends to be quickly and ruthlessly removed by natural selection (meaning that those so vulnerable quickly get eaten by predators). I'm speaking from an evolutionary perspective here, so technology is irrelevant: it doesn't matter what your species is capable of with modern technology if predators hunt them to extinction before they get past fire-making. I should note that my answer assumes your species to be of a relatively conventional sort from a human perspective; details like equal balance of males and females, not-ridiculous sexual dimorphism, the existence of family units, and so on (basically, like most mammals, which by observation are rather dominant on Earth). If your species is eusocial (picture a beehive or ant colony), some of my assumptions are instantly invalid. For reference, the first part of this answer is a frame-challenge: it's pointing out that your premise as stated is likely not viable. I've edited in a possible solution to the problems after it, but I'm not sure it would be enough to explain the extremes you seem to be looking for. One: Given your references to long gestation time and high brain development and so on, I'm assuming that the species you have in mind is meant to hit human-level intelligence or close to it. That is not conducive to rapid reproduction: flukes like twins or triplets might happen, but the great majority of cases will likely be one child per pregnancy, because the resources just aren't there to reliably supply larger pregnancies with the necessary nutrients, and the body isn't easily able to keep up with those demands. This becomes a problem when you combine it with the fact that, in nature, the mortality rate among the young is appalling. Historically (pre-Industrial Revolution), less than half of all humans survived to the age of ten, despite our intelligence and technology and such medicine as we possessed: for most species, it's even worse. The result is that nature favors reproducing as often as is practical, to raise one's odds of having at least some offspring survive to reproduce themselves. What this means is that the females of your species will have evolved to spend a significant portion of their adult lives pregnant. In any given community, then, you've got a lot of your people (my guess here is around a quarter of the total populace of reproductive age, because there is a necessary recovery time between pregnancies, and half will be males) unable to contribute meaningfully to the general cause of survival; many of the other females will be having to look after their children as they recover from the strain of pregnancy. You've also tied up more of your populace (a fair chunk of the males) with the need for supervising these pregnant individuals and protecting them, according to your concept, meaning they cannot themselves contribute to a lot of essential tasks. My best guess at the proportions is that you've got one adult trying to gather or hunt enough food for something in the vicinity of two full families; that is nowhere near sustainable in the general case. Two: If pregnant individuals are this vulnerable and basically helpless, you impose severe limits on the species. Mobility is compromised; in the event of a forest fire or other natural disaster, pregnant individuals are unlikely to be able to escape, and their families are unlikely to abandon the mothers-to-be (or else you wouldn't have families to speak of). This also means migration is pretty much dead on arrival as an idea for your species, for the same reason. If the pregnant can't even look out for themselves, you force communities with guards to protect them, but this circles right back to the first major problem, because you won't be able to get enough food for them all with so few hunters and gatherers. Your other sane choice is to find a safe hiding place for expecting mothers, but securing that from predators without meaningful technology beyond fire-making (evolution works slowly, and given the example of humans technology outpaces it too badly for significant evolutionary changes based on that technology) and doing so reliably is a notable challenge; not impossible, but definitely difficult. Conclusion: Given all of this, your species is at a severe disadvantage compared to related species with less burdensome pregnancies (it's worth noting that human pregnancies are already at the extremely burdensome end, relative to other species on Earth), where the females are still able to work in at least a moderate capacity and move with the group. Your idea for a species will in all likelihood get pushed out and driven to extinction in favor of those other related species. Possible Solution: You might have some luck if you set up your species as something close to pack hunters like wolves. The leaders are the only ones to breed; the rest of the pack is either their offspring, or else adoptees. For this purpose, you'd need a gap between when they become capable hunters and when they typically breed (not necessarily the same as sexual maturity: early maturity could be a safeguard if you need someone to start breeding early, or just if resources are abundant), probably of some years. This is to make sure that the offspring stick around to support the pack until the next few children can take their place, as opposed to rushing off to find mates and leaving their parent's pack vulnerable. To give you an outline, perhaps they tend to be decent hunters by 8 to 10, more or less fully grown by 13, but puberty only at 15 and typical breeding age not until 20+. Your helpless pregnancy is covered by the rest of the family hunting for the one mother-to-be; in the case of newlyweds, they would likely stay with the pack of one of their parents initially, and only break away when their first children reach an age suitable to hunting (which might let you lower the typical breeding age if the pack is faring well enough to support two mothers at once). As intelligence (and length of childhood, most likely) grow, the idea of a "pack" would presumably expand to two families, then to three, and so on until you start getting villages, but the idea is basically that you mitigate my second key problem by minimizing the number of pregnant females at any given time. Answering why the pregnancy is so debilitating is a little harder, but perhaps your species tends towards having litters of children; basically, imagine if triplets were typical for humans (and could go higher for your species, perhaps as many as five) instead of an oddity. This at once covers why it's so debilitating for the mother and why it's not necessary for everyone to be reproducing at once to keep up the numbers. [Answer] Don't make them weak. Make their predators strong, and numerous. It's never gonna be evolutionary advantageous to be unnecessarily vulnerable while pregnant, because losing your offspring is a massive disadvantage. Instead, make it so that there is constant predation. Their predators can smell their pregnancy and baby. The predators are hungry, and they're dangerous enough that only one of these beings in their peak could survive a fight. Perhaps this elephant like creature can kick like a truck if someone gets close, but their predators are fast and numerous, and more often than not, a lone being will get eaten. A long gestation time and a huge pregnancy is needed to produce a strong, powerful offspring, but that means a lot of food to any predators. By weak I mean physically weak Not gonna be a thing. A powerful creature is gonna be powerful even with a massive weight. Physically lazy would be a thing though- anyone doing labour is risking a predator coming to bite at their chest, and they would rely on the males doing that. not being able to defend against a predator Strong and fast predators makes this true. moving slowly (if at all) This would be a massive evolutionary disadvantage. What about, not slow, but slower than their predators, and quick to tire? Perhaps they can sprint fast to escape an attack, but with their weight they can't outrun a pack. not being able to do concentrated effort for a given period of time. Sure, a lack of endurance in late pregnancy is common. Make a dangerous world, not a weak pregnant person. Being pregnant does make you weaker in a fight. You need supervision, even if you are not the weakest. [Answer] If your species is to be human-like, you can take some inspiration from rare complications during human pregnancies, and make that the norm for your species instead of the exception. Some examples include: Relaxin In layman's terms: in order to be able to give birth, the relaxin hormone causes tissues to relax and become weaker, making them susceptible to injury. Severe cases of Symphysis pubis dysfunction or Sacroiliac joint dysfunction can render the pregnant individual bedridden. Eclampsia In your species, the toll of pregnancy on an individual's heart and other systems can be so great that any slight physical exertion (e.g. walking) becomes life-threatening. And inspiration from other human conditions: Foreign tissue rejection (a la donor organ) The fetus is not the mother's own flesh. In order for the mother's body to not reject the foreign object, some aspect of the pregnancy can render the mother so immuno-compromised that she needs to live in isolation. [Answer] You describe birds. As opposed to internal gestation (pregnancy), birds have external gestation; they lay eggs. If one considers the bird/egg unit as the gestating state then this gestating unit is tremendously vulnerable. An egg cannot defend itself or flee at all. Neither can the mother move the egg from where it is. The mother bird is therefore herself much more vulnerable because fleeing the predator means abandoning the gestating state and the resources committed. Once you have the entire repertoire of nesting birds to draw from, there are many amazing schemes you could use. Birds draw attention from the eggs by concealing the nest. They draw predators away so that the predators do not discover the gestating state and the defenseless eggs. Mother birds recruit help from the male bird and related juvenile birds to defend the nest. One species of hornbill walls the female up in a hole with her egg, and the male feeds her thru a tiny hole. Having eggs is a baby step away from being pregnant, but is different enough that when in your fiction you have your internally gestating creatures recapitulate the adaptations of birds, your readers might not immediately recognize what you have done. ]
[Question] [ It’s been awhile since I’ve been on here, and in all that time, I’ve developed my fictional world by a lot. But I’m still confused by something. You see, the society of my world is one modeled on Europe during the Middle Ages, yet they possess firearms. Unlike normal guns, these don’t use gunpowder or bullets, rather, they use liquid nitrogen. My question is, could there be a way for a primitive society to develop weapons like this? [Answer] > > could there be a way for a primitive society to develop weapons like this? > > > No. * [liquefying air](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_air) is well beyond medieval tech level. > > The most common process for the preparation of liquid air is the two-column Hampson–Linde cycle using the Joule–Thomson effect. Air is fed at high pressure (>60 psig, or 520 kPa) into the lower column, in which it is separated into pure nitrogen and oxygen-rich liquid. The rich liquid and some of the nitrogen are fed as reflux into the upper column, which operates at low pressure (<10 psig, or 170 kPa), where the final separation into pure nitrogen and oxygen occurs. A raw argon product can be removed from the middle of the upper column for further purification. > > > Air can also be liquefied by Claude's process, which combines cooling by Joule–Thomson effect, isentropic expansion and regenerative cooling. > > > * handling liquid nitrogen is also well beyond medieval technology, and rather unpractical even in modern times. Surely not something you want on a battlefield. [Answer] Aside from being cool (pun intended) what would be the use of a liquid nitrogen weapon? It's really not that dangerous! Liquid nitrogen is cold; but it has a pretty low heat capacity so unless you pour a bucket directly on someone it's not going to do a lot, and the gas itself is entirely harmless. A common disposal method is just to pour it on the ground outside, and you don't even have to take too much care while doing so. You'd do far more damage with conventional chemicals like hot oil or acids. The most dangerous thing you can do with liquid nitrogen is have it in an enclosed space and let it displace all the oxygen; an intriguing and subtle way to assassinate a pesky king, but not really a weapon in the conventional sense. [Answer] > > could there be a way for a primitive society to develop weapons like this? > > > Yes... ...in a slightly kinky, low fantasy world, one can imagine how such "firearms" work. For example: your armoury could make use of cryogrobbins, a kind of wee imp that destills nitrogen from the air as a byproduct of its own respiration. This is for the cryogrobbin a waste product that it periodically pisses through relatively normal methods. Your gunsmiths will take advantage of this faculty by fixing one cryogrobbin to a kind of cartridge in such a way that the poor wee fellow is bunged up. This builds up pressure in the bladder over time. When it comes time to load the gunne, the musqueteer will simply grab a pre-bunged crygrobbin cartridge from his pouch and shove the poor fellow into the breach of the gunne and pack the ball in from the muzzle. When it comes time to fire the gunne, the musqueteer pulls the trigger which releases the bung and applies pressure to the cryogrobbin's abdomen, forcing a rapid & explosive discharge of liquid nitrogen. The rapid discharge and expansion propels the projectile in the expected manner. Magic. Pure magic. [Answer] It would not be possible to create liquid nitrogen using medieval technology. However for the purposes of a story, it might be possible to suspend disbelief in some people (who were not familiar with any cryogenic technology), although even then it would still be very difficult. How about a large ship with the hull sealed with lead sheeting and capsized in deep water by adding some huge rocks to the mast. Then take a tube to the surface and let the highly compressed air caught in the hull out. If enough air rushes out and expands rapidly at the surface and the process continues for long enough the temperature should drop. You’re not really going to get liquid nitrogen by this method, but you might be able to fool some people this way. Alternatively since your not using the science based tab just use magic. [Answer] It won't work for mediaeval humans in a terrestrial setting. There are only two ways to change the phase of the gas, cooling and compression. The tech of the day can't provide adequate seals or refrigeration. Aliens on a gas giant is another story. They could do with with a winch, a long rope and an insulated bottle. [Answer] As others have noted, liquid nitrogen isn't really possible or practical. One liquid that is available that could be more dangerous than liquid nitrogen is alcohol, which can be cooled down to temperatures well below the coldest places on earth. It also has a much higher boiling point, and tends to stick to things it touches, including skin. If you had a means of cooling the liquid down, say, dragging it up a cold mountain, cooling it, and then bringing it back down quickly (maybe via a slide or something), you could possibly load it into device that sprays it, causing frostbite. Distilling would be cumbersome, though, and this could be a resource-intensive process. Additionally, propelling the liquid would be difficult, especially in a manner that would allow it to remain insulated for months at a time, which one might need on a military campaign. It would be extremely heavy to carry around in a large container that would be able to insulate it. Also, it would be nearly impossible to use over a long range. Air resistance and turbulence would increase the temperature and slow down the launched liquid, limiting both its range and effectiveness. For defensive purposes, such as pouring a large container of it over a wall, it might be more practical, but hot tar/oil also does the trick, but requires less preparation/maintenance. Perhaps you could find some sort of highly endothermic reaction involving two chemicals commonly available (perhaps produced by some creature, as others have suggested), and they violently react in in a way that draws in heat from their surroundings (e.g., air, skin, water, themselves.). A projectile could simply include both chemicals separated in a pouch that tears upon hitting a target. It could also have secondary poisonous effects that would eventually kill/maim the target. ]
[Question] [ In my world, there exists another dimension right above our universe. Only a fraction of the population have the affinity to sense and interact with this extra dimension. A user can siphon energy from this extra dimension and manifest that borrowed energy into our world with real consequences: for instance a user could infuse his breath with energy borrowed from the extra dimension and in the real world breathe fire as a consequences. In actuality he is controlling the enthalpy by tapping the mysterious force of the extra dimension to alter the state of reality in this world. Mechanically, there are 2 ways to increase the size of the fire breath: 1. Dupe - doubling the magic bandwidth to allow twice as large a channel for the energy to seep in. A side-effect is that the user becomes exhausted and needs to rest anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days depending on the duration of exposure to the extra dimension. 2. Boost - modulate the frequency of the energy without changing the bandwidth. A side-effect of this technique is that the user becomes hyperactive and energetic for a brief period of time. This is detrimental because the user needs to remain focused at all times, otherwise the boost will be lost and the time is wasted. However, despite the overwhelming advantage of boost magic its popularity wanes. Why might this be? [Answer] # Boost is unstable. If you use the dupe technique, and become exhausted, you eventually just stop casting. It's a safe failure. Boost, on the other hand, makes you more active. It gives the illusion that you could keep this rate up forever. This leads one to overextend into potentially disastrous conditions. All nuclear reactors are designed along the "dupe" style of thinking. As they overextend, they just naturally shut themselves down. This is safe, which is very important for nuclear power plants. You want to avoid the runaway effects that come naturally from the fanning of the flames "boost" offers. [Answer] # Boost is addictive You say that boosting makes someone energetic and hyper. It probably feels good too. Maybe a bit too good. As with many feel-good drugs, the caster becomes used to that high and eventually cannot feel happy except when casting. But the world only needs so many fireballs. But as the addiction gets worse, they tend to just open the channel and let it rip, burning themselves and others around them. This leads to a backlash in society against those who use the technique... they aren’t just dangerous to themselves! Note that the other answers are things that would keep boost from ever being popular. This is one where it would become popular and then decrease in popularity over time, which is what the question requests. [Answer] # Boost is high-risk high-reward Now, the "risk" in this case is actually not too high. It's not going to kill you or anything but it's still quite risky compared to the more reliable Dupe. Typically high-risk high-reward options are popular for a while because the reward is quite lucrative. However, also typically once people get enough failures, the high-risk is factored as "not worth it" in the popular opinion. Think of the lottery and how many people used to play. They did it because - "Hey, I could win the jackpot". After a while they stop and the rationalisation is along the lines of "I could just spend my money on something worthwhile". So, overall lower-risk avenues are preferred. Or at least different high-risks - "I can't seem to win the lottery but sports betting is much easier". That's not to say that nobody would pursue high risks. Again, the existence of the lottery, and gambling in general, is proof that some people do like it. But in a lot of cases, it's not exactly the reward they are after, they become addicted to the thrill of potentially winning. It can have a powerful draw by itself. At any rate, just judging on how people in this world react to risk systems, it seems perfectly natural that Boost will be "the next best thing" for a time but gradually it will be used less and less. It will likely not fall into obscurity unless there are severe drawbacks but people will prefer other avenues to increase the effects of their magic. Some would go for more moderate risks or might choose a different (newer) high-risk high-reward option. Dedicated Boost users would remain forever. Some might even get addicted to the energetic effect it has on themselves. Others might like how it improves their magic. However, they would be less than the initial popularity boom and the Boost users would likely stabilise over time. Finally, as a personal anecdote: > > user becomes hyperactive and energetic for a brief period of time, user needs to remain focused at all time otherwise the boost will be lost and the time is wasted. > > > This describes me in my university years. I'd want to finish so much work, that I'd devote myself to [pulling all-nighters](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pull_an_all-nighter#English) and depriving myself of sleep. To do so, I'd consume a lot of caffeine and energy drinks (ironically, one such drink was called Boost) that would leave me hyperactive and energetic. I'd also need to remain focused else I might literally just fall asleep even while doing something and wake up after, say, 12 hours wasting time I could have spent doing more work or studying. In some cases, I could have even missed a submission time. This is not too dissimilar to the Boost mechanics, I feel. Even if the effects are that of the Dupe. The thing is that with Dupe, you have reliable system in place. Or more reliable, at least. If I could have made my work or study more effective at the cost of guaranteed need for a nap, I would have done it. But sleep deprivation comes with a lot of unreliability to it. After 24 hours you may feel "fine" (for now) or you might feel quite tired. After 48 you might feel "fine" as in not sleepy but your brain just refuses to work and you stare at a page of text as if it's written in Klingon. And if you do go to sleep, you might wake up after 10 hours or 20. Alarms might fail to be effective, either - I've slept through more than my fair share of them. This seemed worth it at the time. Nowadays, I wouldn't subject myself. I'd pay money to avoid it. The reward of sleep deprivation could be good, but I don't believe it's worth it any more. [Answer] # Boost induces long term damage. Constantly pumping adrenaline from fear/fight or flight causes long-term accelerated aging, nerve damage, heart issues, immune issues. Boost is exactly like this, very short uses infrequently is not likely to cause too much damage. However boosting high, long, or often increases the damage taking place. This leads to Boosters dying young from old persons diseases. This in turn means that no one actually becomes skilled in boosting. Therefor there are no teachers. Even if there were, society deems that teaching boosting is too risky and students/pupils must first obtain suitably licensing (to absolve the state of their health care). That is a lot of risk and a lot of negative feedback when there is a less risky, more socially acceptable, and probably highly lauded skill of Dupe. [Answer] Boost is more difficult As you said, an effective boost requires the magician to stay focused, which is made particularly difficult by the state of "hyperactivity" he finds himself in. So, the magician must undergo an extensive training to keep his mind clean and sober even in this condition of hyeractivity (think something like the training of Shaolin monks). After a bit the people (and - more important - the kings) realize that the superiority of the boost is a diminishing return, because the training of a boost user takes the time and resources necessary to train a dozen dupe users. Similarly, less people will decide to undergo such a stressful training, when they can be good wizards without too much effort (and have a really good excuse to take day long naps). Only a handful of very ambitious people would lean to master the boost (for personal prestige in 1 vs 1 challenges), but they would still be defeated on the battle field by 5-6 "cheap" dupe wizards, which in the long run will make boost magic less wanted. For a real world example, the first musketeers were less effective than archers, but since they required less training, they were preferred in the armies and supplanted archery ([of course, I'm simplifying a bit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archery#Decline_of_archery)) [Answer] # Boost hurts. Not necessarily in a debilitating way (unless you're really pushing it), but it's like a searing, shooting pain all up and down your arm while you're channeling magic like that. Something about the frequency of the magic interfering with nerve conduction or something like that. Anyway, you feel energetic and hyper while boosting because the pain causes your body's emergency reflexes to dump adrenaline into your bloodstream in order to respond to the source of the pain. If you can grit your teeth and bear it, you can get a lot done boosting, but most people prefer to just dupe instead. Much less painful. [Answer] ### Boost is harder to master Looking at the two enhancements, one way they they can be summarized is as such: Dupe overchannels yourself to give more power now at the cost of cost of needing to pay this energy debt later. Hence tiredness and lethargy afterwards. Boost uses the energy to resonate with the energy of the world in a constructive way, creating a sort of 1 + 1 = 2+ kind of effect. However, those that try to learn Boost use it on themselves to power up their spells. As they are in the area of effect, their own energy too gets amplified by this resonant effect, causing the standard side effects of excess energy and hyperactivity. Now we generally understand the concepts that Dupe runs under -- extra energy now that is paid later. It is similar to how exercise can build up a type of debt that has to be repaid later. Since we understand it, we can not only plan for it, but learn how to mitigate and master it much easier. Boost does not have this ease of understanding. Sure, there are people that will understand the concepts behind constructive interference on at least some level. But as opposed to light or ripples in the water, this is multi-dimensional energies interacting to enhance a physical effect. Overall, it is a more difficult thing to fully understand and master. Because of that, there are more people that try to master Boost and fail. This is for a myriad of reasons, but the side effects certainly do not help the caster. In addition, as Boost is losing popularity, it is entirely plausible that the true secrets to mastering it are either much harder to find than the secrets of Dupe, or that they are lost entirely by this point. As such, while Dupe is less advantageous, it is easier to master and mitigate the drawbacks. Boost is much more advantageous but since it is more difficult to master, most to all do not master it. ]
[Question] [ This question already has answers here: [How to study magic that isn't objective](/questions/86526/how-to-study-magic-that-isnt-objective) (14 answers) Closed 5 years ago. I want wizards in my setting to study magic, building libraries of arcane tomes and conducting zany experiments, but I don't want them to be able to share the benefits of their research because that gives them too great an incentive to work together. I want them to be almost territorial, to compete constantly and rarely cooperate, covetous of magical power, yet unable to combine their powers. It's not that they're being obstinate, they simply can't teach what they've learned to each other. I'm assuming they (or at least some of them) would teach if they could. [Answer] You have to treat it (magic) as an ART not a science. A good example I can think of is jazz music. Back in the days when jazz was more popular, or even swing (around 1930's even to 1950's or beyond), some trumpet players would play with a cloth over their hand so that other musicians can't see how they are playing. The term is called "licks," the melodic lines they make when they are soloing. You could say those "licks" are something that make them stand out, their unique melodic lines. Jazz is all about standing out as an individual by playing the music uniquely as your own style. This approach to the music was so important at this time that people would not share their musical insights. Nowadays, jazz is taught in universities, and I suppose you could say it's been broken down as a science. But before, it was more of a folk art, and no one really wrote on the subject.... it was just performed and executed on the spot at the performance, and yes, there was a bit of a territorial aspect because musicians wanted to stand out from one another and not sound the same. --- My suggestion is to treat the magic in your world as a folk art. There must be some insentive for mages to not share their art. The best reason I can think of is that there is some kind of stakes invloved, perhaps jobs, or even fame, where mages do not feel comfortable sharing what they know due to the fact that they don't want to give up an opportunity. EDIT: To clarify the point on "how do you study magic without it being a science".... again, let me stress the folk art aspect. There should be a scene of sorts in your world. Some incentive for mages to learn individually and on their own. They may try and copy each other, but for the most part, they have to learn on their own. [Answer] Make the source of magic itself limited. Only a few wizards can access it at any time. The more powerful your spell the more access to the source of power you have. Therefore, if you share your knowledge of your powerful spells this will restrict the amount of magical power you can wield. This form of wizardry and magic assumes that the source of magic can be accessed anywhere at anytime. However, the amount of magic power that can be used is directly dependent on the power and effectiveness of the spells cast. In which case, it follows logically wizards wouldn't want to share their arcane knowledge as this would be the equivalent of giving away their power. [Answer] You don't actually need a reason for them to keep it a secret. This is a problem with your society, not your magic. Scientific knowledge has been hoarded in the past. Guilds and master craftsmen used to go to great lengths to hide the secrets of their methods and techniques, sometimes because it was a national secret, important strategically, and sometimes just for plain old greed. We actually lost technology more than once because of this, things like roman concrete and greek fire. Knowledge was often hoarded, almost by default, it is only recently that sharing knowledge became common. When being a scholar was expensive and restricted to only the most wealthy, knowledge was suppressed almost automatically just by how hard it was to gain access. [Answer] Method 1: Casting magic is in some way tied to your soul, physicality, or psyche. To cast magic it is more practical to alter your method of casting over time, because there are (meta)physical differences between casters. Like having two incredibly gifted musicians, one plays a guitar with only one hand, and the other plays it with their feet. They can rarely share anything helpful with one another, but both can play the same song. Or think of the [meridian system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_(Chinese_medicine)) in chinese medicine. Differences in birth could form different valves or merging in the channels your lifeforce flows through, forcing you to come up with different methods of activating your fire meridian for a fireball. Or perhaps in order to cast magic, you have to be convinced it will work, as any doubt would interfere with the spell. Thus casters, while starting with a basic framework, over the years would have to make complicated systems within their minds to explain to themselves why their spell works, backed up with thousands of hours of practice on the fundamentals. Think how in the middle ages, two alchemists could have radically different ideas on how a potion will work with the same ingredient makeup even though they're both proto-chemists working off of fundamental rules that are easier to observe. Except in this world, the potions actually would have different effects. Both of those have problems. Could you just use magic to change your meridian system, therefore bypassing it? If it only has to make sense in your head, couldn't someone with extreme confidence just have no rules and do whatever they want? The problem all of this comes down to, though, is that in order to be unlearnable to other magicians because simply studying your rival Chadrick's lead-to-gold spell won't accomplish anything, that would mean that the books and experiments you want are kind of pointless as well to an extent. If you can't learn how to cast a spell through studying, it's hard to justify why any wizard would have study material. [Answer] If magic could be negated as easily as (say) a specific spell being performed backwards, then magicians would be highly motivated to keep their spells and incantations secret. Sharing how to do a specific spell would mean that everyone to whom you show it (and everyone downstream who gets their hands on your spell) would instantly know how to cause it to have no effect. If your business is magic, then your stock in trade is the efficacy of your spells and this would effectively render that specific spell worthless. This actually fulfills the zany experiment requirement too. Let's say (for example) that one of your spells has gotten out, or you've inherited (?) another magician's arcane library of spells and incantations. Your problem is that you now need to update your spells so that they perform the same (or a better) function in a different way. To do that, you have to experiment with what you currently have by modifying it in different ways to see if you can replicate the effect using a different approach. This is likely to produce a large number of zany outcomes until you get close to what your objectives are in terms of spell design. Ultimately, spells in this environment are only useful if they're secret. That means, no sharing with your brethren. [Answer] Perhaps twisting the very forces of the universe with your mind affects you. Using magic leads to feelings of paranoia and greed. The more you use it, the more the feelings grow. Wizards take on apprentices to use the apprentice's power to add to their own but as the apprentice becomes more skilled (and paranoid) they either flee, kill their master or get sacrificed increasing the master's power. Rival wizards are seen as a potential sacrifice as well as a threat so they would be very territorial but wouldn't attack unless they knew for certain they would win. [Answer] Easiest way to do this is to treat it like martial arts, which is the most relatable thing to magic in our own world. If you read Miamoto Musashis 'The Book of Five rings' where he explains his mastery of swordsmanship and how to perfect it yourself you will often find that he cannot explain a concept with certainty. Closest he can come to is a feeling, an instinct that becomes part of you after endless repetition. He tries to compare it to other subjects but often fails because he just cannot describe an internal, intuitive knowledge so he says "it is easy to show this but difficult to describe". In my opinion magic should be treated the same way. Something elusive, difficult to master and explain. Something that relies on repetition and intuition. Internal understanding. [Answer] You can study magic without it being a science because it is NOT science. Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Why did he say that? He said it because advanced tech doesn't seem to follow the rules that we know. If we are ignorant of tech a TV SEEMS like magic. And what's magic? Magic is something that doesn't necessarily follow the laws of science and nature. Here's a bit from [TV Tropes Magic vs. Science](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicVersusScience) > > Magic is often seen as the realm of mysticism and a violation of scientific laws. Science is often seen as the realm of materialism and technology. > > > Magic cheats at Physics: Magic and its users create localized areas where the physical laws operate differently from normal. This > may be expressed as malfunctions to machines beyond a given > technological threshold, altering the combustion point of atmosphere > causes cars to fail and fireballs to form, or electromagnetic waves > collapse within magical auras. > > > Magic is Mysterious: Magic follows no rules at all, therefore science will never be able to explain it. This scenario tends to work > best with Wild Magic (the magic is released by the mage, but not > controlled) and Theurgy (the divine being decides what spell is cast). > The concept does not follow logically from magic gained from study, > becoming an Informed Trait. > > > Magic is an Ideology: Magic and science get along just fine, but the magicians and scientists can't stand each other. Petty rivalry or > hubris leads everyone on both sides to specialize in their field and > completely ignore the other. This conflict can sometimes take a > subtler form, where the magicians want to keep knowledge secret and > the scientists want it shared with everyone; which side is more > sympathetic tends to depend on whether the author (or readers/viewers) > think there really are Things Man Was Not Meant To Know... > > > Now, you may have an idea that because magic follows its own rules, that studying it would lead to its own branch of science, because, after all, if there are provable rules, that's what it might become. You've forgotten one key point of magic, one that gets left behind in swords and sorcery: Belief creates reality. So while there might be rules that wizards all collectively agree on, when a wizard starts experimentation on his own and finds something that works, teaching it is nearly impossible. It's his PERSONAL belief and theory, one that he arrived at after years of study, and now, he can cast an illusionary dragon. Could he teach that to another wizard? Unlikely. If there's an apprentice/wizard relationship, it helps to start you off (because you have faith in your mentor's abilities, you see what they can do, and decide that's reality if only you try hard enough). But once you get into the higher levels of magic, once you unlock the mysteries, it becomes more personal to you. You have your own magic words, your own faith in yourself and the way the world works. Since you're warping reality and going 'round the rules of science, you're going to be eccentric and idiosyncratic. Having a young, easily impressed apprentice would likely be a boost to your powers (and confidence in them) but every wizard can only learn so much from their mentor. Eventually they learn that all the "rules" that the wizard taught them aren't actually law. Once that happens they lose faith in their mentor, and likely will no longer be able to learn from them (maybe they still can, but at this point they'll know they can do something different). The biggest secret never told is this: there actually are NO RULES. None. The ones wizards think exist do because they were passed down, or make fro an easy beginning framework. It's likely that was done for safety. So you might drill into an apprentice's head three basic laws, just to keep the world steady. By the time you find out that the three basic laws can be broken, by then you might understand why they are in place and how much damage it could do if they WERE broken, and that wizards will go after anyone that breaks them. [Answer] This question reminds me of a book in [The Laundry Files](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laundry_Files) series by Charles Stross, specifically The Rhesus Chart, which involves: > > ancient vampires that take great efforts to perpetuate the myth that vampires don't exist in order to protect themselves. If two vampires were to find each other, they would immediately try to kill each other to protect their secrecy (if they could find the other, then ordinary humans might be able to). > > > A similar level of secrecy could be required by Wizards in your world, the general population fears magic so wizards go to great lengths to remain hidden and anonymous, lest they be accosted by angry mobs. In this world wizards would be outlaws that operate in secret and eliminate any other practitioners of magic that are unfortunate enough to cross their path. Apprentices are recruited to be used as a source of power as in [Thorne's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/108133/34920) and any apprentice that lasts long enough without being killed or drained of all their power grows up enough to be able to overthrow their master and take their place. ]
[Question] [ What can cause water to be foam-like, in lumps, but still liquid? Something similar to goo (jelly like but liquid and opaque)? I have a planet and such kind of water, which is drinkable and the temperature of which is 10-15 Celsius. It is a stronger blue color and you can pick it up like goo it doesn't exactly flow like the usual water, instead it divides into lumps and falls in kind if morphed distorted ~ball-like forms. I would like to have an explanation as to how it can be possible? Can this be because of gravity or atmosphere, or maybe something else. [Answer] I'd think this is more of a [Biofilm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofilm) or biological hydrogel. An ubiquitous organism that lives in all the available water of the planet, and rapidly colonizes any 'fresh' water. That would explain the colour and texture, whilst still being perhaps 99% ordinary water. As long as the organism was not toxic, it would be perfectly drinkable. [Answer] Water "sticks together" because the hydrogen ions are constantly being shared with neighboring water molecules. [Surface tension](https://water.usgs.gov/edu/surface-tension.html) is even stronger than the normal water bond because the molecules at the edge of the liquid can't share ions in all directions, so they bond even more to the molecules they can touch. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MxElf.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MxElf.gif) Flowing ions is the realm of electrical fields, and there have been experiments using electricity to disrupt the surface tension of water. ["Surface tension of electrified water decreases as the positive or negative charge increases, but its density and viscosity are the same as those of neutral water."](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp202652q) In the articles I found, the goal seemed to be to use electricity to make water itself more soluble. This is the opposite effect to what you want, so I propose a handwavy planet with a "strange" electrical field that resonates with the hydrogen bond in water, perhaps very subtly, just enough so that the water surface generates it's own coherent electrical field. This "plasma water" is only a few molecules deep, enough to change the surface tension but it is still regular water. Because we've given the surface of the water an electrical field, it will display electromagnetic behaviors like [magnetic braking and motion damping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_damping) when it encounters any ion field – the same damping effect that we see when a magnet is dropped through a copper pipe. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pgatm.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pgatm.png) This video shows many examples of "weird" behavior when a magnet encounters a copper plate, including braking and damping. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sENgdSF8ppA> In this scenario, only the surface of the water experiences magnetic braking and damping. The larger globs of water have more mass-to-surface ratio and behaves more like regular water, but smaller drops might suspend longer in the air, and interact with other small globs to align into threads and filaments. The strongest ion field the foam is likely to encounter is the plasma "skin" of a larger body of water, hence the electrified foam will filament and float above a body of water for a second or two as it navigates through the water's ion field. If you want to push the electrical effect your foam might even have the occasional glow or electrical spark. [Answer] Pure water has the chemical formula H2O. It has the properties it has, there is nothing you can do to change that. The closest you can get with pure H2O is water / ice slush. This can form naturally when water is cooled down to 0 celsius while being agitated. It's called [Frazil ice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frazil_ice) . But if left long enough it will go hard, just as old snow does. To make goo, you need to add polymer to water. Surprisingly small amounts are required. This small 85g box of [Jell-O](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jell-O) is enough to make an entire bowl of solid dessert. Foaming is caused by a group of chemicals called surfactants. they lower the surface tension of water and cause bubbles to be more stable. These also tend to be organic molecules (not necessarily polymers but the gooeyness also helps to stabilize the bubbles.) Common soap is made by reacting fat with caustic soda to break the fat down into fatty acids and glycerol. Substances that create these effects are often of biological origin (nasal mucus, algal slime, etc.) These would have nutritional value, but would therefore unfortunately be colonized by bacteria, fungus and other nasties if left in the open, so you wouldn't want to consume thm But you can get a similar effect when you mix two salt solutions, rapidly, causing a solid to precipitate instantaneously. This is the process used to make the beads of [silica gel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silica_gel) which is then dried by heating to form the hard granules of drying agent that you find in new purchases. There are also clays which are very sticky, such as [bentonite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentonite). While I wouldn't recommend eating silica gel or bentonite, they shouldn't do you any harm and are of no nutritional value, so if they are from a very clean environment such as a lifeless planet they should be bug free. [Answer] Polyamorphic water. Some liquids have more than one state. This is called [polyamorphism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamorphism) > > Polyamorphism is the ability of a substance to exist in several > different amorphous modifications. It is analogous to the polymorphism > of crystalline materials. Many amorphous substances can exist with > different amorphous characteristics (e.g. polymers). However, > polyamorphism requires two distinct amorphous states with a clear, > discontinuous (first-order) phase transition between them. When such a > transition occurs between two stable liquid states, a polyamorphic > transition may also be referred to as a liquid–liquid phase > transition. > > > Kurt Vonnegut's book [Ice-9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine) invoked a fictional state of ice (which has multiple real states; [the 17th was recently discovered](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/scientists-produce-new-type-ice)). > > Ice-nine is a fictional material that appears in Kurt Vonnegut's novel > Cat's Cradle. Ice-nine is described as a polymorph of water which > instead of melting at 0 °C (32 °F), melts at 45.8 °C (114.4 °F). When > ice-nine comes into contact with liquid water below 45.8 °C (thus > effectively becoming supercooled), it acts as a seed crystal and > causes the solidification of the entire body of water, which quickly > crystallizes as more ice-nine. As people are mostly water, ice-nine > kills nearly instantly when ingested or brought into contact with soft > tissues exposed to the bloodstream, such as the eyes or tongue. > > > In the story, it is invented by Dr. Felix Hoenikker[1] and developed > by the Manhattan Project in order for the Marines to no longer need to > deal with mud. The project is abandoned when it becomes clear that any > quantity of it would have the power to destroy all life on earth. A > global catastrophe involving freezing the world's oceans with ice-nine > is used as a plot device in Vonnegut's novel. > > > Your world would flip this on its head - your oceans are full of polyamorphic water, a previously unknown water morph. On contact with terrestrial-type water our common water sets off a rearrangement of the polyamorphic water into the Earth pattern, so your amorphous water will melt in the mouth. Just as Ice-9 poses a danger to earthly life (by crystallizing the oceans) so too a drop of sweat could catalyze the dissolution of your worlds ocean into liquid. You will have to invent some mechanism to prevent that, or allow your oceans to revert in the cold, or something like that. [Answer] > > instead it divides into lumps and falls in kind if morphed distorted ~ball-like forms. > > > You're describing Water Beads/Balz, which are little polymer beads with a stunning capacity to absorb water. <https://nerdist.com/the-magic-of-invisible-water-balls-is-science/> > > I have a planet and such kind of water, which is drinkable and the temperature of which is 10-15 Celsius. It is a stronger blue color and you can pick it up like goo it doesn't exactly flow like the usual water, instead it divides into lumps and falls in kind if morphed distorted ~ball-like forms. > > > The water on your planet can't be plain old H2O. (But, of course, most of the water on Earth isn't plain old H2O; it's got lots of chemicals dissolved in it!) In your world, there is a ubiquitous, blue, modestly hydrophilic polymer on the planet that is -- unlike Water Beads -- non-toxic. The modest strength of it's hydrophilia allows the water to be taken up by life forms. ]
[Question] [ I'm building a world that happens to be flat. Well, it has hills and mountains, but no curvature. However, I still want to limit the eyesight to a few kilometers even if there are no hills around. I don't really care if towers/mountains allow you to watch further (though it would be a nice bonus). Basically, I want the world to be like ours at first glance. A few informations on my world: * People are mostly humanoid, no height difference. * The setting is medieval, no pollution. * The world was designed by gods who can do any magic they want, though they want to minimize their impact. * Preferably, an eyeglass should allow you to see further. * I would like to avoid (if possible) biological alterations/curse. * [Luminiferous aether](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether) is totally a thing in my world, no physics after the Michelson–Morley experiment can be considered to be valid. * There are no time zones (flat earth remember). * I don't care what happens on the borders of the world, it is approximately the area of Europe and most of what happens will be on the center. * Only the visible spectrum matters to this question. --- So here are my questions: * What effects could explain a horizon? * What funny things would happen then? * Isn't the Aether theory cool? [Answer] If you're trying to get a geometric effect without actually having the geometry to cause it, it can be a bit tricky. Consider having photons not move in a straight line. If photons are affected by gravity, they could curve down towards your flat earth. Of course, you have to worry about whether the photons can escape the sun, but if you're not even concerned with the boundaries of the world, getting photons from the sun should be a reasonable level of handwaving for your gods to put forth. Having an eyeglass let you see further past the horizon is trickier, because that doesn't even work with a real horizon. To make that work, you may need to create a ray tracing world. Instead of having light from the sun hit everything an bounce off it, sensors of light (i.e. eyeballs) emit rays in the opposite direction. Everything which those rays hit also act like sensors, sending off rays in all directions until a ray hits a light source. This is how we render 3d graphics in a lot of cases. Doing this would permit your eyeglass to change the nature of the reverse-photons, letting them go further before they hit the ground. [Answer] Actually, for the most part, your world should look like Earth at first glance, because Earth looks flats from its surface. You'll only notice its curvature if you're looking at a ship a long way away at sea, for example. It says [here](https://www.howitworksdaily.com/how-high-do-you-have-to-go-to-see-the-curvature-of-the-earth/) that > > You should be able to detect [the curvature] from an aeroplane at a cruising height > of around 10,600 metres (35,000 feet), but you need a fairly wide > field of view (ie 60 degrees) and a virtually cloud-free horizon. The > reality is that clouds, hills and mountains mean we rarely get to see > the kind of perfectly flat horizon where the curve would be most > obvious. > > > Even at the top of Everest you won't be able to see the curvature of Earth. So that shouldn't be a problem. The real problem is looking at ever increasing distances and not bumping into any hard limit. On a flat Earth, in theory, you could see as far as you wanted provided you had a sufficiently powerful eyeglass. In practice this would be limited by [Rayleigh scattering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering). If that's not enough, there could be a neverending storm front at the border of the world blocking the view. Or a circular waterfall going all around the world and feeding a circular river or sea. Since you're making up the physics, it's your call. I think you should make this boundary as interesting as possible and get it to work for the story. [Answer] I like the idea of inverting the "flat earth" model. Theologians argue that the evidence implies a spherical earth, but it's obviously, scientifically, flat. That's awesome. It really comes down to what you mean by "flat." If you mean a classical flat plane world, with a dome sky (like those old pictures), the easiest explanation is magic did it. The creators didn't want humanity looking off into the distance under the sky and seeing the walls of the dome actually reaching down to the ground. To achieve this, they've slightly modified the physics of the world: physical light generally curves "down". Maybe light is affected by gravity at a much higher rate, or maybe the "ether" causes light to slow and "drop" like a canon ball through the air. In either case, sight lines would naturally be constrained to local space. The stars, sun, and moon in the sky still "work" because their light streams down; there's no more "down" for the light to stream. Sunrises and sunsets are explained by the "tired light" struggling to reach the viewer. Spyglasses still work too, but nobody knows why. The reason is that everything emitting light emits it in a "spray," and the optics in spyglasses allow you to see fainter light. So... [![Light Spray!](https://i.stack.imgur.com/d6fHw.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/d6fHw.jpg) Note an interesting effect of "light spray." The more powerful the glass, the more "spray" you can collect and see a farther distance... but you can ALSO estimate distance based on the angle offset you have to look "up" to see a light source! Another interesting effect would be that artillery and archery become even more of a specialist skill, as sight lines are no longer straight, which means that operators will need to use their judgement to offset shots not only for gravity and windage, but ALSO for the optical illusions of range. Magical weapons, perhaps, may have been created specifically to alleviate the problems of range. Or, perhaps, nobody bothers with long range weaponry, and all battles are fought with swords and fists. Now, again, the point here was for the Gods to hide the seam between the sky-dome and the flat ground, so you've got a couple of options as you walk away from the center of your landmass. The first is to pull a Truman Show, and have the skydome come down into the ocean. As long as nobody sails into the wall, nobody will know it's there. Another option is to have the strength of the "curve down of light" increase as you move farther away from the center. As you get closer to the "edge" of the world, the world gradually gets darker and darker, as light emitted gets "pulled" or "dropped" to the ground faster and faster, until by the time you reach the wall it's literally pitch black (all light sources immediately fall to the ground). Combine that with a human fear of the dark, and you could easily discourage people from going too far. [Answer] I propose smog. Works for LA. [Answer] When canoeing on a lake in Northern Saskatchewan, what you can see is effectively limited by the ability of light to travel through the atmosphere. At 2 miles trees blur into a solid mass. At 8 miles, you can tell land vs water. At 15 miles there are mirages of higher points of land. One trip I had a set of binoculars with me. The lake was calm with only tiny wavelets. It was 2 miles to the other shore. I handed a boy my binocs, and said, "Look at the far shore, and find something obvious right at the water's edge." "Ok. Got it." "Now squat down" "Where did it go!" Other kids came over to try it. Took about 10 minutes for someone to come up with the idea that it was hiding behind the curve of the surface of the water. A 2 mile span has a 'bump' of water about 2.6 feet tall. Still, this is a pretty subtle effect. Things more noticeable: On a round earth, ships start to vanish from the bottom up. You need to be above the ocean to see this. There is enough mist and haze just above the surface, that the boat blurs and vanishes. On Flatland going up in height would only increase the distance before it vanishes. Mirage physics would be extended. Right now you can see mirages up to about 40 or 50 miles under optimum conditions. (cold to warm vertical gradient) On a flat earth, it would take a smaller temperature difference, and given clear air you would be able to see it further away. You could make a whole art out of sending temperature probes up from ships and from that figure out the probable light path, to figure out how far what you were seeing was away from you. Does your world have tides? How does the sun work? If a flat world is spinning, the water goes to the edge. A flat world that isn't spinning will won't have coriolis forces. No tornados, no hurricanes. No cyclonic storms. I'm not sure if there would be any wind, aside from convection cells -- essentially sea and land breezes. On earth the big wind driver is the combination that the equator gets about 2.5 times the insolation of the poles, coupled with it spinning. If the sun is a fiery chariot flying close above the surface (say 1/4 of the NS dimension of the world, then you can establish a thermal gradient. Air would move toward the solar path, rise, and return at elevation. This would be modified by mountains, and oceans, but not by huge amounts. Seasons would require a periodic movement of the path that Helios drove. [Answer] While our round Earth looks, it's possible that a flat earth will appear curved to its inhabitants. This effect would be due to the refraction of light as it passes through the atmosphere. The simplest version of this atmospheric refraction model of a flat earth would be that this earth would curve upwards the further away from where a person was standing. It could be like standing in the centre of a bowl. Instead of a horizon everything in the distance would be effectively rising higher further it was from where you were situated. Please this effect depends on the science of optics as it was developed before the Michelson-Morley experiment. This answer hasn't considered the influence of a luminiferous ether on the refraction effects, but the OP devised how the ether affects light in his world it will be easy to adjust his model accordingly and determine how a refraction bowl view of the flat earth might look. Thermal differences in the atmosphere could create different degrees of refraction. Instead of uniformly curving upwards this could lead to a complicated affair curving both up and down in different places. This might be continually be rippling and undulating. A flat earth might seem to be unstable and changing in unpredictable ways. Imagine the landscape curving away either up or down and possibly rippling as if it was the edge of the sea. EDIT: Please note the original answer had "diffraction" instead of "refraction" as the cause of the optic effects described above. This error has been fixed. [Answer] *There is* a horizon on an infinite flat plane I'm really surprised that no-one understands perspective and in particular the mathematical concept of a limit. Here's a non-mathematical explanation. Imagine an infinite flat earth with perfect visibility. Above it is an infinite flat sky that is parallel to the earth. The land won't go up forever and the sky won't go down forever (otherwise they would cross over). There will be a clear line where they meet. Where will the line be? It will be level with the observer's eyes. [Answer] You declared that there is Luminiferous ether in your scenario. Pre-relativistic physics can provide a good explanation for the existence of the horizon in the flat world: Newtonian gravity does not affect light, since it has no mass, it is just a 'mechanical' wave propagating in the ether. But you can give the ether a downward pointing, constant velocity. (or the earth and all solid objects an upward pointing) If this velocity is comparable to the speed of light, all the lightrays will appear to follow a diagonally downwards pointed path, when observed from the flat Earth** The distance, at which you can look through varies with your angle of viewing, but has a well defined maximum, not by scattering and fading, but by colliding in the ground, just like with our spherical horizon. Of course eyeglasses won't provide broader horizon. (just like they don't provide it on our Earth) [Answer] I propose a variation of [Willk's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/69742/21222). You can't see very far in water because light does not go very far into it. That's because it is more opaque than air. Just the same, if you have a gas that is more opaque than our own world's air, it will constrain the distance from which objects can be seen more than regular air. But it won't be washed away by rain, like fog would. [The very best answer this site has ever seen](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6756/21222) (and which was unfairly shot down) posited that, on a flat Earth, the wall of ice that keeps oceans in place is kept in low temperatures due to the special flatulence of the elephants below the world disc. That flatulence may have other components, more volatile, which go over and above the ice wall and fill the world homogeneously. Those gases have no smell, and are breathablr, but have just the right opacity to constrain the horizon to whatever range you see fit. That is also why the horizon gets farther when you climb a mountain, since gases will naturally have higher concentrations on lower altitudes. [Answer] A "Flat World" does not necessarily imply perfect planarity --- it's not a flat piece of wood upon which the gods have painted green and blue bits. Although, there may well be worlds exactly of that type. As I understand it, your world consists of something like this: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/h7rs9.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/h7rs9.jpg) The horizon for people inhabiting the edgeward regions, along the coasts, will largely consist of hazy air and pressure-variant water. Low pressure systems out at sea will cause the water level to rise and storm driven waves will further obscure the true horizon (the Edge itself). Gravitational effects of the Sun and Moons (stronger at the Edge) will also cause variations in general sea level. Most folks living in the lowland regions of Asia, down along the Red Sea, have something like a thousand miles of Ocean before their vision reaches the Edge. Atmospheric blurring, sea-sky melding (a quasi-mirage where atmosphere and ocean blur together as they meet in the far distance), haze, fog, distant storms, variations in sea level all contribute to the foreshortening of the horizon. The peoples inhabiting the spindleward regions experience a completely different issue. Those living along the coasts of, for example, the Euxine Sea (just north of the rotational pole) in the regions of Trebizond live at sea level. To the south, their horizon will be the Galatian Mountains that rise up from the coastlands. Towards the east, west and north, their vision will contend with sea and will experience similar limitations to the Res Sea Asians: haze and atmospheric blurring. Beyond the Scythian Coast, the horizon will in fact be high points of the undulating steppes of Europe. Woodlands, hills and weather will limit how far they can see. The maximal horizon will probably be seen by the high mountainmen of Hyperborea, who should be able to discern the faint line of the Edge, particularly at night where the curve of the world blots the stars beyond. They should also have spectacular Sunsets and Moonsets where the Edge becomes plainly visible. Of course, the atmosphere and weather will also play a role, but the advantage of living seven to ten thousand feet up can't be beat! The Caucasian monks, living in the 20,000+ foot high Spindle (the ancient rotational pole, before centrifugal forces caused the land to slide around a bit), can probably make out the dim smudge of the coasts of the Red Sea because they can look out and over the undulating steppes of Asia. Again, haze, blurring and sea level will diminish the horizon even for them. To the east, they can surely see the forests of Massagaetia and Bactria beyond the Caspian Sea; but the highlands and low mountains that give rise to the Artaxes River will obscure anything further. The same view can be had to the north where the highlands of Scythia will be their horizon. [Answer] Something all answers seem to forget is simple geometry and the resolution capability of the human eye, but also telescopes.. Human eyesight is a frustum, with the back plane at infinity. But objects further away get smaller. At a certain distance, an object will be so small that the human eye simply can not longer distinguish it. [Angular resolution of the human eye is about 1 arcminute, approximately 0.02° or 0.0003 radians, which corresponds to 0.3 m at a 1 km distance.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_eye) Which means at 1km away, you can not longer distinguish any objects below 0.3m. [Hubble can not resolve the lunar landers.](https://www.askamathematician.com/2015/12/q-why-cant-we-see-the-lunar-landers-from-the-apollo-missions-with-the-hubble-or-any-other-telescope/) Even with really powerful telescopes, it will not be possible to distinguish objects really far away. And we are talking about an unobstructed line of sight here. On a perfectly flat world, foreground object will inevitably obstruct bigger objects farther away. Imagine standing 100m behind a 100m high church. You will not be able to see a 200m high cathedral that is exactly 100m behind the church. Thats simply geometry. A flat earth will already have a horizon. If you you look parallel to the ground, the horizon will run exactly horizontal at half height through your field of view. And you can see foreground objects (which will stick out atop the horizon), but background objects will all blend together into an indistinguishable mush of colors. And that doesn't even include atmospheric effects. Fog, smoke, scattering. Shimmering air due to temperature differences. All those help obstructing the view well below infinite - actually rather much below infinity. You say no pollution, but in a medieval setting smoke from burning wood fires, especially in winter will have relatively thick smoke and obstruct the view. If you want to lower how far people can see unaided, you simply lower their angular resolution or introduce hills & mountains, which act as natural sight barriers. Forests do as well, as do high buildings or fog. [Answer] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_Power> [...]The novel starts when Kammerer accidentally discovers an unexplored planet Saraksh inhabited by a humanoid race. The atmospheric conditions on Saraksh are such that the inhabitants believe that they live inside a sphere.[...] Bonus: Would be great to produce the world, where people believe the planet is a sphere, when it's really flat. ]
[Question] [ I've envisioned my specie called the stalker as: 1. Humanoid about same height, strength & speed as humans 2. [Three pairs of eyes](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/58266/plausible-reasons-for-evolution-of-humanoids-with-multiple-pairs-of-eyes) placed horizontally (Near UV, Visible, Near IR) 3. Lightspeed [neurotransmission](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/9892/28431) 4. Active [camouflage](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/57537/28431) like [cuttlefish](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_iNv0qJlzk) 5. Biological [radio](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/27108/how-to-evolve-biological-radios) for high bandwidth communication, range 1m 6. Spoken language for most of the communication 7. IQ similar to humans. In order to handle all this sensors + biological radio + active camouflage my explanation is that it uses [molecular](http://newatlas.com/single-molecule-transistor/38476/) [transistors](https://youtu.be/bm6ScvNygUU?t=3m7s) as biological computer to help the brain neurons. The things that bothers me is that I need them to have IQ similar to humans. My [story setting](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/58602/could-two-old-theoretical-physicists-help-the-stalkers) for stalker being primitive and learning from the humans doesn't feel right if they're some super Einstein's. Why they didn't figured out things themselves. On the other hand they need processing power to handle all those biological sensors. So I'm thinking for explanation like both humans & stalker have about same CPU which is general intelligence, but stalker has additional specialized parts in the brain that just handle his sensors, radio & camouflage like [GPU](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2009/12/16/whats-the-difference-between-a-cpu-and-a-gpu/), [PPU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_processing_unit) & [DSP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signal_processor) do for the computer. Is it plausible that stalker IQ is similar to ours? [Answer] IQ tests are pretty specific to certain types of intelligence. Just like my mom would destroy me on a "musical IQ" test and I'd be much better on a "logic IQ" test, your species could very well be vastly superior to humans in some kinds of processing, while being sub-par in other kinds. If your stalkers are really good at tracking prey, predicting movement, ambushing their victims, etc., they wouldn't need to evolve highly complex methods of building tools, traps, buildings, and other things humans are good at. To us, they would seem primitive, but the truth is we're just stupid in those regards and need the extra help technology provides. Eventually though, technology would outpace evolution, and we would actually surpass them even in their fields of strength. At this point, they might see a need to duplicate at least some of our education and technology to enhance themselves. This assumes they feel a need to compete with us, however; if they're content to just have their part of the world in peace, they might not change much at all. Your general idea of having different components in the brain is roughly accurate. The brain's mass (or neuron count) will be roughly sub-divided into different regions of expertise. For example, humans have [different parts](http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/kinser/Structure1.html) corresponding to vision, memory, spacial awareness, and so forth. Devoting neurons from the "creativity" center of the brain to vision would give your stalkers what they need to see more of the spectrum, while reducing their ability to invent new tools. Be aware, however, that brains aren't really individual components. Each "part" of the brain is highly interconnected, and the distinction between "GPU" and "memory" is a blurry grey area. Also, many parts of the brain have multiple functions, and some functions are distributed to multiple parts of the brain, further confusing the spatial notion of "parts". So it probably makes more sense to think of logical parts, which are loosely correlated to spatial zones. [Answer] Apart from your species feeling like a humanized version of the [mantis shrimp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp) (which makes me somewhat afraid of it), i see no reason why it shouldn't have a similar IQ? Honestly, psychologists still don't fully understand how the brain works, and even though it has been a few years since i last worked in neuroscience, i don't see any reason why they shouldn't have a similar IQ. Please be aware though, that - scientifically - IQ is not the same as intelligence (even though i assume you meant that, and my answer holds true for both). Edit: i feel the need to emphasize that in my opinion there cannot be a hard-science, definitive answer to your question. I think you might give it almost any Level of intelligence you wanted, with little scientific problems. [Answer] Yes: the brain evolved for a specific role and it’s an expensive tissue. It won’t do more than necessary for the animal’s survival, along an evolutionary time scale. What you describe is our own brain too! Can you think about how you balance upright, throw a ball, or process visual information? The concious thinking mind is a high level process on top of layers we can’t directly access. [Answer] There are some people who are absolutely brilliant at applying and combining learned knowledge in unique and powerful ways. However, some of these may also be horribly uncreative when it comes to coming up with entirely new ideas. The vast majority of human scientific advancement is about building upon the discoveries and insight of others. Your stalkers may be extremely flexible in applying what they know, but have mental blocks that prevent development of new ideas. ]
[Question] [ The average citizen in virtually all ideological societies will pay various taxes. These taxes fall into three subcategories: 1. Tax due when they receive money (tax due on income from labour or selling an asset at a profit) 2. Tax due when they spend money (sales taxes and duties on goods and services) 3. Static taxes for owning certain assets (vehicle taxes, property taxes) The problem with the first two categories is that they can be evaded through black markets, offshoring of transactions, and collusion with tax collection authorities. In most societies, personal income is a very private matter, therefore there is no majority will amongst the citizenry to enforce transparency on how much tax citizens pay on their incomes, which further encourages evasion and corruption. The proposed solution to these problems is to replace all taxes with a land tax. This would be a monthly charge due from each landowner. There would be different rates charged for different land usages (e.g. farmland would have a very low rate, while land with residential or commercial buildings would attract a more substantial charge). The charge would be a certain amount per unit area owned (e.g. £10 per month per square metre of land owned with residential buildings upon it). The rates could also vary by region, in order to match the spending requirements of the local government. To enforce transparency, an online public database with maps would show how land is categorised, who owns it, and how much revenue is being generating. The anticipated advantages would be: 1. A land tax cannot be evaded or offshored. Land ownership is fully transparent 2. The poorest in society, who own no land, pay no tax, while the wealthier, who generally own amounts of land proportionate to their wealth, will pay more tax 3. The elimination of income taxes allows all citizens keep 100% of their earnings, giving them more money to spend in the economy 4. Elimination of sales taxes would reduce the price of goods and services, encouraging consumption 5. Highly skilled people working in the 'industry' of accountancy could move into more productive industries Would this deliver a fairer society and improve the economy? [Answer] There are some specific problems with your anticipated advantages that mitigate any gains you might get. > > 1. A land tax cannot be evaded or offshored. Land ownership is fully transparent > > > * Not completely true, as pointed out in other answers. > > 2. The poorest in society, who own no land, pay no tax, while the wealthier, who generally own amounts of land proportionate to their wealth, will pay more tax > > > * Land tax on rented property will be paid by the renters whether they own it or not. Land tax on stores will be paid by consumers. Land tax on entertainment will be paid by those being entertained. Land tax on utility companies will be paid by consumers. Etc. > > 3. The elimination of income taxes allows all citizens keep 100% of their earnings, giving them more money to spend in the economy > > > * Instead of directly paying taxes, they'll be spending more on services and goods to indirectly pay the businesses' taxes. Overall, nothing changes. > > 4. Elimination of sales taxes would reduce the price of goods and services, encouraging consumption > > > * Again, you're just converting from direct sales tax to indirect land tax. Prices don't change. > > 5. Highly skilled people working in the 'industry' of accountancy could move into more productive industries > > > * Accounting consists of much more than just finding tax loopholes. Simplified taxes would certainly be nice, but you're talking about a fraction of a percent more "productive" use of these extra people. Society as a whole isn't going to notice. [Answer] You are describing a very old system of governance known as [Timocracy](https://infogalactic.com/info/Timocracy), where political power is vested in the landowning class. In ancient times, and even into the early modern period, this was not only a very good indicator of actual wealth, but also ensured that landowners were full and wiling participants in governance, since they were the most affected by it and had "skin in the game", so to speak. Even the intent of the founders of the American Republic was to create a Timocracy of landowners, who were dedicated to the preservation of the Republic and its prosperity. Today, however, Timocracy based on land ownership would not work very well. The industrial revolution and subsequent changes to the economy have severed the close link between land ownership and wealth creation. A land tax would have very little effect on companies like Apple or Google, and many of the Silicon Valley startups (or most new business, for that matter) do not own the property where the work takes place, but rather lease it from a property management company. Landowners would be up in arms, since they would be carrying the burden of government, yet have far fewer financial resources or even people to attempt to influence the political system, compared to the poor (who outnumber them- preventing the poor from overwhelming the landowning class was one of the basic reasons for establishing a Timocracy in the first place), and of course watching millionaire and multi billion dollar foundations like the Tides Foundation, Soros "Open Society Foundations" or Moveon.org influencing elections should tell you that landowners would become increasingly bitter and resentful that they are being outvoted and their wealth is being taken from them; hardly an ideal situation for the long term health of a society. [Answer] This idea is circulating from quite a while: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism> There are clear advantages, like practically no economic distortion, evasion or forcing land to be put in to most useful use. Nevertheless I would say not "usage" but "location". (I mean if one want to put a tomato field in city center that's OK, but should not deserve tax break) Nevertheless: -there seem to be a serious unpopularity of such tax (except of psychological reasons, there is a point that one could have a house with nice piece of garden and very meager earnings / pension. Economists would say that such garden, even when inherited from beloved family should be sold, but economists tend to be psychopaths ;) ) -certain businesses like finance, legal services or IT tend to generate huge profit but under such system pay almost no tax (such tax was a better idea in the past) -there are certain things with negative externalities (or clearly harmful) that better be taxed with some sin taxes - tobacco, alcohol, emission of pollution, etc. -there is a limit of land rents that can be extracted by gov. If your gov needs more (eg. wants to fund some healthcare or retirement system) then may exceed the maximum point and only see how people build high and give wastelands to gov just to avoid this tax. Conclusion: moving a bit towards such land tax system (and at least reduce social security /income tax) would be reasonable, but there would be serious issues to just replace all taxes in this way. [Answer] This approach would have been highly successful in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, but less so today. Back then, if you owned a lot of land you were rich, and if you were rich you owned a lot of land. Today, however, some very wealthy people own practically no land (think Mark Zuckerberg, or Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet), while some people who are middle-class (or only slightly rich) own very large amounts of land (think farmers or ranchers). A land tax would likely drive up the price of food, and that wouldn't help the poor very much. There is a similar problem if you only use sales tax. Out of necessity, the poor spend almost 100% of their income. That means that the poorer you are, the more you're hurt by taxation (horrible). It'd be easier for the rich to become ever-richer if sales tax were the only tax: most of the income they earn won't be taxed as long as they don't spend it. Yes, of course the rich will spend portions of it. But it would be very, very easy for a rich person to use their fortune to make more money. A rich person could double, triple, or quadruple their wealth with no taxation. Based on your post, you want a system of taxation that: 1. Is difficult to evade 2. Is fair (low taxes for the poor; high taxes for the rich) 3. Simplifies accounting 4. Doesn't hurt the economy Based on this, I propose: 1. Taxing Capital Gains (i.e. money made from the stock market and other investment) 2. Taxing Business Expenditures, with higher rates for larger corporations (basically a progressive sales tax that only applies to companies, and also helps small businesses compete against large corporations). 3. Tax business profits (at a higher rate than expenditures). In this case, profit = revenue - expenses. 4. Sales Tax, but only for luxury items. 5. Income Tax that 1) includes all money a person makes in a year (from stock, from from work, etc), and that 2) only applies for people who make more than a certain amount (i.e. only if their income is 5 times the cost of living in the area of their primary residence). 6. Fortune tax which takes a small portion of all total assets each year, say 2%. But only for very, very large fortunes (say when a person has a networth greater than 10 million dollars) Various tweaks or adjustments can also help promote investment in various areas. For example, the government could start a program whereby companies can be licensed as "research institutions" if they spend more than a certain amount of money on research and development, if they publish papers on the research that occurs, and if they agree to allow anyone to use their patents after a set period (say 3 years). A company with a "research institution" licence can deduct their R&D budget from expenditures, and capital gains taxes are lower for those institutions. These taxes should ensure the following: 1. The government does have enough money to defend the country, 2. To provide high-quality education to it's citizens, 3. To provide necessary medical care to the sick 4. To maintain infrastructure and sanitation 5. To fund research as necessary In addition, a system of licences in return for tax deductions should help encourage good behavior on the part of companies, while also promoting certain kinds of spending (such as R&D). At the same time, it should have a minimal impact on the average consumer. Attaining licences would require more involvement from the government (to make sure a company wasn't trying to cheat), but it wouldn't be more costly or more complex than the current system of a hundred thousand separate deductions. [Answer] There's a phrase I like to use whenever someone throws around the word "fair." I like to point out that fair is an F-word, and 4-letter-word. Both terms for expletives apply to the word "fair." Accordingly, I can say "your system will be more fair from the perspective you choose to view it from." It would create some really uneven businesses. Consider businesses which center around the maintenance of very expensive servers in server rooms. The amount of dollars going through each square-foot of that building is enormous. Business would flood into that market unless you taxed at an extraordinary rate. Meanwhile agriculture brings in very few dollars per square foot. Agriculture will die unless it's taxed at a very low rate. You mention that different classes of land might be taxed at diferent rates, but are you ready for rates that vary by a factor of 10,000 or more? You could easily hit a difference in taxation of a million fold before these sorts of businesses are on reasonably "fair" footing. So now you have a huge opening for tax evasion. You thought you were taxing land, but you're really taxing land use. With incentives like those described above, there will be a huge market for people trying to create "farms" that technically grow a crop, but they make their money off a server room in the middle of the parcel. Your tax code would be quite complicated. You'd need to watch out for all sorts of clever things. You always have to when you tax static things (like land) instead of taxing moving things (like transactions). My go-to example is how Mexico handles property taxes. If you drive around there, in many areas you will see buildings with all this ugly rebar reaching up out of the roots. It's because they tax land differently once a house is built on it. The loophole: every such building in Mexico is a "2 story house" on paper, but they "run out of money to finish it" after the first story is complete. Then they never have to pay the higher taxes on the land. Better to admit that taxes will never be fair... ever. Instead, work towards how to make do with unfair taxes. [Answer] This seems fundamentally unfair, at least to my subjective definition of fairness. For instance, a subsistence farmer might own a lot of land\, but make very little income off that land. On the flip side, a billionaire might choose to live in a Manhattan penthouse, sharing the ownership of a small plot of land with perhaps thousands of people in the apartments below. Another drawback is that much 'unused' land actually provides valuable (in the sense of being important to life, rather than financially) ecosystem maintenance services. There does not seem to be any practical way to monetize these services, so those who own such lands would be paying a heavy tax, while non-owners would be receiving the services gratis. \We can see this happening in practice in for instance the Appalachians, where poor natives are effectively taxed off their land in order to build mansions for wealthy incomers. [Answer] ## You might actually get Warren Buffet pissed at the tax code this way This sounds OK at first, until you realize that it'd impact certain entities highly disproportionately to others, as some entities hold land in highly disproportionate ways. Historically, land grants have been used as a means to encourage certain types of development (homesteading, transportation, universities), and entities involved with those types of operations are going to get hit hard under your scheme. In particular, in the USA, the major Class I railroads own oodles of land, much of which dates back to the original land grants they were given to spur the development of railroads through yet-undeveloped areas. Under your proposal, they, along with some major agricultural cooperatives and corporations and a few major real estate holding/management firms, would be some of the largest taxpayers in the country, while many other businesses that lease most of their resources would pay minimal or no direct taxes. The impact would be greatest in transportation -- it'd be a massive subsidy to trucks, aircraft, and ships/barges as most of those companies rely heavily on public infrastructure, while massively penalizing railroads. It'd also discourage upfront private investment in large-scale facilities such as toll roads, bridges, and airports due to tax liability confusion when public and private entities jointly own land. Finally, farmers would be relatively hard-hit due to the regressive nature of a flat tax on land area (vs a tax on land valuation, which is the more commonplace expression of your idea). In short, you'd have to give the railroads an absolutely monster tax break, or completely nationalize the rail network infrastructure (track, right-of-way, and maintenance thereto) in order to give this scheme a snowball's chance in hell. Either that, or your scheme contacts BNSF 793812 while said equipment is moving... ## If privately owned transportation infrastructure wasn't a thing, though... Now, if you're in a place where the railroads are nationalized along with all the other transport infrastructure (i.e. most of Europe), the issues with transportation would go away. Major estate holders would basically become tax collection clearinghouses under this scheme, collecting what basically would be a value-added tax on their leases and remitting it to the government. The bad news, though, is this wouldn't do anything to lessen the impact on farmers, which sadly would still be rather severe. [Answer] Where land taxes exist, they are generally set as a fixed percentage of the land's value. There is an official—named the assessor in most of the U.S.—whose job it is to establish these values. In most jurisdictions he simply rubber-stamps the price of the most recent sale, although in many jurisdictions he is allowed to "adjust" (i.e. raise) this value at specific intervals (usually once per year). Every year, the owner pays a fixed percentage of the assessed value. This avoids the problems raised in the other answers (namely, the problem that levying a fixed amount per unit area will make farming uneconomical without raising very much from high-value skyrise apartments). Most places also have a homestead exemption, which reduces the taxable amount by a fixed value if the property is the primary residence of the owner. This reduces the immoral and unpopular occurrence of widows being turned out of the house she's lived in for 50 years because she is not able to pay the tax bill. Such a system also gives the government a vested interest in maintaining the overall desirability of living and working in the area; if nobody wants to live there, property taxes dwindle, leaving them with less money. It also leads to abuses; Google "Kelo decision" if you want a few pagefuls of stuff about this. [Answer] No. > > The poorest in society, who own no land, pay no tax, while the wealthier, who generally own amounts of land proportionate to their wealth, will pay more tax > > > True, poor people rarely own a lot of land (or anything else really). But the wealthy do not own land in proportion to their wealth. End of story. ]
[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/55471/edit). Closed 7 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/55471/edit) Victor dubs himself a "superhero," but most people don't see him as one. For one, he's likes to murder people. Specifically, he likes to murder large groups of ethnic and religious minorities. What superpower would be effective at mass murder, while helping him prevent being shot at by police? I considered fire, but someone could just shoot him. This is set in modern Florida. He should either have one superpower, or a few very closely related superpowers. Edit: The mass murders in the plot happen during the day. Amusement parks, regular parks, skating rinks, mosques, etc. [Answer] First off, yikes! Not sure what your plan is for Victor, but here's hoping he's a villain who gets what's coming to him. ## Powers for Showing Off and Getting Out Alive So if Victor is a mass murderer and doesn't mind getting into a shootout, he'll need an overwhelmingly strong power to pull off killing people in public without getting immediately gunned down. Fire and other elements like electricity could work if he can turn his body into the element itself or use the element as armor. You can't shoot fire! Also could consider laser beams, magnetism, explosions, basically a good number of the X-Men have powers with massive destructive abilities. Telekinesis would stop bullets in mid-shot or use objects to block projectiles. Hell, regular old super strength could do the trick if amped up enough. ## The Silent But Deadly Kind I actually recommend a stealthier power instead of something flashier, only because it makes it way harder to catch Victor and could turn your story into an interesting mystery. Time manipulation is an obvious choice for this, but also consider chemical/air manipulation. Victor could remove all of the Oxygen around a crowd and none would be the wiser. I'd add more here but I already feel a little dirty for coming up with ways to kill people so quickly. [Answer] Disintegration! For murders, just disintegrate a part of a person's spinal cord.. quick, painless and bloodless For avoiding bullets, set up a disintegration barrier and you're safe as houses [Answer] How about something like this. [Wolverine's job isn't always easy to do.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AcARm.jpg) A description of the power is "...radiates a series of toxins and acid - like poisons...and everything in a radius around you...basically all you do now is kill organic tissue. Vaporize it." I'm sure you can see ways to modify this to fit your character and circumstances best. [Answer] Teleportation would do nicely. Teleport from one victim to the next, killing each as you go, and then teleport out of there before the police can nab you. Doesn't matter if it's day or night. [Answer] LASERS In many religious creeds, the ability to control light, particularly for destructive purposes, is considered divine. Somebody that can focus beams of light as an innate ability might very well believe that they are messengers of some god, and embark on a "holy" mission. Being able to focus or disperse light in any way imaginable is critical to this power being used in the manner you describe. A bright flash will blind unprotected police officers trying to shoot Victor. Sufficient power should enable our "hero" to bore through most vehicles and cover. Given a great deal of power, but wide dispersal, you might allow a sort of light shield, that melts bullets, etc. a few feet from Victor's body. If you add flying, the correlation with angels becomes very strong, and reinforces the "crusading" nature of our hero. [Answer] The Meat Puppet I feel like ol' Victor likes to be seen as the good guy, and what better power to make that a reality than Power Word Hypnosis? By walking up to someone and uttering a single Word of Power in their ear, they become your pawn, and begin to commit the most atrocious acts of mass murder, on their own former friends/family/colleagues/what-have-you, all while glorifying Vic's name or creed at the top of their lungs. Damage control efforts will have to be directed at containing the raging psychopath (or psychopaths!) immediately. Nobody will worry about the guy just trying to get away from the scene. Victor can later claim credit for "converting" the guy, or more sneakily, denounce the ethnic/religious group to which the victim(s) belong. Should you use the second alternative, collateral damage actually begins to work in Victor's favour, and he may amass a group of dedicated followers. I feel like I just summed up world politics. Eww. [Answer] Suggestion Florida Man doesn't kill people, he just suggests that other people do it. It's not his fault that lots of people think that his suggestions sound really good and tend to follow through with them. Even the police force thinks his suggestions sound pretty good, after all, if a few fewer minorities were on the streets there'd be less crime. The people who listen to his suggestions aren't all persuaded, of course. He doesn't implant thoughts into people's heads, he just amplifies what's already there. That way, there's no smoking gun. There's no victim that breaks away and goes to get help. Without special technology or a dedicated study looking at the effects he has on his victims, nobody would even know that he's got a superpower. When asked, his victim won't have any story about suddenly developing homicidal urges out of nowhere. Rather, they've always thought that those minorities were what was holding America back. One day, they were just chatting with a guy at the amusement park. A nice guy, really, who pointed out to them, "We all know what the problem is. Why doesn't someone just go out and do something about it?" And you know what, he was right. [Answer] Metal The ability to control metal would be quite effective with the amount of metal there is in the world (cell phones, cars, parks, wheels, etc). This would also allow him to stop bullets if he was shot at. See Magneto from X-men for further reference of possibilities. Other Powers Gravity- Increase gravity to crush your targets. Increase or decrease around the `superhero` to stop bullets from reaching him. Force- Force choke, lightning, push, pull, etc. See the game Forced Unleased if you want specific ideas of what you could do. Air- Steal the air from people's lungs, cut people, or push people (off of, into, or in front of things). Side note depending on how he manifests his powers he could have any number of super powers and no one would know who was doing it and then couldn't shoot him. [Answer] This question made me think of all the damage that Superman could do by himself if he wanted cough [Man of Steel](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0770828/) cough, so I tried to strip his [list of powers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_and_abilities_of_Superman) down to the ones that by themselves would make him an unstoppable murderer. These 3 seemed like the bare minimum: 1) Invulnerability. He can go about doing whatever he wants if bullets, knives, whatever can't pierce his skin and/or do damage. 2) Super strength. If captors (police, military, other super heroes) somehow subdue him, this would allow him to break out of any prison/containment. 3) Not needing to eat or breathe. Note that this is apparently a [feature of Silver Age Superman](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/37429/does-superman-need-to-eat), and not recent incarnations. Either way, if he doesn't require air/food/water, then he can be kept in prison indefinitely, and he can break out at his own convenience to resume his murder spree. Being essentially unable to die, able to withstand any attempts to stop him, and being capable of breaking out of any imprisonment, it seems that you could get away with unlimited murder until you die of old age. With powers that can be used defensively like this, he is free to murder in any way he pleases (guns, knives, bombs, strangling, drowning, you name it) and can't be stopped. Alternatively, if you wanted to stick to just 1 ability instead of 3, you could give him something on par with [Deadpool's healing factor](http://marvel.com/universe/Deadpool_(Wade_Wilson)) and accomplish much the same thing, although avoiding capture/imprisonment would be harder with just healing and not super strength. [Answer] My answer to every super power need: suggestion as per Kilgrave or better known as purple man. He can control anyone with his suggestion power. He could ask half of the people to surround him and rest to kill each other. Also as soon as police is in sight, he could ask them to go back. He might even build a suicide bomber squad. [Answer] Temperature. If Victor has local control of the temperature, he can freeze (or boil, for that matter) the capillaries inside the brains of his victims. It may require some concentration to do that it many places at once, though (as you want to keep it localized, to avoid a juge energy drain. I assume using powers consumes Victor's energy.) And no one would have a clue it's him. Just a lot of aneurysms... it's very hot in Florida, this time of the year. ]
[Question] [ What conditions would have to happen to re-animate a mummified person to come back to life with consciousness fully restored? What would the conditions of the mummification be and biological/technical challenges that would have to be overcome? [Answer] Magic. :D Since we've never even done that on non-mummies. As Twelfth said, classical mummies have their brains pulled out. Freeze-dried mummies have their brains desiccated. Getting all of those back to a fresh, juicy state, just as they were prior to death is no small feat - even assuming nothing has been eaten by bacteria or other things (worms! maggots! yum!). But even that's not enough, still have electrical charge/whatever. We don't know 100% what makes the brain tick, nor how to access memories even from the fresh ones. Whatever that takes. [Answer] We will have to depart a little from current scientific thought to make de-mummification even possible. With the exception of many people of faith, many of us believe that consciousness is a product of the grey flesh behind and above our eyes. Experiments and observations suggest that damage to the brain has a greater effect on consciousness than any other non-fatal damage to the body. But lets step back a moment, and consider that the people of faith are correct on this issue. Lets postulate that consciousness is a product of some non-corporeal spirit which connects itself to the body in some undetectable way, yet remains undamaged even after the death of that body. We might even postulate that the brain serves as a radio antennae for that spirit such that when the brain is damaged, the expression of consciousness through the body is diminished. The consciousness is not itself damaged along with the brain, but its ability to affect in and be detected by the real world is reduced. If that is how consciousness really works, then reattaching a consciousness to a previously deceased body only requires that we build a new radio antennae that is tuned to the particular spirit which houses the desired consciousness. There is no need for that antennae to be made of grey matter. We aren't so good at building organic machines yet, so maybe we can find a metal or silicon circuit which can serve the same purpose. Similarly, we can replace all of the dead muscles with mechanical equivalents made of metals, plastics and rubber. We would probably want to keep the mummy wrapping to cover up our clockworks, but in the end, our spirit driven robot would compare pretty favorably to Boris Karloff's mummy. [Answer] With a very loose definition of "mummy" as "any person who has parts, or all, of themselves preserved in some way" and a future setting - cryogenics might be a plausible answer. Perhaps the technology was given up on, but they kept the sites running as a "tomb" of sorts. Though, if it works and the cryogenically frozen can come back alive, I don't think most people would think the definition of "mummy" really applies (from today's viewpoint anyway.) --- To expand more specifically to the OP's questions... The brain needs to stay intact and preserved in some way. That's probably the most challenging part of this question to complete convincingly, its almost better off unexplained.`[These people] used some unknown chemical which preserves everything perfectly!` The second half of this problem is removing this chemical or restoring the brain and body to where it didn't undergo whatever mummification process it went through, again without any sort of damage to the body. To re-animate, there needs to be some way to start the brain and all the functions it controls. Electricity is probably the most used solution for this case, but it could be an injection of some type. The alternative is that reversing the mummification process resumes normal body functions automagically. [Answer] Does it have to be a human (Egyptian?) mummy? If it's some alien life form, or maybe even a genetically engineered human... well, these guys can do it: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade> [Answer] You can obtain their DNA, thus you can rebuild their physical body (see "The Fifth Element" for an example). So the only problem is whether you can recover the information they had prior to death. Presumably you have access to the dehydrated and rotted remains of the brain. If you posit that the consciousness is held in the structure of the brain, and that a molecular scanner can scan the remains and detect the structures, then the only issue is whether the disassembled, rotted, dehydrated pile of brain molecules can be understood. Shredded paper can be put back together like a puzzle. DNA is read by breaking it into pieces, reading the smaller chunks, then puzzling it back together. So even if the brains were "scrambled", then a sufficiently powerful enough computer could figure out how it all fits back together. So if you can feed it the molecular structure of the pile of rotted, dehydrated brains, and if it can see past the rotting or "repair" most of the rotting (we assume here that the structure is very redundant, and/or the rotting doesn't actually affect the way the neurons store memory) then in theory it can develop a model of the brain structure prior to death. It then remains to rebuild or readjust the new brain so it matches the structure the mummified brain had. Then you start the heart, oxygenate the blood, and scream, "IIIIT'S ALIIIIIIIIVE!" while cackling gleefully. [Answer] The process of mummification would have to be significantly different from what it has been historically, as mentioned by the other posters and commenters. Most importantly, it would probably have to start with a living person, rather than a days old corpse. We want the cells 'frozen' so to speak, waiting to be restarted, rather than literally dead as in a traditional corpse. The purpose of the original mummies was eternal life. If you think about it this way, the mummification process resembles nothing better than cryogenics today. In cryogenics, a freshly dead body (or just head) is quickly cooled down to a very very low temperature. The goal of the operation is to prevent further decay. Unfortunately, current means of cooling bodies are destructive, in that ice crystals form that destroy cell membranes and make functionality at reheating essentially impossible. So. How would a revivable mummy look like? I think the more important question is about its coffin. It would be a high-tech device (well, i suppose large granite slabs were high-tech 4000 years ago) that would maintain a constant (probably low) temperature. The body inside would have undergone the process while (barely) alive. Since we wish to restore consciousness, presumably we don't want to grab the brains out through the nose like the Egyptians did. If done very very carefully, we might be able to gradually thaw out the person days, months, years, or even centuries later. There are examples of (much simpler) organisms in nature that can revive after freezing, so the idea is not completely insane. Even so, revival in the (same) flesh might be out of the question. More likely, future technology would be used to generate a digital upload, and even more advance handwaving would be needed to reincarnate that mind. [Answer] An emergency system, in a biotec/nanotech future, could be built which packs up the brain state when life becomes unsustainable due to environment or damage to vital organs (other than the brain itself). Suppose that it is destructive, so not good for routine backups. Nanobots or enginneered mechanisms in the cells first freeze the state, and then nanobots pick through it all, recording what was found as they take it apart. The results are consolidated into a compact and durable solid storage unit, for later physical recovery. Once obtained and brought back to civilization, a body is grown and a brain printed out or somehow reset with the connections indicated by the store. ]
[Question] [ How well can a thermal superconductor protect against pulse lasers? First off, what is a [thermal superconductor](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/130869/thermal-superconductivity)? It is a material that has a theoretical infinite thermal conductivity, similar to what is displayed in near-zero helium-4. This practically means that heat can controlled to a degree previously unobtainable. When it comes to lasers, this means that in theory no matter how intense the beam or the how tiny the spot size, as long as there is a mesh of thermal superconductors within the armor plating, the beam will only make the entire armor warm up instead of vaporising the portion it is shining on. At least until the armor reaches thermal capacity in which case the beam will start doing damage, but by then the wearer should have moved out of the way a long time ago. Against a weaponized [pulse laser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsed_laser) however, I'm a bit skeptical. Such a [laser weapon](http://panoptesv.com/SciFi/LaserDeathRay/Blaster.html) would heat dump enough energy into the surface that conduction does not take place, meaning that a mesh that was mentioned above would be useless against such a weapon. In this true? Do Thermal Superconductors provide no protection from pulse lasers? [Answer] A laser will laugh at a thermal superconductor trying to stop it. A thermal superconductor is very good at dissipating heat building up in a confined location, but a laser doesn't necessarily heat up the substance it hits. A laser excites electronic or molecular transitions: only the molecular transitions result in direct heat, electronic transition result into the matter being ionized and all the shenanigans which later on result into heat. By the time the thermal superconductor has started carrying away the heat, the laser has already done its damage. [Answer] I've mentioned this subject briefly on various different occasions in one of my many, many laser cheerleading posts on this site passim ad nauseam. I'll gloss over the issue of high-temperature thermal superconductors here... they're unobtanium, in the sense of "we could establish plausible physical properties of this material, but it probably can't exist in real life". That category includes the stuff that holds wormholes open or makes Alcubierre warps possible, and so it is fair game for even reasonably hard scifi. If your thermal superconductors somehow had infinite thermal conductivity, they'd resist purely thermal effects quite well, up to the capacity of your heatsinks and/or radiators. Obviously you could just cook a target by pouring more energy into it than it can dump, but that's probably not going to be generally practical... it should work on smaller targets, like missiles, but not very large things. With finite conductivity, you just have to deliver enough heat to a small enough space in a short enough period of time that the superconductor will vaporize before it can conduct it away, so a powerful enough heat source can defeat your armor. The problem is that sufficiently intense laser light isn't just heat. Short wavelength lasers, which mostly means vacuum UV and up (a 10 eV ionization energy corresponds to ~124 nm wavelength), [ionize matter they illuminate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation) and ionization is not a thermal effect. Your thermal superconductors, if they are made of matter, will not necessarily cope well with this sort of thing that can disrupt crystal structures and molecular composition and all sorts of things that superconductivity probably needs in order to work nicely. Nuclear pumped lasers are one possible source of this sort of radiation, which implies a surprisingly low tech-level by the standards of having-warfare-in-space scifi... humans could probably make them now ([project excalibur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur#Dauphin_success) demonstrated the technique in 1980 as part of the guardian dauphin nuclear test) though they'd be quite expensive, I suspect. They're only pulsed by the nature of their pump source, so maybe they don't count, though. A [free electron laser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_electron_laser#X-ray_FELs) might also do the job... they already exist, though current examples are not at all suitable for weapons. You might reasonably find a way to shrink an accelerators right down whilst maintaining efficiency in a scifi setting, though that will be challenging in real life ([wakefield accelerators are tiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakefield_accelerator), but very low efficiency making them poorly suited for weapons). With sufficiently intense laser illumination, even using non-ionizing wavelengths, you can get nonlinear optical effects like [multi-photon absorption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-photon_absorption) which in turn can cause [ionization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoionisation#Multi-photon_ionization) if the total energy absorbed is sufficient (obviously this works better if the laser is short wavelength). Once those electrons have left the vicinity, the now positively-charged nuclei left behind will repel each other in an effect called a [Coulomb explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb_explosion), and that's the end of your nice material structure and probably your thermal superconductivity, too. Now, sufficiently intense is doing some heavy lifting there. From the wikipedia article on Coulomb explosions: > > Coulomb explosions for industrial machining are made with ultra-short (picosecond or femtoseconds) laser pulses. ...enormous beam intensities [are] required (10–400 terawatt per square centimeter thresholds, depending on material) > > > That's a big ask, but not an impossible one. This all means that if your thermal superconductor is made of matter, it cannot guarantee safety against laser weapons, though it will significantly reduce the effective range of lasers emitting non-ionizing wavelengths. It is unlikely to help much against VUV, x-ray or gamma-ray emitting weapons. You should also consider that the existence of thermal superconductors makes it easier to construct unreasonably powerful lasers. If your tech-level precludes nuclear-pumped lasers and picosecond pulse generation, then thermal superconductors seem likely to render laser weapons significantly less useful. [Answer] A "thermal superconductor" is not just a material with infinite thermal conductivity, they're not a direct analogue to electrical superconductors, as thermal conductivity isn't a direct analogue to electrical conductivity. For example, a consequence of electrical resistance is that energy is lost in the form of heat. Thermal resistance just results in a thermal gradient, heat isn't lost somehow in the process of flowing through the material. In a thermal superconductor, changes in temperature propagate as a wave instead of by diffusion. This "second sound" is not particularly fast (around 20 m/s in the case of superfluid helium, increasing as temperature decreases), and the thermal conductivity is still finite. Additionally, at least in the case of helium-II, the heat capacity of the superfluid phase is [much higher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_point). They are very good thermal conductors, but you may be better off with a circulating liquid that can tolerate heating without drastically dropping in thermal conductivity and capacity. ]
[Question] [ For the purposes of this question, let us assume that one moon is similar in size to Earth's but slightly further away and the other is significantly smaller but approximately the same distance away from Earth as our own moon. Both are in a resonance of 2:3. My understanding is that this would create more intense tides that would evolve different seafaring technology than cultures on Earth but I'm at a loss at figuring out how this would be achieved in a realistic sense. What I am specifically looking for are the unique challenges presented by more intense tides and the considerations that need to be taken into account when building vessels meant to traverse these waters. I would also appreciate consideration for the general shape, size, and materials used in their construction but these are by no means firm requirements. [Answer] No difference whatsoever The ability to float in water is moon-independent. Waves on Earth are large enough to topple cruise and cargo ships today. I can't imagine any diffeence in how a boat would be built simply because two moons would occasionally create a larger tide. In fact, the only real difference would be in the tide tables, not in the design of the boats at all. [Answer] Longer anchor chains needed, stronger engines advisable Your ship would need longer anchor chains, because harbours will have higher quay walls and anchoring off shore to wait for entry will also demand longer chains. Stronger engines on the ship itself, or on tug boats, would be beneficiary for large cargo ships, when the unloading window becomes smaller (see below), unloading will be easier, when the ship can move into position faster. Also, larger engines could help the ship cope with the stronger sea currents, to keep a straight course. This may be a minor point. Draft limits will affect loading capacity Because of the larger tidal difference, your ship gets stuck easier, when approaching a harbour. Cargo transport would slow down: stacking your cargo up high must be avoided, because draft is to be kept minimal. Draft limits will affect loading capacity, you may need more ships. Tides slow down traffic, they do that now, on Earth.. Larger tidal difference could cause a long wait and a smaller window for loading the ship. [Answer] I'm afraid your little moon, traveling faster since it's closer in, is going to go a little crazy with the other Earthen moon out there. I feel it would not be stable. But you want to know how a stronger tide would affect boat design Many assumptions aside, if you look at extreme tides. [We have them on Earth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxH1OTmDmNk), depending on your geography. Your boats will have to be like our boats, ready to avoid tidal inlets during high/low tide. I don't anticipate any change other than timing. Just make sure to keep an eye on your littlest moon flinging about. Happy worldbuilding! [Answer] I don't think more intense tides or tides with an "interesting pattern" will cause any additional problems while traversing the open sea. Higher tides will mean less silty coastline, stronger current between inner seas and open ocean (think Gibraltar and Bosporus straits), higher tides in estuaries and it's likely estuaries well dominate the number of deltas. E.g. unlikely that the 20% of Bangladesh facing the Bay of Bengal would exist. Sheltered ports may be at a premium (with larger commercial cities concentrating in their neighborhood) and docking/loading/unloadind the ships may be a tad different in all other ports. The shallow water (like South China Sea or thr Great Barrier Reef) may present interesting challenges for navigation. Strong currents may discourage the use of canoes or rafts in such areas. But occasionally the tide may be low enough to expose the seabed and make from "navigating" between neighboring islands a matter of walking (or running, as it may be) [Answer] Part One (of Four): The Maximum Possible Vertical and Horizontal Tides on Habitable Planets. There have been other questions and answers about worlds with high tides. Using the search box in the upper black band for "tides", I found a number of questions: <https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/search?q=tides> For example: [Tides with 3 Largish Moons](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/139362/tides-with-3-largish-moons) In my answer to this question: [Would it be possible to have an earth-sized planet have much larger tides while remaining habitable?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/202716/would-it-be-possible-to-have-an-earth-sized-planet-have-much-larger-tides-while/202750#202750) I discussed how large tides could get on habitable planets. It has been claimed that a habitable planet could have mid ocean tides as high as 20 feet. I don't know how correct that is, but if that is correct it is simple to calculate the maximum height of coastal tides by multiplying the higest tidal range on Earth by the relative height of mid ocean tides on the two planets. So some spots on the shore of such a planet could have tides as high as 530 feet vertically. And if there are tidal flats in those locations the horizontal range of the tides would be determined how flat those tidal flats were. There are examples on Earth flat enough to extrapolate that the flattest tidal flats on another planet could have horizontal tidal ranges of tens of kilometers or miles. And possibly there oculd be even flatter tidal flats. That wuld be rather inconvenient for fishing boats in those locations. And I guess it would be possible for someplanets with 20 foot mid ocean tides to have coasts the maximimum tidal range even more extreme, and to have even flatter tidal flats in those spots, and thus have horizontal tidal ranges of hundreds of kilometers or miles. That would certainly cause problems in docking at ports at those extreme tidal locations, and so presumably there would only be ports in places with much lower tidal ranges. Part Two: Tidal Heights Won't Matter in the Open Ocean. But for ships in the open ocean the height of the mid ocean tides would not matter. A mid ocean tide 1 kilometer high, for example, would be thousands of kilometers wide and would have a slope of less than 0.001, which would be much less steep than many wind driven wves which ocean going ships would encounter with no problem. And such a 1 kilometer high mid ocean tide would be many times higher than one that might erode away all of the continents and make the planet totally covered by ocean with no land. So you can design a planet that has very high tides in some locations, causing problems along the shore line, and changing the designs of port and of ships, but you can't design a habitable planet that has mide ocean tides high enough to cause changes in ship design. Part Three: You May Need to Have Closer and/or More Massive Moon(s) Than in Your Question. If you want to change the designs of ships and ports to cope with high tides in some coastal areas, you will probably need much more massive moon(s) and/or or much closer moon(s) than you asked in your question. I fyou are fine with not having to change ship design then you can go with the moons in your question, but if you want to have different ship and port designs due to much higher coastal tides, you will need to have more massive and/or nearer moon(s). Part Four: A Problem and a Solution. But you have a problem with a habitable planet having very close and massive moons making very high tides, as I explained in my answer. So you may be forced, if you care about plausibility, to make your habitable planet a very young palnet, only hudnreds of millions of years old, which has been terraformed to be habitable by a very advanced civilization. ]
[Question] [ I been reading [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/69434/how-sophisticated-could-an-illiterate-society-become) question and it makes me think a lot. So I came with a question of my own. In a resume, the post presents a world where everyone is illiterate. Some said that the society could be very advanced indeed, others that the society is going to be in a Bronze Age state. But I want to give a twist to this. Let's assume that some kind of system based on scribes persist through time. That every knowledge is copied, written and kept by some kind of religious cult or administrative group. That means a reduced portion of the population. Let's call it "The scribes' house". I can imagine every workshop, laboratory, business, etc. requiring the services of a scribe. People dictating their knowledge to the scribes and requiring them to recall it. Similar to ancient times. But, isn't this impractical to the point of limiting the advance of the sophistication of that society? That's where my question comes: How sophisticated could a society be if knowledge, even written word, depends only on some kind of religious cult or administrative group with scribe-like functions? [Answer] Well, if you have read Eco's "The name of the rose", the Abbey had precisely that role: copying the knowledge and trying to prevent unworthy eyes from reading it, where the worthy eyes were only those fully indoctrinated. On a more realistic side, for centuries even the simple knowledge passed along the religious books of the Catholic religion was actually controlled by the religious people, since they were only written in Latin and not allowed to be translated in vulgar languages. Whether that was a con-cause in the relative stagnation of middle ages is matter for historical debate, nevertheless the less people have free access to knowledge, the more difficult it is for it to advance: geniuses like Leonardo, Archimedes, Einstein, Mozart are randomly born, and unless they can come in touch with something triggering the "spark", they will never shine. And with little circulation of knowledge, like it happened in the middle age, regardless of the causes, there is little progress. Moreover there is a limit to the amount of knowledge that it can be transmitted orally without alteration, and it's rather challenging to pass orally all the theorems involved in calculus, for example. [Answer] To a certain degree, our society is like this. Have you ever tried reading academic papers in an area you are not familiar with? They may be written in your native language (or the language you are fluent in) but despite that, you will have a very hard time understanding them. The reason is field-specific terminology and patterns of presentation. In our world, non-academics and academics belonging to different branches of science and scholarship speak very differently, it is almost like they use dialects. These 'dialects' are taught in universities and their usage is enforced by academic societies. It is extremely hard (or sometimes impossible) to publish an academic paper that does not follow language conventions specific to its area of study/research. A paper like this may get negative reviews for not being 'scientific enough' (it is also possible to publish a rubbish paper that uses 'scientific' language). Each journal has writing guidelines (including styles) that are relatively strictly enforced. Nature will not accept papers that are not written in accordance with editorial requirements. In addition to linguistic difficulties, there is also an issue of access to knowledge. For example, a significant part of scientific knowledge is not accessible by the general public. Paywalls, patents, trade secrets, and alike make it impossible to stay in touch with the most recent developments. Popular science magazines/websites and press releases are highly unreliable since they tend to distort or misrepresent the original findings (this is a tragic result of the grant system and commercialisation of science). Academia also controls what kind of knowledge can and should be collected, what topics can be researched, how they can be researched, and so on. Take for example genetics, there are numerous ethical committees that decide what and how can be researched (no human experiments, no human germline editing, etc.). If morally questionable human experiments are conducted, their results will be impossible to publish and researchers will risk their careers and sometimes even freedom. Despite scientific knowledge being controlled by academia and a decrease in the number of people that can understand most of the accumulated knowledge, our society keeps getting more sophisticated. I think that the existence of some organisations controlling knowledge is less important than the matter of control itself. If the said organisation only collects knowledge and does not put it to good use, your society will stagnate or may even devolve. However, if this organisation uses the collected knowledge to benefit society, society may advance very fast. [Answer] ## A Cult or Administrative Group Can Not Completely Suppress Literacy While the early-to-high medieval period saw a lot less technological advancement than you saw in the classical period, they also did not really see a whole lot of technological regression either. Some knowledge was suppressed or lost while other knowledge was gained. The thing is that even though the Church controlled all the old knowledge by monopolizing thier understanding of Latin and Greek texts, the church could not prevent the rise of new written languages from emerging. Neither could your scribes prevent people from coming up with thier own systems of writing or from inventing new things. So, while we often say that literacy in the medieval period was very low, this is not entirely true. Most households (even peasants) had at least one person who could read and write in the vernacular language well enough to be able to manage contracts, file taxes, share recipes with neighbors, etc. Our statistics of this time period are very skewed because these people were documented as illiterate by the Church because they could not read and write in Latin. ### ... But this does not keep the Cult or Administrative Group from Controlling IMPORTANT knowledge The reason that this kind of "illiteracy" did such a good job of suppressing knowledge was because knowledge invented by commoners could not spread very far with the languages they knew how to write in. There were just too many different dialects for knowledge to spread very far unless it was first translated into Latin. So, considering how the medieval period went down, we can assume that your scribes can not prevent literacy for very long, but they can very easily control the "common language" which only the very privileged have the opportunity to learn because no one actually speaks it natively. ### So to answer your question: There is no limit The same forces that made the scribes what they were could be recreated in any time period on any scale. For an example, picture a setting similar to Warhammer 40k: Imagine a future ~30,000 years from now where mankind expands to form a unified Galactic Empire. The Empire spreads its language across many worlds allowing ridiculous amounts of cooperative science to progress mankind's technology far beyond anything you can conceive. Now imagine what 10,000 years of stagnation and civil wars will do to the Empire. Eventually, every world will have its own language or languages, and no one world will contain more than a fragment of what was once known in its native language(s) plunging humanity into an Interstellar Dark Age. However, you have one group known as the scribes (like the [Adeptus Mechanicus](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Adeptus_Mechanicus) and [Adeptus Administratum](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Adeptus_Administratum) all mixed into one) who still study the old empire's language. They not only have all of the old empire's technological documentation, but they know how to READ it! So while most "Peasants" could never figure out how to fashion anything better than a primitive laser cannons or plasma shields from the limited knowledge of what it recorded in thier own language, the scribes have in thier vast array of literature about how to make anti-star weapons and shields that can phase any incoming threat completely out of reality. They also know how to send messages back and forth between any two worlds in the galaxy without complication because every world has scribes who still know the old Imperial language, and these scribes CAN still work together with with collaborative knowledge of the whole galaxy to continue advancing technology... but not nearly as well as the old Empire could because the scribes are way fewer than the imperial citizens who once all spoke the same language. [Answer] Very unsophisticated Without the ability of the common people to track financial transactions, a society cannot progress beyond simple barter. Without numeracy it is impossible to even tax the peasants effectively - if they cannot record how much they have produced, how can they provide 1/10 or 1/5 of their output to their local lord? Even if the scribe class is actually a "merchants-combined-with-rulers" class, they cannot effectively interact with (read "exploit") the rest of society without a common ability to record credits and debts. This means that the society will never reach the critical mass to allow a wealth surplus to support a ruling class. Note that the above relates to limits on a society progressing to a certain level of sophistication. It might be possible for a high-technology society to regress to an illiterate stage if everyone is issued a voice-only smartphone or equivalent device that tracks all that person's financial and other records while the scribe/sysadmin cult runs the show. However, this approach: 1. is actually allowing the common people to record information through the proxy of their smartphone; and 2. requires me to believe in an IT system more reliable than anything that has ever existed (in the last 24 hours I've spent an hour on the phone to helpdesks, lost internet connectivity twice and had three drop outs in vidcons). [Answer] In the past Actually this describes many ancient civilizations. Obviously the early middle ages but there are many other examples like the magi in ancient Babylon. Size matters Could a state advance and still keep this system possible depends on how large there priest/education class is a modern society requires a lot of highly educated specialists. So it need a gigantic priest class and very powerful church. Slow development. Its possible that with one institute with a Monopoly on learning Could lead to a lack of the necessary competition to advance at the same rate we did in our world because of this it's possible that even if Such a society did advance to are a level it would take considerably longer. Slow to change and correct itself. Something else to consider is how the churches scientific conclusions are treated If they are treated as the same level or even near the same level as scripture then this might slow development also as despite The level of trust we put in it science is usually wrongs it comes to the right conclusion only by trial-and-error. If Scientific conclusions made by Religious figures even well informed well educated religious figures Are treated as the same level as scripture then they might be hard for the institution to correct the mistakes as new evidence comes out. Something leeks out It's hard to hold a complete monopoly on knowledge and education in a modern society especially since a certain level of knowledge and education is needed in order to Function in a modern society. And considering the size of your priestly caste Some knowledge is going to make out Someone's gonna teach something To their kid their spouse or their family. In addition knowledge is power and Secular political institutions may want some of the churches secret knowledge for the selves. Give them a high school education I would recommend that you don't make the average Citizen completely iliterate It taken certain level of education to function in a modern society. As theyd make your a priestly caste the equivalent to someone with a higher education. You have to be a member of the church or to get a higher education but even if you're not you still at least know the basics to function in a modern society. [Answer] Little chance it will be viable Sophistication in terms of technical achievements: probably not, unless there is a stack of hidden knowledge in the religious books, that can be explored. Slowly. In general, religions don't provide methods to approach exploration. Development and new knowledge are really needed for engineering. In a cultural sense, little would change from the directions it started out with. When prescribed religious patterns extend to culture and science, society will be carved in stone. No change. Emigration of young people will be the result, you'll end up with a reservate for the elderly. When the traditional patterns won't yield prosperity, violent uprise against a perceived dictatorship will follow.. If cultural directions would be incomplete, or allow for any basic freedom of expression, eventually people will break out.. writers - dissidents - they'll present different scenarios in novels.. and the solid base you trusted will not be viable. Change will come. ]
[Question] [ The human hand can be flexed at the wrist, extended and even abducted or adducted while the forearm can also be twisted in supination or pronation giving the illusion of the wrist twisting. All of these movements are necessary for all basic human functions. But what if the there was not such thing as a wrist? what if the hand would be directly attached to the forearm. Would things like writing as we know it be possible, if not then what other method of writing would humans have invented? And would there be any advantages to not having wrist or there would be only downsides to not having wrists? > > why would such a thing come to pass? how did that limb accomplish its original function of perambulation without a hinge for flexion, assuming that ceature was a quadriped, as all amphibian-derived land animals on earth > > > Said humans or creatures have an exoskeleton that doesn't allow movements at the wrist, there's no actual wrist. [Answer] I’m not sure about potential advantages/disadvantages to not having wrists, but as it’s definitely possible to write, draw, and paint without the use of one’s hands, having fixed wrists wouldn’t negate the possibility of writing. I know it’s just a Wikipedia page, but there’s an association set up for [artists who use only their feet or mouths](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Mouth_and_Foot_Painting_Artists_of_the_World) to paint, so it’s absolutely possible to create incredible works of art without hands, wrists, or arms. (Also, from personal experience with a broken arm, one can write with an arm and wrist in a cast - it’s tiring, because it requires much grosser motor skills than normal, but it does work). [Answer] One thing to consider: without a wrist allowing the radius and ulna to segue into carpals, all your finger muscles would have to connect to the radius and ulna in straight lines, rather than be spread out over your hand. So, you'd either have to have fewer fingers or less mobility. Of course, you could have wider forearm bones to compensate, but that would lead to a clumsier upper arm, as the muscles from the wide forearm plates would have to connect to the much narrower humerus. Then you could make the humerus wider.... you get the picture. [Answer] I agree with other answers on reduced dexterity. Writing will likely consist of straight lines, like Nordic runs, or cuneiform. Advantages will be few, but could include better tolerance of hard manual labor, like digging or mining. Those activities are very hard on weak joints like wrist. This will not give them advantage in combat, since dexterity is more important. They might be better at shield wall and spear trust, but they will get slaughtered if they break ranks [Answer] It is definitely possible to write and draw with a fixed wrist. All you need is to put your wrist in a cast or stabilizing bandage to try it out. Of course that presupposes that your fingers are still as flexible and dexterous as usual. ## Advantages The wrist is a rather vulnerable part of the arm because it's composed of a lot of tiny bones and sinews. Twisting and pulling can easily damage the wrist and put the bones out of alignment. The bones break under less force than bigger, hollowed bones and sinews that were cut do not reattach naturally. Not having a wrist eliminates these vulnerabilities to a limited extend (there are still the fingers that can be damaged just as well) ## Disadvantages Obviously not having the flexibility of a wrist limits the dexterity of our hand. We can use most tools like pens, tweezers and pliers without utilizing our wrist, but they aren't of much use if we cannot maneuver them into the right position. People who have their wrist stabilized rotate their elbows and shoulders to compensate for the wrist, but this is often strenuous and inferior to the mobility of a wrist. But a species that evolved without a wrist in the first place would have probably adapted that way. Take industrial robot arms for example: They move in a (for humans) unnatural way to compensate for the shortcomings of their joints. [Answer] # Humans are [obligatory tool users](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29027335). Our dexterity using our tools largely comes from the dexterity available in our wrists and fingers. Consider first your average toolbox, how many of these tools are entirely dependent on wrist movement to use? Most of them. How many could be modified to be used by someone without wrist movement? Few if any without making a simple tool much more complex. It's highly unlikely this species would have made it out of the stone age. It's possible they'd have trouble getting into the stone age. Hunting would be hard. The ability to aim a spear or equivalent thrown weapon is tied to the movement of the wrist. Knapping flint requires you to get precise angles between the stones to get the right effect, it's all in the wrist. Even the simplest of actions like eating with your hands, or picking a small item off the ground become significantly more difficult tasks. ]
[Question] [ In a hypothetical situation where ALL man-made structures on earth are destroyed (including servers, cell towers, radio antennas, etc.) but anything existing underground or in space (satellites) would remain intact, would any long-range communications (like from one side of the US to the other), like the internet, continue to function? For how long? This is assuming survivors bring cell phones, computers, radios, or other communication devices with them into underground bunkers, then emerge once the apocalyptic event has passed. Would they have any means of communicating with people thousands of miles away, given the proper equipment? If not, what is the furthest they could theoretically communicate? [Answer] Radio waves can be bounced off the ionosphere. Transatlantic communications were achieved as well as communication between North America and Hawaii with technology that is almost 100 years old. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skywave> [Answer] [Something](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACTOR) would still exist, and could be expected to continue to exist for decades. Indefinitely if they could scrounge or make spare parts. [Ham radio operators](http://www.arrl.org/internet-ham-radio) have made portable setups to allow laptops to communicate together using techniques with global range. These schemes currently use some fixed infrastructure, but could easily be changed to be totally ad hoc. Of course the number of people able to do this is fairly small (2-3 million hams and probably 10k's of digital users), and if all the servers are down there isn't much of an internet, but the old guys could still be trading emails world wide. --- A slight change in the question changes the answer a little: Short wave radios are fairly easy to make and have global range, most electrical engineers or amateur radio enthusiast should be able to cobble something together if they have access to any kind of electronic scrap. If they can bring a few dozen pounds with them into the bunkers it should work from day 1. [Answer] Can we have long-range communication? Absolutely! Short-wave radio will always be available, and communication satellites will be working for some time (at least months). Can we have internet? Not really. While internet was conceived with a fault-tolerant architecture, it now relies too much on a certain set of backbone servers and links. If one of these servers or links is completely down, we can see large internet blackouts. If all of them go down (and stay down), internet as we know it would not be able to recover. In your scenario, if we have a surviving team of communications engineers who can start new servers and reprogram satellites, then there is a chance, but otherwise no, the internet is done for. [Answer] [Iridium](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_Communications) satellite phones should keep working for as long as the satellites remain on station without communication from ground control. The Wikipedia article says “Station-to-station calls from one satellite phone to another can be routed directly through space without going through an earth station.” [Answer] The first 'spark-gap radio' that started everything was really simple to make, and very low-tech. It used Morse code, and sent a signal across the Atlantic. See [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSf93g0heUA), for example. So enterprising makers could cobble together some form of system, provided they have access to the information. A long enough receiving antenna, a high voltage source, a few components. Of course, this assumes there is someone listening as well as someone sending. All they have to do is to go on the Internet for the instructions. [Answer] ## (Literally) Underground networks do exist today. There are a number of fiber optic, undersea, and other form of underground communication links which exist even today. The original backbone of the DARPAnet (what is now known as the internet) had underground links as part of its' structure. There is also the G.W.E.N system, which is based off of Nikolai Tesla's work. It is interesting to note that while the G.W.E.N system as was constructed by the U.S. operated using a ground-hugging wave propagation scheme specifically designed to function post-nuclear and/or large-scale EMP catastrophe, the original claim by Tesla was that his version could function by propagating a wave literally underground at great distances. The G.W.E.N network was never finished due to funding, and some of the structures have been possibly been re-purposed as cell phone towers. If Tesla's claims were accurate, the towers could have been literally built underground, thus surviving a surface-level event. [Answer] Anything cell-based will be schtonk - cellphone systems rely on having more or less a clear line of sight (through air or light obstacles) to the next base station, that is why these are put on towers - and the base stations rely on a backhaul to function. This is either a cable link that will eventually rely on something above ground to function, or a directional, narrow beam radio link that relies on a partner antenna in a very defined place. Satellite phones (not satellite internet links, too much aboveground infrastructure involved) are likely to work for a while - as long as the satellite does not need any attention from a ground control station to continue functioning. As mentioned, there is always shortwave and longwave radio - however the bandwidth of communications possible this way is, just as it is with satellite phones, orders of magnitude too small to support casual, universal communications as you would get from the landline network, or the internet, or the cellular phone system. The reason Cellphone systems, TV networks are done on VHF and higher frequencies (simply speaking, three and four digit megahertz) is exactly that such links can be made relatively directional and of limited reach, and that there is a lot of bandwith available. Literal bandwidth (range of frequencies you can use for your channel, eg 2401-2433MHz for 802.11b WiFi channel 1) and data bandwidth (how many bits of data you can get through per second) are interrelated. This is not limited to 1bit/s per Hz even if it looks that way superficially - but going above that limit means a lot of technical complexity (eg 90s 56Kbit/s modem links or DSL over phone lines having much lower bandwith - the modems are actually complex as all heck internally). The point is, establishing a 20MHz wide channel on shortwave would make the whole shortwave band unusable for anything else in the surrounding area, and would interfere with other uses in a far wider perimeter. Direct satellite links have other gotchas: They need sophisticated equipment. They are expensive to build, so the actual comms bandwidth available to a whole ecosystem is rather small. And they are slow, not from a bandwidth but from a latency perspective - radio waves are still limited by the speed of light, and satellites are far away in the context of modern, rather interactive communications protocols. Buried landline-type infrastructure could be made serviceable by whoever really needs it, as long as shallow underground structures (think manholes in the sidewalks) are unaffected, and the end points of the cables and any locations where active, underground equipment (repeaters etc.) belonging to them needs to be fed power are accessible. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- This question does not appear to be about worldbuilding, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help). Closed 7 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/33066/edit) Two examples I can think of is Christianity and Buddhism. Some Buddhist temples are built at ridiculous heights requiring very difficult climbs and Christian monasteries were often built outside the city walls and [Meteora](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteora) in Greece was built on six stone pillars. Why? I get that monasteries are not churchs so they don't need to preach and reach people all the time, but being in a city gives you a lot of advantages any way. You get more people who might be interested in monk- or nunhood, you can get supplies a lot easier (I mean, think about all that water rationing you'd do rather than risk your life falling down a steep cliff) and you are easier to contact for the religion's head. Why trade all these advantages for solitude? Why is that so important for training monks and nuns? [Answer] Monasticism, at least within Christianity, manifests [ascetical theology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology): > > Christianity purposes to provide the means to follow Christ so we may enter eternal bliss. Christian perfection is a perfection of love. Attaining this love involves rejecting (or denying) that which is disordered within ourselves, learning to love and trust God, and growing in prayer life toward union with God. This may or may not be accompanied by mystical experiences (for example visions, rapture, or miracles). This progression and the various means by which to traverse it are described in the field of ascetical theology. > > > The logical extreme is the [Desert Fathers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fathers) who sold all they owned, gave the proceeds to the poor and went into the desert to dedicate themselves to practice prayer and mediation. This movement arose around the time that the church was becoming accepted by society at large. Since there were fewer opportunities to demonstrate dedication to the faith via martyrdom, Christians began choosing radical self-denial. This self-imposed separation from society is, in fact what the word [monk means](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk): > > from Greek: μοναχός, monachos, "single, solitary" and Latin monachus > > > While solitude is important to ascetic practice, many religious orders focus on other vows such as obedience, poverty, silence and chastity. Keeping these vows can be difficult to impossible when in constant contact with people who do not respect them. So monastic orders often operate away from population centers. However, many convents and monasteries are located in major cities—especially those with religious significance. Rome has so many that there is a [service](http://www.monasterystays.com/?a=faq&b=11#q2) dedicated to helping tourists find accommodation in the facilities that offer guest rooms. Near where I live in Los Angeles, there [dozens of monasteries](https://www.google.com/maps/search/monastery/@34.2159644,-118.0247843,10z/data=!3m1!4b1). Presumably they don't focus on strict solitude, but on other aspects of the [monastic life](http://monasteryoftheangels.com/monastic-life/). [Answer] The solitude is important because its part of their art =) It's a bit tautological. You'll find the monasteries which do not depend on solitude are near the cities, for the exact reason you describe. However, the more otherwordly monistaries are always tucked away. The general hand-waving version of what they're doing is trying to decrease the influence of the world on their life, so that they may focus on the thing they wish to focus on. The more convenient their location is for getting to civilization, the more convenient it is for civilization to get to them and disrupt their focus. Consider the Shaolin Monks. Historically they have been revered as being quite pious. However, as of late, there are voices who suggest the Monks are falling victim to their own success, and that the Shaolin Monestary is becoming a business. Whether this is true or not may depend greatly on your own perceptions, but both sides agree that the origination of this rumor or fact is in the Shaolin teaching of Kung Fu to non-monks. As the world becomes more interconnected, that which is Shaolin must interact more and more with the outside world. [Answer] A couple reasons, 1. it's easier to focus on what ever your are studying without the world infringing on you. 2. monasteries are often bastions of knowledge and or wealth (at least Christian churches collected a lot of money) and being in hard to reach places makes it much harder to loot and pillage (and less desirable. 3. You don't have the world trying to counter your teachings to your young Padawans, before their training has taken root. and likely in reverse importance of my listing. [Answer] While I can't definitively state why every monastery ever made would ever choose a remote location, here are some common reasons for solitude: * Life and people provide too many distractions. The solitude is there to allow individuals to focus on the important things and remove distractions altogether. Such is the case with buddhist temples, but not uncommon in Christian Monasteries. * A religious site in the middle of nowhere brings civilization to that area. Such is the case with the [Spanish Missions in the Americas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_missions_in_the_Americas). This is also true of many monasteries in the old world, especially in the [Migration Period in Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period). If you are placing a monastery, you can place it in the middle of nowhere to aid travelers, assuming that is part of your mission. * The Monastery, or monastic style of life, may be attempting to employ a social structure that is commonly frowned upon. A large distance between those who disapprove and the monastery may just be a simple defensive measure. While we would technically call these [communes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commune), you can easily lump some of these into "monastic living." * Every [monastery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monastery) has some terms that its inhabitants must abide by. By limiting contact with the outside world, the terms may be easier to employ. [Answer] Aside from a need to be "away from the crowd" (as explained in other answers), they also needed to be easily defensible. That was the case of the Christian monasteries in the Balkans. During the time of the Ottoman Empire, many monasteries were razed and plundered by Crusaders and the Turkish Army. Only remote monasteries, in far and inaccessible regions, managed to remain intact. [Answer] Talking about Europe, monasteries are often old. Back when there were established, most places were remote by modern standards. The lands around a monastery would belong to it in order to support it and its people. There are two mutually exclusive things that are likely to happen: * The monks value their surroundings and prevent urban growth (by not selling land to people who "develop" land). * A town forms around the monastery because people are attracted by the commerce. There are certainly many real-world examples of the latter happening; the former is a guess at why a monastery may remain remote. [Answer] Who in society is especially likely to become a monk or nun? In voluntary society, where the choice to join a monastic community is a personal one, people who are repulsed by other people or society in some way are most likely to find appeal in monastic life. "One more bad date and I'm joining a convent." "Capitalism is a drag, I'm going to go meditate and pray for seventy years." In a society where people's life paths are dictated by social obligations and elders, monasteries almost inevitably become dumping grounds for bastard sons, undesirable daughters, and queers. In this sort of society, the appeal of isolating the monastic community is clear: people send their outcast children and wards to isolated monasteries, not the city temple. (of course, "both kinds" of societies coexist at the same time and place from the perspective of different people, but you basically either have a scenario where most people make their own choices most of the time or one where most people go where they're sent most of the time.) Basically, monastic communities tend to be isolated because the people choosing monastic life (either for themselves or their children/wards) tend to prefer the ones that are isolated. Isolated monasteries receive more fresh meat and persist, urban monasteries are less preferred and are at greater risk of death by attrition. ]
[Question] [ My alien is a consciousness physically embodied in a network of space dust. It lives in the interstellar void. How could I make this scenario semi-realistic? What would be the being's source of energy? I imagine some kind of energy will have to hold the particles together in a loose network (it doesn't need to be a solid). The "space dust" could be any particles, cells or cell-like units. [Answer] Before answering your question, please be aware that we still don't know what causes the emergence of consciousness in our brain. With that in mind, you can avoid worrying much about giving a plausible explanation for a space being showing consciousness, because there is little against which it can be compared. We know that our brains work with neurons exchanging signals and that somehow at a certain point those signals become consciousness. Now, if your space dust can have its particle exchanging signals, you have what you need to make a leap to consciousness. Dust particles will exchange signals in their network through photons, fed by the energy flux coming from the stars, and somehow that will cause the dust being show consciousness. Its rate of thought will be way slower than the one of our brain, because the photons will take time to travel the cosmic distances in the network, to the point where to us the dust being will look inert (and maybe to it we will be like a flicker in the background), but if there is an advantage to being in space, is that you measure time on the scale of billion of years, not seconds. [Answer] If in doubt, use [dark matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter). We can't see it, so – modulo some constraints from how it's known to behave (assuming it exists at all) – the sky's the limit! Your alien being's dust cloud body is just the "light matter" protrusion, painstakingly collected via gravitational interaction, manipulated via highly-focused [neutrino](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino) [nasers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_amplification_by_stimulated_emission_of_radiation), of a much larger body composed solely of dark matter. Planets, stars, . It forms these light-matter appendages in the interstellar void because it's really quite hard, actually, to try to manipulate matter with neutrinos: if you're within appreciable-warming distance of a star, the effect of solar wind completely dominates any fine manipulations you might be attempting. Your alien being is capable of thought because dark matter can interact with other dark matter faster than the speed of light. Not via [tachyons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyons): instead, mediated by a Newtonian superluminiferous aether with a field propagation rate of… well, whatever gives you the correct size and thought-speed. The absolute frame of reference (probably ["co-stationary" with the Hubble flow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comoving_and_proper_distances), but not necessarily) prevents [tachyonic antitelephones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone) from being an issue, even as the rest of the universe's physics remains relativistic. Where does the energy come from? Dark matter, of course! There's loads of the stuff: some of that's probably maybe usable energy, of a sort. Maybe there are dark matter ~~stars~~ galactic haloes, ~~glowing~~ humming with usable energy, if the bulk of your body happens to be made of dark matter and also be very very large. --- [Did you get that?](https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=_tZckjQylGU) Good. Don't put any of it in your story. While it's often good to have extra worldbuilding in the back of your head, for things like this? Keep it at the level of internally-consistent technobabble. Either your readers won't know what you're talking about, and you'll lose their attention; or, worse, they will know what you're talking about, and they might find it difficult to ignore how wrong it is. Taking too much advantage of science's bleeding edge risks your story becoming very dated, very quickly. If you can walk the line between explanation and vagueness, tossing out enough details to make the setting feel rich, but never much more than is plot-relevant, your readers might even [invent a plausible explanation for you](https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0150.html). The less you can manage to contradict that, whatever form it might take in any particular reader's mind, the better. So: keep it vague! [Answer] You can't. This isn't possible nor even semi-realistic. > > imagine some kind of energy will have to hold the particles together in a loose network > > > # What we have This is the problem, this simply doesn't exists. What could be that energy? * Photons will just spread out in light speed and go away. Also, it won't make anything be hold together. * Neutrinos would do almost the same as photons would, just at a speed slight less than light speed. But they are way worse since capturing them features ridiculously small probabilities of success. * Gravity don't work that way, it would either collapse everything or everything would fly apart. It could set up orbits, but dust in nowhere near than anything with enough mass for that. * The nuclear strong force acts only in a ridiculously short range. * The nuclear weak force will just make things decay and radiate away energy in random directions until there isn't anything more to radiate. * Electromagnetic forces won't do. They need either very large bodies or very small distances to work. * Electrons or positrons being exchanged won't make anything close together, the forces that they carry are insignificant compared to gravity and momentum. * Exchanging atoms, nucleons or mesons means that the particles are disintegrating with time, except if they can aim each other in the vast distances of space down to microscopic precision, which ordinary dust simply can't. And this gets worse considering that each particle is moving relative to each other in random directions. * If the cloud is dense enough to have something like lightnings, this means that it is dense enough to either collapse by its self-gravity or that the random kicks that each particle do to other particles will make the cloud just expand and disintegrate very quickly and then very quickly it would not be capable of lightning anymore. * We are left just with dark mass and dark energy, but by definition, they don't interact with normal matter nor with photons except through gravity. And are expected to work like neutrinos. * Being a thin clouds of dust, they still need to exchange some sort of packets for communication. Without being in fixed positions relative to each order nor being able to precisely aim each other nor having anything meaningful to exchange, this means there isn't any communication, hence no consciousness. # What about micro black holes? They are unlikely to exist since they would evaporate through Hawking radiation. And even if they do exist anyway, you can't receive anything from a black hole other than gravity, magnetic forces, Hawking radiation and frame dragging due to their rotation, and the former two of them we already ruled out. Black holes could feel each other through gravity, but since they are micro black holes, either they are too far apart from each other or would collide and form larger black holes. Gravitational waves could only work as a signal carrier if they are very massive, which micro black holes aren't by definition. Communicating via Hawking radiation is incredibly inefficient, much many orders of magnitudes more inefficient than trying to use neutrinos and would also make them evaporate. Further, once a black hole absorb some sort of information packet, it don't give anything useful in return which could be used for communication other than gravitational waves or electric/magnetic field variations that we already know won't work. Frame dragging would also work much like gravity, just in weird and direction-dependent ways accordingly to the rotation of each micro black hole. You could encode some information in a black hole by setting and measuring the frame dragging direction and force with some gravitational interactions, but since they are micro black holes, their gravitational well are subatomic sized. So, in order to measure or set the frame dragging direction of one of those without feeding it, whatever interacts with them should have a trajectory with a so large precision that quantum mechanics inherent probabilities kicks in to stop the show and further, it is probably beyond of what the Heisenberg uncertainty principle allows. And yet, locating micro black holes in interstellar space and aiming them precisely is very hard to say at least. Gravitational lensing could help, but since they are so tiny, they are way smaller than the wavelength of most light except perhaps the most extreme gamma rays. This makes them effectively transparent instead of black. # What about tachyons and wormholes? If they in fact exist, they would probably need to feature much more than simply dust just to exist, and much more to perform any useful and meaningful work. Also, if they do exist and can perform some useful work, you won't need the dust anymore and this is already way much more than simply dust. # What are the best chances? The best you can do is a swarm of artificially built small machines, that are powered with solar energy and can precisely aim each other exchanging light. However, since they are just space dust, gravity and momentum will tend to dissipate it very quickly if not a very massive cloud. If it is a very massive cloud it would collapse into a planet or a star, heating and melting its components. Also, as noted by KerrAvon2055 in a comment, since you are in interstellar space, this means that solar energy is minuscle, roughly like trying to run solar panels only with starshine and to make it worse, having a microscopic light-collecting area for each machine (since it should still be dust), hence, they would be starved of energy. [Answer] I'm going to give a tangential answer here - Sometimes you need what we call 'Hand-Waivium' or 'something that doesn't exist or is not known to currently exist that solves the paradox or technical problem that we have'. My favorite example being the 'Heisenberg compensator' in Star Trek for their teleporters. We don't know how it works, however based on the name we are lead to believe that it compensates for the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (the more precise you make a sub-atomic particle's speed, the less precise you make it's location etc.) A Good story doesn't become a Bad story just because of some Hand-Waivium. What matters more is that if you've used Hand-Waivium, that you do so in a manner that's internally consistent. Having a special material that's as strong as steel but as light as a feather - fine, it's sci-fi. Then having that same material be dense enough to be used as a bludgeoning weapon - now we got problems. Further to this - a Good Story doesn't need to have all the answers. In a story where one group encounters a new form of alien life, it's almost absurd to consider that they would immediately (or even in the course of a story) work out and understand ever facet of that life form. There is so much about ourselves that we are know we don't know and probably the same again that we don't know that we don't know - so leaving a little mystery or uncertainty is reasonable. A brilliant example of this is 'What's in the Case' from Pulp Fiction? We don't know what it is, we only know that it's highly prized by one of the main characters and that other characters are willing to kill over it. In short: You can create something new and fantastical to make your life form work, just do so in a manner that is internally consistent and you don't need to know everything about your life form to use it in a story, a little mystery is always good. [Answer] Evolution of complex life in space seems to be impossible. Open space is very hostile to life as we know it. We have single example of life emergence, Earth. Anything that significantly differs from it would be almost completely fictional. So, the being is artificial. It was created by a civilization half a billion years ago as part of a semi-sentient defense system protecting home world from invaders. It failed, so the star turned supernova and everything was lost except for tiny piece of distributed sensor system. Over millions of years it managed to self repair to the point where it consciousness returned even though very little left from memories. It's original purpose clearly become irrelevant, so it decided to travel to the nearest star and see what's what. The cloud mostly consists of tiny yet extremely complex self replicating machines with few fist-sized cores that process hydrogen into energy and use magnetic fields to collect matter in space, shape and move the cloud. As the cloud collects enough matter it creates new cores and cloud elements but there is almost nothing in open space. And then it happen to meet an asteroid / damaged derelict space fighter / escape pod / Terran colonization ship. [Answer] I am going to abuse science here and make a suggestion. First off, your individual dust particles vary but share some common features. If you looked at them you'd find vaguely radiolaria like organisms, with silicon and carbon crystal shells. The dust particles behave a lot like quantum dots. If you want a better breakdown of the technobabble I'd recommend [Hacking Matter by Wil Mcarthy.](http://www.wilmccarthy.com/hm.htm) Where he basically describes programmable matter using quantum dots for his science fiction writings. Anyway said space clouds are in turn held together by powerful electromagnetic fields. How said field is generated is up for discussion. But more importantly the field is used to establish entanglement between individual organisms. Which they use to transferred energy and information(at classical speeds) via quantum teleportation. Similar to we use [NMR to make lines of entanglement and teleportation.](https://michaelnielsen.org/papers/teleport.pdf) Though they bear a passing resemblance to Earth plankton, I'd emphasize that these creatures are essentially dry nanotech organisms. I'd include as well borrowing from other answers to justify them as well. [Answer] Hopefully this answer isn't too off topic, as it's mostly advice for baseline worldbuilding principles, not advice specific to worldbuilding a particular world. Realism in a story is realism about what characters do, why, and under what constraints, not what they're made of and how it works. Since your character's purpose is to serve the story with their behavior, you probably want to start with the behavior (what they want and fear, how they try to get it or get away from it, and what their capabilities are), then work backwards to what kind of physical characteristics they need to have to minimally justify that behavior. Don't worry about the actual science beyond that, unless brilliant characters unraveling the mystery of how the creature works is the plot. If brilliant characters unraveling a mystery is the plot, you do the standard mystery-writer cheat for writing characters smarter than yourself: first decide what brilliant deductions allow the detective$^1$ to solve the crime$^2$, then issue the detective the clues needed for the deductions, then write the crime to fit the clues and write the setting to fit the crime. Finally, restart at the beginning, establish the setting elements that you needed to make up to fit the crime so that it doesn't seem like you're cheating, and fill in the plot to discover the real story, which is how your characters get from the introduction to the denouement and how they change along the way. 1: detective... or xenobiologist(s) 2: crime... or mysterious alien phenomena [Answer] If this alien being is a life form, it must reproduce. If you want to model the dust after life on earth, you would need a substrate of some kind (gravitational perhaps [akin to basaltic glasses upon which RNA forms spontaneously]) that can spawn life like dust clouds. Some kind of cell wall might make sense here too. These primitive prebiotic cells could then evolve into whatever you want. Also, google this: "The Strange Similarity of Neuron and Galaxy Networks" [Answer] You are not the first person to think of this, and - despite most of the other answer's assertations, it is less implausible than you might think. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThDYazipjSI) describes many different possible lifeforms. Starting from about 25:43, it spends several minutes discussing what sounds like exactly the type of life form you are thinking of. If you enjoy designing speculative xenobiology, you may also enjoy watching the whole thing. ]
[Question] [ I am trying to device a spacecraft that is entirely fuel-less; that is it requires no reaction mass. It uses a wormhole-generator for interstellar flight and a magnetic sail for interplanetary transits, but it still needs a way of exiting planetary atmospheres. so here is my idea: two extremely powerful air breathing engines are used to launch the craft, the momentum enabling it to breach the atmosphere, after which the magnetic sail is deployed for the ship to cruise through space. Could this system work? [Answer] The vessel would need to reach escape velocity inside the atmosphere - mach 33. It would need to be made of incredible materials to withstand the forces of that, apart from the ludicrous engines. I don't really see any advantage of this vs. a rocket assisted ascent. Put it on top of a reuseable ascent stage which returns to earth and you have the same end result - a spacecraft that doesn't carry a rocket engine and reaction mass. [Answer] Let's talk about this... This is a [Frame Challenge](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7097/40609). Are you trying to force a policy, or are you balancing technology and economics with policy? When humans ignore economics and technology to implement policy they get... well... weird, bad, not-very-useful results. I remember back in 2003 my brother calling me and asking if it was possible to take advantage of a U.S. government grant program that sought to put retail-grade and retail-cost solar power onto (I kid you not) Walmart's shelves. The program was literally asking for what at the time was magic: a low-cost solar solution that could be bolted onto your roof with no more skill than is required by a hammer to solve your power needs and thereby get rid of all the evil coal, natural gas, and nuclear power facilities. When I stopped laughing, I explained all that to my brother. That grant program was an example of ignoring economics (the cost of manufacturing solar arrays) and technology (the ability to build self-contained and sufficiently efficient solar arrays small enough to solve individual household needs) to implement a policy (everything would be green today if we just convince people it's true!). In reality (and that's a statement that starts bar fights over here in the States), policy, economics, and technology must work together to provide a solution that works today with an eye toward a better solution tomorrow. Your question kinda feels like you're trying to ignore economics and technology to implement a policy. A price must be paid Simplifying things a bit, it takes [3.29x107 joules](https://www.wired.com/2011/07/space-shuttle-launch-equator-vs-mountains/) of energy to lift just one kilogram into orbit. The [Space Shuttle on the pad weighs 2,041,166 kg](https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/167751main_FS_SpaceShuttle508c.pdf). So we need 6.7x1013 joules to push it into orbit. You can't argue with that. That's physics. That's the price. What's left is to decide the economic, technological, and political balance that pays that price. If you graph the value of those three variables needed to pay the price, you'll end up with a bumpy surface that trends toward infinity1 as any of the three variables trend toward zero (even for policy... think of it as, "despite what the government wants..."). Rationally, the goal is to find the lowest point on the graph and use that combination of economics, technology, and policy to launch your craft. Since when are humans rational? Which brings us to your question. I upvoted @ths' answer because his is the fundamentally correct answer. But I'd like to express it with my favorite worldbuilding.SE quote: > > "Can you launch an ICBM horizontally?" > > > "Sure, why would you want to?" (The Hunt for Red October) > > > Could you push a ship fast enough with air breathing engines to shoot it into space? Sure! At a price. And it's a pretty high price. Your biggest problem is that air thins with altitude, which means you need to create sufficient momentum lower to the ground, which means you're fighting air resistance longer than you have to... you get the picture. Science is a... um... somewhat crotchety lady Let's look at this in a cold-hearted way: you haven't created a fuelless solution. Not for any aspect of what you're doing. Fuel is being burned, you're just not who or what is burning it. In this regard your solutions are like solar power. The sun is burning the fuel, you're just taking advantage of it. And you want a solution like that, right? Air-breathing engines ain't it. They'll require fuel. A LOT of fuel. A better solution for you would be to create a space elevator powered with solar power. No fuel in ways similar to what you've already presented. Just attach the ship to the 37,000 km long winch and haul it up to orbit. --- 1 In other words, if you want those joules for free (no economic payment) you need either infinitely capable technology or infinitely flexible policy or both. Do you want it with little or no tech? Infinite cash (so you can build that tower!) and/or infinitely flexible policy (so you can rob your neighbors for the cash to build that tower!). Do you want it despite what the government says? Yup, infinite tech (so you can build it w/o government assistance) and/or infinite cash (to bribe the government!). This all makes sense when you think about it. [Answer] ## Every vehicle requires fuel No matter what method it uses to move, every vehicle requires energy. For most vehicles, that energy is properly called "fuel." That's because doing work of any kind requires energy, and energy has to come from somewhere. Fuel stores energy in a compact form that can be released when energy is needed. Using turbines is not going to make your vehicle fuel-less. Plenty of vehicles today are driven by turbines, and they all require fuel to power those turbines. Some aircraft use turbines, and they need jet fuel. Submarines are driven by propellers, which are just underwater turbines, and they need nuclear fuel. The truth is that even if your vehicle simply floated in space and never tried to move, it would require some kind of fuel to power the electronics and life-support. Your wormhole generator sounds like it will need fuel, because creating a wormhole probably requires a lot more energy than could be captured using solar panels, even if the panels have 100% efficiency. The magnetic sail will probably require energy because your astronauts will not want to have to venture outside the craft to adjust the sail. I suspect that what you're really trying to avoid is anything like a rocket engine, which blasts fuel out of a nozzle to generate thrust. That might be doable. But if it is, the resulting vehicle will still require fuel aboard, adding mass and taking up space. And since igniting the fuel and blasting it out the back is the most efficient way to convert the fuel to thrust, and you're avoiding that, your vessel will require more fuel than a rocket. [Answer] I think I see what you're getting at. Let's presume you're getting zero-point energy from your wormhole generator, so you don't need a power source. Re-wrote based on the comments # Air pumped scram jets The trick is to get the PSI out the back end greater than what you plow into at Mach 33. The advantage that fuel gives you is that a small amount of liquid gets expanded into 500x the volume when it burns, creating a very high PSI within the reaction chamber. Yes, jet engines contain turbines. They don't propel the exhaust, they are spun by the exhaust. Their role is to makes sure the energy of the expanding gasses is pushing everything in the correct direction. Also, they leverage the pressure of the initial expansion to keep the gasses moving when they're pushed out the back, and to compress the air on the way in. In order to push a vehicle hard enough without the explosive expansion advantage, you'd basically need to compress air into a liquid, then forcefully ejecting it from the backside. Without the heat generated by burning fuel, your turbines would freeze up from the expanding gasses, so you'd need to radiate some of your zero-point energy into the expansion chamber. Once your doing that, you are basically imitating a scram jet, except that you're compressing the gas more on the way in, and using magic, ahem, advanced technology to heat it instead of relying on the heat of combustion. Overall, it's not impossible with unlimited energy. You won't be able to use it to launch your ship from a standstill because you need a high pressure flow of air to get the turbines started. [Answer] # If a truly fuel-less launch mechanism existed, don't you think we'd be using it right now? Even air-breathing engines require fuel to heat and expand the air for thrust. ## Option 1: Your spacecraft deploys a [space elevator](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator) down onto the planet. This'll probably require some preparation time. If your spacecraft has some manufacturing capability, it may harvest materials in asteroids and such to construct the cable and counter-balancing mass at +geostationary altitude (which could probably just be a raw, unprocessed asteroid tethered to the cable). The spacecraft may aerobrake in the atmosphere if it is capable of doing so, but would need to ride the space elevator for perhaps a day or so to reach orbital altitude + velocity again. For a fuel-less ride, the space elevator could have a matrix of solar panels at GEO for solar energy. ## Option 2: Your spacecraft deploys a [rotating sky hook](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_(structure)). Sky hooks are a type of momentum exchange tether. They are similar to space elevators but require much less cable & mass to build. They also require a large counter-balancing mass to exchange momentum with which, like the space elevator, could also be a captured asteroid. Your spacecraft must simply be able to reach a target altitude & speed well below orbital and the tether carries you the rest of the way (no simple feat, but any competent spaceplane could make the rendezvous). If you don't care about the sky hook's orbit eventually decaying (possibly leaving you stranded if you can't reach it in time), you don't have to build any thrusters into it for orbital corrections (although there are a number of electrodynamic tethers that use the geomagnetics of planets for orbital corrections). This is IMO the best option. The cable can be coiled-up and reused for later planetary excursions, and all one needs to do is find a large enough counter-mass (such as an asteroid) and to place the thing into the correct orbit. ## Option 3: You leave your spacecraft in orbit and take a hypersonic airship down to the planet. This is [JPAerospace's Airship-to-Orbit](http://www.jpaerospace.com/) proposal for space launch & return missions. A mile-long, solar-powered hydrogen airship slowly decelerates to suborbital speeds over the course of a couple days, coming to rest several miles above sea level. (The airship is delicate due to mass constraints and must remain floating in the upper stratosphere to avoid high barometric pressures and weather conditions.) Smaller balloons/airships or heavier-than-air vehicles could then deploy from the orbital airship's cargo bay to peruse the planet at will. To return to space, the orbital airship gradually builds up orbital speed & altitude over 2-3 days using solar-powered ion engines, rendezvousing with the main spacecraft. [Answer] You can, but the engines wouldn't be called turbines. The whole setup will also be extremely energy-inefficient, which might be irrelevant to you, though. A [turbine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbine) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. In colloquial use, this term is also applied to some engines used in aircraft. These engines can be put in two categories: turbojets use a turbine to drive a compressor, note that the actual thrust is usually produced by the exhaust gases of such engine; turboshaft engines produce thrust via turbine-driven propellers. Both these types are internal combustion engines that burn fuel in (compressed) air atmoshpere to produce thrust. They need fuel, and go against your fuel-free concept. On the other hand, your ship seems to have nigh-infinite (by modern standards) energy generation capabilities - it can power its wormhole generator, after all. Thus, it could theoretically propel itself via plasma jets using atmospheric gases as reaction mass - like [in this article](https://futurism.com/scientist-jet-engine-electricity-thrust). These engines are in very early stages of development, and their reported energy efficience is much lower than that of conventional jet engines; moreover, there is some serious doubt that they will scale well from current 28 Newtons of thrust the experimental device puts out to hundreds of kN needed to match the power of turbojets. But with the energy generation capacity of your ship, a bruteforce solution might just be viable. P.S. There is a question of how your ship manages to generate all that power without any fuel, but that's on you. [Answer] Laser ablation propulsion: Or just laser propulsion could be your answer. In a nut shell. Step one: Cram a bunch of air into a rocket nozzle shaped bell. Step two: Shoot a high powered beam laser into the nozzle from a ground based laser. Step three: well that's it.. you didn't ask, hope you have breaks! [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AuSu5.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AuSu5.jpg) Most proposals work by filling the reaction chamber with some kind of solid or liquid reaction mass that when hit by the laser is ablated away and the expanding plasma thrusts the rocket forward. But there is no reason the reaction mass can't be air. It would be far more complicated with the need to supply the reaction with enough air gathered from the atmosphere as it accelerates through thinning layers. Than to just carry a jettisonable inert fuel only stage. All power and thrust adjustment is carried out by the laser, independent of the craft at a ground facility where mass and volume in no issue. Thus for all intents and purposes the specific power of the craft is only limited by your laster technology. Hard Science Reference: [Beamed Energy Propulsion](http://www.al.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/lecture/Chap3(BEP_Overview).pdf) [Answer] So, consider your average turbojet engine. It brings in air from in front of it, compresses it via several turbines, sprays fuel into it, ignites it, and then lets the heated air and combustion products expand out the back through several more turbines, which also power the ones compressing the air up front. Your ship seems to have some sort of handwavium energy source, given that it's generating wormholes via some means or another. Theoretically, you could replace the "spray in the fuel and ignite it" part with "use your sci-fi energy source to superheat the compressed air even further", so that your only working mass is the air you're bringing in. This was studied in the US back in the late '50s, using a nuclear reactor on the aircraft to provide the heat source, in order to power bombers that could potentially stay aloft for extended lengths of time. They got as far as ground tests of the engines and flying a nuclear reactor (operating but not hooked up to the engines) before Kennedy pulled the plug. [![From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HTRE-3.jpg](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eiPhK.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eiPhK.jpg) As you can expect, the thrust-to-weight ratio of that setup isn't exactly want you'd want for a high-speed application like you're considering. But again, you're using some sort of sci-fi energy source, which hopefully is either a lot smaller than that reactor or is tied to much more powerful engines than the J47s in that picture. As far as exiting the atmosphere goes, if you're on Earth, you're unlikely to reach space without some sort of actual rocket. The fastest that a real-world air-breathing (as opposed to rocket-powered) aircraft has reached is Mach 9.65 at about 33,500m altitude, set by the X-43 unmanned aircraft in 2004. The absolute highest that an air-breathing aircraft has reached is 36,240 m, set by a MiG-25 pilot in 1973 via a "[zoom climb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_climb)", where he accelerated to top speed at a lower altitude, then pulled back and "traded speed for altitude", to the point where the engines flamed out due to lack of air and he coasted on a ballistic arc to the peak, where his airspeed was a whopping 75 km/h. The records for the highest level-flight altitude (~26,000 m) and fastest speed (3,530 km/h) by a manned air-breathing aircraft were both set by pilots of the SR-71 Blackbird. I don't know if any Blackbird pilots ever tried zoom climbing one, but if they did, it's not recorded anywhere. The lower edge of space on Earth is variously defined, but the FAI defines it at 100 km altitude. So the best we've managed by air-breathing aircraft to date is only a third of the way there. Beyond that point, the air is too thin to support combustion, but too dense to allow for a free orbit. Given that your handwavium heat source is just directly heating the air without burning a fuel in it, you might get a bit higher before it's too thin to provide any useful propulsion, but you're still going to have a ways to go. So here's the flight profile that I can picture. Your spaceship flies up to 30km or so, then levels off and kicks the handwavium engine into scramjet mode, accelerating to Mach 10 or so. Once it's going as fast as it can, its pilot pulls back on the stick and zoom climbs. Mach 10 at that altitude is roughly 3 km/s, so you just have to hope that its momentum is enough to carry it upwards the remaining 70km. Just keep in mind that it's not going to have much forward speed remaining by the time it reaches the peak of its climb. I hope your magnetic sails are quick to deploy and can accelerate the ship to orbital speeds before it descends back down into the atmosphere. They can take it from 0 to 8 km/s in just a few seconds, right? ]
[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/235072/edit). Closed 1 year ago. The community reviewed whether to reopen this question 1 year ago and left it closed: > > Original close reason(s) were not resolved > > > [Improve this question](/posts/235072/edit) There are works in science fiction (the Dune saga probably being the most famous of them) where in the future, a space-faring human society has somehow, instead of being a republic (at least in name, if not in fact) or turning into megacorporate entities, has reverted to feudalism with clear-cut castes of nobility and common-folk. Can anyone come up with a 'realistic' explanation for how such a cultural shift could take place? [Answer] # Has it ever left? I've worked at a lot of high end places, or mingled on my own. I've noticed that many (ultra) rich people already think of themselves as something different. As one example: at a millionaire fair someone was smoking on my coffee stand inside. When I told her it was forbidden she grabbed my arm and earnestly told me that "those rules are for the common people". Although we officially don't live in a feudal society it still has many hallmarks of ut. The very rich can do whatever they want. Their money allows them to travel, do activities or whatever they want to do within a legal frame. It also allows servitude of the 'common people', as long as they pay them wages. Their wealth brings power that allows them to coerce, convince or force people what they want to do. Many ultra rich even find ways to pay less taxes percentage wise than the 'common folk'. But also in the illicit area they can do more. They can create more privacy, allowing them to do such operations in more secret. We can see some high profile cases where murder, pedophilia, slavery and other horrible crimes that were hidden for years. Their influence definitely helped a lot here. Though I would say most conspiracy theories are unlikely, it is statistically likely we are missing a bunch of offenders. In the lower brackets of crime they also can do more. Few countries put higher fines for wealthier people. Though fair seen one way, the impact is insignificant for many. If you're a billionaire a fine for driving too fast is something you won't even notice. They probably pay more to heat their private airplane. With the wealthy getting an increasing amount of money they can do more what they want. Space flight used to be only for the few rich countries. Despite still heing hellishly expensive some rich guys now have their own sace programs. ## Space In space it'll be easier to have such rules. Why would you go against the wealthiest guy who supplies the colony? Maybe owns the police? The judicial system? It seems that planets and colonies can get more dependant, allowing rich to do more what they want. The caste system might be reinforced again just through economics. [Answer] ## Feudalism is Infinitely Scalable, Republics are not. The big difference between Feudalism and a Republic is that feudalism has many layers of leadership whereas a Republic is a straight line between the citizen and the top layer of leadership. The problem is that as a population grows and expands, Republics either become less and less representative as each leader is expected to oversee a larger and more diverse group of people, or the Congress becomes so large that there are too many voices talking on each subject to actually make progress. In the modern world most larger nations have tried to solved for this through the practice of federation, the idea of making a Republic up of many smaller republics (states), which are made of even smaller republics (counties/parishes), which are made of even smaller republics (city councils)... but with each layer you add, the more disconnected the citizen becomes from all the layers as it quickly becomes too many political levels to even keep track of. What made Feudalism work so well is that you only needed to participate in the level of government you were involved in. If you were a Barron, you needed to taking in feedback from your Serfs, summarize it, and pass it up to your Count. The Barron did not need to know what was happening at the Royal levels of government, just like the King did not need to know the opinion of every Baron because all information passed though the tiers of management responsible for them. This leads to trickle up representation. ## Why Hereditary Leadership instead of elected officials. Western society has a very demonized view of hereditary leadership that is not at all consistent with how most people throughout most of history have thought. The reality is that most people are good at what their parents are good at, especially if their parents are around to raise them with their skills. So a hereditary leader is not just leader because their dad was leader, but because that person has been raised from birth to be a leader. This makes them the most qualified person for the job, at least in theory. [Answer] 1. An ideology worshipping property rights. Members of your society are being taught from birth to respect contracts and property rights. Anyone who questions that is a "Commie" and "Commies" are evil and godless. Everybody believes that switching over to a different system would leave them, personally poorer. Even if they are already at the bottom of society. 2. Ownership of planets. The property rights of a planet go to the discoverer. If it is not economical to exploit that planet, that's a nice certificate they can frame on the wall and tell their grandkids about. If it is economical to exploit, even marginally so, the discoverer is a trillionaire. (Almost any number greater than zero, times a planetary surface, is a lot of money.) 3. How to assure that tenants rent and do not buy? All (or almost all) planets need a bit of terraforming to make them shirtsleeve environments for humans. At the very least, adapt Terran crops and eradicate the apex predators. With the technology you have, that requires a big, ongoing investment over decades or centuries, with centralized decisionmaking. Planetary settlements where each continent, each valley has a different owner tend to fail. 4. Think of some twist to discourage spread of ownership via investment. That kind of clashes with the first point. Lots and lots of legal precedents to favor partnerships over stock companies? Perhaps a legal precedent prevents limited liability corporations, so it is unsafe to invest in a companies without taking a serious interest in their management? 5. The safety valve. Points 2 to 4 do not apply to asteroid settlements. So this is your Sherwood Forest where the non-conformists go and eke out a precarious living apart from mainstream society. Until some seal blows and their habitat dies. So now you have a tiny class of planet owners, while the rest are tenants. It may be impractical for tens, hundreds of millions of settlers to sign their individual contracts with the owner of the planet. So there is a chain of subcontractors between the individual settler and the planet-owner, each owing rent to the layer above. Not quite feudalism in theory, but close in practics. [Answer] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-feudalism> argues that unofficially feudalism already exists in a new form. I agree based on my own personal definition of feudalism. If you think about this, we are serfs of this world building site. The moderators and so on are the vassals and the company running the show are the high lords. This is not limited to websites. Major corporations act like feudal lords too. Tech companies can pay for scientific research that is unaffordable for universities. This gap grows, and it is just a matter of time before the billionaires will have their private armies and cities. If Elon Musk or others like him manage to set foot on Mars, I doubt that they will want a republic that limits them. Those in power with money will do everything they can to block those who they do not like. [Answer] Conqueror worlds There are worlds where the dominant race sallies out into space to colonize and conquer. These people are the nobles. Species on conquered planets are the serfs. Space is big. Sometimes a conqueror species will come after a new world that has already been claimed by a similarly aggressive species. A reckoning ensues once the two sides realize what is going on and one side might get added to the others empire. Or they might have a sort of detente. If an empire gets added to another empire the former nobility stay nobility but get demoted. An uber conqueror might preside over them all. I envision this as a machine race or something different from the various conquering races. It keeps the peace according to its own interests. It can muster forces from its various vassal empires in time of need. [Answer] In my experience, in certain cases, having a feudal space faring society makes sense. Like how a republic has governors and such a monarchy would have lords and other such class-based overseers for regions. In space you will ultimately need more and more people to oversee expansion, industry and commerce which can lead to a society similar to or identical to a feudal state. I rationalize it as such; an emperor would not want to have to manage everything, so they dish out sectors and planets and star systems to people related to them or part of other important families and groups in the political dynamic, eventually as the empire expands those people need to manage things within their own regions and dish out things within their region to other people. Eventually you have a heavily entrenched class of political "royals" acting as caretakers and doers for their higher ups leading all the way to the emperor or whoever "runs" the entire region of space. [Answer] Nothing that says you can't. The type of government is only a type of government. It does impact things. But scientific output and research is a product of a group or groups of people. While we are used to scientific publications, sharing some information, institutes of science...etc. Nothing says you can't do some of that inside a feudal system. All system of governance will have drawbacks, that's just how things work. ## Tech and feudalism Thankfully in Dune "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind." But what about your world? What if your noble house is just few humans and many many machines and AI? How much will that effect your world and noble family? Will that mean that some houses will still value humans and use them while other go full machine? How about other houses that uses cloning technology to make people. All that kinda makes your system different. Since in a feudal system you say had a lord who is supposed to provide X amount of resource when needed. But with machines or AI or cloning or a combination of both. There is no need for lords, no need to peasants, no need for slaves or servants or anything. You own machines. Sure. Humans will be fun to be around with. Existence of such things can mean that your system looks feudal but in reality it's just a guy with a lot of robotics factories an taking on the guise of feudalism while in reality it's something else. ## Dictatorships in the modern era Completely ignoring the politics and "evil" of such states. The USSR, Nazi Germany, even modern day China has all produced some scientific contributions, even military vehicles are part of science. Advanced surveillance systems or going to space. All under a dictatorship. You simply need to find the appropriate institutes and they can produce science. Sure. Incompetence and corruption can cause troubles for you down the line. But it's not like those don't happen in democracies. ## Dictatorships in history Sure. Nobody sent anyone to space before or made a PC. But then what we made we built on works of previous generations. Each adding a small part to the whole. But they also many earlier civilizations had things that are truly advanced and if you think about it they were, relatively, as advanced as what we have. Sure. Running water might not be a big deal. But back in the day, it is. Building a giant pyramid is an engineering challenge 4500 years ago. And so on with the rest of human inventions and advances. Not to be political, but even now some parts of the world lack some advanced technologies or even basic stuff like running water. ## Scale Interestingly the scale of feudalism in such works is gigantic. Certainly much larger than what we had. With such scale I feel it's much more reasonable to assume that the states will actually function well. Unless pressed for some super doper important resource. Your great house will need to work hard to keep it's edge. Sure. Some will be a bit cruel, some bit too weak, some too noble...etc. But with competition and possibly war. Only those who overall manage their house well are those who will stay in power. Since you have to keep your military edge, your agricultural edge, your medical edge..etc. So. Head of the house works hard to make sure things are smooth. I'm talking in general, since setting is not specif, but does not take a genius to figure out that failing to work and invent and properly manage things will mean your doom. It's like if you are 1 of 2 restaurants in town doing the same thing. You, at least, gotta keep your edge and retain costumers, otherwise they have an alternative. All in all those writers were right. And history as well points to that. Republics are just a system of governance of many. Not just because it became the universal standard system in the last 100-150 years it means that nothing can be done unless under a republic. It's all about how you set your world. [Answer] ## It actually can happen very naturally. As your starfaring society expands, it sends slower-than-light colony ships out to new worlds. These colony ships will be in deep space, unsupported, for decades, even centuries. Necessarily, the crews of those ships are not the same people who will create the colony, or if they are, they're a breed apart. Perhaps the colonists are asleep in cryo-stasis for most of the journey to save resources. Perhaps they're living in their own compartments, but it's necessary to keep the village idiot, or children, or senile elders away from the command-deck of the ship. There are going to be a few individuals controlling the fates of everyone. That's a reality of running a colony ship. What happens when that heirarchical structure arrives at its destination? Does the captain of the one-way colony ship consent to be a citizen? Does he or she want to be leader? They've got decades of experience in leading and command. Why should they give that up? When the ship arrives, the colonists (already totally dependent on the crew of their ship) will still be dependent on their ship for a good while for power, medical treatment, supplies and all sorts of things. If the crew choose to remain in charge, it'll be very easy for them to maintain control. Reading Material A Gift from Earth - Larry Niven : Where the "slowboat" colony ships arrived on their world and the Crew formed an Elite element in their society based on their absolute control of medical technology, particularly organ-transplantation. Allowing themselves to live extended lives and to reward and punish the Colonists by providing or withholding medical treatment. ]
[Question] [ So there's technically 3 things a monomolecular structure can be: * an edge a single atom thick which consists out of many molecules in a row to create the edge, often described for weapons with the sharpest edges. * a structure made of a single molecule, like diamond or graphene * (part of) an item that both has single atom thick edges and consists out of a single molecule. Now I want to use all 3 possibilities in my stories but I don't want to just make up some name for each. I would want to have a somewhat scientifically correct nomenclature to describe each with one or two words. An example sentence: "This sword is monomolecular so we know it has certain properties because of that". Which word or words do I use to quickly describe each version of monomolecular? The shortest (preferably single word) answer for each with preferably an explanation why it is a good description for each type is the chosen answer. [Answer] > > an edge a single molecular thick which consists out of many molecules in a row to create the edge, often described for weapons with the sharpest edges. > > > Materials made out of many discrete molecules are called molecular solids. There are enough classifications for molecular solids though that you you generally wont differentiate what kind of molecular solid something is made of when talking about them; so, here you will simply prefix whatever you are talking about with the adjective monomolecular. IE: a monomolecular blade. > > a structure made of a single molecule, like diamond or graphene > > > The scientific word for this is a covalent solid. Since the solid part is generally implied, you could use the adjective covalent. IE: a covalent blade. That said, all covalent solids are crystals. Even though not all crystals are covalent solids, your audience is probably much more familiar with what a crystal is. When describing a covalent solid, you might choose to call it crystalline instead. > > (part of) an item that both has single molecule thick edges and consists out of a single molecule. > > > Simply combine the terms it call it a monomolecular covalent blade or a monomolecular crystalline blade. [Answer] Monolayer - a 2D material 1 atom wide$^1$. I use this term a lot in my PhD work on 2D superconductors. It can be used as a noun ("this sword is a monolayer") or adjective ("a carbon monolayer sword"). Just figured I'd throw this jargon in there since it's actually my area of expertise. As for your single-molecule covalent material, you could use "monomolecular" for that, though I personally think just using "covalent" is simpler and less ambiguous. EDIT: If only the edge is monolayer-width, it might be better to go with something like monolayer-edged," or a shorthand like "monoblade" or "mono-edge." Thanks to Nosajimiki for pointing that out. I originally wrote a reply comment, but I figured it was important enough that it should be in the main answer. $^1$ Well, technically one crystal cell wide, which could potentially be a few atoms thick, but the distinction doesn't seem to matter for your purposes. [Answer] # Language Fails Me (Because This Isn't Important) Consider the humble car tires. (In some places tyres...) Yes, the vulcanization process takes many smaller molecules and gets them to be one big, (possibly) happy molecule. Note that most people will say the tire is vulcanized instead of monomolecular! The problem with big molecules is that size just doesn't matter so much in most scientific and engineering applications. Because it doesn't matter so much, we do not really have (in English) nice words to differentiate them. This is why it's "vulcanized rubber" instead of "monomolecular rubber." The process and ensuing properties from it are more important than molecular size. Additionally, plastics are also described in terms of cross-linking type and degree of polymerization. This affects properties in a much more dramatic way than individual molecule size. This is also why we talk about vulcanization: it's a method to achieve a very high degree of cross linking. In the world of crystals, you just refer to the thing as a "[crystal name] crystal". Maybe you talk about a specific form or lattice structure of crystals, but those usually have names. (Ex: "a quartz crystal" or "Smithsonite".) This convention also goes the same for glass, but with the added benefit of talking more about composition than structure. (Because glasses lack repeating structure by their very definition!) In the world of metals, we talk about localized areas of homogeny as "crystals" or "grains", even though these crystals/grains may have actual metallic bonds crossing over to form one big crystalline structure. Like glasses, metals are talked about more in terms of composition (or "grades") and temper. Sometimes the process is more important because you are talking about a category, so individuals prefer that. For example, steel can be rolled, forged, or cast and you would refer to those categories as such. # TL:DR There Are No Words There just isn't as much a demand for describing three different classes/uses of "monomolecular" with other words. We are more frequently more concerned with composition over size. You will need to have something made up to disambiguate these or just assume people will understand from context. (Because how often do you care if the tire has a sharp edge?) [Answer] You're going to have to give whatever words you choose a dictionary definition in your writing, because there isn't widely-accepted vocabulary that readers can get the meaning of based on their own experience. So you're wordsmithing to come up with a plausible, meaningful vocab. In which case, how about: > > #1: an edge a single molecular thick which consists out of many molecules in a row to create the edge, often described for weapons with the sharpest edges. > > > Most of the suggestions start with mono-, but uni- or solus- would also make coherent prefixes, or something involving acies (Latin for "edge" or "line"). I quite like uniacic or acimolecular. > > #2: a structure made of a single molecule, like diamond or graphene > > > Macromolecule might be a good word here, a molecule big enough to be seen on the macro scale. > > #3: (part of) an item that both has single molecule thick edges and consists out of a single molecule. > > > This is probably best just given a compound definition. No reason why the uniacic edge of the macromolecule can't trip off the tongue... [Answer] The answer for the second ("made of a single molecule") is easier than the first, and none of the prior answers appears to have used it. The word you're looking for is probably monocrystalline. For example, [monocrystalline silicon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocrystalline_silicon) is a key raw material for the semiconductor industry precisely because it lacks the grain boundaries where electronic flow would be altered in polycrystalline materials. As for the first ("edge as sharp as a single molecule"), various answers have proposed monomolecular. The problem you may run into is that, in various corners of hard sci-fi, "monomolecular" is typically an adjective used to describe [a very fine wire](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/246722/whats-the-first-appearance-of-monomolecular-wire-or-nanofilament-extremely-thi) which can then be used to cut things, being almost invisible (an advantage for its user) and causing dependably gruesome deaths (an advantage for the writer). I'd suggest a neologism here, such as "nanosharpened", if you're planning on lending this edge to knives and swords and such. But I'm probably over-thinking things and "monomolecular" might work just as well -- it's far more important that you show, not tell, just how damned sharp these things are. [Answer] These terms might be recognizable or at least decipherable by fans of the cyber-punk genre, if not SF in general. They may not work in scientific papers, but if your goal is to communicate these tropes within these fiction genres, to fans already literate in the genre’s tropes they should do. Trademark issues may still be a concern. Mono-edged - an edge a single molecular thick which consists out of many molecules in a row to create the edge, often described for weapons with the sharpest edges. Monocrystalline - a structure made of a single molecule, like diamond or graphene Mono-honed - (part of) an item that both has single molecule thick edges and consists out of a single molecule [Answer] > > #1: an edge a single molecular thick which consists out of many molecules in a row to create the edge, often described for weapons with the sharpest edges. > > > Call this a monomolecular edge. Colloquially called a mono-edge > > #2: a structure made of a single molecule, like diamond or graphene > > > A (structure made of a single) molecule is called a molecule. > > #3: (part of) an item that both has single molecule thick edges and consists out of a single molecule. > > > This one makes no sense. Anything of type #2 is just a single molecule so is also a single molecule thick. Again it's just called a molecule. Also just a molecule. [Answer] Before knowing you were talking about a sword, considering the edge only, my mind immediately went to [Polymer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer). Combining this with the [answer of Stephen](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/232032/88731) Polyacimer, Monoacimer and Macroacimer ]
[Question] [ In a story I'm planning, I want taxes to have an actual rate, and not just handwaved away. The setting is classical medieval with Inheritance (book) type of magic. I was thinking a flat 10% of production collected at the end of the year. Examples: farm produces 100lb of corn? 10lb goes to the government. Your bank made \$700? \$70 to the government. (\$ is just a stand in for the example) What would be the benefits and problems of a flat 10% tax on all citizens? [Answer] Summary, or TL;DR. Of course one is free to imagine a world where the inhabitants pay a flat tax computed as a percent of something and that's it. However, this is not at all how things worked in the Middle Ages, or at any other time, in any place of the real world. --- As usual on this site, I assume that by "medieval" the question assumes western European medieval. 1. In a medieval context the word citizens does not mean what it means today. In medieval times, citizens were people who lived in free cities. So, for example, Venice had citizens, and Paris had citizens, but France did not. What the king of France had was subjects. (Fun factoid: The people of the United Kingdom continued to be subjects of their most gracious monarch well into the 20th century. They only became citizens in 1948.) 2. The question repeatedly refers to taxes paid "to the government". This is easy. There was no government. One cannot pay tax to a non-existant entity. (Yes, in medieval China they did have a government. Given that the question uses the word citizens to refer to the subjects of a medieval ruler, I am assuming that the question is not about medieval China.) Taxes were paid to the king, to the prince, to the sovereign or to the Crown; but most certainly not to the government. (Hint: look to what the government does in a modern society. Transportation infrastructure, public education, public health, public safety, public peace etc. These things did not exist in the Middle Ages. There was no long distance road network. There were no free schools. There was no public health service. There was no police, other than what the local lord, or local parish could hire.) 3. One of the most striking aspects of the western European medieval world was the duality between the feudal hierarchy and the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The church had its own taxes (= tithes), which served to maintain a separate hierarchy, which dispensed its own justice and provided its own services, such as registration of marriages and deaths and births. The church was entirely parallel to the state, to the extent that we can even speak of a state. A person could not pay their taxes to the state and be done with it; the church wanted its own. 4. "A flat 10% of production collected at the end of the year": this won't work in a medieval state, for many reasons. First of all, immediately after the question states that the rate is flat, it proceeds to give two contradictory examples; it gives the example of a farm which is taxed one tenth of its gross income, and of a bank which is taxed one tenth of its profit. Those two are not even remotely the same thing. Second, the question seems to assume that in medieval times everybody paid tax to the sovereign. This is quite un-medieval. You may have heard of the French Revolution; the main point of the revolution was to make noblemen pay tax. Third, the question assumes that the tax to the sovereign was the main burden for most people. This is extremely un-medieval. Most people paid vastly more to their feudal lords, and to the church, than they ever paid to the sovereign, if they paid anything to the sovereign at all. The thing is, those payments to the church and to the feudal lord were not necessarily taxes as such; they were tithes, and fees, and dues, and, yes, sometimes, taxes. For example, take an ordinary peasant; most people were peasants. He may owe a flat tax per head to the sovereign; not all medieval states had capitation taxes, but quite a few did. Let's say, one silver dollar per year; with that one silver dollar he fully discharged his tax duty to the sovereign. He leased some land from the local lord; and for that land he had some sort of arrangement, where he had to share the proceeds with the lord; anything between 1/10 to 1/4 or even more went to the lord. He had to pay tithe to the church; say 1/10 of what remained after the lord took his share. If he wanted to grind his grain into flour he had to use the lord's mill; and pay a fee of one tenths. Etc. A tradesman had a different set of fees and taxes. A merchantman yet another. A citizen of a free city, yet another. A feudal lord was in a very different position; he (or she, women could be feudal lords in their own right) was part of the feudal hierarchy, and owed advice and support to his or her suzerain, and had to provide justice and protection to his or her people; the obligations of a lord were of a very different nature than the obligations of a peasant. * In the Middle Ages, nobody ever paid tax on income, for the simple reason that it was the Middle Ages, and there was no way for the sovereign to keep track of the income of their subjects. There were very few people who could read and write, and even fewer who could compute. * In the Middle Ages you had three kinds of taxes: a flat tax per head, or capitation, where everybody who was subject to said tax paid a fixed amount per year; customs taxes, applied to the import (and occasionnaly the export) of goods; and taxes on land, assessed on the amount and fertility of the land. Sometimes and in some places there were also taxes on transactions, applied to a small class of transactions which could actually be tracked. Sometimes there were excise taxes, applied to a small class of goods, for example salt, or imported wine, which could actually be tracked. 5. By and large (with the same exception of the Far East, which I assume is not the focus of the question) medieval states were incredibly poor by modern standards, exactly because they had a very narrow tax base. Being extremely poor, they did very little of what we see a modern state do. They did a little bit of justice, basically limited to the most serious crimes (most of the judicial duties and powers belong and were exercised by the feudal lords); they had a rudimentary administrative apparatus (mostly to keep track of the great feudal lords and the handful of free cities, and of the pitiful tax income); they had some small number of permanent soldiers. And that's about all they did. [Answer] ## As described, your tax system will be difficult to implement The problem with taxing by proportion of income is that it will be very hard to enforce without a ridiculous amount of literate manhours. Every single individual will somehow have to show how much they have earned in the previous tax period, which will be impossible unless they are able to keep accounting records (and thus be able to read), or they are able to point to a warehouse of produce and say that is how much they earned. The actual division at that point would be much more straightforward. Whilst complex mathematics would be beyond most people, the basics of counting and giving one share in every ten would be doable. This assumes that the individuals are all honest, which is highly unlikely. Thus you would need literate taxmen who are able to suitably appraise the income of individuals and levy the appropriate tax. --- Instead of taxing by variable and easily falsifiable values, I suggest you tax based on simple, discrete items. A common tax in Early Medieval England was the Geld. This was a flat rate based on the amount of land owned by an individual. Land was synonymous with Wealth, as it could be directly used to produce resources or you could let it out for Rent. A second common tax was Custom Tax, Applicable against all cargo that moved through a specific area, such as through a city's gates, a checkpoint on a road, or down a canal or river. This worked well, as you could claim a portion of the goods then and there rather than having to determine tax based on a nebulous concept of "income". Another way this worked is to charge a monetary tax based on the value of the goods. (One particular case is the [Sound Dues](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sound_Dues&oldid=871192330), where any ship passing through the Sound was required to state the value of the goods carried and offer them for inspection, under the proviso that the crown was allowed to buy the product at that rate instead of demand a 1-2% tax on its value.) There was also many other fees that weren't technically taxes, but were in practice. For example, peasants may be required to pay a proportion of their grain in order to have it turned to flour at the mill owned by their lord, whilst simultaneously being banned from milling the grain themselves. Thus you will never need to audit suspect individuals as the taxes claimed are all based on obvious circumstances. Sure, some wealthier people may get taxed less than a poorer person, but that's only considered unfair by our modern viewpoint where our finances are much more easily tracked. If someone is moving a lot of resources around (which they'd need to do to get "value" out of it), you'll get your fair share. [Answer] First, in classical medieval times not everybody were paying taxes by money. Actually only about 10-15% of all people were. A peasant may never see a penny in his whole (quite short) life, paying his taxes in food supplies, in his hands and in his sons (greatly depends on country and region). Only traders, guilds and other "[burghers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgher_(title))" were taxed with money. Second, 10% - is a standard "church tax". There would also be "king's tax","high lord's tax", "local lord's tax" and some community taxing. They were mostly fixed ("N shillings per head annually"). But there were also rate-based taxes. So total taxes could easily reach and exceed 100%. It was not that a problem as tax subject commonly was community, not individual. Besides there were widely spread "unofficial business groups" (robbers) from locals which generated quite a noticeable income. And Kings,lords and a church were counting on it. And debtors could choose to write off debt through some non-economical processes (known as riots, slavery or jail). So your 10% tax is a child play compared with what it really was in reality. Kings used to demand their taxes in money from everybody to enforce trade and cities food supply, but it was not that common in "classical medieval" - it's more about late medieval, when first seeds of future capitalism appeared and "city-village" conflict arose. So the main immediate result of flat 10% taxes (only) would be bankruptcy of a king , fall of centrilized government, riots (both peasants and aristocracy), cities depopulation and civil war. [Answer] Not familiar with the mentioned book series but assuming it is related enough to our real world situation. Missed income would be an issue. Person A earns 100 gold in a month Person B earns 9000 gold in a month. this would mean that in your system Person A would pay 10 gold and person B would pay 900 gold leaving Person A with 90 and Person B with 8100. seeing it is apparent that 90 gold is more then enough to survive on Person B would have an extreme amount of wealth. A tax scaling system on the other hand can reduce that by saying "over 1000 gold you got to pay 15%, over 5000 you got to pay 25%. Then Person B would have to pay 100 over the first 1000, 600 over the 4000 after and 1000 over the last resulting in 1700 gold in taxes. Nearly double of what he would have payed under the 10% flat tax while still being rather rich and without damaging the financial security of person A. Flat Taxes are mainly there to keep the rich rich, while scaled taxes take more from the rich without screwing over the little guys...just be sure that the % doesn't go to high otherwise the rich might put in less effort to stay below the next scale (like working only 30 hours) reducing income once again. [Answer] Wow. 10% flat tax. That would be heaven for peasants. 10% was called "tithe". A tithe that had to be paid to the church, land owner, "goverment" aaaand you needed to save some seeds for the spring. They HAD to be paid. No crops this years? Tought luck, taxes need to be paid. So peasants tried to get aways with as much "paying" with money or good as much as they could with manual labor. How was the 10% of crops calculated? If the lord had 10 hectares and got X of goods from it, the amount what peasant had had to be proportional to land they rented. There was almost no other way to know accurate yelds. (sometimes mills were second checkers as people had to declare how much grain they bring in) what if you do forcefuul checking at the end of the season? You better hire some good stewards or you end up with villages dying from hunger or escaping high taxation (remember Robin Hood?). Also banks were the ones lending money to lords so they usually didn't paid any taxes. And they knew how to get away with paying. So banks, taverns, inns and similar paid taxes in form of fixed amount paid each month or years for the privilege of doing business. ]
[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/160975/edit). Closed 4 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/160975/edit) Say it's a world where most people are at least aware that magic exists, and that some magicians can do things that would destabilize a real-world economy. How would economists, legislators, and law-abiding magicians plan around such magic? I've thought of a few solutions (replace it with an element that's hard to transmute or drop it for a currency that's complicated to manufacture, forbid it with punishments that outweigh the risks...), but I'm hoping for magical solutions to this magical problem. [Answer] If you can't beat them, join 'em I know this sounds weird, but you really shouldn't be worried about money. It's the material goods themselves which are problematic. Why would a transmuter care about copying money when its illegal and dangerous when he could just copy things worth money? Let's say you decide that gold makes the coin of the economy, and transmuters can't transmute gold. That doesn't solve the problem, because then the transmuters will just corner the iron market and make money there. Or the coal market. Or really, just any market with a material good. So then you've got a problem, but you also have a solution. If the transmuters are complicit, then you'll never really suffer from material goods shortages. So all you need to do is just have transmuting be a perfectly normal profession. Maybe have a steep licencing fee, to make money and to make sure that not everyone tries to become one. But, honestly, fighting them is a losing battle. Just embrace them and let the rest of your economy become a service-based economy, rather than a good-based one. [Answer] # Change your economic model In a modern world, you just don't have cash, only card payments are accepted. All fiat money is just numbers in a computer and largely immune to replication in that style. The question is really how you get to electronic fiat currencies when you can't pass through commodity currency along the way. The thing is that you can, but your model for what has value is different. Gold and silver largely have value simply because of their scarcity, but if they can be easily replicated by a mage then they no longer have that value. A commodity will only have value if it has both reasonable scarcity and industrial value. Steel and aluminium become more valuable than gold because people consume them. You also end up trading in potatoes and eggs. Less portable but it doesn't matter if they're replicated as you still get your omelette. It's not quite barter, but it ends up a lot closer than gold and silver coins. (Anyway, everyone knows magically created gold disappears in the morning.) [Answer] Magical detection. It's a lot easier to magically notice and confirm that e.g. a piece of gold has been transmuted from something else, than it is to transmute it in the first place. More sophisticated magic can trace with high (or high-ish) confidence who did it, analogous to fingerprint analysis or tracing bullets to guns in our real world. As in the real world, states are serious about catching and punishing counterfeiters. > > "You will never Transfigure anything that looks like money, including Muggle money," said Professor McGonagall. "The goblins have ways of finding out who did it. As a matter of recognised law, the goblin nation is in a permanent state of war with all magical counterfeiters. They will not send Aurors. They will send an army." "I will never Transfigure anything that looks like money," repeated the students. > > > [-Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality](http://hpmor.com/chapter/15) [Answer] ## Magic IS the Currency --- The easiest answer to your question, that prevents any sort of counterfeit from ever occurring, is for the currency to be magic itself. This draws parallels to our modern world cryptocurrency, which is generated by using computers and energy to create new currency. The magic could be stored into small 'coin' containers, with the worth of the currency being dependent on the quantity of magic. The currency can then be used to benefit the society itself, with the energy from the currencies powering vehicles, devices, weapons, etc. To counterfeit the currency means to spend something, maybe energy, lifeforce, time, to duplicate it; if the magicians decide to 'inflate' the economy by introducing new currency, they can only do so at cost to themselves, but this only serves to benefit the society rather than harm it. [Answer] If it's that easy to transmutate or conjure up stuff, then that stuff doesn't become currency. In your world, easy gold means no one uses gold for money. Heck, if everything is that easy, you'll likely have to think in terms of a post-scarcity economy (think Star Trek and replicators). [Answer] Magic is expensive I have a setting where gold is valuable because it must be consumed to create any magical effect. If creating a ton of iron magically costs significantly more gold than buying and transporting that ton of iron, then no one need to worry about the economic impact: no one could make money off that, so it will never be done at scale. Magic is useful for its flexibility, but mundane methods are always more cost effective. Magic is constrained by economics In economic theory, prices are determined by "general equilibrium" which depends on the quantities supplied and demanded for any commodity, as well as the exchange ratios to other commodities. - In a world where magic is constrained by principles like "equivalent exchange" in an economic sense (what in economics we'd call a "no arbitrage constraint"), there's no direct way to make money off of magic (though there might still be a somewhat lucrative business turning 500 dollars of iron into 499 dollars of gold, for example). - If magic has myriad of hard to detect indirect effects, it could sterilize the economic impact of each casting. The simplest example is "creating" a pile of gold coins really just skims a bit of gold coins off every other pile of gold coins in the world. Total supply of gold remains the same, so prices will stay relatively stable. However since it adversely impacts the rich, they will collectively spend a lot of money hunting down anyone who might cast a spell like that. Magic is above the mortal economy If magic users can create a million tons of gold per day, and trading only with other magic users consuming a million tons of gold per day, it doesn't really impact the mundane users' economy. Nothing a mundane user does will ever be relevant to the magic users who are effectively gods. [Answer] The economy isn't as fragile as you think First (although this depends on your setting), Economies are big. For a single magic user to be able to "destabilize" the system would be extremely difficult, no matter how powerful they are and even if they did start cloning coins or whatever, it wouldn't be a big problem. For example, in our modern-day economy, certain people are akin to your "magicians" as they are gifted from birth with the ability to generate money out of thin air. They're called the wealthy. While this is a gross oversimplification, if you're wealthy, you can easily make money by essentially doing nothing (making safe investments and then watching the money grow). These wealthy people don't break the economy, why should your magic users do so? Also, the government regularly preforms this trick IRL too. Most people think that taxes are what the government uses to fund things but really that's not completely true. When the federal government wants more money, they can access specific computer terminals and simply generate some new USD and use it for whatever. Practically, this means all your wizards are rich. [If you're interested in how governments simply make more money, listen to this.](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/09/26/651948323/episode-866-modern-monetary-theory) ]
[Question] [ I want to ask about the utility of bicycles vs. horses, but in a rather specific circumstance. In the future, there is war (the particulars are irrelevant), and it causes the usual loss of population and infrastructure. But it's big enough to be a world-wide loss, and it happens over a series of decades. A number of people with lots of money see the collapse of human civilization coming. And they decide to work to preserve civilization with their resources (and also end up ruling the new civilization they helped save, but I'm sure that didn't figure at all into their motives). So things collapse, but "softly". Basically, things go back to around the early 1800s in technology, then crawl up to about 1850. So, there is a steel industry of some sort, there is some manufacturing infrastructure, but there are still a lot of hand-made goods, and a lot of people are farming. But what's different from the 1800s is that the new society can take bits and pieces from modern day and keep them going, even with a weaker infrastructure. Cars and most other ICE-powered vehicles don't exist; most of the fuel infrastructure for them just couldn't be preserved and maintained. Diesel trains become the typical long-distance vehicle. Given that, how would people in rural areas get around locally in this society? In the actual 1800s, the vehicle of choice was a horse because... well, what else are you going to use? But in this world, there's enough infrastructure and knowledge to allow for bicycles. Not to mention that at the start of this collapse, more people probably know how to ride a bike than a horse, so they could have started with them and keep them throughout the fall. So here's the question: what are the advantages and restrictions of a bicycle in a relatively rural environment? Assume that there is enough knowledge, materials, and infrastructure around to maintain bicycles (the local blacksmith can repair a bike much like they could shoe a horse, and vulcanized rubber is available). Would they effectively be able to go off-road, and if so, how effectively compared to horses? Could they handle wooded terrain as well as a horse, and if so, how would that influence bicycle design? Would bicycles have similar range to a horse over dirt roads? Would a local lawman prefer a bike over a horse, and would he be able to follow criminals who used horses? [Answer] As far as I understand, bicycles actually need a pretty developed industry. You can make a basic bicycle of you have access to steel tubes, welding and ball bearings - and that's already fairly advanced technology for a post-apocalyptic world. The main issue here is that the less technology you have access to, the heavier and less effective your bicycles are going to be, until you reach the point where you have an unwieldy beast usable only on the paved roads, and that slowly. Without modern plastics you have only leather saddles that are heavy and take time to manufacture. Without access to aluminium you have steel rims instead of aluminium rims - heavier, slower, more prone to deforming. Without precise machining you won't have reliable gear shifting (modern derailleurs are a very complicated piece of engineering). Without gear shifting you will have problems going off-road. I'm also not sure you will be able to produce lightweight tubes and off-road worthy tyres in post-apocalyptic cottage industry. I would say, the best the people in your world can hope for is a comparatively heavy single-speed steel bike, that would need reliably do about 14 km/h on a gravel road. That good enough to visit a neighboring farm or bring stuff to town market, but not something you want to chase brigands off-road on. [Answer] Horses are capable of traveling long distances at good speeds, but require significant upkeep. Food, water, shelter, etc. In contrast, a bicycle's speed and distance is entirely dependent on the human controlling it. As far as going off-road is concerned, it would depend on the terrain. I'm not a professional biker, but biking in rough terrain is definitely extremely taxing on the body. In comparison, a horse would have an easier time with grassy terrain and the like and the human would not need to exert as much energy to drive the horse in the correct direction. As far was wooded terrain is concerned, the density and type of underbrush will definitely matter. Anything too dense for a bicycle to move through will prefer a horse, even if the horse can only move very slowly through the terrain. As far as range is concerned, horses have significantly larger range than a human when it comes to longer trips, as humans will tire faster, even if they can maintain good speeds on a bicycle for shorter to moderate ranges. And finally, I doubt a bicycle powered by a human is going to outspeed the burst speed potential of a galloping horse. So a lawman pursuing horse-riding lawbreakers using a bicycle is probably just as ludicrous in your scenario as it would be today. Overall one cannot necessarily replace the other, and which one to use will depend on the scenario. [Answer] From my own experience - I ride both bikes and horses - all I can say is that it depends. On a paved road, even one that's disused, a bike wins hands down. On good, solid dirt - a typical dirt road or fairly smooth trail, the bike & horse will be fairly well matched on the level. As the slope increases, the horse will gain advantage\, but will more than lose it on the downhills. However, if you have steep climbs, soft or sandy ground, need to weave through brush, or things of that sort, the horse does much better. \And if the footing is decent, a horse can climb slopes that I could never pedal. Indeed, I've done a few on horseback that I don't think I'd even try on foot :-) [Answer] Other answers speak to the building and maintenance of bicycles. I want to talk about infrastructure. Roads in particular. Roads for cars are very expensive and time consuming to maintain and repair. They require asphalt (which is likely not possible with that tech level) in huge quantities. [Concrete is a reasonable alternative](https://www.thisoldhouse.com/ideas/blacktop-and-beyond) that would be available, but it also requires huge amounts, ways to transport it, and a lot of time and labor. Fill holes with gravel then cover with a layer of concrete. Once concrete fails though, it needs to be removed and re-poured. The lack of large vehicles like cars and trucks means that a road doesn't have to be as strong as ones we use today. More like driveways (per the link above). But that's still fairly extensive. For either asphalt or concrete, you need reliable transport from elsewhere. Trains would certainly work for most of the ride. But you still need to move the gravel and everything else from the nearest train tracks (if not the station) and then to the building site. With enough labor (especially multitudes of people grateful to have a home), you can manage with horse-drawn carts or even wheelbarrows. But it's something to plan for. [Rammed earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rammed_earth) roadways require some level of equipment to create, but that can possibly be done before access and use of machinery disappears. Ditto for clearing and creating other styles of dirt roads. If you're only riding a horse and not pulling a cart, a trail-style road can work for both horses and experienced bicyclists with mountain bikes or other wide-wheeled bikes. Carts require wider flatter roads and so do regular bikes. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ARNml.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ARNml.png) Mud, rocks, tree roots, and general deterioration affect trails and roads of all kinds. What works great in year one can be a nightmare in year five. Some dirt roads are not hard to maintain (though they take a lot more time and effort than you might think) and others are very complex. Depends a lot on the weather, plant life, traffic, etc. [![Mud, rocks, tree roots, and general deterioration](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fmUxL.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fmUxL.png) # Your society will likely use both horses and bicycles Because of the difficulty in creating and maintaining roads, the local powers that be will only have a few roads. 1. A couple well-maintained arteries for horse-drawn carts. Especially to and from the train station, local industry, and the central marketplace (and the rich part of town). 2. A few bicycle (and hand cart/wheelbarrow) friendly paths for people to get around locally. 3. Minimally maintained trails appropriate for both foot traffic and horses. People who live "downtown" only need a bicycle and can rent/borrow a horse if needed. Or they may walk everywhere and use a bike-share for longer distances in central areas or along arteries. People in areas further out are more likely to have a horse. Chances are they're farmers anyway and horses will be useful to them in ways beyond transportation. In our current world, we already have law enforcement on horses and [on bicycles](https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2012/05/16/nypd-bike-patrol-its-officially-a-trend/). They serve various purposes and it's rare they have to "chase someone down." [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/s8ObK.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/s8ObK.png) [Answer] I'm ignoring the bit about diesel trains, because if you can make diesel trains you can make diesel cars and this whole question is pointless. So assuming no diesels, bicycles will dominate personal transport, because as other answers have said, they're just so much quicker and cheaper. But they will not make horses totally obsolete. Bicycles have hardly any torque. You are extremely limited in how much weight you can carry or pull. So horses and oxen will still be very important for pulling plows and carts. [Answer] Wikipedia has the following claim by the inventor of the bicycle Karl von Drais. ``` „1. Berg auf geht die Maschine, auf guten Landstraßen, so schnell, als ein Mensch in starkem Schritt. 2. Auf der Ebene, selbst sogleich nach einem starken Gewitterregen, wie die Staffetten der Posten, in einer Stunde 2 [Poststunden Weg] 3. Auf der Ebene, bei trockenen Fußwegen, wie ein Pferd im Galopp, in einer Stunde gegen 4 [Poststunden Weg] 4. Berg ab, schneller als ein Pferd in Carrière [Rennbahn].“ ``` Roughly translated: 1. Uphill on a good country-road as fast as a fast marching person 2. On a plain road after rain still as fast as pony-express. 3. If the road is dry as fast as a galloping horse 4. Downhill faster than a racing horse. Considering that he used a bike made out of wood without even pedals the speed is quite impressing. The question of course is how early 19th century country roads in Germany looked like, but I would assume, that they weren't any better than what you have in your post apocalyptic world. Of course speed will depend on the fitness of the rider, and more exhausting than riding a horse. On the other hand a bike needs less maintenance and can be repaired faster and easier. You have to remember that horses need a lot of food, which of course the bike doesn't. [Answer] Why are you forgetting electricity? It is very hard to come up with an apocalypse scenario that doesn't involve total extinction where ability to use and produce electricity is lost. The basic principles are widely known, the means of producing it and the material needed too widespread to get rid of, and it's just so damn useful. It scales easily, so you don't need massive infrastructure to produce and use it--unlike petroleum--and it's highly flexible in how it can be used. Batteries can be an issue, at least on the high end, but the lead-acid battery was invented in 1859, so not as much as you might think. So electric buggies. [Answer] # On paved roads bikes win hands down, but people will use horses anyway Human are endurance powerhouses we are not fast (unless on good roads) but we can keep going for nearly forever. [ultralong distance unsupported off-road marathon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_Divide) cyclists can cross 2,745-mile (4,418 km), averaging around 170 miles/ day. this is a nonstop even where bikers carry their own camping equipment. On paved roads the current human 24 hour non-stop record is [~500 miles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cycling_records#24_Hours_record). Note these are humans pushed to their limits however they could not keep this up dozens of times a year. But even if you say they could only manage half that on average is only slightly slower than a horse off road and much faster on roads. A horse would drop dead over such a course. A trained horse with a rider can travel about a [100 miles in a day](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/6411/possible-distance-travelled-by-horse-over-6-weeks). But if I run down a criminal on horseback I'm not winded afterwards and can still fight, more importantly if I pull out a gun the horse steers itself while I aim. but it is really a apples and cadillacs question, horses have two huge advantages. We use horses because it is something else doing all the labor not you, even normal person, or heck even a child could ride a horse long distance. More importantly horses can pull carts and thus move goods, if your a farmer you are not trying to get from A to B you are trying to move GOODS from A to B. Now cargo bikes do exist and if roads are good I expect many will use them, but that is something people who cannot afford horses will do, just like today. Finally horses can pull a plow, which makes them infinitely more useful to a farmer than a bike, especially if your schizo tech can't make tractors for some reason. Note however farms may have both as bicycle powered farm machines were quite common, as are horse powered engines they just work at different scales, a beet cutter or lathe might be bike powered while a millstone would be horse powered. [Answer] An interesting checksum to this argument is to look at various armies of the 1920's and 30's, which actually raised units that traveled on bicycles. The Finnish ski troops which decimated the Russians during the "Winter War" were actually reconnaissance troops who were trained to patrol the forests on bicycles. These are 1930 era steel, one speed bicycles as well, but well suited for travelling through forestry trails in the woods. [Two-Wheeled Warriors – A Brief History of Bicycles on the Battlefield](https://militaryhistorynow.com/2012/08/22/two-wheeled-warriors-a-brief-history-of-bicycles-on-the-battlefield/) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/15KBy.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/15KBy.jpg) German troops on bicycles. More [here](http://histomil.com/viewtopic.php?t=14064) Many armies used bicycles as a low cost alternative to motor transport for administrative moves. Cycle troops could move faster and carry more than marching infantry, so provided an advantage to the armies which chose to use them. In the end, motor transport proved to be an even greater advantage, and a first class industrial power which could produce tanks, aircraft and warships was equally able to produce trucks in sufficient quantities as well. So long as there is a large enough industrial base to produce the parts to make bicycles, then bicycles can be competitive with horses. However, if the industrial base is too small, then horses will become dominant. [Answer] # The difference is towing capacity A bike is only as powerful as its attached human. Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins [can generate](http://www.mapawatt.com/2009/07/19/bicycle-power-how-many-watts-can-you-produce) over 400 Watts in peak power for an hour or so...but he is a Tour de France winner. You can hit the bike in the gym to see how much power you can produce; I'd suggest that 100 Watts for a couple hours is good for an in-shape human James Watt generated the unit "horsepower" by doing experiments on mine horses. A horsepower is 735 Watts (incidentally, Watts were not invented by Watt, though they were named after him). The mine horses were worked in 4 hour shifts, so they generated this power over a four hour period, then rested, as was apparently the common practice in the day to prevent over-working. I'd say you could assume a horse will generate around 10 times the power output of a man. Now, apply this to towing capacity. It is a lot easier to take your produce to market with a horse than with a bike. Living in a rural area and in a post-apocalyptic world, this is going to be the most important thing to you. [Answer] A blacksmith works with cast iron, not the aluminum, titanium, and carbon fiber of modern bicycle frames ([frame materials](https://www.cyclingweekly.com/group-tests/carbon-aluminium-steel-titanium-132965)). I'm not sure that you can rely on a blacksmith fixing the typical preapocalypse bicycle. Steel would be the most accessible, but it's also heavy and most prefer lighter bicycles. It's possible that they might build cast iron bicycles. But wood might be a better material, as cast iron is heavy. ([Science of Cycling: History of Bicycle Frames](https://www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/frames1.html)) On a flat, an off-road bike can expect [ten to twelve miles per hour](https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/q/1505) (about sixteen to twenty kilometers per hour). Some people may do better or worse, as fitness matters. A horse can do twenty miles in an hour (but then needs to rest). Or two miles in three minutes (and then needs to rest). [Reference.com](https://www.reference.com/pets-animals/far-can-horse-run-full-speed-before-gets-tired-3d6c60ca47ec333). So for a moderate distance, the horse will outrun the bicycle on the flat or uphill. A bicycle can go faster downhill though. And a fit cyclist can ride farther than a fit horse. Horses are sprinters, not distance runners. The greater problem might be that if you go twenty miles (or even two), the lawman might be out of jurisdiction while the criminals will find friends. There are reasons why the typical pursuit involved a posse rather than a single lawman. "Manufacturing" a horse is easier than a bicycle after an apocalypse. All you need is two horses of the appropriate sexes and sources of food and water. A place to shelter the horses is helpful but not required ([mustang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustang)). It's a slow process, but it mostly happens naturally. Bicycles will be easy to find at first, but repairing them will tend to make them heavier and therefore slower (except downhill). This will also be expensive. It can take hours of a blacksmith's time to make a small part that an assembly line would have made in seconds. And bicycles have a number of small, breakable parts. Incidentally, if you have diesel trains, you could also have diesel trucks and cars. I've driven a diesel Volkswagen Rabbit. Any kind of diesel will tend to be durable and capable of burning a wide variety of fuels (e.g. [vegetable oil](http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html) or motor oil), albeit possibly with some modification. ]
[Question] [ First, the argon is a chemical element and the third-most abundant gas in the Earth's atmosphere (approximatively 1%). And I know that when someone inhales a large amount of argon, there is a risk of asphyxiation by anoxia, but that's not what i'm looking for. So, i would like to know if there is any species that when they get in contact or breathe it they die, or something similar (getting sickness which lead to a dead state). I would like to know if there is any others chemicals elements/materials who can be destroyed by the Argon. And if possible, could you tell me what kind of objects are mostly made of Argon ? [Answer] If you look where argon is on the periodic table, it's far on the right, along with the other "noble" gases. The noble gases are gases that, well, they don't really do much. From [Wikipedia, noble gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_gas): > > The noble gases make up a group of chemical elements with similar properties; under standard conditions, they are all odorless, colorless, monatomic gases with very low chemical reactivity. The six noble gases that occur naturally are helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and the radioactive radon. > > > Nobel gases do glow a bit when you put enough electric potential across them (e.g., neon lights), but they don't really do anything else. So it is highly unlikely that argon will be toxic to anything because (as far as I understand it, not being a biologist) toxins work by interacting with other elements and disrupting the chemistry of the host. However, the dominant gas in Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen, and while it is pretty stable, it is probably more feasible that an entity is poisoned by the nitrogen in our atmosphere than the argon. [Answer] According to Wikipedia's article on nitrogen intoxication, argon is 2.3 times as intoxicating as nitrogen ([ref](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_narcosis#Causes)). A 80% Ar / 20 O2 atmosphere, at sea-level, would make humans a little woozy, but not cause any serious harm. [Answer] Just make the argon either Argon-39 or Argon-42. Both have medium term half lives-232 year or 33 year and are electron emitters. That is neither so long that the emission rate is trivial or so short that it isn't around for very long. Electron emitters can penetrate a few millimetres and tend to produce gamma radiation with some barriers. 1% of either in air would really bad for living things such as severe mutation and probably severe cancer leading to death. ]
[Question] [ I'm trying to design a magic item that can eat other magic items to gain their abilities. However, I keep running into a problem. Eventually, the magic item becomes semi-omnipotent as the abilities stack, leaving no weaknesses. Context: Magic items in the world are common and have a multitude of different abilities ranging from combat focused ones like damage absorption, to support ones like speed increase and utility ones like search (checks the area for hostiles and items). Some magic items' abilities are stronger than others, the stronger the ability, the rarer they are. I want the item to gain a plethora of abilities while not allowing it to get too powerful. So what would be a plausible solution? FAQ: * Do these items have charges? - The items have a set number of uses depending on their grade from 1-10 (10 being the highest). However, extremely rare items have an unlimited uses, such as the magic eating item itself. * Do you have to activate them? - Some do, others are passive and slowly run out of durability until unequipped, and those can be repaired. * Can they get damaged when you use them too often? - See above. * Can they overheat? - No. * Could they explode if used wrong? - No. Explosions only happen if its their intended function. * What would two conflicting enchantments do? - They can't be on the same item. * Are very powerful items also unstable or harder to use? - Just extremely rare. * Do you have a magic eating monster or a crazy lich collector actively looking for these items? - No. [Answer] Here, I'll also give you multiple answers. 1. Make it Charge based - You can make it so that the Absorber can only use *one instance of magic item that is absorbed. So if your absorber eats one item, you can only use its effect once. If you give it a duplicate of the same item, you can use it twice.* Think of it like bullets. The more bullets (magic items) you feed to your absorber, the more it can use each abilities. or... 2. Make it EXP Based - Consuming a magic item learns it's magic but only at level 0 (or something). In other words, your absorber only gets a portion of the magic item's potency or to be blunt, *a cheap imitation of the consumed magical item's effects.* For instance Absorber (A) eats Grade 1 Item B (B). Then Absorber's Skill B has only 1/10 potency of the original item (Change the potency based on the grade of the magical item as you see fit). You should feed it the same kind of magical item to increase it's potency. This would limit its power when consuming Extra rare Magical items. For instance, If it eats only one instance of Grade 10 Magic Item (C) and coincidentally, there is only one C in the world, then you are forced to make Absorber's Skill C not as potent as the original one. This would also bring up the question "Is it worth to absorb? The its potency will be weakened. I don't think it's a good idea." Something like that. [Answer] The problem is that your phrasing, "eats other magic items to gain their abilities" causes you to subconsciously filter the attributes of the item and pick only the good ones. A process like that will always lead to unconstrained growth. Instead, have your hungry magic item gain the attribues of the items it eats, some good some bad. It then must integrate these attributes into itself. It would naturally try to get all the benefits and mitigate all the drawbacks, but that's a hard process. If you eat a fire item and an ice item, its hard to grab the best of both without some of the disadvantages of one limiting the advantages of the other. If the hungry magic item is not careful, it becomes "murky," where the positive aspects of the last few items are noticeably present, but aspects from older meals blend together into a sort of drab grey that doesn't really have much power. The magic item must be careful to cultivates the powers it wants to have if it wants to dominate. This, of course, is exactly what happens with children. They suck up just about everything in their environment. As a parent, your job is to cultivate that environment so that the good parts of it that your child consumes resonante together and form a person that, one day, will take over for your place in the world! [Answer] Your item needs some form of drawbacks. As there is no cost to your current item, it is ripe for abuse. Some suggestions you can employ to make the powers of the item limited to superhuman instead of god levels. The "best" way to do this is to slap on limiters and try it out with different powers. To avoid confusion, I'll refer to your item as the "Grand Absorber" 1. Grand Absorber needs fuel: Grand Absorber can absorb another item to acquire new effects OR you can use it to gain more magical fuel to power the magic the Grand Absorber already has access to 2. Grand Absorber has limited versatility: Grand Absorber can only remember a few spells or one spell at a time or only the most few recent spells absorbed or Grand Absorber memory is bounded by tiers of magic it is storing. 3. Grand Absorber time limit: After your Grand Absorber has eaten a new item, there is only a limited number of time (you can spam a spell 24/7 for a month for example) or the spell can only be cast X number of times 4. Grand Absorber is intelligent and greedy: Grand Absorber isn't too fond of freely handing you a crap ton of magic that it has absorbed. You're going to need to pay a price (this could be anything from your memories/gold/lives of loved ones) as tribute if you wish to use the magic 5. Grand Absorber is TYPE limited: Your Grand Absorber can only take in spells of certain schools at a time. For instance your Grand Absorber can only eat magical items that are part of the evocation school. If a user wants to store a new type of magic (like swapping to abjuration/transmutation), the user has to drop all the spells the Grand Absorber uses. [Answer] The easiest way is to have the effect non permanent. You can do this two ways. Either the item can only store so many abilities so to take a new ability means losing an old ability. The other way is the ability fade over time which means it has to keep eating new abilities to replace the lost ones. [Answer] Diminishing returns. Back when you were an apprentice, successfully casting your first sputtering fireball to kill that enchanted giant rat near the entry of that haunted dungeon was worth enough XP to level up twice. Now, as a seasoned mage, you brush those creatures aside with a cantrip and get 0.001 XP for it. (Pardon the mix of internal and external viewpoints there.) Same for the Great Absorber -- the more magic it holds, the more it takes to add to its power. There's a point where it's just not worth it any more. [Answer] Hybrid. The Eater item, on eating a new item, becomes a hybrid of its former self and the new item - sort of like if you were mating two animals. There is some randomness involved. If you breed 2 very strong horses you might get a very strong horse or a super strong horse. If you breed a mastiff and a Great Dane you might get an extra large, lean mastiff. If you breed a mastiff and a Chihuahua you might get a chihuahua that was actually as tough as it thought was. Or you might get some unremarkable medium sized dog. Or a Great Dane with a Chihuahua looking head. If the Eater could shoot fireballs, and it ate a shield generator, it might make fire shields, or shoot shield balls. Or possibly shoot small fireballs that impact on the inside of the small shield it makes. If the Fire Shield Eater ate a flying potion, it might allow you to make giant flight-like jumps from within your (smaller) fire shield. Or shoot shieldballs that fly all around. You can make creative hybrids that are more, less, or weird combinations of their parents. If there are rules for how magical items hybridize you could decide what order your Eater will eat them to try to produce a desired final power. [Answer] When you said "a magic item that can eat other magic items", I imagined one with a mouth and teeth and wondered where the mass it eats goes? Maybe if a magic item eats too many other magic items, eventually, it will become too big and too heavy to lift and can't be used. Or maybe too much magic in one place will create a magic black hole and it will only suck in more magic and won't let any magic out, so in the end, it will cease to work as a magic item. [Answer] Well, one way to keep it from growing too fast in power would be to place a hard limit on how much it can absorb in a given period, for whatever reason. [Answer] Eventually, the item becomes self-aware. Either from eating another item that had the ability to become self-aware or as some sort of side effect from multiple other abilities combined together (much like how our own sentience is a by-product of several other features we share with various ancestor species). Like Sylar from Heros, it initially enjoys adding new powers, but eventually finds that absorbing too much results in problems such as sensory overload, loss of their version of fine motor control, or concern over absorbing another power that supersedes their existing personality. If multiple such items exist, they may wish to avoid becoming so powerful that they become well known and thus a target of others who wish to absorb their powers. [Answer] Give it decaying power based on its power, at exponential rates. Others are suggesting logarithmic functions, but these just don't "feel" right. Instead, give your item considerable amounts of power based on what it has consumed, but based on how powerful it is, it will decay to a level lower than when it started in a relatively short amount of time. You can make this so consuming three magic items means you have to feed it at an ever increasing rate just to prevent the decay from destroying it. If you feed it slowly, you can constantly give it more power over a longer duration, but with less powerful effects. This gives the user more dimensions of usability. Rates of decay, amounts of increase, and decay power can be fixed or vary based on a multitude of factors (i.e. matched item class decays less quickly, higher magic level increases power more, rare item reduces decay fallback, legendary item ensures the item decays to the starting point). [Answer] The magic item has a set amount of uses. Eating other items will allow it to use that items abilities, but the eater still has the same number of overall uses before it needs to be recharged. [Answer] Living things need to poop after they have eaten. The Grand Absorber could poop out one or more items in it's inventory when it gets a new one, effectively having a rotating inventory of spells/abilities/powers. This is similar to item 2 in [Crettig's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/106528/8625) of a limited set of abilities, but gives more flavor to the power. This allows you to say "Welllll, this one wasn't compatible, so in a fit of indigestion, the Grand Absorber pukes it out" or something to that effect. ]
[Question] [ So I have this intelligent alien race of [detritivores](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detritivore) and I was wondering if it would be more practical for them to be a farming society or a hunter-gatherer society. I don't know if this is very important, but they can digest just about anything organic from their planet and for what they can't, they taste with their cheeks. As for how they digest, it begins in their mouth and goes down the throat until it is finished in a sac and send to the intestine like organs. [Answer] Without knowing the details of your planet, my first response is to say that Farming is always the better option for an intelligent species, whether they are herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, detrivores or any other form of consumer of organic matter. Let's start with the most obvious reason; supply. Farming doesn't guarantee a steady supply of food, but it's certainly a start in that direction. Sure, there can be droughts, blights, infestations and other interruptions to crops but generally speaking, farms allow a species to produce food en masse allowing for the bulk of the population to worry about other matters. As elemtilas has explained in his answer, the fact that we're talking detritus complicates the 'harvesting' process but there's a very good reason to overcome this problem, which is that agriculture allows for a much smaller percentage of the population to be focused on food gathering or production. This frees a larger percentage of the population to focus on metallurgy, science, monument building (which means engineering), transport (the wheel), defence, and other pursuits. This in turn generates a diverse economy and with it the need for leadership, which in turn means that leaders rise who can focus the collective effort towards that which benefits the whole, not just the individual. Without farming, you don't get things like land ownership, economic theory, scientific advancement, rule of law, and even protection from minor food supply anomalies. Sure, farming is labour intensive, but it's that intensity which frees up the rest of the population to focus on broader and more diverse pursuits which allow them to advance their civilisation beyond simple hunter gathering. [Answer] If they can digest virtually any organic matter on the planet there really isn't any need for farming. Farming was developed by humans mostly to avoid seasonal food shortages. If they can eat practically anything there isn't any motivation to build labor intensive farms. [Answer] One, remind me nòt to accept a dinner invitation to one of their houses! Two, by definition, a detritivore / detrivore eats already dead & decomposing organic matter: leafmould, fruitfall, carcasses, dung and so forth. Agriculture, being the raising and care of living crops a/o herds for food is therefore out of the question. Their natural habit is one of scavenger / gatherer. Unless you want to take it a step further and, after harvest, they reserve the seed for next planting, but eat only the dead husks. Or during slaughter tide, they sell the meat and hides, but eat the remaining slurry, bones, and entrails. [Answer] You may have a problem of perspective. Detritus (in terms of the wiki link you provided) is a definition that caries a great deal of human bias. It is literally those left-overs that we have little direct use for. If these are the species in of their environment (planet?) that writes the records of science, they probably wouldn't see their diet as detritus at all. Others have pointed out the likelihood of farming being the most practical solution. However in your final choice it may also be worth considering if you want them to favour certain foods, or whether they just see nutrition as a necessary chore. [Answer] Neither? An intelligent detritivore is rather unlikely. If we ignore the reason they evolved sentience as being out of scope, just supporting an animal large and active enough requires a steady stream of rather high energy detritus. Although going with the [sloth solution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloth) is possible and gives an interesting kind of slow time rate thinking, it is probably not what you want. Thinking about a steady stream of high energy detritus being produced, you have to be talking about a large group of animals producing a steady stream of faeces. A large herd of grazers with a fairly inefficient digestion, for example. A large detritivore could survive by following the herds and eating the produce fresh and warm before smaller, otherwise more efficient, detritivores get to it. Such species would naturally first develop [pastoralism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastoralism). They would supplement it with opportunistic hunting, fishing, and gathering. And probably develop pastoral farming at some point. But pastoralism would be their first and "ethos forming" livelihood, which you seem to be asking about. [Answer] There are arguments both ways, a detritivore, especially a generalist one such as have described doesn't, on the surface, have a huge amount of motivation to get into food production but can quite happily survive as a "hunter gatherer" i.e. "a low impact low population density culture that doesn't produce any specialised food stuffs but subsists on existing wild nutrition." possibly even at population densities that would give humans pause (especially in something like a tropical rainforest with rapid and continuous nutrient turnover). The question is does the human farming equation hold water with a detritivore, I think it does. In human societies farms use specialised food crops to produce a local surplus that can be consumed by those involved in other economic activities (teachers, engineers, scientists and other non-farmers) and/or shipped to areas without the local production to support their population density (towns and cities populated by non-farmers, but also inhospitable locations with strategic resources). A detritivore society could also utilise specialised crops, in this case the main desirable attribute would be accelerated growth, to create a surplus that could be shipped to sustain excessively crowded areas or colonies exploiting badly needed resources on hostile areas. What it comes down to is whether you need, for story or other reasons, your detritivores to have high density, urbanised, populations and the [specialisation and division of labour](https://www.economicshelp.org/microessays/as/specialisation-division-labour/) that they make possible, if so then they'll need to be producing food intensively somewhere they haven't paved over to support those populations, and that is farming. What does a detritivore farm look like? On Earth it looks like fields of fast growing [Bamboo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo) or even [Kudzu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu), that are reaped for biomass to be rotted down as food base for the hungry masses, what you use is up to you. [Answer] This is a vague memory, but wasnt one of the aliens in "the animorphs" similar in digestion? he had to be careful about what he stepped on because his "hooves" were the membrane across which absorbed nutrition. so what im saying is, option C is to make your society a grazing one. [Answer] Farming in a way that creates enough biomass that they would consume. This would be the more practical. If they could sit in a zone that best benefits the plant matter they'd be consuming, they could more easily grow what they'd need to consume. It wouldn't matter much if they were a very small population on a large planet full of the mass they'd need to consume, then they could just move around everywhere eating, but being an intelligent species, they'd probably have cultural norms and society that would more likely be better suited as farmers, even if they were nomadic. Plains tribes in the Great Plains of the US moved back and forth over the plains doing really large scale permaculture like methods of land stewardship which was basically a form of farming and ranching. Using burns to move Bison and replenish the soil while propagating plants where needed along the way as they went back and forth over hundreds of miles. [Answer] considering they can feed on anything.. theres no need to provide a stock of food/resources (agricultural or animal).. considering you gather stock as resources are scarce or they miss in certain periods of time (1.seasons/2.wars/3.particular weather - climate changes) 3.regarding planetary changes(1.local changes don't constitute a problem.. see migration) our planet was a rock in space till water made it blue.. and do tell where from so much water(.. not from the rock i suppose as the rock was red hot from asteroid bombarding not to say moon separation theory??) 2.considering you mention intelligent.. there would be no wars or slavery; you only need to gather/store resources in a stratified/settled gathering of individuals(society).. some work, some talk and some smoke:).. they all brag.. and a ruler to f..k with all of them(the warrior type).. as they cant think for themselves.. including the ruler.. very primitive unintelligent gathering of individuals mention1: regarding digestive tract peculiarities each specie has a different one.. some say they adapted to the food.. as in evolutionism.. id say.. sharks are still sharks and crocodiles are still crocodiles unless you genuinely grow a 3rd hand(no gmo cheat) your a fraud mention2: you also mention "anything organic".. the manure product is also organic.. i guess they don't redigest that or they have complete/no excrement digestion mention3: considering they eat all organic would they be best neighbors for biped-monkey garbage? biped-monkey thrashing the whole blue planet(universe next) and all.. side-thought considering all this and your question "practical for them to be a farming society or a hunter-gatherer" i'd go to door no: 3 - scavenger or just hunter(gatherer/farmer implies settled uninteligent individuals; keep in mind feed on anything) ]
[Question] [ So, I'm creating a medieval setting with a bit of fantasy in it. Like, for example, Druids are really able to heal any wound (if their gods wish so tho.), Griffins are alive and kicking, still, there is no way for one guy to send a fire ball or something. Except healing magic, there is basically no magic, except for magical animals, dragons are able to cast spells. It's also on Earth, albeit with a larger Ireland (Same size as the Britain region in France), a very large South Africa and Atlantis which is a continent between the Americas and Africa/Europe. I was having fun creating a superpower living in western Europe, they started in the Alps and spread to Danemark in the North, captured Spain and basically own North Italy. These guys use Griffins to help their army , they got a legislative system that ensure you're not screwed if born in a not noble family and basically everyone is equal, as long as you don't involve in crimes that is. Criminals are released outside the Griffin Republic, which basically means "Good luck living in the wildside, hopefully there is no dragons or bandits or slavemasters..." and is dissuasive enough. There is two military reasons that asserts their dominance, they got Crossbows (only one that does.) and Griffins. Griffins are sentient and volunteer in the army, they are quite able at strategy and act as guerilla units in war time. Then I realized this was cool and fuzzy but they need at least another super power that simply would make them not conquer the world. I created an Irish druidic kingdom, they got healing magic and are incredible seafarers. They discovered every continents and possess trade routes with every civilization they discovered. They dominate the British Islands and a fair part of Morocco. They are very numerous, very few of their infants die. They also craft siege weaponry (Ballistae, Cannons, Catapult) that helped them protect their trade route. Why would these two superpowers fear each other? Everything I think of sounds quite "weird" and unatural (after all before the Cold War, each superpower that found someone that could threaten it felt the urge to strike first.). What would you recommend? Creating a third party ? "Nerfing" them? [Answer] Most large empires in the past, expecially those risen until middle age, were not prevented from conquering the world by another power, but rather from the poor logistic. Once your orders need months to reach all the provinces, once your troops cannot be fed in that war far far away, your empire simply cannot grow further. In a two powers scenario where there is no MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction), you can leverage on this logistic difficulty: set the powers separated by a large natural barrier (an ocean, a desert or a mountain range), which is hardly crossable with the technology of the time. You can refer to the following examples, taken from our history: * America and Europe separated by the Atlantic Ocean * Europe and China separated by the Middle East deserts * India and China separated by the Himalaya A first strike would need such a massive preparations and investments to simply dry out all other resources from the attacker with an high risk of failure, and therefore the two Empires, though being afraid of each other, would have no practical means to attack each other and maintain a reasonable force to protect them from smaller but closer enemies. [Answer] I have a few points of logic you should consider, especially about Griffins, but first: > > [The Europeans have] Crossbows. > > > That doesn't stop the Druids, with healing magic. How powerful or fast is the healing magic? Is it a weapon itself, in war? I have shot both a regular bow and a crossbow, it is not instantly easy to hit the bullseye with it. So while a bolt to the head of a druid might kill it; that is a small target, and can be protected by a shield or helmet. Suppose along with healing, druids can also magically turn off pain in war: They might as well, any injuries are going to be healed anyway, and any damage caused to their bodies by ignoring pain will be magically disappeared as well. Unlike the Europeans, make the Druids extremely hard to kill; it isn't enough to put a bolt in their heart and move on; put ten bolts in them and they are still coming at you with an axe like its a minor inconvenience. A European soldier could get so used to Griffins as to not think of them as magic, but the Druids in war could seem unstoppable. > > Griffins are sentient and volunteer in the army, they are quite able at strategy and act as guerrilla units in war time. > > > Then why aren't they in charge? What stops them from militarily just taking over from the Europeans and subjugating them? I infer they must be better at "strategy" than the Europeans, which makes them more intelligent than their masters, and better fighters to boot, since you intend them to be the reason the Euros dominate. Given all that, why isn't this a Griffin nation? Or alternatively, why don't the Griffin break away and form their own nation? Do the Europeans prohibit the Griffin from holding political positions within their culture? Are the Griffin considered second-class citizens? Is it okay for them to be guerrilla warriors or soldiers, but never okay to be Mayor or President? Can a Griffin be our modern equivalent of a billionaire, rich and powerful with many human servants and a huge estate? Or, despite their sentience, and capacity for self-sacrifice (volunteering to protect others), and superior reasoning ability (required for superior strategic foresight), are they still treated like horses, forever relegated to the animal kingdom because of their phenotype? Whatever makes the Griffin loyal to the Europeans, inequality and second-class status can be a powerful driver for them toward independence or a better lot. Perhaps that political reality is coming to a head: Let us posit that the Griffin, intelligent but warriors at heart, admire the Druids in war as fellow warriors. They note the Druids fight their own wars head on without fear; including their Kings and Priests on the front lines. This is something they don't see in any other culture, especially amongst their own soft and fat Euro masters that stay far from the action. ### A Potential Plot Path The Griffins are second-class citizens in the Euro culture. Put is in a time of initial skirmishes between the Euros and Druids, with Euros invading the more peaceful Druid territory. The Griffin population is unsettled; and developing an admiration for the Druid warriors; a stark departure from their experience with Euros and other cultures. In one of these skirmishes, a young Griffin doing his duty in the military, but also unsettled as to Griffin status in the Euro community, is badly injured by Druids; with broken wings and a spear through him, unconscious and left for dead on the battle field. The Druid King, walking the battle field in the aftermath in case any of his soldiers can be healed, finds this Griffin; and using his healing magic; brings him to consciousness. The broken Griffin awakes in horrible pain; the King lays hands on him and the pain vanishes to barely a throb. The King converses with the Griffin, half interrogation, and half questioning the motives of the Griffin. But this Griffin is not that sure himself about his own motives; he is loyal to a community that does not treat him as an equal. He speaks freely, certain he will die of his injuries anyway. In his mind a Griffin with broken wings is a dead Griffin, period. In the end, the King chooses to not kill the Griffin. Druids are nature lovers and love animals. The King knows the Griffin may return to war, but so might a horse, and he understands that the horse does not choose battle, it is enslaved and cannot do anything else. So the Druid do not slaughter injured horses left behind by the enemy. They heal them and set them free. He asks the Griffin if his kind has made the choice to invade Druidic land. Are they capable of their own decisions? The Griffin claims they are. The Druidic King ponders this, but then says, "You have given me no reason to believe that is true," and with a touch of his finger on the shattered wing of the Griffin, the Griffin falls unconscious. He wakes up hours later, the moon high in the midnight sky, fully healed. The spear through his lungs is gone; His wings intact and fully functioning, even the scratches and cuts of battle are gone. He leaps into the sky and climbs, then circles the battle field, there is no Druid or campfire in sight. He heads away, toward the European encampment. Thus begins the neutralization of the Griffins. This one returns, his story is told and kept amongst the Griffins. They believe him, the Griffin seldom lie to their own kind, and are never cowardly. The Druid King by touching the Griffin has learned the magic they need, and in war hereafter, a touch of more than a second or two from a Druid leaves a Griffin unconscious. After battles, any Griffin not killed in the battle, awakens healed. The Griffin allegiance to the Euros has softened, and they are not inclined to fight Druids. They are sentient, they know full well the Druids could behead them on the battle field, but the Druids choose to heal them instead. So while not all Griffins agree on everything, and some disdain the Druids for being weak and sentimental soldiers, the majority of Griffins have been neutralized by Druidic Mercy. And every time it happens, they question why they are following the orders of the European King at all. Are they really just smarter horses, blindly subservient? There is a growing sentiment among Griffins that "The Druid fight is not our fight, there are other lands to conquer." A separatist movement is brewing, and the Europeans know it; so they have that distraction of social inequality to keep them politically occupied. The Druids are smaller, geographically isolated, with no particular weapons or desire to conquer the world. The Europeans have a standoff with the Druids, and Druids alone, because both Crossbows and Griffins are of limited use against Druids, and an all out assault on Druids might lead to a Griffin revolution. They can still wage war and plunder *other* human tribes; so they do that instead, it is their path of least resistance. [Answer] You are missing internal factors. I disagree with the premise that the limiting factor of an Empire would be logistics. With the logistics of their day, the Romans reached the Persian Gulf, Alexander went much further, and we better do not talk about the Mongols or the Spanish in America. If there was an Empire with a clear advantage, poor logistics would not mean that it would not expand, just that at worst it would do slowly (this year campaign captures a small region, next year campaign another one, and so on...). But internal factors are the limiting factor. As your empire grows, you must organize local power structures because you just cannot manage it from your throne/palace, specially given how slow communications are, so you must give some degree of independent command to your governors. With time, those become more powerful (specially if that is an hereditary position) and any weakening of the central power (for example, in a long conquest war) means an opportunity for the governor to launch a coup that can degenerate in a civil war. The list of empires that had to stop its expansion due to internal conflict is just too long to complete: Alexander's, Western Roman, Umayyad Caliphate, Carolingian... [Answer] # Air power Air power is everything in warfare even now, a medieaval faction with gryphons would be able to conquer anything they chose. As far as they chose to spread their power. The only way to limit their expansion is to somehow limit the gryphon powered supply lines. The easiest way is to limit the gryphons carrying capacity, let them only be able to carry enough for their own needs, if they carry a rider then they'll need to hunt, limiting their numbers, or keep a flock of sheep moving with the army and the logistics become as bad as anyone elses. # Healing This is also a gratuitous war winner. Simply the fact that your army remains healthy regardless of circumstance and injury. Prior to antibiotics even minor wounds could easily be fatal. You have the druids down as seafaring, until the discovery of the cure for scurvy it was estimated that any given ship would return with only half its crew (if it returned at all). By standards of the period you're depositing a considerably higher number of healthy troops into combat from your ships. --- If the druids also have gryphons then my money is on them, otherwise I think it heavily favours the Griffin Republic. Now all you need is a druish princess [Answer] Implementing an important trade between the two factions could solve your problem. By making them rely on each other in order to maintain their status, you could ensure that they won't just outright wage war against each other, while being wary enough to keep an eye on their trading partner. For example, the western superpower could have access to numerous vital ressources for the survival of the Irish druidic kingdom (Wood, ore, etc...) they'd be willing to trade for hatchable Griffin eggs (As mighty as they are, they could very well be extremely picky about their mating conditions, most being met exclusively in the Irish territory.) The druidic kingdom, due to their rather small territory, needs to import ressources from other empires to build the weapons protecting their trading routes, ensuring that their way of life remains the same. Yet, their territory happens to be home to Griffins, but their culture doesn't see interacting with those mighty creatures as something they'd want. The western empire, on the other hand, needs Griffins to ensure that their worldwide-known mounted troops have something to ride on, also ensuring that their way of life remains the same. And yet, they happen to have a bunch of ressources on their territory they can't find any use for. Still, if for some reason their fate required them to declare war to each other, one side breaking their part of the deal could be the start of a devastating, full-scale conflict. But really, who would want to fight against druids able to contact gods? Or fight against an army of agile, dangerous, possibly magic-able, mounted cavalry with deadly ranged weapons? [Answer] The simplest way to keep two empires at bay is to simply say that power drops off the farther away you get from the capital due to all the boring logistics associated with managing an empire. Both empires have a long history of border skirmishes but whenever someone pushes too far beyond the other one's border they tend to get beaten pretty bad, much like in real life. You can also have a lot of fun with semi-lawless "borderlands" that neither empire fully controls where all kind of shady characters inevitably end up as well as semi-independent city states that routinely change hands when they're not playing one empire against the other. Since it's Fantasy you could even take that to the logical extreme: magical resources are somehow tied to specific locations (Druidic stone circles in fantasy Ireland, griffin nesting grounds, etc.) and once your armies get too far away they start having trouble. The griffin's get restless and the druid's spells are slightly weaker, etc. [Answer] Personally I think your idea has a major flaw that would need to be addressed... you have two nations that value life and equality. By your description, they are far more likely to be allies instead of enemies. What you really need is a nation that is the opposite in philosophy, nature or intent -- and for each of the nations to justify the "evilness" of their opponent. For Griffin Republic, it could be aggression (of the Griffins or the people) that drive them. A belief that the Griffin "motherland" is currently occupied by the druids who claim to the land is the strongest because it is the "birthplace of their god". For a real world example, look at the Jewish and Arabic (and Christian) people with their claim to Jerusalem and how many wars over the centuries have occurred because of it. [Answer] There are (at least) two factors to consider: * It's much easier to have a more-or-less stable balance when several (at least three) parties are involved; balance of two is essentially unstable, at any fluctuation of power whoever has the upper hand will give in to temptation to "end it one and for all". OTOH if the smallest of the "3-faction" is smart enough it can realize it would succumb immediately after one of the two "major" ones is out of the way and thus actively and diplomatically act as a "stabilizing factor" (e.g.: mountain Elves / sentient Eagles alliance, traditionally secluded, able to fight on sea and land, but not really interested in lowlands). * If You have two powers You need to divide their abilities so that some natural barrier will keep them apart (e.g.: Griffins hate the sea and Druids simply cannot cope with arid climate); this makes land of the "other" faction less desirable (not to mention to fight at a disadvantage). ]
[Question] [ My story is set in a medieval fantasy setting. The Empire has the ability to create "Soulless". These are able bodied men and women who have been stripped of their free will and personality. In essence, they are meat automatons. After the process is finished, a soulless will only take orders from specific imperial commanders , known as emissaries, unless told otherwise. One needn't give them explicit orders. They are capable of understanding the meaning of more vague orders like, "Attack", "Bring him here", etc. Soulless will follow orders without a moment's hesitation. While they have enough self preservation instincts to protect themselves or to avoid obvious obstacles, but this can be overridden by a command, such as: "Walk into that burning building" or "Stab yourself with a rusty spoon". They do not , or at least do not seem to, experience pain. A soulless will never show emotion. You can systematically shatter its bones or attempt long term psychological torture, but it will not react. There are a few drawbacks. Soulless lack initiative. Once they have completed their order, they will return to their commanded for further orders. For instance, they will fight in a battle, but will not pursue fleeing enemies, but won't pursue do to them being a non threat. They are by all accounts, still human. They need to be cared for like any pet (food, water, sleep, occasional cuddles, etc.). They will push themselves until their bodies give in, so attrition is a valid tactic. Just like humans, they posses squishy organs, whose absence result in death. I intend for the soulless to be a very real and very scary threat. Something that even a seasoned veteran is afraid to fight. So, would the soulless prove to be a much greater threat than a standard enemy? [Answer] The ability to not feel pain actually exists. It is called [Congenital insensitivity to pain.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_pain) It is very rare, mostly because people who suffer from it rarely survive into adulthood. Humans beings need to feel pain in order to survive; it's the thing that tells us that what is happening is not good for our continued survival. You would be losing tons of your soldiers to basic diseases, untreated minor injuries, over-stressing muscles and tons of other things that normal humans would realize are going to be fatal. Emotions are in the same basket; your body needs fear to know that something is endangering its survival. Your body needs rage to drive you to try and destroy opposition. Your body needs love to make you protect others. What you really need to make a powerful soldier, is a human who is in control of their emotions, who can act despite fear, and who knows how much pain he can ignore for the cause, without dying needlessly as a result. Which, incidentally, is exactly what veterans are. (For comparison; you are doing the equivalent of "Because of reports of soldiers breaking down over the horrors they have seen, I've created an army of blind guys. How dangerous are they going to be?". You are removing important input-sensors from your soldiers because they sometimes cause problems, but in doing so you are removing the ability to gather a ton of important information they need to do their job as well.) [Answer] The premise is flawed. They are not scary, they are useless. An army of soldiers who are not afraid at all, do not feel pain, and completely lack initiative, is something one would wish their enemy had. * Without fear they will take unnecessary risks. * Without pain they would not react to small wounds and die of infection. * And without initiative they won't even shoot without a direct order and will let themselves be slaughtered like sheep... [Answer] As core, possibly heavy, infantry, quite dangerous in open battles. Battles were often decided by which side started to have units routing, with domino effect. Facing an enemy that you will have to annihilate is scary, because it will cost you many men to do such. They are also more resilient against cavalry charges event when outflanked, which is quite bad for the cavalry, since it relies on infantry desorganizing and suffer if that doesn't happen. For normal imperial infantry it's also a plus. Having a unit at your side that simply won't crumble and let the enemy outflank you is reassuring. Even they not fucking off and overchasing an enemy against orders (although this was more of a problem with noble cavalry) is an advantage. Their obvious disadvantage is their reliance on a micromanaging commander. If the commander is not very detail oriented and capable the soulless will lose much of their efficiency. Incapacitate that commander or just get him too busy and the soulless will be get in trouble. Also in ambushes, skirmishes and sieges are scenarios where smaller unit initiative is important, so they will be much less useful. And as guards they are simply awful. And well, depending on how the commander gives them orders, there is a limit on how many soulless a single commander will be able to command effectively. If it's tied to voice, for example, he won't be able to use effectively more than one or two hundred or so, which is too few to be a difference. [Answer] Veterans rely on experience to be better fighters. Conventional tactics, feints, etc. can't affect those Soulless. The fact that they lack initiative BUT follow the order, whatever the danger, makes them, at the very least, annoying as hell. Example: 2 Soulless are ordered by an emissary to catch an ambassador. Said ambassador is protected by 10 guards. They will push their limits to obey. They will continue, despite being very hurt, they WILL succeed. Evidently, they can still be killed or incapacitated. It might be really annoying to do so. Maybe the Soulless project helps them mitigate magic or something? Just make sure the evil army is not just those guy. [Answer] Read a story about WWI trench war. Remove the instinct to hide in bomb craters because there was an order "seize that trench", remove the initiative to toss grenades or switch from rifle to small weapons to fight in the trench, remove the pain that force soldiers to fall and lay on the ground. You will have perfect targets, just fixate whatever weapon you have on the head level. You just made zombies with an ability to use weapons. A veteran soldiers would just sit in one place with a pike and stab all those soulless zombies in the face. It would be better to mass produce cows and equip them with bayonets. [Answer] I think that it could definitely work in a way, but might not be worth it. A lot of what your talking about, them being immune to pain, pushing their body to the absolute limit, and following orders without hesitation, can be done to normal soldiers. Maybe they wouldn't be as effective, but you could still train normal people into being emotionless warriors like this. But on the fear factor, these soldiers would definitely work, although I imagine that when people actually get over their fear and use their brains, they would probably be able to beat them, as they don't sound like the smartest warriors. [Answer] Those soldiers would be formidable, but not as the whole army, but rather a part of an army. If I understand correctly, "Soulless" are comparable to [ASoIaF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire)/[GoT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones) "Unsullied", but should be inferior to the latter because they totally lack the initiative and entirely don't feel pain rather than are able to tolerate it to the highest extent. Other answers already pointed to the flaws of such an army. That's why I think these "Soulless" should be a specialized tool, not an all-purpose tool. You won't use diamond glass cutter to hammer nails, and, conversely, won't use hammer to cut glass. "Soulless" troops should be invaluable when you need to rout an enemy's strong point, or make "last stand". They will suffer, for sure, but would be more effective than regular soldiers. Also, the psychological factor of deploying your fearless troops should demoralize your enemy. For most other army uses (scouting, patrolling, foraging) and fighting in tactically unpredictable situations, "Soulless" would be bad, if not completely useless. Also (addressing some of the concerns), they must be able to care for themselves, detecting and treating minor wounds and sores. Otherwise any march, even without a battle, would deplete their ranks. [Answer] As it was pointed out in the previous answers, pain and fear is essential for survival. So, similar to Cem Kalyoncu, I would like to suggest some modificatins: ## Give the the ability to switch off pain. On default, they will still notice if their back gets fire, or if they have a small wound which needs sterilisation, but if they are captured, they can 'switch' and ignore torture, if they are lethaly wounded they can 'switch' and not demoralize allied and draw enemy attention by crying, if their leg is shot, they still can run fast when really neccesarry... Of course you have to teach them to spare this power for really hard situations. ## Change the way they react to fear. Human fear was evolved to help against predators stronger than humans. It makes our mind block, and makes us run or hide down. In medieval combat, you do not need these instincts. Change them the following way: When a Soulless is scared, it draws its weapon, raises its shield, and runs to the closest crowd of its comrades. This is not achieved by training, it is natural response. No matter how hard have the Rebel Knights broken their line, the Soulless would quickly gather into new defensive formation. ## Make secret rituals for switching off other emotions. Anger, attachment, loyality, disgust are all quite handy normally. But if the Soulless have to mascare civilians, go trough pits of shit, calm down and rearrange the formation..., the officers only have to do the secret ritual (something simple and fast but easy to keep in secret) to switch off these unwanted emotions. All these changes are not enough to make them supersoldiers on their own, but if they are led by capable officers and have exceptionally good training, and decent equipment, they make the soldiers more effective, whitch may changes the course of the battle. [Answer] I will try answer the real question you haven't asked. I need a soulless, zombie like soldier who are extremely dangerous. Now this is workable, they need to feel pain, but not startled by it. They need to feel fear but not get affected by it. Pain and fear are important to save themselves when they are not ordered to get killed. For instance, if the order is chase the running soldiers, they should not jump into a pool of lava to accomplish the task. When they are hit by something sharp, they should be able to pull themselves away, but they shouldn't shy away attacking after getting out of immediate danger. Basically, they should be like a hardened soldier who will continue the fight even if he got shot and is in pain. Difference is that the hardened soldier will be slowed by the said pain, whereas soulless will not get affected. One additional aspect could be that they will need little sleep, and no time to mentally rest. This will make these soldiers extremely efficient. They will not get bored of training, they will not sleep while on guard duty. They cannot be bought by money or tricked. Here you go, you have an army of very good soldiers. They will not be better than the best, but they will be many. ]
[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/66357/edit). Closed 7 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/66357/edit) This is continuation of my first question: [Is there a way to buy oil from a country under embargo?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/66147/is-there-a-way-to-buy-oil-from-a-country-under-embargo) I have an oil rich country which is run by a junta. The junta has a history of utter contempt for civil rights, ethnic cleansing, putting opposition in gulags, and killing journalists. The country is far away, foreigners are banned from entering, and communications are tightly controlled. Since the oil boom junta is full of cash. How could junta improve their image in the eyes of the world? By improve I mean improving the way foreigners perceive the country, something like putting a lipstick on a pig. The junta has no plans to destroy its chemical weapons, allow the expelled minorities to return, hold free & fair elections, nor god forbid lose dead last place in freedom of press. Bribing, cosmetic changes or building few Potemkin villages are fine. [Answer] Holding non-fair elections because western people are crazy with the democracy. Think about Arab-summer and how western nations did some air strikes against evil dictators. Not looking though that the alternative force was some random radical rebels that are now making some problems; but worth it for the democracy. Making a holiday resort. Tourists spend time almost exclusively on the resort by themselves and do not really communicate with the locals. The people have some fun time there, which reflects positively with their attitudes. Also western countries are less willing to engage in conflicts if they would end up putting those tourists in danger. Buying media so that there is never a constant stream of how evil the junta is. Less media coverage is always a bonus, even if it does not completely suffocate the news. [Answer] # Utopianism That there were a lot of Americans who thought that the Soviet Union was turning into a worker's paradise in the 1930s. This isn't exactly a convincing argument, since while there were plenty of communist sympathizers, most of the rest of the world's government treated the Soviet Union like a pariah. But by loudly proclaiming some sort of Utopian ethos, while secretly killing and starving millions, you can still generate a lot of sympathy. Just look at all the fawning obituaries for Fidel Castro, who just died. Even the Prime Minister of Canada [said nice things](http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2016/11/26/statement-prime-minister-canada-death-former-cuban-president-fidel-castro) about him, despite plenty of evidence that he [wasn't very nice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#Education). # Success Nothing makes friends like success. Paul Kagame, President and possible dictator of Rwanda, is a good example here. His country is peaceful and stable, growing and getting richer. Yet he [may](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/10/paul-kagame-rwanda-success-authoritarian) or [may not](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/magazine/paul-kagame-rwanda.html) be a dictator. Certainly, he was the guy who 'won' the Rwandan genocide. While he was the 'good guy' in that war, I'll eat my boot if he isn't responsible for genociding at least someone. Also, in a relatively forgotten piece of history that happened within the lifetime of most readers here, Kagame instigated the invasion of Congo by rebels that started the [First Congo War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Congo_War#Rwanda) (1996-1997), which lead to the [Second Congo War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War), or Great African War (1998-2003), which killed around 5 million people. So, the moral here is if you [report great health care numbers](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/04/rwanda-life-expectancy-doubles-20-years) to the UN, people may or may not forgive you for starting the deadliest war since WWII. [Answer] # Become Useful to the West As a refueling stop in the War on Terror. As a site for deniable prisons. As a reliable vote in the United Nations. These days "terrorist" can fill the same role as "communist" did two generations ago. Of course your junta is against terrorists, and of course the opposition are terrorists. On a related note, be polite to the Greatest President in History. Don't confuse him with facts, and never, ever contradict him. Not even if he contradicts himself or mistakes your country for another one. # Avoid Ugly Pictures It doesn't matter what liberal academics write in their peer-reviewed journals. As Slobodan pointed out in his comments, government-affilated think tanks may be another matter, but it is fashionable to ignore liberals. Just make sure your latests crackdown doesn't make it into the evening news. Consider hiring a company like [Hill+Knowlton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill%2BKnowlton_Strategies#1980s_and_1990s). [Answer] Argue that the junta regime is the best option in a field of terrible options. Basically, this junta you're talking about, per the fact they are selling oil, is going to have some friends – maybe that's generous – trading partners. So, conjure up some bogeyman, something far worse than what the junta is, something which must be stopped at all costs. And then, sell this narrative along with the oil. It is easy for the junta to covertly support radical no-chance rebellions to launch attacks on the oil supply (also, since this is the most important source of revenue, any rebellion group would be launching attacks on this supply), which will infuriate foreign buyers. The foreign buyers want their oil supply to be reliable, cheap, and dependable. This threatens those interests. So, the radical terrorists which are attacking that supply (who may or may not be funded by the regime) are threatening the global order. These terrorists are trying to sow discontent and destroy the state from the inside. They are the evil ones. Nothing the government is doing is cruel... it is what must be done. The government simply needs to paint itself as the [well-intentioned extremist](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WellIntentionedExtremist). Then issue propaganda like this: > > It is the for the good of the country, to fight back against radicals who want to destroy the country's values and prestige on the international stage. The opposition are composed of traitors supported by these radicals. They are collaborators trying to undermine the great strides in development we have achieved over the last few decades! > > > This government is dedicated to the return of peace and prosperity. We do not want to fight this war, to keep up this quarrel, but what choice do we have when we have been savagely attacked1 by terrorists who have slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians?2 Our people demand vengeance. We must fight these foes, these terrorists which want nothing but the destruction of our way of life. What peace can be brokered with those who wish to see nothing but our nation's destruction? > > > Idealistic foreigners might cast doubt on our methods. But they are too naïve to understand what our nation has gone through. If they were in our shoes, they would be fighting the same fight. When the last bastion of civilisation is under attack by barbarism3 from all sides, this is not the time for idle pontificating, it is the time to [do what we have to do](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IDidWhatIHadToDo). > > > 1: Conflict may or may not have been started by the government. 2: Civilians may or may not have been placed into harms way by the government. 3: Barbarisms may or may not be present. To quote Orwell, "Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence". [Answer] No need for fictional approaches. Real world gives you proven pathways to success. 1. # Proclaim to be for the workers, social rights, and other left wing goals. Doesn't matter if you are or aren't. Even in 1920s/30s, many of the more left leaning cultural figures liked Stalin. But we aren't in 1920s anymore. We are in 2016. [The Victims Of Communism Memorial Foundation did a poll](http://victimsofcommunism.org/new-report-reveals-u-s-attitudes-on-socialism-communism-on-eve-of-2016-election/) about Millennial attitudes for far left using YouGov. Some findings: > > > * Approximately one in four Americans (26%) and one-third of millennials (32%) believe more people were killed under George W. Bush than Joseph Stalin; > Score one for the Junta. > > > * Nearly 7 in 10 (68%) of all Americans and nearly 6 in 10 (59%) of Generation Z (ages 16-20) falsely believe that more people were killed under Hitler than Stalin > * A vast majority (75%) underestimate the number of people killed by Communist regimes (more than 100 million); > * Of those millennials familiar with Vladimir Lenin, 25% have a favorable view of him > --- 2. # Engage the services of a leading Western media outlet (most of whom are and were left leaning at best, so #1 helps to achieve this too). One of the reasons Stalin was and is so popular with Americans is because New York Times was squarely in his corner. [Walter Duranty got a Pulitzer for whitewashing Stalin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty#Reporting_the_1932.E2.80.931933_famine). --- 3. # Engage the services of media makers. Producers, film directors. As with #2, the approach #1 helps you win points with them. Have them make propaganda movies that paint you in good light. Cuba successfully did that with [Michael Moore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicko). ]
[Question] [ I want to completely and utterly destroy a planetary civilization, while leaving technology and infrastructure (on land) more or less intact. Essentially, some squishy land bound (bipedal, carbon based) aliens earned the ire of the [energy eating rock aliens](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/17515/what-problems-would-an-semi-immortal-alien-race-run-into) who have decided to forcibly remove them and take their metals. By working together the rock aliens can harness and direct ~0.00000001% of the star's output (there are only a few thousand of them) and can use their psychic powers to reflect and bend light. They can also work together to accelerate large rocky/metallic masses (like asteroids). They cannot grip or directly move gasses or liquids. The rock aliens love metals, especially metals with a high melting point and/or high thermal conductivity. They want to remove all the squishy life forms and atmosphere from the planet's surface so they can take away all the metal on the surface without interference. The squishy aliens have many high profile metal buildings on the surface but also have an annoying tenancy of using particle weapons and mass drivers to inconvenience or destroy the rock aliens. The rock aliens don't want to bombard the planet with asteroids because that would bury all the useful metal (it is also bad for rest of the story), and the atmosphere is inconvenient to them because it transfers heat (they prefer vacuum for because it doesn't absorb energy as well). How can the psychic rock aliens remove the atmosphere (and optionally the ocean) in a short period of time (less than ~800 years) with the minimum use of energy and least damage to infrastructure on the surface. [Answer] Redirecting 0.00000001% of the sun's output is more than sufficient to completely darken Earth and moon from direct sunlight, and even all the other forms of direct and indirect radiation landing on the planet. Doing so would not only freeze the oceans, but also the atmosphere - you wouldn't be dealing with gases anymore, but much lower volume liquids and solids. The molten core would still be providing a lot of residual heat, so maybe you'd be dealing with oceans of oxygen and nitrogen rather than solids, but the end result is that you'd essentially still be working in vacuum. If it was necessary to really get rid of the stuff, it's easily done once liquid or frozen. You can either make buckets and drag it out of the gravity well, or, once frozen, redirect all the light into one spot of the frozen/liquid muck you don't want and watch it jettison itself off the planet. Freezing the planet and reducing the atmosphere to liquids and solids will take a very small amount of time - much less than 800 years. Jettisoning it from the planet, if still necessary for whatever reason, would take longer. But the pesky heat-sinking atmosphere would, essentially, be a non-issue. [Answer] So they can manipulate light and larger masses, but not gasses/fluids ? Concentrate sun-light on one of the poles of the planet until it gets hot enough for a significant portion of the atmosphere in that spot to be accelerated to escape velocity. At the (magnetic) pole the planets magnetic fields are weakest given solar wind maximum chance to blow away the escaping gasses. This would also create a permanent low-pressure zone in the atmosphere which disturbs the weather over the entire planet to make life very unpleasant for the locals. Additionally drop large asteroids in the oceans to add more heat to the planet and make life even harder for the locals (tsunamis, vapor-clouds, etc.). Most likely the locals would be dead, or in no condition to operate their weaponry, because of collapse of their society, in just a century or so. With the locals no longer a threat you can start using more direct methods on the surface. Here I'm thinking on building, on the ground, some sort of chemical installation(s) that bind the atmospheric gasses in solid materials, thereby taken them out of the atmosphere. Obviously you don't want to heat the planet too much. Melting the metals wouldn't be too bad, they are still easily accessible. But evaporating them would be problematic as they would disappear together with he atmosphere... If the aliens are powerful enough to stop the planet rotating all things are easier. A non-rotating planet can't sustain a significant magnetic field protecting it's atmosphere. The solar wind would strip the planet from its atmosphere very quickly. (Again: accelerate by heating the gasses.) [Answer] If you want to strip the atmosphere, just do so. Not quite as flippant an answer as it may seem. If you look at the planet from the direction of the sun at a reasonable distance, the atmosphere will have detectable thickness, it will be possible to focus light into a laser beam in such a way that it hits the atmosphere but not the surface. If you use a wavelength that is efficiently absorbed by the atmosphere this will impart energy to the atmospheric molecules and increase the rate of escape. Essentially you can boil off the atmosphere from top down although the light will also have some momentum which will also be imparted to the molecules and help in the escape. Some of the heat will leak to the planet as thermal radiation, but if you pick an uninhabited area such as polar areas or oceans the effect should be minor. And you want to kill anyone anyway so who cares. Once the atmosphere has been reduced to irrelevancy, you can't get entirely rid of with this method, the oceans will be gone to. All the water will evaporate due to low pressure. Apart from the water that will freeze and then sublimate. The difference is not really important for your purposes. Freezing will happen since the thinner atmosphere will lose its ability to retain heat. Second option is to redirect solar radiation in such a way that it does not hit the planet at all. This will cause the atmospheric gasses and all water to freeze. No atmosphere, no oceans, everyone will die, and structures will not be broken by this. Although they will buried by frozen atmosphere and the weight might have collapsed them. But you can simply unfreeze and then make the planet easy to digest at your leisure. There will be nobody to bother you, even nuclear shelters assumed atmosphere still exists outside. Third option is to simply heat the surface until everybody dies. While this would be against the parameters of the question, I am not convinced tasty metal structures would become unedible simply because they have some melt damage. [Answer] How about first reflecting a massive amount of light from the sun onto the planet to heat up the atmosphere, this could boil the ocean and make it impossible for a large civilization to live on. With regards to stripping the atmosphere it may be possible to change the orbit of the planet for a close fly by of the sun, solar winds may be able to slowly strip away the atmosphere although it would be much more effective if you're able to alter the magnetic field of the planet. [Answer] Arrange for a sequence of very heavy asteroids to fly by on near-miss patterns, each one will fly through the atmosphere and skim just over the surface of the planet. Each one will blast out a substantial chunk of the atmosphere so if you set up a sequence of them it will act almost like a bucket chain, with the cumulative effect gradually stripping the atmosphere off the planet. [Answer] # The Direct Approach A typical planet does indeed have a lot of metal on its surface, but there's a place where it's likely to have far more metal, that's far denser and readily extracted: Its core. Instead of stripping the atmosphere, the rock aliens could focus the energy they can harness from the star and just pump it as directly as possible into the material the planet is made from. If they transform it into long-wave radio signals that can be captured using the core (or the magnetic field) of the planet as an antenna, they can then pour the energy into making the planet shake and heat up; the principle very much the same as an induction stove top. With a Sol-like star and an Earth-like planet, the aliens would be able to harness about 40 petawatts. If all of the harnessed energy can be modulated to cause induction in the core of the planet, that would rapidly make life suck on that planet. After hours or minutes, tectonic activity would have increased noticeably, with some zones rapidly being plagued by near-constant magnitude 6 earthquakes and massive volcanic eruptions. After a couple of weeks or days, if any supervolcanoes were already on the brink, they would now be erupting, with [verneshots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verneshot) a distinct possibility. After a couple of months or weeks, any other potential supervolcanoes would be going off, and verneshots and other similarly dramatic phenomena would be commonplace. All life would be long dead. The planet would be seeing massive outgassing, leaving the surface a thinly atmosphered mess of molten rock. After about a year, the planet would be reduced to rubble, and further attempts at induction would be fruitless, as the bits of rubble formerly making up the planet would be too incoherent, but at this point, they would have easy access to all the iron, nickel, tungsten and other materials they could possibly want: An entire planetary core worth. This doesn't preserve the surface, of course, but why bend over a dollar to pick up a dime? The core is where the real action is. [Answer] Reactive metals will strip the ozone, the oxygen and then the nitrogen from the atmosphere and the finely powdered metal will then precipitate out and fall to earth creating a thin blanket of oxide, nitrite, and hydroxide sand that can be harvested for processing and reuse. Widespread Ozone destruction will remove the irritating carboforms too. The ocean is a hard one, there's so much of it and water is reasonably stable, a lot of it will boil off when the atmospheric pressure drops enough and if you use Series I Metals, Lithium, Sodium etc... they'll react to strip the oxygen out of water too and the hydrogen will just boil off into space. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Questions about Idea Generation are off-topic because they tend to result in list answers with no objective means to compare the quality of one answer with the others. For more information, see [What's wrong with idea-generation questions?](//worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/522). Closed 8 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/14402/edit) Assume a transhuman world where body modification, gene splicing, nanotechnology, biological-technological interfaces, brain emulations, AI, and basic mind modifications exist. What augmentations would people commonly have? Not for combat, but for living daily life, non-specialist enhancements. Things that would be common enough that nobody would question them, but they don't need to be universal. They should be just things that you use in your daily life. People have colonized the solar system, so zero-gravity, radiation, temperature ranges, and other things that space colonists face exist. The implants are reliable, and are cheap if they don't require considerable modification, and maintain themselves if you have a AI manager implant. [Answer] # Sight: Many people today have bad sight. The elderly have degraded sight and many young people have limited sight too and require glasses. I would imagine that if these implants were commonly available most people with vision problems would have one to augment their ability to see. It is also possible to add infrared vision and many other cool things to their abilities so many normal people will want them too. # Smell: This would have to be a combination of implants in the brain and nose and maybe a replacement of nerves. This will enhance our sense of smell and who wouldn't want that (except maybe the guys of clean the sewers and empty the dumpsters)? # Hearing: We already have devices that increase our ability to see and it isn't too far fetched to imagine an actual implant becoming more common, especially for law enforcement and government officials and the elderly. # Others: I would imagine mechanical muscles being added to our arms and legs to make us generally more fit. Maybe a 'fat burner' to destroy excess fat or recycle it into muscle and stitch it painlessly to our body. This would sell big as modern society is soooooooooo overblown on our obesity epidemic. [Answer] Things that would benefit any living person: 1. Memory upgrade / software - pretty much anything that is available that increases the brains capacity for recall, storage, analytical speed, visual processing, etc. If people can download knowledge (like the Matrix), people would benefit from that as well. Being able to share memories or images directly would be kind of cool to have if that functionality is cheap. 2. Physical adaptations - Strength, speed, Better visual ability, better hearing, (better smelling? probably not for the average person, but maybe), louder or more clear voice and better voice control. As far as "strength" goes, most people would likely have a balance between power and endurance - while some specialists may want to focus more on endurance and others may need that one burst of extreme power. 3. Quality of life changes - nanobots that assist in fighting bacteria or viruses inside the body, help restore wounds, repair cells, fight cancer, remove tumors, assist failing organs or even take their place. Help get the most energy as possible from food (and assist in sending signals to the body that you have eaten enough, if you have a weight problem). Instant communication without an outside device. Automatic and available readings for any bodily functions or measurements such as nutrition. Automatic contact of help in cases of emergency. These would be the "most important" things. The things that are completely taken for granted because they are just there and being helpful to improve everyone's life. [Answer] Sex I know we'd all like to think better of our species, but what are the most common enhancements people do now? From Viagra, to "enhancements", to boob jobs, humans want to look good and be better in bed. Even a lot of muscle work, like taking steroids, is often used to help become more attractive. I'd be willing to be the most common enhancements will be sex related - improving looks, performance, stamina, etc. [Answer] Information We live in a world driven by information. Having access to any information, at any time, would be incredibly useful - so I predict someone would invent a brain WiFi connector. You'd have access to the full Internet of information, as long as you had some connection. On that subject... Connection The Internet is fairly useless to you if you can't connect to it. To that end, I expect someone would also come up with a satellite connection receiver, so you can always be connected. --- Those are more luxury implants. On the other side, I can see a lot of uses for technologies like this in medicine. Nanobots With nanotechnology, you can create healing nanobots. Having these circulating in your bloodstream means your chances of dying from injury are suddenly much lower. --- Interaction I expect a major business sector to spring up here. Implants or devices that allow you to interact better - with your environment, with other people - would be very much in demand. [Answer] Communication The most common would be a built in communication device. A way to keep in contact with other people. Information A close second is a way to get information. This can either be a mental/visual method, like think your question and the information displays in your vision, or something Siri/Cortana like, where you ask a question and hear a response. Probably both will be used. Memory Everyone wants a better memory, so some kind of co-processor for your brain with memory stores would be very useful. This could have a second use; personality backup. You're out and about, doing your thing, and get hit by a bus. Killed instantly. So they take you in, extract your backup, grow you a new body in a clone tank, and plug your memory into it. Few days later you're back on your feet. There would be mental side effects, but not being dead gives you a chance to work through those. Customization People with certain jobs would have different body mod customization's to make their lives easier. As a programmer an extra hand to hold my coffee while using the two hands to type and one to hold the mouse would be very useful. Wings (a la Birdman) would be useful for paramedics and police officers to get on the scene faster. Soldiers would probably have weapons grafted in to limbs, armored skin, etc. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99qJGrPNLs> [Answer] The Internet The most common electronic devices people use today are mobile phones. People of the future would have immersive and implanted versions of these devices for communication and knowledge retrieval. Mobile phones are already like an extension of people's minds today because they're so incredibly useful. It's likely that people will always demand to have instant communication, search queries, and entertainment available at all times. Instead of everyone on the subway staring at their phones, now everyone on the space elevator will be staring at a space three feet in front of their faces. [Answer] Meta enhancments Skeletal upgrades -Adding musculature has the problem that there is an upper limit to the amount of stress the human skeleton can withstand. Healing nanobots don't necessarily prevent stress fractures, so I propose skeletal enhancements become relatively commonplace. Maybe not Wolverine style unbreakable, but more durable in general. Lactic acid management - Not my idea. But if you can't afford the fake muscles, why not be able to work out without feeling the burn? Turning off this negative feedback does create problems in a few hours of strenuous exercise, but with the right combination of other nanomachinery this is manageable nearly indefinitely. Pain management and rehabilitation - Pain signals are quantifiable, and they can be turned off. As part of the healing modifications, nanotech can detect and isolate pain signals, analyze the root cause of the situation, and start work towards repair and rehabilitation. Fractured tibia? "Oh, my, would you look at that. I'll catch up to you guys in a bit." Self-cleaning - Water is a precious commodity, and hygiene is a must. These both become more important as population density increases. Nanomachinery could be used to handle and discreetly remove excess skin oils and dirt periodically throughout the day and as a mechanical antibiotic that destroys undesirable microbes. Dentistry becomes obsolete, and showers become something you do only in response to a run in the mud. ]
[Question] [ In Fae mythology iron is very harmful to them. They cannot stand to be near it (in some versions it even harms them) and their magic does not work on iron or on anyone holding iron. If a Fairy was captured by a town full of humans and placed in the center of an iron cage she would be completely helpless. How could her friends free her from this trap given that: * The Humans hate and fear the Fae, none would willingly help them. * The fae cannot approach within a meter (3 feet) of the cage. + Their magic also fails to work inside that area. + Even a fae outside the area cannot create magical effects inside it. * They are small, can fly, and can turn invisible but they are no match for humans in a fight. * Their magic is limited to auditory and visual illusions and weak telekinesis. * They do have a limited supply of fairy dust that can make one or two humans unconscious but not enough for the entire village. * The cage is not heavily guarded, there is usually one or two people near it. * The cage is inside a building and while not anchored down it is heavy enough that it would be hard for the Fae to lift, especially while staying one meter away from it. [Answer] As far as I can tell all the guards would be immune from being put to sleep, or at least form being illusion ed or deceived, making bowlturner's answer unfeasible based on "their magic does not work on iron or on anyone holding iron.". Any weapons or armor in a setting with iron will likely have iron making enchanting the guards to be impossible given the rules as stated. In fact, any illusion is stated to fail at the point of opening the cage: "The fae cannot approach within a meter (3 feet) of the cage.Their magic also fails to work inside that area."; and any knife would presumably be itself made of iron. The fairy dust working independently of the person having iron on them would still allow for the knocking out of the guards, but it doesn't allow for having any human to willing open the change as any illusion to do so would fail as soon as they move into the range of the cage to open it. Really it seems to me that their best bet would be to create bow drills, which people such as the [Maya](http://ancientmayacivilization.weebly.com/technology.html) and the [Maori](http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-BesSton-t1-body-d5-d6.html) used to shape [Jade which is harder than steel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness). They would probably want to work from the top of the cage (not a problem as they can fly) and the drill would be pretty long. The guards would need to be asleep for the operation to work and sand would be needed at the drill heads which would require usage of the telekinesis. I don't know that cutting through the entire cage would be needed, if it were cut through enough then dropping something heavy enough would break it the rest of the way. [Answer] As @MontyWild suggested, the free fae could reconnoiter the guards families to find out what each guards' children or loved-ones looked like. Then, leaving the families unharmed and naturally sleeping, the free fae might cast a few illusions, before approaching the night guards to make a deal. The next morning when the cage is found empty, one of the guards would have a rather strange tale to tell... The small crowd of the little ones flew right up to us, brave as can be. Shimmering light dancing around them as their leader addressed me with terms... "Human, release my kin from that cage, or you shall never see your child again!" From behind him, one of the female fae flew forward. In her arms..., she was holding my baby, Amy... wrapped in a faerie blanket and shrunk down to be small like them. "Human, we're taking Amy down under hill where she can serve our Lords as a slave. As long as you keep one of us, we shall keep one of you." I knew what I had to do. I reached for the cage, to unlatch its' door. Bernie tried to stop me, but I drew my dagger... He stepped out of the way. As soon as the cage door opened, they all disappear, even the injured one that had been captured inside. I ran straight home to make sure that Amy had been returned. Found her there sleeping, as if nothing had happened at all. I don't care what you do to me for letting the little one go. I'm never going to oppose the fae again. They play dirty but they deal clean. Amy is safe and that is all that is important to me right now. [Answer] I think instead of putting both guards to sleep, you put all but one to sleep, the last you make drowsy. Then use auditory and visual hallucinations to trick the remaining guard to open the door, maybe make them think they are opening a small cupboard with some gold hidden inside. With the other constraints the fairies need an ally, so creating one in this instance is the best bet. Editing to use the example that ByronDowd brought up in the comments. Knock out all the guards, steal a knife from one, have the trapped fairy lay down and pretend to be dead. Wake up the guard with the stolen knife (preferably the one with the key) and lay an illusion on them to make them see the fairy dead in his/her cage with HIS knife sticking out of his/her ribs, even better put the knife in the cage too. The guard will try to open the cage to get their knife back so they don't get into trouble, with luck they won't notice the fairy isn't really dead until the door is open, at which point put him back to sleep and everyone escapes. [Answer] Since these Fae have telekinesis, they can use sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid reacts with iron to produce hydrogen gas and iron sulphate, as is indicated on the [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfuric_acid#Reactions_with_metals_and_strong_oxidizing_property). The acid can be placed in glass jars and dropped onto the cage; they might be able to throw the jars from beyond the 1-meter radius, but telekinesis is still their best bet. Sulfuric acid can even occur naturally, as the [Rio Tinto](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Tinto_(river)) demonstrates. Even if the process doesn't destroy the cage, it should at least weaken it to the point where a rope wound around the bars can be used to break or bend them. Note: Remember to wear gloves, face shield, and apron when working with sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid is detrimental to health. [Answer] Since the Humans are - to fae perception - implacable in their hatred of fae, willing to place a fae in an iron cage which would effectively incapacitate them (I'm presuming that the captive fae would be prostrate with pain from the proximity to so much iron if fae can't normally approach within a metre of iron at all) and may eventually kill them, then the rescuing fae have no reason not to be ruthless. If there are two guards, find out if either of them has loved ones available. This may take some time and reconnaissance, but invisible fae should be good at that. Then, at night when there are few humans moving around, use illusion to lure out one or both of the guards' loved ones from their home, preferably a child or two. Take the child(ren) to the building where the captive fae is being held. Take the other guard hostage if necessary by putting them both to sleep and then waking them at (non-ferrous) knife-point, and threaten the remaining guard with the lives of the hostages and demand release of the captive fae. If necessary, injure or kill a hostage to prove that this is not a bluff (this is why you need at least two hostages, as one is basically useless) The guards may be able to out-fight the rescuing fae if they thought about the situation logically, but since they (as stated in the question) fear the fae (with good reason) as well as hating them, their fear should lead them to capitulate. With their friend freed, the group of fae can use the hostages to cover their retreat. [Answer] This is fairly simple. The free fae put the guards to sleep during the hours of darkness, and find a rope with a hook. They then hook the rope to the cage by the rope and use their telekinesis to help them lift the cage and fly away with it under the cover of darkness to some place where there are more fae who can use their telekinesis on a non-ferrous lever to pry open the cage. [Answer] Want a cartoonish // comical way of doing it? If the cage is kept on the second story (or higher) of the building...and it'd actually work better if the cage was anchored. A single fairy sneaks into the room late at night and puts the two guards to sleep...leaving one of them just barely asleep and the other in a much more deep sleep. The fairy then finds a rope and slides it through the iron cage to the trapped fairy, who in return slides the end back through a different hole in the cage. The rescuing fairy then ties the rope to our dozey guard and starts about creating the illusion that the room is around 1 foot larger than what it actually is. The one dozy guard is awoken and the fairy takes up a boxers stance goading the guard into a fist fight. The guard thinks this has to be the silliest thing he's ever seen and proceeds to swing at the fairy. The fairy dodges the few lazy blows and moves the fight towards an open window...the illusion makes the window seem a bit further away than what it actually is and the guards punch at the fairy throws him off balance. A weak little telekinetic push and the guard falls out the window. The rope tied to him stops his fall before the ground (don't want to kill anyone), but the force of it pulls the side off the iron cage (which sees the guard drop the rest of the way to the ground). Stunned guard lying on his back on the street watches the two fairies fly away. [Answer] You say the fae are no match for the humans in a fight but that's only an up-and-up fight. The weapon of choice is a fae-sized lance. Two fae pick up lances, turn invisible and charge (flying.) Their objective is the eyes. Against a target that's not constantly moving around this should be very effective. Blind the guards. Blind anyone else in the vicinity. Eventually they will be able to cut the cage bars (any hard grit attached to a string--two groups of fae pulling it back and forth) free of interference by the humans. The only defense the humans have is a face covering that they can see through but the fae can't attack through--a knight's helmet. How likely is it that there will be a knight about?? [Answer] It sounds like the fae can't open the cage without help from humans. Humans can be tricked or threatened into helping, but note that they can also be straight-up hired. The fae can steal some gold coins from someone (or perhaps they already have some?). They can find some criminals or bandits and offer gold in exchange for the live return of their friend. They can offer the gold half-in-advance if trust is an issue, with the reminder that breaking a deal with the fae will result in the usual retribution. If even criminals won't willingly deal with the fae, the fae can make an illusionary human lord and negotiate through him. [Answer] Create an illusion of a human, who wants to take ownership/control of the prisoner. This could be the owner of a circus, or similar, or it could be a spy, thief, assassin that wants to employ the faerie. Depending on the nature of the human, they may come with illusionary treasure, threats, or simply the promise that the villagers will no longer need to worry about the faerie. The villagers could free the faerie, in the knowledge that they are sending the faerie off to a horrible fate, so this does not count as helping them. [Answer] ## Contractors Find humans that like money more than they dislike fae. Hire them to go into town and post a reward for return of these particular fae alive and unsullied, as they are wanted as witnesses / indentured / have a particular blood trait that keeps their patron alive / any story that will do. Townies go "Well, we have those very fae in a cage as we speak!" Contractors say "Really!" As they jingle their coin purse. [Answer] ## Fairy Jaws of Life ;-) Fairies are good with plants, and with resizing spells. Take an oak log, two or three feet in diameter, and shrink it with magic until it is a 2" thick pole. Insert the tip of the pole between the bars. The touch of the iron bars will dispel the shrinking magic, and the re-expanding oaken log will force the bars wide apart, or maybe even wreck the cage completely. Or do the same with a boulder. ]
[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/245834/edit). Closed 8 months ago. [Improve this question](/posts/245834/edit) Within my world of Astarious, I have a race known as the Pegtauri, winged centaurs, who for a time were feared raiders on villages near the mountains that separated their plains from the rest of civilization. But as they were barely-connected bands of wandering tribal herds, they were overwhelmed by the Norromans (Romans that conquered and ended up adopting elements of Nordic society and warfare) and enslaved. Generations later though, groups of them escape Norroman enslavement along with some humans and halflings to form a Spartacus type rebellion. I have it that they win though, partially through deceit and sabotage by their chief spies the Arcani (a group of cat people that Norroman patricians enslaved then trained and 'bred' to be ninja like spies and assassins, who see the opportunity to overthrow their own masters, partially from Norroman corruption and greed) and also from the Pegtauri along with their new Partner Riders being a force to be reckoned with now that they're united, driven, and have some training from the Norromans forcing some of them into being gladiators and mounts for aerial cavalry. My vision is for them to have Mongolian/Scythian like tactics, where they can feint and head away while the rider is able to continually shoot arrows or both fire in tandem, then also be able to have aerial advantages for dropping flechette like missiles down for a 'shower bombing' along with the regular arrows and missiles. However, it was pointed out to me that they would be rather large targets up in the air. And while the Norromans themselves wouldn't tend to be great archers, they would have auxiliary units that would have that training. How do I make my Pegtauri more viable as a fighting force? [Answer] They can Fly I don't think you appreciate how much an advantage that is. Bridge destroyed? Rough Terrain? Quagmire from too much rain? Dangerous mountain path? Nope - they can fly. Castle walls? Nope - they can fly. Almost all of our fortifications against infantry are predicated on the fact that the average soldier cannot fly. We only have to worry about movement in a mostly 2D space (with the exception of climbing/Rappelling). In addition - the speed of flight is generally higher than the speed of movement on foot. Typical cruising speeds for birds are 26 - 45 kph - to put into perspective, the fastest Horse gallop was 89 Kph, but most horses are around 55 Kph - and they can only maintain a gallop for a short period of time. That gives you speed and mobility - you get to dictate how and when you want to fight. Get surprised and in a bad position? Just fly away - they can't pursue you on foot and you can out-fly them. Spot a weak flank? You can move to engage in a much shorter time than a conventional army can. This is before we get to what is probably the single greatest advantage: Reconnaissance and message running Birds-eye-view - think of it like a Medieval U2 or SR-71 spy plane - you can go up high and see exactly what the Enemy is doing from kilometres away - see a big army on the march? You've got plenty of warning to counter. Need to alert your rear echolons of an attempted flank? No worries. Now - sure, Archers pose a threat, but above a distance of about 100-200 metres (and I'm being generous here) they are no threat to a flying creature. A sentient flying enemy without access to firearms is a terrifying combatant just on their ability to fly alone. [Answer] *Frame Challenge: The question should not be what makes them useful, but what you need to do to keep them from being too useful.* ## Understanding the relationship between horse archers and the Roman army The Romans were able to counter Mongolian/Scythian tactics only because they fielded thier own cavalry. While a disciplined Roman Legion could take a shower of arrows from an army of eastern horse archers with relatively few losses, the only reason they ever beat such enemies was because they had heavy cavalry. Horse archers can ride and shoot, but they could not ride at full speed and shoot meaning that a heavy cavalry charge could catch up to them, and when that would happen, the unit cohesion, and melee focused armaments of the Roman cavalry would generally win out. At the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains for example, the Huns could not retreat fast enough to avoid the Roman lead cavalry charge, and Attila lost so many of his horse archers that he was forced to abandon his war on Europe. The reason this is important is because if the Norromans don't have flying units of thier own to battle the Pegtauri, they will never be able to close range and fight the Pegtauri like the Romans could with the Huns. Instead it will end more like the Battle of Carrhae where the Romans were just skirmished to death in one of thier most 1-sided military defeats. ## Why Archers can't counter Pegtauri The problem with archers here is that elevation matters a LOT. So, even if you had the best bows and archers in the world, they would be useless against the Pegtauri. A top tier longbow has a firing velocity of 53m/s. Assuming a 90 degree firing angle, this tops out at ~144m at ~5.3 seconds of flight time... but this is a grossly impractical statistic because the human body is not designed to bring a longbow to full draw at this angle. The steepest angle you can fully draw a longbow is about 45 degrees. Higher than this, and the only way to achieve a full draw length is to pull with your triceps instead of your much stronger shoulder and back muscles making a high pound bow WAY too hard to draw at steeper angles, even for top athletes. Fired at 45 degrees, a 53m/s arrow maxes out at a height of ~73m after ~3.8 seconds of flight time at a range of 214m... but again, this assumes that the Pegtauri are just flying in a straight line at a trajectory that will perfectly intersect this exact range and distance and that your archer is target perfect at that range... but that is not a reasonable assumption. In practice, "target accuracy" will require firing at Pegtauri that are less than 2 seconds of flight time away. This means altitudes of ~56m or less. However, the Pegtauri have the high ground; so, thier arrows are sped up by gravity, not slowed down. Using a similar bow, they can from an altitude of 90m fire an arrow 45 degrees down striking a target in 2 seconds giving them target accuracy from above the ground archer's theoretical maximum altitude. ## Why you can't catch the Pegtauri on the ground > > forcing some of them into being gladiators and mounts for aerial calvary > > > This little statement mean that the Pegtauri MUST have excellent flying endurance and lift capacity. If Pegtauri can fly with a rider at all, it means that they can fly very well without a rider. This writes you out of any possible explanation that they have to land and rest often. It also means that the Pegtauri, without a rider, can spare the weight for some decent armor, a very large number of arrows, or some heavier anti-armor projectiles if they so desire. ## Conclusion: The Norromans Need either Guns or Flying units. So, the only way this works out in any way that is not totally one sided is if the Norromans have a way to strike back. One solution is to give them some other flying units. It could be thier own Pegtauri regiments who did not defect. Or maybe an alternate flying mount like gryphons or dragons... or heck, it could even be something as simple as falcons who are trained to peck the eyes out of the Pegtauri. The other solution would be to give them guns. Guns, even primative ones, fire much higher velocities than bows meaning shooting up is less of a problem for them. A musket that is target accurate at 150m horizontally will still be close to target accurate when fired up... plus, they are better at aiming up at greater than 45 degrees when they need to. Whatever the case may be, the Norromans need something that can meet the Pegtauri in the sky with or they will with 100% certainty, be screwed beyond belief. ]
[Question] [ > > This question is inspired by [Why are interstellar colonists lone rangers?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/71224/why-are-interstellar-colonists-lone-rangers/). I know that many of its answers are also suitable for this questions. However, I am more interested in ideas that work with harder goals and without extremely-far future technology. > > > --- The year is 21XX, and humans are sending their first manned spaceships to venture out of the Sol system. They are several (I would say <100) sleeper ships sent toward different star systems to explore and colonize them. The journey would take several hundred years for the ships, while the human onboard sleeping for most of it. Each ship carries one and only one human on board. The question: * Why carry any human at all? * Why carry only one human, instead of a small team or even more? --- You are free to define the story background to match your reasoning, as long as it roughly follows this: 1. Humans have colonized some parts of the Sol system (so they could construct these ships from space). Exactly how much or how little depends on you. 2. The target star systems are already analyzed from within the Sol system, e.g. with various telescopes, and can even be imaged using solar gravitational lens. However, no probes have been there (except for Breakthrough Starshot, if you really need that). 3. No FTL technology of any kind have been developed, nor to be developed in the foreseeable future. 4. Fusion drives are available, but they are nowhere near interstellar torch drives. For example, to get 10% c delta-v, you would need a mass ratio of about 10 (91% of your ship is fusion fuel), and run it continuously for several years. 5. There can be advanced AI technology somewhere around AGI level. The exact settings depend on you. 6. The sleeper ships can protect the crew throughout the journey from radiation and other space hazard. The crew will not age when sleeping. The ships will carry enough necessary machines, tools and resources for the crew to explore and colonize the target star system, which may include some far-future style technology (otherwise the story won't work). Assume that any amount of humans (including zero) would complete the job, although less human would mean more time and less output. 7. The human on board is not sent away because of a punishment of any kind (or at least he/she does not see it as such), and has received proper training before leaving. --- Like the original question, I already have some answers in my head, although they are not very solid. I will rate on how much they would force the formation of a one-man man team, since that's the core of the plot. [Answer] Possible options for only one human (I don't think existing answers mentioned them): 1. Something specific in the mission requires a loner psychological profile. Perhaps an extreme introvert, maybe combined with some sort of Asperger's spectrum. For lack of a better plausible reason, let's say they are best adapted to interface with ship's AI/computer. This gives impetus to NOT send more than one person, since such types of people are best solitary, and other people range from unwelcome distraction to constant energy drain to active impediment. 2. Some Higher Power (supernatural, or some alien civilization - perhaps one that rented humans the technology for exploration) doesn't want humans to pull a "Jurassic Park" move and reproduce. But they don't know about sexes, so to them any # of any humans greater than one spells "reproduction". 3. Simple one - literal technology limitations. Spaceflight is inherently limited, always. At some points we couldn't built rockets able to lift more than one human to orbit. Galactic exploration poses many more varied technical challenges. 4. Human brain activity interferes with some soft of functioning of the ship or its computer. You can shield from ONE person but not from two (perhaps some sort of interference in EM fields generated by the brains of two different people? Or some mcguffinish explanation that has no basis in real science). * A version of this could be a (somewhat obvious and somewhat well known) issue with computer voice inputs - how is your AI able to follow voice commands from someone who's in a noisy crowd? At least on a ship, there's little chance of a second person yelling "format c:" at your Space Siri; but if the system is for example some sort of "read EM fields of pilot's brain remotely", reading brain signals of more than one pilot might not be realistically possible - imagine two people typing at the same time on same keyboard. 5. This one is more interesting, since it follows the idea that scifi trappings and such are just window dressing to talk about human condition. What's the reason? earth-side human politics. Perhaps doing one human at a time, was the only agreement international bodies could agree on. Perhaps some religion gained dominance which for some internal-religious reason demanded this (hello from L.Ron Hubbard!) 6. A version of the last one, but this time, the one human limitation is an internal dogma of whatever society is in charge of exploring - not even necessarily the whole human species. Interestingly, this does not need to be negative - for example, the society could place an inordinately high value on human life and risking it. Pilot-less missions won't work; so you have to risk at least one human. BUT, you don't need to risk more than one - so the societal rule imposes that only one is sent into risk. 7. Such exploration requires some unique abilities, which are incredibly rare. Wasting two such individuals on a single destination literally means losing a chance at exploring the second destination. This was an idea around space travel in, for example, "Wing Commander" movie (ok ok, you can stop throwing rotten tomatoes at me - so I like it, sue me); until NavSat AI could replace humans at navigating quasars. Not sure if that was a movie invention or part of game lore. Or for that matter, early Navigator Guild in Herbert's "Dune". 8. A bit of a silly combo of the last 3 - there aren't enough candidates, but the limiting factor isn't actually some unique SciFi ability - it's plain old money. You can only send a ship by financing it and buying the right to pilot it; and there's only so many zillionairs both rich enough to afford it AND willing to finance a ship. And the payout from the mission is too big for them to be willing to team up. This would probably work better if earth was split into late-medievalish absolute monarchies who tend to be even less prone to cooperative strategies. As far as why carry any human at all, that's easy. AI isn't intuitive/flexible enough for fully autonomous missions. That's true today with for example chess or many other activities - human + AI always beats just AI even if AI beats most/all humans. Or, some reasons above can easily eliminate "no-human" option; such as religious dogma, rules, politics. [Answer] ## To test if the planet can sustain human life Sending a human can tell us something no probe can... if the planet can sustain human life. If you send a probe, it can rule out lots of worlds, but there will also be many that look habitable, but have flesh eating bacteria, or pollen in the air that turns out to be highly toxic. This means that the odds of an Earth Like planet ACUTALLY being livable on arrival may be low. It could be that out of 100 colony ships, 95 will show up to find out that the planet is too hostile for human life in some unpredictable way; so, we need to send the minimum number of humans to "test the waters". If each ship has 1 person, and your program sends 95 people off to die horrible deaths, it is a lot better than sending crews of 50 people, and sacrificing 4750 lives. Once she gets there of course, she will need to test to make sure that human reproductive systems still do thier thing, so she will need a sperm bank to impregnate herself, and make a second generation. She will also need to test things like growing editable foods, processing drinkable water, etc. If her children grow up and are able to reproduce as well, then they send a signal back to Earth giving the all clear for much larger colony ships to be sent. If she dies, then the AIs will her examine her corpse, and send the cause of death back to Earth. [Answer] ## AIs tend to be unstable In the advanced world AIs have a tendency to get caught on loops and crash, be unable to handle novel situations. As such, it's normal to send a programmer along with the expedition. While the terraforming and colony prep can be done by automated systems, having a human along with the AI means that if there's an error they can fix it. ## The human is backed up. The ship has facilities on board good enough to clone the human, and the human has enough cybernetics to transfer their memories to their clone. Carrying extra humans would be very expensive, and as such it's easier to just have a single human who you can replace if they die. ## Each human is fond of the AIs Each human is the sort of person who prefers AIs to humans. They have AI romantic companions, AI buddies, and generally don't like humans as much. This mission is a dream come true for them, because they get to spend all their time with their favourite people and no annoying humans. [Answer] # They only had enough volunteers for 1 person per ship Let‚Äôs say we have 500 sleeper ships going to 500 different locations. Of the entirety of the Space Force, only 500 people who volunteered for the mission made the cut. They thought to cancel some of the sleeper ships, but they were already built and loaded before they could cancel, and people can only go into stasis once. This dooms your ‚ÄúLone-Ranger‚Äù attendant to work on their own. The biggest benefit I see is that now they don‚Äôt have to file/pay any taxes. [Answer] The artificial womb has been perfected - you can take a fertilized egg from a number of different species and produce babies. But printing a full on gamite from just information is error prone and much harder. There are some details of the biological cell we aren't good at reproducing. Frozen eggs and sperm (and even embryos) result in an insanely better result. There have also been experiments with raising creatures using robots and AI. The results are mixed - better than nothing, but not all that great. And there are horror show points in history where humans are raised by AIs, and it did not go well: raising a human using AI is considered a crime against humanity. Sending a human alongside the other biological material is to provide a parent. Life extension technology means that the typical lifespan of a human is well over 3 centuries before the start of old age at this point; a single 100 year old human could raise a half dozen kids, recruit some of them to raise more kids, and produce a viable colony in their lifespan. The ships arrive and using fully automated processes start building an industrial base. The first phase consists of building simple asteroid mining bots. This gives you quadratic growth in resources. The second phase involves building asteroid mining bot factories and control centers. This gives you exponential growth in resources. Control of the asteroid provides enough resources to pick a planet or moon to build the first base on. This base is going to be temporary (but on the order of 1000s of years). A nuclear fusion reactor, orbital beanstalk, solar collectors, repair bots, radiation shield are all constructed, then an atmosphere is generated and a biosphere is introduced; probably more than one biosphere for redundancy purposes. Then the human is decanted. Their job is to raise the other humans, each produced by the artificial wombs. The humans produced in turn raise other humans in an exponential wave as the base is expanded. Meanwhile terraforming is ongoing. Terraforming is expensive, but the machines have already built an above K1 civilization in orbit. Geological amounts of water are added to a suitable body, factories that produce entire atmospheres are built, etc - the goal being a life-supporting environment that can survive technological collapse on the scale of millions of years or more. The new system continues its 3 primary goals a. Create a new branch of humanity and AI b. Create a biosphere capable of surviving technological society collapse c. Build an industrial base capable of launching new probes further out The estimated time to complete a is on the order of 100 years, b is on the order of 10,000 years and c is on the order of 1000 years. If 50% of attempts succeed, and they launch an average of 5 probes at 0.1 c, you get 2.5 probes for every probe you launched every 1000 years, or a doubling time of about 750 years. Every 7.5 thousand years the number of probes goes up by a factor of 1000. After 75,000 years you can have 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 probes in flight. This is enough probes to colonize the universe (let alone the galaxy) -- the bounding problem is finding suitable destinations. So the wave of expansion is limited by travel speed (0.1c) and distance you can detect candidate systems. As you can see, the exact time it takes to bootstrap to building probes is not all that important, nor how many the new colony launches. The exponential causes "finding viable target destinations" and "travel time" to dominate how long it takes to spread over the Galaxy. Speed is only important insofar as if you take more time, a disaster is more likely to occur and prevent further reproduction. But, going back to the reason, part of the project is spreading humanity, and humans need at least one parent. Sending two would literally double the cost of the expedition. The backup plan if the parent dies is to attempt to raise single humans via AI. You repeat this process until a viable human is created, who then in turn raises the others. Based off of the previous warcrimes, this is estimated to require a few dozen failed attempts. As the chance of the human dying is relatively low, this was viewed as an acceptable cost. [Answer] # Colonies Colonization is all about controlling land and stealing the resources of a foreign country to enrich your home country. The most efficient way to do that in interstellar terms is using AIs and robotic automation. Sending fragile humans only makes sense if/once you ever get around to terraforming or you happen to find a perfect planet. Humans won't be doing the real labor. So why sent a human at all? # Laws and/or prestige/bragging rights Either because it's a legal requirement to claim a planet in interstellar law, and/or because of the prestige that comes with having a person of your country step foot on a new country as the first human (why did we sent a human to the moon? why are we considering sending humans to mars? It's definitely not because it's a good rational idea). The value of the human is purely the fact that he is a 'human' with whatever cultural and legal implications you give that in your world. Of course once you're sending a human anyway - a very very expensive project - you probably will try to maximize the value you get out of your investment, so you train them to be able to have some ability to handle unexpected problems, as humans are pretty versatile, but in a world with AGI's that's probably going to just be a minor redundancy at best. # Bonus: So why not sent prisoners or something along those lines? Because more than enough people are willing to die for the honor of being the first to step foot on a new planet. Add some some decent benefits for their heirs/relatives and it's easily believable. # (Bonus: Classical minor plot twist) By the time they arrive not only (cliche) has FTL travel been invented, but also did the law/culture change so that the idea of sending a human is completely obsolete üòá. [Answer] # To save mass. Every gram saved is worth more than gold. Each human would require tons of mass such as larger spaceship rooms, more supplies, etc. The ships are small and efficient. The goal of the mission is to "bootstrap" the star system, make it susceptible to later, larger incoming starships with more humans. Early ones are the pioneers, a special selected crew. They are the most talented people who can come up with novel ideas and being creative when rigid AIs won't do, encountering a problem that is out of their training data. Human and machine work as a pair. Bootstrapping includes exploring, terraforming, mapping, of course by using in situ resources. However, they might use nanobots, 3D printing, gene editing. They need to be very clever about that. And most importantly they need to build a huge laser platform that helps decelerating later incoming ships, enabling larger transports carrying less fuel mass. [Answer] Don't put all your eggs in one basket The technology used is well tested, but has never been used on a such a long trip. With the length of time for the journey, the planners fear is that some unknown fault could happen. Rather than have it cause a catastrophic failure and wipe out everyone, it was decided that having a single person ship was safest for the mission - if all works fine, then they can meet up at the target location. If some fault develops in a colony ship, a single occupant dies. Not ideal, but better than having the entire mission team dead. [Answer] ## Single Passenger Ships are the Most Efficient Use of Resources for Reaching Maximum Number of Star Systems Limited Resources can be packed within the craft With such a long interstellar trip, the craft must store sufficient energy and resources for the trip such as fuel. This leaves limited space for a payload, which means a crew of 1 is better because 1 crew member can fit in a more compact area. Then of course there will be space taken up by the crew members supplies such as food, water, etc. The technology to keep people in stasis is expensive It would be prohibitively expensive to have several crew members per vessel held in stasis for their goal of reaching a minimum threshold number of star systems. It‚Äôs expensive enough with the individual method, and it was hard to sell the governing authorities on the cost of the single pilot system. If they tried to reach that many star systems with larger ships and more crew members, it would exceed their budget due to the increased cost of additional life support systems per ship, so to reach as many star systems as they can with the funds (and meet that minimum number of reached star systems requirement) they reduce cost of each individual ship by using single passenger ships which only require one life support system. The technology to keep people in stasis consumes a decent amount of energy The more pilots you support, the more power that has to be supplied to this system vs the thrusters. This means that with 1 pilot the craft can travel further and faster without as much energy being consumed by the life-support systems. A single passenger system is better for reaching the most star systems because of all these variables With an allocated budget, by saving cost on each of the individual ships, they can make more ships and reach more star systems than if they had ships with larger crews. So if you‚Äôre trying to reach as many star systems as you can with a limited budget, this approach makes the most sense. Why carry any human at all? Because a human will be required to start a colony once they reach this star system. As another answer mentioned, they could carry the required kit to start a colony on one of these star systems. [Answer] # They're a specialist at troubleshooting The AI aboard the ship can do everything itself without needing a human at all... under normal circumstances. But sometimes things go haywire, outside the parameters of what the AI was trained to deal with. In circumstances like that, the AI throws up its metaphorical hands and wakes up the human troubleshooter. The AI is great at operating within defined parameters, but human intelligence is better at creatively interpreting and dealing with a novel situation. Why only one troubleshooter? Well, it's very unusual that they would be needed at all. There's no sense adding weight for a whole team of humans that probably would never have to be defrosted. [Answer] Psychological profiling Humanity's expansion across the solar system has come with a lot of both large and small scale shifts in human societies and psychology. A new phenomenon has begun of people who find themselves out of place among other humans, longing instead for a solitary existence in space. There could be various contributing factors to this - automation or other 'utopian' developments could make life in current human society boring or unfulfilling; global warming, pollution and other disasters might have reduced the amount of natural beauty on earth, making the urge to explore harder to scratch; The introduction to outer space early in a child's development having unprecedented effects on their psychology; cybernetic, genetic and chemical enhancement to brain function that have been developed over time may have side effects on personality. It can be a very rare condition, but a far larger human population being supported across the solar system would mean that even this rare condition shows up enough to be significant. The exploration program selects for these particular fringe cases - people who, rather than going insane in a socially deprived solitary environment, would excel. This mission scratches some special itch for them - they want to explore, to see other worlds, to break boundaries and see what no one else has seen, push the limits of science. This isn't a colonizing effort so much as a scouting one - these people are tasked with rating their assigned systems for such an effort and collecting as much data as possible and sending it all back to the solar system. That data may be used for colonizing efforts in the far future, but this particular set of missions is about learning first had about other planets - and about scratching that itch to explore, that need that certain people have to see something they've never seen before, to learn about the universe through first hand observation. The society they are leaving is one that feels secure and stable enough to wait all of the years it would take for these missions to get to their destinations and start sending back data, but it is also a society that each of these people felt they didn't entirely belong in. Everyone on this mission knows they will likely die alone on the edge of the unknown, but this is something they chose, something they wanted. You could even give them a poetic name, something like 'Abyss Chasers,' or 'Cosmophiles.' [Answer] It's a difficult choice, but there are several reasons to only send highly vetted individuals on the first scout ships. These individuals are highly skilled and trained - classical astronauts, the best of the best, all in their mid thirties. Their goal on the new planets: To prove that the planet is suitable for future colonization, and send the message back to earth. The risks of sending seed groups are just too large, for all of humanity - small groups may decide not to send the signal at all, and claim the planet for themselves. An individual does not have that temptation. Groups could risk failing to send the message and prospering on the planet due to internal strife. Sending groups would not be cost efficient either, and since you rip them out of their social continuum, you don't find many sociable people who are up for the task. Sending probes ahead may give you some information, but they lack the decision-making of a human-in-the-loop on-site, with low latency. They may miss some blockers to colonization, which a human may uncover. Considered unlikely by the science directorate, but not impossible, the planets may have scentient life. A single human is reasonably non-threatening, and not a colonization ship - in case you do find life on the target planet, and do not wish to antagonize it with a colonial effort - again a major risk to humanity at large. Sending more people on missions which are considered highly dangerous, with most crews not expected to survive 90 days post arrival, was also rejected by mission planners. There is enough time to cherry pick those planets with magnetospheres, minimum terraforming effort, and acceptable seismic activity, while the colony ships are being built as multi-century-project, that the loss of life for exploration can be minimized. You didn't mention it, but these are certainly one way trips. But some get to be humanities first envoy to a sentient species. Other arrive on planets which looked promising from afar but are more like Venus. Their story won't be told. [Answer] ## They're cheaper and more versatile than robots with scanners. Sure, we can look at he planets through a telescope, but how much do we really know about that specific planet? What robot do we need to send? What if the situation has something we didnt anticipate? Now we have send a very expensive robot to waste. By sending brave skilled volunteers (or "volunteers"?) we use one of our best skills: Human ingenuity. We're very adaptive, so we send a human acompanied with a few 3D printers and a usefull AI to help with design/calculations and we have a very creative sensor to send us back all kinds of useful info about our potential new earth! [Answer] ## AIs capabilities and actual sapience have been limited/curtailed by law and/or fear of a robot uprising All the technical limitations / reasons to need one human like breeding are tenuous at best, but I think this limit is the more realistic one. The true "general intelligence" of AI in this universe has been severely limited, the automatic interaction between some AI systems has been blocked and so on because people became concerned about an AI uprising. So we do need one human "overlord" at the end that does all those tiny blocked pieces of thinking for the AI, decided which info AI a can send to AI b and to make the obvious decisions that the AIs were blocked from making. All the breeding new humans, terraforming, building the colony (from adapteable blueprints) and so on can easily be done fully automatic. But legally, a human has to give the go ahead every step of the way [Answer] Bit simple but... They aren't told they're going to be alone. They go to a facility and are shown 500 ships. They don't know that each is being sent to a different star. They are told each ship supports a single person. They go to sleep and wake up to be told the good news. As to the why, you get 500 shots at finding a Sol type world instead of of 50 or 1. [Answer] # They wont be alone forever The human brings fertilized eggs (or eggs/sperm) and incubators with them. Their duty is to help the machines set up the colony, which might take some time, maybe months, maybe years, then activate the incubators und go to stasis again. They will later wake up again to help raise and educate the children, maybe in intervals go to stasis again for years, to be able to give guidance to the colony over a longer period than a human livespan. Why not two or more persons? * maybe because the statis chamber is expensive and heavy, you really want to bring only one. * more importantly, because it has shown that the colony setup is best done by lone ranger types, more people tend to bring unnecessary friction and conflict to the early phase. * specifically, bringing a couple will often lead to them preferring their own children, which will lead to conflict later down the line. Why not zero persons? The AI cannot be trusted with raising human children on their own. There may be other tasks in the setup phase where human assistance is needed. ]
[Question] [ One of the main problems with creating a magnetic field around Mars, (which would be necessary for terraforming the planet) is that most proposed systems require some artificial device to sustain it. (IE, superconducting loops, dipole-projecting satellites, plasma tori). However, one interesting system I read about was tunnelling to Mars’ core and liquefying it, after which the planet’s rotation would generate a magnetic field like earth does. The problem, however, is how to excavate to the core. The inner layers of Mars are all solidified, so there is no problem with unexpected lava or molten metal, and even the cost isn’t much of a problem, since any metals unearthed in mining can be sold to cover the expense. The problem is simply of distance and power; what method can be used to excavate thousands of miles down to the core of the red planet? [Answer] Sun gun! [![sun gun](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Qr1l.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Qr1l.png) <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nazi-sun-gun-space-mirror_n_3015475> Everyone loves sun guns! <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_gun> It is Archimedes' mirror weapon done large. You could use a mirror or an orbiting Fresnel lens. Maybe you don't even need it in orbit - mount the lenses on mountains surrounding the tunnel mouth. Or both - a lens at that handy Lagrange point between Mars and the sun and land based mirror concentrators. The sun gun digs by heating material to its boiling point. Gasified Mars wafts (I insist that it waft) up out of the hole, to be blown by the wind. Probably it would condense into little sandy pellets that would fall onto the land. Mars has a lot of that sort of thing anyway so no harm done. Yes: excavation by means of great heat. And no moving parts, messy lubricants or any of that. OK, ok. If that will be a deal killer you can still have the messy lubricants. [Answer] > > (...) tunnelling to Mars’ core and liquefying it, after which the planet’s rotation would generate a magnetic field like earth does. > > > There are many good ideas such as this in World Building.SE. What I love about them is that most would lead to planetary obliteration and this one is no exception :) So instead of telling you how to tunnel to the core, I will do a frame challenge by assuming it is easily possible to do so. And why you DON'T want to do that. Mostly every substance has different densities at different phases of matter. And for metals such as iron and nickel, which make the bulk of Mars's core, the molten phase is less dense than the solid one - on top of being able to flow. In plain terms: you dig a hole to the core and make it liquid, it will expand. If it is not able to, you will just get a hotter solid. And the only way to expand is through the tunnel, so that molten iron and nickel is going to come up like lava going up a volcano. Depending on how you do it, you might get either a slow, steady flow like a Hawaiian volcano; Or you can use Mars's lower gravity and practical lack of an atmosphere to one-up Krakatoa, possibly knock some unlucky spaceships out of the solar system altogether. Then you are left with less core. Even if the remaining material still occupies the same volume, it will not offer the same resistance to basically the weight of a planet on top of it. I don't have the math in me, but whether it puts greater or lesser pressure on the layers above it, the whole mantle and crust of Mars will shift. A little less core and you can break the crust into plates... A lot of core and you end up with a molten rock, smaller than Mars, that will eventually cool down into a new planet in a few hundred million years. And then there is my favorite part about this plan. The core of Mars is two orders of magnitude more massive than the whole asteroid belt combined, which means that if even just 1% of it comes out (on top of all the rocks you excavated to get there), you have enough material to build a few dwarf planets. There is also enough ore in the rock you dug to disrupt the economy of the Earth for lifetimes, so selling it is not really an option if you're still living in capitalism. Unless you are collecting material to build a Dyson sphere there is just no sane way to dispose of all that rock, which makes me think of [this scene from Disenchanted](https://youtu.be/zggbAZAFpcw?t=8): > > -Trøgs have been excavating for generations. We'll keep it up until the whole world is hollow. If you have any questions, feel free to ask the happy miners. > > -Where do you put the rocks you excavate? > > -We have another cave we excavated for rock storage. > > -Then where did you put the rock you excavated from that cave? > > -What are you, the rock police? I put 'em up my ass. How's that? > > > --- If you still want to get to the core: the biggest hurdle we have nowadays is that we dig with drills, and our drill bits just don't work past a certain depth due to temperature and density of the rock. It ends up that the rock you excavate becomes magma around the drill bit and damages it. You could perhaps remove more of that pesky rock standing in your way by carefully dropping small amounts of anti-matter, or by vaporizing the rock with powerful lasers. In either way there is going to be a lot of harmful things coming back at you from the tunnel, so be cautious and wear protective goggles. The goggles will not protect you from certain death, but at least you will look cool. [Answer] > > the cost isn’t much of a problem, since any metals unearthed in mining can be sold to cover the expense. > > > This is simply wrong. Why do you think fracking goes back and forth with being used? It all changes with the oil price: when it's high, oil extracted by fracking become competitive, when it's low fracked oil would be sold at a loss, and no oil company runs a charity for doing so. Same would apply for the supposed minerals to be extracted in this. If you mine something at 800 \$/kg and its market price is 1\$/kg, you won't cover any expense by selling it. That said, on Earth, with well developed logistic chains, repair crews and all the related shenanigans, we haven't managed to go deeper than 12 km underground, and for a research drill, not for an operational one. The [deepest mine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deepest_mines) stops at 4 km. In the research drill what happened was > > Because of higher-than-expected temperatures at this depth and location, 180 °C (356 °F) instead of the expected 100 °C (212 °F), drilling deeper was deemed unfeasible. The unexpected decrease in density, the greater porosity, and the unexpectedly high temperatures caused the rock to behave somewhat like a plastic, making drilling nearly impossible. > > > We simply don't have the technology yet to go deeper than that, so if you are asking how we can get to Mars core, with something yet to be invented. Just don't go to that level of details in your story, and say it was done. [Answer] If you have have the energy to permanently liquify the core of the planet, you have the energy to bore to it's center. Seriously, the energy you're talking about is so enormous that boring a narrow hole is trivial. Instead of a drill, just heat the rock below to liquid and pump it out a heated side chute... or to vapor and blow it out, or to plasma and conduct it out electromagnetically. It really does not matter - you have basically infinite energy anyways, if you can spend enough to liquify a planetary core on something so relatively trivial as a magnetic field. Note, you might want to do most of this drilling before you terraform, as the resulting fumes will take significant cleanup. But hey, you have basically infinite energy, so that's no big deal! (Note, although you could read this answer as sarcastic, that's not my intention. Practically infinite sources of energy are a welcome staple of sci-fi, as their multitudinous uses are grounds for vast creative explorations. So if you have one, you might as well use it for boring as well as terraforming!) [Answer] # Just dig there. On earth, we are limited by not having basically infinite power. If you assume we do, you can just dig a lot. You'll need a big holes, one thousands of miles deep, and bracing for the hole to keep it from collapsing from the huge weight of gravity and the mass, but there's nothing inherently impossible about this. You'll need a fairly wide hole, to haul up resources and pump down cooled water, but with infinite power you could do this. It'll take a very long time to do it, but there's nothing inherently impossible about it. Just pump water down to cool the walls and haul heat to the surface. [![Mars water](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dyvs4.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dyvs4.png) Here's a basic image of what you need. Have steel bars to hold it open, and use the huge width to pump in a massive amount of water to keep the place cool. You can use the water pumps to pump up rocks, and separate them with your infinite power. If cost is no limit, you can do a lot. [Answer] Multiple problems here: 1. While Mars' core isn't liquid in the traditional sense it is in a sense still liquid. Rock under that much pressure will flow. You dig down, the rock pinches your drill and in time closes up the hole once you pull your drill out. On Earth we hit this problem in less than 10 miles, Mars should let you get something like 30 before you're in trouble and you're nowhere near the core at that point. 2. You're going to have to build a series of airlocks in your bore hole or you're going to find your hole full of high pressure CO2, eventually turning to supercritical CO2 as you get deep enough. Does your equipment work immersed?? The problem is Mars' atmosphere is going to go down your hole and pressure is purely a function of depth--it being a narrow borehole is no different than if it were planet-spanning. The scale height for Mars' atmosphere is 10.8km--going down that amount increases the power by e, the increase is exponential. ]
[Question] [ Same game i mentioned in my other questions. Artificial gravity, robotic harvesting/replanting, and plenty of energy are available on the ship. The farming block is 50x70x10 meters in total but i would prefer to only use 50x50x10m for the farming to allow local housing and storage in the remaining area. The bottom 5 meters of the farm area are taken up by two 2.25m floors of dirt floored pastures 1 holding dairy goats the other chickens (the other half meter is the floor between them and the dirt). The top 5m are five 1m tall hydroponics beds for animal feed. Between google and talking to a friend that raises chickens we figured the chicken pasture and 1 level of feed would be enough for about 800 chickens. Which comes out to about 300 eggs and 12.7kg of meat a day. The problem is the goats. Depending on which anecdotal article you read they need anything between 30 and 200 sqft to run around in but 1ac can only hold 6-8 goats. Or in metric 25 goats to a hectare. With the pasture being 1/4 of a hectare and each of the 4 remaining hydro levels also being 1/4 we should easily be able to feed 30 goats, yes? But that is ignoring the usually superior production of hydroponics. If there is anything about hydroponic yields of hay/alfalfa other than week old sprouts i can't find it. Or even better comparisons between hydroponic yield and regular farming yield. Edit: whoops, in the rewrite i somehow lost that the goats are almost entirely there for dairy. Originally it was going to be cows, but goats make far more milk for the space. [Answer] GMO crops You gots to have goats! Assert your hydroponic fodder crops have been modified to be more productive. [Genetic Engineering Technologies for Improving Crop Yield and Quality](https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/12/4/759/htm) > > In conclusion, genetic engineering technologies make the process of > crop improvement more efficient and controllable. With the continuous > improvement of related technologies, the process of accurately > improving important agronomic traits such as crop yield and quality > and, further, directionally creating new crop germplasm has been > accelerated. > > > The linked article has a lot of stuff on currently used techniques. You can tweak one of these since this is nearfuture scifi so that any wet blankets in your audience cannot protest such a thing is impossible. GMO improvement of hydroponic crops is a cool thing to think about. In many ways the reverse of GMO for fields crops. Drought tolerance - not an issue. Pest and pathogen resistance - that stuff is just a drain on resources. Nutrient uptake efficiency - no need to be efficient in the hydroponic stack. All emphasis is on grow, grow, grow. Have your area the way you envision it and assert the plants have been modified to be awesome. Your goats and chickens are modified too, of course. I will note here that pygmy goats take up less space. [Answer] ## To answer your question If you assume you are providing 2 decks about 2.5m each, that gives you 5000m^2 of ground space. If we are also not too concerned about humane treatment, then you need about 2.8 m^2 per goat of living space. We can also vastly reduce grazing space with hydroponically grown grasses which can produce a theoretical maximum of about 19kg/m^2/yr. Each goat needs about 500kg of feed a year meaning you only need about a total of 29m^2 per goat. I will actually estimate this closer to 35m^2 per goat because you also need to account for things like walk ways, food processing spaces, veterinarian spaces, supply storages, etc. allowing you to maintain a herd of about 45 mothers, 90 calves, and 5 studs. If you assume you are slaughtering about 80 calves a year, that is about 5-6kg of meat a day... or if you are not raising calves for meat, but just enough to replace attrition, you could have closer to 120 milk goats, 15 calves, and 5 studs for a dairy production of up to 120 gallons of milk a day. Milk itself is mostly water, but if you wanted to process it into cheese so that you have a meat substitute, then you would get 43.5 kg of cheese. So lets assume you want meat, cheese, and milk for a nice varied diet, you can produce about 3kg of goat meat, 19kg of cheese, and 30 gallons of milk a day. Since the average person eats 100-300g of meat, eggs, and cheese a day (depending on cultural preferences) This would be enough to feed a crew of about 180-530 which should be plenty given the size of your crew compartment. ## But you should also include fish tanks There is a livestock that is much better than chickens or goats: fish. For starters, fish is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids which is one of the few essential nutrients that your body can not produce from other sources and is really hard to get out of a vegetarian diet. You need it to maintain good health, and fish have it in much higher ratios than other meats; so, you can maintain a healthy lifestyle eating less meat if the meat you are eating is fish. Secondly, they need much less feed because they are mostly sedentary, cold blooded animals. It only takes 1.6kg of fish feed per 1 kg of meat making fish farming ~3-20x as efferent as other common sources of meat. Furthermore, fish can be fed algae which grows MUCH faster than grass the grasses you need to feed goats and chickens. Agriculturally grown fish could use this same space to grow about 500kg of meat per day making them ~83 times as efficient as goats for meat and ~12x as efficient as goats for milk. So I'm not saying you can't do chickens and goats in this space since you've allotted enough room given the right techniques, plus they may be seen as good for your quality of life, but you may want to consider adding fish as a major protein source to reduce your total livestock space requirements. If just 60% of your protein requirements were met by fish, you could reduce the amount of space needed for raising livestock by about 1/2. <https://animals.mom.com/how-much-land-to-keep-goats-12595099.html> <https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/feed-required-to-produce-one-kilogram-of-meat-or-dairy-product> <https://www.skretting.com/en-us/transparency-and-trust/faqs/how-much-feed-is-needed-to-grow-a-farmed-fish/> [Answer] You could just grow cultured animal cells lines in fermentation tanks etc or even just algae/plant cells that are processed and flavored to resemble meat products. Perhaps not as 'tasty' as fresh meat but then you'll have the prospect of that fresh, juicy, sizzling hot steak with all the trimmings and your name on it waiting for you at your next port of call. Something to look froward to after weeks of processed gloop that almost (but not quite) tastes as good as the 'real thing' - despite saying it does on the pre-sealed package its served in. [Answer] ### Wrong animals Why bring goats for dairy when you have a spaceship full of mammals? Through targeted hormonal treatment, your cosmonauts (male or female, although the females will find it easier) can produce a small amount of milk, which they can sell/contribute to the communal kitchen, or have processed for their own consumption. They can even experiment with the effect of spices and other ingredients on the flavour! It's obviously a rare delicacy, but quite trendy, and considered more humane than milking animal livestock. For eggs, families are encouraged to keep quail. Being responsible for a living being is considered good practice for children and helps them socialise and participate in communal work. Quail are quieter and smaller than chickens, while also producing edible eggs (smaller in numbers and size) and high-quality fertiliser. Ideally they would be fed with appropriate food scraps, but that would depend on what food you're growing and whether there are any components that would be undesirable for humans but adequate for birds. [Answer] Vegetable Lamb (Goat) of Tartary [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pXU4N.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pXU4N.png) Since we are in the future there is no need to grow plants to feed animals to feed the astronauts. Just grow the meat directly from the ground. Genetically modify the plants on board so they produce something similar to animal flesh. Also modify the beans and nuts so they have more of the same fats as animal milk. Then your plant milk will taste like animal milk. Or ditch the animal diet altogether and declare that the problem you propose for your spaceship has already run its course on the surface. In the future, due to overpopulation, people don't eat much meat any more. So there is no need to give them meat on the spaceship. They would be like, "Hey Sanjay, what's this pink squidgy thing that came out of the food dispenser? Wait, an animal -- euugh!" [Answer] > > ...the goats are almost entirely there for dairy. Originally it was going to be cows, but goats make far more milk for the space... > > > In that case, skip the cows/goats entirely! In the present day there is [already a company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Day_(company)) producing dairy proteins via GMO-engineered fungi (similar to how beer is naturally brewed using yeast). Give that technology a few decades of continuous research & development, and by the time humanity reaches your near-future setting we'll have more dairy-brewers than dairy-farmers! Of particular importance to your space-faring application is the fact that that such a dairy-brewing facility would operate more like small-brewery than a small-farm - which not only makes automation easier, but could also fit into a much smaller physical volume, and likely with a smaller overall energy cost. [Answer] The only possible solution for the lack of space is the spinning cylinder that generates artificial gravity. To keep the goats active they will be pushed to walk continuously along the spin direction. For the food there is something that is even more productive than hydroponic and they are the algae. A mix of them including [spirulina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirulina_(dietary_supplement)) would do the job. And, if there is any doubt, [goats can eat them](https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220712-the-orkney-sheep-reared-on-seaweed). Well, that was a special case, but I assumed that the science is so advanced that farmers have also a selection of bacteria (fermenting or not) prepared to make the food more digestible, they should be part of the farm. ]
[Question] [ I'm designing a dualistic pair of factions of post-apocalyptic scrappers with views based on opposing concepts of scavenging; renewal, re-use, and removal of hazards versus thievery, opportunism, and leaving a messy heap. The first are themed around Vultures, getting an equally bad reputation but they tend to actually be helpful - also like vultures. I'm intending to design the opposition in a way thematically related to what you might consider a bad scavenger. Part of the idea is something like flies and maggots, or mold, but I want to consider larger complex animals before I settle on those. Invasive species might be what I'm looking for, but specifically anything that causes more harm by scavenging than environmental good. Edit: Alright, so I've gathered lots of good answers from you wonderful people. Dogs, Locusts, and Maggots are all great. I get that opportunism is sort of what scavenging is about, and that it's not all together a bad thing, so I'm looking to expand on that a bit. I've been thinking about spread of disease, hoarding, and general wastefulness are pretty good themes. I'm also going to make a slight adjustment here; they don't have to be scavengers either. So what are some really nasty, unhygenic animals that are associated with death that just make a huge problem for the whole ecosystem? Humans are not an option, unfortunately, this is somewhat about visual storytelling and while that's a brilliant answer it's also beyond my abilities to pull off. [Answer] Invasive Maggots [![Inv](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0S64.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0S64.png) There is an invasive species of fly that lays its eggs in carrion. The maggots eat the flesh and turn into more flies. The flies land on animals and drink their blood, to get the protein to make more eggs. Here's the problem -- the flies carry a disease to which the local wildlife has little immunity. Large animals that take years to mature die from bites from itty-bitty flies that grow up in weeks. Every wet season most of the large herbivores are killed off. This has a domino effect because the local plant life needs these grazers to function. Without grazers the grass gets long enough to suffocate smaller plants. Then it dies in the dry season and leaves a layer of dried grass that stops anything else growing next year. The grazers are supposed to eat all that grass to make way for new growth next wet season. But now there are no grazers. The end result is a once-lush savanna becomes a barren wasteland. [Answer] # Mold Grey Goo is usually a nanotech weapon that breaks down anything it comes in contact with, but we can lift that concept and you realize, that this behavior is also common to mold. A kind of mold that is toxic to inhale and eat is [Black Mold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_mold). Now, in the hypothetical, you could ramp up the mold's deadliness and speed some and you'd see the side effect of it liquefying any organic matter it grows on and you get a rather deadly infection that slowly wanders over the landscape, destroying the ecosystem that was. It leaves behind a corpselike, blackened landscape, not unlike the fields of Verdun in WW1. But while any mold, after breaking down the biomatter, leaves behind highly fertile soil, if there are no seeds left not consumed by the mold, then nothing will ever grow again. # Rabbits Yes, Rabbits. Rabbits are an invasive species in Oceania. And they are responsible for extreme devastation by eating everything in an area and leaving it defoliated and exposed to erosion. The result is the loss of farmable land in some regions of Australia, the local death of endemic species, and desertification. And then those populations don't die off, they wander to consume neighboring areas until nothing is left! [Answer] # Locusts. First and foremost, yes, I am aware they're not exactly scavengers. However, they match almost perfectly your second group. Let's look at your opposing concepts of scavenging: > > renewal, re-use, and removal of hazards... > > > This is your trademark scavenging, it's all about making use of things that others might consider as waste and using them for yourself, reintroducing them into the cycle as a result. Fungi, bacteria and scavenging creatures are important precisely because they ensure that things aren't lost. No corpse will be left pointlessly hanging around when it could be useful to the other living creatures like you'd see in certain polar islands where corpses just mummify and remain there. > > versus thievery, opportunism, and leaving a messy heap. > > > This isn't really scavenging though, it is as you said it: thievery and opportunitism. It can happen among scavengers (such as when hyenas shoo away vultures from carrion), but is certainly not restricted to them. If anything, what you're describing is an uncontrolled expansion of something, much like what you'd expect of a virus, parasite or invasive species. And that's where locusts come in in terms of flavor and behavior: grasshoppers are herbivorous, solitary creatures that usually don't get close to one another and just munch on their greens in peace. However, in situations where food is more scarce, grasshoppers suddenly find themselves having to stay in smaller areas (because food is also restricted to said smaller areas) and so they start bumping, rubbing and staying closer to one another. This more intimate contact between grasshoppers causes their brains to release serotonin, which develops their appetite and makes them more sociable, while also causing a number of changes in their metabolism, making them enter a gregarious phase and turning into what we know as locusts, at which point they begin to swarm, traveling incredible distances in search of food. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GhLQq.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GhLQq.jpg) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V3Kgy.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V3Kgy.jpg) Now, locust swarms are no joke, especially species like the desert locust. When they swarm, they can really do it big, with swarms spanning literal miles in size and able to eat as much in a day as the entire population of a small country (some swarms can eat as much food as then entire daily amount consumed in France in a mere 2 days). They are more than capable of causing famines even in the modern day with all our technology, and in more ancient times they were essentially living, traveling natural disasters. They fly in, they eat anything and everything they can, and when they're done they move on, completely uncaring about the destruction they leave. Locusts don't really follow any kind of harmony or balance outside of their own group, and only while there's enough food. Other than reproduction, their main goal is to eat, and if there's nothing to eat they can easily start cannibalizing one another (which technically kinda sorta can be treated as scavenge behavior, since as far as I found they have no problems with eating one another, dead or alive, when other food sources are scarce) until the last one dies. Essentially I'd say it sounds fitting enough for your other group, because opportunism and thievery are not about recycling, they're about taking what you can use from someone else, be it through force or sheer numbers, and few things spell out "leaving a messy heap" as a locust swarm does. But if a locust swarm doesn't quite have the emblematic vibe you're seeking: # Komodo dragons. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/13uxK.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/13uxK.jpg) If you really gotta stick to a large scavenger that's frightening in its own right, I'd say one of your best picks is the komodo dragon. These creatures are the largest living lizards in the world, feed on both live prey and carrion, are persistence predators and rely on a mix of potent venom and a myriad of toxic bacteria in their mouths, gathered from their scavenging diet (so much so that it was originally thought they relied exclusively on said bacteria to kill prey, though later studies have shown they were actually venomous). They're also not the worst climbers and great diggers, forcing the humans in their habitat to dig very deep holes just so their dead aren't uncovered and turned into a snack. Their sense of smell is so potent that they can essentially find you no matter where you are so long as you don't leave the island they're in. Also, they have a complex system of osteoderms below their skin, which are essentially meant to protect them among others of their kind, as they're apex predators in their own habitat. Basically komodo dragons have anti-komodo chainmail built into them. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2pMxb.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2pMxb.jpg) They don't exactly collect anything that can become a biohazard from an external perspective, but their mouths do have a wide collection of deadly bacteria, some of which we have no real cure for as far as I know, and which are gathered through their diet. So if you want a large scavenging creature that's potentially deadly, has somewhat nasty habits and that can cause a large amount of trouble, they might be among the best picks you can get. [Answer] ## Prions OK, they aren't actually alive, but they do digest proteins, in living or dead bodies, and ruthlessly replicate, causing various deadly diseases, most notably Mad Cow Disease. You do NOT want to eat something that has had prion exposure; it's a lethal transformation. The only problem is that 'prions' sounds a bit too cerebral for a post apocalyptic gang...unless they have an evil genius mastermind. Calling them the Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakobs Gang will ensure their eventual outrecruitment by the Vultures. [Answer] # Humans There are many examples, but to pull out just one, many beetle larvae grow inside dead wood, but pesky humans have a habit of picking it up and putting it into fires. Much better for the beetles to leave it rotting in the forest. [Answer] DOGS! As with humans, there are just too many of them for the carrying capacity of our world. If they were strictly scavengers in small numbers they would be innocuous, but they are often apex predators, and they are second to humans in consumption of meat either as direct predators or as indirect predators (dog food and table scraps. Add to this, dogs are vectors of diseases that may have done even more to kill off competing predators -- rabies and parvovirus that kill hyenas and Big Cats in Africa. In India, tigers have an infamous reputation as man-eaters; canine rabies kills more people. Do you like dogs? Sure. Dogs are among the few creatures that can get along with us humans. But consider what a dog is, and it is in many ways just another Big Cat, a strong, powerful, agile, swift, resourceful, voracious killer. Dogs are ecological disasters in their own right for causing mass extinction, and not only of prey. [Answer] Scavengers that take biomolecules out of circulation. [![shelly limestone](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bqqDC.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bqqDC.jpg) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelly_limestone> This is scavenging considered over geologic time. Consider CO2. The Earth once had as much as Venus. Now our atmosphere just has a tiny bit, with plants fighting over that fraction of a percentage? Where did it go? It is underground, locked into carbonate rocks by biological action over the ages. CO2 in a carbonate rock is out of circulation and no longer available to make sugar or build bodies. One could accuse life forms that make hydrogen gas of the same crime. Some of that hydrogen they make floats up and is lost into space, and to life. Way to go, bacteria. This could happen with other biomolecules - phosphates, mineral nutrients, etc. Molecules that circulate in life cycles eventually become available. Molecules lost to space or locked away in the earth are no longer available. A scavenger that does not return the molecules it scavengers to the circle of life is ultimately a detrimental scavenger. ]
[Question] [ Long story short, a bunch of people terraformed a planet and then were immediately technologically and societally forced back to the Stone Age thanks to interference/extermination/general-not-goodness on the part of some other people who could nonetheless not be half-assed to finish the job. They've been building their way back up for a few millennia; assume that technology-wise, they're identical to Earth in all ways except for those related to fossil fuels. However, this planet was terraformed from what was essentially a barren rock, meaning it never had millions of years for the remains of dead life-forms to decay into fossil fuels - the people in question arrived, terraformed (took about 500 years), got obliterated as a society (took about 1), and have been evolving back into a modern society since (took about 15,000). It takes fossil fuels significantly more than 15,501 years to form. > > [The principal origin of fossil fuels is the anaerobic decomposition of > buried dead organisms, containing organic molecules created in ancient > photosynthesis. The transitions from these source materials to > high-carbon fossil fuels typically requires a geological process of > millions of years, sometimes more than 650 million years.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel) > > > This means that, once technology hits a level where steam-powered ships would have otherwise come into the scene, things instead go differently, since steam-powered ships run off of coal or oil, both of which are fossil fuels, and do not exist on this planet. Moreover, naval air power would be significantly different, since there's no jet fuel. Later on, your WW1-through-WW2-level battleships will be different, since there's no oil for them to burn. For the purposes of this question, this planet is functionally identical to Earth other than the fact that it does not have any fossil fuels. The question: How would modern naval warfare be altered by a complete lack of fossil fuels? [Answer] # 'Fossil' fuels are still produced Not all fossil fuels come from fossils. Things like sunflower oil habe great potential. You can already use it to mix with diesel, though highly illegal in most countries for doging all the taxes on fuel. My knowledge of the incredibly complex thousand stages and (by) products of oil is limited. But using such oils can be a starting point for a great many things. Most likely you can get similar or identical products like plastics, lube or medicine from plant oils. This is important, as many products to create and maintain machines are made from oil. But we might not have any problems. The use of oil has stagnated research in other areas. Because why bother coming up with new methods for lube or oil if there is already an abundant and cheap (by) product available? If you remove oil we might still have all these important products from different sources, as necessity sparks research and creativity. They might be better and cheaper, they might be more expensive and worse, but we would have alternatives. To come back to naval battles, it is fully unsure how such a societies technology would evolve. They might have tons of plant oil used for it's engines. They might have focused on electricity much more and use batteries or other forms like hydrogen to store electricity. Ultimately most big boats are electrical, as even oil is just used to drive generators. That means they are inefficient and electrical boats are a big step in efficiency if done well. In addition they might still use sails to reduce energy usage, though leading to much less predictable boat speeds and arrival times. [Answer] The Age of Sail There were naval battles long before the mass exploitation of fossil fuels. Your colonists could build multi decked sailing ships with pre industrial techniques and could use charcoal foundries to cast gun bronze and make very serviceable cannons [Answer] Without fossil fuels your people would never advance beyond medieval technology levels. Fossil fuels are, in essence, portable energy source. They are still today because even today we do not have designed anything that can compare to energy density and easy to use of a simple litre of oil. Even though we need oil for virtually any technology and if oil run out our entire civilization may collapse, we still cant stop burning oil! Remember that medieval wind or water power generation methods were much less efficient than what we have today. To advance from medieval technology towards industrialized society you need a lot of energy. This energy has to come from somewhere. Water, wind power and charcoal can power medieval society just fine, but if you want to concentrate manufacturing capacity to the point where civilization enter industrial age you need more efficient energy source. I have no idea what can replace coal and later oil as such low tech yet relatively efficient energy source. Charcoal is not an answer. Roman pottery production in the 1 century BC and further approached industrial concentration levels by the use of slave manpower and charcoal. Those "factories" developed in Italy, but as the time progressed, were relocated further and further north. That was because they quite literally were burning entire forests for charcoal. At some point they simply run out of forest to burn and production of terra sigilata pottery stopped, but long term deforestation ill effects still influenced Roman world. Industrial scale production of steel and other early industries (like textile production) required much more energy. I'd say more than earth-like planet can generate in form of trees to be used for charcoal, as before you reach industrial age your civilization will collapse due to ill effects of deforestation. In fact, world without fossil fuels is the easiest method to force perpetual medieval age so typical to classic fantasy worlds. [Answer] A civilization capable of terraforming a planet should be well aware of electricity, conductivity in metals, magnetism, etc, even if they've been bombed back to the stone age. It does not require fossil fuels to discover electrical power, and how to store energy generated by wind power and solar power. Look into green power. We don't need solar cells, thermal solar power is the concentration of sunlight by simple magnifying glasses or parabolas; both of which can be produced without fossil fuels. Focus a few square yards of sunlight and you can boil water to operate a small steam engine that can turn an alternator and make electricity. You can even melt copper and iron directly with just a few square yards of focused solar power. The same thing goes for windmills, I've seen a homemade windmill, built entirely by one man (a mechanical engineer), that turns a large generator and powers a modern electrical house. The same thing goes for waterwheels, most modern dams produce electricity by gravity-fed waterwheels turning electric generators. And of course electricity is like a fluid in the sense that we can combine a lot of small sources to make a much larger current. You can store electricity in batteries, lead-acid, molten salts, etc. With sufficient electricity, you can create modern forges with electric cauldrons to melt metal and refine whatever metals you want, and create any alloys you want. I think it is important to note that the first known electrical device was invented in 1835, 187 years ago at this writing, and the entire planet has been revolutionized into an electrical society in less than two centuries. I believe in another century, fossil fuels and "combustion" in general will be considered a disgusting, polluting and unhealthy remnant of the past. Given electricity you could easily advance, in 150 years or so, to nuclear powered naval ships that are completely electric; constructed entirely with parts electrically produced. And I think it is fair to say that our own legacy of fossil-fuel powered engines are entirely unnecessary, or if energy density is truly a problem, we can with electrical equipment synthesize high energy liquid fuels that are not nearly as polluting as fossil fuels. All you need is solar power, and you skip over the fossil fuels entirely. We clearly don't need them for explosives and missiles, either. Naval warfare would progress along the same lines, first wind-powered, but quickly electrically powered instead of fossil fuel powered, and entirely recognizable. [Answer] The industrial revolution, as we know it, depended on iron and coal. Substituting charcoal would: * Increase the land requirement for forestry. * Probably increase the manpower requirement for lumberjacks and charburners. * Complicate some processes which rely on [high-grade fuels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coke_(fuel)). So you might start with a society where iron and power are more scarce than in the real world. Do they ever get enough for railways, power grids, microchip fabricators? These people would be in a bad position to produce [biofuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel) in industrial quantities. At a wild guess: * More reliance on sail for propulsion, with engines for auxiliary power only. * Less reliance on steel hulls. Perhaps wooden hulls with iron/steel frame reinforcements? * I might have said that aviation lags behind, but historically there was no aviation in the age of ships like these (1830 to 1880), so lags might not be quite the right term. [Answer] ## Bio fuels Experimentation with fermentation and the production of methane etc via bio-reactors could lead to the industrial production of carbon based fuels. But it would take time! However as knowledge of microbiology, photosynthesis, biochemistry and genetics etc was rediscovered the ability to produce carbon based fuels on an industrial scale would become a possibility. [Answer] So this is going to depend quite a bit on just what they started with for a planet, what the terraforming process was, and how much of their knowledge was lost (as opposed to just infrastructure destruction.) It's possible that they have a fair-sized cache of immature fossil fuels that would still work reasonably well. Look at it this way. Fossil fuels are the remains of ancient plants (and animals, but mostly plants) that died in such a way that no bacteria or fungus ate them. Then they sat around for a while and all the water and such evaporated leaving big, long chains of carbon. (A bit oversimplified, but sufficient for our purposes.) To terraform a world like, say, Mars where all the oxygen is locked up in various oxides (and especially CO2) You're going to need to free that oxygen somehow. There are lots of ways you can do this, but when you release the oxygen into the atmosphere for people to breathe, you're going to be left with a big pile of whatever the oxygen was bound to just sitting there. Pull your oxygen out of the iron oxide, you'll have a whole bunch of cheap iron. Pull it out of SiO2 and you'll have lots of material to make computer chips from. Pull it out of CO2 and you'll have a massive pile of carbon left sitting there. Big chunks of pure (or nearly so) carbon are commonly called "coal". So the question is what did they get the oxygen out of for what byproduct they have sitting around, and how did they do it for how accessible is that byproduct. If the world had water, but no life, and they just seeded algae into the oceans to free up some oxygen (even here on Earth most of our oxygen generation comes from the oceans) then they'll have a whole pile of dead algae corpses on the bottom of the ocean slowly turning into coal and oil. The natural refining process takes quite a long time, but speeding it up really only takes a pressure cooker. (This is how "synthetic" oil products and charcoal are made.) If there's not much for water and they used land-based plants then they don't even have to scrape the muck off the ocean floor, they're just making charcoal and/or biodiesel. Hydrocarbons are about the most efficient energy storage we have by weight and by volume, so it will definitely still make sense to use them, especially at the lower technology levels. Even once they have photovoltaics or solar-thermal generators the fact that plants are, by comparison, super cheap per square foot to sow and harvest (and they stash away energy in nice, convenient, portable, long-term hydrocarbon storage) is going to mean they continue to be an attractive option. Especially where, by then, they probably will have developed specialized varieties to maximize output and purity of the rendered oil and charcoal. So basically the answer is that, without a large reserve storage of energy that was banked up millions of years ago, they're going to be devoting a lot more of the surface of the planet to agriculture, specifically to grow things that produce a lot of combustibles in a small volume. Precisely what this will be will depend on the actual climate of the planet. Peanuts, sunflowers, various kinds of tree, possibly massive algae farms -- the efficiency of chlorophyll is about the same regardless, so it's just a matter of finding a species that thrives and stores its energy in an easily-extractable manner. Anything else probably takes some kind of "magic" since we don't really know of a non-hydrocarbon based path between the stone age and modern technology. ]
[Question] [ The beings in question are human-sized that instinctively build nests when they are ready to have kids. The nests are similar to a drey but with the opening on top, like a bird's nest, and are roughly the size of a bed. Naturally, they are used as cribs once the babies are born, and are used while trying to conceive beforehand. They are naturally built in sheltered places on the ground (under a tree, for example). They can also use and create technology like humans. Would their use of technology affect their nests, and if so how would the nests be different? [Answer] Instinctual behavior is bad for smart. Birds that are precocial and know to do things as soon as they are hatched are dumber than those that are born helpless. Your beings would have evolved a culture of nest building, which is very conservative because your bright idea might kill your baby. Still, it will develop with two main pressures: less labor, however you measure it, and works better. Permanent structures are build once, use many times, which allows you to,preserve good ideas and not pay/build again, as long as basic sanitation measure are feasible. Furthermore, sheltered locations can be built and not just looked for. Probably as soon as specialists are feasible, there will be nest builders and nest cleaners. In the early days, this might even be a magical or religious role, to protect the young. [Answer] As intelligent beings, they will, like us, have long since abandoned (or, if you will, supressed or modified) their instincts for civilized behaviour. They will buy their nests at Ikea. ]
[Question] [ I am looking to fashion a passably believable fantasy ship for a crew of about 30 privateers\* (see remark, this could be changed if needed, although I prefer not to have a massive crew in the story). I imagine this being something like a two-masted ship to the general tune of our traditional pirate ships, but with a team of oarsmen (I'm thinking 12) acting as an auxiliary to the sails for increased speed. I also imagine the ship would have its upper forecastle and poop decks, the main upper deck (with galley and officers' quarters), a first-level internal deck with crew hammocks and oarsmen ranks, and a lower orlop/hold primarily for cargo (and possibly a small brig). For weaponry, I intend to make use of devices such as grapples, ballistae, flaming arrows, and large crossbows mounted around the ship...plus some magical-type stuff, of course. They don't use gunpowder in this world (at least not at this point in history). Anything technological tends to come from the use of special gems and power crystals. Small automobile-like vehicles are in limited use, but nothing large-scale enough to propel a ship at sea. As I describe this, does it sound plausible? What might I be missing? What types of ship might this resemble - galley, schooner, xebec, galleon, carrack, brigantine, some hybrid thereof...? Approximately how fast could we expect this ship to move in generally favorable conditions, with and without the use of the oars? --- <sup\this crew takes jobs for hire to bring in high-value goods and goods that might require somewhat roguish tactics to obtain. For example, they might go to another nation to retrieve a rare artifact held under guard. Or, they might bring in a high-value shipment that requires special protection and defensive measures. I figured "privateer"* might be the best way to brand them...but if you suggest something better I'm happy to hear it [Answer] ## Vikings!: As everyone keeps pointing out, the crew size you are listing is very small for the kind of ship you are asking for. You either need to give up oars, simplify your ship, or vastly expand the size of your crew. My suggestion is that, for a bunch of privateers (or in this case, raiders), you need a [Viking longship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longship) like the Snekkja, or possibly a [Knarr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knarr). Some of these ships had a cargo capacity of 24 tons. They have sails and oars, are about right for your crew, and are extremely seaworthy. It was also a highly versatile cargo ship. These are excellent raiding ships, and don't require a port because they are easy to run up on a beach. So while your enemies might need a dock, you can duck in and out of places with ease. But don't expect to be firing big guns from these vessels. There's no room for a big underdeck or towers in the design. The Knarr had perhaps a little more room for stuff on deck, since it had fewer oars. Perhaps a hybrid design could work, but the more you expand the engineering, the more people you'll need to run it. Also, all these ships are open (amazingly, since the Vikings had pretty brutal weather to put up with), so shelter will be off the list. Unless you have some magitech ship-to-ship weapons, don't expect this to be a gun boat. > > The average speed of Viking ships varied from ship to ship, but lay in the range of 5–10 knots (9.3–18.5 km/h) and the maximum speed of a longship under favourable conditions was around 15 knots (28 km/h). > > > PS: If you are okay giving up on oars, you might want to check out [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/174223/ships-suitable-to-sailing-in-monster-infested-fantasy-waters) question as a source of material on ships. [Answer] Sounds like a Xebec The speed of the ship would depend on its overall size, but I've seen Xebecs listed as having speeds of 11-16 knots (under sale, rowing would be far slower, to the tune of low-single-digits) for a 35-gun ship with for-and-aft lateen sails and 16 oars/sweeps. As has been pointed out in the comments, 16 knots is REAL fast for a sailing ship, and should be considered the theoretical best-case-scenario maximum speed, with 11 being closer to what you'd expect. (Forgive me, I don't have my books handy to get the exact quote.) This would be a fairly fast ship for its size and probably about what you're looking for. They also tended to have a single deck followed by a hold, so that also seems like what you're after. The main thing though is that a Xebec generally would NOT use both sails and oars at the same time. The oars are to move when the wind is nil/against you. I can imagine all sorts or problems trying to do both at once, not least the havoc up-and-down oars could make of sails coming around or oarsmen being in the way of sailors trying to do things to the sails. Most dangerous would be trying to turn using the oars, only to find your sail plan meant that you were taken aback at some point in your new heading. On a xebec the masts were usually struck (taken down) when the oars were going to be used. Xebecs (and your ship) would be faster in the long run because they are independent of the wind. So they could still move toward their destination when a sails-only ship would be becalmed/taking like mad, but could use the wind to outpace a pure "rowing" ship. In a fight however it would have to be one or the other, preferably sails. [Answer] You need a small Venetian galeazza [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9D0qF.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9D0qF.png) As has been noted, oars and sails are alternatives on the same boat. They rarely if ever work together. If you sail with the wind behind you then the oars won't be able to keep up with the speed of the boat. If the wind is on the beam, then the boat will be leaning over at a sufficient angle to make rowing impossible. If you head directly into the wind then the sails are not only useless, they are also a hindrance so you should change to oars. Oars are just like an engine: you use them them when the wind is not favourable. [Answer] One giant rower. This is fantasy! Why stick to historical accuracies? Your rower is a giant. He has some unusual traits for his kind which accounts for why he is venturing out into the world of humans. But he is big and very, very strong. He rows their boat like a racing scull. He does not partake in the stealing or the fighting. He gets left on the boat when they go ashore. Your protagonist might ask the crew why they do not bring him with since he is so big and strong. He could be useful. As it turns out, other people had the same idea in the past. There are several very good reasons to leave him on the boat. For a fiction this is easier for the writer. A fiction with 100 assorted slave rowers gets tricky - they are all people with agency and viewpoints. It is difficult to account for and characterize all of these people? But your giant is just one entity with a singular point of view. It is much easier to deal with him in a fiction. As regards why your rower is how he is, and perhaps other characters too, I envision their backstory flashbacks told [1001 nights style](https://sacred-texts.com/neu/burt1k1/), as little breakways in the main story as was done in Moby Dick. [Answer] ## [Trireme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trireme) It's a sailing ship with specifically three banks of oars. There are other variants, for example, a bireme which had two banks of oars. They tend to be single mast though they could have two, single sail, square rigged, coastal ships. Ideal for a fantasy scenario since most non-medieaval myths are set in or close to the appropriate technological window. Your main consideration should be that it's quite slow, but you asked for slow when you said that oars would be an auxiliary for speed. Later sailing ships didn't have oars because they got too big and too fast for oars to be a meaningful speed boost. [Answer] The [Adventure Galley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Galley) as outfitted for William Kidd in the golden age of piracy had both sails and oars. It however required a crew of 160. At the number of oarsmen you are looking at there is no practical way of moving a ship capable of ship to ship combat. A lighter craft would be possible but there would be a diminished space for cargo. Figuring that each oar has two persons and that the oars, though possible staggered like a sweep](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweep_(rowing)>), are matched. This gives four oarsmen, meaning six banks with 24 rowers. The remaining 6 crew being captain, coxswain, helmsman, etc. [Edit] - just reread your question, "... 12 oarsmen ... " so three banks. [Answer] ## Dawn Treader I think I've found my best model for the ship I'm looking for, and that comes from the book and movie The Voyage of the Dawn Treader from "Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis. [![Dawn Treader at Sea](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tXCh2.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tXCh2.jpg) It seems that this single-masted ship is well-suited for a smaller crew. According to [this site](http://www.catholicdigest.com/entertainment/201011-15fun-facts-about-the-making-of-ldquothe-chronicles-of-narnia-the-voyage-of-the-dawn-treaderrdquo/) the ship from the movie was modeled after various British Royal Navy ships while keeping with the single-mast and hull shape of Viking vessels. [Another site](http://home.clara.net/rogerpattenden/dawntreader.html) considers it to be styled as a medieval galleon. The ship has sufficient cabin space, a nice deck design, and I think could be well-suited to doing stealthy merchant runs. Outfitting it with additional weaponry (crossbows and the like) should be doable, perhaps even the surprise ability to spew something like Greek fire from the mouth of the figurehead. Chapter 2 of the book itself describes all areas of the ship, including crew hammocks and rowing benches one deck down, with an open area down the middle where provisions are stored. The ship can be rowed when there isn't enough wind for the sail, or if something happens to the mast (as in the case of Chapter 5, when the mast is broken during a storm). I further watched this movie last night and really enjoyed the feel of this vessel. [![Plan of the Dawn Treader](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ASFiT.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ASFiT.gif) All in all, this ship feels like the best of all worlds to use a model for my fantasy ship. Of course, I welcome any comments! ]
[Question] [ So, now, here is my problem. I'm making a video game, and I wish to make it so that teams use tranquilizer dart-like weapons to capture each other (this is a continuation of my previous question that has been deleted). However, if one were to use a basic tranquilizer dart, as shown below, imagine if this bad boy hit your eye. [![Can't you just imagine the pain of this hitting your eye or, really, anywhere?!?](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ksZjq.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ksZjq.jpg) So, obviously, we can use gas, but that's more of an AOE weapon (grenade-style). So here's the question: *What is the best design for ammo that can effectively* paralyze/stun an opponent with minimal risk of bodily harm? [Answer] TL;DR ignore all the text and look at the cute asian girl in the gif. > > What is the best design for ammo that can effectively paralyze*/stun an opponent with minimal risk of bodily harm? > > > There is an unwritten rule in World Building, that we should never use just an image as an answer. The whole text in this answer is just filler to bypass that, because the weapon you are looking for already exists in the real world - you can buy it online - and I've got an animated gif with it below. ![A woman operating a net launcher against a man. The man is easily snared.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5bC95.gif) Literally Google for "buy net launcher" and you get good results. The first one I got is a kit for rescuing animals that goes for like a thousand bucks. I am totally buying one when I have my own kids so I can stop them from connecting their little fingers to the mains from a distance. #parentingSkills These would be usable in a game as well. If your game is an electronic one, frameworks like Unity will handle the physics of it. Otherwise if your game is a live action call me because I wanna participate. [Answer] What sort of range do you need? If even basic tranquilizer darts are too potentially damaging, then that excludes ANY* projectile weapon. Dissolving drug flechettes, stun balls, tazer darts, drug-delivering paintball pellets even. All of these could take out an eye. Gas would work, but you have explicitly excluded that option. How about a [SuperSoaker type squirtgun](https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/what-is-the-best-water-gun-for-long-distance-water-fights/), spraying liquids? Tranquilizing drugs, superglue, etc.. Unfortunately the effective range of a portable squirtgun is rather limited. Even with the very best technology and a gel-like liquid, the stream will fall apart over more than about 20 yards, and very likely less than that. Sonic stunner? Not sure how one would focus this to work as a directed weapon rather than an AoE device. [Microwave beamer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System)? There is a crowd control device that is somewhat aimable and drops people by induced nerve pain. (some slight scortching smells from the skin are just propaganda, this device is really harmless!) P.S. If the worry of a dart to the eye bothers you, then ANY tranquilizer should concern you. What happens if I get hit by your trank, and try to run away down stairs? Bonka-bonka-bonk-crunch-splat-dribble-dribble-gasp-*die* [Answer] Drones. What you want is a weapon that can fly from where you are to where your target is and inject them with a tranquilizer without all that messy business about flying into the target and hurting them. That implies something with a great deal more precision and control than a bullet, something capable of guided flight, like a small drone. The drone flies over to its victim, latches on using one or more claws, searches for a good injection site, and does its work. (If possible, a drone that can reliably target veins would give you much better onset time with a more predictable result than intramuscular injection.) If that's too slow and short ranged for you, you could try a drone gun! Take your miniature drone, package it in a disposable shell, and use an airgun to launch it near the target. Then, the operator takes over using a remote guidance controller attached to the launcher, like a guided missile. [Answer] Tasers A taser is a great way to subdue people. It takes effect near immediately, only requires minimal contact with the skin of the target and generally isn't dangerous. The one that is fired has small hooks to stay in the target, but doesn't penetrate deep enough for any dangerous penetration damage. Although you can still hit an eye, people are more inclined to shoot centre mass as it's terribly effective on most of the body. There are some restrictions, like some loose clothing can apparently sometimes prevent the hooks from reaching the skin, so too little of the current reaches the person. The same could be said for tranquilliser darts though. Two hooks are generally required, as well as a physical line towards the battery. The advantage is that the projectiles can be relatively low powered and lightweight. In your game you might check how your persons are clothed for protection, which might make some of the restrictions a non-issue. Alternatively to hooks you can have a sort of glue substance, but penetration of clothing is often required to supply enough electricity to the body. You could always go with the option of an electrified net, as someone else suggested. There are obviously dangers with tasers if someone has a heart condition or something, but there are also dangers for using drugs. Tranquillisers can also take a moment before they take effect, leaving you open to counter attack or the target fleeing. This window with tasers is very limited. [Answer] Electric Shocks Unless someone has some sort of medical condition (eg pacemaker), electrical shock is probably the least-lethal method of temporarily subduing someone / rendering them insensate. Here I'll outline other methods and why they're no good: * Beanbag rounds and rubber bullets are commonly used as less-lethal munitions however can still easily cripple someone. A beanbag to an unprotected chest can break ribs and a rubber bullet to the eye can permanently blind someone. Furthermore, they're generally used more in a "deterrence" than "subdue" case and people shot by them are either able to run away or hospitalized * Net guns and bola launchers are weapons that shoot some kind of entangling device such as a net or a bola which are designed to trip or restrain a target. Unfortunately, this does not really "stun" or "paralyze" and can also be quite dangerous because for them to have any range, the weights need to be thrown/shot at high speed. * Tranquilizer darts are not a good weapon against humans and basically only work in games and spy movies. This is because tranquilizers and sedation in general are very difficult to do properly/safely and heavily dependent on many different factors such as body mass, fitness level, activity level, etc. In reality, tranquilizer darts are mostly used against large safari animals and it often takes minutes or even hours until the animal passes out. Therefore, I see a taser (conventional), electrolaser (sci-fi), shock suit as the optimal solutions: * A Tazer shoots two darts attached to thin wires at a target and then applies a high voltage to shock the target. This does require needles to penetrate the skin though, so they aren't that safe. People could get the needles/barbs in their eyes, or get them stuck in their skin and then fall on top of them (not comfortable) * An Electrolaser is a weapon which does not currently exist so is consigned to the realm of sci-fi but it does work in laboratory settings. The basic principle is that you use a powerful laser to ionize a channel of air which then becomes conductive enough to "shoot lighting" along the beam. This type of weapon could deliver a powerful shock without shooting darts. Still, this type of weapon isn't perfectly safe so you'd either need to set the wavelength of the laser to something non-damaging to eyeballs or have everyone wear laser safety goggles. * A Shock Suit doesn't exist but could easily be made with today's technology. Essentially, it's a laser-tag-vest combined with a taser. Everyone wears the suit and it constantly scans for "hits" by opponent laser-markers (like you'd use in laser tag). When the suit registers a hit, it shocks the wearer and disables their weapons or something. [Answer] BEEEEES! Create an air cannon/potato gun that shoots jars of bees. Make sure to use auto glass for the jars so that they will shatter into small pieces and will not sever an artery. For combatants allergic to bees this could be fatal, but to others it would just be terribly unpleasant and distracting. ![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yhIvB.gif) Consequences * The character with the bee cannon must have a bee keeper suit or comparable "armor", so they can apprehend the enemy that has been beed. * The enemy can't have a bee keeper suit or full body covering. [Answer] # Tranquilizers have a dosage problem Drugs always have a dosage dependent on the body weight of the person they're being used against. In the real world, this is why cops and the military don't have tranq weapons. Zookeepers sometimes do, but they're dealing with large animals, and they simply wait for the tranqs to take effect and can shoot the animal a second time if it's not enough. Perhaps the most illustrative example is the nearly-twenty-year-old [Russian theater hostage crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis). Chechnyan separatists took 800 people hostage in a theater. They rigged the place to blow and a standoff ensued. For whatever reason the Russians felt they had to storm the theater. They decided to use exactly this sort of [James Bond-style knockout gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_hostage_crisis_chemical_agent). Casualties were awful. Probably significantly less awful than if the terrorists had detonated the explosives, but still awful. And many of those who died were children because they're so much smaller than a grown-up. They got a comparatively much bigger dose, because they had to blanket the area with enough gas to effectively knock out the terrorists. So gas is right out. Too chaotic and fundamentally uncontrollable. Darts have a similar problem, but are more tractable. Especially with the Power of Sci-Fiᵀᴹ. You need smart darts. The gun has cameras. Sophisticated software estimates the target's body mass. The smart dart is pre-calibrated based on this, but also administers a controlled dosage. Biotech in the dart monitors the target's vitals (not too hard, considering it already has access to the target's bloodstream) ]
[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/149772/edit). Closed 4 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/149772/edit) I am Josephine Mengalus, an alchemist on the path to immortality by becoming a lich. Alchemy is the study of combining magic with science, to create a higher form of study that surpasses both. Souls are power sources that possess large amounts of energy, and can be used for spells or rituals, or to power certain machinery based on magic principles. The souls id made up of two parts. The first contains the memories and personalities of the individual, everything that makes them "them". The second contains the life force of the person, that is immortal and remains after death. I plan to harvest a large number of souls for my soul forge, a specialized container built to hold spirits. Through the use of a dark ritual, I plan to use this soul forge to elevate my to lichdom and make me a god among men. Of course, the devil is in the details, and I must arrange to collect a large number of souls in a short amount of time as well as remain inconspicuous from prying eyes. My first thought was to raise the souls of the recently deceased. However, souls maintain strong connections to their bodies after death, making it almost impossible to remove. That connection fades the longer a person is dead, bringing me to my second idea of raising the souls of the long departed who died centuries ago. These souls are "blank slates" who have lost all memories from life and have no remaining connection to their physical forms. However, the longer a person is dead, the harder they are to raise. It would take a massive amount of time and power to harvest. Which brings me to my last idea: harvesting the souls of unborn children. It takes 9 months for a child's physical body to be created, during which time the soul develops last in the third trimester. These are the Goldilocks souls: blank slates that lack any attachments or memories, and new enough to be easily harvested. I cast a powerful spell that magically harvested ( or "murdered", for the politically correct crowd) the souls of millions of children across the country, drawing their souls into my forge. There are a few alchemists of my craft who would protest this on the grounds that casting such a spell in the name of science violates certain "moral" principles. As idiotic as these excuses may seem to you, they have highlighted a problem. The spirits of these children are known as half-souls. These undeveloped souls, while malleable and easily taken, do not possess only half the volume of energy as a full soul. Logically, I assume that stitching and combining a number of half-souls together would increase their volume and provide for a higher energy output. However, this is not the case, as the quantity of energy that the souls output remain the same. How can this be the case? [Answer] Decay magic. (As in nuclear decay, not rotting away.) Since you can't touch the soul directly, you can only measure it by its energy output: how much magic you can do with it at any one time. These "half" souls are already fully formed. Combining them does not increase the energy density because the space in the aether where they exist is already filled up. I.e., if you pour two gallons of water into a one gallon bucket, you still only have one gallon of water in that bucket. They don't look like they're fully formed to you only because you can't see them directly. Now, as a soul is used, which normally happens by animating a body, part of that pure soul energy breaks down into a less pure, more tangible form. This exercised bit of soul energy continues to release more and more magic until it gets all used up over a couple of decades. Once a bit of soul starts emitting magic, it doesn't stop; it takes a long time to release that energy. This is why a freshly harvested soul from an adult is so easy to manipulate; it's full of energy that will take a long time to dissipate back down to background levels... but because the person using that soul has exercised bits of that soul in certain ways with certain habits and routines, the most energetic parts of the soul match those habits and routines as well... A caretaker's soul could be used to cure wounds, a warrior's soul can be used to cast fireballs and magic missiles. An infant soul, though, has very little of its soul exercised; no habits or routines yet, and it's "cold" -- not emitting any residual magic yet. Necromancers of the past have been unable to jump-start the reactions, and haven't had the patience to let the soul "warm up" before discarding them as failed experiments. Careful about getting too many infant souls together in one place, though. Once they start emitting magic, they won't stop for many decades to come. You need to keep using the magic so that it doesn't accumulate in dangerous ways... This is similar to uranium in a power plant, which is fairly non-radioactive outside of the reactor. The uranium produces prompt radiation with its initial fision due to being close to other uranium (and several other factors that I'll handwave for brevity)... then going on to produce additional heat through delayed radiation, as the daughter products are still highly radioactive themselves, but take hours, months, and years to decay into stable lead, all the while releasing energy long after that first prompt reaction. [Answer] # Because souls are like stars If you combine enough stars together, you would get a black hole, one that is significantly smaller in volume but more massive than any of its constituent components. Also, the black hole emits far less energy than a star. This is just an effect of a physical law of nature, gravity. If magic or alchemy or whatever laws govern souls in your world have an attractive [inverse square law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law) with distance, then you would get the same effect. Tinker with the value of the [universal constant of soul attraction](http://universal%20gravitational%20constant) and combining as few as two souls could give you a black soul-holes. Or something. Whereas 10 souls might output 10$x$ units of soul-energy, one black soul outputs nothing. Unless black souls also have soul-[Hawking radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation) or soul-[accretion disks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accretion_disk). Or something. [Answer] Souls don't increase in volume because volume is a property of matter, something which souls, which are demonstrably not made of matter, do not possess. Souls have altogether different properties, and the additive property isn't one of them. Simply put, soul arithmetic doesn't follow the laws of normal arithmetic. [Answer] How many fetuses does it take to change a light bulb? None, fetuses lack the basic motor skills to change a light bulb and therefore are useless to all such goals. Adding more fetuses isn't going to make the job more probable of happening, it's just going to cover the floor with more mess that your janitor is going to have to clean up. No, you need souls that have basic competence, but not attachment. [Answer] Let's follow your logic Adding more souls doesn't increase the volume: * that must mean it increases the pressure. Adding more souls doesn't increase the output: * output isn't pressure dependent, it's volume dependent, so surface area must be your key to power output. What that means is that all the additional souls you've compressed into this system doesn't increase your power output, but instead increases the usable lifespan. Not entirely a loss as your new Duracell soul powered bunny lasts ten times as long as ordinary soul powered bunnies. [Answer] *Fresh souls lack the resilience of experienced ones.* An old soul, one that belonged to a person who had lived a long and varied life, has become strong and resilient to the ravaging effects of being detached from a vessel. Fresh souls however, are barely formed and gossamer. When you harvested so many fresh souls, you expected a certain volume. However, by the time they'd been drawn in and housed in your forge, they'd lost much of their material to the inevitable degradation inherent in the exposure of a soul to the space between. Note: For further reading on the principles of soul erosion, please refer to chapter sixteen of Thurixarion's Treatise on the Harvesting of Incorporeal Anima. [Answer] They are not actually souls. Soul is associated with the "breath of life" and children receive it with their first breath in after birth. What develops with the last trimester and what your alchemist is collecting is the receptacle for the soul that contains the soul after the child receives it at birth. Combining several receptacles into one leaves you with one receptacle and hence one soul. What you want to do is find a way to sustain the receptacles separately and let each separately gain a soul which you then suck the energy of. You then combine the energy. The order in which you do things matters here. It might be simpler to find a way to suck the energy of a soul without killing or breaking the vessel and then use a ritual to open the vessel so it can receive a new soul which you can then also harvest. You could in theory repeat this several times per vessel as long as you leave time for the vessel to heal between operations. Potentially without killing anyone too. You can also just harvest a portion of the energy. Harvesting one third of soul energy of triple the people should give the same result without permanent negative effects. [Answer] The "life energy" of a soul is actually a one-way portal to another dimension from which energy flows. The size of the portal determines the amount of energy. Newborn souls haven't dilated the portal to full size yet, and so give out a bit less energy. Normally, a soul is tied to the body and so the location of the portals don't overlap in physical space. When you use necromancy to detach the soul from its body, overlapping of souls become possible. When you place two souls in the same location, their energy-portals also overlap the same physical space. Now they are drawing from the same location in the energy-dimension, and there's a limited energy flow for each area - so you get the same energy output as from one soul. The solution, then, is to not have the souls in the exact same location. Create a magical soul-holding framework, keeping each soul at least a portal diameters distance from each other. Not a simple thing, of course - but who said becoming a lich was easy? ]
[Question] [ In my late-Victorian world there are independently moving automata that may act as pets or servants to those that can afford them. They require a fair amount of energy to run at full capacity, enough to move two arms (<500g lifting power), move itself on wheels and power various instruments such as speech and processing (such as a primitive voice assistant). Typically they are 80-160cm tall, 40-80cm wide and humanoid from the waist up and typically made of various alloys and fabrics. The amount of space available is restricted by control mechanisms and additional storage or instruments, using 25-75% of the available space depending on the automatas functions. These systems do not usually contain any electrical workings and fine mechanics is advanced and reliable enough to replicate integrated circuitry. How can I power these machines for a longer period of time? It should be able to run for at least 6h at full energy usage. The energy source should be self-contained, but needn't be entirely safe to the public as insurance is covered. [Answer] Summary: An ethanol fueled external combustion, hot air "Stirling Engine" About 3 litres / day of ethyl alcohol provides about the same energy levels as used by a human engaged in sedentary and moderate effort activities. A smaller robot with less mass and the ability to reduce power consumption to a minimum during periods of no activity should require less fuel than this. Detail. A hydrocarbon fuel and combustion or just maybe catalytic oxidation is likely as dense as you can get. End efficiencies in the 5-10% range are probably reasonable - and more to much more is possible\. Hydrocarbons provide ~= 10 kWh/kg. So 10% efficiency ~= 1 kWh/kg. To obtain some idea of required energy levels, a person in sedentary or light activity to mild activity role requires about 2000 kCal or slightly under 10 MJ/day. 1 kWh = 3.6 MJ so at 10% efficiency you need about 3 kg of hydrocarbon fuel. This could be petrol / kerosene / oil / wood / coal, but ethanol is more attractive as it can be made relatively odour free. Also, ethanol is available from fermentation processes + distillation - which are available almost anywhere, whereas hydrocarbons may not be locally available. There is always fish or plant oils or animal fats, but in all cases combustion is liable to be "odoriferous". To provide ethanol powered mechanical power without needing steam or internal combustion technology you could implement an external combustion steam free Stirling engine. The [Stirling Engine](https://wiki2.org/en/Stirling_engine) was invented in 1816 - so implementation in a late Victorian setting would be entirely feasible. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_* \Stirling engine theoretical absolute maximum efficiency is Max theoretical efficiency = Carnot efficiency = Z Z = (Thot-Tcold)/Thot where Thot and Tcold are the hot end cold end temperatures in absolute degrees. Actual efficiencies of say 50% of theoretical maximum are achievable. Using Victorian metallurgy have Thot = 200 C = 473 K and tcold = say 50C effective = 323 K Carnot efficiency Z = (473-323)/473 =~ 32%, so perhaps 16% actual. 10% seems a reasonable initial target. Working gas can be Air, Helium, or Hydrogen - with energy density increasing. Hydrogen is dangerous and has implementation issues. Helium was discovered in 1868 - but as a solar spectral line. Mass availability occurred after gas field discoveries in the US in 1903. Helium allows substantial size reduction - but a say 250 Watt Stirling engine using air should be acceptable and able to be built into an automaton. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_* "Vickie" - A Victorian styled, ethanol powered, external combustion hot air "Stirling Engine" A model Stirling Engine implementation with a "Victorian era" look: From [here](http://www.jerry-howell.com/Vickie.html) * Stirling engines have no valves, carburetor, ignition system or boilers and they run almost ghostly silent. Properly made, they will run flawlessly every time a source of heat is applied! * "Vickie" is a Stirling cycle engine of modified Heinrici type with elegant victorian styling designed for pleasing looks as was applied to 18th and 19th century engines and machines. ... * The engine is primarily made of aluminum with accents of polished brass and stainless steel and trimmed in dark green and maroon paint. A belt driven brass cooling fan competes with the rod and crosshead action for attention. Vickie is powered by an attractive horizontal brass alcohol burner which sports an integral fuel level sight glass. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ifQSU.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ifQSU.jpg) [Answer] A set of large mainsprings. The springs could be 'charged' like modern batteries by winding them up and may be exchangeable in a modular fashion. Springs tend to be large though, especially when all the 'charge' has been used up, so I doubt this is a very good solution. [Answer] Though the engineering would have been tricky, consider the possibility of a tiny steam engine driven by the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, a chemical certainly known to Victorians. Highly concentrated peroxide can be flowed over a suitable catalyst (eg. a silver wire) and it decomposes quite energetically into steam and oxygen. Manufacture of suitably robust and long-lived seals for such a system is left as an exercise for the reader. Leaks of high-test peroxide are potentially quite hazardous as it can rapidly ignite all sorts of stuff and can be quite toxic to humans. I'm not sure of the minimum concentration required for this technology to work, and so I can't tell you exactly how dangerous it might be, but it won't be quite idiot-proof. The idea has two interesting knock-on effects: Firstly, it provides a justification for the endlessly reused victorian steampunk trope. You may or may not consider this to be a good thing. Secondly, it might bring forwards the discovery of liquid rockets by decades, which will have quite an interesting effect your future history ofthe 20th century; not just in warfare but in the progression of technologies for flight. --- For reference, the estimated energy density of a mainspring is 1.5KJ/l (from [this physics.se answer](https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/226165/225554)). 60% peroxide is more like 3MJ/l, so that would give you a ballpark figure for how much better the little steam engine could be (not taking into account all the possible inefficiencies, which will be legion, but it'll still come out ahead) For comparison, petrol (or gasoline, if you prefer) is over 34MJ/l, and lead acid batteries are around 0.5. [Answer] ## Gravity Your automata have a mechanism that translates gravitational pull into e.g. the rotation of gears, just like the [pendulum mechanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_clock#Mechanism) in a traditional [cuckoo clock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock), which uses wheights hanging on a cord or chain as power source (the actual power is produced by [a crank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(mechanism)), not by the pendulum). [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pYfEX.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pYfEX.jpg) That requires such chains hanging from the body of the automaton, but I'm sure your people could integrate them into the general aesthetics as leashes or decorative bands. The bigger problem is that you either need several such mechanisms to create enough energy, or the wheight needs to descend rather quickly to spin the gears faster (which can be translated into more force). Someone needs to "wind them up" (or rather pull the chain so the wheight is lifted higher again) before their wheights reach the floor and all the gears simply stop spinning. [Answer] Hot radioactive elements driving an ether engine. The [ether engine](http://www.kcorc.org/en/science-technology/history/) was a real thing in the mid1800s; this among other engines working on the principle of the steam engine but using working fluids with a lower boiling point than that of water. I propose your automatons have onboard ether engines heated by a lump of a radioactive element - actinium could work, or thorium, radium, even compressed radon. Many of these radioactive elements were discovered in the late 1800s and using radioactive things this way smells steampunky to me. On being purified, many of these emit heat via radioactive decay. Purified actinium can get hot enough to melt itself. Automaton (cancerproof) mill workers would make the purification of these elements safer. Different automaton makers could have their own proprietary engines (actinium and ether, radium and chloroform, [ultimum](http://particlesonthewall.org/display/potw/September%2C%2B2014.html) and benzene, etc.). Each touts the merits of its own system and the dangers of the others. I can imagine home users not wanting to purchase radionuclide fuel and hacking their automatons to run on thermite, or supersaturated sodium acetate. [Answer] Flywheels [Flywheels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage) have been used as ['batteries' for electric buses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus) in the past and are used in [kinetic energy recovery systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_recovery_system) for race cars as well as grid level energy today. Today we can achieve [0.5 MJ/kg with carbon fiber composite flywheels](https://web.archive.org/web/20100710052927/http://www.pddnet.com/article-next-gen-of-flywheel-energy-storage/) operating in a vacuum at 60,000 RPM with magnetic levitation bearings. One big advantage of flywheel systems is that they can be recharged fairly quickly. Very fast discharge is possible too. Flywheel energy density is roughly proportional to the strength to weight ratio of the materials we make our flywheel from and is given by Energy Density= K\MaxStress/density. K is the shape factor which describes how efficiently we use the material in our fly wheel to store energy and ranges from 0-1, with 0.5 being pretty reasonable. Max stress is the maximum amount of stress our material can take, and density is density of the flywheel material, for energy density in J/kg use pascals for stress, and kg/m^3 for density. So let's figure out what the energy density could be assuming we don't have carbon fiber. Assuming [maraging steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maraging_steel) with a yield stress of 2400 MPa and a safety factor of 1.3(max stress ~1800 MPa), with a shape factor of 0.5, we get an energy density of 0.11 MJ/kg. This is somewhat reasonable given that [lead acid batteries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density_Extended_Reference_Table) have an energy density of around 0.14 MJ/kg. However, both these energy density numbers come with an asterisk. For long energy storage we must put our flywheel inside a vacuum chamber to eliminate air drag which adds weight. The bigger issue is that flywheel energy storage becomes a very efficient bomb should the flywheel fail, much of the stored energy will be converted more or less directly to flying shrapnel. So we need to armor our flywheel. Another disadvantage is that energy slowly drains due to bearing friction. This can be quite low if we use magnetic levitation bearings, but I don't think a steam punk world will have this. For maximum energy density, we should spin our fly wheel as fast as possible, but this creates more wear and tear. A cheat to make flywheels work is to suppose we have access to a high strength to weight ratio material which I am going to call unobtainium. We can suppose that the strength to weight ratio for unobtainium is ridiculously high meaning that our flywheel system doesn't need much of it. Perhaps we only need a vanishingly small amount like milligrams or less for practical energy storage. This means we can limit the damage a nigh indestructible material like unobtainium does by making it ridiculously expensive and only practical for flywheel energy storage. Heat Engines* Since you specified that "fine mechanics is advanced and reliable enough to replicate integrated circuitry," it should be possible to make fairly compact heat engines capable of burning hydrocarbon fuels. As an example of how we can take this to the extreme, [very small gas turbine engines](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.830.3644&rep=rep1&type=pdf) have been proposed as a replacement for batteries. [![MEMS turbine](https://i.stack.imgur.com/S3rO5.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/S3rO5.gif) While the above have used the [brayton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brayton_cycle) cycle, which is the same thermodynamic cycle used by jet engines, we can also use the [rankine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_cycle) cycle, which is thermodynamic cycle any power plant with a steam turbine uses. It has been proposed that one could make a [steam turbine powerplant on a chip](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.472.8701&rep=rep1&type=pdf) with ~11% efficiency and a power density up to 12 KW/kg. This is comparable in power density to a [GE90-115B Brayton turbofan jet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-weight_ratio) engine at 10 KW/kg. It's also been proposed that one could use [tiny organic rankine cycle turbogenerators with solar concentrators](http://cdn.intechweb.org/pdfs/28485.pdf) as a replacement for silicon solar panels in satellites. Now what really enables us to make compact rankine cycle power plants is being able to make relatively compact boilers and condensers. If we can make complicated tiny mechanisms we can probably make a complicated arrangements of tiny pipes. [Answer] Hydraulics or Pneumatics. Even today, much of our electrical machinery trails a wire to the nearest power socket. Until a decade or two ago, batteries were far too big and heavy to provide a viable alternative. Back before electrical utility power, utility hydraulic power was a thing. The London Hydraulic Company installed strong cast iron pipes and had coal-fired pumping stations to pressurize water in them to far higher pressures than water supply. (The pipes still existed long after the system ceased operation, and now contain fiber-optical communication cables). Hydraulic mechanisms are still used, for example in earth-moving machinery, but are now locally powered from an internal combustion engine, or via an electric pump. Compressed air is also still used, again generated locally. Pneumatic mechanisms are less powerful but can easily switch on and off in tenths of a second, and less easily in milliseconds. So your automata could run off supply and drain hoses plugged in to high-pressure water, or a supply pipe plugged into high-pressure air(\), either generated by a large steam engine at a distance of anything up to a few kilometers. Had we been only a few decades later developing electricity, I suspect most towns would have gained a hydraulic power utility. (\) return pipe optional for air, but it might keep the noise level down. PS it has always piqued my imagination that had Babbage ever met a person who knew about pneumatics, it's possible that he could have built a binary pneumatic computer working at somewhere between 10Hz and 1Khz in his lifetime. The course of history would then have been utterly different! ]
[Question] [ In a civilization I'm making, there are two separate groups of people - namely one with the ability to use technology (tech that runs on a chemical in the user's blood) and those without (a small percentage of the population with a blood disorder lacking this chemical). As such this percentage is unable to do things like driving cars, using devices and most importantly firing weaponry. A side effect of not having this chemical in their blood makes this population have heightened senses (still working on exactly why). They are also slightly bigger and stronger due to the fact that they will need to do everything manually like farming or back-breaking work as a living. I would like my main character to belong to this group and still end up in the military. The question here is, would an army with guns, tanks and Walkers (big exoskeletons) have any need for a platoon/company of humans which are unable to use modern technology? --- P.S. Any opinions on the science behind the inability to use tech would be taken also. [Answer] Guns, Tanks, Walkers et al are ranged weapons. These are really good for modern tactics that involve being as far away from the enemy as possible when engaging in combat. Thing is, even a modern assault rifle only gets you so far in close quarters combat. When the fighting gets up close and personal, large heavy equipment, especially if you have to stop and aim it or generally operate it, will always be beaten by an agile operator with a knife. (At this point I'm going to have to give the two classes of people names to explain further; without trying to cast aspersions, let's call them Users and Workers respectively) Users are going to be adept at using the tech, but in this world there seems little sense in diverging their specialisations with close quarters combat training, especially when there's an alternative. You train the workers in hand to hand combat. Then, you use them in 2 ways; 1) Unit Defence your workers are there to protect your users who operate the heavy guns, tanks et al from the enemy. You keep any threats away from the people and the gear in the field. You can use them as spotters for mines, personnel defence, etc. 2) Infiltration This may sound odd, but because they're trained in close quarters combat, you put a platoon of them in a walker or dropship of some kind and deploy them right in the centre of the enemy formations. They come out fighting and wipe out gunners, tank drivers et al quickly with enhanced hand to hand tactics, as well as plant charges and the like if possible. The aim of this is to disrupt the strategy of the enemy by taking out their offensive capabilities. Another thought to consider; the chemical you mention interacts with tech to manipulate EM fields in some manner; theoretically, that means it's traceable. If it's in the bloodstream, Users could never be scouts as they'd be too easy for the enemy to trace. Workers on the other hand could get into advance positions and out to report on troop activities only having to worry about camouflage and the like; an enemy that relies too heavily on detection grids for the blood chemical could easily lose the advantage to some well trained worker scouts. [Answer] "...any need for a platoon/company of Humans which are unable to use modern technology?" Absolutely! Though I'm not sure how this will aid your story. Remember that the vast majority of a military force is not combat-focused. You have cooks, mechanics, logistics people, supply, medical, finance, intelligence, and so on. Only about one percent of a modern military actually does the shooting and killing. Now, I imagine you want your character to be in on the action, which makes being a cook not sound that exciting. But if they aren't going to be 'strong' (able to effect change, be powerful, use weapons) they could be smart. Though in such a world, I would expect their scientists would be able to find a way to extract and capture that which powers all these things. Perhaps it isn't easy, or efficient, but you'd have a way to bottle it into small 'charges,' allowing a non-gifted character to fire a few shots from a sidearm or something along these lines. [Answer] Some thoughts, independent but not necessarily mutually exclusive... We know that there is a technology that runs off of, well, "blood magic". But does conventional technology exist as well? The Unblooded -- for lack of a term -- could do their own research and develop a parallel technology up to whatever level works for the story. Maybe crossbows, maybe guns. Could even be you work these discoveries into the story. A different angle. Perhaps some researcher (from either group) discovers an antidote or suppressant for the blood chemicals. This is your world's equivalent of mustard gas. Drop the gas into the battlefield, then a special squad of Unblooded can swarm in with their low-tech weps and reap a bitter harvest of the panicked enemy whose magic stopped working. Eventually word will get out and enemy armies will have the same technology, and you'll have some very confused battlefields as the presence of gas and wind strength give shifting advantage to Blooded or Unblooded. Third way. As others have mentioned, your hero could be an infiltrator or special-ops kind of guy. He could specialize in assassinations, poisoning water supplies, or all kinds of mischief. Update: Forgot to address how this blood magic works. If it's just plain "magic", then we're done. That's all you have to say. But let's get just a little sciencey here. Could be their blood has lots of alcohols in it, which can burn to power devices (this also explains why the guys without a high blood alcohol level are more observant ;D ). Could be the blood has a special protein which binds with radioactive elements, again to power devices. Unblooded have not this protein. In either case, a very interesting effect comes in to play. You said that technology runs off of this chemical. That means that it gets ... expended. It's a finite resource. So, how long can you power an exoskeleton before you start feeling all faint and anemic? If it's a short time, this gives another opening for the Unblooded on the battlefield. They have way more endurance than the Blooded. Normal Blooded battles must be short, as both sides will run out of blood chemical. Imagine if you kept a small, angry reserve of Unblooded waiting for the main fighters to grind down before they pounce... [Answer] Heavy equipment can only take you so far. Coincidental with Iraq war, there was a move to stop bayonet training for US forces because it was expensive and unlikely to ever be useful. Needless to say, when there was a steady two hours of bayonet work for platoons moving into Baghdad proper from the newly established base at the former international airport, the movement silently disappeared. US forces have the highest tech around, having superior firepower, air cover, tanks, and other vehicles. Neverthless, they had to get boots on the ground using 18th century techniques to take the city. We saw the same in Fallujah, and Mosul. The same theme played out in Vietnam. Ultimately, it requires boot on the ground to take a position. Airpower and ranged weapon support can augment ground troops, but cannot replace them. [Answer] Since anyone able to use this tech has to have the chemical in their blood, it makes sense that an enemy might develop a way to monitor for it (similar to how infrared goggles monitor for heat signs). Since your misfits lack the chemical, they will be invisible to this method of tracking. Not being able to use high tech doesn't prevent them from using knives, crossbows, blowpipes, etc. They might make excellent assassins or guerilla operatives. [Answer] After occupying a zone you need to pacify it. Like the United Nations peacekeeping forces. This means monitoring the civil people returning to their homes, making new laws, helping in the planning of the rebuilding and well, just being there as a symbol of an ended war. Your special forces could use "horses" for transporting themselves, it would be still a good idea in isolated places, mountainous terrain, etc. Also, mounted police forces are more intimidating than people on foot but less than people on an exo-skeleton, and they could use simple hand-to-hand weapons like batons to keep people in line without using excessive force. > > A side effect of not having this chemical in their blood makes this > population have heightened senses (still working on exactly why) > > > People with the chemical could be seeing in a too broad spectrum of light or hearing too many frequencies for hours after being connected to techonology. Your non technological people would be able to focus and they would seem to have heightened senses. [Answer] Covert ops is where your Un-Blooded types are going to shine. You mentioned that these guys are usually The scut-workers of the society since they cannot interact with tech. Well, even in really advanced societies, someone needs to mop up. Think about your janitors where you work. Can you remember their faces? How about the guys you hired to install your roof, or siding. Do you remember them? Chances are the answers to these questions is "No". That's what makes these guys ideal covert operatives. They could move about society all but unseen by wearing janitors coveralls or workman's outfits. Or rather, they would be seen, but not really noticed until the damage is already done. Send them in with primitive weaponry, or just plain tools. A screwdriver can kill just as easily as a pistol at close range. A hammer is an excellent bludgeon. They arrive to service an HVAC unit in a well guarded building. Guards won't bother them about screwdrivers and other workman's tools. They may frown upon knives, but what they are probably looking for is guns. An HVAC tech is probably going to be expected to go everywhere. Quietly take out guards, hit the supposedly well protected target and leave. That's just an example. Or, they could go in to "renovate" a building, setting in various traps that would only trigger in the presence of whatever it is in the blood that's special. A Janitor is also capable of moving around un-noticed. Even Secure facilities have to deal with dust. How hard would it be to maybe set some contact poison traps. Or to use improvised objects to bludgeon a target who is working late. Never underestimate the weapons of our ancestors. Sure, a rock tied to a stick won't vaporize a target from space, but it was certainly good enough to kill a caveman's rival, and when you get down too it, dead is dead. [Answer] It's hard to understand how your tech-deprived situation would work. Firearms, even the most modern ones, work on basic mechanical and chemical principles, so it's difficult to understand how something would not allow them to work that wasn't explicitly some kind of magic, and the same goes for many vehicles. Cars worked perfectly fine for quite a long time without any electronics in them, and if you go with a diesel engine you don't even need the electricity for spark plugs. If whatever affected this group made it impossible to use things like levers and springs and basic chemical reactions like combustion because they didn't happen in their presence, odds are the genes that caused the blood disorder would have been driven extinct long before the culture reached the stage of combat exoskeletons, or at least made it so rare that they don't make a significant presence. ]
[Question] [ In [this](https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/river-channels-on-three-worlds-reveal-a-history-of-shifting-landscapes/) article, scientists are investigating river channels on Earth, Mars, and Titan to see how rivers modify their landscapes. The following quote caught my eye: > > Rivers are, in a way, topography bystanders that always flow downhill. > > > But is the above statement necessarily true? In [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/11526/explaining-uphill-rivers-scientifically) question the OP asks about terrestrial rivers temporarily flowing uphill on a map, but most of those answers involve "resolution" issues (where average gradient is uphill but local gradient is downhill), pressurization, or alternate physics. The answers to the linked question are all local geographic tricks. OP there is focused on earth and cartography. I'm looking for physics on alternate worlds, not necessarily talking about water. Titan has hydrocarbon rivers, Europa has cryovolcanoes, Venus has molten rivers. Would it be possible that a certain combination of environment, chemistry and physics could create "uphill rivers" across significant distances and timescales? For instance, a naturally occurring [superfluid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfluidity) that flows upward between multiple reservoirs or something more exotic? EDIT: To clarify the parameters of the question, a [river is defined](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River) as a naturally occurring stream of water or other fluid flowing through a channel toward a reservoir, such as an ocean or lake. This means things like underground streams certainly classify as rivers, but something like a geyser does not (since it does not flow toward a reservoir). [Answer] There are a few possibilities that spring to mind: * Capillary action: This requires very thin spaces for the water to move through, it could be some absorbent rock with small regular spacing. You see this effect if you fill a bath and then hang a towel over the edge, the water will soak up the towel and drip from the end hanging outside the bath. * Very high surface tension (and viscosity): As long as the other side of the hill was lower and the surface tension of your liquid (we won't be using water here) is high enough then we can get the liquid to flow over the top of the hill and down the other side. This 'river' would be more likely something you could walk across than swim through though, something like pitch or treacle. * Magnets: Perhaps your liquid is a ferofluid (a liquid that becomes magnetic) and your hilltops are magnetised. Once the liquid gets up there maybe wind or just the potential energy are enough to push it down the other side. I doubt the last two are likely to occur and the first is not a 'river' as such, but I'm not sure what it is you're after so perhaps those ideas will fit. [Answer] Rivers do flow uphill. Twice a day, most of the time. [![Severn Bore](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NRKgx.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NRKgx.jpg) This is the Severn bore in England. The water on the right is the normal, downhill flow of the river; the water on the left is the incoming tide, flowing uphill. Tides are a pretty complex phenomenon, but the important part (for our purposes) is that the gravity of the Moon is causing water to flow differently on Earth. Let's define 'downhill' as 'towards sea level'. That's generally what it refers to. In that case, to get a river to flow 'uphill', or away from sea level, all one needs is a temporary or local effect that draws the water up along a slope in order to balance itself out. For instance, if a river encountered a gentle ridge that had a very, VERY, VERY dense object inside it, it might be pulled up to the top of the ridge, briefly flowing uphill, then drop away in a waterfall on the other side. Another possibility is something called a [Hydraulic Jump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_jump). This happens when fast-moving water reaches a slow-moving body, such as when a waterfall or rapids meet a slow-moving stream. The pressure of the fast-moving water forces the level of the slower-moving stream upwards, which could cause the river to briefly flow uphill. [Answer] [![Self-siphoning non-Newtonian fluids](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LHOmX.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LHOmX.jpg) from <https://www.teachersource.com/product/poly-ox-a-self-siphoning-gel/chemistry> These viscous fluids can siphon themselves. The intramolecular adhesion between the long molecules are such that the fluid can be dragged uphill as long as the ultimate destination is lower than the start. Polyox is the one you always see. The molecule has loads of intermolecular hydrogen bonds which is (I think) how it can pull itself along. <https://dowac.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2108/~/polyox-properties%2C-products%2C-and-structure-in-personal-care-applications> [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gHDWQ.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gHDWQ.jpg) Supposedly PVA slime (the glue/borax slime) is also self siphoning & it should be. But I bet it is tricky to get the consistency right, and I found no images. Super long carbohydrates like dextran should also be able to self siphon. It would be a gooey river for sure. If the waterfall part were slow and gooey enough I wonder if you could float up it against the current, Minecraft style? [Answer] How about a dense gas? You have something hot, a geothermal vent or something, at the bottom of a hill. Your liquid passes over this and evaporates but, because it is dense, still stays low down. With the heat rising up the hillside the gas moves with the air current until it gets to the top of a hill, where it is cooler, and condenses again and runs down as a liquid. So it isn't a river of water but more of a thick fog...but it might work. [Answer] What about an underground river? Of course it would have to go downhill eventually, but the water may be "sucked" uphill from a large reservoir, but exit the earth at some point far away that's lower than the reservoir. As for how it would form in the first place I don't know - perhaps it was once a more traditional underground river, but it dried up for a time, and then a huge flood started the water flowing "up" the channel (at this point the reservoir level was higher than the highest point of the underground channel) and pushed it far enough to come out the other side. After the flood receded, the siphoning process continued. Of course if the reservoir ever dried up enough that air could get into the tunnel, then the flow of the river would stop forever (or at least until the next superflood) [Answer] If river, of any kind, would flow "uphill" it would actually flow upward. The only reason water river goes downhill is that there is something beneath it. If the surface ends water flow down and we call it waterfall. So the easiest river of your kind to imagine is a river of hot air being obstructed by ceiling tilted as some degree. [Answer] I can think of three possibilities that would make an upward-flowing river: ## Bubble River When we think of rivers, we generally think of water flowing over rock or earth, down towards the ocean. But what if the "river" were lighter than air? A light gas would float upward, along a ceiling. If the gas originated deep in the earth, it would follow a long, winding channel, not unlike a river, just upside down. For a full cycle, the gas undergoes some chemical change at the end point - a "lake" of gas, that turns to liquid and runs down into the earth, eventually returning to the original path. Alternately, the river could be underwater; perhaps oil, floating on still water; it bubbles to the surface, following underwater channels. A river of oil would seem to run uphill, as the water it is displacing forces it up. ## Outside Forces The second way a river could flow uphill is external physical forces. Tides are one example, but a moon large enough to cause significant tides in rivers would be... dangerous. Instead, natural vents cause inverse waterfalls; as water, quickly speeding along a narrow river, flows over a thin vent, the force of the super-heated gas shoves it upward and forward, launching it into a pool a few feet above. The water continues to rush forward, possibly encountering other vents that jump it up again and again. Alternately, a natural wind, shaped by a rock cavern, whirls around over a pool, whipping the water into the air, where it splashes against the walls of he cavern. The water runs down from the top and is caught by a lip, which funnels the water out, now much higher than it was. A series of caverns like this could transport water up a considerable distance, as long as the wind is blowing - and there are places on earth the wind almost always blows. For a beautiful image, the water may be transported high into the air, then splashes down as a "vanishing waterfall" - as the water plummets, the wind simply blows it away. It's likely the water eventually makes its way down to a lake below, where the process repeats. ## Illusion of Height It could be that highly-pressurized water from deep in the earth, or water that's come from a great height, is forced through a natural nozzle; the water would arch upwards, appearing to travel up-stream. However, the enormous erosion forces would keep this from lasting very long, and technically, the water would always be flowing down - but for a brief moment, the water would jet upwards. [Answer] Maybe an underground pipe-like tunnel filled with water would work. The river would have a brief uphill journey, then a longer, steeper downhill journey so the downhill journey causes a 'vacuum' that sucks the water to go uphill a little. The tunnel the water is in would have to be airtight otherwise the water wouldn't get pulled up by the downhill stretch of river - air would be pulled in. This system would act like a hose where one end is in a body of water and the other end is much lower than the body of water. If the hose if filled with water, it keeps pulling water out of the body of water because of gravity. [Answer] A world with different physics might have that. The master of this, Greg Egan, has exactly that in his [Dichronauts](http://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/DICHRONAUTS.html) universe. He works out the consequences of a “double plus, double minus” space-time metric. More generally, you can invent reasons why some directions are different from others, either due to the nature of space itself or some external effect like the magnetic field of [Forward’s Dragon’s Egg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg). His web page includes an [explaination of the effect](http://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/00/DPDM.html#FUP) and a [physics sandbox](http://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/02/Interactive.html) where you can stack blocks and see it slide “up” the ramp in suitable conditions! > > Since the force of gravity is directed vertically downwards, we will define gravitational potential energy to be a positive multiple of the height of the object above the ground. This is consistent with the kinetic energy associated with vertical motion always being positive. So far, this is the same as the situation on the surface of the Earth. > > > But because we have chosen the horizontal direction of the ramp to be of the opposite kind to the vertical direction, the kinetic energy associated with horizontal motion will have the opposite sign to that for vertical motion. If the ramp is at a slope of less than forty-five degrees, an object sliding along the ramp will be moving more rapidly in the horizontal direction than the vertical, so its overall kinetic energy will be negative. That enables it to ascend up the ramp, because its gain in gravitational potential energy is balanced by its negative kinetic energy. I must say though, seeing it in a simulation of the new physics is a lot “harder” SF than any amount of handwaving! ]
[Question] [ Lets suppose that Antarctica at some point lost most of its ice (due to global warming or some other plausible reason) and now most of its bedrock surface is exposed. Compared to other continents, how would Antarctica look like? Could the land be cultivated to grow crops? what potential resources could be mined from there? and lastly, would humans be able to develop a sustainable society on there like they have done on other continents? [Answer] A 3D map showing the topography of the area was created [by NASA and the British Antarctic Survey](http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/map-shows-antarctica-without-ice-and-snow-130607.htm): ![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JUkXY.jpg) This is what the continent would look like if you instantly removed all the ice and snow. A map indicating elevation in color was created by the same team (from [here](http://www.antarctica.gov.au/science/cool-science/2011/bedrock-map-reveals-ice-free-antarctica)) : [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NvbCs.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NvbCs.jpg) Note that it's far from flat. There are quite a lot of mountains, which would not make any large-scale utilization easy. This latter picture shows just how and where land would first be flooded if the ice caps melted and the excess water stayed there. If all the ice melted, the other continents would also change in shape, [as National Geographic shows](http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/if-ice-melted-map). [Answer] I've noticed that it is mostly underwater, shallow seas coving much of the lowlands. It will rebound from the weight of the ice being removed, which made the techtonic plate sink lower into the mantle. But Michigan is doing that today, so it's not something you'll notice any time soon. In tens of thousands of years the land will rise. ![map 1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/58z3X.jpg) Here is what it looked like before the ice: ![map 2](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1HHer.png) But on that time scale (35 million years) the mountains will erode and new uplifts will take place, so it will be totally different. You might contrive a way to get more usable land, filling in shallows with sediment or new volcanic activity or something. As with the maps, the mineral resources are [detailed on the Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica#Economy). [Answer] If [the caps melted](http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/if-ice-melted-map) it would look like this: ![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bAIyG.jpg) It would look similar to south east Asia. It would contain similar elements to the other continents. If it was warm enough we could easily populate it like other continents. Currently antarctica belongs to no one, officially. But there are [several conflicting claims](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_claims_in_Antarctica). [Answer] The ice would have scoured most if not all of the soil away, so the revealed continent would resemble a huge rocky plain covered in gravel, for the most part. Without intervention, it would also remain like this for millennia as it would take that long for the rocks to weather, lichens and mosses to begin "dissolving" the rocks and soil to develop, allowing for the colonization of the continent by plants, and eventually animals outside of the coastal region. This process will work somewhat faster in the places where volcanoes currently exist, since the volcanic ash and pumice are soft and easily weathered, and also make for a rich base for soil to develop. The weather will be fairly harsh even without the ice (six month "seasons" of summer sun and winter darkness), and Antarctica gets little precipitation, so will be quite dry and arid. As for natural resources, there is no reason to expect that minerals, oil and coal might not exist, since Antarctica underwent the same processes as the rest of the Earth, and even spent time in higher latitudes aeons ago, so would have supported life at one point. Prospectors and miners would be living and working in a very tough environment, and the high costs of supporting a large work force with imported food and everything else would make much mining and oil drilling less competitive than stuff mined or pumped closer to the markets of the world. Depending on political and economic events, it might still be worthwhile to exploit Antarctic resources. ]
[Question] [ I plan on having an ocean-planet with a breathable atmosphere built into my current setting, orbiting its host-star (a K4v main-sequence star) a short distance beyond its frost-line, with oceans that are much deeper than those of earth, making up most of the planet's mass. It doesn't have any natural satellites, is about 1.4 times as massive as earth (8.361\10^24 Kg) has a radius of 1.3 Earth-radii (8,282.3 km) a rotational period of 4.4 days, inclination of 5°, and a surface-gravity of 8.129m/s². i'm not sure if those mass-radii ratios are entirely* realistic because planet-radii seem behave weirdly when it comes to ocean-planets, but those were the proportions i ultimately went with. My plan was for the planet to have surface-temperatures that constantly remain below 0°c, with minimum temperatures reaching up to -130°c. Now i know that our own solar system has a purported ocean-moon, i.e. Europa, but unlike the planet i planned on implementing in this setting, it neither has a liquid surface, nor a breathable atmosphere. I intentionally describe it as "liquid", because it doesn't necessarily have to have oceans made of water, it would be enough for them to be of a liquid which doesn't produce deadly vapors that could kill humans. My question would be: Is it possible for a planet like this to exist, and under what circumstances could this planet retain liquid oceans under temperatures below 0°c while still having a breathable atmosphere? Additionally, what could it look like given the question's parameters? (i.e. things like color of the oceans and atmosphere given the chemicals they're made of, or possibly the weather it might produce.) \*edit: You might realize that some of the responses look like as if they're referencing the question incorrectly. I edited the question heavily to make some more clarifications, hence the bounty as well. [Answer] Similar to the other answers, yes there are lots of liquids that melt below freezing and at a pressure of 1 atmosphere. # Liquid Possibilities ## Butane and Pentane You said that your planet had temperatures as low as -15ºC (5ºF). In that case, I would suggest using butane and/or pentane. These hydrocarbons have a low freezing point and could potentially work. As for the toxicity problem, both butane and pentane are quite toxic, but if you redesign your lifeforms that would be inhabiting this planet to cope with these hydrocarbons, it could work. ## Salt Water If you really don't want a toxic liquid, you could use very very salty water (like much more salty than ocean water which has a 3.5% salinity rate) and that is totally non-toxic. The way this works is that the water only freezes and the salt doesn't which decreases the freezing point of the water. So if you used a concentration of 27% (270‰) salt in your salt water, the ocean could stay liquid till -21ºC and you could adjust your lifeforms' biology accordingly to cope with the very high salt concentrations. Note: Also note that your salt will consist of mostly table salt ($NaCl$), but there could be $KCl$, $MgCl\_2$, $CaCO\_3$, $CaSO\_4$ (and other sulfates - $SO\_4^{2-}$), and some bromine (ex. $KBr$) and strontium (ex. $SrSO\_4$). # Atmosphere You edited your question to ask about the colors of the ocean, the weather, and the atmosphere. If you had a hypersaline ocean (which I would recommend more), you could have an atmsophere quite similar to ours with nitrogen, oxygen, and argon (from the decay of $^{40}K$ to $^{40}Ar$). You could make your atmosphere locally rich in some other elements, like the noble gasses (most likely neon) and maybe some chlorinated and flourinated compounds. If you choose hydrocarbons (butane and pentane), you can not have a oxygen rich atmosphere as the whole ocean would combust. Instead you could have nitrogen, argon, and some other gasses that you choose, though your gravity is too weak to retain any hydrogen or helium. You probably would have a little $CO\_2$ produced from the absorbtion of any oxygen by the hydrocarbons. The life on the hydrocarbon planet could always consist of obligate anaerobes (die in the presence of oxygen), aerotolerant organisms (don't die in the presence of oxygen but can't use it), or facultive organisms (can use oxygen and not use it and survive either way). You would also have a probem, because without free $O\_2$, you can't form $O\_3$ (ozone) which is one of the ways to combat UV radiation. However, since your planet is more distant from its star and your star is more red (K4V), this shouldn't be as much as a problem. Note: In all these scenarios, I am just trying to make the world's atmosphere similar to earth's. You can always add some other gasses to your atmosphere (noble gasses, flourinated and chlorinated compounds, sulfur compounds, etc.) # Weather In the salt water scenario, I'm pretty sure that the weather would be similar to earth's unless you plan on adding some other gasses to the atmosphere. The hydrocarbon scenario would have very different weather from earth (in ways I can't even predict) as there would be very little oxygen in the atmosphere and it would probably mostly be in the form of $CO\_2$. [Answer] The lower the atmospheric pressure, the lower the temperature at which water boils and becomes water vapor. At a low enough atmospheric pressure liquid water is not possible since water will be either solid ice or gaseous water vapor, and ice will sublimate directly to water vapor. A planet habitable for liquid water using lifeforms in general must have liquid surface water, and you want a habitable planet with liquid. Planets habitable for humans would be a subset of planets habitable for liquid water using life in general. So your planet could have many other liquids on it, but it must have large oceans, or even a world-wide global ocean, made of reasonably pure water. Thus the amounts of other liquids present must not be enough to poison hypothetical native lifeforms featuring in the story, and must not be enough to poison any humans who drink it (possibly after purifying it) - unless such poisoning is a plot point. And if the planet has a dense enough atmosphere water may be stay liquid at temperatures lower than the freezing point of water. Here is a link to a phase diagram of water: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_diagram#/media/File:Phase_diagram_of_water_simplified.svg> And apparently water freezes at about 0 degrees C at any atmospheric pressure similar to that of Earth. Water would remain liquid at minus 15 degrees C only at pressures about a thousand times higher than Earth's atmospheric pressure. The atmospheric requirements for your human characters, or any plants and animals with similar requirements, are described in Stephen H. Dole, Habitable Planets for Man (1964). Clearly humans could survive in an atmosphere with the right composition a few times as dense as Earth's atmosphere, but nowhere near as dense as would be necessary for water to be liquid at - 15 degrees C. <https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf> Clearly the oceans can't be made of pure water, they have to include other ingredients which act as antifreeze, preventing the mixture from freezing, and those natural antifreezes have to be non poisonous for any lifeforms which drink the water, including possibly humans if the story requires it. Neal lyer suggested using very, very salty salt water in the oceans of your world. I note that blood is water mixed with many other chemicals and so should have a lower or higher freezing temperature than water. And of course it is perfectly safe to drink non infected blood. On Earth, a lot of organisms which live in cold climates have natural forms of antifreeze in their bodies, often in their blood or sap. And since some organisms prey on those plants and animals, the natural antifreezes are not poisonous to Earth organisms, at least they are not poisonous to any Earth lifeforms which eat those planets and animals. > > Antifreeze proteins are ice-binding or ice-structuring proteins that prevent water from freezing by adsorbing to the ice surface and stopping the growth of minute ice crystals to large crystals in a non-colligative manner. The antifreeze proteins are found in species like fish, arthropods, plants, algae, fungi, yeasts and bacteria. The diversity, distribution and classification of antifreeze proteins were highlighted in this review. > > > <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27739374/> So perhaps the other chemicals in the ocean of your world might include a combination of salt, as suggested by Neil lyer, and ethanol as suggested by L.Dutch, and various antifreeze proteins, which together help the water to say liquid at minus 15 degrees C, and which are in combination are not poisonous to native life and perhaps not even poisonous to humans if the plot requires it. [Answer] There are many substances which are liquid below 0°C (and 1 atm pressure): * methane (melts at −182 °C, boils at −161.5 °C), * methanol (melts at −97.6 °C) and * ethanol (melts at −114 °C) are just three of them, which could be abundant enough to form an ocean on an hypothetical planet. But making a planet habitable without water is nowhere possible, as long as you want humans in the picture. Though the ethanol ocean would give something to party while waiting for the end, humans cannot live without water. Which is why there is such enthusiasm whenever ice is found on the Moon or on Mars: because it helps solving one of the major problems for a permanent base. [Answer] You say it doesn't have to be an ocean of water, but... if you want an atmosphere with oxygen and an ocean that won't produce toxic-to-humans vapors, you really don't have a lot of options. It has to be something that won't spontaneously react with oxygen, which means no hydrocarbons or carbohydrates. Bromine won't burn, but it's ridiculously toxic, doesn't have a freezing point that low, and you wouldn't realistically be able to get an ocean of it. A mixture of carbon tetrachloride, trichloroethylene, and chloroform would give you a liquid ocean with a low enough boiling point, but... chloroform. I trust you can see the problem there with human habitability. And again, good luck getting enough of that together to form an ocean. Perfluorocarbons would be human-compatible and have sufficiently low freezing points, and even come with the bonus of dissolving enough oxygen into the liquid phase that humans could not drown, because the liquid would be breathable. (Although they could still suffocate from the effort of breathing dense liquid, or freeze to death if they fell in.) But again... good luck collecting an ocean's worth of perfluorocarbons. And any of those options still leave open the question of where the oxygen in the atmosphere coudld come from--if the ocean doesn't contain oxygen in its chemical makeup, how are biological or any other sort of process supposed to free up a bunch of it in gaseous form? Your best bet is just making the oceans hypersaline. I am not certain just how much maximum freezing-point depression you can get by dissolving various types of salts in water, but [Don Juan Pond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Juan_Pond) in Antarctica provides an existence proof that hypersaline bodies of water can naturally exist at least down to -50C. [Answer] I know you asked for a liquid, but have you considered a ocean of sand? Sand can be fluidized with air, as certain other particles can. You could have an ocean that contains no water, and cannot freeze. You could have 'vents' that have a constant flow of hot gases from underground pumping into the sand, fluidizing it. If the air pressure is high enough on your planet (Likely preventing whatever you wanted to be there.) the water will remain liquid even below 0. You said no moon, but if you had a belt around your planet, like Saturn, you could have enough tidal force to 'knead' the ocean, keeping it moving enough to stay water. It is possible your water could have a alien form of algae that generates enough heat to keep the surface from freezing, but this likely stretches science. [Answer] ## Geothermal "Antarctica" Planet --- Your planet is very Earth-like in composition with a few minor differences: it has more water, substantially more geothermal activity, but absorbs less solar radiation. This combination of factors leads to atmospheric temperatures similar to those of Antarctica (with below-freezing temperatures for water-ice at the surface) but with geothermal activity keeping the oceans warm enough to circulate as liquid water. Eventually things will freeze solid as those geological processes wane over geological timescales... but there are still hundreds of millions of years for life to evolve and flourish in the meantime. ]
[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/248646/edit). Closed 5 months ago. [Improve this question](/posts/248646/edit) I'm writing a story that takes place after a nuclear winter that lasts for at least 25 years, and which caused much of the surviving population to become hunter-gatherers as a result of crop failure and the death of domesticated animals. During the war biological weapons were also used, which released man-made diseases that could also infect non-human animals so some people and other animals died from man-made diseases in addition to the people and other animals that died from the effects of the nuclear weapons. I'm curious about what mammals people would be able to hunt in the aftermath of the nuclear winter lasting 25 years and deadly diseases killing many of the mammals. [Answer] Mostly the same sorts of mammals that survived the dinosaur holocaust. Rodent-like animals that live underground. They can and do feed on roots, grubs, worms, etc, in tunnels, they make for themselves and are less affected by the weather. Frozen roots would keep plenty of sustenance without rotting, and underground life on a small scale would quite possibly thrive during this long winter. Large animals and probably any wild mammals that had to live in the weather probably wouldn't last long at all. But rodents again like rats and mice might be fine since they cohabit with humans who can warm their dwellings and provide food. [Answer] It is already suggested, but I would bet on small mammals that live underground and can eat anything they can find. After all, mammals were the survivors of the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs in a similar way to your plot. Immediately after the impact, there was a long winter due to the dust in the atmosphere that covered the Sun and thus killed plants and photosynthesis. Specifically, I would consider creatures like rabbits, ground squirrels, rats, mice, or moles, who might be more protected from both the initial blast and the subsequent radiation and disease. These animals can feed on a wide variety of food sources, such as roots, insects, and carrion, which might still be available in a post-apocalyptic landscape. [Answer] The environment during and immediately after the nuclear winter will be harsh: few plants, scattered on large territories, which will be a small base for a food chain. My guess is that the more opportunistic diet the mammal has, the higher the chances for it to survive because it will allow them to find food more often: carcasses, live animals, plants, and fruits, can all offer sustenance. Also, body size will play a role: smaller bodies will have an advantage since they will require less intake to be kept alive, or alternatively will do more with the same minimal intake. Raccoons and badgers come to mind as an example of mammals fitting both categories above. ]
[Question] [ It is the year 1800 technology-level. In this world, no one uses any kind of printing technology (moveable type, typewriters, block printing, lithography, etc). People still write, and need to automate writing. Printing: The art or process of making copies or superficial transfers by impression. Writing: The art or process of producing text (or equivalent to text) with the help of a moving instrument capable of creating a smooth, controllable lines. Pierre Jaquet-Droz's Writing Automaton is an idea, but if that route is to be used, it has to be made considerably more cheap, reliable and versatile. It should be comparable to printing of 19th century in terms of being cheap, reliable and versatile. 1. The process must look like (some form of) writing. 2. It should be capable of making vector graphics - complete lines (or equivalent). 3. It should be programmable via punched cards or specially shaped wheels or something similar. That is, mechanical and easy to make in early 19th century. 4. It should be cheap enough, so that books can be mass produced. This world has no printing technology specifically, but has writing technologies (like palm-leaf+nail, clay-tablet+stylus etcetera) in general. Given that no form of printing is used, what alternative technology can replace the printing press? --- Edit After seeking and obtaining the advice from senior users like @elemtilas (who kindly answered my meta-question), I am removing the unnecessary back stories which may act as distraction to the core question. With the honest belief that this is the correct course of action, I am editing the question. Further advice/suggestion is welcome. --- There are 3 best answers. I think that the best answers are those of (1) Radovan Garabík, since using physical yarn threads as the "lines" of writing, this scheme achieves equivalent of writing (2) UVphoton, since Autopen (or duplicating polygraph) can indeed automate writing (3) quarague, since this is the simplest (though not reader-friendly) technique. The answer of Radovan Garabík makes me wonder that a Mesoamerican industrialisation would have lead to some form of automated quipu production. I am selecting this as the best answer, because I cannot select multiple answers. [Answer] The [quipu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu) is a way of storing information in form of knots of strings, as used by pre-conquest Inkas. Although probably not writing, it can be adapted into one - or perhaps reinvented from scratch. Your entrepreneur devises a clever scheme where individual letters are represented by knots, syllables by "ligature knots", one short string is a word, short strings hanging out of a longer one form a sentence. It is in fact just a simple code of a "normal" orthography, but sufficiently weird to escape the wraith of the "authorities". Quite time consuming to knot manually, but very fast when using a modified [Jacquard loom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine) and pre-programmed punched cards. The timing is about right. And for some reason it tooks off like crazy, filling the natural gap left by the absence of printed material. (it does quite produce the "vector graphics", but hey, it does encode the information...) [Answer] If cost is a major concern, I would suggest to adapt the writing. Building a machine like described in Matthias answer that writes Latin alphabet characters is possible but very hard and expensive with 1800 technology. Making one for Chinese characters is even harder, mostly because there are so many more different characters. But going in the opposite direction and building such a machine that writes Morse code is much cheaper and simpler as it only needs to write a short and a long straight line. This does require more effort for the human beings that want to read things written by this machine but humans can learn. [Answer] Are you looking for something like this? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pqbFe.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pqbFe.jpg) Video-Link: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8YVlR_1hlo> This is pretty straightforward with electricity and digital data storage, it is a bit harder with 18/19th century technology. Energy shouldn't be too hard. Electricity isn't an option, but even at this time, there were some very sophisticated methods too handle mechanical power precisely. If the 18/19 century engineers were able to build clocks, it does seem plausible to power this device as well. It needs low but precise amounts of energy, just like a clock. Precision of the machine itself doesn't seem to be a problem, again, they were also building clocks. Data storage is a bit harder. It needs a lot of very specific commands to create smooth "handwritten" letters. So a lot of commands need to be hardcoded into the machine. This kind of storage and the processing would be much bigger than the whole machine, but I guess not impossible. After all, the letters don't need to look very smooth. The punched cards that would be fed into the machine don't need to carry that much information. It is sufficient when the input card tells the machine "write a capital A" and the machine accesses its internal data storage for all the specific commands that are required to do so. [Answer] The [Autopen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopen) is still used today... it is the evolution of a pantograph. Pantograph machines are still used today for engraving or CNC machining, but can also be used for writing and have the advantage that the scale of the output can be adjusted. It is just a series of mechanical linkages. I would propose that you model your writing factory somewhat after a textile mill in the 1800 time frame. The Jacquard loom was invented then and used punch cards to program the patterns in fabrics. (Sometime around then the Luddites were also smashing textile looms.) But perhaps a simpler approach is to scale up the pantograph and and have it writing multiple documents at once, with multiple pens all mechanically linked. There is the issue of friction and precision, but perhaps the scribe writing has really big forearms... Or a counter balance system using big weights, or a water wheel and providing mechanical assistance. If you scaled it up, there would probably be issues of having a massive polished granite floor to spread out the paper, and a lot of manual labor in keeping the pens filled and sharp etc. You would need to worry about foot prints etc. All of this is completely impractical, an engineering nightmare, and would be supplanted by a printing press when the revolution comes.... [Answer] Metal stencils [![metal stencils](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4kimf.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4kimf.png) [source](https://www.etsy.com/listing/715177907/vintage-alphabet-letters-in-very-thin?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_c-craft_supplies_and_tools-canvas_and_surfaces-stencils_templates_and_transfers-stencils&utm_custom1=_k_CjwKCAiAkfucBhBBEiwAFjbkrw68ajH3X5QRoglPyl3eViX33Fqvk1RdOt3GfmYmcZJYL4yblWOXxRoCIlwQAvD_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_12573354959_124822072732_507851843989_pla-297783379911_c__715177907_120284571&utm_custom2=12573354959&gclid=CjwKCAiAkfucBhBBEiwAFjbkrw68ajH3X5QRoglPyl3eViX33Fqvk1RdOt3GfmYmcZJYL4yblWOXxRoCIlwQAvD_BwE_) Depicted: metal stencils for fancy printed letters. For this scheme the metal stencils would have cursive writing. The original is handwritten in flowy letters on metal foil or thin plate. Copper could work. Lead would work well. The letters are then cut through the metal. You could do this with a sharp tool (on lead or thin copper) or etch with acid. I like the idea of the copiers in your world writing cursive directly on the lead sheets using sharp knives which they periodically whet on a stone. Now you have metal stencils. You can arrange them in a frame and place them over paper then apply ink or spray from above. Alternatively you could use no ink and produce the letters on the paper with heat, toasting the paper through the holes in the metal. You might pretreat the paper with something that toasts fast - this is the principle behind [secret writing with lemon juice.](https://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments/invisibleink.html_) Your cursive metal stencils can be used to produce many paper copies. When the need for those words is done they can be rolled back into foil and reused for the next day's newspaper. --- Ok. I deduce that "writing" must be produced by a human type writing instrument drawn across the paper. You system will still use metal stencils. The instrument will follow the cut channel in the stencil. It will be similar to this groove calligraphy set except there will be entire cursive words and the groove is a channel through the metal. The writing tool extends through the channel and writes on the paper beneath. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1Ueis.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1Ueis.png) <https://groovecalligraphy.com/products/reusable-copybooks-1> The problem with cursive is that sometimes the writing instrument goes backwards. A 4 dimensional vector force (up, down, right, left) is applied to the writing instrument and a turning clock gear determines what force is to be applied at a given time after start. The force applied governs the general direction and the channel in the stencil provides the fine tuning. All letters are connected. Words are connected via a characteristic horizontal line. The writing instrument is not lifted from the page. A line is written left to right and then the instrument drops to the next line which is written right to left. Horizontal lines of text are connected by characteristic vertical lines. There are no accents, no dots and no crosses on letters. ]
[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. Assuming a very large device was constructed which could harvest up to 20% of the mechanical energy of a tornado. It is a mobile platform of some sort, and one or several of these are ready to deploy in a prone region such as America's tornado alley. Assume the simplest scheme: the device turns the force of the tornado into rotational work, by deploying some construction of large vanes, kites, or other deflecting surface capable of withstanding the forces. On placing itself in the center of the cyclone, it is able to draw off 20% of the rotational energy and store it before the cyclone wanders away. The construction is unknown at this point. It is designed to handle the most common EF-2 cyclones, and can shut down and secure itself against larger ones. For calculation purposes, it can complete the harvest by maintaining itself within the center of the cyclone for two minutes, then the funnel wanders off with 75% of its original energy (the process leaves 5% lost as deformed metal, heat, deafening acoustic energy, and eroded metal). [![EF-2 tornado strikes near Des Moines, Iowa, USA](https://i.stack.imgur.com/htpf7.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/htpf7.png) While the energy capture device itself may currently be beyond our technology, the question simply concerns a storage mechanism that can recover as much of this huge rotational work as possible, while being accessible to a mobile platform (the unpredictability of tornadoes make it impossible to pre-stage your energy batteries, or the device, within some large construction). As such, the hard science tag only assumes the input of a known quantity of energy at a known rate from an unknown location or time. # What would be the most efficient means to store captured tornado energy given the high rate of delivery, and inability to predict the location? [My worlds are largely wind-powered](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/224764/hell-trains-powered-by-a-cold-reaction-what-can-the-condensers-use) so this answer can serve several applications generally. [Answer] ## Flywheels Handwaving the many reasons why storing a tornado in a bottle (metaphorically) would not work, and would be an impractical way to gather energy, if you were going to try, based only on the parameters you’ve provided, I’d recommend flywheels. * Are already a rotational form of energy storage * Are heavy but can be portable * Can charge very rapidly / under high impulse Once the portable flywheel rig is set up and the tornado has passed, you can transfer the power to longer term storage e.g batteries at your leisure. [Answer] Gravity Use windmills to capture the storm, then pumps to lift something like water from a low place to a high place, as in [pump-storage hydroelectric dams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity). It is a better way to store [normal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity) wind than tornados, but tornados tend to come with high winds. [Answer] A general alternative is "weight lifting", you use the energy you harvest to lift many tons of weight to a higher altitude; and then the controlled lowering of this weight, which can start and stop as needed, generates electricity. A practical implementation is already in use: Excess solar power is used to pump water from a "low" reservoir to a "high" reservoir during the day, and during the night, controlled draining of the high reservoir into the low reservoir, through turbines, generates electricity at night. These are lake-sized reservoirs, obviously, often replenished by rain. In the high reservoir, this is a bit of free energy. The reservoirs can be built, by digging for the low one, and using the material to build the high one. Or think of something like the Hoover Dam; which operates on nearly the same principle, except we aren't pumping to fill it; a river running downhill fills it for us. This is a way to turn intermittent energy into energy on demand; although there is about a 15%-20% loss in the energy due to unavoidable inefficiencies in pumping. (That's why they use solar power directly if they can, to avoid that loss, but they are designed to over-generate by a significant factor so they can pump and cover the night needs.) [Answer] You have a big problem. First, we need to know how much energy will need to be stored. According to the NIH, [the typical EF2 tornado has 88 TJ worth of energy](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4489157/), so 20% means storing 17.6 TJ. How much is that? Well, converting 17.6 TJ to TNT equivalent (4.184 GJ per tonne TNT) gives 4.206 KT of TNT roughly 30% of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Energy storage systems are often expressed in terms of kWh. 17.6 TJ is 4.89 GWh So, ignoring the other costs just for the moment, what is the cost of grid-scale storage for 17.6 TJ. According to the [National Renewable Energy Laboratory](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/76097.pdf) in 2021, and using the low-end of the range for storage costs. ``` Lithium Ion 352 USD/kWh Lead Acid 380 USD/kWh Sodium-sulfur 599 USD/kWh Pumped Water 150 USD/kWh Compressed Air 97 USD/kWh Flywheel 4320 USD/kWh Thermal 20 USD/kWh ``` Pumped Water hydro storage is clearly not portable. Thermal and compressed air also also very unlikely to be portable - knocking out the 3 cheapest methods. So, what it the cost for lithium ion storage - 5.89E9 \* 352 / 1000 = 2.07E9, or over 2 billion dollars. Though this is a stretch, it becomes much less feasible when you consider have much time you have to charge your storage system. Attempting to charge that much lithium ion storage in 2 minutes would result in a very large fire. Other storage systems would have similar problems. You need to store energy at the rate of 146.7 GW - 6.5 times that output of the Three Gorges Dam. Regardless of you storage system, you need to be able to store the power at the rate of 146.7 GW - this will never be true in a portable device that you must guide into the storm path. An F2 system has a remarkable amount of energy. I would say the nobody is ever going to capture that tornado [Answer] You want to harvest static electricity and temporarily store it in super-capacitors. These can be charged very quickly and will hold their charge for a few days (depending on the capacitor design). It would essentially look like one of those mega trucks. You wheel it in front of the tornado path, charge your capacitors, then drive it off to some central location to offload the energy. This would be similar to a Van de Graaff generator (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator>) but the mechanical element is already provided by the tornado. As the air particles drag though your apparatus, an enormous amount of static will be created which you can then store in super capacitors (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor>). Capacitors are very elastic as well so you can do this over and over with minimal degradation. As a bonus, it should be possible to design a static generator with no moving parts, which will last much longer (you know, if your energy collecting truck doesn't get hit by a shed) Edit: As noted by @Goodies, the specific energy of capacitors is low in comparison to other storage mediums. The wikipedia page has the higher end at about 100 Wh/kg. Supposing we want to store 1 GWh (for simplicity) we would need 10 million kgs of capacitors. Considering that the worlds largest truck (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BelAZ_75710>) can load a meager 450000 kg, you would need about 20-25 of these bad boys working together to harvest the tornado. [Answer] Ignoring like others, the issue that your device isn't ever exposed to more than a small proportion of its highly movable and unpredictable rotational energy, I reason this way for my answer...... @GaryWalker outlines the extreme high rate of charging or storage implied. @Amadeus explains his lifting a large mass against gravity in theory works but in practice wouldn't be much help. # Solution - large volumes of stored/possibly somewhat pressurised air Building on those, I'd suggest your device converts rotational energy into a pump, and pressurises an immense air container made of some elastomer. Here's why: * Lifting an object stores energy but is limited by the mass involved, you want a lot of mass for it. Pressuring air also stores energy very nicely but you don't need to carry round a 100,000 ton block of concrete or steel (or whatever mass it is) for the purpose. Its far more scalable. * Its also much better suited to this situation. Air can be pressurised by fans at very high rates, if the fan is adequately powered to rotate fast - just think of a jet airplane's turbofan engine. Now power an array of them with vertical intakes, by rotation from a tornado. (The engines can be stripped right down as you need a gearing element and something the tornado will rotate to turn it, and they never leave ground level so they can move easier or form from individual carriers that pack together and move cohesively or something to track the storm) * Airbags can accept ultra fast pressurisation easily if well designed and large. They'd need restraining or the storm would catch them, that's easy enough, exercise for the OP. The elastomer design ensures that they have a tendency to deflate, makes extracting energy easier, although really all that's needed is to roll them up and use the emerging air jet. * Simple and fairly foolproof. # It's important to note the purpose of pressurisation in this solution. We are using pressure to quickly store huge volumes of air very very fast, while the storm rages, not to store it at ultra high pressures or liquefy it. (Those are options, of course, for variant answers). Air can take immense pressurisation, and we need that for rapid storage. But really you only need a big airbag, because even without high pressure storage, as you roll it back up, you'll create a powerful air jet to reuse, purely because of volume of stored air, even if not especially pressurised. (Think of the blast of air from an airbed as you sit on it to get the air out when you pack it away) *So the pressure is much more about ability to capture ultra-high air volumes at an ultra-high rate, which may* be at some pressure (but doesn't really need to be), than about storing it at high pressure**. So the bags don't have to be able to resist huge pressures, except at the point of intake. # Other physical side effects Also note you'll have thermal effects. Compressing and decompressing does that. We can handwave those, but really, the only high pressure process here is compression, and we design the intake fan system to dispel thermal effects. they'll get hot, and the incoming air will be a bit warm I guess, but not super hot. The outgoing air is released at a much slower rate, so that's much less an issue. You could have condensation effects too, but that's veering more to hard science/realism, and if they're ignored in a story nobody will notice. ]
[Question] [ I am trying to design a "progressive", every high schooler's dream high school/boarding school where grades 9-12 attend (but could make it just the more senior years if that would work better). Through this setting one of the concepts I'm trying to explore is the opposite of gender segregation i.e. having coed dorm rooms (2 students to a room) available for students (they can choose non-coed rooms also), mainly for plot/world building reasons, but also because I think it is an interesting concept to see how this could realistically work if implemented, either now or in the near future. Based on my research the main reasons this isn't widely implemented (even at most colleges/unis): * Hygiene eg. boys at the height of "sexually discovering themselves", girls challenges with menstrual cycles * Privacy/modesty eg. most girls especially would not be comfortable rooming with another boy, let alone a random one they do not know because simple things like getting dressed each morning would suddenly become embarrassing especially if the roomies start to gossip about each other * Parent concern eg. most parents would not provide consent to allow their kid to room with someone of the opposite gender to prevent distractions, unwanted pregnancies etc So looking at these 3 factors, I may be missing something, but the bottom two feel quite a bit old fashioned and contradictory in many ways. Here are my reasons. In regards to modesty/privacy, public baths/showers are already very common for all ages (although they are gender specific). With gender specific showers and toilets in place (separate to the dorm rooms), I find it hard to believe that some kind of solution couldn't be added into dorm rooms to make getting dressed more private eg. a modesty screen, some kind of alcove etc? The parent concern I understand, however where this is contradictory to me (at least for the senior years) is that the majority of students will be exposed to parties and other social activities which have similar if not worse threat of debauchery. Of course the main difference is that it isn't on a daily basis. But I wonder if the fact that should this become a daily norm, whether it would normalize and trivialize such things similar to how society opinions of modesty change when it becomes more common place eg. when the bikini first came out it was considered scandalous, but now no one cares. Hygiene is definitely the toughest one and I can't see any real solution to not make it awkward/ uncomfortable, other than relying on the student's maturity, educating them and putting certain rules in place. Although that said, I think this one has the potential to be very embarrassing whether rooming with the same or opposite gender, and plenty of boarding schools already exist with kids rooming together. Looking at what currently exists that is similar; in the past few years there appear to have been some boarding type schools that introduced coed dorm rooms (mainly to cater for LGBT). But as far as I can see the arrangement was each student having their own room, which wouldn't work in my case because a lot of the dialogue and characterization happens in the dorm rooms, and I would prefer to avoid monologues. So is there a way to make this kind of setting work semi-realistically or should I rethink things? Existing Culture/Ethics My thoughts were that this would be an international type school open to elite students from anywhere in the world. Assuming they are able to pass the entrance exams. So the culture would be quite diverse and multicultural, hence the option to choose between coed & non-coed. Due to the "exemplary student" nature of the school I thought it would be a good opportunity to explore some more progressive ideas on how a high school should be and how it's students should be treated i.e. NOT as immature, irrational kids who have no control over themselves, their actions and are incapable of making mature decisions. Dorm Rules I have very little knowledge of how to design a high school (hence the reality check) but below were my initial thoughts on how this could work. 3 main sections including a non-coed female dorm, non-coed male dorm and coed dorm. Students would choose whether to live in a coed or non-coed dorm, and require parental consent. The roomies would also be chosen as roomies, not based on any relationship status. I thought perhaps roomies would be chosen by the school itself by default, with an option to change in very exceptional circumstances. The changing of dorms would be strictly limited to prevent chopping and changing, firstly by school rules but also by limited availability of spare rooms, which I imagine would also make sense financially? Students would also go through a thorough induction style education piece when commencing to understand the above. Any kind of "bad behaviour" I imagine would be punished similarly to any other high school i.e. detention, suspension, expulsion etc. And due to the elite/exemplary nature of the students I would imagine this would assist in the rules being followed, since the amount of effort required to get in, wouldn't be worth the risk of getting suspended or worse. Answer Goals What would generally need to be in place for a modern day high school to be able to function with this kind of feature? Whether that be rules and education (to guide the students), processes or policies (to enable the school to deal with any issues easily and efficiently), facilities or building design/layout (not sure why this is necessary, but most dorms are very specific about their layouts and where they put coed and non-coed dorms and rooms). I would like to reconfirm (for some) that this question is in no way about encouraging sexual activity or creating some kind of bizarre love hotel. Please do not comment or answer with this kind of mind set as it adds no value to the topic and misconstrues the aim. There are many modern day contexts where coed rooms exist (see answers below for examples). The intention is to explore how a world can be setup where a similar arrangement exists in a high school like dorm, nothing more. [Answer] All you need is a culture that normalizes this. It was incredibly common across most cultures throughout the ages for co-ed habitation, and not just in a school setting. People tend to minimize how different life has become. So. Some examples to show why this is entirely possible, and how to offer even the more prudish parents (and students) all the privacy and space they might wish. First. Communal bathing. Even today, it's common enough in some places. <https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/german-bathhouse-culture> But historically, even more so--dependent on a lot of factors, of course. Like who built the bathhouse. <https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20121129-the-origins-of-bathhouse-culture-around-the-world> If The Church built it, it is about modesty and separation (in a Europe-centric world). But in cultures where nudity was seen as normal? Japan's history I am considerably more familiar with with regard to this. It was common enough for everyone to bathe at a bathhouse, and if it was warm enough they would walk there naked (pre World War 1, because things have changed depending on where in Japan and a whole lot of factors). I believe in Nordic countries this was fairly common as well, even today (no sources, just hear-say from friends from those countries) Should this be an academy of international repute? One that might attract people from different cultures? Then might I suggest: Shared bedrooms (for 2, 4, or more), with bed, desk, and closet. But single-occupant bathrooms/showers. You need not have communal baths, in the traditional sense. Or you can have communal bathing (single-sex or mixed), and offer single occupant stalls for those who aren't comfortable with that. How do you prevent pregnancies? The same way you would in every co-ed school: You can't. Unless you have more teachers than students (and a teacher accompanying each student at every hour of every day), they are going to find a moment to do whatever they want to do. So there needs to be a level of trust. Either you educate them in the risks and let them make an informed decision (and make birth control readily available, and remove all plausible stigma from requesting as much). Or you will risk pregnancy. And that isn't a teen thing, that's a human thing. [Answer] I really like Alexandra William's example, but I'll expand on it a bit. If you have a dorm designed like the modern college dormitory(at least in the USA), where each room can be locked off, with 2-4 people sharing a room, then it's going to happen. On the other hand, if you have larger, where 10-20 people share a large cabin in a common room, and they all sleep in the same common room, with no partitions or locked off room, I would guess less sex would happen. That being said, they'll just find another place, so like Alexandra Williams said, it's primarily a trust thing. Education will be paramount. A cultural shift might make it work too, as the commenters have brought up a couple times already. [Answer] The Danish military has mixed gender sleeping for conscripts/basic training at some bases. While there may only be a slight overlap in the age groups (min. age 18), some of their implementation details may be relavant: * 4 person rooms with a single bathroom shower * If the room is mixed gender, there needs to be at least 2 females <https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/soldater-af-begge-koen-bor-taet-i-militaeret-jeg-har-ikke-noget-problem-med-gaa#!/> (in danish, but has some pictures of the rooms) I have personally experienced it, and it works great. A 2-person mixed gender room would likely cause some trouble. The lack of "two-person privacy" helps ensure that there is no funny business going on. [Answer] In the reasonably affluent parts of the Western world, we are conditioned to expect privacy as the default setting. One to a room. Cohabitation is expected to be either * a choice, by a couple in an intimate relationship, or * a cost-saving necessity, for people who are not considered eligible for entering an intimate relationship. Among those who are not eligible would be same-sex relatives of similar age, little children in mixed groups, little children with their parents, and for brief times, or out of dire economic necessity, unrelated adults of the same sex. But that is a cultural matrix. I recall reading about an emigrant ship in the 19th century where there would be one cabin for the unmarried males, and one for unmarried females and married couples. The social expectation/presumnption, obviously, would be that a married man would not philander. So you would have to decide into which category your boarding school falls. Either there is a strong expectation that nothing untoward happens, reinforced by strict supervision, or there is permission for things to happen, reinforced by habits and norms to manage the consequence. There could be initial same-sex assignments, plus rules for changing that. "Official couples" could apply to move together, there would be rules for handling breakups, lots of interesting social dynamics to write about. By the final year, is there a social expectation that hetero individuals would have found a member of the opposite sex? What about those who miss out, yet do not identify as gay? What are the social consequences for males or females who 'swap rooms' more frequently than others? Are the males admired and the females ostracized, or is it more equal? ]
[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/215122/edit). Closed 2 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/215122/edit) In many movies and animations, magic is overpowered. Most of the time, magicians could only be countered by other magicians. I'm building a medieval fantasy world where magic exists. In this world, magic isn't the only efficient tool in combat. Sword fighters and archers have a fair chance of winning in combat with a magician. Some people might even choose to use average medieval weapons depending on their physical abilities or lack of magical abilities. There are many different types of magic, three of the most hard-to-balance being: 1. Elemental magic - In the media, elemental magic is often portrayed quite powerfully (for example, Elsa's ice powers in Frozen). In my world, elemental magic is basic magic that people could learn at a young age. It could only be powerful when the magician has skill (obtained through practice and talent). 2. Healing magic - Healers aren't a necessity to win a battle, but having a healer on a team or in an army gives a good advantage. 3. Transformation - Transforming to animals. But it shouldn't be that transformers could never be caught; They shouldn't be able to just turn into small animals and escape. Can there be any rules or limitations to these types of magics, or just magic in general, to make it balanced? The requirements are: 1. The rules or limitations have to be simple and should be able to be summarized in just one or two sentences. 2. They don't have to be creative or original, but they should allow the creative use of magic. I don't want game-like magic where people just use a set of skills and summon fireballs. The magician should be able to use their magic differently depending on the immediate situation. 3. Even the few exceptionally skilled magicians shouldn't be able to destroy armies or do insane things. 4. Magic is useful enough to be used during wars, but armies without magic should be able to fight armies with magic with a fair chance. They simply are less likely to win. 5. Some people still would prefer using only medieval weapons. There are people that can't use magic at all (absolute lack of talent), and they should be able to fight magicians. One example I was thinking of is that elemental magic can't create elements, only "bend" existing ones (for example, in order to use water magic, there has to be a body of water nearby). But the flaw is that some elemental magic is impossible or impractical; electric magic is only possible during lightning storms, and fire magicians will have to carry around torches. [Answer] 1: artillery magic. By adding a relatively long time to "fire" a magic spell they become artillery rather than direct combat murder vehicles. 2: limited power storage. Sure you can kill that guy with a fireball, but what about the next guy? You'd better save your magical power for when you really need it and rely on more normal combat until then. 3: mechanical magic. Ties in with number two somewhat. Magic is about manipulating mechanics, the more you manipulate the more energy and skill it takes. Throwing a fireball takes a lot of energy, lighting candle oil on fire and launching that instead is far more efficient and less cumbersome. 4: no perfect spells. Casting a spell requires skill and concentration, and mistakes alter the spell in some way. It can be less powerful, lack the range, go off-target etc. 5: no "thought" magic but "think" magic instead. Most magic is what I classify as "thought" magic. A healingspell will simply heal any seen and unseen injuries for a certain amount without any further intervention of the caster. A thrown magic missile or fireball will always hit the exact perfect spot the mage intended (unless the target tried to dodge). If the mage has to aim the spell himself then shooting a straight-flying fireball across a battlefield has a high inaccuracy unless the mage is also highly trained in said accuracy. Think magic means you need to know what you are doing to some extend. To heal a wound you need to know its there and have some idea what needs to be done to heal it. To launch a fireball you need the knowledge to light the very air on fire and cause this fiery disturbance to move and stay together until it reaches the target, which could in turn mean there are a dozen different fireballs simply because the understanding and techniques are different. 6: use "low power" magic instead of epic magic. Wolverine's magic lets him heal in seconds, but a superpower that lets you heal in a day is already a ludicrously powerful magic ability. Instead of throwing fireballs you might be able to throw a candleflame, but applied right that is still immensely useful in combat. Similarly the ability to for 1kg telekinesis close to your body and halving in power every meter away would seem insignificant compared to the force, but used the right way it can be an immensely useful tool without making othets obsolete (even when limiting it to outside of the body of your opponents). [Answer] In the same way a warrior cannot possibly swing his sword on the battlefield for hours straight while continuously chopping enemies in half or a horse cannot gallop 12 hours in a row, the amount of power involved in the effect of the spell, intended as energy per unit time, cannot exceed what the caster can actually produce with their body at every moment. To make an example, if a fit wizard can produce an output of 500 W, each spell he casts cannot exceed that amount of power, so for example no melting 1 ton of iron by snapping a finger. And casting several of those spells in a row will inevitably lead to fatigue and tiredness. [Answer] Time By increasing casting times you can decrease the usefulness. Transformation needs to be deliberated beforehand. (Elemental) magic needs to be tactically prepared and can't be done 'on the fly'. Healing can take a long time, depending on the wound. Healing a dozen kinds of tissue, replenishing blood of the right kind and all those can be incredibly difficult and time consuming, making it a long 'after battle' magic. Concentration To successfully do magic, you need concentration. That can already be difficult in normal situations. Now imagine they are tired, exhausted or drugged. Even if that is the case, natural instincts can seriously decrease the ability to concentrate. In a fight body is set in a fight or flight response. In a real battle, with someone trying to kill or maim you, it'll be hard for nearly all people to stay calm and concentrate. Small but potentially powerful Small things can, in the right situation, be incredibly powerful. A beam of normal light to blind, a slippery surface to lose footing or a tiny distracting magical tap on the forehead. All can be used to distract, confuse or unbalance the opponent. That gives a mage the chance to strike back with normal weapons. It can also be lethal. If you can get close enough and put a tiny force for a short moment in the main artery of the neck, the opponent can lose consciousness. Interfere with the ballance in the inner ear tube and cause them to feel like they're spinning. Use their own momentum to cause damage, or cool their blood for a minute or so to cause them to collapse. The options for difficult, potentially effective methods are there in spades. You need creativity, varying knowledge and concentration to pull it off. Some are completely harmless when you fail, others can still have some effect. Fireballs, earthquakes and beams of light are often seen as staples of magic. Yet you can do with so much less. Indirect effects Indirect effects can be powerful. Boost the mood of armies, make your leader look energetic and fresh, make the motivational speach reach far with power. They can do a lot while never touching an enemy. Training and 'normal' circumstances An experienced man with a dagger can defeat an amateur with a sword. Like everything, it takes long hours of regular practice to become good. Having this power can be an addition to your arsenal, or your sole way to attack. Only with creativity, skill and concentration you can beat an opponent. Soldiers were quite often tired from marching and feed isn't easy to get. If you need to be rested and well fed for magic, you need to put a lot more resources in them to be effective. That means even if they're powerful, the army that can be sustained is much smaller if you want effective magic users. That way an opposing army with identical resources can have a numerical advantage if they do with less or no mages, or possibly have better material like horses. [Answer] /The rules or limitations have to be simple and should be able to be summarized in just one or two sentences./ Magicians are freaking weak. Fire magicians can make their hands be on fire, and slap you with them. Preferably on your head so your hair catches fire. Earth magicians can throw rocks without the hassle of being a good rock thrower. Healers can make bleeding stop and that is it. Animal transformers transform into random animals, and playing the odds the animal often turns out to be a bug. [Answer] ## Give and take To summarize the rule of magic: That which which you give must be taken from elsewhere. I'll be using a few examples for each kind of magic to explain. For each example a mage's area of influence would be limited to a range like that of the vitruvian man. I'll have you decide how quick or how tiring the whole process is. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SUcGZ.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SUcGZ.png) Elemental: Fire. In order to produce fire you have to take the heat from somewhere else and bring it together to perform what you require. Setting a log on fire would require you to take the heat from the environment or from living things, making things colder or freezing in them process if too much is taken. This could be done in reverse to cause the opposite effect, taking heat away, causing the intended object to freeze but making the air hotter or whatever you've chosen to dump your heat into. Electricity. You don't need a storm for this. The earth's magnetism provides everything you need. Simply coil a bunch of copper wire around your mage's arms, have them swing that stuff around like madmen, and the magnetic field should interact with the coils in a sufficient enough level, however small, for the mage to collect the electromagnetism into their hands or something for use as an eventual shock. Alternatively, a staff coiled up in copper wire, or have a bunch of mages do this at the same time and have each of them hand over the electric potential to a single mage who will then be the one to fire off the lightning bolt. Mages should be careful to not burn/freeze/electrocute themselves when taking/giving the various energies. Healing: Healing can be done in one of two ways. Using one's own flesh to heal someone, or using someone/something else's flesh to heal. You can also heal yourself by taking the biological matter from someone/something else. Healing magic requires medical knowledge to perform effectively, otherwise the healer may very well eventually kill someone due to blood clots forming or incompatible biomatter not agreeing with the person's immune system or veins or organs simply not working like they should. This is also why simply healing yourself or others on the battlefield tends not to be done, because you've no way to really confirm whether the flesh would be accepted or if you've done the healing correctly in the destination body in the heat of battle and as such it is only done in severe emergencies, where at camp you can use the flesh of relatives or those most likely to be compatible to perform the healing and have the time to confirm that the healing won't eventually kill them. You don't need the flesh or bone or organ to come from a still living person, you can simply use that which has been harvested beforehand though needless to say the matter still needs to be somewhat alive, which is where elemental magic and healing magic can work together in order to freeze or keep cold biomatter for later healing use. Transformation: Transformation magic throws the laws and practices of healing magic out the window, by intently taking in incompatible flesh from another species to give yourself or someone superhuman abilities, strength of a bear or the protection from the scales of a crocodile, or the night sight of the eyes of a cat. Transformations kill the animal the mage takes their newfound abilities from and eventually kills the mage or person that has taken on the bodyparts/form, and requires an exceptional healer to put everything back together in the right way which may still eventually kill the person who transformed due to the healer missing something. Greater medical/veterinary knowledge will increase the effectives of both healing and transformation magic(and the survival rate of the patients/affected) while greater thermodynamic or otherwise scientific knowledge on the laws of the universe will increase the effectiveness of elemental magic. Considering your setting is medieval, both of those will sadly be lacking and as such using magic has inherent risks and limits imparted by how much the mage knows. [Answer] Every action has a negative reaction. Every spell interacts with its predecessor and successor. If you cast a fireball, somewhere in the world a freezing cloud destroys the harvest, if you cast heal, somewhere somebody is cursed with sores. What good is survival, if the village you come to next, hates wizzards and wants to hang you, for the incidents. What if magic, by its very nature always results in evil. One spell interacting with the next, amplifying it, prevents magic usages, simply because overdoing it in short time, might lead to some sort of magic tschernobyl. Your whole party is engulfed in a everlasting fireball, that heals them while roasting them and melts theire items into slack. [Answer] Something that we hit on was the use of materials. Various materials help/hurt various magic. For example, iron/steel help TK (telekinesis), but block other forms (including healing!). A combat mage was that. Crystals help some other forms. Smoke and mist helped both summoning and illusions. [Answer] Think of magic like it's fuel just floating in the atmosphere. In order to cast spells, you draw or channel some amount of that fuel. More powerful spells use more of the fuel. Eventually, you deplete what's in your immediate vicinity, and your only options for casting spells is to wait for more from the surrounding area to slowly fill in the void you created, or to shift locations. It's kind of like oxygen in a room with a flame. A candle uses just a little bit that you will never run out, but a fire in the fireplace will eventually suffocate itself if there is no fresh air to replenish what is in the room. Since it's a temporarily limited resource in intense situations like battles, it creates an interesting scenario where mages might be forced into choosing the tradeoffs between damage, defense, and healing. It also creates the potential for interesting story elements where some areas have high quantities of magic and others have none. It could be natural and related to whatever the source of magic is in your world. It could be a sign of powerful magical users in the area. Or it could be related to plants/animals that interact with magic. Etc. [Answer] Only a single Great Mage in 1500 years As ancient myths confirm, really powerful mages are very rare. Once in 1500 years or so you have one skillful Great Mage like Merlin, turning wars upside down. This person will have pupils, who are going to be strong mages, but not as powerful as their master. There's a limited number of kings to serve, so after a while, many generations of mages will occupy themselves with arts, medicin and astrology, traveling around to please folks, predict weather and farmers crops. By the time the next Great Mage is expected to arrive, mages have become magicians and jugglers in circuses. Real magic has disappeared: people don't even believe it can exist. When the next Great Mage becomes manifest, a cycle will start again. Assuming Merlin was the last pinnacle of magic, to reduce magic in a story, put it at some point after ca 1500 AD. Magic is not relevant anymore in post medieval times. Of course after 5 Juli 2027 AD it will all change.. She is already born. [Answer] ### Magic has layers of difficulty/sophistication 1. Elemental magic Every mage start with bending basic elements. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume these basic elements are Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. There are limitations to these elements. Able to do Fire-bending does not make you automatically able to manipulate, say, Plasma or Electricity. You have to acquire certain knowledge/prowess. Same goes for Water-bending that does not automatically enable someone to manipulate Ice or Saltwater. Air-bending limited to common air Nitrogen+Oxygen gases before Hydrogen/Methane, etc. Mages have to "unlock" the more sophisticated elements. (I imagine the Earth-benders have the final ability to unlock Uranium, Plutonium, and whatnot materials of radioactive destruction.. wink wink ;) ) 2. Healing magic Healers have to acquire knowledge to heal. Not just by uttering "I want you to be recovered entirely from any imperfections, puff!" Think of doctors, surgeons, but with metaphysical diagnostics and scalpels instead. The healers must know how to heal specific parts of body. Basic healer may start with identifying and alleviating common sickness or lacerations. For more complicated stuffs (think: multiple organ failure, coma/unconscious subject, severe haemorrhaging) they have to "unlock" the skill by studying/practicing/becoming proficient one way or another. 3. Transformation/shapeshifting magic We can use evolutionary biology to help giving the sense "layers of difficulty". Simply put, it's easier to transform into genetically more similar beings. Basic shapeshifters can transform into, say, Neanderthals, or Homo erectus, or apes. Beings that relatively close genetically to the shapeshifters' original form. Intermediate shapeshifters can transform into mammals. Advanced ones may be able to transform into anything within Animalia Kingdom. Only very rare, selected, can shapeshift into other forms of life e.g. Plantae or Fungi. --- By giving magic this kind of layers, it makes sense for magic to still be commonplace (or at least, not that rare) within civilization, yet not so overpowered. Because just like there are levels of proficiency in anything, likewise in magic. [Answer] Magical resistance: magic is a natural aspect of nature in your world but so is anti-magic and magical resistance. As you said, some people can't use magic but many of those are also impervious to magical mind trick, manipulations, detection or even effects if they are of pure magical nature (a "mana" bolt). Different people have different levels o this magical resistance. But also nature itself shows this quality, like animals or even vegetales. In that way the magicians are forced to get some particular knowledge of the creature they want to manipulate or even of the climate area they operate in ("it's so much harder to freeze water with so much wind, how do I keep the nanicules together?"). This might be the main reason magic is not reliable in war. Unwanted effects: of two types, one on the spell effect, two on the caster. The spells are really dangerous because they set in motion effects that are hard to control fully. Magic tends to unwind and to everywhere instead of only to do what the caster wants it to do. If uncontrolled magic can flow around the target or even backfire on the caster. Also any spell can rather fail at is origin rather than at the end. What happens is the magical effect linger within the caster turning them more sensitive to it. With enough of this effect the magician can turn into an ethereal entity of some sort. For all these reason really mastering magic is quite difficult. [Answer] Magic needs drugs To perform magic you need to eat various magical herbs and creatures. This a) takes time to prepare and thus needs some forward planning for what you want to do b) limits the number and types of spell available as you need a different combination for each type of magic, c) can make powerful spells hard to perform as you need to find some super rare item from the top of that dangerous mountain along way away. Then you may also find that people start getting addicted to these drugs so they need to consume more to perform the same magic, and they start getting addicted to the drugs. Thus magicians must either carefully limit what they do and how often (lest they get addicted) or could go out in a drug-fueled blaze of glory (for when you do want a magician to be super powerful) but that is likely to either kill the magician or they'll get so addicted they'll be useless afterwards. [Answer] ### Power makes you mad It's simple really. Every time you use magic, you fry your brain just a little bit. The more powerful the magic, the more powerful the effect. Slowly but surely, mages become insane, senile, or however you want to call it. You can decide how much each spell affects the caster, so you can put more of a penalty on e.g. offensive magic if you want. Cautious mages would know they have an expiration date, and retire before it's too late. Those working for armies would be handsomely rewarded (or not, government pay being what it is) and monitored to track signs of degeneration. Those that push past their limit risk their mental and/or physical health, up to total brain death. Retired mages would still have valuable insight and knowledge, making them prime material for advisors or to teach the next generation. You might disallow overpowered spells by making them break the brain of the caster before casting can be completed, thus it would fizzle and have no effect. Or you could choose to allow such spell, with the effect being such that the caster would be mentally unable to do it again, if alive at all. That gives potential for some heroic sacrifice. One fun thing with that is you could still allow a mage to cast while insane, with the mage's state affecting how stable the magic is. It could hit the wrong target, produce the wrong effect, be cast at too high a level and cause much more damage than it should, or cast at too low a level to be useful, etc. Legends would obviously tell stories of old, crazy mages, forewarning youngsters against overuse of magic. Maybe even of unnatural and unethical magic that can extend a mage's mental ability, perhaps in the same way liches extend their lives through dark, illegal magic. Magic retains its usefulness, but you're incentivised to use it only when absolutely necessary, and only to use the appropriate level of power. It can be as powerful as you want, you can decide to penalise a school of magic or another. Overusing it, and pressuring your mages to overuse it, has a very high cost... which gives you plenty of opportunities for a good story. [Answer] Chef magic, you have to eat or drink or use magically prepared items to get any effect. I am making an effort to make it borderline useless here... if you want it more magical I guess you could imbue the things you eat with their foremost property (like eating something small makes you small), but that might be too useful? ## Elemental Eat a chili to spew a flame a few decimeters forward or something crappy like that. Eat something foul smelling and people around you will get poisoned or nauseous from your bad breath. ## Healing Put a herbal cream on your wound and it will heal. Eat a magic mushroom soup, this makes you more susceptible to psychosis but your ability to make up new magical recipes increases. ## Transformation Grease up some skin and wear it on you, and you will look like whatever wore the skin latest (or maybe originally?). It is of course harder to wear skins that are smaller than you, so to do that you could collect a lot of them (for example skin from a school of fish) and put it on you (now you look like a school of fish!) Maybe you could get inspiration from old snake oil adverts. Kindof as if the snake oil actually worked... [Answer] Conservation Elemental Insist on conservation of energy. Yes the mage can throw a fireball, but the energy has to come from somewhere. Over eating becomes a requirement. (See Robin Hobbs' Solider Son trilogy) Transformational To avoid the escaping as a small animal problem you can insist on conservation of mass. Your mage can turn into a rabbit, but it's a rabbit that weighs the same as xe did originally. (Katherine Kerr's Deverry series) Healing Wound transfer, either the healer takes the injury themselves and are specifically tough and fast healing, but you can set your own limits. Or slightly more ghoulish they can transfer them to other ordinary people. Battlefield triage sees a solider with mortal wounds having other injuries healed upon xem to save their fellows at the cost of pain/suffering and a quicker death for themselves. [Answer] ## Balancing Elemental Magic Elemental attacks specialize at area effects but kinetic attacks specialize at focused damage. As I recently explained in [this similar question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/214981/57832), a mundane shield can grant a traditional warrior immense protection against elemental attacks; so, a fireball that could give a whole group of peasants 2nd and 3rd degree burns could be mostly mitigated just with a shield. Add to this the grounding effect of metal armor and the insulation of the oven-mit like arming jacked underneath it, and the armor worn by a traditional knight may in fact be more effective protection against elemental magic than it even is against mundane weapons. So, if you are fighting a group of rioting peasants, magic's ability to hit a lot of people at once makes it far superior to anything a knight can do, but a knight's armor does so much to mitigate elemental attacks that when mages see a well armored warrior approach, they know they need to get out of there quickly, because magic can not focus the whole energy of an attack into a single precise point like you can with the point of a spear or sword. Even wizards may still carry traditional weapons and armor if they can. This is because even with their magic, they know they need those things if they plan to go toe-to-toe with a well armored adversary. ## Balancing Transformation Magic There are very few animals in the natural world that a well armed and trained human can not kill using ancient or medieval weapons and armor. Roman [Venationes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venatio) fought and killed every manner of animal including lions, elephants, bears, tigers, deer, wild goats, dogs, leopards, crocodiles, boars, and hippopotamuses. Just like Roman gladiators considered battling wild animals a specialty, you may find that certain warriors in your setting specialize in fighting wizards who can transform themselves. If you really think about it, turning into something big and strong is not a very helpful ability on the battlefield since it makes you such a big target and deprives you of the ability to wield some otherwise very helpful human weapons and armor. Instead your transformative wizards would benefit much more from going smaller, in which case your Venationes would keep a trained hunting dog and hawk on hand. If the shapeshifter turns into something big, the Venatio kills it with his bow or spear. If it turns into something small, the hawk swoops in and catches it. If it turns into something fast enough to get away, the dog can track its scent until the Venatio can catch up with it. Shape shifting magic is very useful, but in the grand scheme of things, they would be much more useful as spies and assassins than they would be on a battlefield among throngs of well armed warriors. I would probably also add guard dogs trained to sniff out shapeshifters as a common feature of high-security locations just to make sure kings and other highly important characters are not completely at their mercy. ## Balancing Healing Magic Ancient and Medieval battlefields were tightly packed massed of men fighting shoulder to shoulder. There was not much room to maneuver inside of your own battle formation meaning that even if you have healing mages, their ability to reach the front-lines would be very limited. As men are struck down, they fall to the ground often being trapped there for minutes if not hours until one side pushes the battle far enough in one direction or the other for anyone to be able to reach them. By the time this happens most casualties are already dead either from their wound or from trampling, and they can not be saved. Healing magic is still useful because it means that what wounded you can get out can be revived and immediately sent back into battle, but as long as the army without healers can constantly press their attack, they can make sure that the enemy's wounded stay behind the battle line where they will be inaccessible to healers for revival. ]
[Question] [ The Great City has impregnable walls. No-one has ever overwhelmed them and likely no-one ever will. The only way to defeat the inhabitants of this mighty city is to besiege them and simply starve them out. The Great City has been under siege for almost a year and stocks of food are running very low. No crops grow within the fortress city walls because the very ground itself is solid rock - carved out from the side of a mountain centuries ago by the ancestors whose magic or technology (no-one knows which) has been lost. The City has a constant, protected source of pure water within its walls that flows out from under the mountain. The fact that it is filtered through countless layers of rock, means that it cannot be contaminated. The problem With a reliable and plentiful supply of fresh water but no access to food or firewood from the surrounding countryside, how can the citizens eat? Solution They decide that they must capture and eat their enemies. This raises several important questions. I will ask each question separately in a different thread. For now I'll ask exclusively about diet. Question Nutritionally speaking, can my citizens, who are normal humans, survive indefinitely on a sole diet of human flesh (by capturing enemies from outside) and pure clean water? Without firewood or access to any kind of vegetable matter, how can they cook the food or make it sterile enough to eat? Is it possible to sun-dry and then burn their own faeces? [Answer] The human body literally contains all the nutrients humans need to survive and thrive. Getting to them is another matter. Some of those nutrients are easy to get by eating flesh, but others will be concentrated in organs, the bones, or blood. Eating bones is flat difficult, and drinking blood exposes you to a lot of potential diseases. Some organs, like the kidney and liver, can contain toxins, and eating them (especially raw) will, sooner or later, result in serious health issues. Eating raw flesh is mostly safe in the short term, provided it is fresh and the poor guy being eaten isn't already diseased or infested with parasites. Eventually, somebody you eat will be diseased, and in an enclosed area, when one person gets diseased, most of the group is going to get it. Storing the meat is a serious issue, as raw meat begins to spoil very quickly. Without a way to cook it, it will need to be dehydrated (the sun can do this, or magic). Salting meat is a common means of preserving it, though you will need a lot of salt to do this long-term. I can't think of any method they could use to preserve the blood, given the constraints you've laid out. It might be possible to dry the blood and then eat whatever doesn't evaporate. I am unaware of any studies about this, how it would protect you from disease (or not), how long the leftovers could be stored before going bad, etc. In any case, this is going to be very dehumanizing work. Those involved in the processing are going to be severely desensitized and/or traumatized. If anyone they eat has diseases, those are going to crop up in the besieged population. Even if you cook the meat, some of these diseases are going to get out. Without magical support, I don't think it is possible for a community to live on only water and cannibalism for an extended period of time. If they can at least grow some vegetables and fruit in planter boxes, this scenario becomes much more realistic from a "survival" standpoint. It will still cause severe trauma and change their culture in ways modern humans would find undesirable, to say the least. Some of the population could be sheltered from these effects, but not all. Sources for trauma resulting from handling bodies: * <http://trauma.massey.ac.nz/issues/2001-2/greene.htm> * <https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/37365094/MCCLANAHAN-DOCUMENT-2019.pdf?sequence=1> [Answer] You say the plan is to kill/capture and then eat their enemies? One Question. How? As you have defined the problem the city is under siege. By default that means it has been blockaded/encircled by a superior militarily force which is both preventing the inhabitants both bringing in food and other supplies and preventing citizens from exiting in any significant numbers. (That's how sieges work.) It also implies that the defenders have no choice but to accept this state of affairs because they don't have the military force needed to break the siege. Otherwise they wouldn't be under siege to begin with! So if your city is planning to obtain enemy soldiers in big enough numbers to sustain itself they have no choice but to sortie through the city gates and fight pitched battles with the besiegers. And remember besieging armies generally planned and prepared for a siege. They built fortified camps for their own soldiers well back from the city walls, posted guards all around the city to watch for movement and had things like roving patrols and watch fires. They knew their besieged enemies had the option of sallying forth so they usually planned for that outcome. (At least wise generals did.) They're certainly won't be standing around stark naked covered in garnish and carrying placards saying 'eat me I'm yours". Now history is full of famous examples of this type of fight but the outcomes are limited to one of the following broad outcomes; A) The besieged citizens sortie but their attempt is detected and they are driven back inside with both sides suffering losses. However they manage to hold the gates behind them. Outcome - siege continues. B) As per (A) Above but they can't hold the gates the fighting moves on into the city, usually because the besiegers outnumber the besieged they win. But regardless of the outcome the siege ends. Problem solved. C) They sortie and catch the besiegers unaware. The besieging army is defeated and retreats. Siege ends, problem solved. (Perhaps they return later but for the moment at least the siege is lifted.) Point is none of these options are going to deliver enough protein to the city to solve the problem. As long as the attacking general is content to just starve out the defenders without sending troops to assault the walls your city can't access 'fresh meat' without coming out to fight for it. And they will never be able to collect sufficient to feed everyone for long because the only scenario where they are left alone to harvest their prize is the one where they win and the siege is lifted anyway. One final point - most cultures have a universal prohibition against cannibalism, they will do it in desperate situation (and yes this is a desperate situation) but before they 'stoop' to the level of eating human flesh some of the citizens will consider another entirely plausible option which was also common during sieges. Betrayal - someone somewhere will consider trading safe access to the city at night to the enemy in exchange for food and protection. It happened repeatedly in historical sieges. [Answer] Human flesh is remarkably nutritious and you could likely survive on a diet of humans for quite a long period. That being said, there are reasons why no species or culture has ever evolved that relies primarily on cannibalism, mainly that it's not exactly easy to make a living hunting prey that has senses and intelligence equal to yours. Investing that much effort into every single hunt would very rapidly doom your culture. This is less of a problem in a wartime situation, since people are dropping dead all the time, but if you want your city to survive entirely on cannibalism, you have to take into account how good humans are at avoiding getting eaten. Diseases, especially prion diseases, would also be a huge problem, just as they were in real-world cultures that practiced cannibalism. Kuru, for instance, is a neurodegenerative prion disease that was once prevalent on the island of Papua, where it was spread almost entirely through ritual cannibalism among the indigenous population. It's incurable even with modern technology and has an extremely long incubation period (in some cases as long as 50 years), making it basically undetectable as well. In general, eating your own species is risky, since anything that made your prey sick can also make you sick. All in all, it's doable in the short-term, but your city is massively screwed if it has to rely exclusively on cannibalism for a longer period of time. It might be safer to just turn your foes' bones into fertilizer to grow better crops (bone is actually pretty good for this). [Answer] It has happened in the past, like in the case of the [whaler Essex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)) > > Essex was an American whaler from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. In 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., she was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. Thousands of miles from the coast of South America with little food and water, the 20-man crew was forced to make for land in the ship's surviving whaleboats. > > > The men suffered severe dehydration, starvation, and exposure on the open ocean, and the survivors eventually resorted to eating the bodies of the crewmen who had died. When that proved insufficient, members of the crew drew lots to determine whom they would sacrifice so that the others could live. A total of seven crew members were cannibalized before the last of the eight survivors were rescued, more than three months after the sinking of the Essex. > > > Apparently: * some of them managed to survive on that forced diet. And they didn't have a supply of fresh water * they didn't worry too much about cooking their meal, because for obvious reason when on a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean wood is not exactly the most abundant resource. [Answer] Probably Not The human body, naturally, contains all the basic nutrients a human needs to survive. So as long as you're careful to eat all of it (grind up the bone to put in sausages, drink/use the blood in cooking, eat most of the organs) you'll get everything you need from cannibalism to survive. It might not be the perfect diet, I'm not an expert in all the vitamins and minerals a human needs to know if there's Some Specific Thing which you'll be somewhat deficient in if you only eat people which might lead to long-term complications. But the diet will be at least as "healthy" as a normal medieval diet. That being said, how many corpses would you need? James Cole estimates an adult human body contains on average 125,822 calories. [Source](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-cannibals-did-not-eat-humans-nutrition-study-says-180962823/#:%7E:text=All%20told%2C%20Cole%20concludes%2C%20the,consumed%20by%20our%20early%20ancestors.) Caloric consumption for an adult human is roughly 2,000 calories a day. (Cole believes that a modern human's average need is 2,4000 calories a day. Not sure why, so I'm sticking with 2,000 as the more widely-accepted figure.) That implies a single human body could feed 62.9 people for a day. Of course there's going to be "wastage" in the corpse as you're unlikely to eat 100% of it. Assuming 15% wastage (loss of caloric value from spilled blood/missing bits from hacking your victim to death outside the walls, etc) means your average corpse feeds 53 people a day. Call it 50 in round numbers. So for every 50 defenders in your castle, you need to kill one attacker every day AND recover the corpse. Of course, you might not get "just" humans in your attack. I couldn't find a full-body caloric assessment, but just the muscle mass of a horse yields 359,100 calories. Assuming that's the maximum value you can get (medieval horses were smaller, there's some wastage which may or may not offset whatever added caloric value the blood and bones get you) a horse can feed about 179 people a day. But as cavalry aren't really "storm the walls" troops, you can't rely on the enemy keeping horses anywhere near enough for you to snag. So the question becomes, can the defenders achieve a kill ratio of 1 attacker per day for every 50 defenders? I believe the answer is a firm "No." Assuming the enemy has 2x the amount of men as the defenders (Since 2x would preclude the defenders just sallying out en-mass but is less than the 3x generally thought sufficient to storm a fortified position with a chance of success) That would involve inflicting More than 1% casualties on the enemy every day for as long as you need to live purely off human flesh. Sieges were long, drawn out affairs. The enemy likely will keep out of bowshot most of the time, relying on starvation to take its toll. This means any sally for "provisions" will require a force from the castle going at least 100 yards (and likely longer, depending on your bow tech) from the castle, into the enemy camp, killing some of them, and then dragging the bodies back. The dragging back is the killer here. I can see a vicious and aggressive besieging force launching tons of attacks, and POSSIBLY inflicting a kill per 50 every day. But you have to get the body back, as intact as possible. At some point your enemy will realize you're literally eating him and do everything in his power to stop you. Unless you're some sort of horror cult that cannibalizes in peacetime, they'll know you're low on food. The attacker will simply pull back even further, fortify the siege lines even more heavily, and fight like hell to protect their dead from desecration. Which means you won't recover every corpse. Which means you need to kill even MORE of the enemy. As a 1% daily attrition rate would end the siege in a max of 80 days (the point where your besieged force significantly outnumbered the attackers that started 2x the size) Killing even MORE of them makes the whole concept of your defenders being besieged to the point they need to eat the enemy dead redundant. You can offset this somewhat by the defenders eating their own dead as well, but that leads to diminishing returns. A starving person is a lot fewer calories than a healthy one, and likely deficient in key nutrients that would cascade as anyone eating them wouldn't get those nutrients from the corpse. Though I admit I'm not sure how long one could live eating your own dead while "augmenting" any missing nutrients from enemy corpses, the end result still seems like you'd need to many deaths to keep the siege viable, one way or the other. [Answer] In addition what other people already gave as answers: I saw a documentary that stated that the human body contains many nutrients needed for survival, thus cannibalism is a valid option. However, this is only true in case the human that is being eaten is not starving themselves, in that case, the body does not contain enough for a human to survive on and it will only give the false sense of eating enough, purely based on mass and a 'full' stomach. ]
[Question] [ In my fantasy series, the area the main protagonist is from is cool and dreary year-round, but never cold and never hot. For example, it never really gets higher than the 60s farenheit at the peak of summer, but the winters are rarely far below freezing. Rainfall is generally pretty consistent year-round, although some of it is sleet or snow in the winter. As this area is in the far north of its planet's northern hemisphere, the seasonal sunlight hours are similar to the ones found in places like Norway and far northern Scotland. Which kinds of crops could be grown in such an area, if any? [Answer] # Basically Anything That Grows in Scotland Scotland already has similar temperatures and latitude to your desired location in the summer, as well as a long documented agricultural industry. It's even high enough that on the rare occasion [you can see the northern lights](https://www.visitscotland.com/see-do/landscapes-nature/northern-lights/). ### What does Scotland currently grow? > > In June 2013, of crops grown in Scotland (excluding grass), cereals accounted for 78 per cent of the land area, with nearly three-quarters of that being barley (340,000 hectares). Wheat was also significant (87,000 hectares), along with oilseed rape (34,000 hectares), oats (32,000 hectares) and potatoes (29,000 hectares). Amongst fruit and vegetables, a total of 911 hectares of strawberries were grown, mainly under cover, which was the largest source of income amongst horticulture crops.[49] The major areas of cereal production were Grampian, Tayside, Borders, Lothian and Fife.[51] > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Scotland> So you can grow quite a lot of things in this climate, likely more than Scotland could due to the all year round temperature stability. In addition to plenty of livestock variety. ## How Different Is This From Standard Fantasy Food? Not that different honestly. If you want to play it easy/safe, you can copy any standard King Arthur fantasy or any other story set in the British Isles. Their diet shouldn't be too different from existing standard fantasy settings. [Answer] Potatoes, among other things If the occasional freeze happens root veggies are your best bet (think potatoes, sweet potatoes, and beets), as well as legumes that usually grow in the soil, which should insulate them. Russia is famous for its potato-based diet. [Answer] Buckwheat (gives you flour), some types of apples, plums, pears and grapes. Some leaf crops - collards, spinach and kale. Also certain types of berries and nuts plus fungi. For these and other crops there are cold climate gardening websites with all the details you need. [Answer] Places with similar climate include Scandanavia, Iceland, Punta Arenas, and others that can be found [here](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-largest-city-in-the-Cfc-climate-type). These places mostly produce: * grains such as wheat, barley, rye, and oat * oil plants such as rapeseed * sugar beets * potatoes Very often, cfc towns are in coastal regions and rely heavily on fishing as a source of income and food. They are also known to raise sheep and cattle for use, and might have ports, which makes trade a significant source of income and food. Hunting may also reveal foxes, deer, and many small marsupials such as rabbits. Hope this helps! ]
[Question] [ My alternate Earth is placed, together with the whole solar system and nothing else, in the center of the [Boötes void](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo%C3%B6tes_void). > > At nearly 330 million light-years in diameter (approximately 0.27% of the diameter of the observable Universe), or nearly 236,000 $Mpc^3$ in volume, the Boötes void is one of the largest-known voids in the Universe, and is referred to as a supervoid. > > > According to astronomer Greg Aldering, the scale of the void is such that "If the Milky Way had been in the center of the Boötes void, we wouldn't have known there were other galaxies until the 1960s." > > > Assuming a human-like species evolves on this planet, what can they use to determine their position on the globe, when the compass has not yet been invented? As a reference, consider the level of knowledge of some early seafarers like the Phoenicians. [Answer] Who needs stars to navigate, anyway? Navigation can be done by means other than stellar wayfinding. Consider the various [methods in use by the Polynesians](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation): * They used concept maps that show patterns in the water * They used patterns of waves & currents * They used cloud patterns, winds and the movements of birds * They used songs and stories to record and describe sea routes * They also used stars, but those are lacking in your locale! However, I've heard that there are at least 60 galaxies within the Void, strung along in a kind of tubular structure. Perhaps one or more of those will be visible. Your navigators could very easily fashion highly detailed route maps that note currents, wave patterns, shoals, coastal features. These could be in the form of strip maps which show only what's along a route, not the whole world or even a broad region: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4WnFc.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4WnFc.jpg) [Answer] With NO stars, but also with no navigational tools such as compass or sextant? Owch! The best you could do is to determine your Latitude, and East-west-north-south directions, by using a [sun stick](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/find-direction-without-compass/). [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/05lss.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/05lss.jpg) Obviously you need to do this in the daylight, with a visible sun and a reasonably stable workspace. While it is trivial to get compass direction this way, latitude is a bit more tricky because of seasons and the Earth's tilt. You need to know how far the sun deviates from true vertical at noon, for a given date of the calendar. By measuring the angle of the sun's shadow at noon (by observing the ratio of stick height to shadow length), you can derive a very accurate latitude. Longitude is a LOT more difficult. To have any chance of determining your longitude(east-west positions on the globe), you need to know when the sun rises or sets. Accurate to a few seconds. You also need to know the elapsed time since taking a matching baseline for this at a known location. This requires a timekeeping tool that is accurate to seconds, over however long a period you need to navigate away from your base. This was simply not available in Phoenician times. Nor in Roman times, nor even in Medieval times. The first practical timepiece for ship navigation was made in the 1800's But you do not need to know your place on the globe, to navigate. Line of sight works perfectly, and also line of sight to a recognizable feature on a map. With a good enough map you can sail as far as the shore is within sight. And panic yourself to death if a nice fog rolls in, and you lose orientation. Or in the case of this benighted little planet, if the sun sets and the moon is not in a visible location. [Answer] ## Expert knowledge of coastal features It's entirely reasonable to not know where you are when on open water and, only attempt navigation when you have sight of the coastline. This means limited ocean crossings, but that's equally not unreasonable. Ocean crossings didn't become a common thing until relatively recently in the grand scheme of navigation. Even then they didn't have accurate positioning until very late in the game, even that only working at certain times of day. Let's specifically consider the Phoenicians as you refer to them in the question. They basically coast hopped the Mediterranean. If that's the technology you want, that's the limitation you get. Keep the land to port, or the land to starboard, depending which way you're going on the route. It helps if you know whether you're on the north or south coast of the sea, but that at least you can tell from the sun. [Answer] The Phoenicians only knew how to determine north and their latitude. For this purpose you only need the Sun; at noon it will give you true north, and its height above the horizon, combined with the date, will give you your latitude. This is all the Phoenicias knew how to determine, anyway. With an accurate chronometer, the Sun at noon can also give your longitude; but accurate chronometers only came some 2,000 years after the Phoenicians went the way of the Dodo. [Answer] If they have several fast-moving moons, or moons of nearby planets that are large enough to be visible with the naked eye or a small telescope on an unstable platform, then they can navigate better than Earth’s mariners could until the 20th century. They can use ephemerises giving the positions of the moons to determine the absolute time, which combined with their measurement of the time and height of the sun at local noon will give them their longitude as well as their latitude. If the moons are too small and faint to be visible by day, they will need something that keeps time well enough to measure the time between local noon and their first chance to see the moons in the night sky — for each minute that measurement is out by, their longitude will be out by a quarter of a degree. [Answer] Sun is almost enough by day. And by night, if the night is dark enough, you will see a lot of features that can replace the Sun - as zodiacal light and gegenschein. Looks not that hard. [Answer] It is just a bet... but, maybe, you could find directions like ants: <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982212009323> <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-020-01431-x> And there is a theory some ants/birds can see (I mean literally see) the earth's electromagnetic field. People from your alternate Earth can been born with similar sense. Other option is then found a "crystal" that they can see THROUGH it and see the electromagnetic waves. Vikings may have done some thing close: <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/111111-vikings-sunstones-crystals-navigation-science/> [Answer] I am not a scientist, so maybe I am wrong, or misunderstood something here, but I think they can still use the sun or moon's position to navigate or determine their position. At least, based on OP's comments, I assume that they still have a sun and moon like Earth's. Here are some links that explain it better: From: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_navigation> From: <https://www.tgomagazine.co.uk/skills/how-to-use-the-sun-to-navigate/> > > Using the sun to hold a bearing > > > This technique uses the sun or moon to keep you heading in the right > direction. It doesn’t replace the use of a compass, but instead helps > you to maintain a certain route. Using the sun, or at night the moon, > gives you a reference to the cardinals of the compass. > > > 1. Face the direction (bearing) you are going to travel and reach out with your arm as if you were going to grab hold of the sun and hold > this position for a couple of seconds: this helps imprint your > orientation to the sun. > 2. Lower your arm and move forward, keeping in mind where the sun should be in relation to you. > 3. You can travel for 10 mins on a single bearing using this technique before you need to repeat it. > 4. If the sun is behind you, use your shadow. Reach out and hold your arm parallel with your shadow and hold this position for a couple of > seconds. > > > Using this technique frees you up from having to constantly refer to > your compass or map and instead allows you to concentrate on your > surroundings and enjoy the scenery. Mountain rescue dog handlers > routinely employ this method so they can concentrate on their dog and > visibly search the area themselves. > > > > > Angular measurement > > > Accurate angle measurement evolved over the years. One simple method > is to hold the hand above the horizon with one's arm stretched out. > The width of the little finger is an angle just over 1.5 degrees > elevation at extended arm's length and can be used to estimate the > elevation of the sun from the horizon plane and therefore estimate the > time until sunset. The need for more accurate measurements led to the > development of a number of increasingly accurate instruments, > including the kamal, astrolabe, octant and sextant. The sextant and > octant are most accurate because they measure angles from the horizon, > eliminating errors caused by the placement of an instrument's > pointers, and because their dual mirror system cancels relative > motions of the instrument, showing a steady view of the object and > horizon. > > > Navigators measure distance on the globe in degrees, arcminutes and > arcseconds. A nautical mile is defined as 1852 meters, but is also > (not accidentally) one minute of angle along a meridian on the Earth. > Sextants can be read accurately to within 0.2 arcminutes, so the > observer's position can be determined within (theoretically) 0.2 > miles, about 400 yards (370 m). Most ocean navigators, shooting from a > moving platform, can achieve a practical accuracy of 1.5 miles (2.8 > km), enough to navigate safely when out of sight of land. > > > [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oXk7E.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oXk7E.gif) Using a marine sextant to measure the altitude of the sun above the horizon > > Latitude > Latitude was measured in the past either by measuring the altitude of the Sun at noon (the "noon sight"), > > > > > Lunar distance Main article: Lunar distance > > > The older method, called "lunar distances", was refined in the 18th > century and employed with decreasing regularity at sea through the > middle of the 19th century. It is only used today by sextant hobbyists > and historians, but the method is theoretically sound, and can be used > when a timepiece is not available or its accuracy is suspect during a > long sea voyage. The navigator precisely measures the angle between > the moon and the sun, or between the moon and one of several stars > near the ecliptic. The observed angle must be corrected for the > effects of refraction and parallax, like any celestial sight. To make > this correction the navigator would measure the altitudes of the moon > and sun (or star) at about the same time as the lunar distance angle. > Only rough values for the altitudes were required. Then a calculation > with logarithms or graphical tables requiring ten to fifteen minutes' > work would convert the observed angle to a geocentric lunar distance. > The navigator would compare the corrected angle against those listed > in the almanac for every three hours of Greenwich time, and > interpolate between those values to get the actual Greenwich time > aboard ship. Knowing Greenwich time and comparing against local time > from a common altitude sight, the navigator can work out his > longitude. > > > ]
[Question] [ For some backstory, the United States Garrison is the new military of a post-apocalyptic US where modern civilization and every single country around the world fell due to zombies and a ravenous virus that wiped out 82% of humanity back in the mid-2000s’. The skeletal remains of the US Government was able to reorganize and reform itself and liberated Washington, giving birth to the District of Columbia (<https://i.stack.imgur.com/shhRa.jpg>), with the government hoping to one day liberate and retake the entire country. The US Garrison is what was once the US military. After liberating Washington, the five branches of the military unified to form a single military force with no individual, independent branches, a single, shared rank system, the same uniforms, same service flag, etc. This was done in order to cut down on unnecessary redundancies as well as to pool together resources and manpower so that they can be better utilized. So far, I’m stuck on what standard combat-utility uniform Troopers (what someone in the Garrison is called) should wear. I’m currently stuck between the Marine Corps Combat Utility Uniform (<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Corps_Combat_Utility_Uniform#/media/File%3AU.S._Marines_Combat_Utility_Uniforms_2003%2C_Full-Color_Plate_(2003)%2C_by_John_M._Carrillo.png>) and the ranger green FBI HRT uniform [<https://images.app.goo.gl/ytpAFBQdCzK3hbtg7]>. So in a zombie-filled post-apocalyptic scenario, what uniform would make more sense for the Garrison to adopt for everyone? (And just so that we’re clear, I’m deciding between these two specific uniforms. I appreciate other ideas and suggestions but I’ve narrowed my choices down to these two specific sets of uniforms. If you make a suggestion, please decide on either the Marine Corps or FBI HRT uniform). [Answer] Pinneys. [![girl in pinney](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JKZ78.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JKZ78.jpg) Aka [scrimmage vests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrimmage_vest). In your future world good clothes are hard to come by and changing clothes all the time is a luxury for the super-rich. Your soldiers wear what they wear. But it is good to know who your friends are and so they have pinneys to put on when they are active. Your troops have actually come into possession of a great number of pinneys and so they might periodically change colors. This helps when there is a division of labor among the troops (Orange you take the left! Pink, we're up the middle!) and also to distinguish zombified soldiers who might still be wearing the pinneys used in a previous battle. The numbers are very helpful during combat. You can shout at soldiers by number if you don't know their names or cant tell who they are because of the mud and gore. That works so well in sports (though usually there is not gore) that I have always been puzzled that soldiers did not have big numbers on them to distinguish individuals at a distance. [Answer] A combat uniform has several purposes: * Camouflage gives you an advantage if you are ever caught in firefight, where you have a marginal advantage in not being visually distinguishable to your surroundings * Promotes a sense of camaraderie and belonging to the group - if everyone is dressed the same However your setting may be a bit different: * Camouflage may not be that useful against zombies, depending on how they detect and 'see' you. It may actually be an advantage to appear 'ordinary' to your zombies if they find it difficult to distinguish you against other zombies. Camouflage in this context may actually mean you should have blood soaked civilian clothes instead. * In a survival situation camaraderie may have lesser priority to resource allocation, in particular in times where resources would be diverted from eating, blankets or other more useful items to making uniforms. Your troops may actually object to having uniforms if it means they sleep cold at night. I am reminded of an incident where in WW2 Stalingrad the trapped German 6th Army were starving and dying of cold, and a plane load of supplies landed for them only to find out it was full of uniforms, with no food. Reports were this reduced morale and created anger more than the surrounding enemy did. [Answer] > > So in a zombie-filled post-apocalyptic scenario, what uniform would make more sense for the Garrison to adopt for everyone? > > > 1. As this is US-based and [80% of the US population is urbanized](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States), the military will end up using the perfect urban camouflage and dress up in trash (clickable pic): [![Perfect Urban Camouflage](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4fNw9.jpg "Zombie trasher")](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V95E7GM4NE) But instead of using their camouflage to scare humans, they'll just lay in ambush and shoot zombies and then just lay down again or move to the next block... 2. In rural areas they'll use this uniform borrowed from their British counterparts (also clickable pic): [![Rural camouflage](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GnWIv.jpg "Zombie tree")](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-M2hs3sXGo) [Answer] There are multiple answers here as to why this makes little sense, from different branches of the military exist for different purposes (an Infantry Colonel has theoretically the same rank and authority as a Naval Captain, but is not going to be able to effectively command a ship, nor will the Captain be able to effectively command a battalion), to resource allocation (who is making these uniforms and where are all the raw materials coming from). The Confederate Army of the Civil War is illustrative. Although we commonly think of them as being dressed in grey uniforms, in the early stages of the war many Confederates still wore American "Blue" uniforms (Stonewall Jackson was perhaps the most famous example) until the supply situation was sorted out, and the Confederacy very rapidly ran out of the ability to make and supply uniforms at all, with soldiers essentially fighting in "work clothes", and often without any shoes to wear either. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yu91l.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yu91l.jpg) Confederate soldiers in a contemporary picture While "pre war" uniforms are hard wearing, they will eventually wear out, and soldiers, sailors and airmen will end up wearing coveralls or some other utilitarian garb. Since modern soldiers have lots of "things" to carry, uniforms have a multitude of pockets, so clothes will either be modified to have cargo pockets sewn on, or the solders will make/find vests with lots of carrying pouches. Different branches of service might eventually be indicated by an armband or patch sewn on the sleeve. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sWgUY.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sWgUY.jpg) Bosnian Civil war. Wearing whatever they can find Clearing out stores and warehouses will work to a certain extent, cargo pants, hunting gear and other pseudo military clothes are considered fashionable, so there should be a basic supply of utilitarian clothing to wear. However, the purpose of uniforms is partially to reinforce unit identity, so different units and different branches (which perform different tasks) are going to adopt something like a unit patch, brassard, headgear or other distinguishing mark, based on what sort of resources are they can get access to. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SFlzK.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SFlzK.jpg) Polish Home Army wearing identifying arm bands [Answer] How about a practical consideration: ## Whatever you found enough of in a warehouse. Unification in the face of crisis is going to be quick. Urban areas may not have manufacturing facilities. So you use what you can find. Even if it is something silly like a sports jersey. Later on, you might start stylizing it. A few tweaks after a decade, more the next, etc. Or, you might make a new uniform based on changing need, like making sure yours is different from the neighbor you are at war with. [Answer] If the choices are STRICTLY between Marine Combat Utility Uniform and a Ranger Green utility uniform, I'd go for Ranger Green just because it's easier to make and utilitarian enough. Camouflage is not an issue against zombies, obviously. [Answer] The Ranger Green is closer to what I would expect, but lacks some consideration for the environment you've created. Assuming this is your 17 years later scenario, the reason for new uniforms is probably not just about combining the military into a single organization, but because all of your old uniforms have already been worn way past thier expected life spans (along with most of your other pre-apocalypse textiles). Washington DC is not in a great geographic location for the fossil fuels used to make polymer based cloths and dyes, nor is it a great place for many of the plants we normally associate with the textile industry. This means that DC is either importing truck loads of what is likely very expensive textiles through zombie ridden hellscapes, or they have to meet thier own textile needs with what they have. With much of the world still dominated by zombies, I'd opt to suggest that they figured it out themselves. The best native plant for this is actually going to be stinging nettle. Despite it's intimidating name, it is a great plant for textiles in that it makes a cloth with a fiber coarseness that is finer than flax or hemp but stiffer than cotton. This makes it ideal for making uniforms that are both comfortable and tough. It also has a natural beige color so you don't need to dye it for it to make for pretty decent urban camouflage. Furthermore, stinging nettle is an edible weed; so, your survival conscious population can grow lots of it with very little effort, eat it, and use it for textiles making it a potential staple crop for your DC survivors. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PI6QI.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PI6QI.png) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cQrxh.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cQrxh.png) If you choose to dye your cloth a solid green which might be important to distinguish your soldiers from your common folk you can use Bloodroot (a native plant) or vitriol green (a mineral commonly found in old iron mines). But achieving a print like the Marine Corps Combat Utility Uniform is not very feasible without polimer fossil fuel based dyes. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aNaTc.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aNaTc.png) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/domXg.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/domXg.png) [Answer] What makes the most sense to me if I'm writing it? Keep the old uniforms and use the appropriate cameo for the mission or platoon/squad/whatever size based units. That is your forces would be more specialized and depending on the stats and experience you would use that unit, broad sense here not actual term, for the mission. Why? Because who cares about uniforms if the world ended and you need your workers to produce food, meds, ammo, and other essential stuff! Honestly. The idea that you would dedicate enough resources to replace the current uniforms seems silly in the context. And like I said even if they have to fight opposing human soldiers they can use whatever cameo is available then. No need to waste already existing stuff. However I'd add something extra to it. Like ribbons or a bar on the chest or a new flag patch or something like that. Just so they fit in more with the news regime. But changing uniforms would be silly and I'm sure actual soldiers would be wondering why bother if they already have a lot of stuff they can actually use. [Answer] Zombies are going to be your primary villain, but there may be other governments or rogue elements running around in this world. It's going to be a messy place and not everyone is going to be friendly toward your protagonists. (At least I think they shouldn't be all friendly) That being said the troops may at some point logically need concealment from human adversaries - thus I'd go with the Marine uniform. BTW - you mention standardization has happened in this world - keep in mind services are proud of their symbols (insignia, flag, uniform) so depending on how much time has passed there may be animosity about standardizing. After a few years the wounds will be fresh; a generation or two may be less. May be an opportunity for drama for you. [Answer] Have you read [World War Z](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z)? If you have, then this question is 100% redundant. As Brooks realised, if you're fighting zombies then you don't need bulletproof body armour, camouflage, heavy weaponry, any air force except for transport, or any navy. For your uniform, what you need is just full-body covering, made from material which is reinforced to be tear- and puncture-resistant (so nails and teeth can't easily get through) and is relatively waterproof (so blood splatter won't touch you), plus a face mask with eye protection. The colour really doesn't matter. And if you haven't read World War Z yet, then you should prepare yourself to throw away everything you've done so far. Brooks has already told his version of this story, on a global scale and on a human scale, with perfect attention to every detail. You may be able to tell a different story, but you need to know what the state of the art is in this genre. ]

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