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[Question] [ I'm making a series where a multi-purpose frigate travels to Jupiter in order to help in the Mars versus Jupiter war. However, I don't know what the colonies would look like. Maybe floating with engines? Would they all be on the moon? I need an idea! (By the way, your answers are right. Saturn would make more sense.) [Answer] I wouldn't put colonies in Jupiter's atmosphere. The gravity down there is too high... it'll be quite unpleasant for normal humans to live in, and you'll need an awfully powerful rocket to get back out of the atmosphere and escape Jupiter's very, *very* deep gravity well. Jupiter has a lot of moons, but the biggest ones (the [Galilean moons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons)) are probably the most interesting ones. These are: * Io. This is a volcanic hellscape that's bathed in radiation. Don't go here. * Europa. This is a really interesting ice world, whose deep subsurface ocean might actually harbour life. It is however very thoroughly dosed with radiation, making settlements on the surface or in orbit somewhat undesirable. Deep subsurface settlements may exist. * Ganymede. This has a lower radiation level, but it is still dangerous for unprotected humans and electronics. Any subsurface ocean is very deep down, and is somewhat less likely to harbour life than Europa. * Callisto. This has the lowest radiation level of the four, making it a much more sensible place to have colonies on the surface. Orbital colonies might be possible in a low orbit, below the inner radiation belts, but they'd be difficult to get to because you'd have to travel through the radiation belts and because they're so deep in the gravity well they'd be expensive (in rocketry terms) to fly away from. You might put them in orbit around Callisto, or further out from Jupiter. Honestly, the place seems pretty hostile. You'd be better off visiting the asteroid belt if you wanted raw materials, or Saturn if you wanted to live on a moon or in a gas giant atmosphere. Jupiter and its moons seem best for scientific study, and whilst that might be something worth fighting for it would seem likely to be supported by other organisations living elsewhere, rather than being some kind of nation- or city-state in itself. [Answer] [Jupiter’s Magnetosphere Will Blow Your Mind While it Kills Your Spacecraft](https://www.universetoday.com/129669/jupiters-magnetosphere-will-blow-mind-kills-spacecraft/) > > Jupiter is a huge planet, but its magnetosphere is mind-blowingly massive. It extends out to nearly 5 million kilometers (3 million miles) wide on average, 150 times wider than Jupiter itself and almost 15 times wider than the Sun, making it one of the largest structures in the Solar System. > > > --- > > But Jupiter presents a lot of problems as far as being nice to instruments. Trapped within the magnetosphere are charged particles from the Sun that form intense radiation belts around the planet. These belts are similar to the Earth’s Van Allen belts, but are many millions of times stronger. > > > To help protect the spacecraft and instrument electronics, Juno has a radiation vault about the size of a car trunk made of titanium that limits the radiation exposure to Juno’s command and data handling box (the spacecraft’s brain), power and data distribution unit (its heart) and about 20 other electronic assemblies. But the instruments themselves need to be outside of the vault in order to make their observations. > > > The idea is **You cannot live there. Not even close.** The colonies would look like whatever a *radiation vault made of titanium* looks like, or be *5 million kilometers* away, arbitrarily orbiting a point in space that happens to have a planet in it. See [Starfish's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/170505/34000) about living under the ice sheets of Europa. Everywhere else within 5MK is out of the question. [Answer] [Isaac Arthur's video on colonizing Jupiter](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PQnvjGN91Mg) might be helpful. A summary of the highlights: * All the moons are colonizable, most of them in the same way as asteroids. * He really likes Calysto, being that it's not-quite-best at many things, and it's the large moon that is outside the worst of the radiation. * Io is in principal minable, with orbital outposts, but probably the worst to actually live on. * Domes and deep-ocean bases on / in Europa, Calysto, and Ganomede are most likely. * The best bet for Jupiter itself is (extremely expensive) artificial rings, with the deeper ones used for mining gas, and outer rings at the distance where Earth gravity would exist. People can live on the rings, and also use them as launch assists. * You could also turn Jupiter into a starship by sticking lots and lots of Fusion Candles in it, but that would make war with Mars extra impractical. Unless the Martians really want Jupiter to stay and are bombing the candle facilities, but I find that highly unlikely. The moons would be excellent sources for resources for Mars, but I'm not sure what Mars would provide that the moons couldn't find among themselves more cheaply. I'm not sure what cause for the conflict you have in mind, but I can imagine economic disputes easily enough, though how those would escalate to a shooting war is a little harder. Of course, *when* this takes place, relative to what is colonized, makes a huge difference. After all, who said the Jovian moons are all colonized, or that any that are are under the same government? Jupiter can be very complicated. It almost certainly can't be a unified system with a dozen moons and ring-dwellers all fighting Mars, because then Jupiter would be ridiculously overpowered by virtue of shere resources. But if it's just a couple moons and some orbital bases working on building the rest, and Mars wants some of that rest, that's rather different. [Answer] Each planet is inhabited by different species.On earth the most intelligent living forms are called humans.While on jupiter they are referred to as "Julians". They are highly advanced as compared to Earth. When it comes to transportation we have airplanes,motors and electric vehicles,ships etc. They just have highly engineered teleportation inbuilt system injected on their body by the government from their childhood.This technology defies the laws of physics in certain perspective ways beyond our knowledge. This teleportaion cannot be triggered continuously but with a certain delay of time and they can trigger cryptic coloration(i.e camouflage).The extend of these abilities varies from one julians to another. When it comes to outer space they travel by voyagers(ships) highly engineered combat ability with high endurance and immense speed. The julians are believed to have migrated from a distint galaxy and upoun entering our galaxy suffered some technical failures on their voyager and was forced to land on jupiter.They have adapted and colonised the inhabitable jupiter with time. Little do we know about them but one thing for sure they are coming for the other planets to colonise.And with this,pose a grave threat to mankind. ]
[Question] [ The night queen has invaded the northernmost part of easteros with an army of ice wightwalkers. They have surrounded a castle called summerfall, trapping our heroes inside. Various armies of different nations have put their war on hold to unite against this common threat. The future is bleak and everyone expects to be dead before the dawn. The only consolation is that they can share a hot cup of coffee before they die. Years ago, the Lord of summer fall built a store called starbucks, which served the inhabitants coffee to keep them warm and energized during the cold seasons. These magical coffee beans were invented to be able to withstand many different environments, and could be grown at any time of the year. It was a hit with the people, with starbucks opening up chains of stores throughout the north. It eventually became so successful that it spread to other parts of the kingdom and becoming the ancient world's first franchise. Opening up a franchise chain involves the detailed coordination of a complex operation involving many people, facilities, or supplies. This requires the organization of moving, housing, and supplying troops and equipment, as well as the commercial activity of transporting goods to consumers. The setup for this would be very difficult even for today with 21st century tech. I need to figure out the logistics of this for the ancient world to make this a reality. How can I make this possible? [Answer] # Starbucks isn't about the coffee There are countless coffee shops all over the place. In the United States, coffeeshops are so common that a town of 50,000 people will easily have a dozen of them, not counting restaurants and stands and trucks and other places that sell prepared coffee. While most of what Starbucks sells is prepared coffee, that's not why customers choose them over other places that sell prepared coffee (to the point that a lot of longtime independent coffeeshops have gone out of business). Their coffee is better than some places but nothing special. People in our modern world (especially in the US) value consistency. They want to know they can walk in and always get the same cup of coffee, made just how they like it. This has only gotten worse as coffeemaking (both in making the actual coffee and in pulling together the customers specific cup) is now so complex that people who go into a shop and just ask for "a cup of coffee" are ridiculed on internet joke sites. If you learn the Starbucks system, you can go anywhere in the country (and to some degree the world) and order a complex (they're all complex now) cup of coffee just how you like it and know exactly what you're getting. And guess what, people who use one shop's terminology at a different shop get ridiculed on the internet too. And in person. Starbucks also has consistency in their cold drinks, non-coffee drinks, and their food offerings (though some locations may have larger or smaller selections). Their cups are branded (no matter the season, you'll be able to recognize a Starbucks cup). You know about what you're going to pay for stuff. Coffeeshops are also destinations. If you want a place to sit and read or work on your laptop or chat with friends, you will have to try out a lot of coffeeshops to figure out which ones let you do what and for how long and with what access to electrical outlets. While an individual Starbucks might have somewhat different seating arrangements, and different crowds, from another, your overall experience is about the same. # When you set up a franchise, it's consistency you're selling. Take McDonald's. This hamburger stand [opened its first franchise in 1955](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-first-mcdonalds-burger-stand-2017-5). As their stores expanded, they did not at first ship food from central locations like they do now. Stores sourced their ingredients locally. The consistent feel came from the physical store, the menu, and the cooking style (with specific recipes, amounts, etc). By 1981 the food coming in was shipped and ready to go and each store had to comply with [the main office's specific rules.](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-mcdonalds-franchises/) > > At least the menu was blessedly simple, with about a third of today’s > 100-plus items. “Back then, you could crank out a lot of burgers with > 10-to-1 meat,” Jarvis says, referring to boxes of 10 burger patties > per pound. He quarterbacked his staff from the fry station near the > center of the store, becoming a stickler for following McDonald’s > exacting standards for preparing food. “French fries were our bread > and butter,” he says. “I wanted a fry person who, when the fries were > seven minutes old in the fry basket, they would throw them away. It’s > in the manual.” > > > Now things are so complex that [going back to local sourcing is a problem](https://hbr.org/2016/06/why-sourcing-local-food-is-so-hard-for-restaurants). But before the national highway system, before giant trucks with freezers (even more so than giant train cars with freezers), perishable ingredients had to be local. Keeping a franchise recognizable as such required building shops that looked alike, manuals for operation that made sure staff in one location was interchangeable with another, identical equipment, and plenty of branding. This means lots of visits from corporate to make sure a location was on track. While coffee beans transport pretty well, there's a lot more to a franchise. # You're not selling coffee beans. You're selling coffee *seeds*. You're selling seeds that can be grown anywhere in the kingdom. Each agricultural operation has to be different. No matter how adapted these magic coffee plants are, each area has its own way of growing, its own sources of water and fertilizer, its own way of doing things. You aren't managing all that, nor should you. The growing would fail if you did. # Maybe you do sell the processed beans. But say you don't sell the seeds, you only lease out the farms and allow others to grow them for you. Then you process and distribute the coffee beans which are ready to be ground up and made into coffee. That alone is a big deal and you will have different products from different regions. So on to the franchise. The concept of a franchise only works if people go to more than one location. Otherwise, how do they know it's the same? In our modern world, we all know that a Starbucks or McDonald's is the same everywhere, even if we've been to just one of each (or zero). In your world, at least some people would need to experience it. Not enough people travel in your kingdom. And none of them are going to care about the consistent experience. Sure, they might all want "Summerfall Coffee" (just like they all want Dornish Wine with dinner) but that's a produced product that goes through distribution channels and is available for individual inns and cafes and other places that serve food (like castles) to buy wholesale. # Would it be possible? Possibility isn't just about the tech, like you imply. It's also cultural. Culturally, no way. There's no reason for it and no desire. As for the tech... * First what you need is a central office (that's more or less done). * Well-trained enforcers (easy enough). * You need a manual for setup and operations. That's a bit harder because everything has to be handwritten and copied and not many people know how to read. * Franchise owners need to come to Summerfall (or other central location) for training. This is not impossible...the owners would all be 3rd and 4th sons of lesser nobles. The ones who don't want to just be knights or live in their older brother's shadow all the time. If you really want more applicants, open it up to the daughters. * Getting into this is very very expensive. * Once trained, the franchise owner goes back home and oversees construction, probably with an enforcer around for that. * The owner has bought the branded company equipment and hauled it back. * The staff doesn't have to know how to read (well the supervisors should) and their training is very specific. * We'll allow each establishment to supply their own mugs for serving the coffee. * Every few months, a new supply of coffee beans comes in, along with an enforcer to make sure the franchise is doing what it needs to be doing. And of course to collect their share of revenues and payment for the coffee. # With a non-perishable single product, could you handle the logistics of a franchise in that world? Yes. Would it work out financially for all concerned? Probably not. Would all the trouble to create a consistent experience for the customer be worth it? No. Your customers will buy because nobody else has coffee, at least not in the north and central parts of the kingdom. You have no competition, so why does the experience matter? # You'd be better off selling the seeds or the processed beans. [Answer] The only way a franchise makes sense in the ancient world is to take your magic beans, put them in sacks with a mermaid on them, and sell them to anybody who will buy them. This is how it actually worked in the ancient world with operations that had a widespread reputation. They didn't open 'stores' the way you're thinking, they just made their goods and made it as difficult as possible for anybody else to copy them, and then shipped them all over the place. Actual RETAIL franchises like you're thinking aren't practical at all in a setting like this. Here's why: The benefits of a franchise operation come from economies of scale that rely on a) cheap large-radius advertising (e.g. radio/television) b) cheap long-distance transportation of goods and c) a customer base that frequently travels, and is looking for a known reliable source of what they want. None of these factors exist in the ancient world, so there's no benefit to be had from establishing a franchise the way you're thinking. [Answer] **Family** A big problem involved in doing this is trust. You have to trust a lot of people far away that you never have and never will meet. If they are all related that helps to make it even better make them a tolerated but not loved minority to encourage them to stick together. The family wouldn't start this out as a franchise in the way we understand it; instead a group of them moves to a new city and sets up a branch because it's what they know how to do. Whenever possible they would duplicate the supply chain of the previous location rather than ship goods to save costs and because they all know how to do it. Having all the same logos and slogans and brand names is still a but much to expect though. Unless perhaps there is a religious angle involved. This family all worship the god starbuck and decorate their businesses with his likeness. Their slogans are simply religious phrases. They don't preach or convert outsiders so no one other than them is aware its a religious thing and so it looks like a coordinated business decision. If magic is a thing, perhaps starbuck is real and actively helping out, which could explain some of the really complicated parts working. From his perspective people saying his name in a positive light is a win even if they don't know he exists. [Answer] No. Franchises require the enforcement of intellectual property rights to exist. Otherwise, I could simply open up my own coffee store, call it "Starbucks" and not pay anybody else anything for the right to do so. So unless you *also* want to posit some kind of strong central authority that is able to enforce trademark claims, there is no way to have a franchise. ]
[Question] [ Extremely advanced civilization on a computerized space station orbiting a desolate uninhabited planet. There are no other known civilizations within this station's sphere of observation. Not many people on the space station have any scientific knowledge whatsoever because the station is fully automated, but those who do *really really* want to plan expeditions to the surface of the planet because there's nothing left to do on the station science-wise. A single expedition has been done years in the past, with several crew members now lost and marooned on the planet. Years later, at the time of the story, a second expedition is nearing completion, doubling as a rescue op (although the actual fate of the original crew members are unknown). I need a reason why these expeditions would take years to prepare for despite having advanced technology. Also, for plot reasons, drones, computerized ships, or robots should not be able to be sent to the surface in lieu of live missions, so I'd need a reason for that too. Bonus points if you can come up with a reason why there wouldn't be any satellite imagery or information on the planet they orbit (although not necessary). Thanks in advance for any ideas. Let me know if you need clarification on something. [Answer] **It's like *The Girls of Atomic City*.** That's a [terrific nonfiction book](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15801668-the-girls-of-atomic-city) about women who worked in Oak Ridge, Tennessee during WWII doing Uranium enrichment work to aid the Manhattan Project. Very deliberately, the people in charge of the project made sure that no one except some top-level people knew anything beyond the very specific job they had. While the book is about women (because their stories are less often told), this idea extended to all workers. If your job was to perform a specific test on rocks and then report the numbers, that's all you did. You didn't know what the rocks were or which numbers were good or bad or what happened before and after your tests. Even the town the workers lived in was more or less a secret. They weren't allowed to talk to anyone outside the project about what they were doing, even though they didn't really know what they were doing. Nor could they share information with co-workers outside of specific work tasks. They could give a mailing address to far flung family (and white workers could bring their families with them to the town, which had schools and etc) but that was about it. People got fired for small infractions. It wasn't until the end of the war, or even after the war, that the workers knew what they had been doing and what the final product was. So if your space station is owned by a government or private entity and serves a purpose they need to keep secret, it's very possible that they'd tell their workers absolutely nothing beyond what they need to do their jobs and keep the station running properly. If the purpose is secret, the lack of satellite imagery, drones, and so forth is a given. The workers don't need that information for their work, so why would they have it? The scientists may know more about the purpose of the space station, or they at least can give some educated guesses, but that doesn't tell them what is really going on. It will be obvious to most that the planet they're orbiting has something important hidden on it, and that may make them even more eager to explore, but they won't know what it is. The years between expeditions is because the government/company chose that timing. They needed to get people they trust in place. Plus they had to get the equipment there. Since expeditions weren't part of the regular schedule, the station didn't have enough equipment to run another expedition. There are going to be consequences if the workers break the rules. Depending on how isolated they are and what they find out, being fired and removed from the station might not even be possible. The risks of disobeying orders might be quite grave indeed. [Answer] While the station may be fully autonomous, it only does the things is was designed to do like maintaining power and life support for its inhabitants and recycling the heck out of its limited resources. If the station is not designed for planetary expeditions and its inhabitants are not as smart as it's makers, then those landings are being conducted by people who are basically MacGyvering the heck out of what they have. Considering this context, there are some roadblocks. First of all, their landers would have to be made from those very limited extra materials the station has which would be a bureaucratic nightmare for approval. For example, if you only have 20 tons of aluminum on the station to meet the citizen's needs, then throwing 2 tons of that material over-board would be a controversial political matter with huge consequences. Even if the base relies on something like asteroid mining to replace attrition, it might be years between resupplies meaning that it could take a long time to recover the sacrifices made to send the first mission to enable a second one. The second consideration is the fuel. The base would likely derive its power from a limited but renewable resource like solar power, or it will have a very advanced and complicated power source like a miniature black hole. Solar can't power a lander, and super advanced power systems can't be replicated by a society that does not fully understand how that power system was made to begin with. This means, the most likely source of fuel they would use would be chemical (like Kerosene or Liquid Hydrogen). Depending on how advanced this station is, it may be either incapable of making these materials on it's own since they are not needed for survival, or the station blacklists dangerous compounds from being created by the replicators. This means, they may need to spend years growing plants, and processing the vegetative waste into kerosene to fuel their ships. As for your last few questions, if the planet has a dense Venus like atmosphere, they may be able to photograph it, but not be able to know what's under the constant cover of clouds. If the planet is far enough from the star, then the strong greenhouse effect would create a more livable planet, instead of a less hospitable one. A thick atmosphere could also prevent drones from being sent because 2-way communication would be impossible from the ground. The limited knowledge of the stations "science" crew may also prevent them from making an AI smart enough to do the mission on it's own since that is also not a function that the base was designed to do. Alternatively, if the crew is smart enough to make a robot, there could be reasons why computers just don't work on the planet at all, like from an exceptionally powerful EM field. [Answer] **Why it takes so long to prepare:** Getting down to the planet is fairly easy, but getting up again is difficult. There are no spaceports with well-maintained launchpads. Gravity is heavy so you need a multi-stage rocket to lift off, and this must be manufactured in space (most stages are not reusable), then fueled in space, then landed somehow on the planet in a way that it can take off again. This all takes time. Your explanation can be as simple as stating that the station can only produce fuel in excess of its needs at such-and-such a rate, so it takes N years to fill up the tanks of the expedition vessel. **Why they have no satellite data:** The planet could have a "canopy" of full-time cloud cover, like Venus does. I'm no planetologist but I think this could be accomplished by having a planet somewhat closer to the sun than Earth. Or since this could be a far future scenario, perhaps the Sun has become a red giant and is closer to the Earth. [Answer] I am intrigued that / Not many people on the space station have any scientific knowledge whatsoever /. They are surrounded by technology they depend on but do not understand and cannot fix. **They are degenerates.** [![Weena from The Time Machine](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QuRCv.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QuRCv.jpg) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weena_(The_Time_Machine)> By which I mean not perverts, but persons who are less than their ancestors were in the manner of the Eloi in H.G.Wells The Time Machine.\* The station was built by their remote ancestors, who also built drones, satellites and all the other scientific apparatus one might expect for such a station. Generations have passed and most occupants of the station pass their time in games and frivolities. Only a few have any interest in science and these are self taught. The drones and satellites break or malfunction to varying degrees and are not repaired. The AIs aboard the ship have decayed in the manner of their kind, isolating themselves and becoming weird and unreliable. It takes a long time to put together the mission because these people have never had to do anything. The one person chiefly interested in conducting the mission has only desultory and haphazard help from the others, chiefly by force of her personality. She herself is enthusiastic but does not really know what she is doing, figuring things out along the way by trial and error. \*if you are reading on this site, but have never read The Time Machine, stop reading on this site and read [The Time Machine](http://archive.org/stream/thetimemachine00035gut/35.txt) [Answer] Long term delays: Resources to build the shuttle have to be brought in from the asteroid belt/outer planets. They have to build the infra-structure to make the tools to make the tools to move the stuff to make the production plant that makes the fuel. Before you get too carried away with this, figure out how there present economy works: Perfect recycling? Reinvent technology. If they don't have eneough people to understand their technology, they have to re-invent it. Part of this may be lost information dating back to the first expedition. Communication delays: Not being planet dwellers they don't know about the existence of the ionosphere. First expedition dropped out of contact as they passed the 50 mile level, and hasn't been heard from. Or They use line of site communications. The reentry by the first expedition was bungled, and they landed at a point that is never in sight of the station. (This takes serious bungling.) [Answer] If the planet suffers from almost constant geomagnetic storms, it would make it extremely difficult for spacecraft that are not appropriately shielded to make that expedition and can only be done when there is a break in the storms, which could be years apart. Geomagnetic storms would also create very bright auroras, which could explain lack of visibility from space. You could also add weather conditions such as heavy rain clouds or dust storms to add to the obscurity. The space station itself is shielded from such storms (it would need to be if in orbit), but does not come with any space vehicles that have the appropriate shielding. Why would it if travelling to the planet was not the mission? Also, the space vehicles that are available don't come with any autopilot that could navigate a planet entry and safe landing, because they simply weren't designed for that. Most of the station inhabitants aren't scientists, but some are. So while the inhabitants may have the skill to adapt one or two of the maintenance ships (used to carry out minor repairs to the outside of the station) for a planet entry (think heat shields), they don't have the required tools/skills to program an autopilot that could navigate that entry, deal with whatever weather conditions there are and land on what is moistly an unknown terrain. [Answer] They live in Space and so they are not strong enough to go to the ground without prper training (our astronauts have to train so that the muscle degration is not to much, but they still have to train after returning to earth). Unfortunately, this means that the first expedition is propably dead. Or they also knew this and had this propper training like the second expedition. This training should only be doable for the fittest inhabitants and will need years of training. Still, on Earth every step will be hard work. Good luck, Gaianauts! [Answer] i maybe see a reason. the tectonique of the planet is really active, some super volcano spit endlessly ashes into the atmosphere making observation really hard, and sending data via classical communication technologies unusable, you need to get them physically back. With that setting sending drone and automatized drone is not really an option. You don't know where they land, what too look for. It would just be pointing a point on the planet, hope it is not a volcano or an ocean, have interesting characteristics for scientific work and a lot of other variable that are just not thing you can ask to the automated drone avaible to your station. So you need to send human, to command the operation themselves and think without needing to ask question to the station regularly if they have any problems. And since you will want to only take the bare minimum of people in those dangerous mission, you will need to train the scientists to surviving and exploration skill they just don't have yet, from on the field reparation, piloting vehicle they where never trained to use, to how survive on an unknown world where little to nothing is known. Those are quite difficult skill to learn, and you can't afford to not be sure about anything. So the training process might take as long as you need for your setting. ]
[Question] [ It's not finished yet, so it's still pretty empty. But I can't stop worrying about the rivers and mountains, so I ask for help. It's about 1100-1200 miles from north to south. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PuSdB.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PuSdB.jpg) [Answer] I notice that there are two parallel mountain chains in the upper left corner. This would be a natural place for a river in between them, parallel to both, running to the sea in the west. Instead, the upper chain does have a river running to the east. That's not unheard of, but I'm wondering why the eastern side of the valley between the mountains would be at a lower elevation than the western side, as this implies. Maybe, since the mountain chains get closer together toward the west, there are hills connecting them, similar to foothills around the large mountain range on the right side of the map? Edit Ok, so here's the slightly-more-informed opinion. <https://i.stack.imgur.com/aBdRD.jpg> Since you have three north-south mountain ranges that will affect where your rain shadows are, I went to The True Size and compared India to the Western US. <https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Tn1g.jpg> Then I went to Google's My Maps and sketched out a trapezoid about the same shape as your landmass. Since the subtropical band starts at 25 degrees north, that's where I put the base of the trapezoid, just above the word Baja. <https://i.stack.imgur.com/eZDwZ.jpg> So to begin with, you've got a J-shaped crescent of subtropical weather along your southern and eastern coasts. At 25 degrees, the southern coast is like Florida, and the very top of the J, in the upper-right hand corner, is going to be like Virginia. Whether or not it's swampy coastal plain like the East Coast depends on soil deposition. But you might want to consider that, on the East Coast, a mountain range with a similar area as the vertical oval would have a dozen unique watersheds to the sea - and that's without being on the windward side of a peninsula. Since you've got the wind coming from the east instead of the west, what you've basically created between these two mountain chains is a flipped version of the Western US. The area on the western sides of your mountains, opposite the direction of the wind, will be deserts and plains caused by rain shadows. Putting the southern shore at 25 degrees makes the landmass southerly enough that half the rain shadow will be a hot desert (in red), and half will be a temperate desert. But there isn't going to be much precipitation to create the snowmelt and runoff necessary to sustain more than one major river *from that side*, and it will probably be in the upper, more temperate half. As your air masses continue moving west, they'll hit the second mountain chain. If it's high enough compared to the first one, then there will be enough snowpack to sustain at least three, maybe four major tributaries that join the river running south. (If your civilization has the means to build irrigation canals out of the river, and depending on soil quality, that could be some pretty productive farmland.) Since it's flipped, the western side of the Rocky Mountains is the kind of climate and precipitation pattern I'm thinking of here. Finally in this sequence, you're going to have a dangerous, foggy western coast as the dry, hot air falling down the mountains mixes with the cold, wet air over the ocean. Since there's a significant break between the eastern mountain chains, it allows for a large continental climate pattern in the upper part of your map. And last but not least, the range in the upper right hand corner looks large enough, in conjunction with how the other northern chains are oriented, to create a large cold desert in the north, similar to Mongolia. This entire area will probably only have one major river, although there could a tributary from each individual range. If your range in the upper left hand corner is high enough relative to the right-hand-corner-range, then it can create a humid continental microclimate where that river would most likely start. In that case, the rivers from these mountains look about right (assuming you directed the river in that direction with foothills or something in the western side of that valley.) Hope I didn't send you too far back to the drawing board. [Answer] The things that struck me are, first of all, the more-or-less random placement of mountains. Mountains have causes, and they can come from subduction of a oceanic plate (e.g., the Andes) or from a hotspot (e.g, the area around Yellowstone or Hawaii), or from plate collisions (e.g, the Alps and Himalayas) etc. There will be some patterns which are not visible here. (I notice that all the mountains appear to be young. Is this intentional, or just the limitations of the drawing?) Secondly, the land is drawn as flat with narrow mountain chains. You might, possibly, get one narrow mountain chain, but in general they will have lands to one or both sides which are rugged, but not mountains and there will be ranges of hills that don't make it to the status of mountains. I see none of this here. I like the rivers! They start in mountains and they move plausibly across the land. (They don't flow uphill or do other impossible things like split and go off it two different directions.) [Answer] # The Rivers Rivers almost always flow away from mountain sources on both sides of a mountain range, not just one, as is the case in several of the mountain ranges shown, unless one side is a desert (which doesn't obviously seem to be the case, if it is, a lighter yellow or white color should be used for deserts). Indeed, even if there is a desert, it is common to have a river bed that is seasonally dry or even a narrow water fed green strand running through what is otherwise a desert, sometimes in a canyon and sometimes not (a la the Tigress and Eurphrates in Syria and Iraq, or the Nile in Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, or the Grand Canyon in the American Southwest). Also, when a mountain range is the source of multiple rivers (as the Rocky Mountains in Colorado are), the sources of all of the major river systems tends to be centrally located near the point of highest elevation in the mountain range, and they tend to be close to each other. You could visit the source of all seven of the major river basins that originate in Colorado (the Colorado f.k.a. the Grand, the Arkansas, the Rio Grande, The N. Platte, the S. Platte, etc.) in two or three days by horse. Wyoming and Montana, Utah and Nevada, and New Mexico, to the north, west and south of Colorado include mountains in the same Rocky Mountain range as well, but are not the source of any really major river basins (they do have sources for some moderate sized tributaries that merge into the basins of bigger rivers eventually). Similarly, almost all of the major river systems of mainland Southeast Asia and Eastern India have origins that are quite geographically close to each other in a central, high elevation area. The main exceptions to this principle are mountain ranges that run along a coast. They tend to have lots of very fast running short rivers that run to the ocean or sea originating all along the mountain range. Another unusual feature is the complete absence of lakes. Even in places where there are no really big lakes, rivers typically have some places that are much wider than the rest of the river which are called lakes and look like lakes on a map. # A Lack Of Endorheic Basins Another thing that your map lacks, which isn't wrong, but is an opportunity missed, is the lack of an [endorheic basin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorheic_basin), which is to say a water basin that drains to an inland lake or sea, rather than ultimately to an ocean. In the real world, endorheic basins almost always develop linguistically and culturally distinctive cultures that go undisturbed by the larger cultural forces of their region that obliterate other relic cultures, because humans almost always explore new territory by tracing rivers from the coast to their sources and rarely take the final step of crossing the water basin divide across the highlands that surround an endorheic basin until much later. # The Mountains One notable issue with the mountains is that they superficially all seem to be about equal in height. But, Nature is not a big fan of equality. In the real world, mountain ranges tend to be unequal in height, some greater and some lesser, and usually have variation in height even within the same chain. Mountain chains also typically have a few mountain passes midway, often not terribly straight, that allow them to be traversed somewhere at lower altitudes. Mountain passes and the entrances to them on both sides of the mountain range, tend to be culturally important trade cross-roads kinds of places that are also focal points for invading and defending armies on either side of the range. Mountains also tend to form in chains separated by places of low elevation if there are parallel chains. If you have two mountain ranges running side by side closely enough to be part of the same geological system, you'd expect either a Great Basin (a la the Western U.S. between the Sierra Nevada range and the Rocky Mountains) or a chain of lakes (a la the Rift Valley of Africa), between them, not a big flat plain, which is something that develops as far from the mountains as possible. Sometimes the lowlands are submerged below water (the fjords of Scandinavia or the sea between Baja Mexico and the rest of Mexico). The mountains in the map also seem to universally end rather abruptly. Real mountain ranges tend to have some intermediate foothills between the peaks and the plains unless they are isolated volcanos formed by migrating hot spots like the Hawaiian islands. The mountain range in the Southeast of the map, in particular, looks wrong. If all of the other mountain ranges near the coast hug the coastline, so should this one. # Don't Be Too Hard On Yourself The criticisms in this answer are rather blunt. But, you can take it or leave it. Nobody ever stopped reading a story or book because the geology isn't realistic by Earth standards (well, maybe a geology nerd or two might, but that's 0.01% of your audience, tops). The map looks pretty and fits a lot of genre conventions that date back to Tolkien at least. As long as it does the job, it doesn't matter if it is scientifically plausible. But, if you want to add that extra polish and verisimilitude, you could revise it along some or all of the lines suggested in this answer. It also doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing. Even a couple of relatively minor changes along the lines of some of these suggestions will make the map as a whole seem more realistic. For example, simply widening one or two of the rivers into lakes in a couple of places and moving the Southeast mountain range closer to the coast would make the entire map seem more real, even if you change nothing else. [Answer] Most people do not have the geographical knowledge to distinguish between good and bad representations, and so I would say it looks fine - better than fine actually, it looks natural enough to be entirely plausible to the layman. [Answer] I see three rivers with their origins at the endpoint of mountain ranges. While this is not impossible I find it very improbable. Rivers form where there is a lot of water drainage, those origin points are not exactly where you would expect a lot of water. [Answer] That actually looks extremely good for a fantasy map, which are drawn different than an actual landform map, the rivers make sense even if the origins on rivers are never a single point but I assume the map only notes impassable rivers. The mountains are not ill placed although that could change if you include elevation, the western ranges should be from the same cause thus should be connected by highlands. I assume the prevailing winds blow east to west in which case your northern portions may be too green. I'd day it seems like it is pretty low in forest but it could easily be becasue most if it is settled farmland and you said it was not finished. Depending on if your trying to depict climate it will be off, but since you are just asking about mountains and rivers they will work. ]
[Question] [ **This question already has answers here**: [Speeding up time?](/questions/44963/speeding-up-time) (5 answers) Closed 6 years ago. Have re-edited question and changed the frame slightly as the other one speaks about a specific alien-generated time bubble and I'm asking if it could really be happening as we all seem to observe this phenomenon in our lives... I'm writing a story that starts from the general feeling we have of being time-poor and that time is speeding up - we know a year isn't as long as when we were kids - but we say for one reason or another that it's our perception that changes as we get older and the flow of time remains constant. But what if time really is speeding up for the whole planet and it's not a question of perception? Maybe what we're feeling when we feel our lives slip by faster is a sense of something, but we can't prove it because we're all inside it, but we feel squeezed. Can anyone help with a credible explanation - . i.e. Yes, time is running faster than it used to and it is accelerating because... perhaps our planet has entered some weird sector of spacetime? there is negative matter nearby? What is good/believable? [Answer] I think that if time really were speeding up, we wouldn't notice. This is because we exist *inside* the Universe; we have no objective overview of time. However, for the purposes of story a plausible way of measuring time is by measuring light pulses. At the LIGO laboratory, they rely on the speed of light being a constant; they know it will travel a certain distance (through vacuum) in a specific time. If the time the light pulse takes to travel changes, then they know a gravitational wave has passed through the earth, causing spacetime itself to expand or contract. You could use this experiment in your story - say that the light pulses take less and less time to travel. Initially the scientists think this means that space is getting smaller, and worry about a black hole. But then objective experiments show that space has remained the same size. The only conclusion is that time is speeding up. TL;DR the speed of light appears to increase. Given that the universe is expanding, this is impossible. Thus, time is speeding up. [Answer] One year for a five year old is 1/5 of their life. One year for a fifty year old is 1/50 of their life. **This is perspective perception at work.** A year seems like a shorter amount of time, and seems more quick for a 50 year-old BECAUSE it's a much smaller percentage of their life than it is for someone younger. A fruit fly lives for about 40 to 50 days. A day for them is more SIGNIFICANT than it is for us, because they have less time. No one is going nuts. And even if time is ACTUALLY speeding up some, children would still perceive a year as a more significant amount of time than a grown up. So let's break some things down. The first question we have to ask is: **What is time?** You are definitely going to have to give us a definition of time. And you are definitely going to have consider PERSPECTIVE. If time was sped up for everyone everywhere in the universe, how could anyone in the universe actually measure that? If you're just talking about the sun speeding up around the earth, as the measure, that's a different story. If you're talking about everything on the planet aging faster than it should as a measure of time, that too is different. (Like people aging a year in a single day or somesuch). But if the sun is going round faster, and the year is passing more quickly and people are talking faster, and aging faster, having babies faster, thinking faster, if it takes less time for the second hand on the clock to say a second has gone by, and everything else is in sync--you can understand how it would be difficult to perceive. This is fiction, so you can reach beyond the realm of the likely. On a practical level we might not notice time speeding up if it was on a cosmic scale, but, if there is a localized effect, it could be. The solution is perhaps some kind of wave or uneven effect so it would be. **So time could be passing more quickly on earth, while just a day passes in the rest of the universe--if THIS were true, if we were in a time bubble, we would be able to see that the stars aren't moving as they should be.** I think the trouble that people are running into is the universality of the question--you should make it so that earth is now running at a different time than it should IN COMPARISON to everything else--it's the sort of thing that needs a different perspective, and would not work on a universe-wide level. [Answer] We understand why time seems to speed up. It is because we have fewer mental resources to build memories. We are running out of brain as we age, and new memories compete with old. Each day is a smaller fraction of our life. But, since time is a function of matter and gravity, yes, it can change just as gravity can change. And it is arguably just as meaningless. But it's still useful. For us. [Answer] *Space time folds are causing a double pendulum-like speed up effect* Rudimentary physics background here, so this could be just a hopeful sparking point of an idea more suited to your science based tag. It's fiction, so hopefully could be believable enough for your scenario. Imagine the theory people like to use for time/teleportation travel where the space time itself is folded and skipping directly from one spot on the folded part to another takes you to a new time and or place. Now imagine NOT skipping off the fold, but rather entering that end part of the fold that happens to also be at the end of a double fold acting like a double pendulum. You get out there and all of a sudden, relative to someone elsewhere on the continuum, your spot on the continuum is traveling like crazy around the bend with a whiplash effect speeding up everyone within that spot's perception of time. Perhaps there's a bulge in the space time caused by the extreme conditions right then and there where time measurements are going to get wacky, not to mention some other interesting effects on gravity patterns and things dependent on them. "They're migrating East? How bizarre. They'll never survive winter..." [Answer] As far as I understand the local time is slowing down for the traveller when travelling at near light speeds. So we could imagine circumstances at which possibly the time could be speeding up for Earth, but slowing down everywhere else, like for some reason the rest of the Universe was going near light speed and our patch somehow managed to slow down. Otherwise, as others said, we wouldn't have a frame of reference against which to see if things are happening faster/slower. However the implications might be unsustainable for life, insofar as we are talking science-based. I rather think time might be somewhere inside the [fine-tuning constants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe), whose current values are what is permitting universe to exist in its current form. If speed of light alters, for example, the universe may just collapse. Or explode. Same about speed of chemical reactions or other things. [Answer] For purpose of your story, it's sufficient for human **neurons** to transmit the electrical signals slower. Speed of electrical impulse differs from one material to another anyway (as does the speed of light). In your case it could be a matter of a mild virus infection that has a side effect of slightly changing neurons' (axons'?) conductivity. Other that that, if you consider a physical theory a "map" that allows you to predict what will happen in reality (on a "territory"), then it's clear that time as a concept is firmly placed as a part of a "map" and only there. Time is not part of reality. And you cannot measure it; every instrument measures speed or distance. If a theory predicts that "time will slow down" it actually predicts that speed of objects will decrease or the distance will increase (or both, as in case of Einstein's theories). See Barbour's "The End of Time". ]
[Question] [ In a [previous question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/60622/can-a-one-gendered-species-evolve-sapience/) on my purely peaceful, 100% pacifist species, I asked about how to remove all defining characteristics for sexuality yet still retaining sapience. As was pointed out, I had asked the wrong question about these beings. I should have been asking how a 100% pacifist species could even evolve in the first place, even cows and giraffes will become violent if provoked, how do a race of pacifists survive against a tiger or bear? There will be predators, those predators will evolve to eat them. They will need some form of defense. How can a species evolve that lacks a sense of violence, aggression or, for lack of better terminology, a sense of fight? Or, to put it better, how can I hope to evolve purely pacifist intelligence? [Answer] There are examples in any ecosystem of animals which are completely non aggressive. Unfortunately, the place they hold in the food chain is almost always near the bottom. (Think: Krill, certain small fish species, some insects). The way such organisms succeed is by maximizing their ability to reproduce to such an extent that they continue to repopulate even in the face of continual predation. Your question could lead to an interesting concept: it is generally assumed that any sapient species would obviously be the top of its local food chain, but what if there were such a species at the very bottom? Off the top of my head, I would say that a way to rapidly transmit information among members of the species would be paramount, so as to allow continued technological and social advancement in the face of continual losses to the population as a whole. Probably reproduction would be both hard wired into social behavior and a very strong social norm to ensure as many beings survive as possible. They may have social norms that we would consider extremely Darwinian and harsh, based on fitness criteria, and little attachment to their offspring. In fact, it may seem unnatural to them to be in an environment where they have no natural competition, so they may even seed their extra-planetary colonies/ships with dangerous fauna on purpose (sort of like a twist on the Predator aliens seeding planets with species that are good for hunting for their own cultural reasons). Culturally, they would probably value communal achievement to such an extent that individual achievement would mean very little to them. Also, without any aggressive instinct, their social structure might be extremely primitive compared to their overall technological level (depending on whether you view conflict to be natural to social organizational advancement or not). In our history, inefficient organizational concepts for society tended to lose out in competition that generally took the form of warfare. This forced civilizations to adopt more efficient social structures. In their civilization, this process would be completely absent, so they may have very advanced physical technology and completely primitive social (political) technology. Obviously their only response to the need to deal with warfare on any level would be to ramp up re population efforts until the aggressor grew tired of attacking them. [Answer] Let's say the "100%" is a bit of hyperbole, propaganda sent around by this species to help them join the Federation. Let's say they're 95% pacifist. How could they develop intelligence? Well, make them abject cowards. At the first sign of a fight, they run and hide. They climb trees, they duck into caves, they dig themselves burrows, and they stay the hell out of the way of whatever is gunning for them. Put them in the right environment, and you've got a pretty decent selective pressure for them to develop problem-solving skills to figure out the safest place for them to hide. The archetypal species of this kind are the [Pierson's Puppeteers](http://larryniven.wikia.com/wiki/Pierson's_Puppeteer) from Larry Niven's Known Space series. They're a species of biological cowards, herd animals whose first instinct is to flee from a fight. Their political leader is called the Hindmost; the only members of their species that willingly interact with off-worlders are the mentally ill. Your species could also make a good living as parasitic scavengers. A species of scrawny carrion eaters who follow an apex predator around so they can feast on the scraps the predator leaves behind could have access to foods rich in the fats and proteins needed to build a big brain, along with a selective pressure to develop the brains needed to get the most out of their meal. In time, they might also learn to guide their attack dog towards juicier prey - technical pacifists, who are horrified at the thought of killing or fighting, and instead set you up to be killed by another. Your species could be stereotypical hyenas (not real ones, just the way they're perceived in the wider world) - cunning but cowardly scavengers, manipulating others to do their dirty work and growing fat on the profits, but fleeing from any conflict. [Answer] Make them absolutely unique in their environment. Something which no other animal wants to screw with, pardon my french. Maybe they're the **biggest** things around, and *nothing* else has a chance of taking on down. Or maybe their meat is insanely toxic, and would kill anything which tried to eat it. It just occurred to me that being a pacifist doesn't necessarily make it healthy to be around said species. Maybe these things give off a very repellent, slightly toxic odor or smell (think skunks) which really encourages other animals to stay away. Furthermore, maybe these animals accomplish a very important task for other species. For example, maybe there's a very poisonous, and aggressive species of plant which would suffocate the life out of entire forests, and these creatures are the only ones who can consume it and keep it in check. Areas where these creatures were hunted out would slowly be overwhelmed, and their inhabitants die, thus other creatures either learned to leave your species alone, or die. [Answer] I'm adding this, since I'm surprised that nobody has come up with the Babel fish approach (see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) - be unbelievably useful to some violent sentient creature, but in a pacifist manner. I'll come up with an example case to clarify. Let's say that there is some volcanic planet with tons of variation in atmospheric conditions. These conditions create small zones, and almost all species adapt to live in just one zone. On one side of the planet, an extremely violent and powerful species (Species A) develops intelligence, but they are limited to their zone. On the other side of the planet, Species B develops. Species B possesses the ability to convert atmospheric compounds into other atmospheric compounds. They use this ability to survive and thrive on their side of the planet, since they had to develop intelligence in order to fully exploit their amazing mobility in such a complex environment. Species B is pacifist and can survive as pacifists since they can create inhospitable environments to defend themselves. It's hard to kill something when you can't even breathe when you're within 5 miles of them. No predators develop which can do the same trick, since the mechanism is too inefficient and too slow. Species A and B are initially separated by some significant barrier. Sometime after both species develop sentience, an explorer, Bob, from Species B enters Species A territory and makes first contact with an individual of Species A, Adam. This occurs at the very edge of what Species A considers 'habitable' space, an area where the atmospheric compounds are too 'bitter' for Adam to survive long. Adam grabs Bob and prepares to eat him, but realizes at the last second that the air has become much 'sweeter' near 'Bob'. Adam realizes how useful this is and then goes out exploring in previously impossible regions, carrying a terrified Bob with him. Adam quickly discovers that Bob is sentient, and they establish some form of arrangement with Bob where Adam protects and feeds Bob while Bob makes the air 'sweet' for Adam. Adam and Bob work together to create a super-tribe of incredibly-mobile Species A warriors, whose superior mobility enables them to conquer all non-union Species A and B's. The alliance is forged, and now we have the sweet spot for a sentient, pacifist species. Species B's best survival strategy from here on is to be completely passive and just work together with Species A. Also, Species B doesn't have evolutionary pressure to devolve sentience, since ensuring 'sweet' air for Species A is very mentally-challenging. Species A has no incentive to try and develop machines to replace Species B since Species B is really, really good at what they do, cost almost nothing to maintain, and are extremely pleasant companions. [Answer] does it have to be natural evolution? they could have messed with their own genome. the only animals that have no aggressive behavior have little chance to evolve intelligence, either they breed to fast to be able to waste resources on intelligence, , or they are so difficult to kill they never needed to evolve social behavior, ex: turtles. Part of evolving intelligence is having a wide range of behavior, even Niven's famous puppeteers were violent under the right circumstances, they just a massive pervasive cultural bias against violence. Which is actually quite believable, and it is fairly easy to imagine a species that is less violent than humans. Now image such a species with access to genetic engineering they might eliminate violent behavior entirely that way. So start with a low aggression species and then let the mess with their own genome too much. [Answer] How about "The Meek Inherit The Earth"? They could be the only large animal species left on their planet; so they eat plants and invertebrates like worms. There *were* aggressive species at one time, but recall how dinosaurs on Earth came to the end, but the ancestor of us humans survived: All the **big** animals died in the asteroid strike and subsequent nuclear winter. Our ancestor (and long before anything like primates existed) was most likely nocturnal and living in burrows. So, say some similar but worse natural disaster befalls your planet; and the only surviving animals were prey, not very aggressive in the first place, highly social, vegetarians. Without predators, the smarter among them are selected as leaders because of their ability to find food and shelter in the post-disaster hell scape. Say they have a natural deference to such leaders, and (as we already see in wolf packs IRL) only the 'best' are allowed to mate; the rest of the pack jointly cares for the young. (In wolves, the alpha male and alpha female are chosen by aggression, but presume in this non-aggressive species, all that mattered was the intellectual ability to solve survival problems). High intelligence develops; the evolutionary pressure for millions of years is just making a living in scorched rubble; but their species is **so** social that all of them see themselves as subservient to the group, even the **leaders** are not self-centered or focused on personal gain or reproduction, reproduction is something they do if and when their group is shrinking. But their "love" is always for the group; not for each other. Although the stories for this species might be boring (for us humans) because everybody is a selfless altruist, conflict is possible if they meet aliens. Their love is for *their own species*, and the conundrum of what to do when confronted with a violent enemy is something to write about. How do they see such violence? Perhaps like a poisonous plant or moss on their own planet, something to be eradicated, so it stops harming them and opens up land to be cultivated, to feed more of them... Heck, they could see entire planets in this way: There is new farmland down there, covered in what they see as dangerous and poisonous insects, spiders or plants, (but are actually humans) that must be eradicated so they can replant and colonize! They aren't "aggressive", they evolved without any other animals for a few hundred million years and are just incapable of seeing anything that is not their own species as anything but the equivalent of our plants, worms, insects, spiders, etc. [Answer] How about highly sensitive grenade people? If they have one hair-trigger defense mechanism that instinctively goes off as soon as they feel threatened, and there is mutually assured destruction, they might be (psychologically if not physiologically) completely peaceful. They wouldn't evolve any aggressive reaction to predators because they wouldn't need to. And if they feel tempted to treat each other poorly, the potential cost of frightening someone would far outweigh the benefits. They would treat everyone with the utmost respect, because the alternative would be too horrible. There would, admittedly, be selective pressure to develop a mechanism that doesn't trigger as easily from intra-species aggression - because being bullied is less costly than exploding. And there would be selective pressure not to trigger at all - if all others explode, I can just practice mimicry and live safe from predators *and* from myself. But sometimes evolution just gets stuck with a design and can't evolve past it, because it would involve redesigning the organism from the ground up - and evolution can (mostly) only do small changes at a time. [Answer] You probably can't. Have you heard of pigeons and hawks game? It's a model from the border of game theory and biology. Publications began with paper by John Maynard Smith and George R. Price in a 1973. Simply put, in a world of pigeons (non violent) if you happen to be a hawk (violent), you are a winner. Your genes will spread. Or your ideas will. You are the one who fought for a girl, the one who fought for food when town was dying from hunger, etc. So it only takes one mutation, or one random idea, to spoil your plan and add violence to their culture and gene pool. References: * <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy> * Selfish Gene by Dawkins * Evolution Games by Ochmański ]
[Question] [ The world is divided in several factions. Among them : Insects and Humans. When I say Insects, I don't mean insects : insects are the little creatures with six legs while Insects regroup all [social insects](http://blogs.cornell.edu/naturalistoutreach/files/2013/09/Social-Insects-I-26beuxe.pdf), namely all species of ants and termites and the bees and wasps that live in colonies. Insects have developed a kind of magic (at least, Humans have no better explanation). They are all mentally connected to the Weft. They can : * Communicate telepathically with any other member of the Weft. * When a member of the Weft dies, all its memories are transferred to a random other member of the Weft. * Communicate telepathically with some Humans. To Humans, they seem to have the intelligence of a ten year old. Humans have no magic abilities. However, their technology is at least as advanced as ours today and will probably be the kind of technology we'll have in two centuries (I haven't decided yet). Moreover, most of them have a scientific background. There has been a war recently between Humans and Insects. Insects won and had Humans sign a treaty in which one article roughly says : "Each time a Human kills an Insect, Insects will kill a Human. If Insects consider that the number of deaths caused by Humans is too high, Insects will exterminate Humans". Since they have underestimated Insects during the last war, my Humans have decided to obey them (for now...) and are trying to find effective ways to avoid killing Insects. How can they do that ? More precisely : 1. The first step to avoid killing Insects would be to spot them. Are there ways to easily detect Insects not only on the ground and in the air but also in the ground and in materials such as wood ? 2. I'd like Humans to have Insect-free shelters. I guess they could build structures (including in the ground) to prevent any insect from entering but how do they get rid of those who are already in the structure without harming them ? 3. Humans will have to go out of the shelters sooner or later. How can they move without squashing any Insect ? The cheapest and less time-consuming solutions, the better. [Answer] **We can't...** In short, without some radical change in human or insect behavior, it kinda sounds like your humans are screwed. There are *roughly* **10,000,000,000,000,000,000** insects on planet earth. Compare this with **7,000,000,000** That's ten quintillion and seven billion respectively... --- **The treaty you mention is either:** A) Very poorly conceived and written, or B) Specifically worded with the future extermination of humanity in mind. The only places on earth that have no insect life also have no human life (at least not permanently settled). They are simply uninhabitable and don't forget that human survival needs are far more complicated than those of insects. --- **Why are humans screwed?** Well, we kill insects all the time. We drive cars, we walk, we reflexively swat things that land on us... Insects are going to die...according to your treaty it's a one for one deal so then humans die...and there are waaaay more of them then us...and if we *try* to live up to the deal in the treaty there will be even more as we won't be spraying pesticides and swatting spiders and flies in our homes...odds are this could even lead to larger disease outbreaks which kill even more humans. Eventually, even if the insects don't declare war to exterminate us, we will be gone simply by living. The human population will dwindle over time to the point where we no longer have a minimum necessary population to survive as a species. **I say we arm up with flamethrowers and deet laced armor and go out in a blaze of fiery glory instead.** [Answer] Point one, since you've mentioned that the *Insects* are not just insects but have sentience, you could first include an agreement or something similar between Humans and Insects. Something along the lines of, "Insects are also responsible for entering high risk zones where the density of humans is high and likewise, Humans have to make sure that they not enter places where the likelihood of killing Insects is higher." This is the legal side. On the more practical side of matters, if the above idea is not possible, the first thing that popped into my head was shoes. We DO kill a lot of insects by crushing them underfoot. Maybe you could have a special kind of footwear that is soft or pliant enough to actually not kill any insects? (Sounds far-fetched to me but hey, the premise itself isn't that plausible.) Basically, what you first have to think of is what are the different ways in which Insects can be killed by Humans. I mentioned one above. Another common way we kill Insects is windshields. Lots and lots of insects die because of speeding vehicles. So, establish speed limits. Or you could ban vehicles entirely. Or go windshield-less? Another way is to, you know, NOT use stuff like bug sprays, insecticides etc. Most of the suggestions I can think of are on the lines of **NOT** doing things that kill insects (The stuff we do with the intention of killing them.) Another way is for the Humans and Insects to have mutually exclusive zones of work. Kind of like a 'no dogs allowed'sign. These are the really cheap, easy-to-do, non-sci-fi solutions though. [Answer] It depends on how direct the causality in your treaty is. Does an Insect count as killed by a Human if they wander into a "roach motel", for instance, or if they're a bee that stings a Human and subsequently dies from their ruptured abdomen when they leave the stinger inside? In other words, are there situations in which according to the treaty it's the Insect's Own Damn Fault for getting themselves killed, and thus not requiring reprisal? Your Insects may or may not have thought this through; you do say they've got the approximate intelligence of ten-year-olds. If not, well, I'd recommend the human race set out to sea (or space); so far as I'm aware the ocean doesn't have much in the way of social insects (or any insects, really, if you go out far enough). *Getting* out there will take some doing, but maybe the start time on that treaty is negotiable. If so, however, Sphoorthy's answer is relevant here - the isolation no longer has to be total, so we can keep our cars/trains/etc. in certain areas so long as we slow down and take precautions. Lawns are out, though - too easy to miss an Insect in the grass. Either way, though, you're also going to have to address the issue of sociopathic Humans who figure: "Hey, the treaty didn't say anything about *which* Human gets killed if I kill an Insect; there are X billion humans on Earth, the odds I'm the one they'll pick are only 1 in X billion! Sure, I'll take those odds - repeatedly!" Blaze-of-glory types will likely have to be educated on the difference between insects and Insects - a typical windshield is much more likely to encounter the former than the latter, especially after we start lining our roads with Insect-legible "do-not-cross" marks (and tunnels underneath every so often). Similarly, "do-not-eat" chemicals (bad-tasting, not poisonous) can be used to convince termites that yes, in fact, the Humans want that support pillar intact and would rather you didn't keep chewing. [Answer] The only way in which this treaty would work out is if we enforce a strict separation of insects and people. First, insects will have to go live in a country or colony of their own, while people will live on their own territories. (in the scenario you describe this is literally the only way to coexist under those terms) Step 2 is us nuking each and every one of those colonies, because the whole idea of sentient insects holding humanity hostage with magic is nuts. Seriously. How could this truce possibly be enforced? Insects breed incredibly quickly - and ***in quantity***. They can spread much faster than humanity could ever hope to keep up. Furthermore, they are our competitors for some resources - such as our crops. For humanity to redesign our entire existence around avoiding insects is simply insane. They would be killing us by the thousands on any given day as we accidentally step on an ant, or squish a bug (even in our sleep). [Answer] The only viable option I can imagine is ***Insect Repellent*** (not insecticide). Humans would have to devise a non-lethal mechanical and/or chemical system for "encouraging" Insect populations to leave areas that humans want or need to inhabit or enter temporarily, and to prevent Insects from re-entering these areas. This might include sound, vibration, light, heat, pheromones, etc. These techniques are both feasible and in-use today, although without the dire consequences of your "Treaty" if the repellent is excessive or less effective than intended. Because of the gravity of the treaty, this solution would probably include monitoring systems to conserve resources (i.e. Insect detection, to dispense the appropriate dose of Repellent), warn Humans of approaching Insects, and ensure compliance (on both sides), but these are precautionary as opposed to necessary. Humans would have to retreat to areas where they could survive and produce the Repellent without risk of killing Insects. They could cautiously leave these areas if they could carry Repellent and monitor Insects sufficiently so as not to risk violation of the treaty. EDIT: There are many references available that speak to the ability to identify and use non-lethal inset repellents. By studying and understanding insects, especially "smart ones" like you've described, it would be likely they would specify what repellents are acceptable and for what purposes, much like non-lethal forms of human control like tear gas, water hoses, horns and traffic lights. Insects use various forms of communication - for example, here is an article on "Treehoppers" that use vibrations to attract and warn other treehoppers: <http://www.npr.org/2015/08/27/432934935/good-vibrations-key-to-insect-communication> - sending a false "predator warning" vibration would likely get them to scatter. Bee keepers use "smokers" to calm bees. Mosquito repellents come in a lot of varieties, all designed to keep insects away from us (with the side-effect of keeping the insect alive). And here is an example of a "fake wasp nest" repellent (<http://eartheasy.com/live_natwasp_control.htm>) - wasps are territorial and unlikely to come near another nest. Want to buy some insect pheromone repellent? <http://www.pestwarehouse.com/c/55/verbenone-mch-pheromone-insect-beetle-repellants-anti-aggregants> - it's a real thing. I also suppose similar techniques could also be used to "lure" Insects to places we want them to go, since other chemicals, substances, actions, etc. **attract** insects. So a combination of repellents and lures might be more effective than repellent alone. This is high-level information. Intended to provide the basis for the *possibility* of using this to resolve the problem you are asking about.I am not an expert on insects or repellents. [Answer] One of the biggest problems (besides the ambiguity of what is regarded as killing) would be that as trying to live up to the treaty requires humans to cede an awful lot of liberties, there will be humans who resent it. even more so, there will be a lot of humans who don't believe in that "Insects are sentient" crap. Insects can telepathically communicate with some humans. Just as in real human history, gods can telepathically communicate with some humans, and some believe those humans, but others don't. All it takes is a few extremists who feel that enough is enough, and go to torch a huge anthill. Suddenly millions of people will be executed. Which will fuel people to avenge them... [Answer] Chances are good the insects got the upper hand by controlling the food supply - either creating famines by not pollinating and breaking down organic matter, or by destroying crops by spreading disease and eating them. The basic problem is that even if we got rid of insect deaths in our homes, transit, work, and daily life, we'd find that we could not possibly prevent deaths due to our agriculture. [We farm nearly 40% of the Earth's land.](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1209_051209_crops_map.html) These environments are home to trillions of insects. There's simply no way to cut back our farming, or change our methods to be insect friendly without decimating our crop production. Further, while pests and disease wreak havoc from time to time, we control these through the use of pesticides and other insect unfriendly methods. These, however, reflect how we perceive inset intelligence today - if the insects are in any way able to organize, they could literally wipe humans from the face of the earth in under a single generation. I suspect that is the end game for the insects, because there's simply no way to produce enough food without 1) the insects pollinating our crops, 2) growing the crops with pesticides and insect unfriendly GMO plants, and 3) harvesting the crops on such a large scale that we couldn't possibly prevent insect deaths. As such, we should agree to the treaty, then immediately start building farms and cities that completely exclude insects. This would require some cooperation from the insects, but hopefully we can buy enough time so that we can build such farms and cities as is needed to be self sustaining, as well as the technologies to replace the tasks insects do naturally. It would be about as difficult as building a self sufficient inhabited base on the Moon or Mars, but it really is the only way forward. ]
[Question] [ The more I think of it, I don't think mutants would want to be identified as mutants but not all of them will be super heroes or super villains. In a modern western culture, what would the politically correct term for Mutant be? [Answer] Scientifically, humans with natural genetic alterations would be *Homo sapiens sapiens* if they can breed with, and produce fertile offspring from, *Homo sapiens sapiens*. If they can't, then they would be *Homo sapiens deinde*. (Deinde is Latin for next, if you're curious.) Most people don't go by scientific names, however. The average individual instead refers to other individual(s) as he/she/them/we/us/you. There's also countless ways to refer to the gender identity of individuals, not all of which are politically correct, of course. Laws already account for the generic case: *person*. There's no reason not to keep using the term *person* to refer to both *Homo sapiens sapiens* and *Homo sapiens deinde*. Assuming, of course, the latter is legally [a person](http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/person)... [Answer] Shadowrun's answer to this is **Metahuman**. As [the wiki page](http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Metahumanity) explains, the word "metahumanity" can be used to refer either to humans (*homo sapiens sapiens*) *and* their mutated cousins, or to *only* the mutated races excluding humans. Assuming you want a linguistic distinction to be able to talk about mutants without using the word mutant, you'll want to go with the latter case. You could come up with a variety of similar words that perform the same purpose ("novohuman" for example), but I think metahuman rolls off the tongue better, and meta is a commonly used word in its own right these days, so you'll probably have to do less constant explaining of what you're talking about. [Answer] Homo superior is a possibility, if the mutations provide advantages. If you want something that isn't going to be threatening to non mutants (recommended) then Homo mutandis "The Changed Man" would be better. Building off of that, Changed might be a good start. If you look at the history of some of the current politically correct terms, it's kind of a [moving target](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_disability#Terminology). For the "Intellectual and Developmental Disabled", past PC terms were Cretin, Idiot, Imbecile, Moron, Feeble-minded, Retarded, and others. All these entered the language, and then became insults, which forced a name change. [Answer] *As you might expect, there are lots of slurs behind most of the links in this answer.* Given the [frequency](http://www.outrightvt.org/why-we-use-queer/) [with](http://www.nclrights.org/press-room/press-release/trademark-office-says-yes-to-dykes-on-bikes/) [which](https://bitchmedia.org/about-us) marginalized groups [reappropriate](https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/occupying-metaphor-the-reappropriation-of-slurs/) slurs, I think it's likely that at least some mutants would call themselves mutants, around each other and maybe also around [genotypical](http://musingsofanaspie.com/2013/01/10/what-is-neurotypical/) people. I think it's equally likely that many hypervariant and hyperabled people would be [wary of](https://korystamper.wordpress.com/2014/11/20/the-repo-men-reclaimed-slurs-and-lexicography/) [reappropriation](http://www.ebony.com/news-views/sticks-stones-and-slurs#axzz3ujCwyHY6) [efforts](http://www.gender-focus.com/2012/07/25/gender-focus-panel-on-reclaiming-negative-words/). I expect clinical terms taking on lives of their own, names originating as slang within charm communities, names constructed to emphasize Varied people's friendliness and respectability, names reflecting the gallows humor of the freaks and the Cursed, insipid Latinate terms intended to convey neutrality toward parahumans but crawling with fear and revulsion, and hopefully also enthusiastic co-opting of classic monster movies. [Answer] The most politically correct one would be the one selected by that minority group. In all cases of vernacular syntax, there's a wave of names that will be attributed to a certain group or groups. It follows a fairly recurring progression: 1. Exterior label 2. Derogatory label 3. Corrected Exterior Label 4. Internally Accepted label For example, Followers of Jesus were originally all considered 1) Jews in a cult, then were called 2) 'Christians', which translates to "Little Saviors" or "little Christs" by Greeks and Romans, then Romans separated 3) Jesus-Followers from Jews, calling them Followers of the Way, and finally 4) They incorporate the name "Christian" for themselves. You can see that with other groups as well - 1) Deaf 2) Dumb 3)Hearing Impaired, then they agree on the label 4) "deaf". Something similar happened with people unable to walk (although it took effect over a LONG period of time) 1) Handicapped 2) Lame/Cripple 3) Disabled 4) Impaired. In your story, there should be a similar progression. For example, if you're in a X-men, Inhuman, Chronicle or similar style of world, that can be a minor plot element. Something like a: 1) Biodynamic 2) Mutant 3) Genetically Different 4) Biodyn. ]
[Question] [ I have a setting where I want the atmosphere to basically be filled, heavily and consistently, with a bunch of small, airborne bacteria-like cells/microscopic biomatter. For the sake of keeping the question focused on the effects of the actual environment at hand, let's disregard any and all effect these cells themselves may actually have on the inhabitants of my setting who are inhaling it so much, and just assume that they have no functional effect for now; they simply pass into the lungs and bloodstream, and then quickly decay or get disposed of. What amount of this airborne bacteria/cells can I put into the air in my setting that the inhabitants breathe, without it being so heavily present that it literally "clogs" the breathable material in the atmosphere (or perhaps more importantly, without "clogging" the respiratory and circulatory systems that then have to deal with all of it). For example if I want inhabitants in my setting to inhale up to hundreds of thousands or even millions of these individual cells in a single breath, is that possible to design the environment to do, or is that simply too many of a bacterium-sized object to fit safely into the scale of a single breath? [Answer] # A hundred thousand to a million per breath. There are limits on airborn bacteria in terms of size. Bacteria and such can survive in the air by forming what is called [bioaerosol particles](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26225354/) and there's generally just around 100k per meter cubed, while a normal breath will be just half a liter, so a couple hundred is normal, while 6000 would be a deep breath. It's hard to work out the maximum livable density of bacteria, but the highest concentration of smog is just [100 times the norm.](https://www.iqair.com/us/world-most-polluted-countries) This would be when the air is thick with visible bacteria particles and you can't see more than a few meters away clearly. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WG3G3.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WG3G3.jpg) [Answer] Your upper limit is not breathable limit but floral limit. With enough airbone bacteria to clog lungs You do not have enough light on surface to have foliage. Second thing is that bacteria will be water droplets agregtion point on middle and high altitudes making lots of clouds. And rain will clean up low altitudes from bacteria. That can lead to make layer of hot air in middle altitude where will be lots of bacteria and sparse bacteria next to dark, cold ground. [Answer] Depends on the respiratory system - there are literally organisms on earth that breath water. Why not breath bacteria? If your organisms evolved a respiratory system that basically has a big filter and the air passes tangentially to that filter (self-cleaning), it could work. [Answer] There is no real upper limit. They can form a fog if you want them to. If people evolved in these conditions they can deal with it. This article <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroplankton> says: > > Small, drifting aeroplankton are found everywhere in the atmosphere, > reaching concentration up to 10^6 microbial cells per cubic metre. ... > Aeroplankton is made up mostly of microorganisms, including viruses, > about 1,000 different species of bacteria, around 40,000 varieties of > fungi, and hundreds of species of protists, algae, mosses, and > liverworts... > > > Mostly we have no idea. Impact seems to be unclear: > > While the chemical components of particulate matter pollution and > their impacts on human health have been widely studied, the potential > impact of pollutant-associated microbes remains unclear. Airborne > microbial exposure, including exposure to dust-associated organisms, > has been established to both protect against and exacerbate certain > diseases. > > > [Answer] I think the limit would be 2 things. When sun stops reaching earth. and When you cant see your hands Ill let you decide while giving some insight into it, theres 1070 particles/cm3 in a dense fog with visibility under 30 meters. Meaning in your cenario in a dm3 there are 1 070 000 millions bacteria meaning a full breath would take 500 000 ~ bacterie to the lungs, if you want a million per breath it would need to be 2 000 000 bacteria per Dm3 which would be 1 000 000 ~ per breath. Ofc with both these numbers plants wont grow at all due to lack of sun, and the world would be cold. With 2 000 000 bacteria per dm3 it would be impossible to see anything over 10m. The air would feel heavy, like high humidity but stronger, but it souldnt cause diference in breathing once we adapt a little to it.As for "Clogging" the lungs, you would need to breath in something that was bigger 10 ug in infamable quantities over some time, like a forest fire conditions. Possibly the visibility would have been way better since im assuming 40-50ug in size for fog and for them to enter the bloodstream/lungs they would need to be 10ug max. So i would say that the limit would be arround 10 000 000 (low visibility somewhat annoying breathing) and 50 000 000 (that would certainly have bad bad side effects i cant really understand what might come from it). This isnt an opinion sources for everything : <https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/3/258> ]
[Question] [ **Background:** If we look at the past (especially in countries from the early C.E.), a lot of empires collapsed for many different reasons. These reasons are mainly (not exclusively!) going to be an economic collapse, lack of fast communication, corrupt leaders, and/or rebellions among the common folk. However, in this world, only one of these problems poses an actual threat, that being the lack of fast communication. **Context:** As most empires grow larger, their lack of fast communication is one of the main few reasons they will fall. In an empire I'm creating, they do not have access to electrical communication, limiting them to slower forms of communication from one end of the country to the other. Let's say that this empire is going to be about half the size of the modern United States. This empire would need fast communication in order to discuss important matters between two or more leaders, along with spreading the word and enforcing laws/rules that have been put into effect. The technology they would have available that may affect the answers is as follows: * Combustion engines as used in the mid-late 1800s America (meaning trains and very early versions of cars) * Well-paved roads (flat, smooth, good for travel) * A printing press (similar to [Gutenberg's press](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_publishers_and_printers)) * Train tracks consisting of about 40-50% of the distance needed to cover **Question:** What does an empire with this kind of tech (or any others that you may come up with) use to the best of its ability, to keep up fast communications across the country? [Answer] The empire with the described level of technology will prolong its life by **becoming decentralised enough to not require faster communication**. Laws will not need to be announced in the faraway capital because they will mostly be the matter of individual provinces. Taxes, the military, and perhaps even some international diplomacy can also be delegated in this way. If provinces are themselves large enough to experience communication problems, they could well be split into even smaller units. The emperor in such a system may nominally have immense *power*, but surprisingly little in the way of actual *influence*. For a historical example, see the actual USA of the second half XIX century, which was exactly that sort of collection of provinces (they called them 'states'), although the powers of its emperor (the 'president') were unusually restrained. Yes, this system will occasionally tear itself apart when this or that province governor gets ideas above his station and tries to go for independence, or to usurp the imperial title (and that too has happened in USA in the second half of the XIX century; the emperor prevailed, by the way). But a strong central government that lacks quick communication would be unable to prevent it, while the same communication problems would make it less effective at managing the provinces; if anything, this would provide an even greater incentive to rebel and accelerate the empire's fall. [Answer] If you don't want electricity : Lighthouses or semaphore signals. One lighthouse can see another that is 20+ miles away and repeat the signal. Should get 100 miles in a matter of minutes, and morse code can be used. Fog obviously stops communication. Letters are going to be used extensively. [Answer] To add to IhaveIdeas comments: Not just Decentralization, but also a sense of identity and a shared vision for the future. Case in point: Brexit and the EU. I'm using this as an example because you could consider the EU to be an Empire of sorts (it has a Court, a Flag, an Anthem, A Governing body that issues superior law) - and it had instant communication - yet, Britain left. Why? Because the shared vision and sense of identity of the EU ran contrary to the Shared vision and the sense of identity of the UK. Now, I don't want this answer (or the comments) to get into the minutiae of the Brexit debate - however to give the info for the answer, a little context is needed. Britain felt that Brussels wasn't listening. Historically, British Philosophy has been grounded in Pragmatism, whereas Continental philosophy has been grounded in Idealism - this means that on many issues - Europeans say 'This is how it *ought* to be, so let's do that' and the British go 'This is how it will end up, so let's not do that' There was neither a shared vision nor a shared sense of identity. Coupled with a sense of being governed by an entity (Brussels) to which the average British person had no genuine sense of recourse drove the separation. Communication is important, however it's not the speed of communication that matters. If anything, I'd say the larger and more long-lived empires had slower communication *which forced such a degree of decentralization that preserved them* - it's hard to be angry at an entity that otherwise doesn't impact your day-to-day life. [Answer] Keep the barbarians deterred and compliant, keep the border secure, keep the peasants fed, keep the army paid, prestigious, and far away from the capital. Keep the tribute coming, keep the transfer of power orderly and predictable, keep the dictator competent, internalize or annihilate religions, and keep internal trade working properly so the moneyed classes can enjoy the benefits of empire and squabble among themselves for a bigger piece of the pie with a disincentive against independence beyond the threat of punishment. Fast communication might be one way these get accomplished, but it doesn't need to be. [Answer] ## Hot Air Balloons Could be a Quick Means of Travel and Message Delivery So trains can deliver messages relatively quickly, but hot air balloons could span further distances faster, and could travel over bodies of water or other geographical features that could slow trains or couriers. Considering that hot air balloons existed before trains did, this should be very plausible technology for your civilization to possess. Perhaps they could even use some form of steam-powered propeller to make a design somewhat similar to a blimp that could travel yet faster. [Answer] The Romans and Greeks had signal stations and semaphore. The following link has a short and readable summary. <https://www.roman-britain.co.uk/place-type/signal-stations-and-fortlets/> [Answer] I would say the context is off, yes empires failed for many reasons but fast communication was seldom one. It is more important today, since armies, rebellions etc. can be mobilised and deployed over large distances quickly but in the time period you are looking at, not so much. Communication was largely overcome by splitting areas up under local governance, this is pretty much the way all countries have been run from the get go. If you still want to go with that you have various devices, nearly all in the telegraph family optical telegraphs such as semaphores already mentioned, heliographs which is similar but uses sunlight. Don't want to go for telegraph systems, then your best bet would be carrier pigeons which can fly hundreds of miles a day. ]
[Question] [ It's the early modern period. A few Alpine villages, maybe a little town or two, get temporarily cut off from the rest of the world due to heavy snowfall. How can they communicate with the outside? How heavy would the winter have to be for human messengers to no longer be able to travel through mountain passes at all? Would they have homing pigeons, would they even fly in winter, or would longterm storage make them forget their original home? Or is it most likely that they're just cut off until spring and that's it? [Answer] Some time ago I saw a documentary showing the winter life in a small village on the Alps between Italy and Austria: even today, with modern means, the houses try as much as possible to be self reliant and avoid to the best they can moving outside when the roads and paths are covered in snow. When you don't have snow blowers and the like, it would be even more so. Roads blocked = communication blocked, unless you need to communicate something worth risking the life of the person carrying it. And when that person ventures out, they would either use snow shoes or skis. Unless the places are in line of sight and the weather allows them using beacons like fires, but that would be limited to a set of predefined messages. [Answer] I note that the Brenner Pass is the lowest major Alpine pass with a maximum elevation of 1,370 meters or 4,495 feet. The Roman Empire built a road across it, and it has been a main Alpine crossing ever since. Even before modern times, the Brenner Pass was sometimes open from traffic during the winter. It was crossed by royalty during the winter at least once. Archduke Maximilian, later Emperor Maximilian II and his wife Archduchess and Princess Maria, and their retinue crossed the Brenner Pass during the winter of 1551-1552. Their retinue included an elephant, Suleiman. > > He reached Trent, where the Council of Trent had just finished meeting, on 13 December. He crossed over the Brenner pass to enter Austria, where he was transported along the River Inn and Danube to Vienna. He reached Innsbruck on 6 January for the feast of the Epiphany, and Wasserburg on 24 January 1552. The procession entered Vienna on 6 March 1552. > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suleiman_(elephant)> So since the Brenner Pass was open for travel in December 1551 and January 1552, most Alpine valleys lower than the Brenner Pass would have had fairly light snowfall and roads or paths between farms and villages in a valley would have been fairly easy to travel on. Of course any high passes between valleys could have been higher than the Brenner pass and might have been snowbound when the Brenner Pass was open. And of course the Brenner Pass could have been closed by snow in most other years, for all that I know. I note that the 17th century from 1601-1700 was part of the "Little Ice Age" period of colder temperatures. > > The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of regional cooling, particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region, that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period.[2] It was not a true ice age of global extent. The term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939.[3] The time period has been conventionally defined as extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries,[4][5][6] but some experts prefer an alternative timespan from about 1300[7] to about 1850.[8][9][10] > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age> So you might need to look up the current weather and climate of any specific Alpine location you are considering as the setting for your story. And learn how the "Little Ice Age" climate differed from modern climate. And you might also want to study how Alpine climate changed during different parts of the Little Ice Age. Emperor Maximilian and elephant Suleiman crossed the Brenner Pass in an era considered to be part of the Little Ice Age. So was the Alpine climate even snowier in the 17th century than in 1551-1552? > > Juf is a village in the municipality of Avers in the canton of Grisons, Switzerland. At 2,126 metres (6,975 ft) above sea level, it is historically the highest village with permanent residents in Europe,[1] as well as one of its coldest localities. As of 2016, Juf had a population of 31 inhabitants divided between six families in a concentrated settlement. They were 20 in 1991 and 30 in 2001. The first inhabitants were immigrant Walser who arrived in 1292. > > > Juf differs from settlements in lower valleys in being well above the tree line, the nearest forest being about 5 kilometres away from the village. As a result, the area experiences a cold and wet climate, classified as an alpine tundra climate (ET), with average temperatures far lower than those of La Brévine, traditionally considered the coldest inhabited place in Switzerland. Snowfalls are possible even during summer.[3] > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juf> Juf is a lot higher than the Brenner Pas, and there might be a number of other Swiss settlements higher than the Brenner Pass. > > La Brévine is a municipality in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. It is the largest village of the homonymous valley (Vallée de la Brévine), located a few kilometers aways from its largest lake, the Lac des Taillères. The area is particularly renowned for its microclimate and is often much colder than other nearby locations. For its climatic extremes, La Brévine is nicknamed «Siberia of Switzerland». On 12 January 1987, the local weather station recorded a temperature of −41.8 °C (−43.2 °F), the coldest ever recorded in an inhabited location of Switzerland. > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Br%C3%A9vine> La Brevine has an elevation of 1,043 meters or 3,422 feet, lower than the Brenner Pass, but its colder microclimate might make it snowbound even when the Brenner pass is open for travel. > > Trepalle is a village (the highest in Italy) in the Italian Alps, a frazione of Livigno, Lombardy. It is considered to be the village located at the highest altitude in Europe (2,069 m or 6,788 ft at the parish church, with the village stretching up to the Passo d'Eira, at 2,209 m or 7,247 ft). Some argue instead that the village of Juf in Switzerland (at 2,126 m or 6,975 ft) is Europe's highest with permanent population, although the same maybe claimed by the Georgian village Ushguli located between 2100 m and 2200 m in Caucasus mountains. > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepalle> [Answer] ## When in the Alps, use an alpenhorn. The [alpenhorn](https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-us/planning/about-switzerland/custom-and-tradition/alphorn-the-sound-of-natural-tones/) is a 3.5 meter long horn. I'm told that being made out of wood makes it a brass instrument. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpenhorn) has an article that displays the lowest note, but I'm not sure how many Hz that is - still, it is obviously a low-pitched sound that will carry a long way. It could communicate from villages to the mountains above - not just to call shepherds, but also to call cows. Assuming villages are typically on low points near water, I doubt you can use it effectively to communicate between villages separated by tall mountains, but otherwise the sound can be heard over [three miles](https://www.yourobserver.com/article/sound-alphorn-music) away. If there's anyone on a mountaintop to relay (perhaps a military observation post?) the network should be fairly effective. Depending on your scenario, you may also want to look further into "infrasound". The odd thing about infrasound is that most people *react* to it at some level, but only a few of us actually *hear* it. I don't know what possibilities exist with these or related instruments if you have the right people listening. [Answer] **Just cut off** In real life, remote mountain villages were completely cut off from the civilization until weather improves (which may happen only in spring). In case of emergency, an experienced mountaineer can risk crossing the path, but this kind of risk needs proper justification. P.S. After some time I realized that my answer is just a variation of @L.Dutch 's answer. If you agree with my answer, please don't forget to upvote his! [Answer] **It's actually pretty difficult to be completely cut off.** Skis and snowshoes have been around for thousands of years, and were in extensive use in North America and Scandenavia in the "early modern period" (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). They don't appear to have been used much in the actual historical European Alps, but since this is World Building you could certainly give your village some skis. (Snowshoes are realistically not useful on steep mountains). Snow on the ground takes an Alpine journey from "difficult" to "very difficult" but not impossible. You wouldn't ski over to the next village for fun, but you would if you needed to. The depth of snow makes no difference to the difficulty - in fact the worst conditions are when there is enough snow to be slippery but enough enough to prevent the skis hitting rocks. What does cut you off is falling snow. A blizzard makes any mountain journey extremely dangerous, even if you have skis, or frankly even if you have a jeep or a snow cat. You wouldn't do it outside of life or death. [Answer] Yodeling for short range communication, and just self sufficient for the rest with no need of long range communication. Yodeling can be heard a long way away as sound echoes off rocks. I would assume that people knew the best places to do it to communicate with the next mountain or farmstead. Theoretically a message could be passed along like the African talking drums from one place to another several points over. Or even to specialists who would journey down if there was an emergency or someone willing to pay enough. [Answer] If you need a reliable source of communication a shuttered semaphore light system or any kind of optical telegraphy might work, as that minimises the risk of avalanche and could in theory be bounced off a glacier surface maintained for the purposes of extending range for example). There are examples throughout history with mirrors being recorded in use as early as @213 BC by Archimedes during the siege of Syracuse in Sicily, heliographs were used in the battle of Marathon (later renamed to the battle of Snickers! - joke for those of us in the uk of a certain age) in 490 BC. Advanced usage was also possible in even ancient times with [Polybius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_square) having a system for numbers to letters so a set number of flashes could be used to represent a letter to spell out words or abbreviations away back between 208–125 BC. So your options are entirely limited only by what you want to allow, but as for feasible: you would be surprised at how little we have advanced as a species in broad terms, we have some nice new tech, but not so much in the way of fundamental improvements in communication: we simply do the same things faster, with more ease and more often thanks to tech:) There was a record of communicating from Rome to Capri in seconds/minutes (cant find the exact reference, but found another mention in medium, linked below. Addendum - after reading your comment, the information above is useful in the negative: as a way to figure out disruptors; if you want total isolation simply add effectors to that end: the harsh winter makes predatory animals be extra aggressive towards anything that moves, just to survive the inclement weather; solitary predators band together to survive (see previous reason); there are other sentiences that are actively preventing communication (other people, or even different *others* - gods, fae, aliens, elementals etc); weather may behave in a more directly inhibitory manner sometimes (the electromagnetic properties of a storm may lead to a winter-long atmospheric sentience of sorts that is acting to preserve the weather conducive to its own survival, and/or it hates people/enjoys playing "pranks" etc); nature may just win, it is after-all implacable and impersonal, and those two properties alone have managed to beat individuals and civilisations since the dawn of time. Use Sherlock Holmes' old saying as the justification "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" (Arthur Conan Doyle): no matter how outlandish and outre the idea may seem, it is possible no matter how improbable (even if you thought it up 5 seconds ago!) :) references: [Optical Telegraph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph) [Semaphore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore) [Polybius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_square) [Heliograph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliograph) [Rome to Capri](https://nadirkh.medium.com/wireless-signaling-in-ancient-times-a7afd31066c1) ]
[Question] [ The human body contains mana, the life force that can be used for use as a source for magic. The individual's capacity for mana slowly grows with time as the person ages into adulthood, finally reaching its limits during middle age, and then steadily declines. This serves as the basis for magecraft, the study of combining magic with science to advance both fields. A mage can substitute the mana of others for a magical source with no cost to themselves, transferring all the risk to the victim and leaving their own mana intact for use in less risky endeavors. Within each male sperm cell is a microscopic organism known as animalcule, a complete preformed individual representing miniature versions of human beings. These preformed humans develop and enlarge into fully formed human beings through the process of conception and birth. Magecraft allows individuals to bypass this long and convoluted process to create life in order to create a perfect servant loyal to its creator, known as a homunculus. These homunculi are grown within a specially built cauldron designed to hold magic brews. This brew is filled with various ingredients, such as eye of newt, as well as other lay ingredients, such as cow intestines, followed by magical words of power known as incantations. The most important is the sperm of the male containing the animalcule, which are produced by the millions within semen at one time. These various miniatures combine within the brew to create one single being. The resulting "child" emerges from this concoction as a fully grown adult, bound to obey its master's commands. These homunculi must be continuously powered by a magical power source taking the form of a philosopher's stone, an item created from the soul of a human being. This gives the creature life and the ability to perform its tasks. Although they are intelligent, homunculi lack free will and individuality, making them the perfect servant to obey their master's commands. The one drawback of this creation process is that the resulting ritual damages the reproductive capabilities of the wizard, preventing him from having any future children or creating more homunculi. However, recent technological advances have allowed one to bypass this inconvenience. Cryomancy is a form of magecraft involving the study of creating low temperatures as well as their effects. This allows for the deep freezing and preservation of materials so they can be used in the far future. Sperm freezing is a revolutionary reproductive technology that provides a way for individuals to cryogenically preserve and store their seed within sperm banks, giving prospective parents various options. Technology has improved to the point where these banks can be small, compact, and consumer friendly, doing away with the large buildings and storage facilities of the past. This can also be used to overcome the limiting capacity of homunculi. A wizard can simply store animalcules within these compact chambers and preserve them with a spell to be thawed out at a later date to create more creatures. This would allow for individuals to build their own private armies of homunculi within their own personally owned facilities whenever they so choose. As it is the most convenient option, many wizards would do this of their own accord in secret to go to war against others, creating a world where mages do battle with each other through their powerful servants. How can mages be prevented from building their own armies of homunculi? [Answer] **The Usual Way** Suppose the Lord-Around-These-Parts notices one of his Knights ordering weapons and armor in bulk. He has paid the local peasants to come to his property and do six hours of drills and formation marching every day. He marches his *soldiers* in columns across the countryside, waving flags of his own design. This is heresy. The lord musters *his* army and uses it to crush the rebellion. The knight is executed, along with one in every twenty peasants. The Lord's baby cousin acquires the Knight's lands. Building a private army is a huge logistical undertaking. You cannot do it in secret. The local power will notice. The local power is bigger than you. They come over and knock you down. The end. The story for wizards is the same. They build their army a different way. But this way is even harder, more expensive, and harder to keep secret than the what the Knight did. Like the Knight, the Wizard needs huge volumes of weapons and armor for his troops. They also need horses and wagons, and tack for the horses, and food and water, and barrels for the food and water, and blahdy blahdy blah. IN ADDITION! the wizard needs three long hundred iron cauldrons, six hundredweight of boric salt, two bushels of butterfly testicle powder, fourteen tempered copper tubes, five score twain barrels of newt eyes, and blahdy blahdy blah. Every armorer, every metalworker, every apothecary in the country, will know something is up. The King gets word. He sends his army over. Splat. **That's not how you do it.** The Wizard does not create an army for open warfare. He creates a small force of a dozen homunculi. He gathers the materials over several years to avoid detection. They act as a team of assassins and saboteurs. They can be teleported into place. Their appearances change for every mission. They can replace anyone and strike at any time. They are perfectly loyal. They will never betray their master from any form of torture. Each Homunculus contains a Scroll of Arcane Immolation inside its chest. They can self-destruct to prevent another wizard tracing them. The king's personal guard already contains seven different homunculi from five different wizards. He doesn't suspect a thing. **Extra:** Wizards build their towers in remote places like Cliffs and Swamps and the Isle of Man. So perhaps it is easier to formation march your troops without anyone else seeing. HOWEVER! It will be extra obvious where the huge supply train is going. No one ever goes into the Bog of Inequity. They are afraid of the wizard. So when even a single loaded wagon is seen heading along the Swamp Road, they know for sure the wagon is carrying something for the wizard. **Extra Extra:** This assumes the Wizard must acquire all their supplies by mundane means. This is a reasonable assumption. If the wizard is powerful enough to teleport or conjure everything they need, then chances are they are powerful enough to not need a private army at all. You don't need a private army when you can cast Heightened Empowered Big Space Rock on the King's fortress any day of the week. [Answer] **Free will is an emergent property.** /Although they are intelligent, homunculi lack free will and individuality, making them the perfect servant to obey their master's commands/ That is always true for an individual. Also true for 2 or 3 or 5 individuals. At 10 indviduals sometimes some unusual things happen. There will be some actions by the homunculi that were not commanded. They might make something, or show up somewhere. The homunculi themselves will struggle to explain why they did what they did. What they *all* did. As you add more individuals, behaviors of this sort become more likely. The homunculi, if pressed, will try to explain the purpose these actions were supposed to serve. They will try to reconcile their autonomous actions with those commanded by the master. When there are a lot of homunculi, there will definitely be weird stuff going down. Your army will carry out your commands and then decamp in masse to another site. They might divert a river. They might destroy a city and then build a new one. It is not random but it is inscrutable. In the service of these strange objectives, the homunculi show flawless organization with one another. They participate in a mass mind. The mass mind which they have become a part of is not just them. It is something far larger and older. Rumor has it that a wizard in ancient times figured out a different end run around the homunculous problem and did raise a homunculous army. That army left. It still exists, out in some wild lands. It is not clear what they are doing out there. [Answer] **Creating army this way is just not worth it** **First** Creating army is a huge undertaking, weapons, armor, provisions etc. (not to mention ingredients for rituals) It's very hard to conceal. So if any neighboring powers would find out about wizard creating an army, and they eventually will, they'll most probably crush him preemptively, before he builds up his numbers. Also not to mention, people from around the wizard's domain would most probably want him dead for taking their souls (but this is just a theory, because you didn't specify how the soul extraction process works) **Second** According to your process of creating homunculi i deduce that wizard has to use his own sperm to create them, which means he can only create finite number of homonculi, after he completes ritual for the first time he can only use what is stored. So if multiple wizards want to be safe, it would just turn into a contest who can ejaculate into cold jar for longest amount of time, without creating an army, because numerical advantage is king. **Closing thoughts** If wizard wants to project his influence he should use relatively small number of homonculi backed up by subterfuge, assassinations, political meddling, bribes and his own magical firepower. Creating giant army of homonculi consumes way too much time and resources. [Answer] Laws and taboos. Given the consequences in prior centuries for trying to make a Humanculus, It wouldn't surprise me if some form of taboo developed around the process this taboo can be further strengthened laws with severe penalties for any who dare violate the taboo. Rumors and conspiracy theories. Spread this information, Making humongous cost you your soul, Making a himanculous makes you impudent, Lowers your intelligence and gives you bad luck for 7 years. Print newspapers warning Of the Dangers of Humanculus making. Open charities for those suffering from the Tragic side effects of humanculus making. The end just let people's fear and paranoia take them from there. [Answer] Wizards can make trouble in so many different ways. You need a general system for keeping wizards controlled, not just stop them from making homunculi. Nobles spread rumors that wizards are dangerous. All peasants are convinced that if wizards get out of control, they will start sacrificing babies to their dark masters. If Wizards try to set themselves up as nobles, peasants in the area would either flee or rebel. And the neighboring nobles would ally to eradicate this threat to the "natural order". For a wizard to be able to work in peace, they need the protection of a noble. That same noble will keep a close eye on them to make sure they don't step out of line. ]
[Question] [ I've got a world with a long oceanic navigation tradition, but no reliable steam engines. Imagine it's the 1600s in our timeline. There's two superpowers (think two Chinas), and between them an ocean the size of the Atlantic. In the middle of that ocean is a small island, a couple kilometers wide, and utterly barren of life and resources. It is the only island in the ocean but there's no specific need to stop at that place when crossing it, it's a trip of a few weeks either way. [![map](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DlSTn.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DlSTn.png) *The relevant section of the globe* There's no source of fresh water on that island. No plants, except for moss. No animals, except for the occasional migratory bird taking a rest stop. No diamond mine or whatever. There is however a natural harbour so you can dock at the place with your ship; but would you? The two superpowers both claim this island, if only for ego reasons; my question is whether they could actually do anything with it, from a military perspective. How can you exploit a place whose only virtue is that it is the only landmass in the ocean? [Answer] How could you NOT want to occupy this island and build a naval base there? Your naval operations in the ocean, especially close to the enemy coast, will benefit greatly if they don't have to sail all the way back the the homeland for re-supply and/or repairs. They go to the base on the island instead, which shaves about 3 weeks off the turnaround trip. This allows you to cover the operational area with far fewer ships, because each ships useful operating time will be much larger. E.g. Say a naval vessel has a typical voyage time of 9 weeks. When operating from the homeland 6 of those weeks are spend just sailing across the ocean. You cut that in half, effective doubling the useful operating time of the vessel. That means you can execute the same operations with HALF the amount of ships! Of course you will have to setup a supply-chain to keep the base stocked with food, water and anything else that can't be made locally, but cargo vessels are a lot cheaper than warships. Additionally. If you have an established base on the island it can also become (in times of peace) a civilian trade-port where merchants can buy/sell/exchange goods, without having to make the long voyage across the entire ocean themselves. To merchants the same benefit (reduced voyage time) applies even more. Ships "in transit" make no money. They only cost money while being underway. Ships only make money when their cargo gets off-loaded and delivered to the customer. [Answer] The British empire did it with almost any rock emerging from the surface of the sea: [Saint Helena](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena), [Falkland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands), [Ferdinandea island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinandea_Island), [Tristan da Cunha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha) are just a few examples. Ferdinandea was just a clump of freshly spewed lava when the disputes on its ownership started, and were suspended as soon as the water retook possession of it. Having an outpost in the sea in case it is needed is way better than having to conquer one when the necessity arises: it can be used as base point for sailing missions, when supplies can be stored for other friendly vessels happening to cruise in the surrounding. Think of the mission to the South Pole, when the crew on a boat rowed for miles until the closest island to seek help. Or the crew of the [Essex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(1799_whaleship)), who was had to avoid Spanish ports in the voyage through the Pacific. [Answer] # Piracy and trade The island can be stocked with supplies and fortifications by whichever nation uses it. This gives you a massive advantage in trade and piracy, allowing you a larger cut in resources and supplies. Imagine you are a trading vessel. If you anger the authorities or you run short of supplies you can go to this island. Imagine you are a pirate vessel. If you are chased down or run short of supplies you can run to a safe port. Your ships can stay fresh and well supplied, while enemy ships are exhausted and short of supplies. A safe harbour is a big advantage. # Longer and faster trade This also gives a big advantage to trade from foreigners. Nations beyond the super powers can use this port as a stop. There's a big difference in carrying supplies for 7.5 weeks and 9 weeks. At 9 weeks, you're about at the limits of the normal provisions for [a ship of that era](http://www.norwayheritage.com/provisions.htm) which might carry 10 weeks of supply. If they have bad luck in shipping routes, that 9 weeks could lead to starvation. With 7.5 weeks, and a friendly place to stop you can get much more reliable trade from far away nations. Shorter routes also means you have more cargo space for valuable trade supplies, which increases your profit margins. # They can exploit row boats a lot more extensively. Row boats, or galleys are faster than sail boats, but require a lot more manpower. This is great for speed. You can quickly sail in, blast a few cannons, and sail off. It's very expensive in terms of sailors and food, and sailing with wind is much cheaper. An empire which controlled this port could make heavy use of this, so they could be faster and better prepared to make hit and run strikes with galleys or xebecs (wind rowing hybrids) and keep fresh and well supplied. This would make piracy and scouting much cheaper, safer, and easier. [Answer] ## Fishing rights The fishing here is **very very good** due to current upwelling like around the Galapagos Island. (This means that the island would soon enough turn into a haven for sea birds. Grasses would soon arrive.) Thus, the country that not only claims it, but successfully defends it, gets a large bounty of fish (and therefore wealth). [Answer] ## Scientific site Despite its lack of natural resource, the island itself is (surprisingly) located miraculously well. It has lots of potential for scientific research. I was thinking astronomy (predictable weather, unobstructed view down to zero-degree elevation) but it could be something else more creative. It can also be used for testing purposes in advanced applied sciences (weaponry, steam engines \* *wink* \* who knows). Being in the middle of almost nowhere, you can test stuff there relatively safe away from prying eyes, both your civilians and your rivals' spies alike. ## Auxiliary station, including for emergencies On the plus side, the island can be supplied with various tools, including repair bases, basic infirmary, and other emergency-related stuffs, just in case your ship needs it and can't afford to wait several weeks of trip to your continental landmass. You will also feel a little bit safer from pirates targeting your merchants because you have this station. If the other superpowers want their ships able to use this auxiliary station, they must be nice to you. Having such station in the middle of the ocean can have immense usefulness that perhaps can't directly be measured in $$$ for the short term. The usefulness will manifest in other forms, and potentially in the future. ## Extending your territorial waters You can exclusively claim that the seas around the barren island is yours and yours only. If the second superpower want to use the waters: for fishing or other natural resources, voyage path, emergency reasons, whatever, -- now, or in the future, mind you -- they have to ask for permission or setup a treaty or the likes. You've also got yourself an area denial tool or some sort. Even if your world have no global or multilateral treaties regarding what constitutes a territorial sea at the moment, having the island will benefit you quite a lot in the future when such treaties come into effect. ## Justification for exercising power/violence If this island can be rightfully claimed -- not only by vague constitution wording or claims on paper, but also by actual people living there or at least non-trivially using and maintaining the island -- then after some tens of years it can be used (abused?) as a tool to bully the second superpower. If the second superpower dares to trespass the territorial boundaries or stops there without proper permission, you can claim that the second superpower is violating your territorial integrity and you can justify attacking or interning the trespassing ship with higher confidence. You get to claim to be a defender in front of the international community, not an aggressor, if the situation goes sour. ## Forward operating base In the event that a war actually ensues, having a forward operating base closer to your enemy's home gives you an advantage. When on the offensive, you can resupply your attacks quickly and reliably. When blockading the enemy coasts, you can resupply the blockade safely and easily. When operating a defensive maneuver, you have at least two defense lines: one near that island, and one near your own continental coasts. It's far better, compared to having no forward operating base at all. What's even worse is having *their forward operating base closer to your home*. [Answer] Singapore has a [single, distant oceanic territory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedra_Branca,_Singapore) that's just a lighthouse (We have lots of fun geopolitics with lighthouses and our bigger neighbour. [We run a lighthouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulau_Pisang_(Johor)) on someone else's land. Another useful point of reference would be Hans Island, site of the [Whisky War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War) In the age of sail colonial powers tended to plant their flags on anything that didn't have a flag they recognised - and usually if there was a local political power, they got rid of them. The fact there *was* an island meant that *someone* wanted to plant a flag on it. The Brits literally claimed a [volcanic island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinandea_Island) that stuck its top out of the ocean for a little while off the coast of Sicily. Ego aside - I think these references probably give lots of great reasons to occupy such an island * Naval base Especially if the island has fresh water. In the age of steam you'd also be able to store coal. It would also be useful for anti piracy operations * Light house In the age of sail, before radar and maps that didn't have little dragons in them and were as much fiction as geography. * "In the middle of that ocean is a small island, a couple kilometers wide" Very few islands are dead dead. It might be covered in Guano. It might allow for control of rich fishing grounds * "We can't get the scoundrels on the other side of the ocean to have the ocean! LONG LIVE THE monarch/republic/empire/union etc etc" ]
[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/201039/edit) **I have a setting that is intended to be set in the "present day" (i.e., whenever the reader is reading it) set in the United States which involves a secret society of supernatural people with superpowers who have protected people from other factions of supernatural monsters for centuries.** The society is led by an immortal who has been around since the turn of the 20th century and grew up dealing with the political upheavals of the early 20th century (1918 Flu, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, etc.). The organization has ties to the U.S. government where the superhumans keep the monsters suppressed and police themselves in exchange for the government helping them maintain their secrecy. **Most of the people with powers live more or less normal lives among humans** (think pre-Krakoa *X-Men* more than *Harry Potter*) and hence can't just retreat to a hidden world where muggle socio-political issues aren't their concern like the Wizarding World does in *Harry Potter*. The supernaturals don't have a strict cultural identity (e.g., contrast with depictions of vampires who see themselves as "above" and apart from human affairs) that would encourage them to see human issues as "not their problem" and ordinary humans can become supernatural rather than it being strictly inherited (and hence have more ties to the mortal world). **The organization has a strict non-interventionist policy in muggle affairs.** In-Universe the reasons given are that the superhumans don't want to create a system where a caste of demigods rule over humanity, and they're afraid of persecution. The nature of their powers (they're creepy to look at and have side effects that could be creatively misinterpreted to paint them as a danger to society) means they're really vulnerable to bad PR, and they have a history of persecution (think witch-hunts). Perhaps most notably most (but not all) of them could easily be killed by sufficient humans banding together and shooting them with high-caliber guns, so there's no "god-like mage somehow being oppressed by mere mortals" trope. Out-Of-Universe it's for the simple reason of maintaining verisimilitude, since we don't have superhumans running around IRL. **I want to have a setting where the supernatural is hidden at the start of the story so I can have the typical "discovering the supernatural world" plot.** This explanation for why the supernaturals weren't exposed to the public by getting involved in human affairs worked pretty well up until the last year or so, given that most of the 20th century post-World War II was relatively politically stable, at least compared to pre-World War II history (i.e., no open warfare in most western countries, no massive wars but lots of little ones). The Cold War, of course, was going on but the defining feature of that was it played out as back-alley espionage, proxy wars, and high tension over MAD but it never actually got "hot". However in recent times there's been a massive rise in authoritarianism, violent extremism, and general hysteria in the West, as well as an increasing sentiment of "burn the whole system down" and the destruction of the idea of Western culture in general. **Because of this, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to justify why this supernatural organization was able to avoid getting directly involved in current events** (assuming that the reader is reading this in some post-2020s world where "present day" is closer to pre-COVID normal). Specifically I am finding it hard to swallow that this immortal character, who lived through World War II, saw the horrors that totalitarianism and extremism brought, fought on the side of the Allies against the Nazis, and grew up in America and hence has that super-patriotic mindset typical of the World War II generation that is no longer common place today, would just sit idly by and watch what they might perceive as history repeating itself in their home country. There's also the issue of increasing radicalization among the younger supernaturals because the supernaturals, like everyone else, have a diversity of opinions on any given subject. There are likely to be supernaturals who ascribe to the increasingly popular belief among young people that American/Western society is fundamentally and systematically bigoted and oppressive and must be destroyed or changed through violent action, and all of a sudden they have the power to do so. To paraphrase what I said in a previous answer, imagine what would happen if a disaffected member of a marginalized group or ANTIFA protestor fed up with American society decided they were done being non-violent and joined in the riots: just one individual making this choice would potentially blow the masquerade wide open and likely cause huge amounts of death and destruction before finally being put down because of their superpowers (not to mention that is a political can of worms I do not want to open). Not to mention right-leaning and left-leaning supernaturals just plain slaughtering each other in superbrawls or an outright civil war over disagreements, especially since one of the side effects of powers is increased aggression and tendency towards violence (which is, again, why they have a non-interventionist policy). Some of the radical supernaturals may even see the masquerade itself as one of the structures of systemic bigotry oppressing them in the first place, because it forces them to hide their true selves and support the status quo. This exact issue happened within the backstory of the story during the early 20th century and the immortal character fought against it, and hence would be more sensitive to these issues than the average person. Even if the older supernaturals tell the younger generation to knock it off because they'll out everyone and get then killed, younger radicalized members might just write them off as just being tools of the white, cis, heteronormative patriarchy (or have internalized bigotry if they belong to a marginalized group), and hence write them off (or rebel violently against them). It's easy to write the supernaturals as quietly taking out the extremist members of their group behind the scenes (and this is what likely happened with similar supernatural right-wing extremists given the form those tend to take), but less so when everything is in chaos and the violence is more public (werewolves rampaging in CHAZ, anyone?) Earlier events I can more easily handwave that the supernatural may have been present it was just never publicly known, a la *X-Men: First Class*, but that's mostly because these events occurred before social media (hence a lot of chaos to keep things obscured), were events where the superhumans really couldn't do anything (MAD in the Cold War, Chernobyl), or were out of the public eye enough to handwave it. It's much harder to say "well the system designed to suppress the supernatural caught it" when the issue is potentially that very system breaking down. To be clear, this question isn't plot-specific because the story doesn't revolve around the supernatural community dealing with current events of the 2020s at all. What I am trying to do is figure out how I can justify how the supernatural can still be considered a secret in a "modern-day setting" set at whatever year the reader picks up the book (i.e., post-2021), without turning the setting into a pre-2020 period piece, given that the supernatural community has several strong, in-character motivations to break secrecy and use their powers to try and openly influence human society. I don't want the supernatural to be revealed prior to the story because removing the masquerade destroys verisimilitude(i.e., we don't have supernatural beings as public figures or known phenomena IRL). This is something that isn't just unique to my issue, but is going to be a major plot hole for any story that involves immortal or supernatural characters living in secrecy among humanity post-2020. **Given this, how can I justify why the supernatural and people with superpowers didn't get exposed due to current events and why the supernatural world didn't try to get involved in recent politics?** [Answer] **Your superhumans operate at a different perspective level** [Did you know there are still active genocides going on today?](https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages) I didn't, and I wouldn't be surprised if most people don't. While people in the United States might not be super heroes, we could do stuff like send food aid, medicine, green berets to those protecting these people. But we don't because for the most part it is far away and not really something people want to think about. **The super heroes are immune to most issues** Black super humans don't get shot at traffic stops, and if they do the bullet bounces off of them and the lean into the police man and say "No one will ever believe you" and drive off. Super humans don't care about wealth inequality, they can make as much money as they want with their super powers. Super humans don't become Nazis to join the "master race". They have seen the actual master race and it is divided over all ethnicities and religions. Super humans can see the whole world and are more likely to be educated, which fights prejudice. They could overthrow the government, but the one that might replace it could be worse, and who cares about that when supernatural stuff is trying to take over? Anything I have not covered they can probably still negate in some way. **They have different problems anyways** Maybe they do actually have something more important to be worried about. Fox news has been harping on the ["cancelling" of Doctor Seuss](https://www.foxnews.com/media/cancelation-of-dr-seuss-highlighted-in-new-fox-nation-special-closing-the-book-hosted-by-tammy-bruce) for something like a month now. If the superheroes are trying to stop vampires from taking over they probably don't care about that and would prefer to debate which kind of stake is most effective. They might have some reflections of our culture in them, but that might mean that super heroes are canceling a super hero for marrying a girl who travels backwards in time and will be under age in 30 years. Or there is a controversy over whether super heroes with disguises can participate in the Miss America pageant if they identify as male. Or people questioning if we should ban laser eye usage from above 1,000 meters at ground targets in the war in Transylvania. We can't know what matters to them for sure unless we know more. [Answer] * The members of the secret society don't agree on who should win. Getting involved in politics would cause a violent schism. * They have a suspicious and carefully-watched truce or detente agreement with an opposing secret society of villains/monsters (who may be quite happy with either winner). * Their "ties to the U.S. Government" make them subject to the [Hatch Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch_Act_of_1939). * They must work through fronts and shills...who DID get involved, but were drowned out by other interest groups. * They must work through fronts and shills...who were *supposed* to get involved, but somebody stole their funding. (shakes fist) They are still looking for it. * Blackmail * Intrigue * Time Travel * Fighting on Mars during most of 2020 * In hiding from old girlfriends/boyfriends or avoiding paternity suit servers * Replaced by a robot double for most of 2020. * Stuck in [The Village](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner) trying to figure out Who Is Number One. The list goes on and on. Supers don't need bland, sensible reasons. The whole point of having supers is that the weirdest stuff happens to them. [Answer] **Prior events had supernatural connections. Recent events do not. It is a major victory for your supernaturals!** The Nazi genocides had behind them some serious bloodthirsty ancient entities. The supernatural war was fought alongside the known war. Similar entities were behind the Rape of Nanking and then later genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda. Several ecological disasters have had different but no less supernatural forces behind them and these also warranted involvement of your superhumans. But not all major doings have supernatural forces at work. The dissolution of the Soviet Union did not but the overthrow of Romanian dictator Ceaușescu did. The Arab Spring and subsequent Syrian revolution did not, although lesser supernatural beings always take advantage of chaos to advance their agendas. No hurricanes are supernatural. Brexit was not supernatural. The advent of Donald Trump was not from supernatural machinations. Your supernatural heroes are actually quite pleased with the doings of recent years in the US and Europe. It is just people doing people things, sorting out their differences in messy people ways. There are no angry nature elementals, no ancient blood gods demanding sacrifice, no entities from Beyond that want their plane back. It is so normal. The supernaturals consider the last 10 years a triumph on their part. People have been left free to be people. [Answer] ### Say Cheese! For a start, let's take a look at Social Media and the advent of the video camera on the cell phone and their upswing in recent years. Those two things combined make it very difficult to do anything in the wide open without being analyzed and potentially outed by those willing to believe in magic and the supernatural. It is a concern that is put into the curriculum of the supernatural world for the last decade or so -- Doubly so now that the technologies have really taken off. Now I can hear the responses involving scouring social media and other online resources for those pictures or videos that would out them and delete them. My premise is that this is exactly the point. Resources have to be dedicated to handling this, leaving less of the supernatural world to take action in the mundane world, or investigate possible supernatural actions. This could even be a plot of another faction -- using social media to limit the actions of other more active factions. By using social medial to draw attention to their rivals, they force them to react. And while yes, this risks exposing the faction that is doing this -- they have planned for that and have contingencies where the people that they are targetting might not. Now the faction might have a controlling interest in social media corporations, or it could be that they saw the potential of it and incorporated it into a plan of action that is paying dividends to this day. With resources tied up in this, there are less available to actually look into other things and discern whey they need to apply their influence ### The Investigation Continues Depending on your time frame, it is also a possibility that it might be a supernatural thing, and some of the supernatural world are investigating things. Without clear unequivocal proof that it is within their mandate to interfere, they do not lest they begin the slope of becoming what they fear they will become. This is something your immortal founder would know about and likely always have in the back of their mind. That others that are balking at the delays and the snail's pace of the investigations is entire part of the tension -- some of the supernatural community want action now and are basically barred from doing so by non-interference policies. In the 50's, we would get our news through radio and the newspaper. If a super could influence people through those, it would be through the radio most likely. This limits the numbers of influential supernaturals that could, say, inflame extreme reactions in the masses by commands through media. Sure they investigate, but it was shorter and easier back in the day. In the 2020's, TV is king. Whether your news is streamed off of the internet, read off the screen, or seen on TV, the visual medium is now the primary way to transmit information. Now imagine if a supernatural entity is causing, or assisting with, the current polarization of Americans, or taking actions with the wealth inequality with intent to change the country's innermost workings. There is a long list of things to consider before knowing that they can meddle like: * Is this entity the sole cause of this, or are they just fanning the flames? How much can they interfere based on what they find out? * How is the entity doing this? Things from subliminal messaging to suggestive voices, or playing with the lights from the screen are all options. So how are they influencing? * Related to both above: Where are they applying their powers? Sure, the masses are inflamed, but are they actually being affected? Or is it possible that it is, say, some executive involved and they are passing purely mundane order to the folks below? * Where are they? With some cunning and a VPN, you can be in one physical location but appear to be in another. In short, it's more complicated to find concrete proof of entities meddling in the mundane world than it used to be. And the immortal founder will not take action until they have it. ### Internal Problems Perhaps a faction of mundanes have discovered the supernatural and Do Not Approve. They have seen how they have fingers everywhere and influence everything, and they remain aware by being careful to the point of being paranoid. Maybe, it's a parallel secret society with mundanes and disenfranchised supernaturals that want change and are willing to take the fight to them to do it. Perhaps it is a secret branch of the government that was originally a contingency plan and was activated for some reason. No matter the reason, the supernatural factions are now finding themselves the targets of mundane actions. Sure, they can defend themselves, but messy deaths and disappearances will be noticed in 2020 ... mostly. With the supernatural world under active threat, they have turned their gazes inward to deal with the problems of their own. This leaves potential factions to do what they want in the mundane side with less eyes on them. [Answer] ***It is very easy to justify that the described secret organisation is not involved in current political events.*** After all, this organisation is basically on the government's payroll and must abide by specific rules outlined in the agreement between the US government and the said organisation. Protection is a double-edged sword: A protector can easily expose protected or outright eliminate them. However, ***it is impossible to justify that all supernaturals (as individuals) are not involved in current events***. Unless every single one of them is a member of the said secret organisation and the organisation itself has the means of very tight control. As you said yourself, there is no special cultural identity that all supernaturals possess and they live normal lives. Supernaturals themselves are a very new phenomenon, the oldest of them is only 100 years old, so there is no time to build a supernatural community with strict rules and traditions. Fear of exposure and voluntary self-isolation cannot take place since there is no history of systemic persecution. Laziness, lack of interest in politics, or ignorance also cannot work as justifications since they are not universal. In other words, there will be someone who will disregard the non-involvement stance and start to act. If they are smart, they will be discreet. If they are not so smart or want to use shock tactics they will expose their powers. How much impact these actions have will depend on the government's ability to keep things covered up. ]
[Question] [ So there was a nuclear apocalypse. It doesn't really matter why. Most people now, about a few decades or so later, are scavengers. They take pre-nukes things and use them for shelter and utilities. This woman, we'll call her Jane, she decided to use all of these old vehicles as shelter. Only, Jane has the brilliant idea to hook them all up to a big truck in the front, get some fuel, and create a mobile community. The question is, is this possible, and how much fuel would it take? For reference, there are 6-14 vehicles in this lineup. The lineup is made of regular cars and minivans, modified to provide more living space. There is also a doubledecker van somewhere and a tow truck in the back. For the most part, the community is self-sustainable. They grow their own food, collect their own water, and make their own tools. The only thing they can't create is gas, which they scavenge. EDIT: the cars all run on regular gasoline. no electric cars and no diesel SECOND EDIT: the cars are (hopefully) all hooked up via ropes and whatever else they can get their hands on. the vehicle pulling them is rather strong, and the second car in the lineup helps out, so ideally we only need enough fuel for the 2 vehicles. the vehicles also use about 5-7 litres per kilometre. [Answer] **Gasoline Has an Expiration Date** Gasoline lasts about 6 months, or at-least it DID. Now that we add ethanol to it gasoline only has an official storage life of about 90 days. Treatments can be added to extend this storage life, and obviously post apocalyptic survivors aren't going to be extremely picky, so that gasoline they are scavenging for ought to be good for all of about 6 to 12 months after the disaster (and that is assuming all the fuel they find was new on the day the bombs fell, which most of it probably wasn't.) What they are going to do for fuel after this is up to you, but assuming they build their mobile gasoline powered community on the day of the disaster any gasoline they found would be useless within a year. Diesel has a slightly longer shelf life, but again, even accounting for fuel treatments and using using bad diesel that might only buy them about 18 months. I'm gonna turn into Hank Hill here and tell you that modifying vehicles to run off of propane makes a lot more sense. If a disaster so bad nobody can manufacture fuel happens then you have about 6 months to a year to scavenge increasingly bad gasoline or diesel before that is no longer an available option. Propane virtually can't go bad. I have no idea how much propane a modified car would burn. Propane is slightly more viable than gasoline because it doesn't spoil, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have an expiration date either. Propane doesn't spoil, but it does slowly leak out of the valves on tanks over time. I don't know exactly how long this would take but eventually even the propane would disappear all on it's own, probably within a few years. **Where Are They Growing This Food?** The general standard for non-industrialized agriculture is that under ideal conditions it takes a minimum of 1 acre of land per person you want to feed. *Ideal conditions* and *minimum* are the key words here. Pests, poor weather, crop selection, and fertilization method all are variables to worry about. I'm saying that 1.5 to 2 acres is about mandatory, since ideal conditions don't really exist very often, the issue is that since they do not have industrialized farming anymore 1.5 to 2 acres of land is about as much as a person is even capable of working on their own. But... If they are mobile how are they farming? If they have farms why are they mobile? You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Nomadic scavengers are not going to remain that way if they start farming because farming is a full time 12 hour a day 7 days a week job just to not starve. The moment they start planting a crop they have just committed to a long term period of sedentary non-nomadic living. If a farmer runs off to go play mad-max he will return to find his fields fallow. The closest thing to nomadic farming is what we see amazonian tribes doing. They live months or years in one place until the soil is exhausted then move a little ways over onto a new plot and start over again. [Answer] 1. The part about growing their own food probably wouldn't work unless they operated out of a central location where their farms are located during the growing season. The reason why this is the case is because a single person needs about 0.25 acres (~10,000 ft^2) of farmland to grow enough food in a year to keep the person fed for that year. Alternatively they could drive cattle (motorcycles recommended, if you don't want horses), or be able to supplement their food source in some other way. 2. As far as moving a vehicle, for every 100 miles traveled, most contemporary vehicles need between 3 and 5 gallons of fuel. Since these would be larger vehicles, the fuel economy would be closer to 5 gallons. For 6 vehicles it would take 30 gallons for every 100 miles, for 14 it would be 70 gallons. I would recommend that one of the vehicles be a fuel truck which typically can carry between 5,000 and 11,000 gallons. [Answer] How much fuel they use is dependent an enormous number of details. For example, the mere need to go up a grade will have a substantial effect on your fuel consumption. The quality of your axels will matter a great deal as well. A custom-designed 16 trailer road-train might do well when a bunch of cobbled together minivans wont. Also, the speed you choose will matter. It will be much more efficient to go slow. Fortunately, I think you can sidestep some of these fuel issues with wood gas. You can use the gases from wood to power an internal combustion engine. [Wood gassifiers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas#Internal_combustion_engine) fell out of popularity, but they are still functional, and they work in a post-apocalyptic environment. And if you're going to pull that many cars behind you, I say you should do it in style: [![British Cromwell ARV towing a Pz IV](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xOyNI.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xOyNI.jpg) Treads will provide much-needed traction on questionable terrains. You'll note that all the road trains you see are in flat areas! [Answer] Road trains can travel up to 100 mph and have extra shielding for road debris same as the plow on a train. They can pull spare semi-trucks for back up and broke down to singles on smaller roads. Scouts would lead ahead of the convoy for any problem while the rest of the convoy would be far enough time to stop and prepare. Food like potatoes, peanuts, carrots etc can be harvested from fields left behind from farms while traveling and scavenging. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/unLzq.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/unLzq.jpg) ]
[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/124485/edit). Closed 5 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/124485/edit) I'm writing this book series called the Weasel Sagas (link [here](http://sites.google.com/site/weaselworldofficialsite) for more on that) that has this planet called Aurea. Aurea is the planet in this universe most similar geographically to Earth, with forests, grasslands, plains, jungles, and deserts. The civilization here (which is based on the Byzantine Empire and has similar culture/tech) has some cities (usually along rivers or near oases) in a vast desert that is home to colossal Dune-style sandworms. These sandworms can grow to be over 1,000 feet long, weigh several hundred tons, and be around 100 feet in diameter. These worms are carnivorous (normally feasting on the Landsharks, Camels, Zuniceratops, Hippogriffs, and Deinocherius native to this large desert) and will attack humans if there are enough of them in one place to pique their interest (i.e. a city setting or an army marching through the desert). These sandworms, although fairly squishy on the inside, are protected by a thick exoskeleton almost as strong as kevlar (although very small areas around their mouths and nostrils are unprotected for obvious reasons). Although they are blind, they can smell large concentrations of prey from up to 50 miles away and can slither through sand at up to 60 mph. Getting through stone is tougher, but they can accomplish this at speeds of around 30 mph by gnawing through the sandstone underneath the desert (some of which ends up in its gizzard to assist digestion). However, these beasts are not powerful enough to drill through solid bedrock. How would these cities go about defending themselves from these beasts? What weapons would be best to use? What tactics? How much damage would these cities suffer in the event of an attack? I'll include more info on the main two cities in question here (just as a side note, these maps tell of these cities AFTER mass industrialization, so ignore the spaceports): [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cetid.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cetid.jpg) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zTrgk.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zTrgk.jpg) [Answer] Best thing they can do for cities is build on a place the sandworms can't dig through. There really isn't anything a medieval army can do against those worms to defend their city. They can tunnel beneath defenses, so yeah... Not to mention even if they surface medieval weapons aren't going to do anything to that thing. Perhaps stuff like boilling oil or ballista, but those things aren't exactly easy to set up nor cheap or very accurate. I would imagine buckets of water and other tactics to get a reading on tunneling would be well spread out to get some sort of early warning that a worm will surface. I think the best defense would be to pevent these worms from getting too close to the cities or trading routes to smell the people. Ensure that cattle is 'sacrificed' near the border to keep the worms in the areas you want them to stay in. The worms won't have a reason to go searching any farther for their food if their food is delivered to them. If a worm gets in a city it's basically going to be the medieval variant of Godzilla going ham in Tokyo. Only thing people can hope for is that they're not the ones going to be eaten and that it doesn't take too long for the worm to kill sufficient other people to leave again. One worm rampage could send a medieval city in a recession from sheer damage. Sacrificing cattle every so often is probably the most effective and cheapest solution. [Answer] In *Dune* people lived on rock, because the worms ruled the sand. If you think of sand as the oceans and rock as the continents, the *depth* of the sand is also important: maybe the worms can't come into the shallow areas near exposed rock, and can only travel through the deep sand further out. But if you're giving the worms the ability to eat through solid rock, then it's nothing like *Dune* and we need an entirely different approach. As an aside, assuming these sandworms are an older species that has existed from time before time, then certainly there wouldn't *be* any rock, only sand and gravel, by the time humans evolved. A solution for your cities would involve understanding why the whole world isn't desert. In *Dune* the worms were allergic to water (or something... it's been a while). So perhaps your world only has worms where there's no water? Anywhere with a decent amount of moisture, enough to grow plants, there won't be any worms. Even in the desert, cities could grow in river valleys (think Egypt) and oases. The big question is, why would humans want to go into a desert that has no moisture at all and no rocks. This wouldn't be like the Arizona desert that has scenery, wildlife, and valuable minerals -- it'd be a barren sandbox. The only reason I can think of is that they might want to cross the desert for trade, if that would be the shortest route from point A to point B. Let's go with that. If humans want to create new trade routes across the desert, and water is a defense against the worms, they might build *canals* from point A to point B and roads alongside the canals. [Answer] **Incense** You worms hunt mostly by smell it seems, so the humans would position their cities in such as to drive their smell away from the areas the worms inhabit, being near current water would help with that. Some cities could build giant canals around the city since the worms don't seem capable of crossing water all that well. If a worm is seen near the city, then giant incense pyres would be lit to mask the human smell. The humans would probably start looking for aroma combinations that could drive the worms away. [Answer] You built like in Tenochtitlan (Mexico city) Your cities aren't "*usually along rivers or near oases*", but in the middle of rivers, lakes, swamps, delta areas. People travel in boats instead of carriages. The ground is soft, and when the sandworm attacks, it needs to swallow a full lake. Even if they aren't allergic to water, the sudden stream of water to their mouths and the tunnel collapsing from losing the integrity, means a predator would choose another prey. Your sandworms are super-predators, with that size they need to be sleeping for long times (to preserve energy) and then only move to eat, because humans are to them like peas to us. So they will be oportunistic hunters, eating everything that is easy to catch. It's the only defense I can think of, because the Medieval weapons won't make anything to the sandworms, they are too massive. If you have enough time to develop a civilization (Byzantine Empire level needs a lot of people to develop technologies), with the time you can hunt and almost drive to extinction the sandworms (as we have done with so many wild animals on Earth). Maybe with poisoned bait. Or killing their prey and hoping they turn into cannibalism. [Answer] I feel like it's a given that they're pretty screwed if the worms get into their cities, and the fact that they can crunch up bedrock makes them fairly OP, but have you considered a subterranean blade system, or something biological or chemical that hurts them? They had a good bit of steel during Byzantine times, and it's likely that even if the worms can crush up bedrock and move through sand in a way that seems fluid, that it would still be harmed by ingesting poisons and sharpened blades. What's more, if the people have a sense that the worms are attracted to them, perhaps there can be a situation where they set traps to lure the monsters towards people(even if they don't know it's smell, I could envision them using undesirables as bait to satiate the terrifying beasts). Interestingly, during the early Byzantine Empire, there was a huge anti-pagan sentiment, especially insofar as they used sacrifices and that could be a fun dynamic where the pagans have a better sense of the worms because they sacrifice people/creatures to the beasts in an effort to remain favored by them. The opportunity exists that the pagans could use their sacrifice as a type of bait and either trap the worms (ludicrous, but awesome), or they could at least set a trap that harms them. Alternatively, the pagan tradition could be abused by a non-pagan in order to harm the worms and it could be the thing that causes problems. Just some ideas that I had while mulling it over. ]
[Question] [ I am inspired by [Dr. Robert Schoc's](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Schoch) hypothesis that the Great Pyramid and Sphinx date back to a lost civilization from 10,000 BCE. *The Question:* Suppose an asteroid/mega solar flare/etc. reduced today's humans back to a hunter-gatherer state; but after 10,000 years humans have again achieved the technology level we have today. Would archeologists of that time be able to tell that something more than hunter-gatherers existed before them, and would they be able to tell how advanced we were? (I'm not sure if I want structures such as Mt. Rushmore destroyed or not. I would think such structures couldn't be made by hunter-gatherers, but I don't know) If yes, at what point in history would we have had to be wiped out so that there would be no trace of us after 10,000 years? *My Thoughts* I think future archeologists may find our nuclear waste deposits. However, I don't know what shape they would be in after 10,000 years or if they would be recognizable as man-made. I don't think anything else would survive, so I would say the historic cutoff would be when we first started having nuclear waste deposits. [Answer] # Absolutely. The largest traces would be cities (it takes *a lot* to wipe out even a prehistoric settlement, and there's no way all modern cities could be thoroughly covered in sand). Then, mines: there are mining operations that extend for kilometers, and you're not going to "lose" one in ten thousand years unless you employ several decent-sized asteroid strikes. [![The Udachanyay mine](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lN2Ut.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lN2Ut.png) Any new civilization would require mineral resources, and would find most ore deposits to have already been mined out. They'd also find large landfills here and there, with lots of refined minerals, plastics and so on. Moreover, this would conclusively demonstrate that the previous civilization was pretty advanced: not only several special steels and alloys will easily last ten thousand years, but a less advanced civilization could never have produced such traces. And of course pollution. We can pretty well map out atmospheric composition for the last 30,000 years and more in the Antarctic ice cores. There are several distinctive layers of soot there now (which actually [defeat the purpose](https://phys.org/news/2011-04-scientists-soot-key-rapid-arctic.html)). Finally, **radioactive traces**. There's no reason why Schloch's alleged civilization should have produced them, but *we* did, and artificial isotopes such as [technetium 99](https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclide-basics-technetium-99#technetiumenvironment) are likely to outlive humanity. As soon as we started worrying about radionuclides and developed tests for them, we were able to map their relative abundance. There is no way we could have missed a 99Tc spike later than *one million* years ago, and there is no natural process that produces 99Tc (unlike 14C, which could be explained by a GRB, nasty solar flare, or alteration in the cosmic environment). > > At what point in history would we have had to be wiped out so that there would be no trace of us after 10,000 years? > > > Around 20,000-30,000 BCE. After that date, we begin having reliable fossil evidence that made it to our era, two hundred centuries later. It follows that if someone wiped out the Altamira tribe, we would still find their paintings - unless the "wiping out" also included obliteration. In that case it would depend on the obliterating technique. Still, I don't think you can get much later than 5,000 BCE at most. # Cultural Memory While it is possible that stories about a Golden Age where man could fly, go to the Moon and watch Youporn would be dismissed as fantasy and myth, it **is** possible for such a memory to disappear completely. It would take a lot, but there's something called *damnatio memoriae* - "damning of the memory". Imagine that the shock of the wipeout spurred a new religion - one where technology and the "old way of doing things" was blamed for God's wrath. The new Church "hierarchy" fixes very few proto-technological "tells" that are used to recognize anathema - "Thou shalt not make signs that convey meaning, unless larger than a man" or "Thou shalt not make use of anything that has been touched by fire, except for food". Something of that kind appears in David Weber's *Empire from the Ashes* (the planet Pardal is inhabited by humans that have forsworn technology and succeeded in forgetting everything about their having been members of the Fourth Empire), as well as in the *Safehold* series of the same author. There are also several other stories (e.g. Wyndham's *The Wheel*, Startling Stories, January 1952). [Answer] I'd be optimistic in a sense. There is **no way** to reduce humanity to the Stone Age as long as enough educated adults remain. Look at the Leonardo da Vinci level of tech. All you need for it is a basic engineering knowledge (widely available in 21st century) and wood. As wiping out everyone but babies while making them survive is not an option, you'd need something more than a nuclear war to let humanity survive, but forget its knowledge. A flebtonium-based memory wipe, maybe? Next, the question is what of humanity remains. If all humans would disappear, future archeologists would find enough evidence of our existence. Probably even more if it survived. Rich men's waste dump is poor man's metal ore. In some kind of an post-apocalyptic stetting, people would scavenge waste pits and abandoned cities for materials. So, in most cases, badly reachable, but durable artefacts of older civilisation would remain. Humanity would rather degrade not to the Stone Age, but to Enlightenment, augmented by extended medicine and engineering knowledge, as well as more advanced materials from the remains of the previous civilisation. [Answer] A lot of what we do today sinply will not decay in less than 10,000 years. As other have mentioned plastic would be a proof of a civilization having existed. Other things would also last more than that... A complete exhaustive list would probably fill a book, but here is what' on the top of my mind: * Jewelry. Gold, silver and platinum are quite tenacious, chemically speaking. So is quartz, as well as many types of rock used in jewelry. * For the very same reason, gold plated teeh would also be a good indicator of a civilization. No known irrational animals adorn their teeth with gold. * Electronic circuits. While many of the things on a motherboard would decay in ten millenia, the silicon in its parts would not - it is as chemically stable as sand for all practical purposes. Many circuits and wires also have gold in them. * Satellites. Unless your doomsday scenario involves taking down all satellites, or removing them from the solar system, they would be a strong indicator of a previous civilization - even if they are depowered or otherwise rendered permanently non-operational. I know their orbits decay with time, but [some satellites are expected to still be there more than eight million years from now](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAGEOS). Side note: I think removing all traces of satellites from the solar system would require orders of magnitude more energy and technical sofistication than what is required to wipe out all traces of civilization within the atmosphere. * [Actual time capsules](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_capsules). We as a species have a habit of making time capsules, and they might last more than 10,000 years. [Answer] Processed materials. Composites, plastics, alloys, even ceramics don't occur in nature. No matter how badly degraded the objects using them get, many of these underlying materials will survive in some form, be it chips, shards, or even dust, for extremely long periods of time. Many plastics, for instance, are not attacked by biological decay, don't oxidize, and their shards can survive most plausible types of physical mistreatment. Aside from the small proportion of artifacts unlucky enough to encounter lava, their remains would survive as a clear indication of a technological society. But you don't need to be *that* sophisticated - even something as simple as bronze, in whatever form, is a strong indicator towards active metallurgy. [Answer] There's been a brief History channel series, [Life After People](https://www.history.com/shows/life-after-people), that explored this question in thorough detail. It's far more visual than an answer can be, and each episode ends in a 5K-10K year prediction. Most of our cities will be covered with soil, but some of the Northern-most ones could survive as piles of rubble with almost no cover. It depends almost entirely on new soil deposition rate. Still, even Angkor Wat, which is in the tropics, hasn't been buried much, and will remain identifiable for millennia. The humanity would have to be removed around 2,700 BCE to remove *immediately obvious, unmistakable* traces that even a cursory visual scan from space would pick up. To leave no traces at all, pretty much to before cave paintings (over 70K years). [Answer] 10,000 years are not enough to wipe out...skip that, ERADICATE a global civilization down to the ROOTS. Unless these archaeologists were unlucky enough to search only in Antarctica or in the Death Valley et similar places, traces of our existence are everywhere. You'd need tens of thousand of years, if not millions, for geological and climatic processes to cover everything under a nice layer of rock. And even then, paleontologists would find us. Just as we found dinosaurs. So, no, even after our demise we'd survive history. [Answer] There would be traces. Just as there are traces of past civilizations now. A million years would make it all very hard to decipher. Plastic and Nuclear waste being the last trace elements of our man made mess. The faces on Mt Rushmore and some Dams and Levees? Machu Picchu? Pyramids? Bones? Satellites? ]
[Question] [ **This question already has answers here**: [What if the earth were physically split in half?](/questions/18432/what-if-the-earth-were-physically-split-in-half) (6 answers) [Can a shattered planet still hold a breathable atmosphere? [closed]](/questions/102758/can-a-shattered-planet-still-hold-a-breathable-atmosphere) (1 answer) Closed 5 years ago. After tossing this question in my head for a while, I can't really come up with the best results. The situation is someone or something has split the earth in half, through the core and has moved the halves away from each other, far enough away they can no longer really interact with each other. Assume both halves are on the same orbit as Earth would be if it were unsplit, and ignore any forces that would be required to split and move the Earth-halves. The Question: Can life, especially human life, survive on the halves of the Earth? [Answer] Probably not. If the halves were dome-shaped, then gravity would try to shift it down into an orb, causing catastrophic events, landslides, etc. Everything would be pulled to the middle. Even if the gravity problem was ignored, the moon might get caught in a different orbit, causing fluctuations in the tide. Without rotation, the Earth would be disrupted. The rotating iron core generates Earth's magnetic field. If the rotation of the core was disrupted, the magnetic field would cease. Then the sun would strip away the atmosphere and burn the surface, blasting life with a constant barrage of radiation (SPF 5000, anybody?) CME's (coronal mass ejections, essentially concentrated radiation that acts like an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP))would fry electronics, and everything would die. Assuming you had a magical field of magnetism, however, you would still have the problem of there being no night or day. Any way you cut the Earth, and any way you cut it, it won't work. [Answer] Shortly said: no. More detailed answer: once you split the Earth in two, each part will crumble under gravity to get back to a spherical shape. This alone would make the surface hostile to life. Then since you have half the mass you also have a much lower gravity, meaning that the atmosphere as it is today will be gone by the time the half earth would have cooled down to life decent values. [Answer] No. Among other things, the oceans and atmosphere would pour over the newly created edge and flow down the gradient until they equalized, resulting in a number of effects: * Creating mighty wind and currents. * Reducing the amount of atmosphere and water available on the (former) surface. * Causing a great cataclysm as the cooler air and ocean reach the hot inner core of the earth, which is now exposed and radiating and likely to deform as noted by L.Dutch and Anonymous in their answers. * The lighter external crust which currently "floats" on the thicker, viscous interior of the earth and which is presently driven across the surface by convection would a) no longer be constrained along edges, and begin to spread over the edge, which itself would be deforming towards a more spherical shape b) be pulled apart by the new transverse forces. * These storms of air, water, steam, and earthquakes would likely scrape the surface free of topsoil, eliminating prospects for farming, while coating the surface in a fresh layer of ash and sediment. * Over any longer period, the earth would wobble erratically as it sought a new equilibrium; as Anonymous noted, you'd no longer have an interior dynamo to generate a magnetic field. The two halves would also develop a new and erratic orbital relationship with the moon, and I think the details of that relationship would depend on how far apart the two pieces were and where the moon was in its orbit and what angle the was bisected at at the time of the split. [Answer] Here are some educated guesses from a physicist about what would happen if the Earth were split in two. I'm assuming that the splitting happens magically and instantaneously, with one half just suddenly disappearing and reappearing somewhere else. Although this leads to quite extreme effects it's actually the best-case scenario - any other way of splitting the planet would add energy to the system, making it even worse. I'm also assuming the split happens along the Grenwich Meridian, so that it splits England, Africa, both poles and the Pacific Ocean into two, while the Americas and East Asia end up in the middle of their own hemispheres. For someone in central America or Indonesia, the very first thing they'll notice is that gravity is suddenly half of its normal strength. This will probably feel like a terrible earthquake, as if the ground has suddenly started to drop away underneath them. This is just an illusion, though - it hasn't. Yet. For someone closer to the edge of the hemisphere, gravity has not only reduced but also changed direction slightly, since it now points towards the centre of gravity of the hemisphere instead of to what used to be the centre of the Earth. However, this is the least of their problems and they will not have much time to think about it, because of the enormous shockwave that's passing over the land at the speed of sound, destroying everything. This occurs because the air at the edge of the hemisphere is suddenly in contact with a vacuum and is rushing into it. The air that goes over the edge will then start falling towards the core of the Earth. Speaking of the core, this has now exploded. It was previously under a huge amount of pressure, so much so that the inner core is solid iron, despite being hotter than the outer core, which is liquid. Once that pressure is released it will turn back into a liquid, expanding as it does so. I'm not sure exactly what the volume change is, but I'm sure there are now unimaginable amounts of white hot liquid iron rushing out into space at 6000C. This explosion can't be seen from the surface, but it causes a shockwave of its own, which will travel up through the mantle and manifest as a huge earthquake, which will destroy everything the atmospheric shockwave doesn't get. For places far from the edge, the earthquake will arrive before the atmospheric shockwave, because it has less distance to travel through the Earth. After that, the half-Earth will start collapse under its own gravity to turn back into a sphere half the size of the original. The Earth's core is now entirely liquid and the mantle, while largely solid, doesn't have anywhere near enough strength to hold itself in a hemisphere shape without collapsing. I don't know how long this collapse will take but it will be well underway within hours if not before. If you watch simulations of the [Moon-forming impact](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwl_JBQtH9o) you'll see that the Earth behaves like a liquid when it is subject to forces on that scale. The process of collapse turns gravitational potential energy into heat, with the result that once it's finished the half-Earth will have a surface of molten rock and an atmosphere made mostly of hot gases that were previously trapped in the mantle and core. In short, most people will be dead within hours, and long-term survival is completely impossible. [Answer] **When you mix life with 10,000°C plasma, all you get is more plasma.** No, it would be absolutely impossible to survive for a very, very long time after this event. Each half would collapse in on itself violently. In general, if you think you have an idea of what kind of forces are involved, multiply that by a few orders of magnitude, and then some. The last time anything of a similar magnitude happened (the Theia collision), the entire Earth was turned into a ball of plasma. Imagine ripping a huge mountain from the surface of the Earth, and dropping it from high in the upper atmosphere. Now imagine taking two mountains. Now three. That alone would likely sterilize Earth and would put Chicxulub impactor to shame, and yet we're not talking about some wimpy mountains or asteroids, but a massive chunk of the Earth collapsing in on itself. **Millions of years later, you would find two dry planets with no atmosphere.** Those are the immediate effects lasting a very, very long time. But what about long-term effects? What if you come back to one of the Earth halves several million years later? You'd find a dry, moon-like planet with a rather homogeneous composition (much like the moon itself). The heat of the collapse will have burnt away the atmosphere, and no atmosphere means the oceans will evaporate, so no water either. Any atmosphere that was left after the planet cooled will be blown away by solar winds, as the Earth's magnetism will have been completely eliminated, destroying the protective magnetosphere. Without terraforming, it will be uninhabitable. [Answer] Surprisingly yes life can survive, not human life sadly but life nonetheless. Now let me introduce you to a group of creatures known as extremeophiles. These babies can survive condition toxic to us and most life forms. Moist are microbes(excluding the tartegrade of coarse) and are capable of living in places that avoid the new deadly obstacles brought by a split earth or are just good at handling it. Now I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say possibly some undersea hydrothermal vent creatures (yeti crabs, tube worms, etc...) could survive as well being so far from the disaster zone. ]
[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 6 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/96572/edit) What is the probability of two people having the same scar on their body in the same spot and the same shape and the same backstory (drunk driver in a chevy '78) Could the scar be a viable form of identification? Would it trump a witness in a police report? Would a security camera in Wisconsin showing an individual having this scar be believed more than a witness that recognized the individual's face in a crime scene in Florida? What if both are eye witnesses? The main topics here are police identification and social recognition. (That is the same scar, seize him! vs That is the same scar, what a freak coincidence!) The scar complexity also have a role, a simple stab wound on the upper arm would be dismissed as coincidence, but the scar I'm talking about is a combined scar from an accident and a surgery in the shape of the state of Idaho. The scars sizes and details play a big role in identification/recognition. The individual is a time-traveler and may or may not have been involved in a crime with witnesses identifying his face. **Major Edit** The world I'm designing contains a number of **Iterative Persons (IP)**, that means if a person dies he will be reincarnated into an other person born on the same exact moment. The memories are little tricky, the **IP** will remember the events of previous days for all other instances depending on the number of times they fell asleep. i.e: the instance 4 when he wakes up for the 3650th time in their life will remember the memories all previous instances (1,2,3) have when they fall asleep for the 3650th time, regardless of their time or age. The **IP** is able to sense that these memories are from other instances and can (more or less) know to which instance they belong to. This also affects scars so everyone will have the same scars (not injuries) appear on them upon waking up. One day, instance 14 wakes up with 3 years worth of memories and a gun shot ~~wound~~ scar on his forehead and a large exit ~~wound~~ scar on the back of his head. Would having the same scars will cause people to suspect two iterations are the same person or an **IP**? Can this be used to 'Help' previous instances by providing alibi in crimes? [Answer] Last time I checked my ID card it reported data about my hair color, my eye color, my height and a picture of my face. No mentions to scars, even though I have some scattered all over my body. Same at airports, I got my face scanned for matching with my passport, not my scars. Scars are not good as primary identifiers, simply because it's too easy to counterfeit them and they are also not stable over time. And most of them are so common that they are practically worthless. Just think of appendix surgery: how many people have that scar in their lower abdomen? Or how many skiers have scars on their knee, as consequence of snapped tendons in ski related accidents? Scarface, just to give you an example, was well known for this feature, but nobody started arresting people with a scar on their faces just because "hey, they have a scar on their face!". *Addendum after OP's comment*: about large scars, our brain is developed to quickly identify faces, not scars. Telling the difference between two look alike scars would take much more training and inspection than telling the difference between two look alike faces. Still I see no reason for basing the identification on solely one plausible scar (with plausible I mean that I don't imagine a scar coming i.e. with an unique serial number). [Answer] If the scar is caused by some kind of machine, and the accident involving the machine is typical for its use, then having the same injury is not outrageous. They would have the same story concerning the injury, too. For surgery, the doctor would normally use a standard incision based on the specific operation, right? You can probably contrive reasons why it is less of a coincidence, and work that into the plot. [Answer] In an accident the odds of getting the same scars would be sod all, even twins being used as crash-test dummies would struggle to get identical wounds from the same impact test, at the same speed, in the same model of vehicle. A crash is a chaotic system, in the mathematical sense that there are too many variables to account for, where you can't predict exact outcomes based on the measurable variables at the time of the incident. As to the surgical scars, two surgeons dealing with wounds that were extremely similar might cause a near match in final, treated formation, if they were in the same year, with the same teachers during their time as students and so learned the same techniques. Even if it was the same wound treated by the same surgeon it probably wouldn't heal the same way for two different people though. As to the rest anything I say about the legal/prosecution side of the question would be bare speculation and pretty pointless, it's purely the realm of the story teller to speak to those issues. ]
[Question] [ I am thinking about an alternative - history scenario, where humans were able to discover and use electricity, in a 12th-13th century. I don't need any complex devices, I want to make society study focus on electricity usage. What would be the most reasonable explanation for it and where this discovery could have been made? EDIT: OR what would be first possible time for humanity to start studying electricity if it was impossible during 12th-13 century? [Answer] Something related to the [Baghdad Battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery). It is a set of three artifacts which were found together: **a ceramic pot, a tube of one metal, and another rod.** Early hypothesis suggests that the pot was filled with wine, vinegar, or other acidic juice, to build some sort of what we know now as **galvanic cell** (some sort of battery). For example in a manuscript rediscovered in the sack of Constantinople in 1204. I don't know why they would use electricity when mining was a big problem, but it could be a plausible start. [Answer] * Somebody mistranslated an old alchemical text. Instead of endless boiling in glass or copper vessels there was endless stirring with glass and copper rods. By the "[law of contagion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_contagion)" stirring different pots with copper-wire-linked copper rods helps to transfer effects. * A thousand experiments later, some alchemist was electroplating metals. The secret spreads and somebody tries systematic research, plus [economic applications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrenfried_Walther_von_Tschirnhaus#Inventor_of_porcelain). * Somebody puts a magnetic compass next to a live wire. For a very long time that remains a parlor trick, but electromagnets find some niche application. [Answer] Amber polarization by rubbing with wool cloths and electrostatics where the first phenomena to be noticed. From there to starting playing around with capacitors (Leyda bottle and similar) was a short step. * Was amber available in 12th century? YES * Was wool available in 12th century? YES * Was manufacturing good enough? YES for copper, silver, gold, glass * Was mathematics good enough to help understanding the physics behind? NO It looks like you might get to notice electricity and some related phenomena, but you will lack the mathematical ability to understand it. This is not a problem, at the end ships kept floating without understanding of the buoyancy principles. You won't get any divergence theorem or any Maxwell laws, but still you can get some empirical knowledge. Which environment would be the more likely to trigger the discovery of electricity? Well considering that amber, wool, gold, silver, copper and glass where available to a well established merchant, it could have happened that a curious member of a wealthy merchant family started playing with electrostatic and found how to build a bottle to store it (and play funny tricks to other family members during dinners...). From that the jump to playing with saline solutions the step is doable, and some alchemist can start adding on the table also acid and solutions with gold/silver. Whops, you have found how to gold/silver plate vile metals! [Answer] Not exactly a full answer, but half an answer at least: I think it would be somewhat plausible that someone could accidentally invent the [Leyden Jar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyden_jar) 500 years early if they were experimenting with tangentally related things, like a means of keeping food (particularly pickled food) fresh or using foil for reflecting the sun for heating things. [![Leyden Jar](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gpxHh.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gpxHh.png) I'm fairly certain the effects of glass and mirrors in conjunction with light to generate heat were well known, so I can see how someone might think "a glass jar wrapped in foil will help heat things". The metal rod in the top might simply be intended as a makeshift handle. [Answer] Electricity is a complicated concept that really wasn't discovered, investigated, and formalized as a concept by any one person. Instead there was an entire western scientific community that was exploring it over a period of centuries. Going from Gilbert's experiments isolating electrical attraction to Edison and Tesla was about 300 years. I honestly don't think all this was doable in even that kind of time-frame without the printing-press. You need some kind of mass communications infrastructure that would allow that amount of educated people to collaborate and hear about each other's work. The Renaissance period (whether people realize it or not) is essentially synonymous with "after the printing press". --- If I were to try to do it before then, I'd go with something like the following: In the early medieval period, when Christianity was competing with German Heathenisim in Europe, there was a bit of a setback. Perhaps the son of [Harald Bluetooth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Bluetooth#Denmark.27s_conversion_to_Christianity) was electrocuted ringing a church bell in attempt to scare off the ["air demons" in a lightning storm](https://history.stackexchange.com/q/2955/771). It was pointed out to the king that this was clearly Thor's displeasure, and that He obviously makes a special target of all those pointy-steepled Christian churches. Non-Christians all over Europe make a habit of erecting giant crosses in open fields near storms, just to celebrate when Thor strikes them down. Ensuing events set back Christianization of German areas by centuries. This caused the Catholic church to see lightning strikes on churches as an **existential threat to the church**, and to devote their top minds to the effort of studying lightning. The effort would also have the full support of the entire international communications infrastructure of the church. The greatest minds of Christendom were sought out and educated specifically for this purpose. Everyone down to the local parish priests was trained to consider identifying smart kids to their bishops as part of their duties. With this system in place, this one topic had the finest minds in Europe working on it. Perhaps three generations of Newton-level thinkers were devoted to the task (where without this effort they would have wasted their lives as serfs). --- The part I'm kind of fudging here is somebody (perhaps a Pope?) having the insight that lightning was a natural phenomena that can be studied, rather than an "act of God". I'm not entirely sure the Medieval mind was capable of that jump. [Answer] When you clean your amber with wool you electrify the amber. This was noted even by the ancient Greeks. Then by accident someone who was doing this in rather dim circumstances could notice the spark he creates when holding "cleaned" amber and touching someone else. Then after many many years (because all observations would be done by naked eye so that would take time) they would experiment with machines that would hold the amber while the wool cloth is moved around it. You know, the ancient machine when you have amber in the core and wool brushes are moved in a circular motion by hand. Kinda like our modern hand phone chargers. [Answer] ### What you need is someone who is an obsessive and has a lot of money If you have someone who really made it their life's work to dig into electricity, static charge was noted by the Greeks after all, so it wasn't unknown in the 12th century, it just wasn't understood. Provided they could study to the exclusion of all else they could potentially make a couple of breakthroughs that would get others interested in continuing the work. The math for unifying magnetism and electricity or even for properly quantifying electrical phenomena isn't there, but you can use things you don't understand. We lacked the math to explain radio for a long time while we were using it for Morse. ]
[Question] [ On a world I am building, the defining feature of the world if that the days last 9 years instead of 24 hours. This means that the species' living on the world must always migrate to keep up with the short band of habitable land. They would live on the poles, but at the north pole lies the largest ocean and at the south lies an area of inhabitable dryness. Other features of this world are its 0 degree axial tilt, many small moons, and a ring going around the equator. How do the people of this world manage to achieve the effects of the agricultural revolution, without agriculture? That is, how can they gain the vast population and technological increase? For the sake of simplicity, assume that the animals living there are just like earth animals. [Answer] To get a agricultural revolution in your setting would be difficult. The climate of your world would require constant migration making any cultivation time either very short, in the amount of time available to cross the habitable zone, or very long stretching across the uninhabitable regions. For short you would need to move very quickly to the hot edge of habitability plant crops and harvest as the cold dark approaches, or use advanced planting groups and follower harvest groups, but you would need a means of moving goods forward to feed and support the planters. For this to be effective you would need faster modes of transport and very fast growing and maturing crop species. For the long haul you need to find what species, if any, survive in place all year long. Hopefully some of them are edible, these could be harvested as you pass, something like a string of orchards. Encourage these plants to spread and care for them as you migrate past, anything you can do to get them to spread or improve their odds of surviving through the entire 9 year day. For both strategies you would want a fixed migration path which would allow you to take advantage of long term improvements. Set up farming areas and orchards along your migration path. Every time you pass you make slight improvements and perform upkeep of the areas. The ultimate goal would be a series of farm like settlements and storage caches all the way around the world giving the society a buffer of food to allow for innovation and cultural development. This would be long term generational investment and would require constant effort and a culture to protect the improvements. A raiding party burning a farm would not just be immediately harmful, but would continue to cause harm on a recurring basis as you came back to the devastated area every 9 years. [Answer] > > depends on the species, some simply grow at a rapid pace (like wild rhubarb) others plant hardened seeds to survive the night, some "hibernate" and some actually just "move" along the planet like wild vines. > > > If that's how plants work, why can't you have agriculture? 1. Plant the fast growing seeds at the leading edge of the habitable area. Harvest at the trailing edge. Ship food forward to the planters and any weeders. 2. Plant hardened seeds at the trailing edge. Harvest tomorrow (nine years from now). Harvesters leave underground caches of food for the planters. 3. Protect the vines from predation. Plant new ones and protect them as needed. That sounds like agriculture to me. Build dark houses (rather than greenhouses). They would keep the blazing sun off the plants so that plants could grow during the day. Build mirrors that redirect the hot sun from the light side to the dark side, extending both growing periods. Plant seeds in pots. Carry them with you. When you get to the leading edge, plant them and wait for them to mature. An underwater people might develop. As the day grows hotter, they drop lower in the water. At the trailing edge, they migrate across the poles to the other fields. Not to mention that part of agriculture is about managing herds of animals rather than plants. For example, in Mongolia, they used horses for food and drink as well as transportation. This was part of the reason why they were so successful in invading Russia in comparison to Napoleon and Adolf Hitler. They brought their agriculture with their army and did not rely on fallible supply lines. The idea of [migratory herding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumance) is well established. Once they figure out electricity and start building solar panels, they can add air conditioning and artificial lights. With space flight, they can build mirrors that darken one side of the world and brighten the other. [Answer] If the plants are only active in the same time of day that the people live the choice to shape plants' life-cycle is similar to Earth's peoples'; they notice what kind of plants they like and promote them. Your people's ancestors must have had scouts. And the farther ahead of the main body they are the more sure the route chosen is the easiest path in the long term. Eventually they might be most of a life-cycle of a usable plant ahead and things they drop will be noticed by the main body. If everyday watermelons are gathered from where your scouts camped months before you might ask them to plant some flax while they are at it. Whatever the survivable window if the plants and people have similar ones this method works if the people organize themselves with scouts and main body as far apart as possible in a continuous moving plan. If they have a hurryup and wait plan you might just have normal agriculture since you can wait for a whole window which is at least one plant life-cycle. [Answer] Shouldn't be too hard, this happens already, it's called [slash and burn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn) agriculture which is still used today in places. Probably one of the first and easiest methods of agriculture. Along with [transhumance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumance) such as nomadic people still practice. Both of these are low tech and intuitive for primitive peoples. Communities plant and harvest an area for a few years and then move on as the soil nutrients are used up. [Answer] The pre-sapient ancesstors of those people will already be adapted to that 9-year cycle. What do animals do in general? Hybernate, eat stored food (cached themselves or digging up dorment tubers etc.)? Lets suppose they don’t hybernate and the rise to intelligence is driven by their better ability to plan for the winter. They make caches that are better defended against other animals. They exploit caches *from* other animals. They find natural plant cache (e.g. tubers) and prey on hybernating animals. Being “smart” means having a flexible and general approach, being able to apply all the stategies used by other animals, adapting to changing conditions and combining approaches. So they have a *double* revolution: not only do they manage the growing of plants during the day (inventing agriculture), but they also improve the storage techniques for use at night. The long cycle stimulates their intellect: rather than sleeping most of the time through winter with only a few shifts of guard duity and getting up to eat once a week (like their ancesstors), their great breakthrough is to store enough food to remain awake most of the winter. They don’t have crops to tend, but they apply this time to working on their technology. Later, they use it for art and literature. Their original snug dens become warm burried lodges and then cities full of workshops. Make the 9 year cycle drive their culture in this way, as well as making them different from the dumb animals as a defining characteristic of their existence. [Answer] If the day is so long then also plants need to "emigrate" somehow (even if just burying underground till the ice will thaw). Agricultural revolution is not the real propulsion of bronze-age culture, bronze-age came along because populations become sedentary (agriculture encouraged this). You can stipulate large underground caves where volcanic activity keeps conditions stable year-around (I should say "day-around :) ) and have there communities of artisans waiting for customers at dawn, doing some agriculture during the day and burying deep in their workshops at night. It is a bit difficult to manage because You need provisions for several years, but you have a "natural freezer" in the caves near to the surface. Light would be even more difficult to provide, unless you invent something like luminescent plants adapted to the warm caves. Other possibility is to make the populace waterborne and have a fleet sailing toward the sun. It doesn't need to be very fast, so it can be primitive rafts, even large ones. If they are sailing at the right latitude they could even take advantage of winds and currents for push (trade winds come to mind). Large enough rafts would support sizeable factories and raw materials could be gathered along the cost. You can even combine the two and add a fleet of "fast rafts" speeding towards the morning, settling down doing gathering/agriculture waiting for the main fleet, packing everything there and racing ahead again. Something could be left beyond to be used "tomorrow" (mostly stone buildings, wood wouldn't last without maintenance, probably). Whatever is needed for metallurgy is difficult to attain in a constantly moving world. [Answer] For a planet to have a day 9 Earth years long the rotational period of the planet with respect to the stars and the orbital period of the planet around its star will have to be almost exactly the same. This will make the apparent position of the sun in the sky appear to move very slowly. But for an exactly nine Earth year day the sun would appear to travel 40 degrees per Earth year or about 0.109 degrees per Earth day. So you are going to have to calculate how the rotation rate and the orbital period combine to make such a long day. Life will not be possible on that world unless the oceans and atmosphere are able to distribute heat around the planet and keep the temperature differences between high noon and midnight moderate. But on the other hand you want to make the day and night temperatures different enough that your people will have to migrate around the world every nine Earth year "day". Thus they will have to sail around the world on the equatorial ocean and make many stops at various islands and continents every nine Earth year "day". Or they will have to ride on their alien mounts around the world on the equatorial continent every nine Earth year "day". Having to both ride across land and sail across seas seems like a bad idea. They will never be sure to find riding animals on the next landmass unless they bring them on their ships. And they will never be sure to find ships or be able to build them on the next sea shore they come to, unless they drag or carry their ships across the land with them. Many things could go wrong for them if they have to cross both lands and seas. The Earth's circumference is 24,901.55 miles or 40,075.16 kilometers. So if your planet has the same circumference of Earth they would have to travel 2,766.8388 miles or 4,452.795 kilometers per Earth year and 7.575 miles or 12.191 kilometers per Earth day, and 0.315 miles or 0.507 kilometers per hour at a steady pace. At the equator. If they live far north or south of the equator they could travel at a slower rate. And of course they probably have to stop and rest unless they sail on ships and take watches where some sail while others sleep. Or they can move on land constantly if they have wagons or travois or yurts on wheels or something and half the people and animals rest in the wagons while the other half pull the wagons. If they do spend part of their time resting they will have to travel proportionally faster when they are moving. Of course the planet could be significantly larger or smaller than Earth, so they could have to travel proportionately faster or slower. Suppose that a band finds that they have enough seed left to plant a crop and enough food to last them for six more months. They stop and plant their seeds and live off their previous harvest for six Earth months while the sun moves 20 degrees to catch up with them. Then they harvest their crops and travel for another six Earth months twice as fast as the sun until they reach a distance 40 degrees ahead of their previous position. They plant their new set of seeds and cultivate them for another six Earth months while the sun movies another 20 degrees to catch up with them. [Answer] The animals will be migrating as well, so you can have the animal husbandry bit of agriculture. Your people can be the equivalent of nomadic reindeer herders, cattle herders, Mongolian tribes with camels, horses and sheep, and so on. They'll have a guaranteed source of food on tap (and draft animals to do the work of transporting them and their stuff), so their population will be bigger than nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples. What makes this lifestyle possible on Earth is milk. It can be drunk fresh, or processed into butter, curds, cheese, etc for longer storage. You say your animals are like Earth animals - you'll have to make them mammals, or invent some other milk-analogue which can be harvested from them on a daily basis. (e.g. they are giant 'aphids' which produce honeydew). Can't really think of a way to solve the metal-working problem. Especially since tin, copper and iron ores are very scattered and rare resources - unlike grass for your herds, which you can find almost everywhere. [Answer] A planet with a 9-year long day would have half of the planet in daylight, and half in night. Depending on the size of the planet, and how close it is to its sun and the amount of power put out by the sun, this would determine how hot midday on the equator gets. Such a long day on a planet with an atmosphere is likely to result in severe atmospheric storms, with the hot air on the sunny side rising and drawing in colder air from the night side. This air would descend on the night side as catabatic winds, possibly forming rolling cells. The large northern ocean would help distribute the heat from the day side, and might keep the entire northern shore of the continent viable for life, even during the deepest of nights. [Hadley cells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell) will result in banding of climatic and atmospheric conditions by latitude. All of the lifeforms on the planet would have evolved in this system, so would have a variety of mechanisms to deal with the long day and night cycle, from having entire 9-year lifecycles, to surviving the night by laying eggs for the next generation before dying, to cocooning or hibernating, scavenging, or finding friendlier environments underground and living in the sea. Assuming that the people are in tribal units, those on the northern coast would do pretty well, and might develop something like normal agriculture, along with fishing, growing different crops over the day. Those further from the coast can stay in one area for a season, before moving on. This would allow them to do agriculture and mining, and they may trade with the coastal peoples. They may even establish cities that are abandoned after the season. If there are several groups following each other, each may stay in the cities for a growing season before moving on. Those closest to the equator would probably be more nomadic, given the imperative to keep moving, and might raid the agricultural cities further north or south. They might shelter underneath the shadow cast by the ring for shade. Those south of the equator may develop agriculture in a similar way to their northern brethren, though they would not have a continual stream of coastal communities to trade with. All of this would depend on the continents that exist on the planet, of course. A standalone continent that doesn't straddle the planet will produce unique lifeforms that can survive both day and night cycles, and peoples who have evolved to live very differently from those on the continent that straddles the planet. [Answer] If the natives built a large number of wagons on wheels to provide small garden plots, then the farm becomes portable. There would probably also be an outhouse incorporated into these mobile farm platforms for fertilizer benefits. Whatever serves as the draft animal would be hitched to the gardens to move them periodically. While this would work well for berry vines and smaller vegetables, it would not be a complete solution. But it does provide enough food that an advance group could be planting in the "dawn area" so that there is a large supply of food for the main group to follow. We can also assume that at the tail end of the procession where harvesting occurs, that a certain amount of caching of food stores occurs. This would minimize the need for as much back and forth travel to distribute food stocks. [Answer] I would like to simply Point out that, whilst people are coming up with great ideas for agriculture, the most efficient being Portable Farms pulled by creatures, and a rather nice idea about utilizing the native fauna and promoting growth of edible species, I would like to point out that there's a massive blazing forge that these Nomads are fleeing from every "day", the Sun is more than capable of refining even Advanced Alloys at the temperatures that surface would reach! Retrieving the material Ores is actually rather easy to accomplish, in 3 Months alone, a small group of 10 people with nothing better to do can dig a rather sizable hole, complete with a covered Entrance to both keep creatures out, and keep the Sun (or lack thereof) out, and it's perfectly possible to have it be completely stable to prevent cave-ins, made even more possible when you factor in that this is something they require to withstand the violent changes the temperature difference creates, they'll be gone for most of the "Day" (9 years / 0.25 years, they're only there for ¼ of 1 year, the rest is prep work), so they won't be able to "maintain" the Mine, it must stay stable whilst they're gone. Also, whilst Milk is digestible Raw, it's not very agreeable with most Digestive Systems these days, I'm not sure how much that's translated to here, but there's a possibility of Allergic Reactions, which is why we Process our Milk (Lactose Intolerant people are more common otherwise, as a wider variety of people are unable to drink it or risk Death), but as these are Alien creatures, they could produce Lactose Free Ice creams if you so desired! That's the best part of World Building, it's your World, you get to Build it! Although I'm going to guess that you are aiming for more "hellscape nomad" type, not "the Cow has Ice Cream coming out of it's Udder" lol it would be fitting though if said Cow could survive that Night. ]
[Question] [ I've done a question about [Aerial battle of knights riding flying creatures... How would they fight?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/79065/aerial-battle-of-knights-riding-flying-creatures-how-would-they-fight), that was put [on hold] for being too broad. So I'm splitting the question into a series. --- The context: In my world, we have two cities, each on a high mountaintop, separated by a vast valley. In order to wage war, the warriors of each city bridge the huge gap between them by using flying creatures. Now, these flying creatures are of various natures... Some are dragon-like pterodactyls, others are giant eagles. But each one can carry only one warrior and his gear. The warriors saddle and mount the beasts like they would do with horses. --- Now, let us imagine that one of the flying armies has indeed won the battle. The army is now flying to the enemy city, in order to drop the knights into the city so as to conquer it. That city has no more flying creatures... so it must use some kind of grounded weapon. **Knowing that their technology is on the medieval level, how could the city defend itself against this menace? Would archers be sufficient or efficient? Would they use catapults, ballistas or any other kind of weapon? And which ammunition would you suggest?** --- PS: Links to the other questions for this series: 1. [Aerial battle of knights riding flying creatures - preferred weapons for the warriors](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/79255/aerial-battle-of-knights-riding-flying-creatures-preferred-weapons-for-the-war) 2. [Aerial battle of knights riding flying creatures - how would their military formations be?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/79346/aerial-battle-of-knights-riding-flying-creatures-how-would-their-military-form) [Answer] Generally when you lost your entire army the city falls. You never commit your entire army if you can. You'd have a detachment of guards specialized in defending the city. Regardless, the enemy has won. We lost so many flying mounts they're insignificant to the fight. So what can we still do? We design our city to withstand an arial assault. I assume the mountain isn't flat at the top but a regular mountain. ## The city With access to flying creatures it makes sense your civilization is more vertical then ours have been. Cities got walls to keep people out. It makes sense your people did something similar to the sky. Modern paratroopers and helicopters still need open ground to land. I imagine your city to be rings of multi-storied buildings. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AwpZ9.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AwpZ9.jpg) A, your keep, castle, main fortification. B, Outer wall, reinforced against the keep itself. Your main barrier against the common rabble as well as enemy Knights that entered the city. C, First ring of buildings. Can be multiple rings easily depending on the size of your city. D, Outer ring/city wall. Given a land assault isn't mentioned I think you can get away with the outer ring being lightly fortified buildings. E, Buttresses to support the outer ring. You obviously find them between the rings as well. Can be turned into towers if you wish. *Now you claim your city is on a high mountain top. This will make the weather and specifically snow an issue.* So I tried to take that into account. First story entrances and large slanted roofs. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xQHw2.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xQHw2.jpg) 1. Between the rings I envision some sort of wooden covering against the elements. Obviously that would make the city very dark so I think a mixture skylights with canvas or metal grate coverings might work. Maybe even poor glass? As long as it lets light through but somewhat blocks both snow and enemies. 2. Buttress 3. Outer wall of the keep. Has a large roof to keep snow out of the first ring of buildings/the first street. Only open entrance to street level excluding the keep. Can easily be manned with archers and ballistae. 4. Outer wall itself, added buttresses to the keept for additional strength. Has a first story entrancepoint with the first ring of buildings. Probably gates with porticulus. 5. Space underneath the street between rings of buildings. Might be able to turn that into a sewer system. 6. Keep. What you want is minimize the open space on top so no enemy can simply wander in. Making the keep and it's wall(s) the focus point you create a killzone that's easy to man. The keep should house the barracks and supplies like bolts, arrows etc. Access between rings is probably archways, gates and tunnels. Anything that's closed at the top. In a sense the city is one large interconnected building. Linked roofs keeping the air closed for snow and Knights. Roofs are likely augmented with metal spikes to dissuased landing there. It's hard to train an animal to go towards danger. Being tall and thin they would easily stick above the snow. So weather wouldn't make them useless. Might even function like lightning rods, keeping the wooden roofs somewhat safe. 7. High narrow Streets allow for all kinds of cool details. Banners between houses, extra wooden platforms. Etc. 8. Side view of the settlement on the peak. ## Weapons The first thing that came to me was the already mentioned ballista. An oversized bolt in your wing will surely stop any flying animal. Now we want the animals stopped, but this can be done when they're close to the city. Any fall would disorient our armored Knights that can then be killed by troops on the ground. The perfect weapon for bringing down enemy fliers isn't the heavy ballista, it's the [(Chinese) repeating crossbow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow). Simple design, easy to use but with limited range and power. It can generally go up to 120 meters but effective range is closer to 80 meters. That's little over 250 ft. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7GX5Z.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7GX5Z.jpg) Now this is completely outclassed by a traditional crossbow in range and power. It struggles against armor of any kind unlike regular crossbows. But wings aren't armored. Wings tend to be quite fragile. The repeating crossbow could fire up to 40 bolts a minute. Now that's a volume of fire you can hit a flying target. Give regular versions to your guards that patrol the walls. Then mount larger ones near your open areas. Any flier coming close will be showered in bolts. Hit their wings enough and they should go down. [Answer] # Strategy: Target the enemy mounts close in. It's unlikely that these cities have one mount for each knight - flying creatures need a lot of space and a lot of food. An invasion force must be very large. So it's likely that the invasion relies upon multiple waves of knights, with mounts shuttling back and forth to carry many knights across. This sort of attack has several critical weaknesses: The mounts are obvious force multipliers, and so obvious targets. It also means the invasion force is unsupported by infantry. Knights and infantry support each other - either alone is weaker. Knights alone are fairly easy meat to a wealthy and prepared defense of thousands! So let them land in your kill zones. Target the mounts first, then kill the grounded knights at leisure. The purpose of targeting mounts is to reduce the *rate* attackers can land, and ultimately to lower the *final number* of attackers. Guide the enemy flyers into your kill zones using nets and fire and fortifications and spikes/spears, etc. As each wave of fliers land, puncture as many mounts as possible using crossbows and arbalests and other high-velocity weapons - you want them to fly away fast and scared...and to bleed out on the way home. Use ordinary barricades and fortifications to channel the grounded knights into separate traps as they leave the landing area. You don't need to kill them - disable them with rocks dropped upon them, tanglefoots, spring-loaded levers, etc. Try to break a leg or arm. Take them out of their armor - it's valuable. Then, still alive, throw them over the edge in full view of their horrified friends above. [Answer] Ballistas are the main weapon you would want as their are easier to aim than something like a catapult. You would also want people who can cast magic and items that can cast magic. DnD (Faerun) had bolt casters. For passive defenses, you want steel cables and/or nets running between towers and spikes on the roofs and tops of walls. You also want your walls and buildings to be relatively tall and close together to make it hard for fliers to get to the ground. make it so there isn't enough room for their wings once they get between buildings. Towers and walls will have covered platforms instead of open to provide coverage from above. Also, to prevent the roofs from becoming staging areas for landed troops, give them steep peaks That, combined with the narrow streets and the chains and spikes between buildings will insure that only a few of them make it to the ground in fighting condition. [Answer] Your cities were built by people who live with and accept flying mounts as a normal part of life. As such, their access control techniques (such as walls and gates) would be prepared for airborne intruders. For example, perhaps your city is surrounded by an extremely tall wall which rises from the mountain top to above the breathable atmosphere. Flying over the wall would be impossible for medieval equipped knights (or their mounts) so they would have to confront the gates. Since the gates focus the intruder's access into a smaller, defend-able zone, archers would be very effective at keeping them out. [Answer] There are the four ways of trapping and snaring * mangle * tangle * dangle * strangle I think that you need to look at tangling up your prey.. causing them to fall out of the sky. Nets are being used currently to disable drones [see this net gun](http://www.dronedefence.co.uk/net-gun-x1). The nets could be launched by ballista and don't need to be heavy, only binding This could be achieved at night with a ships rigging above the walls, the webbing would have to be difficult to see and supported on multiple points (in case of enmasse assualts) [Answer] Spears, lots of spears, set in the ground/rooftops/walls etc. pointing upwards to prevent flying creatures from landing, and/or kill the knights jumping from up high to the ground. Are balloons with chains, preventing flying creatures to enter airspace over the city out of the question? (like hotairballoons over London during WW2) [Answer] An airborne attack has basically 2 means of taking a city. 1. Bomb the city from above using dropped or missile weapons. Rapidly 2. Bypassing perimeter defenses to get troops on the ground. **Bombers** You've said the flying mounts are only strong enough to bear one rider. This means they aren't going to be strong enough to carry heavy bombs like boulders along with the pilot/rider. This means your bombers are going to be limited to standard ranged weapons of the era you are emulating: spears, arrows, bolts, and sling bullets. None of these are going to be particularly effective from a fast-moving flying creature. Shock value? Maybe. But unless they have the numbers to make it rain ammunition, they won't be great at picking off targets. I suppose it is marginally possible that your bombers could light flaming ammunition and drop that to start fires. ([Not arrows](https://youtu.be/zTd_0FRAwOQ), though... that's a TV myth.) These birds/dragons/etc. are going to be large and slow, bred to emphasize power over speed. The creatures cannot be heavily armored; they lack the wing power for this. And your pilots can only be lightly armored, since they must want to devote as much of their "birds'" power to ammunition. What good is a bomber if it can only carry a pilot and a half-dozen arrows before it has to return home and reload? To *defend* against this, your city will build defensive structures with flame-proof, armored, roofs. A stone roof instead of thatched or wooden should suffice. And gives your ground-archers a shield. They sit under that roof, taking pot-shots at anyone dumb enough to fly in range. Give them crossbows if you want a faster ammunition that might have better odds against the bombers. (Maybe a three-person defensive team, the best shooter does the shooting while the other two reload spare crossbows and spot for incoming targets.) Remember, too, that a bombing force cannot *take* your city; they can only soften it up by beating it into submission for a ground force or landing air force to then take. **Airborne** Like modern airborne forces (see 101st Airborne Division, US Army), your flying creatures could simply be a means to get men on the ground. These birds will be bred for speed and possibly trained to return to the sally point after their rider leaves. This may allow one bird to supply waves of troops if it survives the flights. The soldiers will basically be infantry trained to fly into the combat zone. They will carry whatever armor and arms their mounts are capable of carrying, but the speed of landing is vital. While they're in the air, they are larger, vulnerable, targets. To *defend* against these airborne troops, you need two things. One, defended archers (see above). And two, *restrict your landing areas.* If your city has streets too narrow for mounts to land in, then they must land on rooftops or in open parks. It would be a relatively trivial task (assuming the foresight to do so) to build roof lines with points at regular intervals where pole-arms could be set. Imagine a roofline that has weapons similar to these bristling out every three feet or so:[![halbreds](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UqZwg.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UqZwg.png) This make the roofs into pincushions where no bird could land. If your mounts are capable of hovering, then troops could jump down onto roofs from the birds, but that still takes some time during when they would be exposed to arrow fire. And you could always throw caltrops out onto rooftops as well, to discourage such efforts. This limits inbound troops to open park areas. These become killzones where your station defenders with bows, crossbows, spears, etc. Entering that area in the hopes of landing would leave more bodies than fighting men by the end of the day. An attacking force would probably try to use both Bombers and Airborne troops, but it would be a hard fight in both cases. Remember, the defenders don't have to kill the birds; they just have to break a wing. And those wings are going to be larger than the body of the bird, so they become easy targets. [Answer] Unfortunately, your city should probably surrender (or evacuate, but for reasons that will become clear, that isn't a likely alternative). Your scenario has two similar mountaintop cities, with similar military technology. Therefore it is logical to assume that both cities employ the various ingenious and excellent defences mentioned in other answers. Unless the commander of the victorious army is a fool (and probably isn't, given that said commander has just secured an overwhelming victory), your final comment: > > The army is now flying to the enemy city, in order to drop the knights into the city so as to conquer it. > > > isn't what will happen 'in reality' - at least not in the way this has been interpreted so far. The army may be flying to the enemy city, but its commander is well aware of the likely defences, even assuming no prior scouting, and won't be landing any troops in kill zones. Your cities are on mountaintops, which means (a) access routes to the cities are restricted and (b) most if not all food is going to be imported from lowland farms where there is sufficient fertile soil. Given that the victorious army now has complete air superiority, all its commander need do is lay siege to the city by targeting supply routes. This can be done out of range of many if not all of the city's defences, and will eventually starve the city into surrendering. Should the city have vast food reserves, the victors can simply cut it off - ignore it. The only scenario where they would try to invade the well-defended city would be if that city possessed something the victors needed, and that need was time-limited. The upshot of this is that neither city would risk losing control of its own airspace, and would not commit to all-out war, but instead defend its supply routes and farms, perhaps with garrisons and way stations that can be rapidly reinforced/resupplied by air. So, if the cities ~were~ drawn into a 'final battle', the losers probably can't evacuate, without being picked of by patrols of flying knights from the other city, and can either surrender immediately, or starve first and then surrender. The only way to have the flying army impale itself on the aerial defences suggested is to have either ignorance of these (an invading horde, for example) or sufficient desperation to be willing to incur major losses. Or both. [Answer] Simplest method is massed arrow volleys. The most effective would probably be a counter attack with flying mounted warriors of their own. ]
[Question] [ I'm putting together a design for a large land based walker style weapon, the machine has missile rack above and 2 large railguns/coilguns/cannons on each side. Aesthetically I'd like the design of the cannons to have between 3-6 barrels and law wise be a coilgun. The weapons are intended for anti-infantry and combating large horde-like enemies at ranges of 500m to 4000m, I'm thinking around 300 rounds/min. In this sort of situation would there be any practical need/advantage for a coilgun to have multiple barrels? Many thanks. [Answer] **A couple reasons that can work together or separately for this to happen:** 1. Heat management 2. A normal "machine gun" style gas operated piston is unsafe for this weapon for some reason ## Heat One of the reasons modern vehicle mounted weapons like the [GAU-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger) have multiple barrels is not for any sort of aesthetic reason but for heat management. Even then, the GAU-8 cannot be fired for long periods because it will still overheat. It has a firing rate fixed at 3900 Rounds per minute. Weapons with high firing rates tend to overheat rather quickly using chemical propulsion. Modern Infantry machine gun teams must limit their firing rate and often, a spare barrel will be carried for squad automatic weapons. (One example is the m249, a squad support weapon used by the united states military, read about it [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M249_light_machine_gun) if you want ) Chemically propelled firearms will overheat eventually and if they are fired while overheated it can ruin or deform the barrel, rendering the weapon inoperable or unsafe. If your weapon is a coilgun which uses chemical propulsion to provide an initial burst of speed to projectiles, this might be good enough for you. Any weapon with such an extreme firing rate will be multi barreled in current technological application partly because of heat, but also because of the second reason. # Firing Mechanism If your weapon is not using chemical propellants, you cannot use the same standard mechanism for automatically loading the next bullet as a modern machine gun or automatic weapon uses. Modern automatic weapons use a portion of the gas produced by the burning of chemical propellant to drive a mechanism that automatically ejects an expended cartridge and allows a new one to be fed into the mechanism. This is a really high level overview as there are multiple types of automatic reloading mechanisms (Read [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_gun) for more on different types of automatic loading in modern firearms) Automatic weapons which do not use this mechanism to load another round would require another method to load the barrel safely and reliably. One of these could be using multiple barrels. In this way, because the barrel being loaded is not actively expected to fire the next round, there is more time for a mechanism to properly load the projectile. The [Gatling gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun) is one example of this type of weapon and was used in the United states civil war and other conflicts. Therefore it is safe to say, firing mechanisms may be the reason your weapon has multiple barrels. For example, if you had a railgun and not a coilgun, you could say you needed multiple barrels to ram the projectile into place adequately. The key here is the safety and reliability. Machines in real life cannot operate instantly and as a result there is a sort of upper limit on how fast you can safely reload a single barreled weapon. Perhaps the reason your weapon has multiple barrels is because it is the only sensible way to load rounds in a reliable way. [Answer] Historically, there were two reasons to have multiple barrels. 1. Rate of fire was higher than rate of loading. Extreme example - systems that can only be loaded in base. Without extremes - [gatling gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun) was a solution to loading problems. Now this is long gone for regular guns, don't know about rail or coilguns. 2. Temperature. If you have 6 barrels, each one receives only 1/6 of the heat. This greatly increases reliability and allows simpler construction, without radiators and other kinds of cooling. Example: [M61 Vulcan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M61_Vulcan) [Answer] * The process to transfer energy from the electrical power plant to the projectile won't be 100% efficient. The waste energy will become waste heat. Multiple barrels help to cope with this excess heat. * It may be feasible to share components between coilguns of different caliber. The same power supply could be used to fire a relatively large but slow mortar round, a smaller but faster autocannon round, or plenty of MG rounds. If the power supply is the heavy or expensive part of the weapon and the barrel(s) and ammo feed are cheap, it may make sense to share the power supply. [Answer] one problem with current railguns is wear and tear on the barrel, being able to swap out barrels might be a solution. if you would only get 8 shots per barrel, having six barrels gives you 46 shots with the same machine. [Answer] Besides the heat- and loading time problems already mentioned by others multiple barrels with separate loaders make it easier to fire different kinds of ammo from each barrel. Your walker might have one barrel loaded with the coil gun equivalent of shot (a steel casing full of steel balls with the casing falling off after firing). The second barrel with ke-penetrators and the third with whatever you might come up with or the same as one of the other barrels. Mixing ammo might cause problems with just one barrel even if the barrels have an identical setup because loading times or acceleration by the coil might vary. When going on a anti infantry run all the barrels except for one might be loaded with ammo meant for soft targets but you'd still be prepared if some hard targets appear. As a side-note: if this monster is meant as an anti infantry vehicle I'd build some flamers into the feet in case someone gets close. [Answer] It's as simple as more barrels = higher rate of fire. You can fire them all at once (fragmenting shells would make a wall of death, or AP shells for armoured targets), or sequentially to take out individual targets. You'd either have a rotating set of barrels loading one at a time (like a minigun), or have fixed barrels with their own loaders mounted on a turret (Like a double barrel shotgun). maybe one on each side for versatility? [Answer] When "combating large hoard like enemies" don't flock shoot. You can track targets based on pattern recognition (face detection), movement, and/or heat signatures. Give each barrel a 10 degree field of fire and let them help aim for you. I'm thinking of the last Matrix movie. ]
[Question] [ In a science-based universe with a species physically similar to merfolk, so tails and arms, what weapons would they develop for use during the stone-age phase of their existence? These would be used both for hunting and for skirmishing with other tribes although fights involving more than 30 or 40 people would be highly unusual. The underwater environment provides a number of constraints in the ways weapons can be used and designed, but does it also allow other new options? [Answer] **Shivs, that is improvised sharp small weapons.** You cannot throw or shoot anything underwater. Friction stops it very quickly. Take a sharp rock, or a shell of some sort. If it is sharp all over wrap it in something to be able to hold it. And there you have it. As technology progresses you probably want longer weapons to outreach the opponent. You can *not* slash underwater without expending a lot of energy, stabbing is much easier. This means **spears**, which is basically a shiv on a stick. However, you don't want very long spears, since they become harder to turn to face a moving opponent. A two-ended spear is a possibility, but I don't know how practical it is. You can possibly get a rock/paper/scissors situation where short spears beats shivs, and long spears beats short spears, but shivs outflanks and beats long spears. One major difference is that battles are 3-dimensional. This makes battle tactics much more complicated. The short version is that it is easier to out-flank, but harder to fully surround someone. I don't know much more than that about this, but I expect being able to outsmart the opponent will be more important than in land battles. So far, the water has been a problem, but as you say it can also be an advantage. Take a really big rock. Fasten a lot of gas bladders to it to make it float. Push it to directly above an enemy village or other target. Cut away the gas bladders. Smile. [Answer] If they were to somehow use kelp or say bamboo that was growing near the edge of water they could fairly easily create telescoping spears with say a gas bladder being popped as the propellant. This could be used in place of say a bow and arrow with reduced range. But Stig Hemmer brings up a good point about slashing and 3D battles, which to me says that they would develop a way of using their clothing as a weapon say for example a helmet with the snout of a swordfish on it that is large enough to skewer other merfolk. At that point combat would depend a lot more on agility and swimming capability. Some other thoughts that i had: 1. kelp nets = to reduce the movement of enemy troops. 2. domesticated predators = to act as hunting dogs of sorts. 3. concentrated poisons of say a puffer fish = suicide bomber style attack to take out multiple targets. 4. gas bladders = stick one of these into an opponents gills and pop it to cause the same affect as sticking a humans head into water for 10 seconds, not to mention the damage of forcing something into gills. 5. a tail fin = made of coral or shells that allowed for faster swimming speeds and it has a sharpened edge the in close quarters combat could be swung at an enemy to cut them open. That's All I got hope it helped! [Answer] I think another effective tactic for underwater combat would be to obscure sight, much in the way cephalopods do (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_ink>) in order to escape danger. However, for this application, I imagine using an ink sac for creating a cover of darkness for highly-trained underwater combatants to come in close with a sharp object and do the deed quickly and accurately. [Answer] Since mobility underwater is a major factor, I would be designing weapons towards the aim of hindering or trapping opponents so that the short range stabbing weapons mentioned in other answers can make short work of them. Think of barbed nets, harpoons to impale and tangle, even just wrapping ropes around limbs, etc cetera. Consider weighting them to drag them deeper, or even the opposite, if you could somehow deploy an inflatable bladder that would drag them to the surface. Visibility is also often limited in aquatic environments — create confusion with clouds of ink, like a cephalopod; or shimmering clouds, like a shoal of small fish. Actual cephalopod ink sacs would be a good resource to use for this, or something like mother of pearl or shiny metal pieces for the latter. To prevent an enemy from escaping in dark or murky water, you could even maybe attach noisy objects to them. Lastly, and this is a little more fantastic, if your environment had bioelectric organisms handy, you could maybe try to harness this effect — as long as you could come up with a way of preventing it from hurting you as much as your opponent. Electric Ray on a stick? [Answer] I'd suggest that in such a situation one of the things you might see is an increased reliance on domesticated sea creatures for war - after all, it is generally preferable to fight over long distance if at all possible as it places you in less direct harm's way. Think leopard seals, sharks, giant squid etc. You might even see such creatures bred specifically for war, with bigger teeth and leaving nastier wounds. Weapons, unfortunately, would likely be limited to spears, swords, knives and axes due to the extra drag imparted by water. This leads to interesting tactics. An army which relies on creatures has more mouths to feed and is thus more reliant on good logistics. The three dimensional nature of warfare in the ocean also means that you might have vastly different creatures in very different roles. Indeed, over a large enough scale, you may start to need to take into account pressure in both animals and protective equipment for your mer-people - a creature that can fight effectively at -400 ft would struggle at -4000. [Answer] I'm answering this question taking into account how you could use the environment with a stone age equivalent knowledge to help you in your attack/defence with a little bit of fishing thrown in. these are the sorts of things that you could learn from trial and error and don't need any futuristic tech or knowledge base to decipher. As on land, Use nature to guide you in your underwater tactics. It's pretty much already solved most of the tactics aside from weaponry. --- ASSUMPTIONS MADE: * Breathing and air supply are not an issue. But hey, even whales need to breach every now and then, so if necessary take that into account. * You have some sort of thermal insulation from the cold. --- I’ve listed several things to take into account 1) **Light & Darkness = One very important factor to take into account. Little to no light reaches beyond about 100-200m of the ocean surface** So you could either use the darkness to make surprise attacks or retreats from below or you could force your opponent into the darkness to disorient. For this you would need some sort of light source or visual enhancer for yourself. 2) **Bioluminescence** = Nature has several bioluminescent species which create their own light. You could bottle up a couple bright sources. Either use them as 'torches' or if they are particularly bright (it's a make-believe world, so you can make them as bright as you want) you could cover them up, take them into a battle in the dark depths and then suddenly unleash a light bomb on your unsuspecting enemies. Making either an attack or retreat under the cover of ...lightness! 3) **Water pressure** = The deeper you go, the more the pressure. So long wavy spears won't work in the deeper depths and close combat swimming would be the order of the day. Whereas it could be the opposite in the shallow depths where it is easier to wave a long stick through the water. 4) **Speed** = I'm not sure how water pressure would affect projectiles. Maybe make shooting them upwards easier and could be considered the equivalent of the high ground. I know from experience that swimming underwater is easier a few metres beneath the surface where the pressure is more uniform around you. Swimming would be faster deeper down, but large quick movements slower. Stabbing would be easier than slashing, think more Zulu assegai than dancing twirling spears and halberds (axes on sticks). 5) **The Bends** = Water pressure could be used to your advantage by forcing your enemies to rise too quickly and get the bends; Nasty way to go. Or at least too much pressure on the ears. Think in terms of mammoth hunters tagging each other out when they got tired of running (ie you need to stop and decompress yourself). This would involve preplanning and groups of people waiting at designated depths. 6) **Extreme temp variations** = Some ocean valleys have hydrothermal vents, with super hot water; Force your enemies to either burn or flee. The same in the polar regions. There is a rare event where seawater freezes and the remaining denser saltier water forms a downward 'tendril' or brinicle reaching for the seabed freezing everything it makes contact with. It was called an Icy Finger of Death. I must say it is one fantastically magical looking naturally occurring event.While we would be fast enough to avoid getting stuck in it (it takes about 12 hours in real time to form), it could catch a few arms, legs, tails unawares, if you were distracted or trap a wounded unconscious soul. If you are just hunting for food, it could be a cool drive by - pun intended. Just chip out want you want and move on. 7) **Currents** = Use the currents to your advantage. If you fighting in the depths you could force your enemies into an upwelling current, and again they die of the bends if they can't get out quick enough. Or you can use a downwelling current to quickly escape/retreat. Get yourself away from your enemy, and then take your time to rise back up to the surface when you feel safe! You could string up some huge nets (material of your choice) downstream and then fight and drift downstream guiding your enemies into the nets. 8) **Sight**= Warmer, slower currents are normally sediment laden, so visibility will be poor. Colder upwelling water is filled with nutrients and is therefore teeming with life. That's why the fisheries are always located in those regions. So you can use the wildlife to your advantage to distract/ hide in/ lure in some predators or just easy fishing etc. 9) **Sealife patterns** = Ocean wildlife also has an oscillating pattern according to the day night system. Depending on the species they will rise to the surface and sink to the depths during the night and day to take advantage of light and nutrients. Some of this is passive like, phytoplankton. Teeny tiny bits of grub feeding off other teeny tiny bits of grub. Others use their own propulsion to take advantage of the rich easy food pickings. Think jellies. Masses of stinging jellies. You could time your attacks to coincide or avoid, whichever floats your boat. 10) **Also think BLOOD** = Are there any sharks around. They are apparently the bloodhounds of the sea - I wouldn't want to stick around a battle/hunting location too long. You would need some sort of substance to cover any wounds and wrap kills in that will prevent the sharks following you home. Unless you like having lots of sharks right outside your front door or that is your intention to lure them somewhere. I'm thinking some sort of waterproof gel-like slime or fish mucus etc - something that sticks and seals at the same time and/or some sort of sealed container for any bloody kills. --- All of these features would and could be used to their advantage by a people living in the stone age. It's just up to trial and error for your swimmers to figure it out. The world is your oyster! --- I would highly recommend watching the BBC's Blue Planet and Frozen Planet for how ideas on how the natural world works and use that to inspire tactics that would work in those situations. [Answer] There probably wouldn't be a lot of difference between stone age weaponry whether it's developed for use on land or under water. Short spears would dominate melee combat. Projectile weapons would have reduced range under water, but would still provide some advantage over melee weapons. Atlatls are spears launched by a hand lever, which is a very simple concept that many groups of early Humans discovered independently. Bows and arrows are a logical evolution of the concept of a propelled spear and would also be practical with stone age technology. Retrieval and reuse of projectiles may be difficult if they sink, so a thin line made from kelp or a similar material might be attached to retrieve the projectiles once fired. This would also be very useful for hunting small animals as they can be reeled in once impaled on the projectile. Domesticated animals may be used as weapons in underwater warfare too. For instance, whale like animals may be used to lift nets filled with rocks that could be lifted over a group of enemies and released as a sort of primitive artillery bombardment. [Answer] If they ever develop chemistry and metallurgy as we know it, they could build ranged weapons like spear guns, torpedoes, and even guns that fire supercavitating rockets instead of bullets. They would need some semblance of industry in order to develop such weapons, but seafloor mining and chemicals that burn underwater exist in our world, so it's not impossible. [Answer] If they somehow have access to terrestrial bamboo or something like it they could make air filled spears that when released at depth will shoot up to the surface. [Answer] I agree with the answers already given, short stabbing weapons would likely dominate combat. I would add that bone would likely be a common building material for these weapons and other tools. They were used commonly by humans and Neanderthals at a low technology level. This would seem even more likey underwater where wood is uncommon. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_tool> ]
[Question] [ So, my MC was a scout that was part of a team from Contact Bureau that belong to a Space-Faring Civilization. They had descended on some 'primitive medieval-esque' Planet for scientific studies to judge about the possibilities of integrating the planet inhabitant (or at least part of them) to his parent civilization (They don't really care about habitable planet, colonizing empty rock is more simpler and without backslash from the natives or activists). He had conducted a peaceful contact with a number of native villages near his Science Base. So all was looking well... Suddenly, the peaceful native was attacked by another native from different country. The MC want to help, but his supervisor said that he cannot use 'Lethal-power' because it will become bad PR for the Contact Bureau back at homeplanet. So how can MC archive this? I'm looking at non-lethal weapon that can: * immobilize or incapacitate quite large number of person in short time (<10 minute) * non-lethal, or hardly lethal (death not caused directly from the weapon effect) * can be portable or static but not something that need large energy requirement (like a dedicated energy source), even better, something that can be carried by a drone plane like Predator. * If possible, based on current tech/science, or something can be extrapolated from current one. A little about situation: * The planet natives can be considered had High Medieval Tech (low grade steel is available although not in great number), gunpowder is known but not widely used in warfare. * The enemy equipment was a mix of leather and metal plate armor, with mix of sword, spear, and bow. * The enemy numbered 300 people, highly motivated and trained professional soldier leaded by a highly motivated General-equivalent that was worshiped by his soldiers. (Just think of him had the same bravado as Julius Caesar or Alexander) * They camped at 500 m from nearest village at the middle of common temperate deciduous forest and maybe would attack tomorrow. * The defender was just 600 common militia (think European standard peasant militia) with limited training and experience behind hastily constructed wooden fence. * his team can only give indirect support (not participating physically) due to some bureaucratic rule... (damn bureaucrats) * The current season is Mid-Spring. * If possible the MC don't want his identity as off-worlder known, but he accept if it can still be considered as 'Magic'. Had I narrowed it down? It doesn't too broad right? If it impossible, I just had the MC Machine gunned them down them with Drone and pretend they just died from natural cause. As usual, sorry for the bad English and thanks. [Answer] You can use powerful LED or laser based image projector and HI-FI audio system, and draw a picture of their God on clouds demanding the warriors to surrender. Also you can disperse some drugs in air to improve the effect. [![Jesus in clouds](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZFbaP.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZFbaP.jpg) [Answer] Gas. That's the simplest and lowest tech option. You have a range of possibilities - tear gas, if you want to disperse and incapacitate the opponents in a certain area. More powerful irritants can cling to clothing and skin and make people unable to fight. Or you can induce uncontrollable vomiting. Or you can just use knockout gas. [Answer] In my opinion, if you're going as far as having a star-faring civilization, it's much more consistent to have something very different from anything we know, rather than something that is available today. We are so far from real space travel that things like nanotechnology, quantum computers, and even mind uploading seem close in comparison, so I always find it rather unlikely when a space opera looks too much like our own time. ## Foam If you want to avoid going too far afield, you can use the concept of a foam explosive, which explodes and releases a large amount of sticky foam in a wide area. The foam hardens very quickly and totally immobilizes anyone caught in it. The only way to remove the foam is to use a special solvent. Conveniently, you can dissolve only some of the foam around a person to keep his hands and/or legs constricted while you haul him away. I don't think there is anything like this currently in development, but it's always struck me as quite advanced-sounding, but still very plausible. ## Nanotech You can also use nano-technology, which is kind of a license to do anything you like while still maintaining suspension of disbelief. You can have nanites that mess with the peripheral nervous system, intermittently blocking nerve signals to the limbs, causing enemies to fall over and be unable to advance. Less impressively, you can just have them cluster around the targets' eyes (or equivalents), blocking vision. Or maybe just zap them if they move around too much. [Answer] Sound. we already have several different non-lethal weapon systems designed to disperse crowds and protesters. [LRAD](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/14/lrad_long_range_acoustic_device_sound_cannons_were_used_for_crowd_control.html) is one of them and was used on Occupy Wallsteet protesters. Some produce high pitched sounds that are uncomfortable to our ears, others low frequency sounds that make us very uncomfortable. Others just painfully loud sounds. The LRAD can get over 149Db. That hurts. The LRAD is also used to keep animals away from things like wind power generators. [Answer] All the above are good conventional weapons that actually already exist. For a "new invention/Sci Fi weapon" I think some sort of TASER Round. The gun is traditional in all sense with magazines, scope, etccc... except they have a specific type of ammunition that fires a small electrically charged round that tazes upon impact. Metal armor really wouldn't help in this case sense it would conduct electricity. Perhaps have the gun powered by NOS similar to a paintball gun so as to avoid the velocity gunpowder would cause the projectile to send out. Basically this is a rapid fire stun gun. Drawback would be limited range (perhaps 500 feet) do to the NOS power. Another way would be to have the "ammo" be the NOS canisters that need to be replaced. (Think mass effect 2 and the heat sinks). And the gun fires a beam of electricity that tazes the target.Range would again be limited. [Answer] Auto-bola robots: robots that carefully aim and fling bolas at a high rate, tangling the legs and arms of opponents. We will probably have this technology in the next 10-20 years. Just make sure to have regular forces come in and make arrests before the foes free themselves. [Answer] # You control snakes with their head. These men worship their commander. They will do anything for him. Therefore, it seems to me that the best way to stop them would be to capture their general and get them to surrender their weapons. I would image the easiest way to accomplish this would be to use a cloaking device (maybe an advanced [Rochester Cloak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester_Cloak)) to get really close to the general. Either place a powerful hand cannon (you can give a demonstration), or a knife at his throat in front of his army, and demand their immediate and unequivocal surrender. [Answer] Something that could be delivered through a drone plane would be something such as the [Active Denial System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System) that is in use by active US Military. This is quite literally a "heat ray" in the sense that it heats the surface it's pointing at. It's non-lethal, but can cause slight burns. A slightly advanced technology would simply make this technology smaller and apply to a wider effect, basically forcing enemies into a painful position. They'd simply not want to be in pain any longer and retreat/surrender. Metal plate armor would negate this, though the useful parts for fighting, such as the eyes and joints, would not be protected. [Answer] ### The same way you would paralyze a savage animal : Using a tranquilizer gun.[enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AbH8b.jpg) And if they become too many : Use a tranquilizer **machine** gun. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1OF3l.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1OF3l.jpg) Give this weapons to your 600-men army, train them how to use it, and equip everybody with at least 10 shots of ammunition. If they have learnt a bit during training, they will easily paralyze all enemies. Or have your drones shoot. Probably even fill the shells with paralyzing gas such as Chloroform ? --- <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-lethal_weapon> is a good source of inspiration. Rubber ammo ? Electro ultraviolet laser ("advanced taser gun") ? Pulsed Energy Projectile ? Choose whatever you want ! [Answer] I would use any kind of chemical weapon. Another poster mentioned tranquilizer weapons, but for many people you would have to develop a tranquilizer Gatling gun (which would be cool in its own right ngl). I would instead use a gas weapon, something like Fluothane, to render large groups unconscious. You could also use Nitrous Oxide, the same stuff used by surgeons to put you under, if you have enough of it for a large group. [Answer] How about the use of a lethal weapon in a non-lethal way. Such as your machine gun armed drone strafing the ground in front of the charging army. The churning turf, and splintering trees, rocks, and bushes would visually communicate that crossing that MC's line of death would be Deathy. I also agree with the other ideas, sticky foam that spreads out along the ground, microwave area denial weapons, sonic weapons. Another is a small hexapod like caltrops. They remain inert until you get near them, then they run under your feet. Maybe electrified and shocking people who get too close or maybe poking them. Similarly, robotic area denial lobsters. If you cross into their area of denial, they give you such a pinch! ]
[Question] [ Ok, so Sergey Brin decides to become immortal. He allocates a trivial share of Google's bazzilion dollar profit to research, hires the best minds, and starts eating more healthily, doing more exercise, and cutting down on the cocaine and ecstasy. Let's say that given enough time, computing clusters, scores of hapless test subjects, and truckloads of hundred dollar bills to burn, these geniuses find a way to stop aging, and also cure various irritating infirmities of the body, such as cancer, heart disease and all transmissible diseases. Brin is now free of aging and disease. His next concern is that he'll go crazy due to human minds not being design to work for that long. Out goes another bazzilion dollars, and boom, thanks to some advanced neuro-prosthetics, our lovable gazzilionaire now has a billion-year memory capacity. All of this is still firmly within the realm of real-world physics. Now, we run into a problem. **Brin now asks to be made immune to all normal weapons, as well as fire, suffocation, starvation, crushing, piercing, slashing, acid, cold or electricity.** Ideally, he'd love to be able to survive anything short of a thermonuclear detonation a few meters away. How much of this is in any sense achievable without technically breaking physical law? You can assume tremendous and compact power sources and any sort of nanotech you need. So a nanomesh that fixes wounds and restores body shape from a stored backup would be ok, but anything outright magical is out. --- While so called mind transfer into a new body is all very interesting, and will obviously be Brin's plan B, he's strangely unwilling to have his primary body die in horrible agony, only for some body double with his memories to inherit all this wealth and power. He's more interested in direct technological ways to gain (near)immunity to being killed in the ways listed above. [Answer] I would say the best way is to get a body-double and apply filtering to transfer only the input you want and discarding the rest. That is to say; you lock the original, real body in a safe container and then make a machinal duplicate. Any desired feelings are copied one to one to the real body, which will experience the world *exactly* like the real world. However, any negative input (bullets, fire, etc) would not be copied over and thus not experienced by the original body. This preserves the original body for all time; gives the original body immunity to just about anything (as its stored in a container that nobody can access), the duplicate body is just an input/output sensor with no "self", and even allows some other things like rapid travel (if you have multiple devices), although no more than one could be active without funky side effects (because you'd be simultaneously experiencing both) While it circumvents the strange concept of "reuploading", it does not however allow the original body to wander freely. Doing so would simply be too dangerous. Anything exposed to the world is at risk from all sorts of things. This is based on the approach taken in the movie [Surrogates](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986263/) [Answer] I've had a nice quiet evening to ponder on this, so I'll throw in an answer myself. We want Brin to retain, as much as possible, his human aspect. Moreover, according to (my) OP, Brin is reluctant to rely on uploading and other such technology. He's just a very physical guy, you know. So working with these constraints, what can we achieve? > > Brin now asks to be made immune to all normal weapons, as well as fire, suffocation, starvation, crushing, piercing, slashing, acid, cold or electricity. > > > 1. Immunity to normal weapons (piercing, slashing) * Low caliber (handheld) firearms, single shot. This is relatively straightforward. All you need is a few hundred panoramic angle microcameras and ranging lasers, a reactive nanomaterial hood that deploys a few centimeters from Brin's face (or wherever the impact point is). * Firearms, rapid fire. The previous solution (microsecond deployment futuristic super-kevlar hood) could work for a single shot, but how about machine-guns. Would two or twenty bullets achieve what one cannot, and wear down the anti-kinetic material? Luckily, Brin's Sweater and Jeans actually contain a rigidizable exoskeleton, that would essentially act as a exo-suit bodyguard and quickly whisk him into cover, performing immensely entertaining acrobatic bullet-dodging feats in the process. (This is why Brin has to go through a thorough stretch-out every morning, otherwise even his reinforced ligaments would tear under the pressure) * Explosive Rounds. Brin's GoogleGlass sports a nifty miniaturized hafnium-based gamma laser cannon, safely detonating explosives long before they get anywhere close. Sensors in his nose can sniff out over a thousand types of common (and uncommon) explosives more than 1000 ft away, alterting him to any potential dangers. His improved sense of smell also made Brin very picky about his wine selection in restaurants. * Melee. Brin's belt is comprised of several thousand overlapping plates of transparent alumina, a material several times stronger and lighter than steel. If the AIs supervising the set maser/laser/optical sensors detect an incoming sharp weapon, a fast microengine array deploys the materials in the belt into such an angle as to deflect the blow (or blows) away from Brin's soft, human body. Additionally, the lining of his shoes contains microexplosive bolts that can be fired at incoming projectiles to deflect them. The belt is also very stylish. * Spiketraps, deadfalls etc. In the event of a sudden unforeseen acceleration (such as falling through a trapdoor), Brin's sneakers' heels are capable, under AI direction, of jet-propelled flight for upwards of a minute, even before the microfusion reactor in Brin's chest even needs to provide additional power. 2. Fire. During his trips abroad, Brin is often faced with the irritating danger of being burned at the stake as people misidentify his an "an agent of the Great Satan" or other such nonsense. Thankfully, Brin has a twofold solution. The first line of defense is a deployable laser array using Sisyphus Cooling technology can create a thin layer of oxygen and nitrogen atoms at nero-zero Kelvin some distance away from Brin. This allows him to casually walk through campfires, and stroll around Californian forest fires. Now in case Brin decides to walk on lava or grab really really hot things (potatoes out of the fire, turkey out of the oven, or forge iron bare-handed, a flexible aerogel casing can deploy (for instance, gloves) to make sure that Brin's delicate fingers are not affected. 3. Suffocation. Any high-powered executive will occasionally find himself in a suffocating environment. Whether it's overly long board meetings with Eric Schmidt, or a chlorine traproom, it always pays to be prepared. Thankfully, Brin's trademark turtleneck contains a rebreather mask, that is capable of creating a vacuum seal or of perfoming atomic filtering. In Brin's lungs are implanted nanofactories that can be turned on that use up water and CO2 to create oxygen and a few carbohydrate compounds that can be turned into sugars to help nourish Brin. This process can continue for as long as the microfusion reactor in Brin's chest can send radio-power to these nanites. Brin has once held his breath for for the entire duration of an executive retreat, and said it was "sweet". 4. Starvation\thirst. As discussed before, nanites in Brin's lungs can generate carbohydrates and other complex molecules out of water and CO2. Brin does not like to talk about this at length, but his underwear is capable of very effective reconversion, turning upwards of 99.93% of waste material back into a usable form. This has never been tested of course but given air with regular humidity, it is estimated Brin can survive without food or regular water for up to a year. Not that he ever would do that, of course. Caviar and shark-fin are some of the little pleasures of life. 5. Crushing. Similar in construction to the Aerogel, a high-strength deployable array can increase the effective surface to be crushed by a tremendous amount. Imagine an air-bag that almost instantly fills out the whole room, making even the hardest blow feel like a light feather, or temporarily stopping walls from closing in and allowing Brin time to escape. 6. Cold. Not exactly a problem when you have a microfusion array in your chest and a warming diamond weave in your clothes. In fact, Brin regularly takes morning walks at the South Pole (next to Google's secret Android Army Factory). He claims these are quite invigorating. 7. Electricity. The Diamond meshing in Brin's clothing acts as a Faraday cage (protecting him from EMP blasts), and instantly extruded superconducting nanowires can sprout from his soles and burrow into virtually any material in nanoseconds, creating a disposable root system that is uniquely effective at dispersing electricity. This allows Brin to climb on tall mountains during severe thunderstorms and laugh at the gods. [Answer] I would say the simplest way would be to download himself and his genome into a computer and live as an AI. With his DNA on file he could have his body recreated and download his mind into it any time he wants to be physical. having several machines in far apart but constant backup would make him more resistant to destruction by destroying the computers. [Answer] > > immune to all normal weapons, as well as fire, suffocation, starvation, crushing, piercing, slashing, acid, cold or electricity. > > > If you insist on **immune** and also refuse to upload your mind to either clone or mechanical body of any kind, then you can consider this impossible given limitation of biological matter, especially give such wide variety of harmful effects concerned. You can not be immune to starvation, because you would run out of energy that at very least your brain need to power you consciousness. There are acids able to destroy any living cell, and so on. Biological engineering could make you way more resistant, you can change skin to some kind or crust, you can improve your healing factor, but still not be immune. Even higher resistance could be achieved turning you into cyborg, either with replacing body parts with mechanical ones, or using some kind of bio-nanobots that could improve your healing factor to one close to sci-fi movies. (Imagine nano bots delivering stem-cells to wounds and accelerating their transformation.) Your best outcome without mind upload is imho Star Wars' General Grievous. He has a biological brain and eyes and the rest of the body is mechanical. Close to immune but still not immune. [Answer] Tell Brin to avoid normal weapons, as well as fire, suffocation, starvation, crushing, piercing, slashing, acid, cold and electricity as part of a daily life regimen. In all seriousness, if you demand an organic body, you are going to suffer all of the limitations of an organic body, including the ability to combust. The only escape is avoiding such things. There are some extreme martial arts masters who are thought to have developed enough "inner energy" to be sufficiently aware of the universe to avoid bad things happening to them. Whether you consider this the stuff of mythology or not, you'll need to accept a bit of mysticism to get around mortality -- it's been beating us for thousands of years, it's not going to give in easily. [Answer] An option could be to have biological parts replaced cell by cell by some nanotechnology powered cells. The replacement would also be done by some nanobots : skin will become another highly-resistant material, extra air-filtering capacity will be added, as well as internal oxygen reserve, etc. In short, this process will removing biological limitations by replacing all body parts by top-technology material. Probably enough to deal with common risks, but whether or not this covers all cases is left to your appreciation of new materials thougness. A building collapse, a trip in orbit, a swim in a volcano may leave you with serious scars... [Answer] going along with what Bowl said, cloning (or probably less 'cloning' and more 'building a new body with your dna that is the same age as you) and transferring your mind to the new body would be a good option. You can backup your mind every night before bed. If you die the next day someone loads up your mind and puts it in to the new body. You have 'lost' whatever time occured form your last upload and when you died, but otherwise you're alive. You are effectively immune to most causes of death because as long as your backup is saved, and we must assume it will be saved in massive parallel, you will be coming back from anything. Of course rather or not you're are really immortal is an interesting debate. If I back up my identity and then die the next day my mind will remain, everyone will still see me and to them nothing as changed. but I, the person who backed myself up and then got run over by a truck, still am dead. Do I care that a new-identical copy of me lives on if my personal identity didn't? [Answer] In "The Golden Globe" by John Varley, one of the characters has had his brain protected by a special mesh that would preserve it in the case of catastrophic damage to the body. The idea being that by that point, it's relatively trivial to grow a new body from scratch, so the only important part is the brain. The body can be ruggedized or armored or weaponized in whatever ways you want, but if "survival" is what's important, then in the event of bodily failure you just induce a coma and perserve the brain, then one of his staff can build him a new body later. A similar trick was used in "Use of Weapons" by Iain M. Banks, where a decapitated field agent was "rescued" and had a new body grown for him, thus saving his life. ]
[Question] [ Some owls have ears placed with one higher, and the other lower. If an (otherwise normal) human were to have that sort of thing, only with their eyes sockets (and by extent, eyeballs). For the sake of the argument, let’s assume the right eye is about 3cm higher than its current position, and the left eye about 3cm lower. Would this have any beneficial abilities (like being able to judge height/distance better) or any adverse affects? [Answer] **No beneficial effect** Assume there is a human that's got his neck crooked so that it's tilted sideways irreparably. Eventually his brain would accommodate to his eyes being at uneven height, producing a correctly aligned field of view, although it could potentially be flawed in diagonal direction (if the head is tilted to the right, then leftwards-downwards and rightwards-upwards areas will have weaker coverage, and vice versa), giving that specimen less chances of avoiding an attack from there. Yet, if your species would have uneven eyes placement, there should be an *advantage* first that would help eyes align in such manner, yet I fail to see any. The detriments of having unevenly placed eyes could be numerous. For example, such placement would block or displace one side of that human's nose, the other side would have to displace the brain, also the "upper" eye would be less protected from falling debris, the human brows provide some shelter from small object and a capture means for tiny or smaller particles like dust, and the upper eye of your human would suffer from being open from zenith. Brain displacement might make one hemisphere less potent than the other, altering the core ways of how your humans think, having the lower eye too close to mouth cavity might result in occasional eye damage from eating hot or sharp stuff, that otherwise is blocked by a layer of bone we have, maybe more. I'd rather make your humans have *three* eyes, two normally aligned and one specialized on top between the nasal cavities and the brain, which would allow for tilted vision and normal together with better 3D senses. [Answer] You mention the misaligned ears without explaining why owls have misaligned ears. ## First why do some owls have ears at different heights? A: to change the arrival time of sounds. With ears on either side of your head, it is very easy for a human to judge what direction a sound came from on the horizontal plane... However it is very difficult for humans to judge the distance to the sound and/or the height that the sound came from. Try being blindfolded and have friends clap their hands at different angles.. YOu can tell exactly where what direction the sound came from.. Now try different heights at the same horizontal angle? You cannot tell anymore. Now cock your head diagonally with respect to the source of sound. Suddenly you can tell what elevation the sound was produced at. We know where a sound came from by the distance in time it takes the sound to arrive at the right ear vs the left. The cock eared ness of owls benefits them when they are hunting small rodents underneath snow. So having cocked ears help owls determine where a rodent is underneath a snowbank because it changes the time to arival for of the souunds to each ear. Does the same thing work with eyes? ## Maybe, but not in the same way... Light is fast1 or so I have heard. The difference in time for light to travel to your left eye vs your right eye is so small it can be ignored2 your brain cannot judge the difference between the two. Which is your eyes do not use the delay between image arrival to determine anything... ### So how do we have depth perception then? We judge depth by the difference between what our right/left eyes see. The further apart your eyes are the better depth perception you can achieve because there will be a greater difference between each of the two images. Putting your eyes diagonally, if it increased the distance between your eyes would therefore most likely increase your depth perception... However it is not because your eyes are diagonal.. but rather because they are further apart. An example of an animal that benefits from widely spaced eyes is Hammerhead sharks who have [incredible depth perception in a very small portion of their field of vision](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/widely-set-eyes-give-hammerhead-sharks-exceptional-binocular-vision). The downside with this of course is that the further apart your eyes are the less overlap there is between them so the area that your vision aligns becomes smaller and smaller. It is a trade off between better depth perception or a larger percentage of your vision gets depth perception. --- 1 like really, really fast. 2 It is less then the time it takes your photo receptors to realize that there was light. [Answer] Peripheral vision is kind of like 2 overlapping circles. Having them in the horizontal plane lets you see wider in this crucial orientation to spot lion, bear or rabbit, while there are fairly few interesting things above or below you need to spot fast (fruit won't run away and birds aren't really dangerous). The effect of increasing distance between eyes, and especially by making eyes looking more "outward" you improve field of view at a cost of foveal vision. I guess, based on correlation with animals. Obviously, I am assuming human eye remains essentially unchanged, just moved and with the mandatory brain compensation that would happen. So, this adaptation is pretty plausible only in special scenarios, especially where said humans aren't apex predators but prey of bigger beasts. For example, you would have one eye to guard against flying creatures (dragons, dinosaurs or whatnot), and the other against ground creatures like snakes. You would have worse sight overall ... but you would spot those nasties faster, so you would survive, unlike ordinary humans. [Answer] Diagonally placed eyes help you concentrate better. This is why humans grab their chins and tilt their heads while staring at that blank wall in the art museum. They will also help you view things more skeptically. Unfortunate politicians with level eyes have to tilt their heads while their debate opponents are speaking. If you would like to experience diagonal eyes, I recommend the excellent fashion choice of tying a bunch of bananas (7 or 8 should do) to your left ear. Once you are convinced of the advantages that this brings, you can have your left ear pierced and wear your banana bunch even more confidently. Just remember to swap out the bananas every few weeks. ]
[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/234512/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/234512/edit) Pictures are provided below. But overall there are three sentient alien species, at the top of the universe food chain in my setting. One of them are the Enslaver Aliens (different individuals shown below) who naturally evolved on a planet that emphasize such characteristics and resulted in one of the three most deadly species in the universe. Enslavers are able to grow to the height of a fifteen storey building, capable of floating in mid air, mind control thousands to hundreds of thousands of human beings, teleport occasionally, control the local weather, create forcefields and have a strong control of telekinesis. They are sentient creatures with [blue and orange alien morality](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality) which makes sense. And they were able to create their own starships to colonize their galaxy. Each Enslaver is a deadly natural disaster to human civilization and a threat to the human species similar to the Yellowstone Eruption. Fortunately, over the course of 20 years, in my modern setting, only four of them actually appear. They are immortal beings that only grow stronger with age but their growth slows down overtime. They are confident in themselves, though rightly so. Humanity has right to fear such creatures. They see as as cattle at best, ants at worst. Killing a full grown Enslaver literally requires, in my story setting either requires: 1. Multiple Hiroshima Level Nuclear Warheads 2. Being willing to sacrifice ten of thousands of soldiers in weeks long battles 3. Sacrifice hundreds of Super Soldiers over the course of days 4. Willing to wipe out an entire city to even a small country to steal its "prey" As these aren't really hard science fiction tropes I happy to consider them being created in a Lovecraft Environment. They are Alien Eldritch Abominations after all. But the reasoning for how they naturally evolved has to make sense. The question is thus quite simple. What kind of environment or homeworld would see to the natural evolution of such a creature? [![Enslaver 1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OR2V3.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OR2V3.png) [![ENSLAVER W](https://i.stack.imgur.com/znksV.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/znksV.png) [![Enslaver 3](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VcRk5.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VcRk5.png) [![enslaver 4](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cmOhp.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cmOhp.png) [Answer] The look to me like some kind of floater, that's evolved in a gas giant world. Space faring creatures that have evolved from gas giants have always been a mystery, since they have no way of evolving tech like smelting metals or controlled fire for that matter. Though intelligence is possible. Any technological advancement beyond simple tools if physically impossible (Improbable?), without outside assistance. I see this species starting out in a floater environment, perhaps a hot jupiter, or rather a "warm" jupiter. plenty of energy from the host star, a brown dwarf, for life to evolve in the improbable environment of the gas giant. Our creature is a parasite. finding its home within the relatively tiny brain of the host floater. There it lives it's entire life cycle within the host. The Host is a predatory floater. using its squid like locomotion of squeezing out atmosphere to propel itself forward. Where it uses bioelectric shocks to overwhelm it's prey. Over time the creatures evolved, in the unchanging environment millions and millions of years pass. Eventually the parasite and host are inseparable, indistinguishable, integrated into a single being. And by chance intelligence evolved. Though with two minds. One the old host still primitive, the other the Parasite, dominant and controlling. They are territorial, and war among themselves for mates and the best gas belts which are fertile with prey. Millions more years pass Bioelectric has evolved into Telekinetic, and telepathic. Their conflict has sharpened their skills. One day they look up and see something beyond the cloud tops. Something not a cloud or a floater, something alien. They reach out with their minds to the aliens minds and find them simple, and tiny, easily overwhelmed, as if they have never touched another mind before. Yet full of information, knowledge they can grasp but out of their reach for all of their existence. They reach out and bind the alien minds. As they bind their hosts. They force them to take them up into the ships. Their hosts rebel, terrified of the closed in spaces within the tiny vessels. But they will obey they have always obeyed. TLDR: parasite on bioelectric host, that lives on gas giant. Parasite evolves with host over extraordinarily long period of time telekinetic powers. But cant evolve technologically because the environment prevents basic mechanical means of production. Eventually are discovered by alien race which are themselves over taken and mind enslaved and used and a means of escape from their gaseous environment. [Answer] **Microcosm** Your Enslaver looks like something more suited to being tiny and a liquid environment. Like these zooplankton. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WNsxE.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WNsxE.png) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4x9Qx.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4x9Qx.png) This is exactly where it came from. The Enslaver lives in a liquid envionment, similar to the Lovecraftian [Far Realm](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Far_Realm) from D&D where "The Air is Viscuous as Syrup". In their universe the enslavers are tiny creatures that band together using a telepathic field to communicate with the rest of the swarm. Number 1 rule of Dimensional Hopping: Portal size matters. There is no notion of relative size between dimensions. How big the enslaver is when it comes out on our side depends on the size of the tho portals. If our portal is twice as big it comes out twice as big. Number 2 rule of Dimensional Hopping: Creatures obey their own rules. Normally a creature the size of a skyscraper would collapse under its own weight. But Rule 2 means it doesn't. it also explains why it is so hard to kill, since small things are generally harder to kill. Sometimes I swat flies and they go paff to the other side of the room and keep buzzing about. And your enslaver is smaller than a fly. [Answer] Evolution seems unlikely. Predators don't evolve more than they need to to get their prey. But engineered biological weapons make sense. Get a huge creature and modify it into a weapon if you have the tech seems something we'd do on Earth if given half a chance. If such a thing could get loose, wipe the floor with us and then go rampaging around then there's your creature. [Answer] # High Energy World These creatures, unlike puny humans living about a weak star, live in a realm of unknown physics. Their homeworld is dominated by energy gradients that would destroy lesser lifeforms. However, the enslaver's sort of life harnessed this power While the enslaver's power would be overkill to ensnare terrestrial prey, it would be quite proportionate for taking down mobile phytoids, or running away from an even more powerful predator ]
[Question] [ Inspired by [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/159551/would-the-us-government-of-the-1960-s-be-able-to-feasibly-recreate-a-modern-lapt) question. A time traveller appears in two situations in the year 1985 1. in front of Steve Jobs and other Apple high ups 2. in front of few federal and us army officials The time traveller brought with him three iPhone 13s, charger included. He explained what he has brought and shows them how the phones work. He then gives three of the iPhones to each of them. He then disappears as mysteriously as he came. Now, my initial question was how fast each of them could remake the phone, however, this time, I'm only asking: Would the 1980s US government be able to recreate a smartphone? Note: If you can answer both questiosn I would be very much pleased. [Answer] Below picture is taken from an infographic made by Intel to celebrate Moore's law's 50 years in 2015. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xoxWf.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xoxWf.png) As a ballpark figure will tell you which huge leaps has technology made. In the 80's it was believed that 1 micron would have been the ultimate end of lithography and integrated circuits (today we are starting to produce at 2 nm, 500 times smaller than 1 micron). Even the architectures used in modern chips were yet to come. Nobody in 1985 would have had the technology to reproduce the electronic present in a current smartphone with the same size. And it would take them about 35 years to develop that technology, which is exactly what has taken us in this real world, unless your time traveler has take along also all the detailed development history of the IC industry. [Answer] There would be tremendous time saving involved from reverse engineering the materials. A lot of progress of semiconductor technology was driven by the ITRS roadmap. There were a lot of wrong turn and false starts along the way. Just having examples of what is possible would have been tremendous. The characterization tools were more primitive then, but was advanced enough that they would be able to identify many key features on the device level. Equally important would be understanding the packaging, surface mount components, antennas, sensors , display etc. Steve Jobs might not have access to the tools need to do that level of reverse engineering but several government and commercial labs at the time would. In terms of recreating the I-phone, I think it unlikely that they would want to or make a serious effort to duplicate the I-phone as a useful item. Instead they would take what they learned and apply to issues related to national security, space and missile programs, as well as advancing science and commercial application. The whole concept of a flat display, high efficiency white LEDs etc would spawn whole new industries. [Answer] Now this question can be read in two main ways: 1. Can the US government recreate a modern smartphone. A. To this I would answer no, as I am fairly no one had the manufacturing quality to build such small transistors at the time, however the modernish smartphone may arrive slightly sooner, maybe around 1990, and not 1994 (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon>). However this leads us to the second interpretation: 2. Could the US government make any form of smartphone? A. Yes, if they try a lot they probably could make a VERY SIMPLE smartphone, think not an iphone but more like the Nokia 9000 Communicator but larger. As in 1980, both relatively portable computers existed (mcm/70 (kinda) and the Epson HX-20 would be released in 2 years.) and mobile phones (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Kupriyanovich>) so one would simply have to glue the two together and slightly miniaturize them and voila, a smartphone. As a smartphone is: "a mobile phone that performs many of the functions of a computer" this would count as one. [Answer] ## Nah... Look at your smartphone. Then look at photos of the [Apollo program guidance computer](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Agc_view.jpg). Your Smartphone could run the whole apollo program and you would still be able to do stuff on it. That's the state of 1970s chip technology. 1981 was the year MS-DOS was released. IT technology couldn't even begin to comprehend modern programming, and the tools to make the chips and boards needed for smartphones were still in its inancy: motherboards for the 1982 C64 [were quite efficiently laid out *for the time*](https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Motherboard) but to a modern designer have tons of wasted space and only use one side and filled with components that everybody could replace with a soldering iron and tweezers... while modern smartphones have at least two sides filled with low space [surface mount components](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-mount_technology). How did we get to that miniaturization? We made more powerful computers that could assist in making the next generation. The whole design of the smartphone is very heavily tied to the presence and availability of many types of surface mount components. The whole idea of SMD was only starting to gain larger traction around 1986 and it took till about the mid-1990s for SMD to surpass traditional components. Even then, the components of the mid-1990s would still be oversized and not able to set up the power of the smartphone. Oh, and there is the sheer impossibility of computing power. The latest smartphones have a computing power inching in on 100 Terraflops. Some years ago, that was [supercomputer territory](https://www.pingdom.com/blog/10-of-the-coolest-and-most-powerful-supercomputers-of-all-time). The Cray-2 from 1982 had 1.9 Gigaflops. That means you'd need 100 000 Cray-2 to get one smartphone in computer power. Only the 1993 Fujitsu Numerical Wind Tunnel would get to a factor of below 1000. The first computer to get past 1 Terraflop was ASCI Red in 1997. All in all, our smartphones are as capable as a quarter of the 2004-2008 Blue Gene/L setup - which has the size of a warehouse! [Answer] # They'd never accept it. You show up in the 1980s with a tiny spy camera, microphone, location tracker, fingerprint and face reader, all made in China. They're designed to produce commercial data that anybody from any country can search through with no kind of warrant. You say you want to get Americans to carry them around everywhere they go. (Even people on secret military bases!) Just be glad they had an ACLU back then to stick up for Communist spies with abhorrent ideas. To think that those conniving Reds actually thought Americans would just lie down and accept such an idea, in exchange for some small graphic icons and an occasional wireless phone call! [Answer] Yes, but it would be huge. The USA did not have the ability to cram anything approximate to a modern smartphone's components into so small a space until this century at the very earliest, just because of the precision of manufacturing techniques. A lot of stuff would really confuse them, like the point of a touch screen when you can just have buttons for stuff, but I don't think it would have a particularly dramatic impact on computer technology at that point. Before the 1970's it would've changed things in major ways I don't know how to predict, but by the late 70's we had a pretty good idea what future computers would look like. The direction was predictable at that point, although not the physical limits. Things would be subtly different, and computers would've reached the current limits of smallness maybe 5-10 years ahead of us. They may or may not have solved the quantum tunneling issue by the 2020's, I have no idea, and cannot know until we solve it. ]
[Question] [ The city is modern/futuristic and is fairly large. It was designed to be self-contained, and has been sealed shut for a thousand years. All human residents died, so there has been no maintenance. There *are* living beings (monsters/demons as well as things like rodents, insects etc.). There are also things like plants, water, etc. There is no light or heat (although I could conceivable include a fictional way to provide those things, such as mutated fungi or magical light sources). Specifically, I'm wondering what would happen to vehicles, signage, windows, electronics, buildings, etc. [Answer] With no light, the plants all died quite quickly (it takes a *lot* of light to keep plants growing), and the animals died of starvation. The bacteria, fungi, etc., will have exhausted the formerly-living materials and died too. There might be viable plant seeds, fungal spores, and the like, but nothing is actively alive. If your demons needed food to stay "alive," they'll be gone. If they only ate for the sake of cruelty, they'll be *really keen* to do that. If they were trapped in the city, they may well have destroyed anything that could be useful out of frustration at the absence of any other outlet for cruelty. [Answer] Vehicles - completely non-functional, rusty chunks of ore. But some plastic parts will survive just fine. So it will be more like a blobs of iron and zinc ore with cool plastic parts inside. Sponge of the seats will desintegrate, plastic hard panels of the front and doors will remain intact but somewhat brittle. Lots of plastic in engine parts and fuel system will remain fully intact. Rubber wheels will become very brittle, but will mostly hold its shape. Plastic tanks and pipes can be used, if new clips are used, and pipes are not bent, as they will become brittle too. Plastic tanks remain intact. Gasoline and diesel will become waxy and unusable for a car. Water may remain in a screenwash tank. Radiator system will rust away and lose coolant. Oil will be mixed with motor's rusty remains. Road signage - somewhat functional, metal including the pole and tension ring will rust away and fall off. Plastic will remain as is, probably on the ground nearby, but will be covered in dust. Careful wiping of the dust can reveal bright colors as today. Plastic of this type will still likely be brittle, unlike some car parts. Windows - Somewhat functional. Glass is intact. Inner gas pocket seal is broken, so they provide no thermal insulation. Inner aluminium frame will oxidize, but outer PVC frame will stay. Hinges will oxidize. Windows will stay in place, but wont keep warmth, and will fall off as a whole unit when touched. Window will be covered in dust and not let the light through. When fall it will shatter completely into small chunks, as PVC loses its flexibility additives, glass shatters normally, and oxidized aluminium is dust anyway. Electronics - completely non functional. component leads (legs) will rust away. Copper surface will oxidize and become green. Solder may stay intact. Plastic will stay intact - all the element shells. Elements' remains will remain in place, but without any attachment to the board will easily fall off when touched. Plastic parts and ferrites will stay intact, but not that useful without leads or the board. Ferrite cores could be used. Long pieces of copper wire will remain okay-ish, as only ends will oxidize. So ferrite core and copper wire could be used to wind up a transformer. buildings - many will stay functional. Skyscrapers will fall because of steel rusting away. One story wooden houses will fall because wood is eaten away. But dumb and ugly 5-9 story concrete blocky buildings are likely to stay as is, it is just concrete and it is not affected. Old stone buildings like churches also have a good chance to stay as is, losing its wooden roof but remaining mostly functional. Overall everything will be covered in a sticky grey dust, no bright colors to see when flashlight is turned on unless dust is wiped. No transparent things either. No complex plants either, more like moss and fungi. Most common entity that survived will be advertising objects: plastic cards, plastic 'paper', plastic signs outside the business, plastic emblems, price signs, plastic packaging and labels for goods, door numbers, cheap plastic chairs and toys. Glowing mushrooms is a thing, and can grow there too. No need for those, but they look cool. Some insects may survive eating what remained of those who decomposed the wood. Some reptiles could theoretically survive at extremely slow metabolic rate, but this is pushing the limit. Warm bloded animals cant survive on such a low metabolic rate. So no birds, no mammals. Could replace rodents with large spiders to keep the 'ewww', but also not throw away the realism. They wont be fast though. Movement is restricted to 1 cm/s at most, likely even less, due to metabolic rate limitation. Faster creatures will starve to death. Chemotrophs are likely to dominate in such conditions. In particular eating metals and rubber. Basically a goo, microbial mat, that covers everything that has water and sulphur or organic or metals. Probably thats how the life began, and it will end in a similar way. [Answer] First, temperature will be constant: it'll be whatever the temperature of the surrounding rock is. Near the surface, this will approximate the annual average of the ambient air temperature (50-60 F in most of the continental United States); then the deeper you are, the warmer it gets because of the Earth's hot interior. Paint, dyes, and such will likely last better than they would with light, as light (especially ultraviolet) is a primary source of fading for dyes and organic pigments. You won't have plants as we usually think of them without light, but there could be fungus, and caves have their own populations of insects, fish, reptiles, and amphibians adapted to not needing eyes (a thousand years isn't long enough for rats to completely lose their sight, though). If the environment is dry enough, wood and metal will be preserved better than on the surface, but that isn't likely the case if there's life present, at that requires and distributes moisture. Also, rodents, insects, and fungi will tend to break down natural materials, so wood frame structures are likely to be brightly colored ruins after this much time. Generally, anything electronic will be unserviceable after more than a couple decades -- there aren't any circuits of any complexity that don't depend on electrolytic capacitors, and these go bad when not used for as little as ten years. This is why a desktop computer can continue to run continuously for ten years or more (running the same software it got when it was new), but if you get one from an abandoned office building, there's a good likelihood it won't start up. The same is true of radios, cameras and flash units, cars new enough to have electronic engine controls, and so forth. Insulation seems to be tasty for some rodents, so electrical wiring may have issues, and of course car batteries will be unserviceable after as little as a few months of neglect. [Answer] To maintain animals, you need plants. To maintain plants, you need warmth, light, or ideally both. Your demons and monsters are unlikely to take a side salad with their meals, so they would probably prey on the largest non-monstrous creature in the area. If a monster eats like a carnivorous human, let's say each monster needs 50 pigs a year, one per week, ish. Supporting large animals like that requires some serious calories to be available. To this end, I would suggest making your city home to geothermal power, which fuels the growth of [dark-leafed plants](https://mindplants.com/plants-that-grow-in-dark/) , mosses, and lichens that survived 99% of the lights going out. Maybe that's why that location was chosen for the city in the first place? It's not unreasonable to think that these near-future people could gene-splice together crops tailored to grow underground; imagine a field of wheat, or an apple tree, almost jet black. Over a thousand years of neglect, basically everything broke down, including the heat transfer conduits, meaning a large number of physically disparate locations within are overrun with plant and animal life, all supported by heat not going where it was designed to go. And as a bonus, this provides light in some places, in the form of dully glowing metal. So, with all that out of the way: vehicles would be rusted to unrecognisable scrap, and completely devoid of paint. Ditto signage. Windows would probably be alright, unless the heat's *really* something to write home about in some places, in which case they would likely have broken from either sustained heating or repeated heating and cooling, depending on how static the environment is. Note that suspended windows, like the wall panels of large public buildings such as art galleries, are held in place using metal fasteners that will *definitely* have given way. Electronic circuitry is a non-starter, as others have said, but it's always possible to fix some stuff with Handwavium technology. Buildings are a little more tricky. Some concrete mixtures will last centuries, some will be crumbling in fifteen years. Some buildings don't even use concrete anymore, or if they do, only in the foundations. An underground city doesn't sound like something that would spring up organically, which implies it was a designed habitat, which implies that it would have been put together all around the same time, or at least sufficiently close enough together that after 1000 years it makes no difference. The key, then, is consistency: decide how unstable and crumbled your buildings are, and stick to it (at least by category; steel-framed buildings would *definitely* have collapsed, long ago, and rusted into almost nothing). Personally, I'd go a little unusual and flatten your city a bit, make it so the wildlife and passage of time have made it into a semi-open plain, with concrete pebbles and dead things forming a semi-toxic soil underfoot, dotted with outcroppings in the form of old buildings. It's not quite a maze, it's too open for that, but it's certainly not somewhere your average line of sight is very long. If you want to gain access to any of the old buildings, you'll need to bring seismic imaging equipment and a shovel. ]
[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 2 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/220986/edit) I don't understand much about physics and ballistics, so I hope I don't make too many incorrect assumptions here. So, I just saw [this video](https://youtu.be/mFdOgkllUvs) where a 4 mm tungsten sphere hits a 85 mm steel armor, and it hits the target with so much force it simply melts the steel. No deformation or fragmentation, just melts like butter. So, how much gunpowder (the "nitropowder" used on guns, or cordite and so on) it would be required to accelerate this projectile (a 4 mm tungsten sphere) to 50 km/s? Or at this point, it would be "easier" to just use a small charge of C4? Well, I would guess that this is not very logistically efficient, since you would be able to shot a lot of regular sized projectiles with the same amount of gunpowder. [Answer] You want your bullet to go from standing still to leaving the muzzle at 50 km/s, it means that it must receive an energy of $E=1/2 m\_b \cdot v^2$. The velocity is given, the mass of a 4 mm radius tungsten ball is given by its volume, $2.68 \cdot 10^{-4}\ dm^3$, times its density, 19250 $g/dm^3$, resulting in 5.16 g. Thus we are looking at a kinetic energy of E = 6450 kJ. According to [Wolphram Alpha](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6450000+J+to+kton), that't the amount of energy released by the 1.5 kilograms of TNT, which occupies about 1 $dm^3$. This is a first, rough approximation. Once you take into account losses due to imperfect combustion, friction in the muzzle, imperfect sealing and so on, that figure goes very quickly up to the point of becoming unrealistic. Escape velocity figures by means of explosions can be achieved with [nuclear explosion](https://gizmodo.com/no-a-nuclear-explosion-did-not-launch-a-manhole-cover-1715340946)s, but there you will need to deal with how to make the "bullet" survive the explosion itself, and the massive drag with the atmosphere. [Answer] You may want to look at the Voitenko compressor. It accelerates a disc, not a ball, and uses high explosives, not gunpowder, but can achieve shock wave velocities of over 40 km $s^{-1}$. Initially, hydrogen gas is confined in a hemispherical dome covered by a metal plate and with a barrel at the apex of the hemisphere. The projectile seals the barrel. A shaped charge is exploded against the metal plate. Initially, it offers some resistance, allowing pressure to build; then it fails suddenly, compressing the gas behind to approximately $10^5$ atmospheres. The gas propels the projectile along the tube. An experiment at Ames Research Centre, using a 3cm thick glass tube as the barrel (the barrel does not survive the experiment), produced a shock wave travelling at 67 km $s^{-1}$. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voitenko_compressor> <http://www.islandone.org/LEOBiblio/SPBI134.HTM> [Answer] The speed of sound of regular air is 343 m/s. Blast waves move between 4-8 km/s. 50km/s is quite a bit above that. Projectiles fired from cannons can move at most the speed of sound of the propellant gas. I'm not quite sure of the speed of sound of the propellant gas resulting from a C4 or cordite explosion, but I'm pretty sure it's much closer to 8km/s than 50km/s. In short, even using high explosives like C4, it's impossible to move a projectile at 50km/s using a cannon. However, all is not lost. Using a rocket, you can move faster than that limit, since you're not relying on a blast wave to push you. A 4mm ball of tungsten has a mass of 5.17g. Military grade solid rocket propellant (which includes RDX, the active ingredient in C4) has a specific impulse of 268 seconds in a vacuum (lower in atmosphere), per Wikipedia. The rocket equation is: $$\Delta v = I\_{sp}g\_0 \ln\frac{m\_0}{m\_f}$$ Where $\Delta v$ is the desired change in velocity (which is 50 km/s), $I\_{sp}$ is the specific impulse (268 seconds), $g\_0$ is acceleration due to gravity (9.81), $m\_f$ is the dry mass of the rocket (we shall assume it to be the minimum of 5.17g, the mass of the tungsten ball), and $m\_0$ is the mass of the rocket including fuel. We're looking for the value of $m\_0 - m\_f$. Solving for $m\_f$: $$5\times10^4ms^{-1} = 2.68\times10^2s\times9.81ms^{-2}\ln\left(\frac{m\_0g}{5.17g}\right)$$ $$m\_0=5.17\times\exp\left(\frac{5\times10^4}{2.63\times10^3}\right)$$ So $m\_0 \approx 9.33 \times10^8$ (rounding to 3 significant figures). That means you'd take about 933 thousand kilograms of military grade rocket fuel to accelerate your 5.17 grams of tungsten. This is probably too much to be practical, and this is already assuming conditions extremely favourable to the launch (you're in a vacuum, there's no rocket hull, only the tungsten ball). In practice, you'll probably need a few more times rocket fuel, rendering this concept even less practical. [Answer] At the risk of drifting even further away from OP's original intention, a nuclear explosion blew a 900kg steel cover (the "Manhole cover") into the atmosphere at a speed of 66 km $s^{-1}$. The nuclear device was detonated at the bottom of a 150m borehole, covered by a steel cap. The principle is the same as in a gun. The explosion causes the gas, in this case air, to rapidly expand. Initial resistance by the cover allows pressure to build slightly, then release suddenly. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob#Missing_steel_bore_cap> If this is too far off topic, let me know and I will delete the answer. [Answer] As Tech Inquisitor mentioned railguns, let's look at how they stack up. A projectile in an electromagnetic railgun will accelerate until the the induced back electromagnetic force is equal to the applied voltage. This is the theoretical limit; in practice the length of the rails determines how long a projectile can accelerate. If we have arranged our railgun to operate in a vacuum, with no projectile resistance, then the muzzle velocity of the projectile is given by the following equation: $$v\_{muz} = \sqrt{\frac{2DF}{m}}=\sqrt{\frac{2DILB}{m}}=I\sqrt{\frac{2DL\mu\_0}{m}}$$ where * $v\_{muz}=$ Muzzle velocity (metres/second) * $D=$ Length of rails (metres) * $F=$ Force applied (Newtons) * $m=$ Mass of projectile (kilograms) * $I=$ Current through projectile (Ampères) * $L=$ Width between rails (metres) * $B=$ Magnetic field strength (Teslas) * $\mu\_0=1.26 \times10^{-6}$ (The magnetic permeability of free space, Henries/metre) (Equations taken from [here](http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/212_fall2003.web.dir/Daniel_Lenord/velocity.html)) So doubling the velocity requires four times the rail length, one quarter of the mass or twice the current. Current railguns have a projectile mass in the region of 3kg and a muzzle velocity of about 3.5 km $s^{-1}$. Assuming nothing melts, reducing the mass to 5g (a factor of 600) would give a muzzle speed of the order of $3.5 \times \sqrt{600} \approx 86$ km $s^{-1}$. As the Navy knows this, and chooses a larger projectile with a lower velocity, I think air friction would melt the smaller projectile. **Comparison of weapon systems**: | System | Energy | | --- | --- | | Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren | 8 MJ | | University of Texas | 9 MJ | | BAE Systems | 32 MJ | | Dahlgren BAE Systems | 33 MJ | | Rheinmetall 120mm gun | 9 MJ | | BGM-109 Tomahawk | 3000 MJ | ]
[Question] [ I was roleplaying with my siblings, and one of them had selected the Shaman Class I devised. A Shaman's power over the elements comes from their connection to said elements, so their place of origin determines what elements they can control. As a joke, since this sibling had selected the Island background and the Earth & Air Elements, I told him that he had grown up in a *very* small village out on a barren, windswept rock out in the middle of an ocean. He laughed, and we went on with things, but lately I've been thinking about the feasibility of living in such a way. First up, I know something of how islands form. Even out in the ocean, isolated islands of rock are slowly but surely colonized by plants as they break down into sand. This makes what I'm thinking of-a huge, brown, rough square of stone protruding from the ocean like a floating brick-seem unlikely at best. Secondly, temperature extremes. Even accounting for how water tends to moderate temperatures, rock is horrible in this category. People cook on sun-heated rocks, and as any camper will tell you, after dark the Earth loses heat and becomes cold very quickly. This would seem to make the island inhospitable. Thirdly, food. I'm not sure this will be a problem, actually, as the sea can be a reliable source of both meat and veggies (Japan indicates seafood can sustain life, and seaweed is another viable source of nutrition). Summed up, my question is: **Can Humans Survive On A Barren Rock?** Namely, can a group of humans, limited to medieval technology, survive on a barren, windswept rock out in the middle of the ocean? [Answer] There are many many examples of humans living in desolate places; Skellig Michael, Boreray, Bouvet, Tristan, even Rockall. [![Skellig Michael](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6T0jm.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6T0jm.jpg) [![Boreray](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3rNJh.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3rNJh.png) [![Bouvet](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ICDKH.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ICDKH.png) [![Tristan](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lOis1.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lOis1.png) [![Rockall](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fFBPo.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fFBPo.png) Rockall, in the last pic, is about as close to your ideal as you can get. In 1985 a man spent 40 days there. In 1997 Greenpeace occupied it for 42 days. In 2013 a man spent 45 days there. Even this tiny, desolate rock, having absolutely no resources for humans, can be lived on. Food, as you noted, is not a big problem. To quote wiki on Skellig Michael: > > "It has been estimated that no more than twelve monks and an abbot > lived at the monastery at any one time.[42] The monastery was > continuously occupied until the late 12th or early 13th century[2](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3rNJh.png) and > remained a site for pilgrimage through to the modern era. The diet of > the island monks was somewhat different from that of those on the > mainland. With less arable land available to grow grain, vegetable > gardens were an important part of monastic life. Of necessity, fish > and the meat and eggs of birds nesting on the islands were staples." > > > Water can certainly be a problem depending on the size of the island, the size of the population, the climate, geography, and distance to other islands. Since your question asserts that such an island exists, we can conclude that the population isn't so large as to overwhelm what nature can provide, and the geography and climate are suitably favorable - or that the village trade with others to acquire something to drink (perhaps not necessarily water, maybe ale). The previously mentioned Skellig Michael included a cistern to store water. The next issue is building materials and fuel for fires. Again, the solution is much the same, either there is enough on the island, or it needs to be traded for. Easter Island is a classic example of what can happen if there isn't enough wood. Stone can always be used as a building material, the Skelligs are a prime example of this being done. In summary, it's absolutely possible. I think trade with the outside world to acquire wood will be pressing. Perhaps the shamans of the rock can provide magical services, such as keeping storms and sea serpents away from the mainland, in exchange for a tribute of wood. [Answer] Not really, unless they are very lucky. Even though they might feed on something they catch in the waters in the immediate vicinity of the barren rock (but it is not a given, see how the inhabitants of Bikini struggled to keep their fishing habits once they were relocated to another atoll) they will surely suffer the lack of fresh water. In most of the climates rain will not be so frequent to constantly supply them with water, and even if the barren rock is in a region with frequent precipitations, they would need something to harvest and store the rain water: laying on the ground with open mouth can harvest not much water. And don't forget climate: with no shelter, cold or scorching heat can easily debilitate a body, increasing the needed food intake in a situation where available food is limited. There are historic example in an less extreme situation, with the [whaleship Essex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)#Landfall). > > On December 20, exactly one month after the whale attack, and within hours of the crew beginning to die of thirst, the boats landed on uninhabited Henderson Island, a small uplifted coral atoll within the modern-day British territory of the Pitcairn Islands. The men incorrectly believed that they had landed on Ducie Island, a similar atoll 220 miles (350 km) to the east. Had they landed on Pitcairn Island itself, 120 miles (190 km) to the southwest, they might have received help; the descendants of the survivors of HMS Bounty, who had famously mutinied in 1789, still lived there. > > > On Henderson Island, Essex's crew found a small freshwater spring below the tideline and the starving men gorged themselves on endemic birds, crabs, eggs, and peppergrass. After just one week, they had largely exhausted the island's food resources. On 26 December, they concluded they would starve if they remained much longer. As most of the crew prepared to set sail in the whaleboats once again, three men – William Wright, Seth Weeks, and Thomas Chapple, the only white members of the crew who were not natives of Nantucket – opted to stay behind on Henderson. Almost a year after Essex sank, Lloyd's List reported that Surry had rescued the three men and taken them to Port Jackson, Australia. > > > If you check the images from the satellite, you see the island is not barren, yet they struggled. Also one of the hypothesis on the disappearance of [Amelia Earhart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart#Gardner_Island_hypothesis) postulate she landed on an atoll and died there. Also in this case the island has some vegetation growing on it. [Answer] ## It's a Funny Shaped Rock... The two key things you need are: a water source and building materials. Each influences the shape of the island and it's surroundings. ## Water Easiest way to get water on a remote island is elevation change - the air is forced up by the landmass, cools, and causes rain. Think Hawaii and it's lush, volcanic mountains. To fit the "small" requirement you might want something that's more like a karst tower - the island is leftover from a previous larger landmass, and its edges are all tall, vertical cliff faces. ## Building Material The people will need some raw materials to build clothing, homes, boats, tools, etc. The best inspiration here might be Inuits - the Arctic is pretty sparse in terms of building materials, but they made it work. This population will hunt for large, aquatic mammals - think seal, walrus, and/or whale - and use their carcass to make basically everything from bones knives to skin [boats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umiak) to leather tents and water jugs. Seals and sea lions sit on rocks to regulate temperature, so if the barren, protruding island is one of many rocks in the area, and the other rocks are basically at the water line, these animals might spend a lot of time near the island, and the population could hunt them from boats. Killer whales also hunt seals, so the population could also hunt those whales. **So to make this work, you'd need a massive tower of rock jutting from inhospitable, rocky waters, full of a bounty of seals and lurking killer whales.** Sounds like a pretty cool back story. [Answer] If the [Inuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit) can live on ice then your rock sounds like a paradise. You would need a source of fresh water: either a large enough land area to collect fresh water, or someplace cold enough for year round ice to be available. Otherwise people can live in surprisingly hostile conditions. For a surprisingly similar locale, check out [South Georgia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Georgia_and_the_South_Sandwich_Islands), which is basically barren (it does have some grasses and sea birds) and supports a very small human population. Most people only live there seasonally, but the British Antarctic Survey supports ~10 people there year round. [Answer] Could've been a port village, kept alive by trade and acting as a pit-stop for ships and sailors. Around the island may have been reefs and such which may be able to keep a small village alive but the lack of building materials make this a hard ask, which is why it may have been established way back as an in-between point and the structures on it were built with imported/transported wood. Alternatively whatever building materials they did have were obtained from shipwreck materials washing up on the island due to ocean currents, but how the locals survived until they obtained the wood(due to the sun and such constantly beating down on them) is going to be hard to explain convincingly. [Answer] **Yes, of course.** There are tons of historical examples of peoples making homes for themselves in places that are practically barren islands - lots and lots and lots of whaling villages fit this description. Running water helps a lot but if the sea around you has some particularly desirable resource, like say pearls or whale oil, you can easily trade for the supplies you'd need - and trade doesn't really need to be all that frequent, as you note, man can live off the fruit of the ocean alone. The big issue is fresh water - but a simple crystal ball can solve this for you, for a small village. [Crystal balls can actually be quite good at focusing sunlight to make heat](https://people.com/human-interest/crystal-ball-sparks-wisc-house-fire-causing-250k-worth-of-damage/), and could be used to boil water. They are also relatively low tech to produce, and so will fit naturally into most settings. Fancier methods of doing the same thing, such as lenses or mirrors, are of course also an option, should they make more sense in your setting. If you want the island to be truly and completely self sufficient, that gets much more challenging, but if you just want a narratively justifiable small village on a barren rock, this is most certainly achievable. [Answer] Not a full answer, just a pictorial comment on part of your question: (otherwise I would have made it a comment only) In your question you mention: > > Even out in the ocean, isolated islands of rock are slowly but surely colonized by plants as they break down into sand. This makes what I'm thinking of-a huge, brown, rough square of stone protruding from the ocean like a floating brick-seem unlikely at best. > > > Let me introduce you to the [Island of Rockall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockall): Claimed by the UK, claim denied by everyone else even though they don't want it for themselves either. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iowBS.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iowBS.jpg) It stands a magnificent 17m tall, and not much more that that in length or width. Yet the nearest inhabited spot of land is 370km away over the Atlantic. Could anyone live on it? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SzPUh.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SzPUh.jpg) No, No they could not! That's MEAN MOTHER OCEAN out there. [Answer] * To have a village, you'd need buidling materials, so rock breaking into nice slabs would be ideal. The houses will essentially be rock-igloos, with the odd whalebone as structural support, and hides for creature-comforts like doors and windows -- or maybe the whole upper layer of the island is just a maze of natural tunnels in prorous rock, layered on an erosion-resistant slab of granite? * You'll have no big boats, as there are no trees, but you could build some skiffs from the hide and bones of whales, or even just raftlike structures from the bladders and hides of fish, which you could use to forage around the island. * There is lots of edible algae, so let's give the island a patch of those nearby, this will balance the diet quite a bit. * You have no real artificial source of heat (whale-oil not being plentiful enough for heating, just lighting and cooking), so you either have your islanders wrapped in seal-furs, or get the island to a very temperate zone. * The freshwater problem needs to be adressed very thoroughly, as there can be no lapse in freshwater supply. Luckily there is multiple options: Small natural cavities that store plentiful intermittent rainfalls, a setting so far north that there is an unending supply in drifting ice, a species of marine animal or plant that stores freshwater, or daily, absolutely dependable rains that can be captured using hides. * the island does not need to be situated in an inhospitable climatic zone to be barren and windswept: If it is small enough, even lush vegetation in a tropic setting would be scoured by human acitvity over the decades. A shrub is trampled, dies, the topsoil stabilised by it is swept away into the sea by rain and wind, and you have just reversed a century of slow buildup for that spot(rinse(literally), repeat). Perhaps they have one remnant, like a bonsai citrus tree, that is venerated and lovingly tended.(Yeah, Waterworld-trope, i know) * If the surrounding biome is interesting enough, the islanders might even be able to accumulate a surplus that they can then trade for any other civilizational resource that features into the characters backstory - there is plenty of marine products that are worth a lot - whale-perfume, mother-of-pearl - pearls, shark-hide, diverse dyes from small critters, amber, poisons, ... * The wind-swept aspect of the description neccessitates big-ish waves in the surrounding ocean, which you either temper by having a submerged ring (coral? caldera(the island then is a volcanic cone inside that caldera)?) surrounding the island, or lean into by having the wind blow near-exclusively from one direction and have the island formed like a horseshoe, with a sheltered haven. [Answer] Plenty of small, remote islands have [people](https://www.grunge.com/115095/smallest-islands-people-actually-live/) living on them that show how your character can survive. * Food: You can have fish like the people of [Migingo](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/migingo-big-trouble-on-small-island-1651736.html) Island where five hundred people live off of fish on an island of less than an acre with a single boat potentially catching up to 200 pounds of Nile perch in a single day. [![Migingo Island](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tyqte.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tyqte.png) * Water: Like the people of the island of Santa Cruz del Islote, you can collect rain water for fresh water if it rains enough. You can also make fresh water with [solar](https://%20How%20to%20Make%20a%20Solar%20Still:%20The%20Ultimate%20Purification%20Devicehttps://worldwaterreserve.com%20%E2%80%BA%20how-to-make-a-solar-still) stills from sea water. * Fuel: You might need to start [using](https://unu.edu/media-relations/releases/vast-energy-value-in-human-waste.html#:%7E:text=Biogas%20from%20human%20waste%2C%20safely,%2C%20Brazil%2C%20and%20Ethiopia%20combined.) human waste and some animal waste if you have it as a potential fuel directly or as a way to simply produce biogas. This fuel will be easy to ignite and help cook [food](https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/04/18/alternative-to-fossil-fuels-turning-human-waste-into-fuel-to-heat-homes-and-cook-food) or heat a home. Dried plant matter can also work too. [![Basic Two Barrel Biogas Generator](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DrBCj.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DrBCj.png) * Home: This is probably one of the trickiest parts. Having simple tents might be enough depending on the climate with a tarp or even [trash](https://keanradio.com/how-to-make-a-tent-out-of-a-trash-bag-one-armed-outdoorsman/) bags to make tents. Similar to people on Migingo Island, you can have shanty homes using materials from elsewhere or small [emergency](https://survivalcommonsense.com/make-trash-bag-survival-shelter/) shelters made from bags that allow people on the island to sleep on their boats or on the main island with enough shelter to keep themselves warm. ]
[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/206417/edit) I'm writing a sci-fi novel with some very real scenarios. And this scenario is particularly dark and emotionally charged for a lot of people. If you can read and respond objectively, I'd appreciate it. The protagonist is the survivor of a botched abortion, but she doesn't know it yet. Besides some physical setbacks, I picture her to have unexplained anxiety and almost PTSD symptoms. But I'm really not sure if this is medically realistic, since she wouldn't remember the botched abortion. I do know that abortion survivors who learn their siblings were aborted often feel survivors guilt and massive insecurity about being loved...but again, my character doesn't know anything about what happened to her. She has a good adopted family. I could take creative license and say that the subconscious remembers what the conscious mind does not. But I'd still like to be more or less realistic. Thank you. EDIT: Just thought this might be helpful: The character also had one or two major operations as an infant, to help her survive. Again, not consciously remembered. Also, I should have clarified this before...but it's not necessary for my character to have PTSD like symptoms. I was just exploring the possibility, thinking it may add depth. [Answer] This is fairly normal. [PTSD can develop without memory of the trauma.](https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ptsd-can-develop-even-without-memory-of-the-trauma-psychologists-report) > > Adults can develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder even if they have no explicit memory of an early childhood trauma, according to research by UCLA psychologists. > > > > > The study, which will be published Aug. 15 in the journal Biological Psychiatry, found that among the many forms of memory, only some may be critical for the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. The research suggests that explicit memory — which can be voluntarily recalled from prior experience and articulated — may not be a requirement for PTSD, but that other, more primitive forms of learning may be required. > > > > > At least six previous reports have found that some people who have experienced terrible life events that resulted in brain damage developed syndromes similar to PTSD even though they had no recollection of the events themselves. > > > Adults routinely do horrible things to children, like beating them up, raping them, and mutilation of their body parts, and there have been quite a few studies that show, like the above, that the stress response from such events can induce ptsd even without memory. If she had a painful non consensual medical operation while unconscious she could have ptsd from that despite not being conscious while it happened. This [can happen prentally as well.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5624542/) There's a reason that lots of mothers who want successful children play relaxing music to their babies and try to stay in a good mood and do nice things and don't try to abort their fetuses. If the mother has extremely stressful experiences all those stress hormones can impact the baby. The normal symptoms are things like autism, attention deficit disorder, anxiety and anger, or borderline personality disorder. [Answer] I am not aware of anyone with PTSD who does not remember what triggered it. I do not see why your character would have PTSD in this situation. > > I do know that abortion survivors who learn their siblings were aborted often feel survivors guilt and massive insecurity about being loved > > > Guilt and insecurity are not at all the same thing as PTSD. Your character should not develop PTSD from learning they were an abortion survivor, even if the events were extreme. They could develop depression or severe anxiety (which is not the same as PTSD) or paranoia or a variety of other conditions, but PTSD generally requires extremely traumatizing conditions, typically characterized by a situation where the individual experience a traumatizing situation where they feel they have no way to influence or control events. It can happen in first responders who find themselves overwhelmed by extreme conditions, soldiers, victims of assaults or robberies (where the effects go beyond ordinary trauma), car crashes and so on. It can be a result of cummulative exposure to such conditions. PTSD would not, IMO, be a response to expect from someone who learned they were an abortion survivor and had no memories. > > I picture her to have unexplained anxiety and almost PTSD symptoms > > > I would say that "almost" does not work. YOu will either be diagnosed with PTSD or not. Anxiety is not enough (although it would be a symptom and is typically situational and extreme). Trauma and anxiety after e.g. an accident or assault does not always (I am happy to say) result in PTSD. Here is a link to the [Mayo Clinic page on PTSD](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967). [Answer] Medically speaking, no one remembers anything before about 3 years of age, +/- 12 months. While the brain does form memories, apparently the part of the brain that indexes them isn't ready for primetime yet, making those memories permanently inaccessible. And outside of pop pscyhology, there's no evidence that such things would permanently affect someone considering that they have no memory of them. The number of doctors providing late term abortion is rather low in the United States (and similarly low elsewhere in the world). The public tends to not know their names except when something happens like when Tillerson was assassinated 15 years ago or when Goznell was prosecuted (he was shoddy as a doctor, his clinic was unsafe, but politicians were reluctant to prosecute for fear it could backfire on them). The latter is probably the closest the real-world gets to your premise. He was accused of botching abortions, and infants were born alive. In the several alleged incidents where that happened, he or others were said to have euthanized those. Thus, no survivors. I would speculate that in all such cases where any doctor was willing to attempt a procedure so late in pregnancy that the infant could conceivably survive, they would "finish the job" should their malpractice cause the baby to be born alive. It's politically fraught to not do so. They would have willing accomplices already in power if there were need to cover anything up. That said, there are any number of obstetrics modes of failure that can result in lifelong injuries to the infant, many of them physically crippling. Think physical ailments, not psychological. [Answer] I remember reading, some time ago, that it was possible to tell children born from mothers who carried out their pregnancy during stressful times (war, famine, etc.) can be told from those whose mothers had less stressful pregnancies. If I remember correctly, they were more sensitive to stress factors and had higher level of cortisol in their blood stream. A botched abortion per se is an instantaneous event, however I can imagine that the pre- and post-abortion, especially a botched abortion, can be assimilated to a stressful situation, which can leave a signature on the newborn. However this doesn't mean that the newborn will remember it. What can happen is that the botched abortion leaves some physical damage, resulting in a physical memento of the event. [Answer] > > The protagonist is the survivor of a botched abortion, but she doesn't know it yet. Besides some physical setbacks, I picture her to have unexplained anxiety and almost PTSD symptoms. > > > Anxiety is possible since people can have unexplained anxiety even if they are born normally and have good families. Brain trauma or physical deficiencies caused by failed abortion may further aggravate the symptoms. 'Almost PTSD symptoms' is not specific enough to say whether they are possible or not. Brain damage can result in [a variety of symptoms](https://www.webmd.com/brain/brain-damage-symptoms-causes-treatments). [PTSD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_stress_disorder) is not fully understood and prenatal traumas are even less understood (also because it is not always possible to distinguish between nature vs. nurture effects). However, it is highly unlikely that someone can develop PTSD due to the circumstances of their birth. > > my character doesn't know anything about what happened to her. She has a good adopted family. > > > Please do not underestimate the effects of these two factors. If your character does not know anything about what happened to her and has a good adopted family she is very likely to grow up as a happy and well-developed person. Even if her birth caused some trauma, a good family can help her to cope with it both mentally and physically. This makes PTSD even more unlikely. Anxiety can still be present, but should not reach uncontrollable levels. A good family environment can heal (or at least lessen) almost any psychological injury, especially in children. If you absolutely need your character to be crippled, a physical trauma would be a much better explanation. [Answer] As a frame challenge, you've decided the character has PTSD from a young age. Make up anything else that could have caused whatever symptoms you need her to have. Stay far, far away from botched abortions. It's the wrong kind of controversial. You could even safely have her find out her mother decided to have an abortion, but wasn't able to get there. > > NightWatch, Sergei Lukyanenko > > > Botched abortions are currently a favorite issue of anti-abortion groups (your real-life example is an anti-abortion crusader). More-so, playing up the trauma of abortions (for the mother) has long been a pro-life tactic. Putting "abortion" + "PTSD" in the same sentence is going to hit that button. Readers will assume the book is pro-life propaganda -- not a big draw for SciFi fans. If you just want to write a book that doesn't accidentally drag in controversies that will alienate potential readers, skip it. [Answer] How much she would have unconsciously remembered is unclear. The brain is one of the most complex things in existence to us. No one can be completely sure of much. This goes even further for the unconscious mind. I think made a good case that this is medically realistic for a sci-fi story. [Answer] Never answered my own question before, so this is cool. After reading everyone's helpful and diverse input, I've been able to clarify my research techniques and come up with a workable (though yet incomplete) answer to my question. Can PTSD form from a traumatic birth experience? I still don't know. I'm not sure if there's sufficient evidence to back that up. But some say that it's possible that trauma at birth, as well as prenatal trauma, can increase the likelihood of a child or adult displaying certain levels of disfunction -- especially if these deeply entrenched traumas are reinforced by later trauma. Attempted abortion in particular, which by all standards is an attempt to end a life, could elicit the most primal negative response, deep in our subconscious. To quote William R Emerson, PhD in his work, "The Vulnerable Prenate," "In the case of the woman who lost her father just prior to pregnancy, the baby presumably experienced the same loss that his mother experienced. In addition, a very tangible and personal trauma happened shortly thereafter. Early in the pregnancy, when she was eight weeks pregnant, the mother’s husband abruptly left her for another woman. She was shocked by the experience and felt deeply abandoned. Presumably her unborn child felt abandoned as well. Because the woman had little financial security and did not want to raise a child by herself, she decided to abort her child. She attempted several abortions, most often by using the hooked or curved end of a coat hanger. As a child, her baby was periodically sadistic and self-destructive. The manifestations of his sadism bore a striking resemblance to his mother’s abortion attempts, although he was consciously unaware of them. He burned himself with cigarettes and gouged private parts of his body with sharp metal objects. His favorite sadistic instrument was a fishing hook, but he complained he could never buy ones that were big enough. As a young adult he was arrested thirty times for assault, and his modus operandi was reminiscent of his mother’s attempts to abort him. He usually assaulted his victims when they were sleeping, by using heavy braided wire with a wire hook welded on the end!" (<https://www.healing-waters.co.uk/the-vulnerable-prenate-dr-william-emerson/>) Although deep, subconsciously remembered trauma can be treated if a baby is fortunate enough to be raised by a good family, it's possible this person may still be more vulnerable to negative situations. Also, it used to be believed that infants couldn't feel pain properly. Prior to the mid 1980s, operations on infants were routinely made without painkillers, only drugs to keep them from moving. (<https://differentdream.com/2011/03/can-you-imagine-infant-surgery-without-anesthesia/>) Now, it's common knowledge that pain can be felt much earlier, and babies are anesthetized for prenatal operations. Those who experienced painful operations as babies may still be scarred. All that to say, trauma from painful experiences as babies (even if not intended!) can affect people later on. And I think we have a lot to learn still about prenatal as well as early childhood experiences and how they can affect us psychologically. Edit: More on early human psychological development: "There is a growing body of research showing that babies in the womb feel, taste, learn, and have some level of consciousness. One study had babies in the womb receiving “vibroacoustic stimulation” (Gonzalez-Gonzalez et al., 2006). That is a fancy way of saying sound waves were transmitted. For comparison purposes, there was also a control group that did not receive the treatment. After they were born, the babies who had received the stimulation were again given the same treatment. The result was that these babies recognized the signal and tended to calm down after receiving the signal. The researchers concluded that fetal life is able to learn and memorize with this capacity lasting into neonatal life (post-birth)." source: <https://psychcentral.com/blog/emotional-trauma-in-the-womb#1> ]
[Question] [ This rogue planet is a cold rocky world where liquid methane replaces water, hydrogen is used in place of oxygen, and a large moon. I was thinking the large moon would have a large tidal pull that keeps the mantle active and generates tons of geothermal energy for the plants to use in place of sunlight. Or maybe this world could could be a moon that orbits a rogue gas giant. But I'm not exactly sure how all that works. Either tell me how exactly that works and if it's sustainable, or give me another way the plants can get energy. [Answer] There's only one real world situation where we think tidal heating is a significant source of energy. That's [Jupiter's moon Io](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(moon)). Io doesn't get most of it's energy from its interaction with Jupiter, rather from its interaction with the other moons in the system. If you *really* want tidal heating to be the source geothermic activity, then you're going to need a moon of a very large rogue planet in a moon system with several large moons. It's unlikely that any other situation will generate enough energy to drive a volcanic system to feed your [hydrothermal vents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent). (Halfthawed is right that hydrothermal vents are the best model for turning geologic activity into an ecosystem) Honestly, I don't think tidal heating is the way to go. Earth has remained geologically active for all these billions of years with this one secret: being really big. Planets generate heat when they form, that heat is trapped under many fathoms of insulating rock. It's kept Earth's core hot for, like, 4 billions of years. Well, to be honest, Earth has a second source of heat: [radioactive decay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_heat). Radioactive elements in the mantle slowly decay over over billions of years, releasing a little heat as they do so. I've seen models that say that without all the natural uranium, Earth's core would have cooled twice as fast. Between the two effects, it's feasible for a planet a little bigger than Earth to maintain active geothermal vents for tens of billions of years. Longer than the lifetimes of many stars. The surface of a rogue planet will be cold. Extremely cold. Within a couple of degrees of absolute zero. There's no way around this. The only possible atmosphere will be hydrogen and helium, all other gasses will fall to the ground like snow. There will be no oceans on the surface. Rogue planets take in thousands of times less energy than Pluto. The surface of Pluto, with its seasonal [methane snow](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/methane-snow-on-pluto-s-peaks), would be tropical in comparison. *Way* too cold for liquid methane. I disagree with Halfthawed about the feasibility of an insulating atmosphere, if the atmosphere were thick enough to contribute significant insulation, your planet would be a gas giant. Atmospheres make poor insulation anyway, they [convect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convection) with delivers heat to the outer layers (where it radiates away into space) relatively quickly. What you need for insulation is several kilometers of rock and water ice. All life will have to exist in the sub-surface ocean. We think there are [sub-surface oceans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Subsurface_ocean) on most of the large, rocky bodies in the outer solar system. They seem pretty common. [Answer] First of all, if you have liquid methane, you are in range of temperatures where life as we know it cannot exist. Then hydrogen cannot replace oxygen, because it doesn't oxidize other elements, apart maybe some alkaline metal. Then, last but not least, plants use as source of energy for their chemical processes. A rogue planet has no star, and thus no source of light. Even tidal force, though they can produce some heat, would produce at most some far infrared radiation. Being that typical of thermal process and not of electronic transitions, it won't be useful for sustaining any equivalent of photosynthesis. The only way for some sort of life to be present is that, provided that the other issues are somehow hand-waved, the tidal heating would produce some sort of geological activity and that would release some chemical which could be oxidized as source of energy. But those organisms would not be plants. [Answer] **Hydrothermal Vents** But first, let's clarify something. In your question you state: > > Either tell me how exactly that works and if it's sustainable, or give me another way the plants can get energy. > > > It doesn't work, it's not sustainable (see L.Dutch's answer) so I'm now going to give you another way for plants to get energy. For starters, we're using liquid water, not liquid methane. In order to keep this temperature, we're going to be giving the planet an insulative atmosphere, so hydrogen is actually a good choice in that regard. We'll still have a suitable amount of oxygen though, but this is actually kind of moot because life isn't going to exist on the physical surface or in atmosphere, it's going to exist in the ocean. Given the insulation in the atmosphere, it's possible for this planet to mantain a hot core, and said hot core can leak into the ocean via hydrothermal vents. Hydrothermal vents are perfect for life, seeing as they provide a decent range of temperatures around them not to mention unique chemicals. The way your plants are going to get their energy is from these chemicals - not from light, that's not really possible on a rogue planet. Basically, these things will be more similar to plankton. [Answer] How about the planet being half-rogue? Not attached to some particular star, but gravitationaly bound to a large cluster containing a great deal of giant stars? You'll get a lot of frequent and near supernovas, but surviving that, it may be liveable. Other idea: the planet travelling before or behind the edge of a star-forming shock wave. There will be always a lot of young, bright stars around. [Answer] I had a couple thoughts... lets see here... 1. Natural fission reactors. They've happened on Earth, and given that the closer you get to the center of our solar system the denser the planets, I'd expect the insides of Mercury to be radioactive as hell. As if having the Sun for your next door neighbor didn't make things hot enough. Perhaps a liquid core that was relatively active such that fissionables were brought into close proximity, generated some heat, and then separated fairly regularly. Regular enough to keep the core molten. Not terribly sustainable. The core would eventually get low enough on fissionable material that the core would solidify and then everything grinds to a halt. 2. An ecosystem that sleeps when it's too far from the sun. There are bacteria that can be completely dormant in extreme environments and then "wake up" when things settle into something more survivable. Make your entire planet's ecosystem like that. It only "wakes up" when relatively close to a star. 3. A nigh fanatical dedication to the Pope! 4. Apparently Jupiter was big enough to burn like a sun for quite some time before it finally "went out" and settled down to being a gas giant. If your rogue planet was actually a bare-minimum sized rogue star... it would admittedly be hard to justify having flora and fauna. It has been done however, see also: "[Dragon's Egg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg)" and "[Starquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starquake_(novel))" by Robert L. Forward. I believe the books revolve around a rogue white dwarf with an ecosystem and intelligent life. Their neutron-based biology worked so much faster than our chemical biology that the human explorers in orbit around the white dwarf watch them go from stone age to flying up to visit them (from within a white dwarf's gravity well(!!!)) over the course of a month. [Answer] I don't think this scenario is feasible for several reasons: 1. It is highly unlikely that a reasonably terrestrial world would have a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, it just would not have enough gravity for sustaining it for a long time. 2. Even if you get your chemistry right, the chemical reactions at lower temperatures are usually a lot slower. It took about 3.5b years to develop something resembling plants as we know it today, so for your planet it will take an order of magnitude longer unless you have some magic catalyst. In that timeframe any power source your rogue planet might have would certainly run out. [Answer] **Hard Radiation!** Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense! Your lonely rogue has a heavy heart; chock full of uranium and other radioactive elements. It is hot down there! Also there are alpha particles and their friends flying around. This is the source of your hydrogen - it is stripped away from primordial methane, ammonia and water that was trapped in your world at its formation. You could have some of the hydrogen and "oxidized" carbon (here called oxidized because of the double C=C bone, not because of oxygen) form naturally. Higher up you could have your plant equivalents catalyze that with ionizing radiation capture photochemistry. Like our green weeds capture visible light and plow that energy into stripping hydrogen off of oxygen, your plants capture ionizing radiation released by radioactive decay. <https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/107363/energy-capture-photochemistry-with-ionizing-radiation> Yes, yes, they laughed on the chem stack when they told me that beta particles are too energetic to do chemistry with. Mad, they called me, mad! But I'll show them. I'll show them all! mmm, yes. Back to the chalkboard. Your plants capture energetic emanations - maybe from radon working its way up from below - and strip hydrogen from its home, releasing it into the atmosphere and creating carbon and nitrogen molecules. The stuff of life. The nice thing about this is then you have hydrogen for your critters to breathe, and they use it to reduce the big molecules made by plants back to methane and ammonia. The circle of life! You have now a reducing world. There is much written about such and much on the stack exchange. Here is one. [Ammonia planets](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/120762/ammonia-planets). ]
[Question] [ The original, irish lore around banshees has it that they merely foretell the death of someone, but do not cause that death. American pop culture has changed this, so they do bring death and destruction - as seen in various media such as videogames, books (I remember there was a malicious one in some Harry Potter book) and cartoons. And they do that through screaming. I am interested in the pop culture one. How do they bring about death and destruction? How can they be anatomically correct? Since there is an element of legend and myth around banshees, it doesn't have to be the screaming that does the actual killing - but they need it for some evolutionary reason. [Answer] **It's a hallucination caused by a parasite.** The funny thing about banshees is that the original Irish legend (like just about every original legendary and mythical monster) had completely different banshees from modern day. You are correct that they couldn't kill people and would just foretell their death, but they also took the form of an attractive young woman. The creepier version generally had you meeting them when they were doing something like washing your funeral shrouds, except no one you were with could see them, and when you looked away then looked back, they disappeared with no trace of them, though of course, depending on the story occasionally it would be a woman singing. So symptoms include: seeing things only you can see or hearing sounds only you can hear, and death within days. And that sounds like a hallucination to me, a hallucination strongly correlated to the victim's death within a day or so. So the anatomically correct banshee, what seems to me, is a parasite that infects the host's brain and starts hallucinating. And, like always, when I think up a horrifying disease and go looking for horrifying things in nature, it turns out to already exist and be worse. Let me introduce [*Naegleria fowleri*](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/10/29/parasite-human-brain-control/#.XcG90TNKhPY), aka the 'brain-eating amoeba'. It's the reason you *never, under ANY circumstances, drink from still water* while hiking. (Among other things which are equally horrifying.) Having one of these will result in a condition called naegleriasis. The amoeba migrates to the brain and starts eating through it. It takes up to a week to fully kill the host and symptoms include hallucination. Now, remember, since the banshee can only be seen and heard from people who will die within the day, the description of its form must be taken from the hallucinator. And at this point, I think it's more likely that it's a voice that's heard, the 'banshee parasite' causes an eerie singing voice when it's eating the host's brain. And then the host dies the next day. And it's not hard to believe that the placebo effect takes over to show the woman- in other words, since the population believes in a banshee, when it takes over their mind and they hear the hallucinated voice, they conjure the hallucinated woman because they know that's supposed to happen. [Answer] ## The causation (from the banshee's perspective) is backwards A banshee doesn't scream at a person to cause their death. A banshee screams at a person *that they know is going to die*. Why this might be evolutionarily favourable is fairly straightforward. Maybe they require fresh carrion as part of their breeding cycle - they lay eggs in the flesh, or have a symbiotic relationship with a carrion-eater, or somesuch. If it's not plausible that the banshee itself to utilise the corpse in their breeding cycle, maybe they are infected with a parasite that does, and which causes pain to the host to trigger the screaming response when desirable. The more challenging question is how the banshee *knows* that a person will imminently die. Perhaps they have very acute sensitivity to human illnesses, or a slight clairvoyance. Note that the screaming is not incompatible with the banshee *actually* causing death - by being a carrier of (the same or different) airborne diseases that are lethal to humans, for instance - only that they are (from the banshee's perspective) coincidental. [Answer] **Resonance.** You know that trick where opera singers can shatter a wine glass? They do that by singing at the glass's resonant frequency, causing it to vibrate until it shatters. [The same principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_resonance) has been responsible for the collapse of multiple bridges, and is theoretically capable of collapsing entire buildings. All your banshees have to do is scream loud enough, for long enough, at *just* the right frequency. In order to produce such loud, long screams, your banshees would also need superhuman lung capacity, and probably specialised vocal chords in order to be able to produce the right frequencies every time. As for why they would have evolved the ability to scream like this, perhaps they have a predator species or prey species with the ability to construct things, like beaver dams or rabbit warrens (or human dwellings... [*scare chord*]). They developed the resonant screams as a means of collapsing those structures, either as self-defense against the predator, or to trap the prey. [Answer] For me, Renan seems to be asking for a banshee that would kill people on purpose, not just foretell their deaths, and needs a reasonable explanation for why their screaming comes into it. The most logical answer seems to be... **That's how they hunt.** We all know how deafening a good fire alarm can be, and that's not even designed to incapacitate us, quite the contrary. So by weaponising a potent voice, like that of howler monkeys, it could be used to disorientate or even paralyse the banshee's prey while the hunter descends on it and goes for the kill. Some people are also sensitive to [certain notes and melodies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicogenic_epilepsy), so maybe by very precise adaptations, these banshees would find a note that can trigger a seizure/loss of conciousness in their target. [Answer] **The banshees are screaming because they are happy.** Maybe "whooping" would be a better term. First the banshees set roller skates on the stairs, leave the potato salad out then put it away at the last minute, get people hooked on cigarettes - death dealing things. Then they get happy thinking about the setup. Then they start cackling and whooping and shrieking. If you actually lay eyes on one while she is screaming you will see that she is doing a shuffling little jig, making stabbing motions with an invisible knife. They are just mean, those banshees. But mean things get happy too. Being mean makes them happy. [Answer] You're interested in the pop culture one. So I'll ignore the foretelling of death and just concentrate on why they might evolve to cause injury / death by screaming. The simplest explanation is that they evolved alongside a predator that hunted primarily using its hearing, perhaps because it was nocturnal. Natural selection selected predators for better and better hearing, to the point where extremely loud sounds could stun it. Thus natural selection also selected banshees who could scream loudly enough to stun the predators. To take it further, perhaps then natural selection selected predators who could tolerate louder sounds, banshees who could scream louder and so on in an evolutionary arms race. For whatever reason the predators died out long ago (or maybe they still exist too, in dark corners of the world) and we are left with banshees who have evolved a scream loud enough to injure or kill. ]
[Question] [ I am writing a Steanpunk novel and am interested in having a "plausible" Union Steam Gun that would help turn the tide in an Alternate History American Civil War. The gun can be either a machine gun type weapon that is operated by two or more soldiers or a hand held carbine or type weapon handed out to Union Cavalry. My research found there was a Steam weapon called the Winans Steam Gun, that was also a centrifuge gun. Perhaps ideas on how to modify that to make it more effective. By, the By, Thanks to everyone who answered my "Quick destruction Of a helium filled airship," question. You all are absolutely amazing, wonderful, creative thinkers. I am so grateful that you all choose to freely share your ideas and knowledge on this site. It is a wonderful tool and blessing for authors. [Answer] "Plausible", "Hand held" and "Steam Powered" are mutually exclusive terms when you're dealing with steam power in the age of steam. Steam is big, it's heavy, if you're lucky it's self propelled, and even then the Winans Steam Gun didn't match the power of gunpowder weapons and its accuracy was terrible. If you want steam powered weapons, start with self propelled artillery and work your way up to tanks, but hand held is out of the question. [Traction engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traction_engine) did exist by that point, so having a steam powered base for your mobile artillery is possible. Making the weapon more effective is possible, but with steam it's almost always about boiler pressure, and at that point higher boiler pressure means a bigger, heavier, boiler and a bigger, heavier, furnace. [Answer] Let's try a look at the 'machine gun type weapon operated by two or more soldiers', because handheld isn't going to work, and I see no reason to drag the poor horses into this mess. The problem with the Winans Steam Gun is that it's just markedly inferior to rifles and and the Gatling Gun. So let's discuss Gatling Guns. The Gatling Gun, by which I mean the one invented by Richard J. Gatling, and not the modern guns which bear the classification 'gatling', was invented right before the Civil War, with the intention being to 'reduce the size of armies and show the futility of war', of which it only accomplished one of those things. It had a few unique features, like the 'rotating barrel' concept, letting it fire faster without the barrel overheating, and used a gravity fed hopper. Now, here's the interesting part - it was hand-cranked. And where I see a hand-crank, I see a spot for a steam engine. In other words, if you hook up the steam engine to the gatling gun, you can eliminate the need for a person to hand-crank the gun and possibly improve the firing rate - though not too much, because at a certain point overheating starts being an issue, but you could work through those problem by increasing the number of barrels (it started at 6) and reducing the caliber of bullet (started at .58), and the increased weight wouldn't be an issue, because it's not hand cranked, perhaps even up to a thousand rounds a minute. (Possibly - the highest it actually got was [900](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun#cite_note-Parker,_John_H._2006-3).) At which point it's not exactly hand-held, and would take a team of soldiers to use, and is only slightly better than the original Gatling Gun, but does work. Slightly. Though if you want, you can stretch plausibility slightly by mounting the thing on a traction engine, add some deflective armor, and you suddenly have an impromptu half-track slowly charging at the enemy. It won't work on uneven terrain, get stopped cold by trenches (which were everywhere), and be a massive target for enemy cannons but just imagine these things tearing through a Confederate charge. [Answer] [To prove a Mythbusters related point, scientists at MIT built a steam mortar cannon using technology and designs developed before 200 BC](https://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/steamCannon/ArchimedesSteamCannon.html). This mortar could hurl projectiles with more energy than a modern .50 cal machine gun. As @Separatrix rightly says, steam is an ugly beast that is difficult to fully weaponise. However, the invention of a small and (relatively) portable mortar cannon would allow your army to respond agilely to combat scenarios. **The invention of the mortar (especially one more powerful than a cannon) would allow your Union to lay down cannonfire faster and more frequently than the enemy**, so your army's tactics are very difficult to respond to because you could have projectiles flying at the speed of sound at any moment. The stealth advantages of mortars over cannons is also something to consider. Mortars were reinvented in-promptu at [The Siege of Vicksberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Vicksburg#Siege_operations) in 1863, and proved remarkably effective. In fact, the result was a decisive Union victory that many consider to have been the war's turning point. Any side that developed this technology first (and in a more scientific way than right on the battlefield) would be a serious threat. [Answer] Building a steam cannon, starting with rank ignorance. Well, a gun is a tube that contains high pressure in it. The pressure accelerates a projectile out the tube. We have a steam boiler so there is your pressure. It operates over known pressures. How can we manipulate barrel size and projectile weight to make something comparable to existing firearms? I found this sweet excel table here <http://closefocusresearch.com/calculating-barrel-pressure-and-projectile-velocity-gun-systems> It does the calculations. I included the whole thing so you can see stats for real guns. Then my cannon. [![graph](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yEJXP.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yEJXP.png) The pressure from a steam boiler is substantially less than that in a gun barrel. I used 350 psi as representative of boilers from the 1860s. 2 orders of magnitude low. How to fix? 1. More acceleration time. I made the barrel 10 feet long. The projectile has more time to accelerate. Longer would be better but I worried it might get droopy and people might not think you were enthusiastic for the project. 10 feet is plenty long. 2. I made the projectile big: 2000 grains. That is 4.5 oz or 1/3 pound - hefty but not stupidly so. Less than triple the .50 cal. 3. I tripled the bore diameter. Also someone painted it like a barber pole. The generously long Willk cannon lobs giant bullets at about half the speed of a Minie ball but with the energy of a .44 magnum bullet and a lot of momentum. The barrel is essentially just a steam whistle: a tube connected to the boiler. For the feed mechanism, a rotating wheel occludes the connection between barrel and boiler, breech slides open, bullet drops in from magazine hopper, breech closes, connection to boiler opens. Repeat. I cannot calculate fire rate. I will assert it is fast but probably not as fast as a Gatlin gun. A gun like this would be a phenomenal naval weapon for a steamship. You would fire in an arc, as they used machine guns in WW1. The big bullets could travel great distances and would come down through other watercraft or if you were beseiging a city, down through roofs. --- Thinking about the steam cannon: bullets would be pointed, hollow iron cups. They would be filled with water then sealed with a cork. They will be lighter to transport & iron is less prone to denting than lead. Water is cheap and heavy and will be used to provide extra mass on site. If water is in short supply, then dirt or rocks. [Answer] I think that any civilisation using a steam gun would have to have some sort of inability to produce any other sort of explosive charge that could propel a projectile. Steam although i think would be kind of awesome cannot produce in high enough quantities the required Psi quickly enough to fire a projectile efficiently. Other types of weapon like maybe a steam powered fist or really anything driven by a piston may well be viable. Steam generally needs time to build pressure. I guess maybe, water under very high pressure Ie. water forced into a container smaller than water's natural mass perhaps? But then that's not exactly steam, steam being heated water. I truly wish it were not so. [Answer] The fix for the low pressure of the steam piston and subsequent low projectile velocity might be to incorporate it into a 'light gas gun'. In a light gas gun, a large piston is used to pressurize a light gas like hydrogen or helium. This also heats the gas, raising its speed of sound, which gives the projectile higher velocity. The large steam piston pushes the gas into a much smaller barrel, so the pressures can get insanely high. At the end of a barrel is a burst disk calibrated to blow upen at a specified pressure. When the pressure is reached, the disk ruptures, and all that gas rushes down the barrel at the (very high) speed of sound. This pushes the projectile down the barrel and out. Light gas guns can attain extremely high speeds. In fact, they are primarily used to test high speed impacts, and projectiles can reach 8.5 km/s - fast enough that if you had one on the Moon, you should shoot projectiles at the Earth. But normally, the super high speed ones have huge pistons driven by explosion, not steam. Still, a much scaled down, steam powered version of that might still get you some decent projectile velocities. But I have my doubts that it would ever be small enough that one or two men could handle it, and I certainly wouldn't want to stand beside a steam boiler on a battlefield. It'd have to be incredibly well armored, which would make it not very portable, or it would be a terrific target for the enemy. More details here: [Wikipedia: Light Gas Gun](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-gas_gun) [Answer] Not exactly the answer you are looking for, but I would suggest a steam power tank instead of gun. Heavy armor for protection and a early breach loading cannon in a platform moved by a steam traction engine. You could add a couple of Gatling guns for antipersonnel protection. ]
[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/148053/edit). Closed 4 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/148053/edit) Many traditional space settings feature cloaking devices, which, given what is required for them to *work* indefinitely against detection in space, imply ability to 'dump' waste heat 'into nowhere' (most common description seems to be 'into subspace') to the point of keeping the external temperature of the craft comparable to that of cosmic background radiation - essentially like a radiator whose irradiated heat never heats up any surrounding objects. Now, obviously that looks scary from the PoV of conservation of energy, but upon closer inspection, it just means that our universe isn't treated as a closed system, and the 'bottomless heatsink' is acting as a weird radiator pointed 'elsewhere'. However, like many engineering solutions, surely this invention can be put to purposes other than the above one! **What are those alternative applications and how revolutionary are they likely to be?** A note on jumping to the most obvious answer, power generation: is it likely to be *efficient* enough to be revolutionary? If yes, to what degree? [Answer] If you have a bottomless heatsink you can **generate free electricity** by using the difference between ambient temperature on Earth and voids of subspace. Basically an inverse refrigerator that generates electricity by cooling things. As it was pointed out in comments, a [Stirling engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine) will suffice. Doing this will probably also **affect global warming** positively. We can cool the planet while generating no new CO2. So it will be very revolutionary, empires will rise and fall - **oil prices** will immediately plunge, as well as coal, while billions of people will **cut their cords** to power grids since they can make their own energy. [Answer] **Directed Energy Weapon Eater** one could armor something we wish to protect with the bottomless heatsink to protect it against directed energy weapons. So long as we can absorb all of the incident energy and the heat transfer rate to the bottomless heatsink is high enough, we can prevent the armor from melting. For more fun, we can use said absorbed heat to generate power. This probably won't protect your crew from getting irradiated by particle beam weapons without impractically thick armor **Industrial processes** Many industrial processes require heat to be removed. In chemical plants we wish to remove heat so that things may be condensed. A bottomless heatsink that can keep the external temperature of a spacecraft at 3K could make attaining cryogenic temperatures easy. We also get nifty things like self powered air separation plants. Because we have cheap cryogenics we could produce [amorphous metal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_metal) like we produce steel. **Keeping superconductors cool** With a bottomless heatsink, you don't need room temperature superconductors. Whether this makes superconductors more common or just a novelty for levitating cup-holders will depend on how cheap the bottomless heatsink is and how fast it can transfer heat. Superconducting power lines and maglevs might not necessarily happen just because of the issues with dealing with extremely cold things. For example, we can't just spray our bottomless heatsink on wires to make them superconduct and hang them up on power poles because they'll accumulate a layer of ice. Although if you can keep a spaceship's hull at 3K then you can probably also keep a bunch of loops of superconductor cool in space [to trap antimatter orbiting in planetary magnetospheres](http://www.centauri-dreams.org/wp-content/Bickford_Phase_II.pdf) **keeping quantum things cool** In addition to superconductivity we can exploit low temperatures for other weird quantum phenomenon like [superfluidity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfluidity), quantum computers, [bose-einstein condensates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensate). Determining the applications of such phenomenon is its own question, although I will point out that [bose einstein condensates have been used to slow light down to 25 km/h](https://physicsworld.com/a/slowed-light-breaks-record/). **Medicine** we can store medicines which need to be refrigerated passively. Blood, tissue, organs, could also be stored this way too. This removes the difficulty with keeping [cryonics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics) patients cool. **The ultimate beer koozie** It is said that if you give man the hand of god, he will almost immediately use it to scratch his behind. If the material is cheap enough it could be used to keep drinks cold passively. We can of course scale this up to a beer cooler which can keep drinks cold almost forever. The point here is that if your material is cheap enough, there are plenty of mundane applications. There are likely ample applications in cooking, with ice cream machine being the first thing that comes to mind. Because we can passively achieve cryogenic temperatures, we can make an LN2 ice cream machine that fits in a typical home kitchen. [Answer] Stellar Exploration Literally meaning coat your ship and go take measurements of the insides of the sun. If you can do that then perhaps add a layer if to the sun to make it impossible to achieve helium fusion and stop the sun from expanding into a giant and swallow the Earth. Condense Jupiter so we can suck out Liquid Hydrogen with a simple hose. For fusion fuel. Would all that energy create a black hole? Smaller more mobile spacesuits. Temp regulations is big part of current Designs. Heat wears out critical piece of tools in industrial Machining. This would Increase wear life significantly. If you can retrieve the heat you have perpetual motion. A loop of pipe with water and a waterwheel. Take heat from one side of the wheel. Pump the heat back into the water on the other side of the wheel. That should cause a flow of water spinning the wheel generating electricity. Could this device condense the energy into matter? I hope I have been helpful. [Answer] Supercomputation. If that heat sink could be manufactured on a chip together with the transistors, it would enable Moore's law to continue unimpeded at least for decades - CPU speeds in hundreds of gigahertz, with many more transistors that could be placed much closer to each other, plus chips layered on top of each other. [Answer] An end to nuclear meltdowns. If the device can draw off all forms of energy so as to leave an energy-emitting object invisible against the cosmic background, then it can certainly draw off enough energy from critical nuclear core to leave it safe for human handling and disposal. Install one under every nuclear reactor to "catch the core" as it melts down through its containment. Stasis. For this technology to draw an object's temperature down to cosmic background, it must be actively withdrawing heat, not just collecting what is naturally emitted by the object. If that forced energy withdrawal can be carried to its logical extreme, we can stop all subatomic motion within an object. Larry Niven came up with some really creative uses for matter in stasis including single atom thick blades (which can cut through anything) and perfect cryogenic suspension. [Answer] I am constructing a story where something similar is used (although mostly to stop space ships and kinetic bombardment from being able to wipe out entire planets). Basically you can throw energy into a few types of dark matter that barely reacts with the universe. But that same dark matter also has energy that can be turned into useable energy for the ships. So you use this as a type of battery. Your ship would use this subspace as a closed energy system. First it's a heat sink, but you carry this piece of subspace and the energy within with you and can later pull the heat out again and make energy out of it. If you can't concentrate it into directed kinetic energy directly rather than vibrational heat energy. [Answer] **Energy** First lemme just say: Peltier device. Uses temperature differences to create electricity. **Weather control/weather weapons?** @alamar mentioned global warming, which I agree with I think. But on a more aggressive scale, and depending on the size and efficacy of the devices, you might be able to use an array of heat-sinks to temporarily break up warm-air fronts or updrafts to dissipate or mitigate certain tornados or even hurricanes and other weather patterns. Alternately, maybe a fleet (Vogons anyone?) of gigantic cloaked ships could [de-cloak then] use the heatsinks to create massive severe cold-fronts, or freeze an ocean, thus starting some catastrophic eco-disaster (I'm thinking of the super-freeze from DAY AFTER TOMORROW, though that was kinda corny). Maybe they could arrive in secret, cloaked, then de-cloak under water or in a forest or pose as an iceberg or glacier (or just jettison the heatsinks and leave), and slowly wreak their havoc until they are ready to reveal themselves (or get discovered). ]
[Question] [ As the title say, can a planet have a different gravitational pull depending on its location in orbit around its sun? Is this explainable without magic? [Answer] Not easily. An orbiting object has the feature of being in free fall, which means that objects on it are not subject to gravitational pull from the object that is being orbited, no more than a person inside an orbiting space station feel no gravitational pull from the Earth. There is however such a thing as tidal forces. Since all parts of a planet orbits the sun at the same orbital speed, even though only the centre of mass is fulfilling orbital equations, objects on the near side experience more pull from the sun that objects on the far side, since the near side moves slower than an object in circular orbit at that distance from the sun would, while the far side moves faster than an object at that side would. This is typically too little to be noticeable by people on Earth, though one-third of the tidal forecs creating ocean tides stems from the sun. To make it word as you want, you would need the planet to be either far closer to its sun, compared to its mass, or being far bigger (creating a greater tidal difference between near and far side). If the planet has slow rotation, e.g. only having one day and night per orbit, it may be experienced as having lower gravity during the day than during the night. Or if the planet has a very eccentric orbit, the gravity differences between night and day will be experienced as greater the closer the planet is to the sun. The major problem here is that any tidal force strong enough to be felt as noticably different gravitational pull will very likely tear the planet apart, not to mention creating extremely high and low tides. The latter may not be a problem if the entire surface of the planet is ocean (or if the planet is very plastic), since the inhabitants would move with the surface. Another result of such high gravitational pull is however that the planet will most likely be tidally locked, meaning it will always have the same tide facing the sun, same as our moon always has the same side facing the Earth. You would need a planet that is made of extremely strong and/or very plastic material to make your idea work, and even then, there are likely to be associated problems such as extreme tides and extreme temperature differences between day and night. [Answer] It already happens. Look at the schematic drawing below, where you see a planet and its Sun (not to scale), with two different places on the planet: one facing the Sun, the other on the opposite side from it. [![schematic of the gravitational set up](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MguQo.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MguQo.png) Gravitational pull can be schematized with a vector, and the resulting pull is the result of the summation of all the pulls in a given spot. In the place *b* in the picture, the pulls of the Sun and of the planet will operate in the same direction, while in *a* the pull from the Sun will partially counter the pull from the planet. Therefore in *b* the pull will be stronger than in *a*. Also, during the course of an orbit around the Sun, the distance between the two bodies changes slightly, and as you know the distance plays a role in the equation for calculating the gravitational pull $F = G \cdot m\_1 \cdot m\_2 \cdot 1/r^2$. However, the difference is normally so small that it cannot be noticed without sensitive instruments. When it becomes noticeable it means that tidal forces are so strong that the body is about to be disrupted. [Answer] I can think of a somewhat contrived way that this can happen, but it will be a smaller effect than you'd probably like, and with severe restrictions on the planet's climate and types of civilizations that could live there. The idea is that your planet could be in a highly elliptical orbit that causes it to experience large temperature changes throughout the year. This in turn could cause the planet to expand and contract, thus changing its surface gravity (i.e. when the planet is closer to the sun, it would have a lower gravity on the surface, because its surface is physically farther away from its own center of mass). Thermal expansion alone won't get you this effect on a rocky planet - solid volumes tend to increase only by about 1% at most even when subjected to temperature changes of 100 K (which is where you should probably draw the line as far as this planet being habitable is concerned). One workaround could be for the planet to have pockets of gas throughout its interior; when the planet heats up, pressure from those pockets could inflate the entire planet like a balloon. However, I'm doubtful that you could get more than a percent or two from this either, and it also comes with more details that need to be addressed, like why geological activity doesn't push most of this gas to the surface. No, if you want to go the thermal expansion route, the best way I can think of is to have floating cities above a low-mass, gaseous planet (a [gas dwarf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_dwarf)). This is all conjecture since there are no confirmed gas dwarf exoplanets, but one with the mass of Earth, similar to Kepler-138d, could ostensibly be 80% gas by volume (60% by radius). Let's take a case where the average atmospheric temperature varies from 250 to 300 K based on time of year. EDIT: Originally, I did some sloppy approximations and got 7% reduction in gravity. However, I didn't take into account the fact that, since the city is floating, it doesn't matter where the gas goes; the city will move to wherever it can maintain the same ambient pressure as the temperature fluctuates. This ends up yielding a much more significant effect, since pressure varies *exponentially* in gravitational fields. I got severely carried away in the calculations here, and they got very messy, but in short: with the assumptions above as well as a mostly-Helium atmosphere, a city floating at a height of 50 km at the coldest part of the year could be carried up to a dizzying height of 1500 km in the warmest, decreasing the local gravity by a whopping 40%! That means people would be able to jump twice as high in the summer as in the winter. Could be an interesting way to have the effect you're looking for, though the sky-city-on-a-gas-planet thing might be too specific for the setting you have in mind. [Answer] In order to have changing gravitation, you either need changing masses or changing distances. Changing masses are only possible if mass becomes energy, for which you need rare phenomenons and which would not depend on orbit and not be cyclical. But going for **changing distances** there are plenty of options, of which some have already been mentioned : 1. Have an elliptic orbit - the closer your planet is to the sun, the brighter it is on the surface *and* the higher is gravity (Image Source : [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_orbit)) [![(see Wikipedia)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rESjD.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rESjD.gif) 2. Have a moving sun - such as a sun and a black hole "surrounding" each other, or other complex constellations leading to your sun *itself* orbiting something else, following a certain course such that it passes (Image Source : same Wikipedia page) Try to think of the following white circles as a sun and another object. As you can see, this leaves us with an interesting orbit for your sun. If you now had a your planet orbiting the two objects, the distances would of course change. [![see Wikipedia](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WLFeK.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WLFeK.gif) And, last but not least, a sun next to a black hole simply gives darn picturesque images (Image source : <https://phys.org/news/2010-07-black-hole-big.html>, see for original source) [![Beautiful](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1w24n.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1w24n.jpg) --- **Alternatively**, you can have *other objects in space* affecting gravity, such as large gas planets - see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point> For instance, the tidal forces on our earth are caused by our moon. The bigger the objects and the higher the distance changes, the higher the impact on gravity on your planet is going to be. In the meantime, just enjoy the orbit between Pluto and Charon (Image source : NASA, I assume - <https://i.stack.imgur.com/L7si0.jpg>) : [![mhm](https://i.stack.imgur.com/awNca.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/awNca.gif) [Answer] You could change the distance relation of the gravitational force field. In the real world it decreases quadratic with distance F=F(r^2) but you can change that to any function you like. Something higher order like r^3 and above will have more turning points. You could put your planet in a distant of such a turning point and depending on your coefficients the resulting gravitation on the closer to further sunside would be different. Does that make sense? [Answer] A single planet won't have a noticeable difference unless you can change its mass or shape wildly. However, a second planet orbiting within another plane, the opposite rotation, or forming a binary pair could apply great *additional* gravitational forces at different positions in the first planet's orbit. ]
[Question] [ In a land similar to the Roman Empire, slaves are used to drive machinery. Mostly this is a matter of getting them to pull carts or wind handles. The Emperor wants a clock that is accurate to the minute, powered by slaves. With the technology of Ancient Rome and unlimited slave-power, how can such a clock be accurately regulated? Let us suppose that the clock has a face similar to a modern-day analog clock. --- **Notes** The clock cannot be regulated by referring to another clock. It must be self-regulating. Water power, sand-timers, wound-springs etc. are not to be used directly to power the clock - just slave manual power. However an (unpowered?) mechanism will be need to regulate the machine. [Answer] One possibility would be this set-up, all components being available to your parallel world Roman Imperials: **Component I:** is the temporal regulation mechanism. Deep within the works of the *Horologon*, is a water cistern that is kept full from municipal water supplies (the Aqueduct). Pipes bring water down to a valve that is set by the engineers to flow at a certain rate. The water itself is brought up into a marble statue of a water nymph and is ejected from her left nipple at a constant rate. The water so ejected squirts onto a small water wheel which thus rotates at a constant rate. Two of the water wheel's buckets have projections that strike a small brass chime held by a bronze satyr at the wheel's base. **Component II:** is the slave regulating mechanism. This component consists of a slave, two wooden mallets and two bronze nakers (a kind of drum). The slave, taking his cues from the satyr's chime, beats out a lively rhythm on the nakers which will regulate the slaves that actually operate the horologon itself. The rhythms vary by the hour, and close attention paid by passersby will immediately tell them, just by listening, what the hour is, even if they don't look up at the horologon's clever display. **Component III:** are the slave tableaus. This is all part of the magic of Romanesque time keeping: the day being divided into fifteen hours of the clock, based on the calculated number of chime beats on Midsummer's day, there are therefore fifteen tableaux visible on the horologon's portico. The figures in each tableau are dressed in characteristic fashion of a particular region of the Empire and the slaves in each tableau dance in a fashion characteristic of that region. Other slaves, the *tempora magistri*, or "conductors", beat time along with the nakers by tapping their feet and striking the floor of the portico with their batons. Baton strikes are carefully counted and choreographed with the rhythms of the nakers to occur every half minute, first one strike then a double-strike. Every minute, or every double-strike of the conductors' baton therefore denotes one minute. At this moment, the tableau advances slightly around the portico. **Component IIIJ:** is the horologon's display. Resting upon a great toothed rondel of hard wood at the centre of the tableau is a similarly toothed rondel from which radiates fifteen long spars with red legionary shields at the end of each, upon which are painted large numbers: J, IJ, IIJ, IIIJ, etc. up to XV. **Component V:** is the housing. Naturally, the Emperor wishes to help the people of the Eternal City tell time, else why build a public horologon at all? But more importantly, he wishes to make a grand and opulent public display of the whole matter. Sure, any Marcus Aurelius in the street can look up at the Sun and say, oh, it's a little after noon. But the Emperor wants to make sure that not only his own subjects, but also traders from distant lands and embassies from rival empires and visiting dignitaries alike are awed by the cunning engineering and obviously vast wealth of the Empire. To do this, the entire horologon is housed within a marble temple like building, perhaps on the end of one of the basilicas. The beauty of its painted statuary and mythological stonework is a feast for the eyes; and all eyes will be drawn to the huge arched *skene*, the stage where the tableaux play out. **Component VJ:** is the general orchestration of the horologon. All well and good, but how does one actually tell time? Quite simply, if one is sufficiently literate, one can simply read the numbers on the dial. As the big **XIJ** moves across the stage, you know it's twelve o'clock. If you're clever and you notice the evenly spaced markings along the base of the stage, you'll see that each time the conductor double-strikes his baton, the cartouche moves from one marking to the next. And, again, if you're literate, you'll notice that these markings are labelled: *prima, secunda, tertia, etc.* The big numbers indicate hours of the clock, the small numbers indicate minutes. But the wise observer will note the horologon does much more than count minutes and hours. Indeed, the wise Emperor has devised the tableaux in such a way that each set of costumes and each set of dances is constantly changed over the course of time. Every day, the timed syllable chanting of the slaves, with its calculated number of syllables per line & strophe, corresponding to the passage of minutes, changes -- one day, hymns to the Moon or the Stars or to Istar or Ares; every two weeks, the dances change slightly and every month the costumes change as well. Every three months, the over-arching theme changes. Thus, the observant student of the imperial horologon can tell you what day, what hour and minute and in what fortnight and season you are currently in, all by observing and listening to what the horlogon of Emperor Minimus is telling! [Answer] # With a pendulum The quirk being that neither the pendulum nor the need for accurate time keeping had been invented in the period you're asking for, but gearing was already in use, the basic physics of a pendulum regulator could follow well enough. [Answer] * Have the slaves build a large wheel, with an even number of carts evenly spread around it and a clear mark on it. * Have the wheel installed with an horizontal axis, free of spinning. * Have the slaves cut a number of stones, all from the same mine, all with the same shape and weight. * Have the slaves carry the stones to the top of the wheel, where they will put one stone in each cart reaching the top. * Have the slaves take away the stone from the cart when it reaches the bottom and carry the stone to the top. * Define every round trip of the mark on the wheel your base time unit. [Answer] With the mention of the analogue face, I'm going to assume they have a decent grasp of gearing. From there you need to control the speed that the slaves are rotating, for that you can use a simplified centrifuge governor. [![ centrifuge governor](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lhrhj.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lhrhj.png) Attach an arrow to the flyweights and have them point to a sweetspot chart and you could maintain a somewhat accurate fixed rotation speed. [Answer] You build a release for polished, uniform stones on the top of a slope or fall, which is triggered by the stones hitting the ground. [Answer] Have a giant isochronous curve (a curve that a falling object always takes the same time to traverse despite starting position, plug it into youtube to see toys based on them) with giant round rocks that roll back and forth in it, attached to an arm that pushes the clock. Over time the rocks will lose momentum due to friction and a slave will need to push the rock back up to the top. If there are a pair of curves, a well trained group of slaves can keep at least one ball rolling at all times. Naturally, when they release the rock, it's a dangerous business. [Answer] ### How the Romans actually did it A **clepsydra** is an ancient style of mechanical water clock used by the Greeks an Romans. It used a float and gear system to turn a clock face. Too keep it accurate, a slave would simply need to once a day empty the water from the float container, refill the water supply, and refill the float container until the time on the clepsydra matches the time on the sun dial. A sun dial is always going to be accurate during the day, and the mechanical mechanism of the clepsydra allows you to estimate the current time from the last syncing so you can continue to tell what time it is when the sun is down or obscured. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VIQMA.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VIQMA.png) > > Water power, sand-timers, wound-springs etc. are not to be used directly to power the clock - just slave manual power. However an (unpowered?) mechanism will be need to regulate the machine. > > > **Frame Challenge: Water, sand, springs, etc. are not really a source of power for a clock, they are how the clock regulates its power to keep it from going too fast or too slow. Without one of these, you have no clock.** For example, my daughter has a model Da Vinci clock that uses a weight to turn it. It works just fine if the weight is properly calibrated to the gearing, but if you add extra weight, it moves faster, less weight, it moves slower. So, using ancient technology, you need one of these "power sources" to regulate the time because direct human power will not be consistent enough. That said, when you use these things to regulate a clock the real power is actually coming from the person winding the spring, or moving the water or sand back up into the supply chamber. In a small clock, this could be a job that only takes a person a few moments out of thier day, but the bigger your clock, the more energy it will take to reset the regulating medium. So if we go with a clepsydra (but on a large scale), you could imagine a giant clock tower that raises above the level of the town cisterns so that it can be high enough to be seen from all around. But because of its height, you cant just passively fill its water supply from an aqueduct, you will need slaves to carry buckets of water up the tower all day to fill the water supply to keep it running. So it is literally powered by the work of slaves even though it is a water clock. [Answer] Simple: You have a mechanism that stores built-up energy from the slaves, and uses that energy to power the clock. We already have this in the form of old wind-up clocks that rely on a person being willing to regularly wind them to function. [Answer] Given the Era concerned the Emperor simply declares that '*money is no object*' i.e. the project is the Apollo moon mission of the the era concerned. Slaves are simply tasked with implementing or assisting in the implementation/engineering of ever finer/more refined and accurate versions of both clocks. The exception being land holders in proportion to the (e.g. clocks cast/etched in metal) until such time as they refine meticulously precise versions of both types of clock by trial and error. ]
[Question] [ I'm building a world for a role-playing game campaign using the [Stars Without Number](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/226996/Stars-Without-Number-Revised-Edition) system. Some background information first: **Stars Without Number Original Setting:** In the original story provided by the SWN book, humanity has reached a post-scarcity level of technology and has traveled and settled to other star systems using (a) FTL travel, and (b) worm-hole-like portals. However, at some point, a cosmic event happened called *The Scream* which destroyed the portals and drove many people mad across the universe, effectively cutting out colonies from one another. As a result most planets were set back centuries both from a technological and a social/cultural perspective. **Quantum Entanglement Communication:** In the [Mass Effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Effect) series there is a type of communication based on [quantum entanglement](https://www.alienelement.com/2016/09/06/quantum-entanglement-mass-effect/). The upside of QEC is that it allows two ends to communicate instantly no matter the distance. The downside is that, the way quantum entanglement works, you can only create a communication channel between points A and B, as opposed to other ways of communicating where you can broadcast your message to several/countless endpoints. **My setting:** In my setting FTL travel is being discovered and humanity starts settling on hundreds of nearby systems. *There are no wormhole-like portals,* the only way to get to a star is via FTL travel. As it happens every time a powerful nation establishes colonies, Earth attempted to maintain control. The way Earth did that was via setting up QEC systems between itself and most of the planets and acted as central hub of communication for everyone, similarly to how [telephone centers used to operate](https://www.wordsandpaint.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/women-at-switchbd.png). Remember, the downside of QEC is that it establishes communication only for points A and B. This means that if Colony B wants to send a message to Colony C they will have to go through Earth (Point A). However, at some point, Earth was overtaken by unbraked/sentient AIs and this communication hub was destroyed leading the colonies to panic and chaos. **My question:** Earth would want to keep QEC technology a secret. Otherwise, some of the colonies may establish QEC systems between themselves. If you attempt to keep the technology secret from a single colony you can guard it using a substantial force. But that becomes increasingly difficult when the colonies number in the order of hundreds. So, **how is it possible that Earth kept the how-to of this technology a secret for a long time on so many different worlds?** **p.s.** There is a [similar question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/80288/how-to-keep-a-military-technology-secret-while-using-it) however the answers specifically address the scenario described by the OP and thus they are not suitable for my setting. [Answer] The technology for locating the quantum entangled pairs is not integral to the actual communication device. In a heavily guarded bunker on Earth, a supercomputer and some very specialized equipment locate a pair of quantum entangled pairs. (Actually two sets of pairs) It then puts one particle from each pair in a transceiver to be transported at FTL to the colony world. The other particle of each pair goes into a transceiver which stays on Earth. Only the technology to use the particles for communication ever leaves Earth. The tech which finds them and isolates them for this usage, stays at home. In this way, the colony world scientists can fully understand how the communications works (which is vital since they have to maintain their transceiver). But they cannot locate new pairs on their own; so they cannot create communications channels of their own. Earth remains the center of the universe. [Answer] If the Internet and all its component parts (routers, DNS servers, certificate authorities, etc) vanished tomorrow, would you know how to rebuild it? To most people on most of these worlds, the QEC system is "magic" -- not literally magic, but it's there, it works reliably, and for most people that's enough. If the system was installed by experts from Earth and has no user-serviceable parts inside, then there's been no need for people on the remote worlds to become experts or to be granted access to schematics etc. This doesn't mean that there aren't curious people, tinkerers, and hackers, of course, so this "make it uninteresting + no need to know" policy needs to be accompanied by consequences for people who try to reverse-engineer or hack it. This can take the form of physical security (high-voltage shock if you don't do the secret 17 steps to open the door in the right order), remote surveillance (Earth is immediately alerted and they can remotely monitor and trigger stuff1), or *local* policing (this is super-important to us and we can't risk letting you break it,2 *or* this is super-dangerous and we can't risk you getting fried). 1 Consider the chilling effects if, at setup, Earth installed transmission points in, say, three places on the planet. The response to tampering is a building-flattening explosion plus messages at the remaining locations: "don't do that again". That might disincentivize hacking. 2 Doesn't heavy guarding mean it's interesting? Well, depends on how you spin it. Maybe what you're guarding is access to the super-expensive communication channel to Earth -- it's about the money, not the technology. Or maybe it's because this is the "red phone" and only authorized people are supposed to use it. You can have reasons to guard it that aren't about protecting technological secrets, in the same way that protections on ATMs and credit-card readers protect money, not the underlying technology. [Answer] Like Henry Taylor's answer, I'm assuming that the entanglement is done in Sol, with them shipping out one half of a pair of something like SIM cards to anyone who wants internet. ## TL;DR the same way no one makes backyard nukes: no exact steps, no infrastructure, no institutional knowledge, it's also a military secret Consider nuclear weapons. A fair number of people on the internet know how they work in the very broad strokes. And yet, the number of nukes built in crazy people's garages is zero. Why's that? Because going from "smash chunks of sub-critical radioactive rocks together to get a supercritical mass" to an actual nuclear weapon is hard, and that information isn't available on the internet. Likewise, even if the physics behind QECs is publicly available (like nuclear physics) the information needed to actually make QECs is not. Also, making nuclear weapons requires a lot of specialized, expensive, easy-to-identify infrastructure. Likewise, QEC production could also require some very large and expensive components that are quite obviously for QEC production. As such, not only are potential QEC manufacturers discourged by this high startup cost, it's also obviously going to be a QEC plant to anyone who's looking. More on that later. There's also the matter of institutional knowledge. Basically, not everything written down is going to be understood, and not everything that needs to be written down will be. "Use water" said the Roman concrete makers, but it took us until very recently to realize that they used salt water. "No duh! You use salt water!" the ghosts of the Romans shouted at the researchers who published that finding. The same thing applies here: knowledge of some steps in the process may not be written down, or they might get misunderstood by whoever reads them much later. If you want to make microchips, you need a degree. You also need a thousand other people with degrees. Even if one person who knows about making QECs is out of Sol at the time of the Apocalypse, it won't be enough to preserve that institutional knowledge. You're going to need to train a lot of people in how to make QECs, and that's probably going to require a specialized school. There's probably one in Sol, and it's probably mandetory to sign NDAs and/or work for QECcomm or whoever makes them. But finally, the military is going to want this under control. Why? Because they need to be in communication and synchronize. They also want it centralized because that way they can monitor QEC traffic for intelligence reasons. If a bunch of rebels had QECs that didn't go through a centralized, monitored hub, then it would be much harder to track them down. [Answer] **It is not secret. Earth didn't understand it either.** The communication tech is based on found alien artifacts, discovered on a dead world. Also on this world were clues to FTL travel. FTL was more tractable to hack and copy but the spooky communication technology proved absolutely inscrutable. It is not even certain that the intended primary function of these devices was communication. Fortunately a fair amount of working devices were found, enough to distribute around and use. But the Earthers were unable to figure out how they worked or replicate any of them. [Answer] Perhaps the QECs on the remote colonies have a 'tamper seal' of sorts that destroys the entanglement if opened/modified. Communication technicians in the colonies could know how to use the QEC but wouldn't be able to actually take it apart. [Answer] **The technology is not completely secret**, or it can be rediscovered by the colonies - but it has an Achilles heel that the Earth Directorate uses to maintain an iron grip: all the communication paths created using this technology are plainly visible to each other in another dimension, and **the Earth Directorate destroys any new channels which appear** and are in the process of connecting; the Earth Directorate is able to rapidly detect, and destroy, nascent channels because they are much further advanced in this technological regime than the colonies, which are still taking their first steps here. Destruction of a nascent communication channel in this alternate QEC dimension may cause real-universe destruction of the machinery responsible for forming or controlling the channel. This would repeatedly set back experimentation on the colonies, albeit not permanently. Eventually a colony may figure out what is going wrong and figure out how to defeat the Earth Directorate's brutal ban. This concept also allows for an unknown "outer space" area beyond the Earth Directorate's purview where *unknown parties, much older and more advanced than humanity, lurk*. Perhaps some among the Earth Directorate's scientists have seen glimpses of some of their ancient, unimaginably large and apparently strong communication links, but they kept it to themselves and they were unable to learn more because their bosses never authorized them to expand research beyond maintenance and defense within the colony volume... The concept of a device which the primary government authority uses to prevent others from gaining an equal device is a central component in my all-time favorite book, Alan Dean Foster's "The Peace War". > > However in that book, the device is not for communication, it is a weapon, and it is so powerful it actually elevated a minor faction to global authority status prior to the start of the main portion of the tale. > > > [Answer] We alredy have that. There are many countries using the internet today that wouldn't be able to rebuild it nor control it if they had to because they lack the industries and the know-how to build or control. You don't have to keep it secret, you just have to keep them poor. And in the case of wealthy network nodes secrecy would be useless. Using the internet as an example, the technologies needed to rebuild it are naturally present in all rich countries. It may not be a 100mb connection, but it will work. ]
[Question] [ **Closed**. This question needs [details or clarity](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- **Want to improve this question?** Add details and clarify the problem by [editing this post](/posts/127272/edit). Closed 5 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/127272/edit) In my world, humanity has turned to space as a source of resources. Of course, all that stuff has to be transported back somehow. On Earth, that is usually done with seafaring ships or rail vehicles. Is there any reason someone would choose to transport solid materials via rail vehicles (i.e. vehicles, usually several joined units, connected to a fixed rail) instead of freely traveling ships? [Answer] An interesting query! I would posit that the answer is: # NO 1. Rail networks are great over continental distances: exactly the sort of transport web you say is in operation in your world. 2. Rail networks require lots of moving pieces: switches, signals, sidings, multiple tracks to handle more than one train at a time. 3. Rail networks require constant maintenance and direct access to every inch of the system for routine maintenance, emergency repairs, recovery of derailed vehicles and the like. So much for planetside networks. 1. Space is big. Very big. All the rail networks on Earth span about a million and a half km. The Moon is about 380,000km away. That's conceivable. But the distance to Ceres is something like 400 million km. That's not conceivable. 2. Rail travel through space will be extremely slow in comparison to even a typical rocket. Consider that a rail network will necessitate vehicles having wheels of some kind. Just the friction of wheels spinning along will, I should think, cause the wheels to disintegrate, overheat and seize up or simply fall apart due to the great distance being traversed and no maintenance depots along the way. 3. Flimsy rail. There being no earth to anchor or support the infrastructure, I think the motion of the vehicles would cause the track to bend and sway and rupture. 4. Slow travel. Even a maglev kind of vehicle will be much slower than any kind of ordinary space vessel flying the same route. 5. Gravity & rotation take their toll. Lastly, all the planets in the solar system are in constant motion around something else, and even the solar system itself is in motion. Even if you could anchor the track to the Earth, it won't line up with anything in space. The Moon moves at a different velocity, so a track anchored there as well would snap. Same goes for a track anchored to Earth and Ceres. None of these things strike me as allowing for a viable rail network in space. [Answer] **Yes - in our Megastructure for our future Advanced Civilisation** [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ODxmo.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ODxmo.jpg) A *[dyson swarm](https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2017/08/23/how_to_build_a_dyson_swarm.html)* is a series of interconnected space habitats (or artificial satellites) that orbit a star, capturing its energy and utilising it to sustain a civilisation. Such a swarm is for an advanced civilisation, possibly using AI and [self-replicating robots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft) to create large structures. It is easy to see that the creation of such a [megastructure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megastructure#Theoretical) may require transport of raw materials in an orbital fashion without the constant use of rockets and propellant, for both its manufacture and maintenance. [Rockets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket) could be problematic. If much material needs to be accelerated and decelerated using propellant, after such a massive amount of material is transported, the propellant gases and energy required would be enormous. In contrast, an [orbiting ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring) or cable (ie. Your Rail), could be used to transport goods and material using acceleration and deceleration of the material (ie. Your Train) with no expenditure of combustible gases. The ring would be on an orbital path, so there would be little to no lateral forces on it. The movement of people, food, construction material, and other items could be containerised and move along the rail between satellite habitats. Containers moving on a ring in opposing directions would prevent the rail from rotating. Over time, it may indeed be possible for the rails themselves to become ideal, habitable areas. Rails could overlap too, to create a three dimensional ring structure, like this: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NDqEZ.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NDqEZ.jpg) Such a structure could actually harness completely the energy of a star, and provide for a complex internodal network of intersecting railcars and trains, without the constant unsustainable use of expendable propellent. If you create a story in such a setting, I would definitely read it! [Answer] Yes, A simple way is that rail vehicles don't need to have engines or thrusters or actual people on them. Rather than having a space shuttle that needs all that extra room, a rail vehicle only needs to have 1 compartment dedicated to control, and if you want to be more advance, you could remove even that. The way I envision it isn't so much a Railway vehicle, but morel like shipping containers that can be attached to a rail. The rail uses electromagnets to accelerate the container, launching it along a set path to another station further along (No rails inbetween, only at the start and end) . All the controls and power is used on the rails, and fine tuning the path and amount of acceleration. The railway vehicle as you call it simple carries goods from 1 place to another. It doesn't contain anything except what the goods inside need. (Think of it like a shipping container in space rather than a train). Basically, it makes mass travel and goods delivery cheap. If you want to transport people, you just need to make room for oxygen, food and waste storage, no room for fuel, thrusters and a control system. If you want to deliver steel, then you might just put them into the container right away. If you want to deliver more, you might even link them together and send them in one go. Of course, there is technically a huge margin for error on an interplanetary and higher scale, which you would add thrusters, fuel and a control system but its effectively removing all the extra fuel you need for acceleration and deceleration. I remove the rail in the middle because its space. Space is huge and you will travel in a straight line if nothing disturbs you. Chances are, everything that can disturb you will be tracked and monitored and factored into the equations. So to save on materials, you remove the middle, and focus on the start and the end. [Answer] # No Consider the reason for having rail networks on earth: We could certainly try to push wagons of goods overland without any fixed tracks below them (and to a certain extent, people did that), but this would be incredibly cumbersome at best and infeasible at its worst, due to all the obstructions and friction with the ground. Rails provide a smooth, continuous surface which minimizes the effort needed to move objects along them (we have roads instead of driving cross-country for the same reason). In space, there is no friction and there are virtually no obstructions. Once you have put something on a certain trajectory, it will follow that course inevitably, affected only by gravity until you take deliberate measures to change the course, e.g. using thrusters. Rails are completely unneccessary in that setting. This does not even touch upon the engineering difficulties (impossibilities?) posed by such a construction. See [elemtilas' answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/127274/49482) for some examples. ## Yes, for transportation from/to orbit This concept is called a [Space elevator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator). The basic idea is a cable that is anchored to the ground at one end and extends beyond geostationary orbit. The outer end is held up by centrifugal force, which also keeps the cable under tension. Climbers (which correspond to trains, if we see the cable as some sort of rail) can ascend or descend along the cable, gaining/losing horizontal speed along the way. However, this only works for getting stuff in orbit around the body it is anchored to, not as a connection between different bodies. Daniel Jour mentioned in a comment that you could also let go of the cable at an altitude higher than geostationary orbit, which could provide additional speed high enough to swing to another body without extra propulsion. Even then, most of the journey would be traveled away from any anchoring rails. ]
[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 5 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/111773/edit) The protagonist of my story *was* a normal human transformed into a non-biological entity (long story); however, his new form is an (outwardly) exact physical and mental replica of his old. He can pass as human until close examination. Before the transformation, he was a U.S. citizen, native born, with a valid Social Security card, etc. My question: would he still be considered by the (present) U.S. government to be a citizen on the S.S. rolls--a citizen--with all rights inherent? Would he be typed by the Feds as an illegal alien perhaps? If they determine he is not, what would be the status of all assets in his name--e.g., home, car, bank account, etc? EDIT: The Government has discovered that he is no longer a human and law enforcement has asked him to come forward for an interview on suspicion of manslaughter. In this setting, superhumans are in the comics genre--ergo, he is the first and only super. And not a machine or even composed of regular matter/baryons. He has not been declared dead, and he considers himself to be the same individual, only in a different form. [Answer] Chances are, he will keep his US Citizenship First of all, he needs to be declared human. Non-human can't be a Citizen nor an alien (in USCIS sense). This issue will be tricky and will take time, probably going up all the way to [SCOTUS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States), but from what I see, he has a high chance of keeping all of his human rights. Declaring this person a "non-human" would just be too controversial. Next would be a Citizen vs Alien decision. He may be declared the same person, or not. Chances are, again, higher that he would legally be the same person, but the court may want to avoid setting the precedent and declare him a new one. By the way, declaring him a "new human" would be much less controversial that declaring a "non-human". And this will have a direct implication on the citizenship. If a new human does not get full inheritance from the old self (like SSN), he may not automatically gain citizenship. And if his transformation occurred outside the US, he's not getting citizenship by birthright. In this case he may indeed lose US citizenship, but may get some other citizenship instead. [Answer] There's no clear answer, since our existing laws do not cover this, and I doubt that there's any real-world analogy to fall back on. *If* someone in the government (the government is **not** a single entity with a single purpose or a single mind or even a single goal -- politics is all about getting people who believe different things and want different things to work together) decided to make an issue of it, it would undoubtedly go to court with the courts' job being to come up with a reasonable decision based on laws and precedents. How *that* worked out would depend a lot on what the particular government agency that triggered to whole thing claimed. Is he a machine with no rights? An alien? A machine *with* rights? A machine copy of a dead man? A human, but a danger to the community? A human but a danger to the nation? An unregulated AI? So one issue that might or might not be at the heart of the subsequent legal dispute is whether he is human. In this case, it would certainly wind up in the Supreme Court and they'd have to come up with a careful answer that didn't create unnecessary new law, but was true to the Constitution and the laws as written. (My only-slightly-educated guess is that he'd be declared to be the same person he'd always been.) Or it might come down to a question of whether he is a danger. The law concerning that is pretty well worked out and the lower courts might well dispose of it. Congress could always pass a law covering the issue and unless the Supreme Court found it to be unconstitutional, that would govern. But that's not very likely. [Answer] This is a really legal gray area. You could write the entire story just about the legal case. The definition of death is medical & biological: end of heartbeat or brain activity: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_death> His form and memories are too imprecise and abstract to argue over. **Argument for citizenship** would be the strongest if the transformed body has a heart that beats and brain that generates recognizable electrical signal. It would also help if there is no body (and no biological matter) left over after his transformation. The argument **against him being alive** is that he is a fancy robot equipped with advanced chatbot and voice synthesizer. With a few more advances in modern technology, you could create a fairly convincing imitation of a human being. Chatbot and visual recognition system can be trained with things that a specific person is supposed to remember. So if we grant citizenship to your protagonist, should we grant citizenship to those robotic copies as well? **Even if he does have have a brain**, the key argument here might be whether each neuron of his old brain was copied or transformed into the new form, and if they function the same way. If yes, his new brain could be viewed as a form of prosthetic (similar to artificial heart), so he is a person. If no, his "brain" is a fancy computer similation, and not a person. There might be a **middle ground** actually: he is declared to be a person, but a mentally disabled one, and hence a ward of the state or his parents or family. The example here is people with brain injuries or dementia - they might have lost good chunk of their memories, skills and personality traits, but they are still the same legal person. But they will never be trusted to make financial decisions, drive cars, use kitchen knives, etc. PS It might not matter much: he will likely be **locked up in a government institution** in either case. B/c even if he is a person and a citizen, he is still made out of some unknown matter, which might be radioactive, or can explode when exposed to some specific chemical, or maybe his breath is toxic, or maybe it takes time for the negative effects to build up. And most importanly, maybe his condition is contagious, or he can spread it under the right circumstances. [Answer] I think that to declare him an *illegal* alien and not a thing or animal, the government would have to claim that he is human, which means that he would retain citizenship as a matter of course. The decisions and precedents would be about his humanity, not his citizenship. Another interesting angle is religion. While the US legally has a separation of church and state, in practice religious beliefs play a *huge* role in the private thoughts and public actions of citizens and elected officials alike. If an influential TV evangelist or bishop hears about the case and declares the character an angel, a devil, or a *machine* simply because he doesn't fit readily into the dogma of dead and afterlife, this would greatly polarize the debate and it might cause some leaders to side with the cleric. [Answer] I'm going to go with the controversial answer here and say that an essential part of the answer depends entirely by what you mean by "super". If this person is more like superman than batman, the answer to "do the feds...?" is mu. That is to say, it doesn't matter. The law is a fiction that exists only so far as someone is willing (and able) to enforce it at the point of a gun. If he can't be bulleted into compliance, than any laws concerning "who owns what" concerning him are meaningless, especially if there is no one to raise hell about it. If it's his own stuff, that means there won't be any sympathetic ears, ergo, he keeps his stuff. The law will bend to accommodate. If he's somewhere between batman and superman, the question gets substantially more nuanced, but still ultimately boils down to "how much violence are we willing to engage in to get him to do (or stop doing) something" and "how much violence will be necessary to get him to stop... existing". [Answer] If he made any publicity before the government hid him away, this becomes less of a legal issue at first than a political one since the question asks about how it would go down if it happened today. There is stuff in the news every day regarding immigration and if one political person or another thought it would help their case, they would be all over it. I prefaced the statement the way I did because I believe that if the government found out about his powers, the powers would become the focus more than any other factor. A powered person is first and foremost a threat to national security, and secondly a potential weapon. I am not a lawyer and can't give a legal opinion. Ideally all that would mater is that he was born a citizen but I don't know. [Answer] **The problem is more of a philosophical one** than a legislative one (yet). If all atoms in your body are replaced one after another (this actually happens over time), are you still the same person? If your "native U.S." atoms are replaced with "non-native U.S." atoms, are you not a native U.S. citizen anymore? That would mean a U.S. citizen who lives most of his/her time out of the U.S. would at some point become non-native. While I believe that some people really think that way, this isn't currently the shared opinion in court, as I believe. Now what happens if you replace the atoms faster or larger chunks at once? Does this change the reasoning. If so, then there must be a line. **The court will have to draw the line**, if necessary, but it is really a blurry thing. For example, you explicitly wrote > > [he] is no longer a human > > > What defines a human? When someone lost both arms and legs and get them replaced with prostheses, he still counts as human, no? But what if he gets replaced more, so that only the head remains? Would that still count as human? Surely many would say "He is just a head!" (as they said earlier "He is just a cripple!"). Are additions to the human make the humans inhuman? When a third arm is inhuman (and people grow third arms occasionally), why isn't the sixth finger on a hand (this also happens, humans are weird)? ]
[Question] [ In commentaries to my other question @JustinThyme suggested that [high-functioning autists could be the best space colonists](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/92432/39490): > > A great deal of very successful scientists ARE autistic. Einstein, for > instance, [showed autistic tendencies](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3676-einstein-and-newton-showed-signs-of-autism/). Autistics have a very high > representation among surgeons. In fact, the best space colonists would > be from the autistic population. Most of the traits needed are > synonymous with autistic traits. > > > I think it is an intriguing idea, although, I am not sure it would work. Even [high-functioning autists](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/High-functioning_autism) have emotional and social problems. They experience difficulties connecting with other people and maintaining relationships. They are also prone to developing anxieties. I can see how a person with [Asperger syndrome](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Asperger_syndrome) could be helpful to a colony due to their amazing focusing ability (although, I am not sure that this focus is deliberate). But I am having a really hard time imaging how a group of people with high-functioning autism and/or Asperger syndrome could establish and maintain a functioning colony. I wonder if social and emotional impairments typical for autism spectrum disorders could jeopardise the survival of a space colony. Or maybe they would actually benefit it. ***NB***: All colonists have normal or higher than normal intelligence. **All** colonists have autism spectrum disorders, but not necessarily Asperger syndrome. [Answer] I suspect that High Functioning autists might not be great colonists, but would make great ships crew. ASD (autism spectrum disorder) has a very wide variety of symptoms and it takes a combination of them to make a diagnoses. That's why you need to screen heavily for the right combinations of symptoms. Useful ones I can think of would be hyperfocus and moderate to mild sensory sensitivity. Another common one that would be useful as ships crew is a tendency toward rigid adherence to rules. 1. **Hyperfocus** Even complex tasks, when performed repeatedly, will become boring for many that would be considered "Neurotypical". Ship safety relies on observation of a wide variety of variables. Someone on the spectrum might be able to shut out almost all of the outside world to focus on those variables, note changes and report them. They can do things like this for long periods of time without going nuts. 2. **Sensory sensitivity** Have you ever known a car guy who will tell you that your car is about to break because your engine sounds wrong? This is the kind of quality you want to look for. Sensory sensitivity in more severe cases are why some on the spectrum will look away and turn an ear to you when you talk. This isn't rude behavior, but they simply can't take in both audio input and sight input at the same time. With milder cases and coupled with focus, someone who can shift focus to exclude sight may notice any machinery that is maybe not right, but it hasn't shown up on the readouts as normal. 3. **Rigid rule conformity** One of the things that has defined ships safety since groups of people went out on little piles of wood into the water has been for the crew to react as one to a variety of situations. Get a small group of people who have a natural inclination towards following the rules, and most problems will be met rapidly, effectively, and without debate. So those are some ways that High functioning people on the Spectrum would be a benefit to ships crew. Here is why they may not make the greatest colonists. **Rigid rule conformity** The ship is a small, consistent environment. Not a lot of changes. A Colony planet is going to need a lot of creative thinking, and maybe total re-evaluation of many of the rules and assumptions. This is going to be very disorienting to someone on the spectrum. Massive change is **extremely** hard for them. Likewise with **Focus and sensory sensitivities.** Get too wrapped up in hearing Alien Bird Song might mean you miss the deadly green bug crawling on your pant leg. **Edit:** This generally assumes the Sci-Fi trope of colonists landing on another planet and setting up shop right out there on the land in shelters and log houses on the prairie. It was pointed out that this is not exactly a realistic scenario. It still stands though that the kind of challenges of a planet side colony are still going to be a very challenging change scenario for people on the Autism Spectrum. The reasons for establishing a colony are varied, but they generally involve establishing a beach head of sorts and then expanding. This means EVA's, dealing with the local landscape, and possibly dealing with local flora and fauna. This means a lot of change from routine and chaos even in a sealed environment. It could possibly be too much to adapt to in a short time frame. [Answer] I don't think that selecting colonists because they are on the autism spectrum is necessarily wise. ASD covers a very broad range. Typically, I would expect you to select for a range of capabilities based on the roles to be performed. Some people on the ASD spectrum might fit into specific niches required by your community, but I would never expect the autism to be a deciding factor in and of itself. For example, I have a graphics artist on my webcast team. The requirements of the role are: * good aesthetic sense, * ability to focus and do creative work in real time in a chaotic environment, * finds satisfaction in a role where he is relatively isolated from the rest of the team, and * ability to use some specific software packages. I found the perfect match, and found out much later by accident that he is autistic. His autism is a benefit in that role because a part of his condition is being synesthetic. He experiences emotions and sensations as colors, so he is finely attuned to subtleties of art that I completely miss. He and I get along well in part because I am oblivious to many social signals, so I don't pick up on his behaviors that drive neurologically normal folks nuts. However, If I were neurologically normal, his social skills would be a sufficient liability to rule him out, no matter how good he is technically. [Answer] My grandson is autistic, through him I know a dozen other autistic children. A major problem with autistic children is a failure to understand the needs of other people, the pain of other people, the wants of other people. They don't care because in a way they are incapable of it; they do not have the normal structures that let them feel sympathy or empathy with another. Other people can be objects to them, objects that cry when pushed, but it's like turning on the TV or radio and hearing a car engine or a speech: To them, no emotional impact from the crying, they pushed an object out of their way and that was the end of that. This is not to say they do not have their OWN emotions; they cry, feel pain, and get angry when they don't get their way. They just have a lot of failure understanding that OTHER people have emotions, or don't relate to them well: Once my grandson asked his mother, "Are you mad?" She said, "Yes, I am very mad." He replied, "Stop being mad. I don't like it!" Autistic people would not be good colonists. They can't be good supervisors because they don't understand other people, or how problems affect other people. On their own, if they are constrained and disciplined (without harming them) they can get jobs done. But they DO have their own emotions, wants, hurts and favorites, you cannot just program them like robots. They may not feel a need for the **companionship** of other people, but they do still **need** other people. On their own in the wild, they would die: Humans are weak, slow, and easy prey even when fully abled. As colonists, you would have a hundred people on their own, not a team of a hundred people. They don't naturally form teams, they can only be part of one if somebody else is running the show. Autistics (or Aspbergers) are ***not*** smarter than everybody else when it comes to social glue and relationships and working together toward a shared goal, that is a defining characteristic of being autistic. If they had that, even in normal measure, they wouldn't be autistic, they'd just get labeled as having an OCD or compulsion or anxiety. [Answer] No offence intended, but extremes of any sort will be bred into the population and eventually show physically, psychologically and politically. For colonists you are much better off with a wider spectrum of people. [Answer] My first response to all the responses is ... are any of you autistic? If not, you are not really qualified to provide any reasonable description of what being autistic/aspergers means. First, the diversity of "issues" that the autistic population deal with is huge. One experience with one autistic person is merely one data point. It borders on irresponsibility to then generalize the entire autistic population based on that single experience. The neurodiverse people are classic hunter/gatherers (rather than having an agrarian based environmental response). They are your classic explorers/scouts. They should always be part of the leading edge of any exploration. They are problem solvers that interpret their environment in unique ways that neurotypicals do not. Certainly, not all autists would be qualified. We are not all qualified to be astronauts, are we? There would be a selection process that would choose those who thrive in new and challenging environments. Someone, like Charles Darwin, a typical type asperger fellow who voyaged around the planet cataloguing life forms, would not be amiss. Merely because autists are generally espoused to have low social IQs is not a huge factor. I mean, they are a bit like computers aren't they, lacking in the banal give and take on inconsequential subjects? I'm not sure why being socially adept is a high priority for space exploration. In fact, all that neurotypical emotion just gets in the way of getting the job done. Think about the mind set of the military and NASA personnel.... [Answer] Everyone here is missing a much broader issue that would make a colony of space autistics a bad idea. [Autism is characterized by a lack of motor coordination](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5996852/#:%7E:text=Children%20with%20autism%20not%20only,skills%20hamper%20participation%20with%20peers.), all people with autism either have poor gross motor skills or lack fine motor dexterity which results in terrible hand-eye coordination. Autistic people can't accurately do things like catch a ball to save their life, and most who excel in physical activities like martial arts only do so after extensive training to compensate. This would be bad in space where failing to have good hand-eye coordination could result in small debris clogging the air filters or failing to grab something in an EVA. Also, autistic people usually don't get along well with other autistic people. It's not like autistic people are all on some alien wavelength that lets them vibe together. Indeed, from an autistic perspective the neurotypicals come off as kind of a hive mind. They wouldn't cooperate well. Then there's the issue that while heritable we don't know what actually causes autism. You would have some inheritance of autism but you would have issues where many children born are either neurotypical or have low-functioning autism (non-verbal, unable to communicate at all, etc.), which is really bad. [Answer] Autism is a spectrum, just like "normal" humans are on a different spectrum of intelligence and capabilities on all fronts. This means that not all high-functioning autists actually have a complete lack of social capabilities. Autists can learn social interactions. In fact female autists are so bombarded with so many social cues that the normal-functioning female autists are much more rarely found than the male ones. Most people on the internet seem to think that all Autists are the classical "overload them and they start screaming" type, even though the screaming is just one (bad) coping mechanism for overload and there are many more. So let's just describe a scene that by all accounts should be nightmare-fuel for autists: A 3-day large organized party with 6000+ people paying for entry and several tents blasting loud music. The people show all emotions from sadness, love, happiness, jealousy etc mutated by the various amounts of alcohol, drugs, sleep and food they had. At any one point several dozen conversations are taking place over the music while each person is bombarding everyone around them with a variety of bodylanguage and facial expressions. Not only did a normal-functioning autist help during these parties several times a year while listening to the music, but he simultaneously worked there as a manager to make sure his part of the party ran smoothly so people showed up and were relieved in time while pitching in when it was busy. Each of these individually can be a cause to overload an autist, but this autist did all of these simultaneously without problems or overload. He was specifically requested for the job several times afterwards even. Put that same autist with the right person in a silent and bare room, and you can overload him in 15 minutes flat. The point: Not every autist is the same, and you aren't sending your autists to a clustered chaotic loud party but a structured space-colony. Even better: All others are also autistic and they are both trained and selected for the job! You hold all the cards: The Autists are likely selected young and trained for the job for years. Just like not all "normal" humans can become an astronaut and need to be selected and trained for the job. You'll teach them coping mechanisms and test their capability to handle the stresses of the environment. What's even better is that our current society isn't build to deal with autists which never helped and only exacerbated the problem. Autists often find that they have to adapt to the people around them but at the same time the people around them make no effort to adapt to the autists (in fact some will deliberately be worse, trying to blame someone for attempted murder and almost winning the case worse). But your society is quite literally build out of Autists and can be build from the ground up to cater to them. An advantage autists have is that they don't need that much space for their lives. They don't need as much space for relaxation, in fact many autists will relax or de-stress to avoid overload by specifically doing small tasks and making sure their environment is in perfect order. That is exactly what you want. If you select your high-functioning autists you could very well end up with a lot of Einsteinian brainiacs in your colony. I actually don't doubt that it would be the most ordered, crime-free community ever to have existed. [Answer] High functioning autistic people would be good for the day to day running. They live for routine so boredom and repetition wouldn't be an issue but they would be terrible as colonists because they are bad at adaption and change. My brother has high functioning autism and works as an IT sys admin. He can handle the day to day running and problems he has seen before but he goes to pieces when facing a problem he doesn't know how to solve. Lucky for him he has an encyclopaedic memory for computers and networking. Colonizing space has things go wrong and you have to be extremely adaptive to solve the issue. Failure to do so could end in death. They could quite easily freak out when faced with life and death choices. At best you might have a couple for their fantastic, almost computer like minds but they could never be in charge. [Answer] **NO This is Madness** I'm going to simplify your fundamental problem. A colony is like any other human communal or organizational structure: **IT NEEDS UNIQUENESS AND INDIVIDUALITY** Throughout history whenever man has attempted to homogenize a society it has resulted in failure. Forcing everyone to be this or think that inevitably gets crushed by the "out of the box" thinker that turns the table. In this case your collective of autists would be hammered by a normally composited society of socialites and autists. **Normally** I would try and explain my point further listing facts however you have now broached the incredibly enormous topic of what makes a society as well as human social patterns. There are plenty of text books, courses, and thesis you can read to enhance your understanding on this subject. Suffice it to say, what happens when your incredibly focused autist astronaut encounters a problem outside his comfort zone. Autists are generally not known for their adaptability. No one wants their nuclear core technician rocking back and forwards against a wall while the siren are blaring. ]
[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/92482/edit) For a project I'm working on, I have a world that is comparable to medieval Europe, except, dragons exist. Humans don't live anywhere close to dragons, since they are pretty destructive and the humans don't have any meaningful ways of fighting them. However, for the storyline, I want the humans to interact with the dragons, preferably by occasionally sending groups to where the dragons live. These would probably be 'expendable' humans, like criminals, sent there by a person in power to give them an opportunity to redeem themselves. The one problem is, I can't think of a good motive. Question: What would be a reason for humans to go near dragons (nests)? Some constraints: I don't want the dragons "to live on a gold mine", aka no purely geological reason; it has to be related to the dragons. Also, the dragons don't 'hoard gold' like the Smaug-types; they are just animals. [Answer] ## Scales It is often said that dragons [shed scales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecdysis). These scales are thought to have magical properties. (Whether they actually do or not isn't as important as the *perception* that they do.) This grants them an economic value. Where there is an economic value, there will be someone ~~foolish~~ brave enough to try to go after them. But of course, they're smart enough to not go after them personally. Nope. they instead hire people ~~more foolish~~ more brave than themselves, to get the scales for them. ## Eggs Chicken eggs are so common. Tasty, sure. But have you ever eaten the extremely rare *Omelette du Draco Ovum?* No? Tsk. So sad. Well, obviously, only the most wealthy people can [afford](https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlaalindahao/2016/03/03/worlds-most-expensive-meals-sublimition-masa-guy-savoy-prix-fixe-restaurants/#216aa2289a99) to dine on dragon egg omelettes. Some day, perhaps, you can afford the real thing. And no, ostrich eggs are no substitute. Sigh. ## Bones The bones of dead dragons are valuable, too. Ground up, they're said to be potent magic. Whole, they ward off evil spells. Ivory may be cheaper, but dragon bones are the real deal. Ivory just can't compare. ## Teeth and claws The sharp teeth or claws of a dragon make excellent daggers to impress your friends. Sure, they aren't quite as strong as good steel, but they're better than bad steel. And they don't rust. And dragons shed them. So it's not like you have to kill a dragon to get one. You just have to find one in the dragon's nest, before the dragon finds you. ## Dragon meat Dragon meat never rots. No one knows why; magic, obviously. And unlike common pig or cow meat, it is quite spicy. A rare delicacy, then, to eat dragon meat. And a favored food to take on the road, since it isn't salty and never spoils. If you can get some, it makes the best stews, the best travel rations. Expensive, though. And don't be fooled by venison cured with pepper or other spices. That crap will rot once you're a week into your journey -- and away from the merchant. ## Pets A few rare fools think that they are dragon-marked. These idiots strike out to find baby dragons. They think they can tame the dragons. For every thousand or so who go out attempting this, maybe one succeeds. The tamed dragons aren't really worth the risks, to be honest. They don't grow as large. They usually don't learn to fly. And even if they do, they're never tame enough to safely bear a rider. They don't mate in captivity. But they are impressive. ## Feces Dragon dung burns like nothing you've ever encountered. Where do you think the Chinese got the recipe for black powder? They copied dragon dung. Poorly, I might add. Dragon dung is more powerful than TNT, pound for pound. Quite valuable in wartime. ## Rite of passage Maybe stealing a scale or lost tooth from a dragon nest is a rite of passage for warriors. To prove your a man and ready to begin your journey as a soldier. Or maybe it is a spiritual quest taken by certain monks of a select order. ## Trial by dragon Instead of a [trial by combat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_combat), prove your innocence of [whatever crime you allegedly committed] by raiding a dragon nest. Come back with one dragon tooth or claw and one dragon scale, and you'll be innocent. If the dragon eats you, well, then we'll know you were guilty, you dirty criminal. [Answer] **Animal products** It depends on the mechanics of the world you're writing. If there is magic, say that dragon corpses, or dragon eggs, have magical properties. If you want to avoid magic, say instead that dragons' physiology is such that they need large amounts of precious minerals to function, or that their hide/scales/teeth/claws/heartstrings are more light and durable than any material the medieval world is able to economically produce, like spider silk, or are just nice for making luxuries out of, like ivory. **Capturing specimens** It could also be that there are thousands of different kinds of dragons, and the scientists/farmers/labourers want them for specialised tasks, or that the scientists/nobility wish to observe/study/document the different breeds in some way. [Answer] **DRAGONS RULE, HUMANS DROOL.** The dragons on this world are respected and even worshipped. Humans send pilgramages to the dragons so that they may ask favors, garner wisdom, or simply show respect. Dragons will require small sacrifices in exchange. You could have the dragons actually be indifferent to the humans, but accepting their "god" status as a way of not having to bother with them. While humans might not be able to harm a fully grown dragon, one must still watch her eggs, sleep, et cetera. Some dragons may occasionally ask for gold. (The baby dragons are teething and they need a metal soft enough to chew on as they are teething. The dragons may also see humans as kind of "pets" and may occasionally head out of their homes to protect their pets from threats and even other dragons. (Don't kick my pet human "fluffy") [Answer] ### It's a test for young men and women entering adulthood There comes a day in a boys life where he has to face his fears and show his village that he is worthy of being called a *Man*. In the middle of the year all boys who reached this point will together be sent to the dragon nest and tasked with retrieving something that would prove they were close to the nest. For example an egg for the ones who are really brave or just a few scales that lie around near the nest for the ones not that brave. The same may apply to young women who want to show that they should be treated with a special respect and want to be allowed to enter certain political posts. By bringing back evidence of their bravery they are allowed to continue as normal members of society. The better their evidence the higher the chance that they will be important figures, maybe even acknowledged in other parts of the country when they manage to capture a young dragon. A few die every year. But that's what it means to live in a medieval world populated by dragons. Only the strong may survive - everyone else will automatically be viewed as some kind of outcast or criminal not worthy to continue his bloodline. Criminals from the surrounding villages are always used as an escort - by making sure the young men and women survive they can redeem themselves. Every criminal gets up to 5 young men and women who he is supposed to protect. If all of them survive the criminal is freed of his sentence. If some die his sentence will be lowered depending on how many survive. If all die the criminal will be seen as an outlaw and should be killed on sight. [Answer] ## Communication In many fantasy worlds, dragons are creatures with a level of intelligence similar to humans. Sometimes they can even speak human languages. So you can communicate and reason with them. Unfortunately dragons are also very dangerous and aggressive. Anyone trying to talk to a dragon when it has a bad day risks being roasted. So you usually send messengers who are expendable. Unfortunately that means that you can only send people who are not just expendable but also *reliable*. You have to trust the messenger to do their best to deliver the message even if it could costs their life. But you can not expect the dragon to sign a receipt. A convicted criminal would just throw the message away and claim they delivered it. Possible reasons to communicate with a dragon: * Ask them nicely to stop attacking villages and attack the villages of your enemies instead. * Trade with them. Maybe there is something dragons need or want from humans. Maybe there is something dragons can provide to humans (besides protection). * Ask them if it is OK to settle in some area or if the dragon considers it its territory and will burn down everything you build there. * Inform them about some existential threat which might also be relevant for dragonkind. [Answer] **Entertainment** Traitors and murderers are given to the beast for feeding, while the noble court looks from afar making bets of who is going to be devour first. **Protection** As a natural protection for the kingdom, just like setting a castle near a river or a mountain. The objective is to use the dragon hunting grounds as barrier agains an advancing army or any other dangers comming in that direction. **Costume** People gets used to the posible disasters that would occur for settle in a specific location, for example earthquakes, volcanos, twisters, dragon attacks, etc. Most people would stay even in the presence of this danger for the money or better life that they can find here over other towns. **Religion** Dragons are magical creatures that people worship and wish to create temples, take care of them and feed them. You could find a few examples in our civilization for this kind of behaviour. ]
[Question] [ I’m new to worldbuilding and have started building my world last week. The world that I'm trying to make is a paranormal fantasy but as I was building the world I had an idea that I wanted to experiment but don't know how to approach this. The idea is each country in this world has a setting based on a sub-genre. For example the types of countries I'm thinking to make are: One country that has a steampunk setting where the government is a absolute monarchy. Another one is a cyberpunk where a mega corporation runs the country. Is an idea like this even possible? By “possible” I mean can it even make sense and fit in one world. And how can it? I'm having trouble trying to make sense of it. Are there even any stories that have a idea like this? [Answer] Take Earth in the late 19th century. * Industrializing democracies and *de-facto* constitutional monarchies like the UK and US east coast. Industrialists, bankers, engineers. * Frontier sectors where "the cavalry" hunts down natives like the US West or southern Africa. Cowboys, settlers, bandits and sheriffs. * A great bureaucatized monarchy in China. A different autocracy in Japan, with different outcomes. * Small tribal units in much of Africa, not explored by the rest of the world (which wrote the maps). However, the industrializing countries from the first bullet point did have a global reach, and the others did not. As the poem went > > Whatever happens, we have got > > > The Maxim gun, and they have not. > > > Hilaire Belloc, The Modern Traveller [Answer] It can be done. I can think of a few examples off the top of my head * *Diamond Age* by Neil Stephenson -- The "phyles" in this world are almost a perfect match for what you describe. * *Times Eye* by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter -- In this story, the Earth is cut up like a jigsaw, and put together from pieces from different eras. If they can make Genghis Khan meet dinosaurs while taking advice from a Russian cosmonaut, you can have subgeneres! * *Otherland* by Tad Williams -- This one might be a bit cheating, because much of the exotic culture mashups we see in Otherland occurs in a VR world. However, given how important VR is in his story, I think it qualifies. We also get to see a cultural clash between several subcultures and one tribe of bushpeople. While the ways of !Xabu's people are fading in the story, you still have a setting where they exist alongside modern civilization. * *Dune* by Frank Herbert -- The Fremen and the Great Houses are as far apart in styles as you could get, and yet they share the same planet. They even fight, which is pretty impressive from a literary perspective. Despite being very different, Herbert managed to make them evenly matched. [Answer] One way to explain this is simply that the different countries have different levels of technological and magical development. So you may have a nominally modern tech country where fantasy elements are hidden (paranormal fantasy). You may have an advanced, purely scientific country, no magic used at all (cyberpunk). You may have a country where they mix technological and magical solutions (steampunk). You may have a country where only magic is used (epic fantasy). You may have some difficulty explaining why the technological solutions don't spread out to the magical countries. One explanation that appears frequently in fiction is that magic breaks tech. For example, [Kate Daniels](http://urbanfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Kate_Daniels_series), [Wren Valere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Anne_Gilman), and [Harry Dresden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dresden) make electricity work badly around them. For example, Kate often has trouble using a phone. Harry has to drive an old VW Bug because he fries the computers in newer cars (on a bad day, he fries the ignition of the Bug). Perhaps the magical country is awash with ley lines or whatever. The scientific country has none. The steampunk country has lots of low level magical energy. So no modern electricity or internal combustion engines, but it doesn't interfere with steam engines. Your paranormal country may have remote places where magic is available but most of the surface is magic free. Practitioners need to store up magic to use outside of their enclaves. Another solution, used in the [Well World series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_World_series) was to make different locations subject to different physical laws. The basic idea was that the physical laws from multiple worlds were to be present in one world. There were distinct borders with different physics on either side. The [Hell's Gate series](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/HellsGate) has separate universes (rather than countries). Tech universes are adjacent to each other and magical universes are adjacent to each other. They meet in the middle, where both tech and magic work. But the closer to the tech end, the less that magic works. And vice versa. [Answer] The Torg RPG by West End Games (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torg>) was a multi-genre version of Earth. There is a backstory about how it got this way and the variety of genres included: * Living Land — a primitive, Lost World-style jungle covering large swaths of the United States' East and West coasts plus a small piece of Canada. The dominant species were humanoid dinosaurs called edeinos. Technology and magic were almost nonexistent, but the inhabitants had access to powerful miracles. * Aysle — a magical, low-technology realm that covered most of the United Kingdom and parts of Scandinavia. The realm was similar to traditional Dungeons & Dragons settings, but with slightly less powerful magic and somewhat better technology. * The Cyberpapacy — covering France, this is a realm which was initially a repressive, medieval theocracy (that wielded real miracles). En route to Core Earth it melded with a virtual reality and gained cyberpunk technology and attitudes. Ruled by the Cyberpope Jean Malreaux I. * Nippon Tech — an ultracapitalist nightmare society covering most of Japan where lies and betrayal were as common as breathing, and where martial artists, computer hackers, and yakuza fought to bring down the corporate-controlled government. * The New Nile Empire — based in North Africa, this realm combined a restored Ancient Egypt with pulp sensibilities. 1930s technology worked side-by-side with Egyptian magical astronomy and "weird science" powers and gizmos, while costumed Mystery Men patrolled the alleyways of Cairo. * Orrorsh — a Gothic horror realm ("Orrorsh" is an anagram of "horrors") set in Indonesia where the realm's Victorians considered it their White Man's Burden to protect the natives from the unspeakable monsters roaming the countryside. There were a few books set in this muylti-genre world that might help. A list can be found at: <https://www.librarything.com/series/TORG+Novels> * Storm Knights (Torg, the Possibility Wars) by Bill Slavicsek * The Dark Realm (Torg, the Possibility Wars ; Bk. 2) by Douglas Kaufman * The Nightmare Dream (Book 3 of the Possibility Wars/Torg) by Jonatha Ariadne Caspian * Strange Tales From the Nile Empire by Greg Gorden * Dragons over England (Possibility Wars) by Ed Stark * Out Of Nippon by Nigel Findley * Mysterious Cairo by Greg Gorden * Interview with evil (Torg, the possibility wars) by John Terra * City of Pain by John Terra Intermingling the people from the different genres was what made Torg interesting to me because each person had a completely different world-view. [Answer] I was going to reference TORG but Jerry answered that much more thoroughly than I could have. In general, if you have modern travel options and modern communication, it would be hard to have such totally different settings on a homogeneous world. You might have areas with preferences for one type or another but that would mostly be stylistic. In general people would end up using whatever is best for a specific situation and have a blend. You could have religious or cultural reasons for the divides. Religious areas may be anti tech or anti magic (or both). However, I don't know if that would have enough different settings for you. That leaves a TORG like world with different physical properties for different areas. In this case, figure out what caused it, how long ago happened, and which, if any, of the settings was the default before the incident. The main question here is: do items from one area function in another area? In TORG, people had a field around them that allowed the properties of their birth zone to overide the local zone enough to let personal devices work for them. Maybe there is a sharp cut off where people have to get off the train, walk to another platform and board the lightning rail. Maybe there are blended zones between or the zones are mostly blended areas with the bias stronger as you approach its center. Maybe items from one area only function for a limited time in another area: batteries die, magic items slowly loose charges/power, robots experience increasing glitches. [Answer] I recommend reading "Clockwork Angels" by Kevin Anderson and Neil Peart. There are many very good recommendations to your question, however "Clockwork Angels" answers *specific* categories, i.e. a 'Steampunk' -like Monarchy culture, some in Dark Ages style trade City-States, all in a work were Alchemy works. As an added bonus, the story line is essentially an Alt-Earth version of Voltaire's "Candide". [Answer] As a suggestion, you can come up with some kind of global cataclysm that would destroy almost everything except the large isolated and well-protected technological area. All the people are to build some kind of preservation colony under defensive dome, pretty much like in the "City and the Stars" by A.Clarke. Everyone capable of buying a ticket moves under the dome, most of the "poor" people's world is destroyed, though maybe not entirely. Then in a post-apocalyptic world new civilisation rises from scratch, while City Under The Dome stays isolated for some time. After the lockdown is lifted, there are two worlds: a marvellous technological heaven from the past and a brand new civilisation that might as well be in a steampunk setting at that time. Not sure about mega-corporation, though. Anyway, such contrast can be exploited in many different ways, I believe. Besides, it depends on what is considered "in one world". Does the one universe count? If yes, then it's easy - make one planet an agricultural, make the other one industrial. The good example is "Commonwealth Saga" by P.Hamilton where exactly this approach is well described. ]
[Question] [ To clarify, I don't mean "whoosh kapow" laser rifles and I don't mean the handheld rocket launchers or plasma cannons fiction often tries to pass off as railguns. The weapons I'm referring to operate more like the Boeing Laser Avenger and Mass Effect weapons respectively. The laser rifle is used on low power settings to cause skin lesions, second and first degree burns, and rapid-onset embolisms via boiling the victim's blood in small pockets. At higher settings, it can boil water inside the body to cause small, localized steam explosions to kill the target or just cut through flesh completely, amputating limbs and bisecting torsoes. The railgun/coilgun is pretty self-explanatory. All I'm really looking for is a relatively normal rifle with a higher than normal muzzle velocity but the same muzzle energy that doesn't rely on chemical propellants. Assuming at least a few centuries of technological progress and the advent of both antimatter power production and miniaturized fusion reactors (a question which I will likely dive into another time), could either of these modern(-ish) weapon systems be miniaturized into a handheld rifle? If so, which would be better in terms of combat effectiveness and energy efficiency? [Answer] My guess: the choice of weapon will be determined by * ease of production: what weapon is easier to make and has the least strain on industrial capacity. (i personally think the railgun is easier to produce) * Situation: lets say the railgun is most efficient at long range (like in fields) but is rubbish in urban environments which is the laser rifles main location. You can see this in the current military as they deploy troops with weapons most likely adapted to the situation. * Price: The more complex the weapon the more expensive it gets. i think the laser rifle is more complex making it possibly more expensive. * Reliability: Which of the weapons can take the most damage before breaking, can work after being submerged in water or mud, etc etc. * Protection: which of the weapons is easier to defend against, is there protective clothing against any of these weapons? if protective clothing against laser shots is more common then protective clothes again rail-gun projectiles then it would be the more logical (not necessarily the most economically friendly) solution. * Logicistics: Are the weapons and their ammo easy to store and maintain? for Rail-gun you have to store: the gun itself, it's ammo, it's power supply but are easy to maintain for the laser rifle, the rifle and power supply have to be stored but high maintenance required These are factors that i think must be considered in choosing the more plausible weapon. It's not an complete answer to you question but it might provide ideas. [Answer] From a practical military standpoint, the development of a rail/coilgun weapon is actually preferable to a laser for ground combat. Lasers are line of sight weapons, require delicate optics and are generally energy hogs, converting as little as 20% of the input energy to laser light. (Free Electron Lasers can do better, but the issues of generating a relativistic electron beam to energize the weapon would seem to put it outside of the realm of "hand held" weapons). The soldiers using them are also limited to line of sight, can find the beam is blocked by fog, dust or smoke, and if the beam is too powerful, the air itself turns into a plasma which runs back "up the beam" to the laser emitter (meaning the laser weapon would have to operate in a pulsed mode). These issues are not as much of an issue in naval, airborne or space weapons, compared to ground combat. Kinetic energy weapons like railguns or coilguns have fewer limitations for the soldier. He can fire through smoke and other visible obscuration. Given the massive kinetic energy of these rounds compared to ordinary bullets, he can shoot through walls and other types of cover which would stop laser light or conventional small arms rounds. And of course depending on the calibre of the weapon, he can fire a variety of rounds, including potentially smart rounds or explosive rounds, much like the XM-25 is designed to do. I suspect the evolved electric firearm will resemble the AA-12 automatic 12 gauge shotgun in concept. The soldier can fire a solid "slug" to breach cover, a flechette round filling the air with high speed darts and an explosive round to attack area targets. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iA9v2.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iA9v2.jpg) *AA-12* The main issue here is the amount of recoil the soldier will feel as the weapon is fired, so the action might be in a "soft mount" that absorbs some of the recoil force inside the stock before it reaches the soldier. [Answer] It depends. All militaries use use a range of weapons for different means. As they say in the military, "the situation always dictates." In all honesty, chemical based projectiles are likely still the way to go in a realistic future because of their: 1. Extremely low failure rate 2. Ease of use 3. Ease of repair This is why, for nearly all of human history, despite amazing advancements, we used (and still use) variations of pointy sticks to kill each other - because they work most of the time, with little training, and are easily maintained in extreme environments. (It could be argued that bullets are just another variation of a pointy stick. Lasers are just another form of burning people. Both carry the same hazards and advantages then as now. But that's besides the point.) In the future, guided munitions, such as an [electronically actuated bullet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_bullet), are more likely, like those used in the [Fifth Element](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119116/), pictured below, used to hit a target behind Zorg: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yhlb9.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yhlb9.png) The ZF-1 used in this scene is a multi-purpose weapon, which uses multi-purpose ammunition, and is integrated with other weapon systems such as darts, flame thrower, and freeze gun, among other lethal and non-lethal uses. But in consideration of your original question. With **laser weapons**: Pros: * They could easily damage unprotected flesh * Be safe for use in cases where hull breach (if spaceships are a consideration) is a concern * Only need to be large enough to have a power source and a laser diode * Power source could be adaptable * No recoil Cons: * Easily refracted or scattered (by smoke or materials) by environment (weather, armor, smoke) * Field repair near impossible * War is inherently dirty, lasers need to fire through clean lenses for max effectiveness * Collateral damage is a great concern, due to ability to set things afire, and the inability to warn of misfire * If there is a Geneva Convention-like law, burning people to death could be a legal concern under an "unusual cruelty" clause On **rail guns**: Pros: * Can penetrate through a variety of armor * Not easily deflected * Projectile not effected atmospheric concerns Cons: * Must be used in a vacuum, because recoil is either deadly in a handheld weapon... * Or the recoil is so violent, an auxiliary system is needed to compensate... Not amount of "technology" can account for huge amount of momentum, so there must be some system * The rail must be ***perfectly*** clean, otherwise the barrel would explode lethally * Ammunition is limited, even if it could be made very tiny A **HUGE** con for both weapons: * Both are susceptible Susceptible to EMP But if they were used in an infantry squad: * Lasers, preferred where hull penetration is a concern, or as a secondary weapon * Railgun, anti-infantry/light armor weapon, standard ground combat If there is a special weapons company/platoon, such as modern militaries have, which handle mortars, explosives, and machine guns - then such a weapons section may be better suited to handling the special purpose weapons while the infantry riflemen carry reliable chemical projectile weapons. This would allow the railgun team to emplace and give supporting fire, as well as carry the necessary equipment to deal with recoil; and a laser team to carry the batteries and lens cleaning equipment for laser. There could be a variety of sizes of lasers/railguns much like the modern military was well - some meant to be carried on foot-patrol, and others meant for base defense or long range support. Be sure to acknowledge that a technological advanced military must not only have the ability to kill with sticks or bare hands, but also know how to use advanced communications/navigation equipment we don't currently have available, and know how to operate if that equipment is out of commission or damaged. (Such as knowledge to repair it or ad hoc it.) [Answer] Well, to the best of my knowledge, the problem with both weapons system is the energy density of the energy source, meaning you either need hilariously advanced batteries to (out)compete the chemical propellant of a bullet or a hook it up to a power generator. You seem to postulate fusion reactor, which will fit in a hand-gun, while also not melting the gun (and your hand) with the waste heat. Considering that factory hall sized attempts are still not certain to work, we are firmly in the realm of speculation/fantasy here. If you want to go with the soft-approach, the answer will probably depend on what you want the weapons to do. Lasers are line of sight weapons, bulky (by definition their concentrating optics/mirror need to be large enough to NOT melt, while focusing the weaponized beam) who will expierence defraction and refelction in atmosphere (shorter range), your railgun slugs are slower but could be tuned to follow ballistic arches (shoot over the hill). One would also assume that railgun would experience considerable rail erosion, but if we handwave the power source, I guess, we can also handwave that. If you want to keep it slightly more believable I would constrain Lasers/Railguns to vehicles (Tank size and up) and run with normal slug-throwers for my power armour. Maybe something like High Energy Chemistry for your slug propellant? [Answer] There are a few factors that you need to consider with small arms nowadays. **Supply chain** - or in other words, ammunition. Supplying ammo for your troops is a massive task - not just expensive in terms of sourcing raw materials and manufacturing but also the extensive infrastructure to bring the ammunition to your troops. Railguns have all the same problems that firearms today have - limited ammunition per clip, and you need to pause and reload at regular intervals. Even vehicle-mounted weapons require the arduous reloading process (although they can of course carry many more rounds). Laser weaponry would not have this issue - assuming they draw power directly from your miniaturised fusion reactors as opposed to batteries, they could effectively work forever without reload or recharge. Certainly the lifetime of the reactor would be longer than the lifetime of the weapon itself due to general wear and tear. On that topic ... **Maintenance** - railguns, like conventional weapons, have moving parts. Projectiles must be moved into the barrel from the ammo clip, and fired. All of this would require mechanical movement, which needs lubrication, maintenance etc. Laser weaponry needs no such components - aside from the heat generated by firing the weapon, there would be minimal wear on the materials. No moving parts, no mechanical reloading, less wear and tear. That means a longer life, so your military can spend less on replacement weapons. Your troops also spend less time stripping their guns regularly. **Range** - this has been mentioned in previous answers, and while railguns will fire projectiles that are affected by gravity (therefore increasing their range, in theory) this is not really practical for handheld firearms. Sure, a ground-mounted railgun could bombard enemies over the horizon (and artillery is used in this manner today) but the main brunt of frontline troops will be engaging at line-of-sight range. In this case laser weaponry wins, as distance will not affect their aim as lasers aren't affected by gravity. On top of this, lasers travel at the speed of light, so there's no need to lead targets. Your troops can shoot at an aircraft two miles up and will hit it instantly. No need to adjust sights for distance falloff, or wind speed and direction - just point and press. **Stealth** - not something a lot of people consider, but bearing in mind how useful stealth can be (especially for snipers and commando-style units) it's still important. Railguns are incredibly loud, while laser weapons need make no sound at all as they're entirely electronic. In addition, railgun projectiles may be easy to spot (especially large ones), while lasers (contrary to most sci-fi depictions) are practically invisible (moreso if you give your stealth troops specialised lasers that pulse on and off at a high frequency, making them hard to see even in a dust cloud). The only person who could directly see the light from such a laser weapon being fired would have to be standing directly in front of it - and they'd be toast anyway. Through all of this I've assumed you have very efficient and high-powered tech - you mentioned miniaturised fusion reactors so I'm assuming the laser weapons in question can flash-heat a target instantaneously, as opposed to having to hold the beam against a target for any length of time to do damage. The technology for this isn't out of the question, it just requires a lot of power which we can't scale down with today's technology. The one advantage I would give to railguns is that they're much more adaptable - you could fire gas canisters, EMP charges, harpoons etc. from one. However I think for pure damage output and effectiveness my above points stand. [Answer] I will take the reverse position as @GijsM, to put some different point of view: Assuming it is a futuristic mean technologically advanced, we could assume that: * Storage of energy is not yet an issue. * Production is not an issue, the cost has been optimized up to the limit where, due to massive production, cost is not a limitation. Due to those factors, the laser weapon has been a "holy grail" of weapon engineering for long time due to its important superiority: * The bullet travel at light speed, making accuracy higher for moving targets. Furthermore, it is impossible to intercept. * Bullets do not need to be produced * Munition weight nearly zero (excepting battery and recharging system). * Not (less) affected by wind, electromagnetic fields, gravity, etc. * May cross some materials without resistance (windows) * Nearly infinite range. * Allows infinite / continue fire rate. As a general comparison, if technology is not a limitation, laser is much more effective. [Answer] Rail-gun/slug based tech 100% I'm ignoring the fact that you have man portable lasers that can bisect things at will; if that’s the case you're never going to have infantry combat at all (and rail guns will effectively operate identically at that power level too.) The advantages of throwing something physical totally outweigh the advantages of a laser. (It’s also traditional for humans.) There are going to be a lot of opinion based reasoning and you can propose situations for both sides and then counter them. For example: Smoke rendering lasers useless, counter; if the laser is that powerful, it will ignore smoke/and or shoot a different wavelength of laser. Urban combat being poor for low fire rate slug throwers, counter; mini-gun - The loud bangs of slug throwers are demoralizing to enemies, counter; the beams of light from out of the darkness seeking to burn your eyeballs out of your skull are demoralizing to enemies. The biggest point FOR slug based guns is actually the basic problem with lasers; you have to hold the laser on target, while for a slug based weapon you only have to get the weapon on target at the same moment you pull the trigger. Weapons are all about imparting a lethal amount of energy to someone you want to go away. Slugs carry this energy in mass and velocity, and impart it by destructively dumping this energy into the soft tissues of the other guy. **Lasers impart this energy by heating a point; the more energy you want to impart the longer you have to hold it on that point.** If you stray even a little bit, you lose a massive amount of destructive potential because you are spreading your energy around rather then focusing it. I'm sure you can google the amount of force it takes for an object (bullet) to penetrate flesh, but don't assume a laser outputting the same energy held by a person will ever do the same kind of damage. It will cause burns sure, but you and the other guy are not going to be standing still and that same amount of energy will get spread around. Lasers might make sense as a vehicle mounted weapon where you CAN get the “cut everything in half” feeling because they're bringing their power-plants with them, but at the same time you’ll have the Gauss based Vulcan on the other side. Ultimately you need to decide what tech level your at; once you start getting to star trek levels of personal power potential [pew pew pew], infantry make almost no sense (unless you get equal super-tech armors). Lasers start to get advantages once they get hit-scan-kill abilities because they have no ballistics and start penetrating matter like rail-guns will, but until that point, all you're doing is putting burn marks into things. [Answer] **Both** If you posit that you have solved all the relevant technical problems for creating rifle-sized versions of both of these weapons, you're already in the space where you can determine what the in-world advantages and disadvantages of each one is. Given the number of constraints given above, it would be easy to decide that a given squad would carry one or more of each weapon type. To wit: Assuming hugely dense energy sources, lasers effectively have near-unlimited ammunition, and are unlikely to cause significant collateral damage. They are also likely cheap to produce and maintain, as they have few moving parts. This sounds ideal for the futuristic infanteer, who will be used to take and hold strategic assets and conduct house-to-house clearing of same. One or two squad members might carry the more expensive and specialized railgun, for use in specific situations. For terror troops, raiders, and other special forces, the railgun will likely be more useable. The cost and maintenance will matter much less, since they will be deployed on a small scale, and can use special ammunition tailored to the mission. Collateral damage is an asset for many of these mission types. Much like militaries make use of many different chemically-powered weapons now, in order to take advantage of the varying effects of those different weapons, so too will the rail rifle and lasgun become a part of a larger arsenal. [Answer] there is an online calculator for kinetic weapons and lasers, both are however in a vacuum. <http://www.5596.org/cgi-bin/kinetic.php> <http://www.5596.org/cgi-bin/laser.php> [Answer] Various good answers here, but I'll point out two advantages of laser weapons that haven't been mentioned. 1. Lasers are much more flexible as a weapon. With a rail gun, what you will end up with generally is a high powered rifle. With a laser, on an individual device you have the potential to have a variety of firing modes for the situation. Need a shotgun? Turn up the dispersion and tune up the capacitors. Need suppression fire? Switch to continuous beam and attach a big heatsink. Want to blind enemy sensors? Lower power output. You can have it all in one package. 2. Lasers are a lot easier to aim. With a rail gun, you basically have to align the entire assembly with the target. With a laser, aiming can be accomplished by turning the final lens. What this means in an infantry weapon is that a rail gun is limited by the abilities of the human holding it, whereas you can easily imagine building in auto aim capabilities to a laser rifle. Stick a camera and a computer on and your laser rifle user needs only to aim in the general direction of a target, pull the trigger, and bam, perfect headshots every time. [Answer] Your railgun, unless it has some massive detriment, is going to be the winner in this matchup. You have more versatility over the laser in terms of ammunition and loadout, and you don't have to hold your shot on target. That said, a laser weapon might have a specific valuable role, such as a sniper's weapon (if the laser beam doesn't diffuse over a long distance, it will be more accurate than a kinetic round). The real question then becomes is the railgun better than a traditional firearm? ]
[Question] [ I have a magic system in which mages can enhance existing power sources (such as taking a small spark and building it into a fireball) or launch pure 'magical' attacks. Generally their magic is only good at direct immediate applications of force/energy, no long term effects or subtler magics; but they can be quite powerful, particularly in battle. All mages store power in a Crystal which they use as a reserve to fuel their power. It can take anywhere from days to weeks to fully 'recharge' a crystal, depending on skill of mage, quality of crystal, and abundance of ambient mana. When they run out of mana they can't do anything and are helpless, and in fact generally try to keep at least half their mana in reserve at all times for emergencies. However, an oddity of the system is that it's 'cheaper', in terms of magic used, to deflect or even redirect an enemy's attacks back at them then it is to produce one's own. This is because an attack requires two steps: building up enough force for the attack to be dangerous, and then directing the attack. But a defender need only expend enough power to 'capture' the attacking magic to redirect it, at a much lower expenditure of mana. He also requires the skill to capture and control the spell fast enough to keep it from striking him; if not skilled enough he may be roasted, but most mages can redirect a single attack pretty easily. Non-mages can also Channel, which allows them to flow mana through their body to enhance speed/reflexes/etc to make them into stronger and faster fighters. Thus solders are generally faster and more lethal than soldiers of today, with a larger difference between master soldier and amateur. Mages cannot do this—the energy stored in their Crystal prevents Channelling—thus they are no match in a purely physical fight. However, mages still generally consider a non-mage to be a minor threat since they can unleash death from range and generally kill a soldier, even a skilled Channeller, before one could close in to do any harm. I'm trying to get a feel for what magical duels are likely to look like in this setting. Mages often fight other mages and so will have learned how to fight. Their opponent may be more or less skilled than them, and may have more or less mana 'stored' than them (a less skilled mage may have more mana than a more skilled mage at time of a duel if the skilled mage had recently expended some of his, for instance). A mage has an idea, but may not always be certain, about how much mana another mage has stored when a battle starts. What I want is for magical battles to still be interesting, featuring trading of attacks and defense, counter attacks & redirects, that can take a little while to be decided. However, the fact that defending is more mana efficient seems likely to push me to one extreme or another, which is something I want to avoid as being less interesting. I want to avoid situations where mages rarely attack because it's so much easier to defend, but I also want to avoid the opposite extreme where a mage will unleash a flurry of attacks to overwhelm the enemy attack and end the battle in the first second. How can I encourage dynamic fights, preferably including different strategies being preferred depending on one's skill vs. enemy, available mana each side has, and even enemy preferences? [Answer] One option that I could see working well is making the mages a lot more mobile on the battlefield than they normally would be in fantasy. If attacks are very easy to redirect, maybe make attackers move around a lot and try to sneak attacks into the sides of an opponent or from a downward angle (like a magical uppercut). If fighters are moving around very quickly, it would be much harder to redirect an attack back at an enemy. So instead of fights ending very quickly, they would be more like battles of attrition, with skilled mages trying to wear down an enemy's endurance or mana until they can't fight back, or surprise them and sneak an attack in. I could also see feints and being innovative as playing a large role, just like in real world boxing or even fencing. For instance, a mage could reveal a small torch with the intention of making the enemy think they're doing a fire attack, and then blasting the enemy with smoke instead. When the enemy is coughing and dazed, they could fire the real fireball and end the fight. However, this wouldn't be too OP, because an opponent who knew of his tactic could counter by clearing the smoke easily (I imagine doing something like clearing smoke would be much easier if you saw the attack coming). Long story short, having fights be decided by innovation and quick movement in all directions could keep combat refreshing and complex, instead of the more Harry Potter style standing in place and duelling. [Answer] There's a couple of different ways to do this. My first suggestion is to make it more difficult to "redirect" a more powerful attack. In other words, if a powerful mage throws an immensely powerful fireball at a weaker opponent that opponent may not be able to redirect the attack because he lacks the power, not necessarily the skill. Right off the bat that will create an imbalance which will make fights more challenging in some situations. Now for my other ideas: ### Feints and Illusions If an attack can be blocked, distract your opponent so that he won't block it. It would be interesting if some "evil genius" in your universe finds a way to "capture" a lot of energy, and then shoot two small fireballs in quick succession instead of a single large one. Alternately, one spell can create an illusion of many fireballs being launched, and the defender has no idea which is the real one. ### MMA (Mixed Magic Arts) Google "[Multiclassing: Because wizards run out of spells](https://memestatic.fjcdn.com/pictures/Multiclassing_4a8832_6397716.jpg)". If that picture won't make you LoL I don't know what will. Same principle applies here. You shoot a fireball at an opponent, followed by an arrow or two. Or maybe you summon minions that shoot (weaker) projectiles of their own. ### Conclusion What it really comes down to is being able to either distract, or overwhelm your opponent. I envision a fight where a skilled mage will launch a barrage of illusions at his enemy, followed by a chain of weak attacks, and the summoning of imps, or other minions, all adding their own "pinprick" attacks to the mix. The defending mage will have to unbind your summoned creatures, dispell the illusions, and deflect your attacks all at the same time. Two skilled opponents could go at it for quite a long time, and have one heck of an interesting battle. [Answer] Some answers gave an idea that more or less gave you a solution when put together. The magic you are describing relies a lot in really knowing the options you have. Magic let's you modify the rules of nature, how the energy and forces work. Therefore, **a mage with good knowledge of physics might have a huge advantage**. @Pork made some examples on how to evade attacks in a way that could be more mana-efficient, like changing the positive charge of the air. Same could apply to more situations, like changing humidity of the air, magnetism, gravity, etc. With that you could improve your deffences, but also make a simple attack way more destructive. What I see here is that attacking can be more efficient than simply throwing huge amounts of power. It all depends on how well you know your power. This way, **fighting between mages would really be a battle of wits. Rather than simply throwing and redirecting raw power, they'd optimize their use of mana through their knowledge of reality (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.).** [Answer] The implication in your setting is that launching a powerful attack on another mage will make you weaker relative to the other mage. So why would you ever do something that makes your position weaker? If confronted by another mage, your best strategy would be to NOT attack them and wait to see if you could bait them into attacking first and doing something stupid. From the real world, people try to kill other people without letting them fight back. There are three strategies: * Open up an attack suddenly before the defender is able to defend (the stab/shot in the dark ambush). * Bring enough friends so that he can't defend himself. * Kill him so slowly he doesn't know he's dying (i.e. poisoning) Those are basically how all assassinations went down historically. And historically, defense is stronger than an attack; a powerful warlord or king or ruler would be surrounded by bodyguards etc. So in your setting, your problem is not how to get mages to kill each other, but instead how to do it in ways that are not cowardly assassinations. You see, no one wants to die, so why would you risk your neck on an engagement that you might not win, especially if the very act of attacking to start an engagement lessens the chance of you winning? Certainly, why would you risk your neck on an engagement when you could just poison your enemy (I assume that a crafty mage can develop some magical/enchantment version of a poisoning....or just use regular poison). I think your scheme runs into a problem with human nature. If you want mages to fight, then attacking another mage cannot be a net negative, or all you will get is assassination attempts. You will have to build in some net positive to striking first...or at the very least make it win-probability-neutral. [Answer] I feel kind of like I may be looking at this wrong, but.... If your main power is amplifying things that exist, couldn't I amplify the heat generated by friction to directly burn my opponent? Or, if this force works both ways, I could decrease the friction he experiences while walking to make him slip. If there's any wind in the area, I could amplify that to push him off balance, especially if it comes from his side or something. You mention that mage me can make stuff bigger, you don't really address the idea of redirection. With an extremely literal interpretation of your system, I would have to amplify something else to counteract whatever was there - maybe a light breeze to redirect a fireball, positively charge the dust in the air to absorb a lightning bolt, heat something to melt an icicle, etc. I would generally disagree with the idea that its cheaper to reflect something (unless its a beam of light) than it is to nudge it towards someone but if that's the hand waving you're engaging in, fine. If I had to fight under these conditions, I would take props with me. I might have chaff made of combustible material so I could chuck it at my opponent, he would be forced to use magic to redirect the material while I looked for one or two that get through. I would also wear gear that wasn't really flammable to allow me to mostly ignore anything he shot back. Or you could use something like a flashbang and redirect all the light + sound at the enemy while also amplifying it. I think one of the easiest ways to make fights longer is to give mages one or more 'powers' or 'spheres of influence' that cover what they can affect with their 'magic'. This might also mean they have different ways of recharging - the lightning mage plugs into a wall outlet, the wind mage sits on a roof, etc. By doing this, you also make it so that a water mage could condense a shield to ward off a fireball but couldn't directly send it back. If their 'senses' are sort of limited to what they affect, this also makes sneak attacks more viable and probably a larger part of a fight. Under that situation, a Channeler might still be a threat. Channelers should probably get their own specializations - either body parts or attribute classes (strength, stamina, speed, defense, thinking, etc), probably attribute classes. Body parts sounds kind of weird, but you could do 'eyes', 'ears', 'upper body' kind of stuff. L.E. Modesitt Jr's *Saga of Recluce* had a system somewhat similar to what you're describing, from what I recall most battles were settled with one of: total overwhelming force, a large amount of minor actions or using magic as a distraction while they kill them with a mundane trap. [Answer] From a game design perspective there’s two types of conflicts, skill based and tactics based, something entirely skilled based would be a racing game where you can’t affect the other racers, you all race the same course with the same cars and whoever crosses the line in the shortest time wins. On the other hand an entirely tactics based game would be something like playing chess by email, each player has all the time in the world to choose their next move so there’s no reaction speed or focus required, players just have to make wise choices. The magic duelling you describe seems very skill based in the sense that spellcasting is a learned skill however it doesn’t sound like spell failure is a common event. If larger spells take more time/effort to cast but are also more effective at penetrating defences then you’ve a risk/reward mechanic. Big slow difficult spells are more risky but more rewarding whereas small fast simple spells are good for disrupting enemy spellcasting but won’t do much if any damage. Now terrain and position is very important because if you can use physical barriers to block enemy attacks you’ve got an advantage, likewise you don’t want your enemy to take cover or hide, especially if they know your location but you don’t know theirs. Thus you have tactics (where should I go, what spell should I cast, should I focus on attacking or defending) and skill (how fast can I cast, how big can my spells be, how well can I manage my mana and bluff that I’m vulnerable when I’m ready or ready when I’m vulnerable). With tactics and skill being important factors a more skilful mage can be defeated by good tactics whereas a tactical genius could be overwhelmed by superior, this makes the outcome uncertain, of course the better mage will win but the definition of “better” is a capricious thing. [Answer] What you describe is actually quite close to many oriental martial arts. Kendo would be an excellent example, where the going theory is that the first person to move loses. You could draw a great deal of content about these duels from those martial arts. Mage duels would need some outside force encouraging the mages to get closer to eachother. As you get closer, the line between an attack and defense blurs. An action which captures an opponent's spell defensively may also set one up to make an attack in return. Other than that, it would be a matter of waiting for your opponent to make a mistake. Sensitivity to what your opponent is doing would be king. If you can detect a flaw in their defenses, and fling a very small attack at that chink in their armor, you may be able to distract them away from defending another part of their body. Then you can make a larger attack there. [Answer] > > However, an oddity of the system is that it's 'cheaper', in regards of magic used, to deflect or even redirect an enemies attacks back at them then it is to produce your own. > > > When the opponent redirects your attack back against you, then how about redirecting it right back? Maybe while also adding some more energy to it in the process? A magic duel could be kind of like a ping pong game with the wizards passing the same magic projectiles back and forth between each other until one slips up and gets hit. In order to confuse the opponent, they will add additional minor projectiles to the fray, deflect some attacks but reflect others or do feints like pretending to deflect a fireball into the ground and then actually reflect it towards the opponent in the last moment. I could also imagine a kind of [magic tug-of-war](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeamOWar) with both opponents mentally wrestling over the control of a single fireball between them, each one trying to press it towards the other. There would be a lot of room for applying strategy, psychology and skill. The continuously escalating back and forth of projectiles would also look quite impressive and exciting to any spectators. [Answer] Add more types of magic If magic attacks are easy to redirect, mages could close in on the other, reflecting attacks, then stab the other mage with a sword. Simple, and boring. Battles could quickly turn into swordfights. Perhaps you can make mages able to channel their magic into a sword, or, even better, use magic to move (eg. shoot a fireball at the ground and ride the explosion, or use wind, etc.) Battles between mages would turn into cool jumping fights, with magic being used to try to get in range of another mage to stab, or to blast away channelers, or to distract other mages, etc. I think that mobile Channeler archer would add an element of excitement, and makes sense, as they can dodge, while forcing mages to be on their toes to dodge the arrows. I'd also make mages frail, so if they fail to defend, they die, or are severely injured (maybe it drains their mana). Frailty also rewards creativity, such as bouncing a lightning bolt while charging with a sword, causing the bolt to hit enemies in the back and kill them. ]
[Question] [ So...I will first describe the world. The main difference is that it is populated by humanoid bears instead of humans, but the countries are roughly the similar (there are countries that don't exist in our world such as Medwedia, the main superpower, but China, Russia, Great Britain, the USA, Germany, etc... still exist). There are also small geographic differences (the Ural mountains are built slightly differently, they are much higher, more like the Alps). As of 2015, the technology and society seems like a mix of different periods in time. For example, because Medwedia, the main superpower, is a very conservative nation, people still go out every day wearing suits and top hats. General technology is at the level of the 20th Century, but advanced computers (even better than ours) exist and a mission to Mars is happening likely before 2030. While we still have drones and stuff and tanks and planes, the infantry fights in formation, with the officer yelling "FIRE" and the soldiers firing their muskets. The marching still happens like with fife and drum, and all uniforms are still very colorful, as they were in the 19th Century. Also, the cavalry still plays a large role in battle, with dragoons charging at enemy tanks. So...what could possibly lead to such a technological mix? [Answer] If warfare is highly formal and ritualised, it might plausibly be restricted to archaic weapons and tactics. In this case war is like a large-scale duel, or even a sporting contest, used to settle disputes between nations. Stakes are limited, and the participants agree not to do anything too destructive. A loose historical parallel would be the largely bloodless [formal wars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condottieri) fought between city-states in Renaissance Italy, often with archaic weapons -- in this instance, knights instead of musketeers. On the other hand, if warfare is a genuine struggle for survival, it's highly implausible that the participants will voluntarily avoid using machine guns, tanks, aircraft, and so on. If any of these are used to their full potential, then nineteenth-century style cavalry and musketeer formations will be immediately slaughtered. (As pointed out in comments, the story of Polish cavalry charging German tanks in 1939 is a myth -- but the myth has stuck because it's such an obviously doomed and suicidal tactic. Short of super-technology or magic to level the playing field, your wish to have "dragoons charging at enemy tanks" is not going to work.) [Answer] Not having a lot of large wars. Starting by skipping WWI and WWII. Maybe even skipping Napoleon and his rampage across Europe. If large scale physical confrontations are rare and only a few brigades ever engage each other at a time there is less reason to 'improve' military tactics. Being very conservative could also dramatically slow down advancements as long as they aren't getting thrashed by their opponents. [Answer] You've got two very conflicting styles / goals here and I'm unsure if they can be resolved. The reason tightly formed infantry units went out of style is a rather large advance in 'spray' weapon tactics. Cavalry - These guys were useful up until automated fire really began to leave its footprint on the battle field. During times of muskets, the reload time between the infantry firing allowed groups of dragoons to successfully charge and overrun an infantry unit as they were frantically trying to reload. Early muskets also used 'plug' style bayonets that would permanently change their musket into a short spear and once plugged they couldn't 'unplug'. When guns became automatic and capable of firing more than one round in 10 seconds, a horse (or whatever your cavalry is riding) becomes a gigantic target with little ability to close in time. Machine guns made cavalry completely useless as machine gun fire could easily chew through a horse and the large side of it made it easy to hit. What makes a tank a different beast here is it's relatively immune to small arm machine gun fire that tear through cavalry so easily. (edit to add...I should mention this doesn't mean the horse was instantly obsolete. They began taking support roles in logistics instead. People could still use a horse to get to the battlefield...but they would dismount prior to battle) Infantry formations - These were decently widely used up until WWI when artillery started to be more and more commonly used. Artillery rounds were packed with steel balls and explosives that would spray the steel balls everywhere. It's estimated that just under 60% of all military deaths in world war I was directly caused by artillery fire...one round could completely decimate a tightly formed infantry group. Long range artillery fire put a quick end to formed infantry. Even grenades (grenadier) eventually had an impact in this domain. To go a bit further...planes can have the same effect an artillery unit can have...dropping bombs that explode on the ground and launch steel pellets in all directions is a complete loss scenario for tightly formed infantry groups. I'm having problems resolving this...it's a bit picky and choosy in a tech format to get the world you are asking for here. For tightly formed infantry and cavalry to be effective you need to explain away developments in automated fire and artillery. The biggest weakness of slow fire muskets was the reload time, so there is a very strong pressure to modernize muzzle loaded muskets into breach loaded weapons that can be reloaded significantly faster, and finally into automatic weapons that are reloaded by magazine. A single person with an automated rifle could easily devastate a formed group of infantry, and how you can be flying to mars but still reliant on single fire barrel loaded muskets is a bit beyond me. (added as per Ghanima's comment) - It was the great developments in small arm fire that drove the need to make armour units (tanks) that could resist the small arm fire that devastated cavalry. Where would the need for developments in tanks come from if cavalry were still effective? The other advancement you need to eliminate is artillery fire and explosives. In the line formation infantry days, cannons were in the beginnings of using 'grape shot' and other spray style shot (sorta the shotgun approach to cannons...grape shot is a bunch of grape sized pellets fired out of a cannon instead of one larger ball)...this was heavily employed on ship to ship warfare as small rounds wouldn't damage the opponents ship but would kill the crew. By the time world war one came along, we were launching explosive devices that would explode on impact that would spray small steel balls upon impact...no man in his right mind would intentionally stand in tight formation in battle again. You also need a way of removing small explosives, in particular grenades, from ever being developed. A grenade of today would almost completely down a tightly packed group of infantry. ANd theres where I'm stuck at...I have a problem seeing a society capable of flying to Mars be incapable of developing anti-personnel explosives, artillery, or even automated rifles. [Answer] Maybe you're looking at the problem from the wrong side... instead of asking why didnt they develop effective artillery/automatics/tanks/bombs why not ask what development in massed infantry technology made the aforementioned obsolete. Two narrative devices come to my mind, take them, leave them or develop your own. 1) A long range man-portable weapon that instantly detonates gunpowder/explosives. Combined with the advanced computing of your world (targeting) such a development would make high-cost pieces such as tanks/artillery a poor investment and magazines or grenades a greater liability to the carrier then the opponent. The tactics therefor revert to 'old style' man vs man where massed infantry and cavalry has its place. 2) A cheap, absolutely devastating weapon was developed that can wipe away entire civilizations or armies with no downside (like radiation). [Maybe something that rapidly corrodes all iron-based components]. Unrestricted use almost sent the world back to the stone ages as technology and cities were irretrievably lost... a more 'civilized' manner of warfare had to be developed and so they looked to the past. [perhaps backed by the powerful threat that in any extended conflict utilising these weapons the Medwedia empire would surely be the lone survivor] In short, design the world you want. There are plenty of solutions to the 'technical' problems... [Answer] You have to get some effect that negates the effectiveness of the individual soldier/vehicle. Unfortunately, the only way I see it developing is somewhat mystical... imagine that there is some invention that transform a kind of "aura" or "psychical energy" into some kind of force field that can be used to deflect conventional bullets (and make explosives explode well beyond dangerous range). The only weapons that somewhat work against this field are powered, again, from the same (or similar "aura"). Then, make the effects of the "aura" of a person extend beyond his body, and cumulative. So, if you have two guys together, each one's aura is a little more powerful than each of them separate. If you have one thousand of them together in a small area, they have a still stronger "aura". Also, put some limits at how it extends, so benefits to extra big formations are not directly proportional, and offset by other disavantages. For example, if you specify that your area has an effect radius of 3 square meters, you get the following distributions For one soldier, total power = 3 `00100 01210 12321 01210 00100` For two soldiers, total power = 5 + 5 = 10 `001100 013310 135531 013310 001100` For three soldiers: 6 + 7 + 6 = 19 `0011100 0134310 1367631 0134310 0011100` For ten soldiers, total power = 6 + 8\*7 + 6 = 12 + 56 = 68 `00111111111100 01344444444310 13677777777631 01344444444310 00111111111100` At certain sizes, the increases of total "power" are almost lineal with the number of soldiers, and other factors (frontage of fire, maneuverability) would come into play. [Answer] If most of the nations were extreme [isolationists](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolationism) they may all have developed at very different speeds and largely ignored the technology and ability of other countries. One of the most obvious cases where this happened was with Japan, which was using Samurai in a different style, but with manners similar to, medieval warfare up until about 1850's. (*As opposed to 1500-1600s*). --- My own knowledge of this is very limited and comes mostly from wikipedia, feel free to expand with more specifics. [End of Tokugawa shogunate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakumatsu) [Medieval Times](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages) [Answer] As other answers have mentioned, advancements in weapons technology made line infantry and cavalry obsolete. In particular, improved accuracy and reload speed of rifles, combined with mass-production techniques, made the main offensive advantage of line formations—volley firing—largely unnecessary, and made cavarly more vulnerable. The invention of the machine gun and the improvement of artillery made the tight groupings of line tactics a liability. Both line infantry and offensive cavalry were (mostly) obsolete by the end of WWI. So, to keep these formations and tactics relevant, you need to either **prevent** or **nullify** these advancements. You say that technology is around the same as our 20th century. That still leaves a pretty broad range of time—the technology in 1901 was vastly different from the technology in 1999. So the simplest way to allow 19th-century tactics in 20th-century society is to make it the *early* 20th century. While military tactics were already changing at the turn of the century due to the [Boer War](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boer_war) and other events, small changes in your world's history and technological development would make it plausible that they were still the same. Unfortunately, having your story in the early 1900's doesn't fit with your desire to have tanks and planes, let alone spaceflight and drones. So, you will need to go a little later. Both computing and rocketry were greatly advanced during (and because of) World War II. The first electronic programmable computer ([Colossus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer)) was built in 1943, and the first Turing-complete electronic computer ([ENIAC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC)) was made in 1946. The first artificial satellite ([Sputnik-1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1)) was put in orbit in 1957, and the first manned spaceflight ([Vostok 1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_1)) took place in 1961. So, for more advanced computing and spaceflight to be plausible, the rest of the technology in your world should be around the levels of the 1950's or 60's. By this time, automatic rifles, grenades, mortars, and bombers were commonplace in warfare. As Twelfth's answer states, it is extremely unlikely that a society or world could have the ability to travel to Mars without developing any of these technologies. They must be able to build pretty good rockets, so they should be able to make missiles relatively easily. You cannot reasonably deny your people the weapons advancements that made line infantry tactics or cavalry charges obsolete. If you want to keep them, your only option is to have other technological advancements the reduce or eliminate the advantages given by these weapons. In other words, you need to have the development of armor and other defenses keep up with weapons development. There are two general types of weapons that you will need to address: rapid-fire small arms and long-range explosives. --- For defending against small-arms fire, you basically have two options: armor and cover. The use of cover is better suited for smaller groups like squadrons or fireteams, but can be used by larger lines (during the Napoleonic Wars, the Duke of Wellington would often line his armies on the reverse slope of a hill). If you have body armor that can reliably resist small-arms fire, then you can form lines against enemy infantry without worry. This hypothetical armor would also do a good job of protecting soldiers against fragmentation bombs, grenades, or artillery, but explosive weaponry would still be a problem. To defend against these—artillery and missiles in particular—you will need to use some sort of active protection. Specifically, your armies will need hardkill measures that directly interfere with incoming projectiles, like [close-in weapon systems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system)(CIWS) that shoot down enemy missiles. If you can prevent your opponent's missiles and artillery shells from reaching their target, then explosions from those weapons are no longer a threat. These technologies could be explained in connection with the society's emphasis on computers and space travel. The development of new rockets and spacecraft could lead to the creation of a new composite material that makes for very effective armor. Advanced computers make the detection and tracking abilities of a CIWS possible, as well. --- These two defenses can also give you justification for the offensive aspects of your desired tactics. If your ordinary guns can't penetrate your enemy's body armor, your infantry won't keep using them. They will use something more powerful—maybe something like a large-bore shotgun, or even a [4-bore](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_bore). Shotguns, especially the larger varieties, are less accurate and have shorter effective ranges than rifles. The high recoil associated with their power would also limit the practical firing rate. These two factors bring you back to something similar to 18th- or 19th-century muskets, where formation firing is the best way to inflict casualties. And if battle lines are still in use, flanking cavalry are still useful, too. (Fun fact: shotgun-like pistols called *dragons* used by cavalry are how dragoons got their name) If you're going to protect your troops with a CIWS, you'll need to be able to move it. The *lightest* one that I've been able to find is more than 7,000 pounds, and most seem to be closer to 12,000 pounds. You'll obviously need a vehicle for that. If your enemy is using a similar system, you'll obviously want to destroy that vehicle. But normal anti-tank weapons, like rocket-propelled grenades, won't work because of the CIWS. However, because of the split-second of time the systems need to identify and shoot down a threat, they have a minimum effective range. So you can have your cavalry charge to get within that range, and then attack. Now, you have infantry fighting in line formation and cavalry charging tanks all within the realm of (mostly) 20th-century technology! You'll still need some handwaving to explain why you don't use heavy machine guns like the Browning .50 Cal to beat the enemy's body armor, or other possibilities. Maybe the armor is even better than that, and all your infantry use rockets? I don't know, but I think this is the best you can do with this setting. You already have bear-people, so I think people could manage the suspension of disbelief required here. ]
[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/8392/edit). Closed 9 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/8392/edit) ## Could we humans develop psionic powers in the future? Aside from what is common in science-fiction and fantasy literature, it doesn't seem reasonable that our bodies would develop powers like telekinesis/telepathy. ## Could a human mind have influence/control over matter? ## Does our brain "leak" any kind of radiation/magnetic field/wave, whatever? Please consider: * Our world and our rules of today * Psionic powers that don't require machines. * It doesn't matter how strong it is, it could be simply making a pencil move. [Answer] Define "machines". We already have technology to read brainwaves and cause robotic arms to move. That could pretty easily be changed to activate a magnet to move things, or to send wireless signals to something to cause it to move. But they do currently require sensor caps and cybernetics. But what if people could build bio-engineered sensor caps, and wireless transmitters? It would allow people to manipulate their environment in the Internet of Things, and serve as a foundation for telepathic communication, without anything we would identify as a machine. Beyond that, there is no plausible science to exert force upon random items remotely. [Answer] Its a tricky topic to approach from as skeptical of a wording as you chose. Consider that the brain DOES cause a pencil to move. It sends the tiniest of electrical signals out down one tube, and a muscle does the work. How about telepathy? Consider the death-stare of a spouse reminding you that you should be moving pencils today without him or her lifting a finger (and you are also reminded you were *supposed* to move the pencil yesterday). What is very tricky about this is your wording. Your wording suggests that the method of telekenesis/telepathy must be outside the realm of science. The effect has to be made by the mind (which is not fully defined by science or philosophers). However, history has shown that once we gain control over something, science models it and makes it part of itself. TK/TP will never occur by that definition, because every time it does, science moves the bar. 300 years ago, the telephone would have been considered telepathy. [Answer] I do envision we will have a 'form' of telepathy in the future. We have cell phones right now and we have very rudimentary sensors that can 'read' our brains. if the reading improves to the point of translating to words, we could send our conversation over the network and converse with someone merely by thinking about it. Might need a little microphone in your ear or maybe connect directly to the brain to receive. At this point other abilities could be 'psy' powers, thinking and you can start your car to warm up on cold days, or change the channel on the TV. These would all be tech assisted psy powers but the end is the same. [Answer] I'm going to split psionics up into three parts. * Telekinesis (moving things with your mind) * Telepathy (reading minds and speaking with your mind) * Psychic viewing (sensing with something other than the normal 5 senses) --- Telekinesis can be bound from a physics perspective: how much power does it take to make a pencil move, could the brain produce it, and could they do it without cooking themselves or the thing they're trying to move? Let's get a lower bound. There's a scene in Phenomenon where George is idly making a pencil roll back and forth on a table with his mind. [A pencil moving at walking speed has 6 milliJoules of energy](http://wolfr.am/2zEpEK7k), some more would be needed for acceleration but close enough. This is about [the energy contained in a whisper or pressing 6 keys or a millionth of a food calorie](http://wolfr.am/2zEF6wyY). So yes, the human body can produce this amount of energy without cooking itself or the pencil or the table. We already know this because I can move a pencil with my finger, but it's good to get the numbers. The next problem is how do you invisibly move an object using known physics? This is where the problems start. We could use a very focused magnetic beam, but it would effect everything in a line from the psychic to the pencil and beyond. Also pencils aren't very magnetic, so it would have to be extremely powerful to induce a magnetic field in graphite and wood likely cooking the user and everybody else. Finally, this would limit the psychic to only pushing things away from them or pulling them in. They couldn't, for example, lift anything, turn a doorknob or flip a switch up or down. Maybe they ionize air to create a breeze or suction. Again, this requires a tremendous amount of energy, the breeze would be easily measured, and it could only push or pull. I will leave the problem of telekinesis there. You're basically trying to make a tractor beam. Good luck. --- On to telepathy. As has been pointed out by others, we can already influence other people's minds through the use of what I'm going to lump together as "social hacking". The human brain is a big pile of old parts repurposed and rewired together to cobble together sentience and intelligence (two ill-defined words), and it's version 1.0. There's *lots* of ways to trick it, cause people to think your idea was really their idea, or change their memory. Radiolab has an excellent episode on [Memory And Forgetting](http://www.radiolab.org/story/91569-memory-and-forgetting/) about how every time we remember something we actually destroy and recreate that memory. They have another episode, [Choice](http://www.radiolab.org/story/91640-choice/) about how Free Will may be an illusion and your decision can be swayed by a simple cup of coffee. This is all a ripe field for your story. As to mind reading, we need some way to transfer information from one brain to another. Here I'll take the term ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) literally. You can just sense things people can't. I'll draw from the field of cryptology. It was [recently claimed that encryption can be broken by listening to a computer as it decrypts something](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/173108-researchers-crack-the-worlds-toughest-encryption-by-listening-to-the-tiny-sounds-made-by-your-computers-cpu). Take that basic idea, stretch it a bit, and a mind reader may just be a person who can sense the minute changes in a brain's electromagnetic field and translate them into their thoughts. The brain is, after all, a supercomputer. [Fish, dolphins and platypus can sense magnetic fields](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroreception). Why not? --- Finally, psychic viewing. Seeing through objects is simple enough, our psychic has the ability to see outside the visible spectrum. Biologically there's no problem with this, and some people can already do it a bit. Similarly, sensing very high and low frequency sounds is no problem. Adults tend to lose their ability to hear high frequency sounds, kids have ESP compared to adults. Assembling those sounds into "vision" (echolocation) is not a problem, [humans already do it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation), your psychic just does it better. As for things like taking a psychic trip to Jupiter (psychic or astral projection)... I got nothing. --- There is another mechanism of action, that biological organisms can be [Quantum Computers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer). Greg Egan has played with this idea. The novels are short and well written, so I encourage you to read them. In [Quarantine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_%28Greg_Egan_novel%29), > > it's found that humans are the Quantum Observer and the main character has the ability to it turn off. He can try all possibilities simultaneously and select which version of the universe he collapses the decision tree to. Need to guess a pass code? Just randomly push buttons! One of the trillions of "you" will get it right, pick that one and toss out the rest. > > > In [Teranesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teranesia), > > DNA becomes a biological quantum computer. Evolutionary pressure, instead of coming from the current environment, is coming from *all possible environments*. DNA can predict the mutations necessary to survive future threats and reproduce. > > > A more subtle version of this, where the user was not entirely aware of the mechanism, would appear "psychic". --- That's all about making psionics plausible. Will humans ever develop them? Evolutionarily speaking, you need to come up with a reason these chance mutations will help humans live to reproduce in the long term, and which existing part of the human anatomy can be adapted to fit. If we were trapped underground for many generations, rods and cones which can see a wider spectrum in dimmer light would be beneficial. If we lived in a cold climate, [a mutation to continue to produce lactase after maturity allows us to gain caloric benefit from the abundant but otherwise inedible grass by digesting the breast milk of bovines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase_persistence). That all takes a long time, and is rather more complicated than is presented to the layman. Fortunately, we have genetic engineering and don't have to wait around for evolution. Want to sense magnetic fields? Splice in some dolphin DNA! Of course, it's not that simple, but it's plausible. How do you do this to an adult human? [Gene therapy](http://www.genetherapynet.com/what-is-gene-therapy.html)! Alter a retrovirus to inject, modify or delete genes in your existing cells. Or use it to force the brain to grow new structures or make new connections. Still in the future, but plausible. [Answer] Some humans "may" already have very minor psionic abilities. Projects like PEAR and it's clones went like this. A subject sits with a machine that is randomly generating single-digit binary numbers (0 or 1). The human focuses on one number, sometimes called heads or tails and defined thus, as the machine generates them. The machine generates millions of numbers and many tests are performed. When the results are compiled, the humans can be shown to influence the machine into generating the chosen number more often than the non-chosen one (usually less than 1%). It may not sound like much, but assume it is the starting point for human psionic powers which will awaken in the next centuries. Assume the influence is on the vibration of a single atom. The atom vibrates a little more powerfully when going in the positive X direction and less powerfully when vibrating in the negative X direction, X, Y, and Z axes are assigned arbitrarily by the influencer, and Y and Z cannot be affected. The exact mechanism of the influence is that the atom loses a portion of heat when moving toward the non-desired direction, and that energy is added back when moving in the preferred direction. Mass and energy are therefore conserved. Where the energy resides in the interim is beyond my skill, in both particle physics and worldbuilding, to explain. That's all that can be done by any person born before 2010. This ability occurs in a significant portion of the global population, but is undetectable and therefore cannot be selected for. The child of two parents with the ability would have a stronger ability. The children of two parents with the ability is the second generation group. They will have the ability to influence between 2 and 8 atoms. Each successive generation that is born of two parents of the same generation with the ability has the ability to influence a greater number of atoms. (ie a 4 and a 4 create a 5). The child of parents of two different generations would have their generation number equal to a random integer in an inclusive range of one greater than the greatest and one less than the least. (ie. A 2 and a 5 have a child that can be between 1 and 6). A parent without the ability would be considered generation 0. Atoms influenced = [base] ^ ([generation]-1) where [base] = a real number between 2 and 8. The best of the 10th generation (base number 8 and an unbroken chain of children of two parents with the ability for 10 generations) could move 1 billion atoms, but even in gold that's only 350 femtograms. The best of the 20th generation could influence 10^17 atoms. In gold that's 380 micrograms, in water it's nearly 35. This might be detectable, but is still very unlikely. The 26th generation is probably when the psionic ability would be detected. The best of this generation would be able to influence half a mole. A person would have to be extremely lucky to be such a person, but they'd be able to move 9 kg of water or nearly 100 kg of a denser element like gold. This motion would not be like levitation or many of the other telekinesis that is common in sci-fi. It would be more like a vibrating cell phone moving across a table, just the vibrations are much smaller and much more frequent. Overcoming gravity would be very difficult, but causing a material to slide along a flat surface or reducing/adding to the effect of gravity to decrease/increase friction would not be difficult. At this point governments and the scientific community would probably get involved. It could be quickly discovered that this is a genetic trait, and that the effects increase with successive generations if both parents have the ability. This could lead to selecting for the genes and the ability being scene as desirable. As nearly all of humanity should have at least one ancestor with the ability so class warfare between users and non-users should not be an issue. Populations in countries with modern freedoms would probably just add it as a factor in mate selection. (Similar to modern day tech-savvy. Nearly all have it to some degree. Some think it is important in mate selection, some do not.) In more totalitarian governments, parents may be sought out to create children with the greatest possible ability (China: Two tallest people in country "encouraged" to marry and produce a child. That child is Yao Ming.) The numbers can be changed to speed up or slow down the process, and of course if a user concentrates on half the number of particles, twice the result is achieved and so on. [Answer] **Technological Telekinesis is right around the corner!** For this sort of psionics to be possible, you need to have the electrical signals of the brain affect something outside the human body. This has already happened. (Google Cathy Hutchinson, who can control a robotic arm with her mind, thanks to implants). She currently controls it with a wire running into her head, but it's easy to imagine a wireless version. In the future, such implants will probably become more common. It’s entirely possible that someday, they would move beyond medical devices for the severely disabled. They will certainly become smaller, possible to the microscopic scale if they can be made with nanotechnology. In short, telekinetics is just around the corner, if it isn’t already here. Telepathy is probably coming too. If you are talking about something like the X-Men, where Professor Xavier was just born with unique mental powers, then the answer is no, it won't happen unless genetic engineering makes progress by leaps and bounds over the next few centuries. And even then, it'd be through indirect mechanical means. It will never spontaneously happen. [Answer] We already have robotic arms which are driven by patterns of human brain activity. Such pattern detectors can be placed in hat/cap. They will interface with robotic arms/machinery. No psionic skill is necessary, but tricky part is to be focused enough to keep proper brain pattern long enough and clear enough. If you don't want hat, you can have under-skin implants all over scalp, with some concentrator. [Answer] It cannot be ruled out yet. Our current technology is unable to measure any energies coming out of a human skull which might provide a mechanism for either telepathy or telekinesis... but that doesn't mean that it isn't there. We can say that it is unlikely that such an energy could have existed across all human history without a scientist or professional observer actually capturing proof of its existence in an undeniable fashion. But the absence of proof is not a proof of absence. So,... maybe [Answer] Yes. Especially if you mean telepathy rather than telekinesis. People who study telepathy will tell you that we already have it, but have mostly let it fall into disuse and be squelched by disbelief, skepticism, and unscientific scientists. People who study animal communication will tell you that animals still can and do use it. Same for people who study plant communications. For a scientist discussing this, I suggest the book [Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals](http://www.sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert-sheldrake/dogs-that-know-when-their-owners-are-coming-home) by Cambridge scientist Rupert Sheldrake. Brain activity (and plant communication) does give off radiation, which is how lie detectors and brain activity scanners work. However that's not necessarily how the information is sent and/or received. Experiments show that people, animals and plants can attune to each other and then respond to each other even at great distances, where it seems implausible that it happens via something like a radio signal. However it happens, there are many reproducible experiments which show that it does happen. As for telekinesis on inanimate objects, I don't know. ]
[Question] [ A nation wants to utilize a large, currently brackish & endoheric body of water for irrigation & drinking. Damming the rivers & moving the water from there isn't considered viable for the reasons that they want the inland sea to remain intact, & that the areas where the rivers enter the lake are on the exact opposite side of where the major cities that need the water & ports for exporting food are. The plan id to take the water from the lake to the ocean at a similar rate as water is entering the lake, over time this outflow would lower the salinity as it would no longer be functioning as an endoheric lake. After long enough the water would have low enough salinity for drinking & irrigation from the provision of the outflow. Ecological collapse isn't considered much of a concern as most of the life in the endoheric lake/inland sea in question is also found in the rivers draining into it. The body of water is a bit less saline than the Aral sea before it started to dry up at 8g of salt a litre (vs 35 grams of salt a litre for sea water) & is somewhat larger than the Aral sea was at around 71,000km^2. The technology they're trying to do this with is roughly that of the early cold war, think 1950s-1960. Would turning a inland brackish sea into freshwater by artificially adding an outflow be possible? [Answer] **The lake will be significantly drained** It is not possible to quantify the result exactly without far more detailed information on the climate and geography, but a qualitative answer is possible. If the water level of the lake remains seasonally constant then it means that the amount of water coming in is, over time, equal to the amount of water evaporating from the 71,000 km^2 surface of the body of water - let's call this rate of input and evaporation X. As soon as you add an outflow at a rate of, for example, 0.5 X, then suddenly there is an imbalance - water is coming in at the same rate, evaporation is continuing at the same rate, which means that the lake is losing water at a rate of 0.5X. The water level will drop until the surface area is only 35,500 km^2, at which point losses from evaporation will be 0.5 X - half the surface area equals half the rate of evaporation - and the equilibrium is restored. (Note that "half" is just an example, but whatever fraction of the incoming water is removed by the outflow is roughly the fraction by which the surface area of the lake will be reduced.) Needless to say, shrinking the lake/sea to a fraction of its former size will have drastic ecological and economic effects on the area - wetlands will be drained, practically all docks will be left high and dry and so on even if the lake is only reduced in surface area by 20%. More realistically, it probably needs to have an outflow more on the order of 40-60%, which means that the majority of the lake is no longer a lake. Whether it is economically plausible for such an engineering project to be undertaken depends on a number of factors not specified in the question - the outflow rate needed to reduce the brackishness, the length of the pipes/canal to take the outflow to the ocean, and, most importantly, the gradient between the outflow point and the ocean. [Answer] **It would take forever.** Even ignoring the balance problem KerrAvon2055 mentioned it seems impractical. There is a metric for lakes, water "residence time" - the mean time that water spends in a particular lake. You can see it at many Wikipedia pages about lakes. Even for lakes with significant outflow it is huge, for lake Superior it is 191 years. For Caspian Sea, which is somewhat similar to your case, it is 250 years. To bring salinity levels from 8 to ~0.5 g/l, 15 of 16 parts of water has to be replaced. The fastest way to do it would be to drain the lake and let the rivers fill it again. ~250 years. If it is done gradually it would be much slower. Initially fresh water comes in, saline water comes out. Then they mix. Salinity would get from 8 to 7 g/l much faster then from 7 to 6. The closer to the goal the slower it goes. Exact numbers depend on lake depth, inflow and evaporation rates, water layers mixing, etc. But it would take centuries, potentially thousands of years. Laying pipelines from the rivers would be a much more practical solution. "the major cities that need the water & ports for exporting food are" - there are no major cities in places without fresh water and they don't really export food, they import it. ]
[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/235329/edit). Closed 1 year ago. [Improve this question](/posts/235329/edit) My fantasy world includes non-traditional dryads who are pretty much just humans that have a stronger connection to nature, as well as the ability to grow plants out of their skin. Is there any way to realistically store plants inside a human body, and how would the plants exit the skin? My current explanation is "magic" because the dryads *can* do magic, but I'm looking for a possible realistic explanation for growing plants out of their body. [Answer] I would say there are two routes you could take. The first of which would be a combination of Euglenoids, endosymbiotic theory, and an advanced (or just different) endocrine system. I wouldn't necessarily say they "store" the plants within their skin, but rather ambient plant growth within the skin is a natural part of their metabolism. This method would mean that on a cellular level the dryads are both plant and animal, and that the plant growths are more or less a benign teratoma of sorts focusing on plant growth rather than animal growth. This concept is similar to mitochondrial structures apparent in eukaryotic organisms. Euglenoids exhibit both plant and animal characteristics, and if we combine that with endosymbiotic theory, we can extrapolate that some macro organisms could have developed with Euglenoidal DNA. Exercising control over the growth becomes the hard part, but we can further extrapolate that the endocrine system of said Euglenoidal organisms would likely have developed some way to communicate with the plant structures on a hormonal level. Just like adrenaline is used to stimulate ATP synthesis within mitochondria, a hormone "like" adrenaline could have developed to stimulate the plant side of the Euglenoidal organelles. The draw back to this explanation would be there would likely be many different species other than humans also capable of this symbiotic phenomenon. You could use that as an explanation for dryad-like creatures as well. Such as an ent, or a powerful woad spirit like a stag with druid levels. You could even have evil dryads have malformed or malignant plant growths. My second explanation is that the dryad capabilities are caused by an entirely different creature. Such as a parasite or mutualistic micro organism. To this effect the only reasons humans have these capabilities is because their bodies are host to another organism that grows the plants. You could explain that the misconception that dryads are their own species is caused by infants being born with symptoms of the infection. Infection being a loose definition of what was actually at play. If the dryad creature was actually mutualistic or commensalistic you could use something akin to chimera syndrome as an explanation. Our bodies have natural ways to fight off infections like this. So if you really wanted to get down into the "meat and potatoes" (pun intended) of it, the dryad creature would need to be immune to our biological defenses. In either case I would say the plant growth is relatively slow, and only expedited with magic. [Answer] Under the assumption that dryads look and function like Earth humans do aside from being able to use magic (which is a thing that does stuff? idk I'm just an Earth human)... The readily apparent answer would be that they function the same way any existing human parasites do and would have the same options for entering/exiting fairly easily through existing orifices or less easily through creating their own opening. I suppose you could also have some very fine plants that replaced the hair on the body and 'exited' that way. As intestinal parasites the plants would be able to obtain nutrients by taking them from food ingested by the host - it could also be possible that the plants produced enzymes that assisted the dryads in processing materials not normally considered food like a modified pitcher plant rooting in the stomach and taking over the function of that organ. If the plants extended outside the body (perhaps a nice bushy mustache descending from the nose, or by mimicking hair and extending from pores) they may be able to use photosynthesis as many plants currently do. They could also be hooked into the bloodstream and obtain nutrients from there. [Answer] **Horny Protrusions.** [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JODRg.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JODRg.jpg) The Dryad has horny protrusions all along the body. There are small holes in the horns. The plants grow out of these holes with their roots anchored to the lattice structure on the inside. The Plants are like orchids. They do not need soil. They get everything they need from the air. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sN5Vc.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sN5Vc.png) [Answer] Who's to say that on your fantasy world life has taken a different path leading to blurring of lines between what is a plant and animal? You mention your fantasy dryads basically just humans with a strong connection to nature. All life here on earth is made of the same basic DNA just coded differently. A possible explanation could be the "gene library" if you will has expanded to include the production of plant cells. Similar to how trees can regrow branches your fantasy Dryads could include growth nodes that generate plant matter? [Answer] Maybe they don't grow the plants "out of their skin", but merely "on their skin"? Like lichen that grows on trees or ivy that grows on walls. Maybe their skin secretes some nourishing sweat-like substance that allows the plants to grow on the dryads body. If they can voluntarily control that process they can manage the plant growth in the way they like. If the spores that produce the plants are just everywhere in the air, especially close to where other dryads already have them, and if they grow really fast, then it might look like magic, when a dryad just wakes up in the morning, "full of plants", after deciding on that when going to bed the evening before. ]
[Question] [ I want to have a mountain range in my continent that splits it into two parts, such that it is incredibly difficult for them to communicate. How could I pull this off in a plausible way without having to resort to magic? [Answer] Doesn't this already happen in real life? The Urals separate Asian Russia from European Russia, the Himalaya separates the Indian subcontinent from Asia, just to cite some examples. When two tectonic plates with continental crust collide, they will end up forming exactly what you ask: a unique continent separated by a mountain range right at the point of crash. [Answer] **Double Mountain Range, with Desert** As in the real world, simply have two large tectonic plates forcefully collide. Make the mountains as tall as the Himalayas, and as long as the Andes. Make the mountain range extend all the way to mostly uninhabitable Arctic/Antarctic regions. A secondary up-thrust from a secondary break in the tectonic plates would make a second mountain range mostly parallel with the first. Between is a barren, dry basin like the Atacama desert, mostly devoid of habitable life. **Crazy Explorers** Only crazed, desperate explorers would be willing to travel for weeks through these extreme environments. In reality, though, people are extremely tenacious. Some adventurous nut job is going to try to cross the mountains and the desert, and eventually will succeed. Perhaps throw in some very nasty wild monsters/aggressive mountain predators. Or, even better, some vicious parasitic creature that dwells in the deserts. The first night you sleep in the desert, it latches onto your shoes, crawls up to your leg, and then burrows into your nervous system. It injects chemicals that slowly make you lose your mind. Everyone that comes out of the desert is a raving lunatic. Add local legends stating that evil beings reside in the mountains, and you have social reasons on top of biological reasons to shun the journey. **The Ocean Work-Around** Unless the mountain range runs across the earth, one side will still end in Ocean. By adjusting the ocean and wind currents, you could have a massive desert on one end of the continent. So desert on one side, frozen wasteland on the other. Prevailing winds circle away from either direction of a long peninsula of desert/mountain jutting out into the ocean. Without advance ship technology, no one will get past these straits of death. To be clear, it took renaissance technology for Europeans to circle around just the northern coast of Africa. So, this is a reasonable possibility. [Answer] What you're looking at is one of two things the more likely is what we call a [suture zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suture_(geology)), these are formed when oceans close due to the [subduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subduction) of the [spreading centre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-ocean_ridge) that creates the ocean floor and thus the eventual subduction of the ocean basin and collision of the continents on either side. In the modern world the existing sutures are quite old mountain ranges; the Urals in Siberia and the Appalachians in the US being the best examples. Sutures run the full length of the old continental margins so they're highly likely to bisect the resulting combined continent entirely and quite neatly. Less likely but still possible is a mountain range built by a [continental convergence zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_collision) here we have several active examples, the Atlas range in north Africa, the Pyrenees and Alps in Europe are all the result of the collision of Africa with Europe, and the Himalaya in Asia caused by India's collision with the Asian continental plate. These mountain ranges are far more dependent on the local geography and geology in terms of extent and morphology and so are far less likely to bisect a continent entirely or neatly. ]
[Question] [ The very large trucks are mining truck size. They can haul 300 to 100 tonnes of ***Thing™***. They can be outfitted to carry containers. They have a roughly equivalent curb weight to their payload. They can travel at up to ~100kph. They need wide, level, dedicated roads. But they can travel at most of their top speed without paving. But this is bad on their wheels. The biggest issue I see with these things is that they wouldn't be that efficient compared to trains. There is near future technology. [Answer] # The land is flat and hard and disruptive to rails: Your environment needs to be filled with hazardous material disruptive to rails. The terrain can shift regularly, or be filled with a corrosive substance that will slowly dissolve any rails put down. While your vehicles are affected by the corrosion, they can be hosed down at the destination and coated anew with anticorrosive coatings. Or perhaps there is some organism (intelligent or large) that actively destroys rails. Your terrain should be relatively flat and featureless, but the ground should be well packed or stone - a natural road bed for your vehicles. But when I say relatively, we don't want perfect, or else someone will use a vehicle with smaller tires. So a terrain with no major irregularities, but small ones - imagine a city-sized ball pit filled with head-sized boulders. Perhaps a terrain constantly hit by small earthquakes that have broken down the surface to the consistency of gravel. While train tracks keep getting broken, big trucks keep on truckin'. Ice might be a nice choice (especially if your trucks can float if needed) as the terrain would change enough to disrupt trains, but still stay flat enough for your trucks. If rivers were shallow and frequent, mostly frozen but occasionally thawed, they could be made to be roads. Even if your truck broke through, they could drive on the bottom. An alternate version of the river scenario is if the terrain they need to travel across is frequently interrupted in shallow water with a hard bottom - the big trucks can simply drive through these obstacles, while lesser vehicles can't. * Payload is another option to deal with to make your vehicles practical. If the material is large, and mostly valuable intact (say, looted alien vehicles, spacecraft, massive blocks of jade, huge alien animals) then you'd need to bring the huge hauler right to the huge thing you needed to move. * Fuel economy will be a sticking point. If we assume a modestly futuristic power plant for your vehicles, it could be some kind of advanced device that provides power but doesn't scale down well - perhaps they come up with a 20-ton toroid 50-100 feet in diameter as the center of a small fusion engine. It's a bit too wide to be practical for trains, but a huge truck is just the thing to carry one of these handwavium power sources. [Answer] Look at the reasons that trucks are used today instead of trains. The routes that trucks follow can change very quickly while it takes a long time to change railroad tracks. Even in the first days of railroads, it took a while to survey the proper route for a railroad. Truck roads can be built faster, they can go over rougher ground, they can go up and down grades that railroads can't. Schedules are much easier to change. At the start and end of the trip, trucks can change where they pick up and deliver to far easier than railroads can. In Australia, they use trucks hauling many trailers as "truck trains". (Other places allow doubles and a few triples.) Again, this was faster than building a railroad. We also have to look at the role of the government. The reason we got national railroads was due to the federal government deciding that such railroads were in the national interest and greatly subsidizing those railroads. The first national railroads received large amounts of land as pay and even today, much of the forest lands in some states still belong to the railroads. The federal government is still subsidizing railroads as it pays for rebuilding parts. Later on, our federal government decided to subsidize the highway system. The Interstate highway system is 90% paid for by the federal government. Even today, there are many voices stating that the taxes on cars are subsidizing the truck traffic as they say that truck taxes don't pay for the wear on the highways and bridges. There are major subsidies for the airline industry (airport, radar, air traffic control, etc.) So, to answer your question, one of the major determinants of why very large truck would be used for logistics would be whether the government decided to subsidize the use of those trucks. [Answer] **Thing™ comes in a fixed size.** [![big block](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LY0PN.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LY0PN.jpg) <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/largest-manmade-block-ever-carved-was-just-discovered-lebanon-180953518/> And Thing™ is big. There is no way to break it up into smaller thinglets to transport on trains or barges. Thing™ is the size it is. And if you want Thing™ you need to move it in a vehicle that can accomodate its very large bigness. [Answer] There are a lot of threats in the path from A to B traveled by the big truck, and they travel in convoys, with the main truck surrounded by other vehicles dedicated to its defense. This sort of mimics how carriers cruise the oceans, for the same reasons. A railway, in a scenario of constant threat, when compared to your truck which apparently can fairly manage unpaved roads, has two disadvantages: 1. it gives a fixed path 2. it needs to be protected 24/7 [Answer] Easiest way is cargo width requirements. Trains run on track gauges. Making them broader is more expensive both for the tracks and everything associated with them. So if your cargo sometimes is exceptionally wide you cannot use a train. Another possible reason is if some of the land is disputed. You can't build rails etc,. but a convoy of guarded trucks is different. Or rails are a sabotage risk. [Answer] ## Thing does not have fixed sites for loading/dropping-off Trains are great when you have to move payload between two fixed points A and B. Even greater if said train uses that rail route repetitively. Unfortunately, there is no fixed place with respect of transporting this Thing around. Building a rail route may not be worth it, especially if it turns out you've built it in the wrong area and you don't need to use it anywhere enough ever again. On the other hand, the trucks can traverse most part of your area. Half of your areas are already developed and have some sort of roadway infrastructure available. The proportion of roads with high-quality dedicated tarmac may not be 100%, but it's already above the safety and practicality margins required for the tracks. So, trucks, because it can afford flexible load/drop-off points and it's infrastructure requirement is not as gambling and demanding as rail routes. [Answer] Such trucks already exit and have existed for decades. They're called [road trains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_train) or long combination vehicles. > > They transport freight across some of the harshest environments on Earth. > > > [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RTQDH.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RTQDH.jpg) They are used in Australia, Europe, the US, Mexico, Zimbabwe and the have been used in Argentina. Depending on the configuration and the legal restrictions in each jurisdiction they can be a single prime mover with several trailers. In Australia they can be up to 53.5 meters long and weigh up to 200 tonnes. They can travel at speeds up to 110 km/h. The limit so far being legal restrictions. In remote regions without rail they are sometimes the only way to transport freight and they do it efficiently. They are used on both sealed and unsealed roads. Though, wet dirt roads, after heavy rainfall, can be be problematic. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SZmZ7.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SZmZ7.jpg) [Answer] The equivalent of cows. During the expansion from east to west in America the railways had to occasionally deal with cows on the tracks. A train cannot go around them, a truck can. Some form of large animal lives in the area. You arent allowed to seperate its living area (or that of another species) with rails+fences while creating a long stretch of high terrain with wildlife tunnels is just not economically feasible. You'd have to maintain the rise, fences and tunnels. So you build roads with trucks that can move off-road for a moment to avoid these creatures should they block the road. [Answer] Putting down and maintaining a road is 'easy'. For high speed rails, you need continuous welding, a whole load of dedicated infrastructure including switchgear and turntables. A train can't really go *backwards* easily either. A train certainly can't overtake. While maintenance is needed, a wide enough road system means your trucks can overtake each other (and a train style central control system would be useful!), split off the 'main' path easily without dedicated hardware. You probably would periodically close off one half the road, repave the thing overnight, and you're good for quite a while. Essentially the ideal use case here is lots of high volume (so the big trucks are useful), high value (so the capex is worth it) items. Supplying a spaceport or 10 might make sense - especially if you're doing interplanetary mining. Space ships are large and bulky and can't be built onsite. A remote location might be the best or safest place for such an installation. You'd occationally move rocket segments (bulky/light), supplies and fuel to the spaceport, and come back with ore (heavy) - which explains the basic mining truck design for these vehicles. ]
[Question] [ I'm creating a cold-climate fantasy world and would like to replace all (or most) inspects with bats. Bats would come as small as bees, all the way up to ride-able size. Big ones eat smaller ones, etc. Fantasy world, so it doesn't have to make 100% sense, but I'd like the concepts and interactions to be grounded in science. How would bats serve as pollinators, could they produce honey? [Answer] Being pollinator and producing honey are two independent features. Bats are already pollinators in [real world](https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/animals/bats.shtml) > > Bats are very important pollinators in tropical and desert climates. Most flower-visiting bats are found in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. > > > Two species of nectar-feeding bats, the lesser long-nosed bat and the Mexican long-tongued bat, migrate north a thousand miles or more every spring from Mexico into Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. > > > Producing honey instead is done by certain insects to feed their little ones, and it is done by eating and then regurgitating the nectar produced by the flowers. Since bats are mammals they would feed their young ones with milk and then they would proceed directly to eat their main food, so producing honey for a mammal has little sense. Also producing honey as energy storage for harsh times has little sense, since fat tissues are better suited for this and follow the bearer more conveniently. [Answer] # Naked Mole Bats: No, that's not a typo. If your bats engaged in sophisticated [eusocial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality) activities, like [naked mole rats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-rat), then it's possible for them to produce a partly digested, regurgitated foodstuff that might have antibacterial enzymes, or have bacteria contained that culture the foodstuff. Naked mole rats produce fatty acids from otherwise indigestible cellulose in their guts using symbiotic bacteria, and I could see bats feeding on various foodstuffs, vomiting it into a communal collection (with the symbiotic bacteria) and letting the whole thing [ferment like cheese analogs](https://www.fastcompany.com/90619602/these-cheese-alternatives-arent-plant-based-theyre-microbe-based) to convert cellulose into some kind of more digestible form (fats or proteins) that would then be used to feed the young and queen. ProjectApex and L Dutch are both right that bats are all ready involved with pollination, so this is a perfectly sensible extension of bat behavior. But I doubt that if your pollinator bats were drinking nectar that THAT would be the source of "honey." In fact, the honey-analog would most likely resemble a soft cheese like feta. At most, they might regurgitate nectar to stimulate bacterial growth. Sorry, sweet is unlikely. ]
[Question] [ I am writing a story in which the average temperature of Earth falls by 150C (270F) over the course of five months. That should be cold enough that, according to a source from Kurzgesagt, the ice caps would meet at the Equator. With such a process taking place, when the caps connect, how smooth would the frozen oceans be? Would they become smooth ice plains, or rough jagged ice? Or would we have uneven ice but covered in evened out snow? [Answer] **I spent two years in Finland, where the Gulf of Bothnia freezes almost every winter** In other words, the Earth already has an answer for you. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/k5wa9.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/k5wa9.jpg) Both years I was in Finland the Gulf of Bothnia froze. It does pretty much every year. Regular trucking lanes are set up when it freezes between Finland and Sweden. It freezes a hair faster than in your case — if I recall, in about a 2-month period. But that event explains what would happen to the oceans... *to a degree.* **Salinity isn't as even as you think** One problem is that saline not only changes density vertically, it has moderate differences horizontally. This means your ice will freeze at different rates in different areas. This will contribute to... **Platelets due to water motion** Since the water is moving beneath the ice, the ice will initially be in the form of platelets (you can see them in the image above). However, the platelets don't last forever for two reasons... **Photons are hot** No matter how cold the air gets, those pesky photons still carry a wallop. Yes, you can get the surface cold enough that even photons can't cause any melting, but in the conditions you describe, there would be a minuscule amount of ice melt (and I really mean "minuscule"), but the result is that over time (SEE BELOW) the ice evens out. But they have help... **Wind is the ultimate sand paper** And if the photons don't eventually smooth it out, the wind will. Wind and every grain of anything (including other ice crystals) blowing across the surface. I can only imagine the kind of wind that would build up out in the oceanic wastes if there *wasn't soft, gooey water to absorb some of its energy.* I think the world would see some terrific wind, way beyond what we ever see today. But wait! There's more! **And then there's the snow** Falling snow will also cause the ice to smooth out. Now, you're no longer putting water into the air through evaporation, but the process of [assublimation](https://phys.org/news/2018-10-sublimation-solid-ice-quickly-evaporation.html) puts it into the air just as quickly. But to get real snow in the way you experience it today is unlikely. It's more likely that you'll get fine, crystalline powder or hail. I'm sure you know the difference between "wet snow" and "dry snow?" Yeah, only dry snow. Now, all this suggests that you'd see choppy, ugly formations initially but, over time (and not that long, months or a year) you'd see the ice smooth out. Except... ***The Earth's grumbly tummy hasn't stopped.*** You still have volcanism. You still have earthquakes. You still have things that are going to break up the ice. What this means is that *locally* you can expect the ice to be quite smooth. Smooth enough to comfortably drive on. But across large areas you'll have hills-to-mountains worth of ice. An every time one of those 8+ earthquakes happens — especially if it's on the coast where it can create an under-the-ice *tsunami,* you're going to get a lot of stuff breaking up. In fact, one of those tsunamis could rip up whole lengths of the ocean. Which is cool! Two more things to think about... **["sea level" isn't the same world-wide](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0146631361900442)**. This is a wonderful complexity. > > The surface of the Pacific Ocean stands about 40 cm higher than the Atlantic Ocean with respect to the 1000-decibar surface, and the North Atlantic and North Pacific stand respectively about 14 and 17 cm higher than the South Atlantic and Pacific. The North Atlantic is warmest and saltiest, the South Atlantic is coldest and densest, and the North Pacific is least dense and least salty. (See above link) > > > Should the ice get thick enough, the atmospheric pressure differences will become secondary, even tertiary effects. But the fact remains that there is a difference between the different chunks of oceans. Those differences could contribute to the existence of oceanic ridges, ice ridges on the surface where these transitions occur. Maybe the wind would smooth these out, too, but the existence of the different regions would lead to more ice breaking up. An then **there's the moon.** If there's any liquid water at all, it's going to have tidal force. Like the pressure differences mentioned above, the thicker the ice, the less this is an issue... but they would also lead to the ocean never being completely smooth — unless you freeze it all. **Conclusion** While I believe there would be large swaths of very smooth ice, notably where the ocean is more shallow, I also believe that in the areas experiencing earthquakes it will be very broken up and whenever an under-the-ice tsunami is the result of an earthquake you'll see huge ripples of broken-up ice. The world would still be very dynamic. [Answer] Smooth with pressure ridges. If you look at the Arctic ocean, it has large areas of smooth ice and places where the ice has jammed together breaking it up and making "hills" of ice. These hills are not large by terrestrial standards, but for those who were attempting to travel by foot to the North Pole, they were a significant barrier (and even worse for those with machines). Wind pushes ice around and ice doesn't have internal strength. So, ice opens up on one side and jams together on the other side. See the bottom of <https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/arctic-zone/essay_wadhams.html> Source contains more information, so as links for even more information and photos of all kinds of ice. Here is the cite about rough water ([public domain](https://sos.noaa.gov/copyright/)) > > **How ice forms in rough water.** > > > If the initial ice formation occurs in rough water, for instance at the extreme ice edge in rough seas such as the Greenland or Bering Seas, then the high energy and turbulence in the wave field maintains the new ice as a dense suspension of frazil, rather than forming nilas. This suspension undergoes cyclic compression because of the particle orbits in the wave field, and during the compression phase the crystals can freeze together to form small coherent cakes of slush which grow larger by accretion from the frazil ice and more solid through continued freezing between the crystals. This becomes known as pancake ice because collisions between the cakes pump frazil ice suspension onto the edges of the cakes, then the water drains away to leave a raised rim of ice which gives each cake the appearance of a pancake. At the ice edge the pancakes are only a few cm in diameter, but they gradually grow in diameter and thickness with increasing distance from the ice edge, until they may reach 3-5 m diameter and 50-70 cm thickness. The surrounding frazil continues to grow and supply material to the growing pancakes. > > > At greater distances inside the ice edge, where the wave field is calmed, the pancakes may begin to freeze together in groups and eventually coalesce to form first large floes, then finally a continuous sheet of first-year ice known as consolidated pancake ice. Such ice has a different bottom morphology from normal sea ice. The pancakes at the time of consolidation are jumbled together and rafted over one another, and freeze together in this way with the frazil acting as "glue". The result is a very rough, jagged bottom, with rafted cakes doubling or tripling the normal ice thickness, and with the edges of pancakes protruding upwards to give a surface topography resembling a "stony field". The rough bottom is an excellent substrate for algal growth and a refuge for krill. The thin ice permits much light to penetrate, and the result is a fertile winter ice ecosystem. > > > [Answer] Look at icecaps already existing, what you will get is not much different from that since in both cases ice will be moving and flowing, resulting in similar surface features. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nsy12.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nsy12.jpg) Where it will be snowing the snow will smooth things out, same effect will be achieved by winds. ]
[Question] [ My sci-fi civilisation has discovered how to make things out of unobtainium. Because of Quantum Space Magic, it is (for this purpose) unbreakable, perfectly reflective, and completely inflexible. The obvious difficulty of making "invincible" armour from this is the vulnerability of the joints, as they clearly can't be made of unobtainium - how could I design a suit of armour that could mitigate this problem as much as possible? [Answer] Design your armor like a [hard suit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_suit#Hard-shell_suits). It won't be perfect, but anything trying to get it will have to get through some tight corners and tiny crevasses. It will be invincible to almost any practical projectile, though I'm not sure how it would hold up against really intense radiation (think ship-killer lasers; anti-personnel weapons should be no issue). Like the [sun crusher](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sun_Crusher), your (second) biggest weak points are going to be the sensors. (Or the visor, if for some reason you want everything *but* the user's face to be invincible.) You *biggest* problem (thank you [Starfish Prime](/users/62341) for pointing out that I'd overlooked the obvious!) may be cooling. As was discussed in [another question](/questions/52613), a heat-proof, radiation-proof material is bad news for anything inside it. Thermodynamics is a harsh mistress and dictates that if you're using energy at all, you're generating heat. If that heat can't escape, it's eventually going to have deleterious effects on whatever is inside the armor. Now, you could work around this by giving your unobtanium reasonably good *conductive* heat transfer, but if you do that, you've also opened up a potentially significant vulnerability. If you *don't*, however, you're going to have to "soak up" waste heat somehow, which means eventually you have to exchange it, putting a time limit on how long the armor can be used. (Or, alternatively, you could have very vulnerable heat sinks on the outside...) [Answer] ## Your bigger problem is hammers. Contrary to RPG lore, ancient armor was not usually addressed by ye olde canne opener, but by the [war hammer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_hammer), in whose steely light every unobtainium-armored warrior is going to look like a nail. Unless your quantum space magic has allowed you to make armor pieces with inertial dampeners, the joints are just going to be places where your body starts moving quite abruptly. A solution to this, which also "covers" your joint problem, might be to be able to lock down the armor in response to attack with sliding rods that root the user to the ground. Still, there's an obvious response to that: turn a fire hose or a brigade of boys with slingshots on the armored miscreant and see how long the armor stays locked down. If it's much time at all, just have someone walk up and chain the invader securely to an unobtainium peg in the ground, to be left as an exhibit to the glory of your empire through the coming generations. [Answer] **You wear an Unobtanium chainmail below the plate Armour** You know, one thing that can be obvious when you look at plate Armour, even at the late medieval period, is that there are places it doesn't cover all the time, which at first sounds like a problem in design. Something that might not be immediately apparent though is that said armors were developed for a reason: protect the wearer as much as possible without turning them into a clunky humanoid thing that can barely move and that wouldn't be able to get up if you pushed them down, which some people still believe was the case. However, plate armor still allowed you to move in it, as one can clearly see in [videos such as this one](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qzTwBQniLSc). This was so that they could be well protected all while still being able to move around nimbly, which is absolutely critical for ANYONE wearing any kind of armor, because every armor will inevitably have gaps, from the gaps in the joints meant to allow for movement to the gaps in the helmet meant for seeing, and if you're not mobile enough to easily get up, run and do what anyone in a medieval battlefield must be able to do, any small group can simply knock you over and jab a knife into your eyes through that gap. Now, how did they partially solve this issue? Well if you seen the video you'll likely see it at 0:40,but if you didn't, here it is: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZmJfG.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZmJfG.jpg) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AoYBu.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AoYBu.jpg) From these you can easily see how they deal with not leaving the regions near the joints completely unprotected: some armored knights would simply wear a layer of [chainmail](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_mail) below the plate armor, covering the chest and limbs so that the region wasn't left completely unprotected. This kind of mixing different armors wasn't uncommon, and it isn't unheard of knights that'd wear variations of the gambeson, a cloth armor, in their chests below the plate for further protection and for helping deal with blows dealt to the armor. Summing up, just use a proper chainmail below the armor, preferably a ribbited one since it is more durable than ring chainmail. Since chainmail was created before plate armor, I doubt they'd have the tech to make an unobtanium plate armor, but not an unobtanium chainmail. "but what about guns?" well the main reason plate armor went out of fashion was because better guns started appearing, guns that could penetrate the plate armor without a problem. However, your plate armor is indestructible, and if the properties of unobtanium you mentioned are applicable to processed unobtanium rather than just to the unobtanium processed into armor, then chances are that it is still something one can use practically to protect themselves against firearms, especially if you add in other neat things like bulletproof transparent plastics for the armor visor and other more "modern" things that weren't present. In regards of how well it'd fare against other weapon and sci-fi elements you'd have to explain better WHAT this armor is mostly meant to protect you from, but if we're talking about melee weapons and even certain firearms, a properly made version of a [Gothic plate armor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_plate_armour#:%7E:text=Gothic%20plate%20armour%20(German%3A%20Gotischer,Empire%20during%20the%2015th%20century.)) with a layer of proper chainmail underneath will most likely be more than capable of doing its job properly. ]
[Question] [ As evident by the title, this is a Class-related system. So, what exactly do I mean by "Rogue's Dagger?" Simple-a dagger made for a Rogue. Small, easily concealable (size of a dinner knife? I'm not sure they're *small*), perhaps even folding (like a pocketknife, perhaps?) and with a built-in crowbar and lockpick compartment. The last two are put in so that the handguard (assume it's rectangular) has a hollow compartment under the center; the seal stamped into the metal is actually a metal lid, a sort of lock, that closes off the lock pick compartment. Where the pommel should be, the hilt comes to a point, bent at an angle to the otherwise straight hilt (the hilt is a miniature crowbar). In order to open the compartment, the seal has movable parts; it can be twisted, and the objects stamped onto it (say a shield with two swords crossed over it, surrounded by a ring of stars) have to be pressed or moved to the correct position in order to open the sealed compartment. In this case, one must: 1. Press the stars in the correct order 2. Pushing the swords in opposite directions, so they come off the shield and almost form a V 3. Press the shield It would take some rather small and complex mechanics to get the seal to work as described here, and since I picture point of the crowbar extending directly from the fist when held in the hand, I'm not sure this is feasible. So my question is: *Is This Rogue's Dagger Feasible, and If Not, How Should The Design Be Changed?* As always, I appreciate your input and feedback. Thank you! (Also, please let me know if the tags are wrong.) [Answer] A few considerations: * Rogues are rogues because they don't have money, and custom clockwork machines that small are *expensive,* even today when you can get prefabricated parts * See all the other answers concerning length of effective pry bars * Modern folding pocket knives have machined locking mechanisms which make them viable. Reproducing a fairly large one with medieval technology wouldn't be impossible, but it would be weaker, heavier, and cost more. So what's a rogue to do? I think what you're looking for is more of a kit, and to keep it all in a small package, I'd recommend something like this: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Lygd.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Lygd.jpg) The handle is indeed hollow if you want small doodads in the knife itself. And check out all those little gadgets! Plenty of room for a set of picks, a vial of poison, a tripwire for traps, etc. Frankly, just the hollow-hilted knife (with tight wine-bottle-like stopper) might get you most of what you want. A full tang is certainly stronger, but this would do just fine if it isn't heavily abused. [Answer] ### Spring loaded blade, with the handle disguised as an everyday object. If we put aside the implied tech level, there's this [wonder that you can 3D print yourself](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2765718), which is a switch blade hidden inside a Nintendo Switch game controller: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1KByj.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1KByj.png) Or this Iphone case holder with a hidden switch blade: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ku708.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ku708.png) I reckon I could fit a few picks and a tension wrench (tool #2 for lockpicking) in that case too. Jumping back to your implied tech level, I'd start with one of these, which anyone can have in their pocket and look like a moral citizen: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8YeGU.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8YeGU.png) Put a spring-loaded blade in the spine, and hide your lockpicks inside in the inner cover. This way if a guard searches you, and flicks through the bible, they'll see its complete. If someone asks you to look up a passage you can. And then later you can press a hidden button on the spine and spring the blade out. I reckon with some selective reinforcement of the spine so that's it's not uniform, but its squishy in some place and rigid in others, you could actually get a nice handle and grip on the bible spine. [Answer] I don't think the crowbar would work at all, because crowbars work off of leverage and one that size would provide basically none. Any task you couldn't manage with your own hands, you'd not benefit from having such a small crowbar on the job. I like the idea of a built-in lockpick although you must remember that picking locks uses atleast 2 tools, one to provide pressure and another to manipulate the mechanism if I remember correctly, and if you want to be able to break a variety of locks you will need a variety of picks. This means your handle would have to be a veritable swiss army knife of different picks and the more you have in the same volume of handle the smaller and weaker they would be, this also means more chances for things to break, and more weight in the dagger (also subtly spoiling the balance of the weapon). There is also no practical reason I can think of why you would want your trespassing equipment integrated into your killing tool, although it is still a cool idea so the rule of cool can be your reason. EDIT: Just rereading the question and forgot to adress the size and folding. Folding knives have no tang which means they are substantially weaker than fixed blades and in this case if you wanted to use the sheath to benefit from the full length of the knife as a crowbar, you absolutely could not have it be a folding knife as any decent amount of pressure would break it at the joint. Daggers are generally speaking double edged blades aswell, so when the blade is folded one sharp edge would face outwards and cut your hand. As to size I would reccomend a dagger far larger than a kitchen knife (if you mean butter knife) with a blade atleast 6" more like 8-10" long, the idea with a dagger is to thrust/stab and for that you want a narrow blade to provide little resistance and a long blade to cause as much damage as possible. [Answer] No need for a crowbar if your dagger is made of mithrilium. Instead you need an extender, such as a socket wrench. This way you can open most doors. What a rogue really needs is tools for disassembling traps, removing jewels from wherever they are embedded, weighing and appraising such jewels, pickpocketing, climbing aid, and, when it comes to it, fighting. Therefore, the proper thieving tool would look like these: For level 1 thieves: [![A simple spring knife](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hb30b.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hb30b.png) Level 3: [![A simple swiss knife](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DdEIF.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DdEIF.png) Level 8: [![A more complex swiss knife](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6pbxt.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6pbxt.png) Level 15: [![A regular swiss knife](https://i.stack.imgur.com/d16yF.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/d16yF.png) Level 99, with 15 prestige levels in McGyver: [![A swiss knife with 99 tools](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GfIhw.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GfIhw.png) [Answer] In addition to complexity adding to weakness, I would like to point out that having specialist tools makes you stand out and will likely get you arrested. If the tools aren't illegal/suspicious, the rogue should have a set of full sized dedicated tools. That's how a mechanic or a doctor does it. They don't fix a radiator or remove an appendix with a swiss army knife if they can avoid it. If the tools are illegal/suspicious, they should try to make due with the sort of tools people commonly carry around, and improvize when something special is needed. That's how real thieves do it. A coat hanger is just a coat hanger and it stays at home until you need it to steal a particular car. Car thieves don't wander the streets with special purpose-built car stealing multitools just waiting for the police to pick them up. You might get some leeway if it's seen as cool to emulate rogues and carry around certain things, sort of the way rap culture influenced people to act like they had drugs or weapons when they didn't, which helped hide those who did. Of course the authorities might start harassing common citizens who walk around with a crowbar and grappling hook speaking in thief's cant, even if the citizen in question is just following a fad. [Answer] Not a good idea. A Rogue's dagger serves ONE purpose: to poke holes in other people, before they can poke holes in the Rogue. You want something small, so it can be concealed. Or at the very least portable enough that the Rogue's movements are never impeded by it. You want it as light as possible, and fast as possible. This means **no** crowbars, lockpicks, toothpicks, guitar picks or anvils in there, please. Just a handle, and a blade. The blade is thin, so it can fit between ribs, and sharp so it can cut through clothing and skin and flesh with no problem. And no crossguard, no pommel, no fancy grip. Yes, no crossguard even. If the Rogue uses the dagger in combat against another blade, then he is not a rogue but a warrior. It need not be wide and strong to survive being used as a parry weapon. Rogue's dagger is for making holes in people, not fighting! If the rogue wants to throw something, he would be an ultimate fool to throw away his dagger! Dagger is for poking holes, not throwing away. If your rogue wants lockpicks, and a way to stun someone, and a place to put some sleeping powder, and somewhere to hold his cash, then let the rogue use specialized tools & appliances for those roles. A multipurpose tool would be great for non-combat usages. If you need to pick the lock on a door, or force it with a crowbar, you have *minutes* to complete the action. So you can afford to use a tool that needs configuration, or that can only be carried in a backpack, or such. But the dagger? The dagger is for making holes in people before they can make holes in the Rogue. If you need to poke a hole in someone before he sees you, you have *seconds*. Single-digit seconds. ]
[Question] [ I'm really not interested in creating a language for my world, especially having to make up names for the peoples and places. Or drawing maps. Mainly because I'm neither a good linguist nor a good drawer, and worried it will turn out badly like some other series I've read, or be too similar unconsciously to my favorites. Are there ways around this when writing an epic fantasy? [Answer] Maps, languages and other world-building isnt a requirement, and can in fact be a point of annoyance for the readers. Having some aes mokdai (local dragon lord) who uses his G'radhid Talons (a type of magical spear) in the Habdabib ceremony (important to celebrate the Jastran season halfway through winter) in the city of Urdal (a smaller regional city in the small country of Galhallen with a rich culture stuffed with more names) is going to get tiresome very quickly. What is more important is the information itself and how it fits in the story. Lord Of The Rings has a massively deep lore explained in the Silmarillion (probably bad spelling there) but its not required for the story of a bunch of saps that have to get the magical mcguffin across the lands while things fall apart around them. The maps and languages a nice and all, but are actually mostly irrelevant to the story. The most important thing to know is that you have the high passes of cant-remember-mountain, and that you have 2 alternatives: through Moria or all around the mountains through Rohan. And just that sentence is all you need, the map is an extra, a bonus but not required. I never needed to know what Sauron really was. Its explained in the Silmarillion, but as an almost force-of-nature evil he does fine. Focus on making the story awesome, the lore can wait. And nothing makes the lore more awesome than an invested reader. [Answer] You don't need to make up languages. Most works just ignore the problem. This is commonly referred to as [Translation Convention](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslationConvention). You can do the same for people and place names. Sure, your character's *real* name is ᡂꛡࡁߚ, but we'll just call him "Bob". (If you like, you can [mention that you're doing this](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging).) Another approach, which is fairly common¹, is to use "Native American" naming conventions², i.e. use names like Stormbringer, Clearwater, Dances at Dawn, Sits with a Stiff Back... Obviously these are also subject to Translation Convention, but they also provide a gentle reminder that they Aren't In Kansas, and can double as a [Meaningful Name](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MeaningfulName). Alternatively, of course, there are random name generators out there, or you can make your own. (¹ I'm using this in the book I'm currently writing. [Wings of Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_of_Fire_(novel_series)) also uses it; characters have names like Clay, Tsunami, Moon, Winter...) (² Almost surely not unique to those cultures; that's just the example I know offhand.) As for maps, depending on what you're writing, maybe you don't need a map. If you do, well, there is no reason you need to show the audience. If you need a map (even if it's just for your own use), but don't feel capable of producing one yourself, there are various tools available; just search for "worldbuilding tools", "map generator", and such. One I've been playing with recently is [Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator](https://github.com/Azgaar/Fantasy-Map-Generator). [Answer] Team up with a buddy. Hollow Knight is one of my favorite works of literature in the form of a videogame. Team Cherry made it by having the original creators focus on mechanics and design only. The two of them added the names, backstory and context later. It ended up being a beautiful mythology. When Valve developed Half-Life 2 and Portal 2, they their teams developing mechanics while Chet Faliszek (a.k.a. Mr. Awesome) did the text and setting. Even Monty Python had a similar process. John Cleese and Graham Chapman would write together, with Cleese doing the frameworl of the sketches and Graham adding the layers of absurdity. Thus the dead parrot sketch was born! Stan Lee was famous for worldbuilding, but he never did it alone. He would provide backstories and relationships but a lot of the worldbuilding proper came from Steve Ditko (who created all the mysticism around Dr. Strange - the Eye of Agamotto for example was Ditko's idea), Jack Kirby and even Moebius. --- So if you don't like mapping and naming, have someone do it for you (and with you). You may end up having a lot more fun that way :) [Answer] Write some investigative scenes... Imagine your protagonist back when they are middle school age and write a scene in which they are making a presentation to their class. In their own voice, have them tell the class about a particular historic event and how it influenced all that came later. Imagine your protagonist's love interest at a coming of age ceremony, reciting the family history to their assembled love ones. Write a few epitaphs for famous historical figures, listing their life accomplishments and the family they left behind. Write the summary page of a college level thesis on language evolution in your world. For each question about the details of your fledgling world, write a scene or written artifact to provide an answer. In using your writing process to slow down the usually rapid-fire question/answer cycle, you will give your imagination time to find the best answer to each challenge. Then print out all of these informative scenes and put them in a box for future reference. They are not intended to be part of your finished book, just some tools to help you illuminate and discover your world. [Answer] I suggest researching Earth's actual history in the classical and medieval periods. Take notes of features from various cultures and empires you would like to incorporate into your world. Don't be afraid to go as far as the muse takes you, both in terms of document sources and inspirations. Things like the rank structures of armies and noble families, demographic data regarding "mundane" factors like nutrition and average education levels, and the etymologies of common names in various times and places of history. One site I recommend for fantasy worldbuilding inspiration is The Ancient History Encyclopedia at ancient.eu. [Answer] One thing to do is draw a different type of map. If your story is set the way too popular fantasy society based on feudal Europe, why not show makes of Feudalism? You could have one map that shows the kingdoms in a region, and then another map showing the dukedoms that each kingdom is divided into, and a third map showing the countships that each duchy in each kingdom is divided into. There might be 10 kingdoms, 100 duchies, and 1,000 counties. I've seen many maps where the USA is shown as a solid block along with neighboring countries. I have also seen maps which show the USA divided into states. And I have also seen maps showing all three thousand plus counties in the USA. In a feudal society, each county would have been divided into many lordships or manors, just as counties in the USA contain municipalities. And I have never seen a map dividing the entire USA into many thousands of municipalities. But it is is quite common to make maps showing all the municipalities in a county or a region containing a few counties. And it would be equally difficult to show all the lordships or manors in a map of Feudal Europe. But a map showing all the lordships in the feudal county the main character lived in would be feasible. What about a political map showing the political subdivisions in a non feudal country? For example, the early Roman Empire was mostly composed of hundreds or thousands of city states consisting of a capital city and farmland around it. In each city state aristocrats competed to be elected to to the city council and as magistrates. Above the city states were the governors of the dozens of provinces, and above the governors the emperor. City states were divided into districts called *pagi*. In the later Roman Empire the levels of administration were increased. A district or *pagus* was part of a city state which was part of a province ruled by a governor which was part of a diocese ruled by a vicar which was part of a prefecture ruled by a praetorian prefect which was part of the empire ruled by one or more emperors. So even a non feudal country could use maps showing various levels of political subdivisions if they are important for the story. And one thing to do in a feudal or more centralized state is to draw a chart of organization instead of a map, showing who has authority over who. And if the country has a bureaucracy many people will have non territorial zones of authority over their subordinates in the bureau. Or maybe the entire story takes place in large caravan with hundreds of people and camels crossing a desert, or an elephant caravan with hundreds of people and elephants crossing a lush but uninhabited jungle, and you might need to make an organization chart of the expedition, and maybe another chart show likes or dislikes who. Or the entire story might happen on a ship at sea or a starship with hundreds or thousands of people aboard and you will need an organizational chart to keep track of people's roles. Or maybe the story is set in an isolated mansion where a large family has gathered for an event and a murder happens. In a fantasy or science fiction story the family might be non human or have life extending technology, so there could be many more generations of cousins and their ancestors alive at one time than is normal at the present. So you may need to make a family tree to keep track of everyone and make notes on how they feel about each other. So whether your society is a galactic Empire with billions of densely inhabited planets or a tiny isolated group of travelers, you need to figure out how that society works before you start creating events that stress it close to or beyond the breaking point. [Answer] Yes. Thinking and doing draft and plot what plot writing sessions basically you are feeling out the world it's functions, its layout when you just write it plop your characters into what you think is the world then see if it still is that. I don't do maps, I do clothing design, I don't design buildings I search pintrest and Deviant art for inspirtations or approximations to what is in my mind as I don't draw buildings externally. Instead I make house plan layouts so see their homes. Now keep in mind picture surfing isn't to copy that exact thing its a refferance so you can imagine it better. But yes you don't need map skills or langistic skills just do what you can to make it visable and real to you have all 5 senses walk into your world feel the weather or taste their spices things like that can help. But really it's just a lot of thought then putting it down you can learn so much about your own world how it runs, who runs it, and what towns are where if you just write it don't try to adhere rigidly to what you think you want this world to look like it will evolve slowly and show you. Like I have a small town located to where my mages live the mages had open fields all around and flat terrain but this grew as I wrote now the world over many months told me the mages live in a city, they have a city of helpers next to them, they have fields and deep forests and a huge river near them. The human town moved 5 times and is now huge it's a city dependant on the mages I did not have all this when I started it grew and evoloved now I can see the both areas to the point I've now made my own rough city maps so I can see what my characters are seeing in these places. You do however want to make up town names, you don't have to go all fancy but you don't want to have a Batman as that is a real town in the world. Using Wiki to see city and town names of the regions you are inspired by can help you draft up your own names also there are mixing sites that will scramble and make a lot of new words see: <https://www.nameacronym.net/name-combiner.aspx> <https://www.babynamesdirect.com/blender/> <https://www.mithrilandmages.com/utilities/CityNames.php> Now why did I just give you a baby name scrambler? Because you can put in anything towns, plants, wood names, whatever and it will mix it up. Mithril is a rando town generator use it to find ones you find agreeable then use either baby names or nameacronym to mix it up the acronym allows for a 6 names to be mixed at the same time generating a billion options. [Answer] Language is easy, don't write a language unless you really want to, very few readers will ever engage with it and it really does not help you write the story. The only thing you might have to consider is terms for your fantasy elements, do you have giants beasts, well those will need a name, have magic based on glowing rocks well the rocks will need a name but there is no reason to reinvent the wheel, for the most part use your normal native language. As for naming people and places, that is on you, characters and locations need a name, its basically impossible to follow a story with no identifiers. You could take the goblinslayer route and use characters jobs/outstanding features in place of names, Farm Girls, Dwarf Shaman, Novice Fighter are the actual names of characters in the story. Consider however your characters need names even if they are unconventional ones. This is important for you to fully form a character concept in you head you will need to call the character something. If you can't bother to do that then chances are your characters are not fleshed out enough to be interesting. For map making first you don't need a map, some of the best authors did not created maps until after they had many books and even then often they used maps created by fans. Or make the map after you have written the story following your characters journey. A map just for the sake of a map is not really a good feature. Tolkien had a map but his story was about a physical journey, where a map is a very useful tool for tracking a journey. If your story takes place entirely in a single town or area, you don't need a map. If travel is not an important part of your story you also don't need a map. The Conan stories did not get a map until several books in, you just had vague descriptions Cimeria was in the north Stygia in the south and that was about it, travel itself was just kinda skipped over most of the time, the story just jumping from location to location so a map was not necessary. You should also consider the scale of your story. If the your story takes place in one city you don't need a map of the continent, but it might be a good idea to have a rough sketch of the layout of the city even if just on a napkin marking the major parts of the city. Just becasue you make a map does not mean you have to publish a map. You can also expand a map as you write more books, the map pulls out and you get more and more of the world as the story itself explores more of the world. If your story deals with political intrigue between warring states then you will need a map for your readers to follow along. If your story is about an epic journey then a rough sketch of the journey may be helpful. Consider if a map would actually hep your readers follow the story. [Answer] If you don't forsee those things being important to your story, don't waste your resources on them. Just don't for all of those things. Just don't make a language. The characters always speak a language strikingly close to English in stories written in English. Reading a book with a bunch of weird terms is confusing and sucks. If you wanna get fancy sprinkle some Italian or Spanish in there or something. Just don't make up place names. Use real names or names other people use in books (those are also real names or based on real names). Name places after people. Do you know how many fantasy locations are named Albion? Just don't draw maps. I liked the idea of having my setting on a large plateau, so I used Iran. My story takes place in (not) Iran. The culture is mostly like Kowloon Walled City, a completely different, real place I found interesting. Overall, having to keep track of a bunch of names detracts from the story experience, and originality is no where near as important as execution. Just look at classical art. The subject matter is quite often literally the *exact same thing*; you'll see two or three paintings of Chronos eating his child, eight to ten virgin Marys, and a bunch of fruit. What matters is technique: those brush strokes, the pallette, the use of light. It also helps if you can make your audience feel something. In worldbuilding this is done through setting, not coming up with funny names. ]
[Question] [ Mana is the life energy of elves that allows it to function. These elves are similiar in design to human beings. When an elf becomes pregnant, the developing fetus feeds off of its mother's mana, abosrbing it into itself and allowing it to grow. This is minimal during the first few months, with more mana being necessary at the later stages. During this time, the elf is unable to use magic. This prohibition ends after the child is born, with mana storage rising to normal levels. Occasionally, a condition known as mana leakage occurs during this process. This happens when mana being fed to the fetus is not absorbed completely, with some of it leaking back into the mother. This is dangerous to the mother, and child, and can lead to the death of both parties. If not caught in time, this can lead to a number of effects, such as: 1. Mana poisoning of the mother 2. Child born with abnormalities, such as disfigurements. 3. Hot flashes, in which mana fatally overheats the body. Why would a elf's own mana be dangerous to her? [Answer] ## Too much of a good thing in the wrong place. Mana causes cell growth. The elf's biology controls the flow of mana to the right places in the body, allowing faster tissue regeneration, muscle strain healing, etc. But if mana just leaks into the body, any tissue it comes into contact with begins to grow uncontrollably, creating large tumors made up of useless new cells. The tumor grows, and outer layers prevent mana from reaching the inside, so the cells on the inside eventually die from starvation and the tumor rots from the inside, leaving behind lumps of dead tissue that block blood vessels and prevent organs from functioning normally. Magical microbes then feed off of the spilled mana and cause infections in the dead tissue. The immune system can't stop the mana-charged bacteria, and the elf goes into sepsis. [Answer] Because this powers MAGIC. Normally when using mana you kind of shape it with the spell before you send it away, giving you control over its effects. But if mana leaks randomly it is going to cause random magical effects. Most of these are benign but this kind of leakage will happen for the remaining months of the pregnancy, increasing the likelyhood that something bad for the mother and child can happen. [Answer] **The properties of mana change after absorbed into sentient beings (the elves especially).** The mother, after absorbing the mana, adds its personal wavelength/attribute to the mana. During pregnancy, the mother either cleanses her property out while channeling it to the fetus or the fetus is attuned to the mothers attribute, able to absorb it. (This can serve as several mother-child plot devices later on). **Outcome 1:** If it leaks out of the fetus, it already has a different bio signature/property to the mana, similar but different to the mother's.This causes something similar to blood poisoning if enough is built up, interfering in various ways with the mother. Same as the problems with human pregnancy when the mother - child have different Rh blood type. **Outcome 2:** Mana being necessary for healthy growth, the lack of sufficient mana during pregnancy naturally causes disfigurements and abnormalities. No need to dwell on it. Its the same for humans, in the past or in poor regions if the mother didn't get enough nourishment the child will have problems. Just like after birth and during growing up. Bone and body shape dis-figuration. Sad example, look up Ethiopian kids pictures. Bloated stomachs, thin limbs from constant starving. **Outcome 3:** The mother's and fetus's mana attribute/wavelength are opposites. After mixing in the body, they clash with each other, causing micro explosions, frictions . The mothers body not equipped to handle the extra inner heat, its over her natural tolerance level to cool herself down. [Answer] I would borrow a line from @Adrian Hall, saying that it could result from a disturbance in the mana flow as it happens in healthy, non-pregnant elves. It could work in a manner similar to the condition called [pre-eclampsia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-eclampsia) in humans. Without going into medical detail (also since I am not a doctor), it is a condition that stems from an abnormal development of the placenta and results in high blood pressure in the mother and developmental issues in the baby. In the worst case, it can cause seizures and possibly even the death of the mother and child. In your elves it could be a (risk of) abnormal development of the organ that allows the mana flow from the mother to the baby (analogous to the human placenta). This would essentially disrupt the mana flow of the mother with the consequences you describe: * mana poisoning (analogous to high blood pressure) * abnormal baby growth (because the baby does not receive a correct/regular amount of mana) * risk of fatal consequences (such as eclampsia/seizures) A nice bonus is that the mechanism and the etiology of pre-eclampsia are still quite obscure, your elvish disease could be in a similar state of "we know what happens and more or less how it happens but we don't know how to prevent it", which could lead to preventing magic use in pregnant elves on a precautionary basis. [Answer] Mana doesn't flow in one direction and it doesn't normally flow equally this unabsorbed mana could find its way back into the Mother and trigger a short term reaction thought to be harmless but in reality its mana that is outside of its normal containment. In this case the mana is "stored" in the body in a specific way and when it is leeched by a child it is transferred down a specific pathway similar to how our blood flows in our bodies. Same could be said for mana that it has pathways that stretch across your body. However the child is siphoning off from the parent and the leakage means Mana now has escaped the normal flow and is outside of its pathway. The excess un-absorbed mana could begin to pool or collecting in area of the body. Being unable to correctly flow back to its origin point the mana will At this pointbegin affecting its surroundings. This affect manifests as an acute exposure similar to how one could be exposed to radiation they are exposed to raw unchecked mana. It causes the symptom you presented and begins to deteroriate the Elf and the offpsring the mutation could be caused from the damaging of cells and the presence of corrupted cellular instruction caused from the exposure. I'll make an assumption based on your hypothesis that an Elf is capable of self disposing of mana internally and/or their adult existence allows the usage of Magic fueled by Mana to regulate themselves to a degree. The exposure (caused from not being properly contained and regulated) will prove eventually fatal because although the Mana is naturally produced it doesn't mean it is not powerful a good example is Stomach acid which we naturally produce in our stomachs but is a harmful thing to have splashed on your organs in parts of your body that it is not supposed to be in contact with. The cellular corruption causing mutation and defects will prove fatal in most cases unless the abnormalities are minor. Ultimately hot flashes could manifest in the parent elf as their body rallies a defense to attack and contain the abnormal cells and structure created by the exposure. [Answer] Mana production is a biological function of elves. Its precursors build up in the elves system until they are needed to form mana. The act of using magic triggers its expression, as does pregnancy. Free radical Mana floating about in the mother's system acts as a spark on tinder and the mana precursors can start reacting, releasing mana. But, it is unfocused and in excess of the unborns need. Mana, being energetic and reactive seeks the path of least resistance to release. This is through the mother's subconscious desires and innate magic use. The mana leakage results in wild and unpredictable magic that is dangerous to everyone since it is reacting to her subconscious desires and annoyances, but without proper proportion and restraint. [Answer] The mana passed from elven mother to child is a blank slate. It is the foundation of a new soul. The fetus absorbs the mana, and becomes a person, with a soul and with the natural ability to use mana to create magic. If that creation energy goes back to the mother, you get all sorts of awful side effects. The mother’s soul could revert back to a blank, pre-birth creative state, causing massive personality changes. Or a new soul arises in the mother, in direct competition with the soul currently in residence. Sometimes the fetus possesses the mother. Or the fetus doesn’t receive enough mana to properly form a soul, and you end up with a child that is missing some key elements of a soul (with a range of horrifying side effects: unable to handle mana, doesn’t have empathy, etc). Even rarer, the leaked soul energy creates a second, shadow pregnancy within the mother. The child is born haunted by the ghost of its nonexistent twin. [Answer] Mana is a fluid, just like blood. It has to flow. When blood does not flow properly, it stagnates. For mammalians it also tends to coagulate, and coagulated blood in the wrong places leads to all sorts of problems. When blood leaks in the brain you have what is called a stroke. When blood leaks in the torso we have what is generally called internal haemorrhage. Both are life threatening. When a pregnant woman has a bleeding inside the womb, that threatens the mother and child in a lot of ways. The leak may be between the placenta and the womb, which means less blood for the child, which means the fetus will be undernourished, and risking anoxia. Anoxia itself may lead to malformations and an underdeveloped or damaged brain. Also the blood flowing where it shouldn't may lead to infections, which can lead to fever. Just have it so that a bad or wrong flow of mana has the same effects, and you have what you want. ]
[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/147426/edit). Closed 4 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/147426/edit) Setting: Far future space based science fiction. Think Star Trek: Enterprise levels of tech with more consistency and more resources if that helps. There are 4 sentient species in my setting: * Homo Sapiens Sapiens * Homo Martiensis (Martians) * Dar * Awrx The Martians are the descendants of the first colonists. They are generally better adapted to low gravity and high radiation. They are tall, not lanky but generally lacking in musculature (by comparison to humans) due to extra "water weight" that helps with radiation. Culturally they are known for a strong appreciation for knowledge and are generally more naturally intelligent than most humans but also generally weaker and lighter. The Dar are not a hive mind but they are very collectivist and have a chromataphore based language that allows incredibly dense transfers of information in parallel. Essentially its like having multiple conversations at once with different people that don't get confused with each other but they do amalgamate into a whole. Allowing for astounding levels of teamwork in the species because they can group together and make plans very efficiently. Especially because in their family structure parents are always estranged. It is your siblings that you stay with for life in a family unit who's name roughly translates to "circle" or "ring" as they tend to stand in circles when communicating at high bandwidths. They are also, not silicon based, but more like mobile coral or other rock like forms of life and thus are structurally strong but brittle. They are the only species that does not ban and distrust Artificial Intelligence. The Awrx are large muscly green creatures from a super-earth with lots of sunshine. They are relatively radiation resistant because they can "eat" a lot of it. Culturally they are very direct but diplomatic. Their emotional centres are more developed than ours and their history is full of cold wars but almost no hot ones. I tend to think of them as being strong like a cow rather than strong like a jaguar. Neither of which are creatures I'd like to mess with. They are also herbivorous meaning their relationship with the animals on their planet went down a very different route. Generally less naturally intelligent than humans but they are by no means stupid and "the cream" is historically better at rising to the top in most of their cultures compared with most of ours. They are the only species with a strong dislike of cybernetics and genetic enhancements. Which just leaves the humans. There are several things my research has led me to such as "Sweat" suggesting we are more enduring over long distance than most land species and superior balance. A friend of mine has also suggested that as a species we are far more enduring when injured than most species. He cited as example things like deer just dying from shock at a minor injury whereas there are stories of humans that have had just horrific things happened to them and they've stayed awake the whole way through but I don't know how true this is and any more professional sources would be appreciated. I want the humans to be in charge and not in an entirely nice way. The Solar Aegis is an stratocratic empire that is pretty nice to live in for most people but rising through the ranks is tough and not necessarily based on merit. **What do humans have going for them that makes this possible?** [Answer] Earth has a technological advantage over everyone else. That is why they are in charge. The martians are living on a dead world, so most of their resources go into just staying alive. The Dar circles are naturally cooperative, so their history is peaceful and mostly conflict free. Their technology is amazing, but it is non-aggressive and often shares power among all of its users rather than reinforces a hierarchical command structure. The Awrx aren't as smart as us and have a physical strength advantage so they aren't as motivated as us to develop a technological advantage. As with most of human history, the side with the most guns and the best guns get to be in charge. The Earth human advantage is that we have always known this, so we came to the party armed. [Answer] Compared to the other races humans are psychotic. The other races (with the possible exception of the martians) would - literally - die before taking another life, humans can have lots of coping mechanisms for squaring away murder (self defense, first strike, the greater good). The martians are few in number, and see life as very precious given the harsh environment they inhabit. The other races hope they can steer our maturity as a species, and take the view that it's better to have us on the inside pissing out, than on the outside pissing in. [Answer] One thing that you failed to mention as cultural traits is creativity. And this is what makes humanity special... most of the other races are sort of mono-cultures with little varience. Humans are fractured into nations and divided over religions and which fictional universes are the best. We've gone to war over the silliest of reasons... and that was before we met an alien life forms! But those same negative sides have lead to some amazing achievements in arts, and culture, and having the insane notion to combine a pizza with a bagel! Humanity thinks outside of the box and can provide solutions to problems no one would think of. In my own fiction, aliens who know of humans have a saying: You can not kill **a** human. The reason for this is that they realize humans are organized in loose and inter-related clans... in order to kill a human, you must kill his family... and their families... and then his tribe (nations) and eventually, his entire species. Humans are perfectly willing to work with you for a common peace, but they will fight until either you back off or you kill every last one of them. And the problem with that is humans understand the concept of a fair fight... but they choose to ignore that. They will make you fight a fierce battle for every inch of territory. Other series saw some unique options that may or may not be true. For example, in Animorphs, the two warring alien races (The Andelites and the Yeerks) both come to the conclusions about humans that terrify them. The Andelites recognize that that humans technology advanced much more swiftly than their own, having achieved orbital space flight mere decades after the first flight (their own interval between their two achievements is measured in centuries) and they fear that humans might achieve FTL in a few more decades... and are wide-eyed with horror when they realize the basic understanding of the concepts are developed in the course of the series. The Yeerks, a race of parasitic Brain Slugs, realized they had to switch tactics from an all out invasion to a secret invasion when the initial scout who found humans reported back to her superiors that humans were a Class 5 species (Ideal class to infest) numbering about 5 Billion (this was made in the 90s)... and they responded "Surely you mean 5 million" which was more comparable to most species population numbers. [Answer] **Looking at this kinda from the hugely negative side...** * You describe the Awrx as cowards, always getting mad at one another but never actually throwing a punch. * You describe the Dar as cooperative to a fault, socially incapable of making individual decisions. Cohesive as a group they're wet noodles caught alone in a dark alley. * Your martians are natural isolationists. Settlers. People who want to be left alone and build fences to protect what's theirs. **And the Terrans...** Your Earthers are *pioneers,* they can't stand the idea that there's someplace they don't know about, haven't visited, cannot overcome, and consequently, cannot claim as their own. But this expansionist, "that's mine, too!" behavior isn't enough.... Let me tell you about a co-worker I once had. He was aggressive, perfectly willing to step on the people around him to stand a little taller in the company. He manipulated every situation to make him the savior, the obvious decision maker, and the only one who could be trusted to protect the company. He isolated labor from management, ensuring that management only ever saw that he was the perfect person to control the masses. (Management literally *couldn't believe and wouldn't believe* our complaints.) He enjoyed playing the intracorporate political games and the pain he caused others. He turned a company that was *family* into a group of strangers that couldn't trust one another. After a year, everybody was walking on eggshells. It took me years to understand what he was in a single word — and your Earthers are the same thing. **Your Terrans are sociopaths** From [Psychology Today, "How to Spot a Sociopath"](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201305/how-spot-sociopath): > > * Superficial charm and good intelligence > * Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking > * Absence of nervousness or neurotic manifestations > * Unreliability > * Untruthfulness and insincerity > * Lack of remorse and shame > * Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior > * Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience > * Pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love > * General poverty in major affective reactions > * Specific loss of insight > * Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations > * Fantastic and uninviting behavior with alcohol and sometimes without > * Suicide threats rarely carried out > * Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated > * Failure to follow any life plan > > > From a social standpoint, nearly all of these would define a naturally aggressive and controlling species that's a pain in everyone else's collective behind, but you'd be unable to easily move them out of the halls of government. They'd be too good at making every other species look like the villain. [Answer] I like both these other answers, but in addition to humans are crazy and like guns, I’d like to add a few more options here. **Humans are adaptable** Out of all the creatures on planet earth, nothing can match humans at their ability to adapt to new environments or situations, or even better, change said environments and situations to suit their needs. Name another creature, (besides maybe tardigrades), that can exist in the desert, the tundra, in mountains, on plains, on the ocean, **in** the ocean, in the sky, in space, and apparently other planets. Even crazier, humans often times explore or even settle in wildly hostile terrain for no other reason than because they can, or because another human said that it was impossible. Humans are always trying to improve and push the limits of what is possible. **Humans are predators** Although we don’t normally think of ourselves this way, humans are **the** alpha predator on planet earth. Which, I might add, we manage to accomplish by throwing pointy sticks at things and walking behind them until they die. Due to our body plan, intelligence, and again, adaptability, humans **always** win a war of attrition. **Humans are determined** Because of our persistence predator nature, humans are nearly impossible to subjugate. In fact, if history has taught us anything, it is impossible to keep humans from eventually dominating everything around them, be it their environment, animals, or even other humans. This is because humans are stubborn and determined, once their minds are set on something they are pretty much unstoppable in pursuit of that goal, and are willing to use any tactic necessary to achieve it. So to put it all together, humans are an adaptable, determined, super predator with a powerful drive to dominate everything around them. So it’s not going to remotely strain the suspension of disbelief for you to have them be the dominant party in this scenario. ]
[Question] [ # Context In the animé Attack on Titan, armed forces use a special device called 3D maneuver gear (also called vertical movement gear) to move through the air. The system is based on a pair of grappling hooks shot from the waist, and compressed gas. The gas is used both to shoot and reel back the wires, and to propel the user in multiple axes through a pair of exhausts on the back. The exhausts are mounted on gimbals to allow for rotation. The system is operated through a pair of wired controllers, one for each side of the user. Here are some schematics: ![Schematics part 1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/R8wFL.jpg) ![Schematics part 2](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9DhkB.jpg) And here is the thing in action: ![Run, Eren, run!](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JPCKO.gif) I believe that such a system, in real life, would be useless for its intended purpose (military action, specially against giants). The main reason for its creation is a mix of plot necessity allied with the Rule of Cool. I think it is also anachronistic for its setting, and slightly Steampunk-esque. However! Suppose that some billionaire from our real world wanted to build a functional 3D maneuver gear. Would it be possible? # Goal To build a wearable device that would allow the user to swing among buildings, trees or other high/tall elements of their environments, by combining grappling hooks, steel wires and compressed air or some other gas. The objective is to have one or more prototypes - mass production is beyond scope. **Edit:** Achieving the velocities seen in the show is not necessary. Alternatives can allow for a leisure ascencion or descent, for example. # Constraints The project will start with a technology level that we are expected to have on the next five years. It is ok (even expected) if new technologies are developed for and because of the project. The real life 3D maneuver gear may be larger than the fictional one - a very large backpack would be accepted, but should not be heavier than 60 kg. Money is not a constraint. # Motivation This tool may be used by firefighters, search & rescue personnel, mountain climbers and window cleaners. Also the Rule of Cool. [Answer] ## Part one responds not to the technical difficulties of such a device, but a more fundamental conceptual issue. *Competitive Fencers* are some of the ***fastest*** humans on Earth (both by self-selection into the sport and the Darwinian aspect that if you are able to win enough bouts to want to keep doing it...) and for us, the difference between you scoring a touch first or me scoring a touch first is set to 1/32 of a second, which is half of the lower end human response time of 1/16 of a second. And I gotta tell you as a fencer, martial artist and a high performance motorcyclist - that's pretty *amazingly* ***quick*** response time. So **@jdunlop** is onto a really solid point here: at the velocities indicated in the OP and the video, it's *very* unlikely a human swinger-operator could respond quickly enough to not end up pancaked against some built environment element or other. It's *also* worth noting that humans "run out" of fast-twitch decisions pretty quickly, reaching "decision fatigue" when they are likely to make wild misjudgements or fail to decide - or more typically just... *freeze*. In this scenario, *either* result is likely to be terminal! ## Part two looks *briefly* at the physics (without maths) Strength of materials is an immense issue with this concept, both for the device and its components and for the built & natural environment elements being used as hoist points for this idea. The device: Steel cabling would not be even close to strong enough or have enough longevity under the continually varying stressors applied, and would very rapidly reach metal fatigue and shear. Bear in mind we're ***not*** talking about the load of *just* the mass of the swinger-operator and the mass of their compressed gas canister and gas inside, we are *also* talking about the inherent load of the length of cabling itself, and more crucially, the force (simplistically Mass x Acceleration [more accurately see the vector equation below])being *exerted along* that cable (tension) by the moving mass of the swinger-operator and their equipment - and then subsequently massively changed in both amplitude and vector with each new connect-pull-swing-jet-disconnect event. Every hard stop event is a massive deceleration - placing immense strain on those cables - ask a crane operator about working load factors and braking stress - they ***ease*** those heavy loads down due to the huge impact sudden changes can have on hoist cables - and in fact the other massive failure mode for hoist cabling is sudden detensioning after overload - leads to a kind of unraveling / unweaving called "birdcaging" which then gets run through the various pulleys and blocks in the crane and the cable gets chewed to heck. So the only material we know of at the moment which comes close to this level of tensile strength, strength-to-weight and resilience is natural spider silk. > > [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ukv3v.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ukv3v.png) > > > where vector p is the momentum of the system, and vector F is the net (vector sum) force. If a body is in equilibrium, there is zero net force by definition (balanced forces may be present nevertheless). In contrast, the second law states that if there is an unbalanced force acting on an object it will result in the object's momentum changing over time. > > > Compressed gas has mass - and the more compressed it is, the denser, the higher the mass; in addition, pressure vessels are incredibly dense and have to be manufactured to pretty exacting specs - and they are ***heavy*** (ask a scuba diver) in the extreme. This adds *immensely* to the load on the putative steel cabling - and the more compressed your gas, the denser the pressure vessel has to be to constrain that gas. Moreover, to have enough gas to *lift* the swinger-operator through space and reverse vectors when necessary means your reservoir is staggeringly large. And of course, you have an ever-escalacting version of the rocketry lemma: more reactant = more mass to move = more reactant needed - but in this case with the additional constraint operating inside a 1G gravity reference frame. Harness webbing / straps - the harness being worn to throw that human body around would need to be not only strong and tight fitting (with these forces, even the slightest slack will lead to immense impact damage from the straps slapping home on the swinger-operator's body with each event); the straps would need to be hecka wide in any place bearing significant load, and yet somehow conformable enough to body shape to not be incredibly uncomfortable or joint-de-articulating. Swinger-operator - pretty much either isn't an unaugmented human to begin with or dies very quickly - even assuming we somehow handwavingly beat the reaction time point I raised above, the huge acceleration loads (3-5 gravities) in quick succession in varying directions would induce blackouts, redouts, broken limbs, de-articulated joints, broken spine, broken neck, decapitations... Built or natural environment elements - each of the things being used as a point of purchase by the "grappling hooks" would be subject to both compressive and tensile loads in very quick succession in *very* small point-load sized areas, and in most cases we can assume things like concrete, stone, glass and other similar facade system materials - once in a while wood, and even less frequently steel or other metallic surfaces. With these kinds of impacts and loads, the grappling hooks will simply break through materials as load increases; as each grappling hook pops free (punching out concrete fragments from around its attachment point such that they become shrapnel moving towards our swinger-operator) suddenly plunging our swinger-operator out or down into space and shifting not just the remaining but now increased load onto other grappling hook connections - these too will catastrophically fail... I think you get the furry, flat and squidgy meaty pancake on the groundplane idea here. [Answer] This is anime, so you already know the answer. Any one element of the task has a snowball's chance in hell of working. However, all of them working together... well. Let's just say good luck. First, ditch the "pressurized gas container" that has *far* too low of energy density. Its a non-starter. At least start with a real power source, like burning hydrocarbons. A liter of gasoline goes a long way. Second, it looks like he's throwing the grappling hooks. There's no way a human is going to be able to pull that off. The grappling hook falls with gravity at exactly the same rate as the climber. So if you want it to go much higher than you, you're going to have to fling it up really hard. Physically speaking, people dont have the muscle strength to do that. You're going to want to fire these grappling hooks from guns powered by that gasoline engine. Third, darts glance off things. It's really hard to design a dart which embeds itself 100% of the time. A reasonable safety margin would involve making sure that the existing darts you have in place can keep you from becoming a splotchet on the ground before trying to fire another. Your aerial parkour practitioner is probably going to want 6-10 cables, and something really creative to keep them from entangling themselves. Fourth, darts that are hard to embed are hard to take out. There's a very good chance that you're going to want to retract a cable in a direction it doesn't want to go. You cant just have the gas engine jerk on it, because that'll change your trajectory a bunch. You're going to need active darts which can get thinner on command to disengage. Generally speaking, that's opposed to the properties you'll need for a dart to penetrate in the first place. Fifth, these wires would create some very brutal shocks. You need a static line to avoid stretching during use and maximize endurance, but you need some dynamic stretch as you start to lay into the line. This is actually the easiest to solve part of the puzzle. Each of the wire spools needs to be on its own little elastic mount. Still going to hurt, but better than what we see in the anime. Then there's the human side, which many have mentioned. Training these perfect reactions so that you never once make a mistake, with your life on the line, is not going to be easy. Speaking of which, do you know how many time the guy correctly threw the grappling hooks in the little clip you linked? Zero. Not a single one of them was correct. He actually became a bloody little splotchet multiple times over. You *need* to have a cable that's above you to oppose gravity. If all you do is launch them forward, you never gain altitude. He did manage to do a web-slinger like move once where he shot one to the side, but it was improperly balanced, so that just made him a bloody splotchet on the wall. Oh, and the one throw that was useful also was the kind which would glance off the stone, so it probably was another red puddle on the ground as well. Tough angles. Very hard to learn indeed. [Answer] Watched that anime, was quite interested and fascinated with ODM gear. Reasons why nothing like that can't and won't ever exist in real life: 1. Grappling hooks. There is no way to penetrate anything concrete-like with a shot projectile and have a reliable grip to sustain a human weight. It is possible with the wood, but even then you won't be able to pull it out easily enough. 2. Gas operating system. Its efficiency is ridiculously exaggerated in that anime. You can sometimes see people fly vertically with it, while in real life you would use up all your reserve and barely got few meters high. To fly on a compressed air you would need hundreds of times more compressed air. 3. In general, soon we are gonna be able to fly with electric motors and lithium batteries. A bunch of things like that exist already, and they're only gonna get better. Obviously it is a working concept and allows you real 3D maneuvering anywhere, although applications for that are meager and is mostly for fun. [Answer] ***It can be made*.** **Graple guns.-** We have them right now but instead of using gas, controlled explotions with gunpowder could send them flying. The graple head can be design to penetrate and deform while traverse a material, to lash and stay anchor at it (not all materials of course). The cable would detach from the grapel head when called and the system should set a new one for his reuse. **Motor**.- We could adapt the motor of a motorcycle to reel the cables when need it. With enough tinkering it would work for 15 minutes or more with just a few liters of gasoline. **Cable**.- Whe have strong enough cables rigth now to support an adult human without trouble (at set speeds). **Augmented Reality Googles.-** As stated in other answers, 3D movility is hard and complicated, thats why our tester would need the support of a navigation system that calculates distances, speed of the reeling, collition and targeting of the grapel guns while the driver only sets his destination. They idea would be at some extent like the autonomous car tech that we have today adapted to this niche. You wouldn't be able to do some of the movements that can be seen in the anime, but with enough training really cool acrobatics could be achieved. [Answer] I wont say outright that its impossible, but lets create a checklist of what can be currently built and what needs to be figured out. 1) Strong enough Cables: Carbon nanotubes wound into a rope. Stupidly expensive, but will do the job, easy. 2) Hook that penetrates walls, grips the wall, and releases on command: All three can be accomplished by controlled explosions, as long as control wires are built in the rope. At time of contact with wall, explosive thrust from the base of arrow hook can be used to penetrate the wall, and a timed explosion from within the hook, opening the flap outwards, can help it create a grip. With a control wire, you can retract the flap and release the grip, making it easy to roll back in. The advantage of this approach is the reduced requirements on the device that will launch the cable, since it need not bother with penetration, just reach the wall. The problem to be solved is how to reliably reload the explosive charges. But I am sure that's not a big issue. 3)The engine to launch and retract the cable(without much tension in it): Launching and retracting the cable are two very different business, and require different characteristics from the engine. Launching requires a high instantaneous force, whereas retracting requires slower but steady, gradually changing force, otherwise the cable hook will whiplash into your face, just imagine suddenly pulling a thread tied to a stone. Electric motors can be used reasonably well with a few modification, for launching. I would recommend a powerful spring to be stretched by the motor, launching the cable would require releasing the spring. While retracting, the motor can again stretch the spring via gears. You no longer need a gas cylinder, just some battery packs. 3 b\*) Pulling yourself when retracting the rope: Now is the first and main hurdle. Pulling that much weight (about 100 kg overall), at the speed shown in the anime, is ridiculous. Using a motor and gear assembly, you can achieve both torque(for weight) and rpm(for speed) but not simultaneously. A probable (but limited) solution would be to use a bungee rope like cable. But it won't let you move like Levi in midair. In conclusion, you can swing like Tarzan, but Mikasa won't be impressed. [Answer] As usual, a frame change is needed in order to accomplish what is being depicted without making the user into a splotch on the pavement. The previous posts have summed up the issues very well, so I won't repeat them here. I would suggest the time and energy and resources would be much better spent on some sort of jetpack or personal flying device. Rocket and jet powered jetpacks have been around since the 1960's, with Bell pioneering a rocket pack which used the decomposition of highly concentrated H2O2 to create a steam rocket. Early rocket packs simply could not hold enough fuel for more than a few seconds of thrust, which made them spectacular for stunt work, but otherwise impractical. However, modern technology has offered several more practical alternatives (for certain versions of "practical"). Personal flying devices using large enclosed rotors have been demonstrated, as well as a "flyboard" using small turbine engines. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hsNy7.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hsNy7.jpg) *Martin Jetpack* [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HTzwO.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HTzwO.jpg) *Zapata flyboard* So from a technological viewpoint, getting a person in the air and flying around between buildings and treetops is actually possible. The Martin Jetpack is likely more economical from an efficiency viewpoint (accelerating large masses of air slowly is more efficient than accelerating small amounts of air rapidly), while the flyboard is far more compact and mobile. The real issue which has been alluded to is the speed of human reflexes, and the G loading of the body when making rapid changes in direction. To rapidly fly in an erratic path through a constrained space (like an urban setting or forest) is going to be beyond the ability of a human pilot. It is likely the machine will have to be on autopilot, with the human pilot essentially saying something like "get me to point D via way points B and C, and never rise above rooftop level" and leaving the machine to do the rest. This would also need a change in how the human is carried in the machine, since being unrestrained (like on the flyboard) is going to result in either being flung off during flight, or suffering severe injuries as you are flung about in flight. The Martin Jetpack is somewhat better in that regard, although the person is likely going to have to be far more rigidly constrained, and probably wearing a "G" suit to supply counterpressure and prevent blood and fluids pooling excessively as the vehicle flings itself around the buildings. As a sort of extreme checksum, you could go far faster (say in a laser propelled "lightcraft" extracting laser energy from an orbiting satellite) if you were packed in a tight tube full of oxygenated fluid which both surrounded you and also infused all the spaces inside your body as well. Jumping out to confront giants after that might be somewhat problematic, however... [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MkKVD.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MkKVD.jpg) *Conceptual model of a single person lightcraft* So while there is no practical way to jump around urban or other settings using cable apparatus as depicted in the show, if you actually want to be able to do 3 dimensional manouevre at high speeds, it is somewhat plausible for a very advanced flying machine to do the job, so long as the passenger is properly protected and restrained. Fighting giants in this way is another matter altogether. [Answer] not like in attack on titan, probably, but i think alternatives would be feasible. for example: cryspr on spiders: give them loyalty toward humans (like dogs) proper lungs,(bugs and spiders and stuff don't have breathing muscles, but instead have a bunch of tubes around their bodies, and rely on passive oxygen intake) a much larger size (again, dogs as an example: from wolf size to tiny pugs). you could then wear the spider on your back and have it shoot webs. you could also do something mechanical, but that's too expensive and boring [Answer] 1. Battery 2. Strong motor for pulling human, and setting the ''gun'' to lock 3. Gun like part for shooting the hook 4. Switch with 4 different actions. One switch would pull the wire of pressed all the way,The Second would move you(human) the same action but less strength for the hook to not be removed, Third switch would shoot the hook. The wire should be strong enough to support a human. The environment is a big deal for the hook to Grab And Stay there unless you trigger it ]
[Question] [ This is the continuation of a thread of related posts on a hypothetical alternate universe/Light Plane. Other posts from this thread are here: [How To Make an Earth with 27 Suns Work](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/111855/how-to-make-an-earth-with-27-suns-work) [Radiation Levels and Effects on Planet with 27 Suns](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/119148/radiation-levels-and-effects-on-planet-with-27-suns) This thread is related to [this one](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/111855/how-to-make-an-earth-with-27-suns-work), with modifications (hence the name, "attempt two") It is **not** a duplicate because the previous one was "impossible." This has been modified to try to make the hypothetical situation possible. I changed some of the physics and specifications. I also stopped editing my previous post because it would have invalidated (all) the answers. # Background information This is a setting in which a planet is in orbit of a star/stars in a solar system/tightly packed globular cluster with 27 suns. (Terms "sun" and "star" are used mostly interchangeably: suns is preferred because they are all very close to the planet (astronomically.) You can manipulate what type(s) of light these suns emit : these suns can emit sub-infrared and super-gamma and anywhere in between. A mysterious *Source* creates a mysteriously strong Field around the planet, which we'll call "Ex-vee" for short. XV is totally protected by this super-magnetic/magical Field, which, though small, deflects all that nasty gamma radiation and heat. A layer of reflective, metallic clouds further cool the planet down, and mountains colored dark black act as heat absorbents, capping off and sending the rippling warmth up into the higher atmosphere. So the intensity of the light is certainly blinding, but not particularly hot. The planet is protected from the suns' radiation and heat. It has liquid water. (Though no breathable oxygen has been developed, that will come with photosynthesis, which is easy when you have the light of 27 suns on you nearly all the time.) So, all of this magnetic field/heat protection is currently being handwaved (may be covered in future questions). Now, the size/type of the suns is up to you, but there must be at least one 1. blue giant 2. white dwarf 3. midrange star Yay! So we have our stars. Toggle the types of light and we're halfway there. Additionally:It's heliocentric. From what I understand, it would be best to have the largest blue star either at the center or in a binary orbit. Smaller stars orbit these stars (or are perhaps caught in between) and the even smaller stars orbit these pairs or single stars. Then finally come the planets, orbiting stars orbiting stars orbiting stars (or a single stationary star). I figured out the distance from the inner edge of our real-world Kuiper Belt ($\approx 4$ lighthours.) Not that much. So I'm going to say, the suns must be within 1 light-day of each other and the entire group of stars must be within 1 light-month of each other. Ignore the effects of the compactness will have on the crushing gravity. The orbits must be long-term stable. I want all 27 suns to be visible from the planet (not necessarily at the same time, you manipulate as needed) and I want there to be a night (a point at which only 0-5 suns are visible, meaning 22-27 are not visible) and there should be such things as eclipses (a shadow falling on a sun, either from the planet/other planets/moons, if there are any other planets or if there are any moons.) You may insert a white hole of any mass at any point, but only one. It cannot replace one of the suns. There must be all 27 in addition to the white hole, if added. ### As For How It Formed And How Long It Must Last: This is kind of a tough one to explain. Suffice it to say (hopefully) that the suns are kept alive for up to 20 billion years, even the giant blue star. A highly technological society and the fact that this is a "light plane" fuel the stars with enough energy to keep them alive for a very, very long time. (Please suspend disbelief.) They also (sorry for making you wince, astronomers out there) formed very very very unimaginably fast. Like, in a couple thousand years. Some all-powerful entity (read: the author) commanded it to happen. Now we have super-healthy, long-lasting stars that formed very quickly and settled into their ideal orbits. Rocks smash together, etc etc, and our dear XV forms and settles into an orbit, orbiting one (or two) stars, each of which are orbiting other larger stars etc. NO black holes(NO exceptions). You MAY insert a white hole(s) as needed. NO instability. NO supernovae. NO collisions (well, apart from asteroids/comets/whatevers that would get vaporized by XV's Field or the sun system's heat). The suns must indeed be suns! No fakes. 27 suns (though you may add additional non-stellar objects to make it work, (planets/moons/asteroids, NOT BLACK HOLES or gravitational/stellar anomalies!)) Oops! I just used the last atom of unobtanium in this universe and my hand(wavium) just fell off from all the handwaving to manipulate light and star lifetimes, heat, etc. Now it's up to YOU to figure this out (without any "magic"): How would this work? You need to figure out: What orbits the stars follow/how they orbit each other. How XV orbits the star(s). (Not tidally locked, please.) Does XV have any moon(s)? Are there other planets in this solar system? (these are for stability). Things like seasons, day lengths, eclipses, sunrises/set times etc. will be left for another post. There must be a long-term stability. If it helps, you can manipulate gravity so that the stable orbit "freezes" for the long term. I also need to know if this system needs any other planets to work and if it can work with any other planets. Same with a moon or moons. Finally: # To summarize the Ultimate Question What would it look like? What stars would orbit rough stars? I don't need an informative diagram. Just draw/show me a rough outline: Star 1 (blue star) is here, Star 7 orbits Star 9 which orbits Star one, during their orbits Star 16 is at the position opposite of Star 24, XV orbits Star \_\_\_ which orbits \_\_\_ at \_\_ position... --- **Thank you to all in the [Sandbox](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6168/sandbox-for-proposed-questions) who helped me develop this question, especially @Renan and @Secespitus.** --- --- ***In accordance with [this meta post](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106/should-our-default-position-be-that-answers-should-be-science-logic-based-rath), please do not use magic as an answer (handwavium is already used enough that I want a fairly science-based answer to this, please.)*** --- --- [Answer] Looking at some real examples of quaternary and larger star systems, all of the stable configurations appear to be in pairs. Take [Castor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_(star)), for instance, which is composed of six (known) stars: Aa, Ab, Ba, Bb, Ca, and Cb. Each pair, such as Aa and Ab, orbits fairly close together, like a normal binary star. Then the A and B pairs themselves orbit each other, exactly as if each pair was a single body. Then the C pair (which is itself two stars in a tight binary orbit) orbits the rest of the system *as a whole*. This produces an orbital chart that looks something like a championship bracket. Most trinary star systems have the same structure, such as the familiar case of [Alpha Centauri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri) (A and B orbiting together, and Proxima as a distant companion). Trinaries where all three stars orbit one another at close range are normally unstable. This suggests that, if a 27-body system exists, it will have a similar (but much larger) structure, with pairs of stars orbiting in close proximity, and those pairs orbiting together with other pairs, and so on. (At least five levels deep.) However, that poses its own problems. Taking Castor as an example again, the C pair orbits about 5,000 AU from the rest of the system. I wasn't able to find a particular "standard" distance in a hierarchical orbit like this, but it makes sense that it would have to be distant, or else the pairs' components would start to interact with one another and it all breaks down. There's also a point where it stops being a star system because they're just too attenuated - there are arguments that Proxima Centauri (at 13,000 AU from Alpha Centauri A/B) is not really gravitationally bound to the others and therefore doesn't count. XV could basically orbit whichever of the stars you feel like. From thousands of AU away, the others would just be visible as stars, or at the outside, as planets. Telescopes might be able to resolve them as more than points of light, allowing them to have e.g. transits on the other stars, but not eclipses, and they wouldn't be bright enough to affect e.g. the day/night cycle or XV's overall heat budget. At best, one extra pair might be closer to its primary/primaries, but no more than that. Of course, XV could be in a circumbinary orbit around one of these pairs (or it could be around a singleton; a 27-star system of course has at least one odd star out, and might have more). If it's in orbit around a binary it would see all the normal binary-star effects like eclipses of one star by the other. [Answer] The magic phrase you want to Google is "N-body choreography". A choreography is a special kind of orbit where the items chase each other instead of orbiting around each other (see the "competition hierarchy" mentioned in Cadence's excellent answer). I found [someone who had worked out a stable orbit pattern for 21 bodies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw9_XdAwbGA): That's not the 27 you were hoping for, but it might get you started. Now, that 21 pattern is Newtonian gravity... may not hold once General Relativity gets involved (the comments on the video don't say). You say your system was artificially constructed. That's good because the probability of one of these choreographies forming naturally is so slim that, well... > > Are there any figure eight orbits in the universe? Douglas Heggie, 2000 together with Piotr Hut performed numerical experiments by throwing binary pairs, all masses equal, at each other and seeing how often figure eight solutions formed. On the basis of these numerical experiments and other considerations, they estimate the number of figure eight orbits in the observable universe lies in the range of 1 to 100. One does not expect to see any of the other choreographies due to their dynamical instability. Thus choreographies are of extremely limited interest in astronomy. > > > (From [Scholarpedia](http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/N-body_choreographies)) The fun part about choreographies is that, apparently, we can prove that high-order choreographies must exist, but we have almost no ability to actually identify one. So you could simply assert in your story, "The 27 suns existed in a 27-body choreography established by the Builders," and no one could gainsay you as long as you never went into detail about what the mechanics were. [Answer] There is a simple but apparently improbable way to construct such system of twenty-seven suns. Where the planet is quite straight forward, it must orbit only one sun. One of the three midrange stars, which suggests it would be either K or M star, and possibly even G class star. There would have to be a high-mass object at the centre of the entire of twenty-seven suns. This arrangement is similar to the [high-velocity stars](https://www.space.com/20303-black-hole-star-speed-record.html) orbiting the [supermassive black hole](https://phys.org/news/2017-08-stars-orbiting-supermassive-black-hole.html) at the centre of our galaxy. Now one of the conditions for the fictional world depicted in this question excludes black holes. However, it does permit white holes. Fortunately, this makes the proposed arrangement workable. A white hole will also be a gravitationally massive object. > > Like black holes, white holes have properties like mass, charge, and angular momentum. They attract matter like any other mass, but objects falling towards a white hole would never actually reach the white hole's event horizon. > > > This answer's proposed model for a system of twenty-seven (27) suns consists of a central high-mass object. Its mass will comparable with a supermassive black hole, but in this case that high-mass object will be a supermassive white hole. All twenty-seven suns will orbit the white hole like the planets of a solar system. The entire system of suns can be arranged in the 3:2 orbital resonance pattern. This will guarantee the stability of all twenty-seven suns. The planet can be located orbiting a suitable star, where its surface conditions can be suitable for life. The orbital velocities of the twenty-seven suns will be high. Probably, several times that of the Earth's around the central mass. Since the Earth has an orbital velocity of 30 km/s, they could have orbital velocities four or five times greater. XV will just orbit one of the stars. Does it have a moon or moons? Possibly, but the high velocities of objects orbiting the central mass may make it difficult for planets to gravitationally capture matter to either become moons or to allow the formation of moons. The other suns will appear as extremely large and bright stars in the planet's sky. Some might be visible the hours of daylight. This is due to the fact the other suns won't be too close. It won't be like having multiple suns in the sky at the same time. Nights will be much brighter and better illuminated than those on Earth during a Full Moon. [Answer] There's another possibility here, which seems to have been overlooked in the other answers, and which may be closer to the author's original intent. The sizes of stars can vary tremendously, from 7.5% of our sun's mass to 35,000%. This is a bigger range than the difference between Jupiter and our sun. So put one enormous blue giant in the center, and let it be orbited by 26 much smaller red dwarves. Although there may not be a plausible way for such a system to form, it should be perfectly stable. It also has the interesting possibility that, if the planet in question orbits around one of the mid-range red dwarves, it can have two suns (one red and one blue) of nearly equal apparent magnitude, as well as 25 others of various relative intensities, which wax and wane on timescales varying from seasonal to millennial. ]
[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 5 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/112978/edit) **Note: This is background research for parody/comedy story. So, some below points are not even plausible and I do not care about it. Please do not waste your time commenting and/or posting about plausibility of the setup** You did it. You played ultimate prank on your friend Dave. You and group of your friends got yourself and (especially) Dave drunk. When Dave passed out, you snuck him inside the freaking rocket scheduled to send first humans to the Mars! Speak of luck of drunken guys, right? Thing is, the situation got real south for Dave. To hit the optimal launch window and to avoid bad weather, NASA rescheduled the flight 4 hours earlier and as everyone was hurrying up to actually launch, everyone overlooked one extra drunken guy on board. *(Before commenting, read the bold text above please)* Long story short, Dave wakes up at moment when its too late to turn the rocket around. Now, for the background research: Group of six highly trained astronauts is stranded on space ship together with Dave, who is drunk, hungover and has no freaking clue about anything even remotely connected with rockets and/or space. Now the background research questions I really care about: * Are they going to survive the trip to Mars and back? (Assume length of flight 6 months one way, 14 days on the ground and 6 months fly back) * Can the Astronauts train Dave to do at least something benefitial during the trip? * If yes, what is the funniest possible job to assign to Dave in this setup? * Is there is someone to be fired about this massive security breach? Who is? (Assume the start is happening "tomorrow", in current day, current Earth setup) * Is it even remotely plausible that Dave will become first (drunken) man on Mars? [Answer] Maybe first drunken man to leave earth orbit (although there could be debate about that with post-soviet countries) but not drunken man on Mars. He would sober up before they get there. They would probably survive that trip (assuming that food was prepared for 5 people but with a little excess on), But they would need some extra rations on Mars or shorten their stay there. The jobs that Dave are good for: being a living experiment. He has no training, he's not mentally or physically prepared for the trip and he cannot distinguish a sonic screwdriver from a Phillips. That's Lieutenant Phillips to you. The thing is that the astronauts and control think that no one else knows about Dave (because Dave doesn't remember the night out). So they give the him stupidest, riskiest jobs that they always wanted to test but never had a "spare". About security - everyone who had "security" badge at the time would be fired. But for comedy relief that would be good spoof of "you have 24 hours to solve this case Kiminsky or give your badge back". And the security would search for those who enabled Dave to get into rocket. [Answer] I opt for a deceased Dave leaving LEO and probably being the first corpse ever sea buried in outer space. **Reasoning:** A rocket lift off is a rather brusque event. Anything which is not properly fastened to keep its position is going to bounce around and hit hard on the surfaces. Imagine walking in a 747 during take off or landing. A rocket take off is way more brusque and harsh. That is already hard to cope while sober. Dave is drunk, so at best with slower reactions. He won't be able to protect himself with the basic defense mechanism our body develops while growing up. And Dave won't have a designated seat where he will be fastened. He will be smashed around, defenseless or even unconscious. Now let's assume he miraculously manages to survive lift off and reaches LEO. Space sickness is common, and being drunk makes it worse. When you puke in microgravity the puke will float around your head, and if you have nobody to help you because you are unconscious you will drown in your own cloud of puke. So we end up a corpse (either dead by traumatic impact or by drowning) which will be rotting in the 6 months it takes to reach Mars. Decomposition consumes Oxygen and such usage is not kept into account in designing the life support systems on the space ship. So, once the crew finds the corpse, their only choice will be to sea bury it into the outer space. Put the corpse in the load lock, vent it and wave goodbye to Dave's body. Call it Dave in the sky with diamonds, maybe, or Space Davidity. [Answer] Dave's very survival, and that of the rest of the crew, depends on the margin of safety of the life-support rig on board. Dave, as an average guy, is probably slightly more of a strain on that system than the rest of the crew, and at minimum while he's breathing he's a 17% extra burden on the Oxygen regeneration cycle of the vessel. Margin of safety on most modern engineered systems is 10%, so if NASA didn't build in any extra margin of safety everyone is unconscious in a few hours and dead shortly thereafter. That's the only part of your six (6!?) question mini-marathon I'm going to answer because none of them even have any bearing on the outcome of the others, and six questions is this site doing all your work as the author and that's not on. [Answer] > > * Can the Astronauts train Dave to do at least something beneficial > during the trip? > If yes, what is the funniest possible job to assign to Dave in this setup? > > > My suggestion here would be toilet cleaning, for the possibility of floating waste? It is probably unlikely (as I know that you are strapped to the toilet) but I don't see a reason why there would be absolutely no chance of floating waste on a space toilet. He could catch it in a device similar to a butterfly net with a bucket on the end. However someone more knowledgeable on space toilets might have more information on this sort of thing. > > * Is it even remotely plausible that Dave will become first (drunken) man on Mars? > > > After that amount of time it's unlikely that the alcohol involved at the time of the prank would still be in his system. However, if he had somehow drunkenly stowed more alcohol onto the ship with him, it's possible he may have drank some before landing. ]
[Question] [ In this story, the world is in peace, **until the Lightning nation attacks**. Because of the peaceful period before, this particular nation under the attack of the Lightning nation is able to learn about the creation of the lightning. The general idea of electricity is sufficiently known: 1. It can be grounded. 2. It can be redirected using metal. However, due to lack of *other* magic/bending techniques, this nation is left to their knowledge of metallurgy and electricity (and other knowledge) to handle the invading Lightning nation. In this nation, they can produce small electricity using a waterwheel, through a mechanism they currently don't know - electromagnetism - (it just works!) to research electricity. There is no electrical device other than basic wires, so the research in this area is boring and particularly undeveloped. This can be reproduced easily, but they have no idea why this work. This nation is particularly famous for the melee soldier: ranging from hand-to-hand martial artist, rogue-like dagger wielders, to knight in armor, and archery and other projectile-based is not developed very well, so they must depend on their melee soldiers. The Lightning nation, confident in their lightning bending over soldiers without magic/bending ability, only sends lightning benders to invade them (with catapult and battering ram for sieging castles). Lightning bending works by creating a low resistance channel of ionized air toward the targeted location (only air), then release the accumulated, all using fingers - [Avatar-like](https://i.stack.imgur.com/v794A.gif). The power is only comparable to real lightning in 20 meter. > > An average bolt of negative lightning carries an electric current of 30,000 amperes (30 kA), and transfers 15 coulombs of electric charge and 500 megajoules of energy. > > > All lightning bender soldier able to do this, with more experienced users capable of extending that range. The power of the bolt diminished exponentially with a maximal average range of 50 m. Using the ability is at-will and you can discharge from your 4 limbs, less than 1 second needed to release a bolt, and recharge cooldown varies from 3 seconds to 10 seconds for greater bolt. **How the attacked nation can prepare their melee soldier to defend against the lightning strikes?** I'm **not** asking about how can they win the war, or kill the enemy - might do that in their sleep by sending assassins. Encasing the soldiers in Faraday cage obviously out of the question. I don't think carrying a metal rod for grounding is capable of protecting the user against a lightning, though I'm free to be proven wrong of this. Please consider the medieval setting, their limited knowledge of electricity (no electrical device yet, only basic wires), and **unavailability of magic/bending at their country**. The answer also should be practical for a melee soldier. Cookie points if you can redirect this back to the enemy army. **Update** According to the [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/48133/34288) on this question: [Metal Armour vs lightning strikes?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/48066/metal-armour-vs-lightning-strikes), metal armor seems out of question. > > This means that even inside a Faraday cage, if you are close enough to its walls, the arc flash will still injure you. > > > The math is done there if you are interested. [Answer] You've correctly identified the main mechanism for protecting these foot solders from lightning strikes: [grounding](https://youtu.be/eNxDgd3D_bU). *Ah, but how much grounding do you need? [A thin wire will easily burn out](https://youtu.be/-3IbAerYj8I), explode, and so on if you put too much current through it.* *So how to make [lighting rod fashion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_rod_fashion) transition over into lightning rod armor?* # The Full Armor Solution **First**, we need to look at some lightning rods, as they regularly and reliably redirect lightning away from flammable wooden buildings. [Lightningrodparts.com](http://www.lightningrodparts.com/parts3.html), perhaps unsurprisingly, has lightning rods. They are not large: they get as small as 3/8 of an inch (9.525 mm) thick which means there is less metal in a lightning rod than there is in a sword! **Second**, we should note that a "Standard Concealed Through the Roof Lightning Rod," comes with a *thin rubber sheath* to protect the very flammable house from a *very fire-inducing* lightning bolt. **Third**, we need to talk about armor. Did you know that people generally wear [gambesons/aketons/padded jackets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambeson) under armor? And that these are generally made from *insulating* materials? The solution here ought to be obvious now: cover the joints with dense chain-mail or get wires/plates to attach to metal armor plates together at multiple points to allow the increased current to preferentially flow through the armor, not the person, and into the ground. Make sure the boot soles are also metal and that there is a layer of thick cloth between the soldiers and all their metal gear. The goal is to make the lighting go through the armor and not the person. Thicker plates will conduct electricity better, but multiple smaller wires can come together to carry the same amount of current. This lightning-proof armor will likely not be over-cumbersome. Asbestos, [which is very insulating](https://www.asbestos.net/exposure/products/general/asbestos-gloves/) and [very anciently available](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos#History_of_use), can be added to fibers to make heat resistant gambesons. This will lightning proof your solders as much as they can be. # A Shield-Based Solution Another alternative is to implement something like an electrically conductive [pavise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavise), a shield meant to be placed on the ground to grant cover. It is something that foot soldiers can shove into the ground and take cover behind as they see these lighting people gearing up to throw lightning... if they're anything like Avatar's fire-benders, this works. [![Ground Shields!](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XzUMF.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XzUMF.gif) <- This attack has a *definite* tell. The shield solution more-or-less makes the shields planted into the ground a stand-alone lightning rod. You circumvent the arc-flash problem by increasing the distance from the lightning rod. The [IEE 1584 standard](http://arcadvisor.com/faq/ieee-1584-calculation-procedure) is sensitive on the scale of millimeters- something easily achieved by planting a shield and taking a small step back. # Problems People will be blinded be the flash of lightning. (Until [auto-tinting goggles](https://www.bakersgas.com/ESA0700000800.html?gclid=CjwKCAjw2ZXMBRB2EiwA2HVD-CgZpHwiRiTvXNDrUxaJdq5zRL2KYHI9ybnj3xlnlH-xaHMsYlXvbBoCylwQAvD_BwE) happen.) People will be deafened by the boom of thunder. (Earplugs may be quickly developed.) People may still suffer burns from intense heat going through their armor or shield. (Asbestos and other insulating materials can help with this.) These armored solutions, however, will allow these people to talk about their wounds much later, and that's something. # Some More Considerations Suppressing fire will be super helpful. Archers suppress the lightning people so the foot solders can get close and get to hacking. Some tactics may need to change, like looser formations to prevent side-flashes from lightning strikes. [Answer] Chainmail by itself (or full plate) should act as a faraday cage. As long as they touch the ground, I would imagine the electricity flows through the armor to the ground. Remember, the metal just has to be think enough to make "go through the metal, and not melt/vaporize the metal" is a viable altenative to "cook person". You can look at the [tesla coils using bands.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTxFXckwihs) And those are people who turn up the voltage, not create special ionized gas channels. [Answer] ## Starve them From the data you've given, lighting benders must eat like Sumo wrestlers. The average 2000 Calorie diet is about 8.6MJ of energy. You quoted 500MJ of energy in a lightning bolt, without suggesting that it should be scaled in any way. Literally, each lightning bender is going to have to be eating for an army! A single lightning bolt is equivalent to 58 people's 2000 Calorie diet. Once you scale the power levels to something which isn't The Hand of Zeus reaching out and touching you, platemail and chainmail become valid options for solving your problems. If you drop the power by 1000 fold, which brings the calorie output into the "heavy exertion" category, each lightning bender has the power of a good sized MIG welder. [Answer] With the strength of the lightning available there's not really any effective, portable way to stop or redirect lightning. So there are two practical options. The first and easiest is just not turning up. Lightning bending has changed the prevailing tactics, melee is no longer effective on an open battlefield so it's better to give them all crossbows and hit the benders from range. If you absolutely have to have melee forces you're starting to look at using the melee forces only for protecting the archers and not for attacking. The second is stealth. The soldiers need to get as close as possible without being seen, forests would be perfectly for this. Then they can charge in before the benders can kill too many. [Answer] I think (lightning rod) spears should work - and the fit well to a melee based military. Imagine a lightning rod metal core, which at the tip is made into a spear head. The grip (or better everything except for tip and base) has to be covered in insulating material, I guess leather or something like that. By planting the base of the spear on the ground and holding the spear head in the direction of the enemy you can sort of 'catch' the lightning bolts - the longer the spear the better it works. By advancing in alternating lines you can even move towards the enemy, while still being 'grounded' at the tip of the front line. (I'm thinking something like [this](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Magazine/DespertaFerro)) [Answer] We need to find something that keeps the suspension of disbelief of readers willling to accept lighting mages and people fighting them hand-to-hand. And people did believe in this: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RUObN.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RUObN.jpg) So what about something like this: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ik0ul.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ik0ul.gif) <http://tesladownunder.com/> "Umbrellas" at the point of wooden spears, with long weighted chains to act as grounding, hanging near the "catcher" part. Like Macedonian *sarisas* defending agains archers, some of the spears point frontwards and the rear ones go up in progressive angle up to 90º. If the front spear breaks after catching a lightning, the fighter on the back passes his spear to upfront, in a chain. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9PItq.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9PItq.jpg) Since your phallanx would have too many conductive points, perhaps they would organize themselves in porcupine formations instead of attacking squares. [Answer] If the benders themselves are not invulnerable to their lightning, the soldiers can create water or sticky conducting fluid bombs launched by catapults so the benders are drenched as well and can electrocute their allies. On that note, napalm or Greek fire in the old world, works too. There can also be large mobile lightning rods pushed by insulated soldiers or engineers while personal lightning rods attached to backpacks with grounded wires may also be crafted since this is in a fantasy setting and they can wear them similar to Japanese flag bearers (at the back). Maybe they can also use large bells as a sort of directed sonic weapon to disorient and attack the benders? Really large bells like as in catapult scale. ]
[Question] [ What materials would be significantly better than currently commonly used radioactive materials (Uranium/Plutonium) for energy generation? I am looking for some material which could've been brought (so it doesn't need to occur naturally or commonly) to Earth long ago, kept hidden for thousands of years and now uncovered. [Answer] Molot has the right answer, but I'd just like to chime in with numbers because that is what I do. # Chemical reactions Chemical reactions don't release nuclear binding energy; instead they only release the energy of molecular bonds, so they have limited bang for their buck. For example, burning octane (a component of gasoline) through the following chemical reaction > > 2C$\_8$H$\_{18}$ + 25O$\_2$ $\rightarrow$ 16CO$\_2$ + 18H$\_2$O > > > yields **17.0 MJ/kg** of reactants. This is about the recommended calorie intake for an active adult male, or the kinetic energy of a tank's main gun. # Fission Fission reactions (Uranium and Plutonium) generate energy by splitting an atom into smaller parts. A portion of the binding energy from each atom that is split is released. Because mass and energy are equivalent, the binding energy of large atomic nuclei is manifested as a measurable mass. When such a large nucleus is split, the resulting fission products have a lower total mass than the original particle, by about 0.1%; mass was converted to energy. Here are the numbers for U$^{235}$. Various other Uranium, Plutonium, and Thorium isotopes have similar energy profiles; you won't get a significant boost to energy density by switching out your fission fuel. The average energy released by a single atom during fission is 202MeV, broken down as: * 169 MeV fission product kinetic energy * 5 MeV neutron kinetic energy (partially recoverable) * 7 MeV prompt gamma radiations (not recoverable) * 6 MeV delayed gamma radiation (not recoverable) * 6 MeV delayed beta radiation (fully recoverable) * 8 MeV anti-neutrinos (not recoverable) So the recoverable energy is around 180 MeV in total. Most of the gamma radiation is carried off to the shielding, while the anti-neutrinos head off into deep space. For 235 g of reactants, that means you get 1.74e13 J output, or **73.9 TJ/kg**. This is about equal to the energy from Little Boy, or all the gasoline carried by an Airbus A380. # Fusion Fusion is sort of the converse of Fission; smaller particles merge to form larger particles; as they merge they lose mass. This works because of the binding energy curve. The binding energy is highest at around iron, with ~56 nuclides. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xiGAf.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xiGAf.png) Thus, any reaction with daughter nuclei closer to Iron will produce more net energy. Fusion is more productive than fission because there is a (visible) large delta in binding energies between hydrogen isotopes and ultra-stable Helium-4; and also because the reactants are much lighter per atom. The best fusion reactions from a specific energy standpoint involve fusing $^2\_1$H with either $^3\_1$H or $^3\_2$He. The former of these two reactions releases most of its energy in a hard-to-capture neutron, but the latter develops 18.3 MeV per fusion as kinetic energy in an alpha particle and proton. Both can be captured and used electrostatically, giving a specific yield of **353 TJ/kg**. This is about the energy released in a large thunderstorm, or a 20 meter meteor strike. # Antimatter Whereas the previous reactions converted *parts* of their mass that were equivalent to nuclear binding energy to usable kinetic energy, matter-anti-matter reactions convert *all* of their mass to energy. This conversion is done simply by the famous equation $E=mc^2$. Thus, $c^2 = 8.99\times10^{16}$, so anti-matter yield is **89.9 PJ/kg**, which is about the energy released in a magnitude 9+ earthquake, or 1 second of solar radiation on the Earth. On the minus side, the anti-matter reactions are complex. Electron annihilation releases gamma rays, which are hard to capture and use. The reaction between protons is even more complex, as each proton is in turn composed of various quarks. Some of that energy will be carried away in unrecoverable neutrinos, and most of the rest in high energy gammas. I'm a bit down on anti-matter as an energy source for these reasons; there is a lot of research and engineering before we could recover the energy from this reaction. # Conclusion Yes, antimatter can release about 3 orders of magnitude more energy per kilogram than nuclear fission, although I certainly hope the aliens left a tech manual explaining how to recover it. Also, don't be the explorer that slides the lid off the tomb filled with anti-matter... [Answer] Nothing beats energy density of matter-antimatter reaction, with famous $E=mc^2$ equation. Actually, if we will measure energy density the way we do for fuels we burn, it will be $E=2m\_ac^2$ where $m\_a$ is mass of antimatter - because for each unit of antimatter we will annihilate the same mass of matter - and matter is everywhere, essentially free. For now, storing antimatter is only possible for short durations. [CERN managed to store antihydrogen for 16 minutes](https://home.cern/about/engineering/storing-antimatter) and that's current world record, it seems. But there is a [patent application](http://www.patentsencyclopedia.com/app/20090022257) for storing antimatter in an unpowered ways, trapped in fullerene molecule. This sounds feasible and, in theory, could be stored a long time. For hard science on antimatter storage, visit [question on our sister](https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/207879/104551) site. [Answer] Well, there is a correlation between the energy density a radioactive material has and its decay rate: The higher the decay rate, the higher the energy density. To store store it for some thousand years, it needs a half life of the same order of magnitude or larger. Also, α radioactivity has typically more energy per decay than other types of radioactivity. So you need an α radioactive material with a half life of several thousand years. Besides Plutonium you can choose some other transuranium isotopes (of Americium, Curium, Berkelium or Californium) or you can use pure Radium. There are also interesting isotopes of Lead and Bismuth available. An exotic alternative constitutes the isotope 250Cm that decays by spontaneous fission, emitting even more energy than a typical α emitter, and that has a half life in the right order of magnitude. You can find isotope data on the German language wikipedia here: [Liste der Isotope/7. Periode](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Isotope/7._Periode). EDIT: Handle with care! Some of the suggested isotopes are able to sustain a nuclear chain reaction and careless handling may cause a criticality accident. [Answer] While I would agree with the existing answers that antimatter wins on a strict energy density ranking, I would like to propose an alternate material for consideration. Super heavy elements inhabiting the [island of stability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability). In general as the atomic mass increases for elements (the nucleus becomes larger with more protons and neutrons) they become more unstable with shorter half lives (with a corresponding increase in radioactivity). However, it is theorized that at some large threshold the large number of protons and neutrons in the atoms nucleus becomes more stable making the elements last for longer than a few microseconds before it begins decaying. The super heavy elements might have some interesting properties, the most useful of which may be a very small critical mass allowing for much smaller nuclear weapons. Simply by the fact of their extreme densities, atomic masses >300, compared to U-235 or Pu-239, would give them slightly higher energy densities compared to existing fission based fuels. [Answer] # Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators Using radioactive materials for passive heat production (without the need for a reactor) is the simplest method, but power is inversely proportional to half-life, so after thousands of years, there won't be much useful material left. With a half-life of 432 years, Americium-241 is probably the best choice here. It is currently being considered for space probes due to the shortage of Plutonium-238. Even after thousands of years, the remainder should be seperable without too much problems, as the decay product is Neptunium-237, which has a half-life of 2 million years (and is useful in its own right). # Current fission Current fission processes all start with uranium. Natural uranium consists of 99.3% U-238 and 0.7% U-235. Uranium-235 is fissile, but Uranium-238 is not. It will eat neutrons though, especially at higher energies, which means you can't get a chain reaction in natural uranium without a very clever reactor encasing it. For most purposes, this means the uranium will have to be enriched, increasing the percentage of U-235. Except for bombs, practical enrichments still contain mostly U-238, which means you will produce Plutonium-239 as it absorbs neutrons. Pu-239 is itself a good fissile material and has a lower critical mass than U-235, though if it stays in a reactor for too long, it will grow fractions of Pu-240, Pu-241 and Pu-242, which will make it unsuitable for gun-type bombs. ### Fissile energy production All fissile isotopes, upon neutron-induced fission, will release roughly 0.1% of their mass as energy, so big gains can't really be made here. Fusion will give you about 0.5%, but there are other answers that describe that. # Thorium An alternative fuel cycle starts with Thorium-232, the only primordial isotope of thorium. Like U-238, it's not fissile, but when it eats a neutron, it will turn into Uranium-233, which is fissile. This fuel cycle is considered (by some) to be better because it doesn't grow transuranium elements (such as plutonium) by design, and as fissile isotopes (U-233 in this case) that fail to fission (and instead eat the neutron) will have extra chances to do so (U-235, Np-237 (fast neutrons only), Pu-239), very few transuranics will be produced in practice. # Artificial isotopes Up to this point, we've discussed things that are available on earth right now, in sufficient quantities. Some transuranics have half-lives sufficient to stash them away for a long time, while still having useful properties. Neptunium-237, mentioned earlier, has a half-life of 2 megayears, can be used in bombs and fast reactors, and can be used to breed Plutonium-238, which is, for most purposes, the best RTG material. Curium-247 is an isotope of Curium that has a half-life of 15 megayears. It is fissile and has a critical mass much smaller than the currently used fissiles. This enables the creation of small bombs (suitcase nukes) and small reactors. If you leave the stuff lying around long enough, it will grow fractions of U-235 (half-life 703 megayears), Pu-239 (24 kiloyears) and Am-243 (7 kiloyears), with U-235 being the largest fraction by far. Amusingly, this produces chemically separable, pure U-235. This can also be done simply by storing Pu-239 for long enough. Other curium isotopes may yield even better results, but only Curium-245, with a half-life of 8 kiloyears, can make even a claim at being storeable. [Answer] As far as where a hidden energy source could be kept hidden for thousands of years and now uncovered, I have a perfect answer and that is right where we found all the other radioactive elements. In pitchblende. Pitchblende (Uraninite) is a radioactive, uranium-rich mineral and ore. It has a chemical composition that is largely uranium, but also contains oxides of lead, thorium, plutonium, polonium and rare earth elements. Marie Curie processed tons of pitchblende to come up with her discoveries of radium and polonium. If you were to discover a radioactive substance beyond group 7 elements, traces of it would be found here. In the past when miners would find pitchblende ore, it was usually a disappointment. It meant the silver vein they were following had run out and now it was just lead and pitchblende, which had little commercial value, all the way up to the point it became worth a great deal to anyone interested in radioactive elements. What better material to discover has riches planted from the past than something everyone thought through the centuries was utterly useless? <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uraninite> [![pitchblende](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nJBZT.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nJBZT.jpg) [Answer] The need for a huge energy kick brings us to nuclear reactions, but fusion fuel is not very likely to fit the bill; we *have* fusion fuel and the problem lies in getting it to fuse to begin with. So we would need to retrieve the *technology* rather than the material. Fission could do, but even then, the brighter an element burns, the shorter it does so. A radioactive substance that's still radioactive enough after a thousand years would not be all that radioactive. I submit a third hypothesis which is still tolerably plausible: an **anti-meta-material**. It is possible to create a [structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penning_trap) (Dehmelt-Paul lattice) that is capable of trapping antimatter ions in a charged ionic lattice. In reality, with the materials and technology we have, it can't exist because building it would require extreme tolerances, and the anti-ions' thermal energy must be lower enough than the lattice constraints that the lattice itself doesn't implode. But we could imagine a metamaterial where a positively charged lattice held free antiprotons in crystal-like "cells" at room temperature for an indefinite time. Then, when heated e.g. by a laser, the lattice would start collapsing and freeing antiprotons towards the laser itself; these could be electrically accelerated and used to trigger a controlled series of annihilations. You would get lots of radiation and a staggering amount of thermal energy. Then it's just a matter of using that heat to power a turbine, not unlike what's done in (fission) nuclear reactors. Once the nature of the magic crystals is discovered (that they are about 5% antimatter in mass), to exploit them you only need a tuned laser and to be able to control an electric field. And you get an energy source that's hundreds of time more powerful than nuclear fission. The crystals also double as fearsome weapons - crush a crystal with a powerful enough explosive, and enough of it will fracture and start an antimatter explosion, vaporizing *the remainder* of the crystal and instantly triggering an even larger reaction. ]
[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/75578/edit). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/75578/edit) I’m an alien. No, really. I’m from an high-advanced civilization. But you don’t believe me. So you ask for a demonstration. Among other things, you ask me to share a scientific knowledge totally out of your league but that you could be able to verify **in a few days**. Something that makes scientists says "Ok, it's not one of us." I will give you only something completely innocuous (physically and socially) and that will not lead to great shock among the public. Maybe something that’s just a matter of interest for the scientists. So... what could I give you? [Answer] The list of all stars with exoplanets that are observable from earth at current technology level. Once you know where to look, detecting exoplanets is not that hard these days. Tell them the exact number of planets and their orbital periods for easier detection and further proof of your origins. [Answer] **A math or logic proof.** They can be independently verified, don't need high-technology to be transmitted, are very impressive to people who know what they're looking at... and entirely cryptic to people who don't. Perhaps one of the [Millenium Questions?](http://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems) These are widely recognized as extremely difficult and useful for science, but they're abstract enough that unless someone is interested in math and science, they're unlikely to know/care about them. It would probably see some press, but not wide coverage. Also, there's a foundation set up to check your answers, though I'm not certain about the 'verify in a few days', because I'm not a mathematician. I could post it on Stack Exchange, maybe. :P Also, there's a million dollars worth of prize money, which might be a nice bonus. [Answer] Maybe not in a few days, but: you could give nuclear scientists the recipe for a transuranian element on an [island of stability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability): a superheavy isotope of a new element that is stable (i. e. it doesn't decay) in the order of a few minutes or hours. This need not require extremely strong energies, maybe only tuning some reactions that have already been tried before: > > Whilst elements with atomic numbers expected for the island of > stability have been produced, the total nucleon count of these > isotopes has been too low. These synthesised isotopes have contained > too few neutrons to reach the supposed stable region. > > > Synthesizing a new stable element would also not be immediately dangerous: it could serve some useful purpose, or not. [Answer] One technique would be to provide the equivalent of the Encyclopedia Britannica in your own language along with a alien/english dictionary and grammar. I don't think it reasonable to invent a whole new language along with the equivalent of the Oxford english dictionary and the EB. The existence of the three works alone is persuasive. Linguists could quickly tell if it was derived from any earthly language group. Even with incomplete translation you have a whole world of history, geography, etc that can checked against itself. The only two invented languages I know of with significant number of speakers is esperanto, and klingon. The first is basically a romance language with the irregularities cleaned up, so it's not made from whole cloth. Huge chunks of vocabulary are taken from existing languages, and the spelling and pronunciation renormalized. *[Edit: I'm told I'm wrong about it being romance language derived]* Klingon (which has more speakers than esperanto) is deficient in vocabulary. [Answer] Share your knowledge of the communication mechanism you use to connect to the library of knowledge you will use to answer the scientific questions proposed to you. Just because you are alien doesn't mean you are going to know every single thing there is to know at a moment's notice, so you will have prepared for being asked these questions ahead of time. Nearly instantaneous communication technology over large distances (dimensions?) will no longer provide shock and awe to current Earthlings. If our current communication technology is similar enough, the experts in that field could verify likelihood that it is legitimate. If you are indeed able to remember absolutely anything scientific we could come up with, then we would be very interested in learning lots of new neurotransmitters used for memory function in a biological memory storage system (our brains for humans). [Answer] The simplest solution I can think of, would be a metal or mineral unknown to here. Alternatively, a plant or animal would be possible, but that may cause complications (see bringing plants or animals into Australia, for example). A metal or mineral should be fairly easy to verify as being alien, and won't be shocking to the masses. ]
[Question] [ Year 2077 C.E. someone invented a one way time travel into the past safely, the problem is that anyone can replicate the method with ease due to the proliferation of All-In-1 Advanced 3D printers and the weak anti-piracy law. Since it is impossible to stop **anyone** from going into the past can we at least stop people from developing god complex and drastically alter the course of history in their favours? This time machine only permits 1 person per usage, destination and exact date of arrival will be randomly chosen for you (any moment between 1 to 9999 years into the past). Luggage must not exceed 1% of your mass and no devices allowed as they can emit electromagnetic waves that cause interference to the time machine. [Answer] This won't be a problem. For simplicity sake, just imagine that you are the time traveler. Got it? Great! So you're a modern human. You're now back in the past. Let's say in the rural wilderness of France of the 1100's. Here we go. First let's speak the language...oh - sorry. No one actually speaks French. It's some horrible mixture of Latin-Germanic-and Celtic. So, communications is right out. Let's hunt. You know how to make a weapon right? No, of course, you don't. Bake bread - easy! Except you need to actually make the flour, harvest the yeast, build a suitable oven...forget bread. Point is, we won't need to worry about a God complex because modern humans will not survive long in the past. We lack virtually all the skills needed just to get by. [Answer] Why bother? The time travellers can only carry one percent of their body mass. After the clothes they stand up that leaves hardly anything. No gadgets to subdue empires! A complete lack of skills to cope with past conditions and a lack of the languages to deal with people in the past. The time machine will arrive randomly somewhere between one year and nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine years in the past. Ho hum! These guys aren't a threat to history, they're a threat to themselves. Consider our god syndrome time traveller landing nine years in the past, apart from babbling about what he might inaccurately remember about 2007 (this is written in 2016). Far from conquering 2007, how we remember Our Glorious leader from the Far Future of Nine Years hence those nine years ago, but if only it happened that way, instead our time traveller is likely to slammed into a detention centre and milked for his scrappy knowledge of the future. Trump for US President, indeed! A obvious lunatic. Nine thousand years in the past, what's the point of wanting to be a god if you can barely communicate with your palaeolithic ancestors and more especially if you find yourselves totally dependent on them for your food and survival. No-one is going to bother about preventing God complexes in stupid time travellers who are only going to their death in a past which they are ill-equipped to handle on a conventional, day-to-day level, let alone a history-changing one. The problem is more one of duty of care to mentally bewildered who will only kill themselves with time travel. Of all the many forms of time travel this is one that is singularly useless for any possibility of changing the past and manipulating history. [Answer] ## Negate Their Existence Perhaps make sure your time machine only makes use of principles where if you alter the past even a tiny bit, you immediately alter the future enough so that you are never born and cease to exist immediately. Ideally, somehow the time travel mechanics would be built so that the traveler is somehow exactly linked to the time travel process in such as way that any time travel happens only in a timeline where only they will be effected in the future, and they will be effected negatively--they will never be born, but the rest of the future is unchanged. ## Travel Only to Other Timelines Make sure that any time travelers cannot travel to a timeline that is ours. If they travel back, they get their own unique instance of time that does not effect the future for the rest of humanity, and so it's not such a big deal if they become godlike or severely alter the course of history, since only they will be effected by any changes. ## Time Travel Police Perhaps a police force tasked with tracking down unauthorized travel into the past, i.e. Terminators. ## Public Education Educate the public about any dangers of effecting the future. ## Sabatoge the Time Travel Machine Schematics Aggressively hunt down all existing records of correct time travel machine blueprints and destroy them. Substitute them with copies with errors that involve principles only the anti-time machine bureau understands. [Answer] Other answers have correctly revealed that travelers from the present will be poorly prepared for their journey most of the time. With 10000 possible years to arrive in, and with an entire planet of geography available within each of those years, only a small percentage of those who take the leap will land on survivable soil. Statistically, most will drown in deep ocean, far from the sight of land. But that doesn't mean that history is out of danger. The human race produces an almost un-exhaustable supply of ambitious idiots. No matter how stacked the odds are against any one of them surviving the trip, eventually one will land somewhere, where their foreknowledge will be dangerous. And by dangerous, I'm not talking god-complex level meddling; I'm talking extinction level stupidity. The fact that we are even here to discuss this problem is just luck. Somewhere out there, someone has printed or will soon print up the time travel machine which will send them back to their personal historic sweet-spot. And once that print-job is finished, so are we. So set off the EMP devices! Erase the Internet! Cancel the 20th and 21st centuries! The knowledge of time travel must be forgotten before it's too la... [Answer] How do you keep them from developing a God complex? Make time travel lethal. Nothing says, "You are not all powerful" as potently as death. Every trip exposes you to radiation. One trip, two trips, per year? Fine. More? Problems start to develop. Also, the trip arrival point may seem random to users, but something in your physics is rolling those dice... maybe the time machine always drops them at a point where they can't make any difference no matter what they do. PS: the range of the time machine being 9999 years... that's too coincidental a number. Consider making it a value computed from some universal physics constants that dictate a time horizon. [Answer] # Single Time Line Theory The time travel theory I prescribe too, this is the best for your story. There is only one time line. Simple enough. Any changes made to the past are already felt, which means if you alter the past it turns out that is the way it was all along. Time travel can still be seen as negative (altering the past is bad) but no one will notice if you do. How can you develop a God complex if you can't change the past? Look to the future! It's all you have control of! [Answer] It's a one-way trip, to a random time and location. The chances of this turning out good are very low. * 70% of the Earth's surface is water. Therefore, 7/10 times they would most likely drown. * 33% of Earth's land is a desert. Of the 3/10 times the traveler didn't pop out over water, 1/3 would be in a desert. * 50% of Earth is said to be [wilderness](http://www.conservation.org/NewsRoom/pressreleases/Pages/120402_global-analysis-finds-nearly-half-earth-still-wilderness.aspx). I assume this includes desert, so 1.5 times out of 10, the traveler would be deposited somewhere 'safe' * If the arrival doesn't kill them, the likelihood the traveler can find food, shelter, and clothing in time to avoid dying is low * Even then, the chance that people they ran into would not just kill them outright is pretty low. So, I need to ask, why would people go back? **Profit** They don't know when they are going, therefore they wind up in plague-infested Europe, Rome or prehistory. If they knew *when* and *where* they were going, they could bring back facts which would profit them greatly, but since they don't, they have no motivation. **Fame** Unless they manage to get mentioned in a history book somewhere, nobody would know what they did. They can't take much tech with them, so acting like a God to primitive people won't work. **Escape** The truly desperate may wish to go somewhere where nobody can find them. Think of escaping the Mob or a hostile government. This level of desperation is close to suicide. If it's one-way, nobody would ever know the machine did anything other than destroyed the traveler. I don't think anyone would use the machine for a one-way trip. [Answer] ## Parallel Timelines An other option would be that at the point of traveling back in time, the traveler essentially creates a parallel timeline. Any actions in that timeline would change the history of that new timeline, but not of the original. The effects would be only in the new parallel univers, and your history remains untouched. ## Statistical improbability Chances of survival are slim. * With having a random location assigned, it is highly probable that you will end up in the ocean, considering 70% of earth is covered with it. * And even if you arrive on actual land, most of it will be wilderness(how much depends on the time-period), lets assume an average of 40%. * Then there are time-periods where it will be very hard to survive due to war and the brutal living conditions in comparison to today. Not to mentions all the diseases that will kill most visitors. Again lets assume some number for the chance of survival: 50% (kind of optimistic). The resulting chance of surviving the time jump and the living conditions afterwards is only 0.3\*0.6\*0.5 = 0.09. So only about 10% that would survive the trip. For an individual to change history there will also be a certain amount of intelligence required. Lets say 1 in 10 would be able to change anything major. That leaves you at a mere 1% that are dangerous. At this point you could just say it so unlikely that it just doesn't happen. ## Changing the past is not possible In the movie "[The Time Machine (2002 film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine_(2002_film))" after the death of the main character's wife, in an effort to save her, he build a time machine. After going back and saving her, she died again of a different cause. After multiply attempts he then came to the conclusion that the past cannot be altered. You can implement something similar. Let them attempt to change history, but every time they try it it will have no effect or make things even worse. [Answer] ### Breaking news! We just found another person who accidentally traveled to Pompeii and immediately died in lava. That sounds painful! *(Editor's note: probably too quick to be painful.)* We just found another thousand people who died of starvation in the wilderness! We just found another thousand dead bodies in the desert! We just found another person who was burned as a witch in Salem! We just found another person who was eaten by the Donner party! We just found another person who was eaten in Jamestown! We just found another ten people who were eaten by cannibals in Africa or Asia or the Pacific islands! Ooh, we found someone eaten by cannibals in Europe! Oops, someone got sacrificed to the gods by the Aztecs! A few thousand travelers just got killed by popping into war zones! I wonder when we'll find someone with a successful traveling experience? ### Make a movie I'm thinking something along these lines (possibly inspired by [Roots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots_%281977_miniseries%29)). "I am a time traveler." Sound of a whip hitting flesh. "I am a time traveler!" Sound of a whip hitting flesh. Sobbing, "I am a slave." ### Time travel survivor Take people and leave them in random locations. Film them and see how long it takes for them to quit. Rules say that if the person calls a friend, that's the same as quitting. This will help people realize how difficult it is to survive a time travel jump. ### Low chances Given a random place and time, you are far more likely to die than achieve success. You have perhaps a four in five chance of drowning or dying of dehydration immediately, and a one in ten chance of starving in the wilderness. The remaining one time in ten, you only have to worry about suddenly appearing in some country where you don't speak the language. Possibly because no one spoke modern English (or whatever) more than a thousand years ago. Most of the last 10,000 years weren't that great, and the typical modern person doesn't have skills that would transfer. Perhaps the most useful talent would be killing people, but a single skilled killer who doesn't speak the local language is likely to be killed by some group. It is possible to succeed, but most people won't. It's hard to prepare for the general problem, as the randomness leaves too many alternatives. It's easy to encounter a circumstance that turns a survivable location deadly. Most people will need help from other people to survive, but not knowing the language and not having anything to trade mean that it's hard to get help. [Answer] Did you say "one way"? As in, they can't ever come back "home" to the present? And they can't specify where they go, or when? The only people signing up for this voluntarily will be the suicidal and the desperate! It might be something you could force on criminals, except that sending a criminal back in time just one or two years might be a blessing, rather than a punishment, especially if they have time to memorise some lottery numbers or share movements ... ]
[Question] [ I am building a world where a system of weregild or blood money can be paid when someone was killed by another. Renumeration by the murderer in money for the death, according to the value of the life lost. I already know that the social status of the victim influenced the amount paid to the family in other systems. Given that children are plentiful in the world I am creating, and yet don't contribute to society I am hoping that it will be realistic to value them at a lower amount. **I plan to add my own tweaks based on the way children are perceived there, but I'd like to know/if how the age of the victim affected the amount paid out (very old or very young), if at all in the system of weregild and in medieval society (which used a modified form of the system)? Is it realistic to impose a scale based on age for a system like this?** Edit: "In other parts of England, where the cost of one sheep set the value of a shilling, the value of a nobleman was 1200 shillings, with 200 shillings for the value a freeman. Under King Alfred the Great, acts of mutilation required specific compensation: 30 shillings for cutting off an ear, 60 for a nose, 9 for a finger and 20 for a toe. Women held the same wergild as male members of their class, and pregnant women had their own value, plus half of that for an unborn child." Use the values in [this link](http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com/2010/10/money-matters-anglo-saxon-wergild.html) as a jumping off point, if you want specific numbers. EDIT: As @The Bloody Poet pointed out in his answer, the values for all kinds of things were set down. As detailed as it was, children are not mentioned in the primary source. This could be because the concept of childhood was not quite as it is now. Given that my world does have a concept of childhood, I will likely modify this to fit my world. [Answer] You've actually stumbled upon something that is (or at least has been) a matter of debate among some History scholars (I know, I used to live with one.) Her speciality was Islamic Law (The Principles Of Muhammadan Jurisprudence by Rahim, Abdur was a favourite of hers) but she also dealt with European tribes and customs, and I spent many a 'happy' evening listening to her discussions on the subject. I contacted her to get her opinion on this, and this was her reply: "Read the Alamannorum. It is all in there." Sigh. So I did. The Leges Alamannorum [(*Pactus legis Alamannorum* and *Lex Alamannorum*)](http://www.leges.uni-koeln.de/en/lex/lex-alamannorum/) are a group of Germanic texts dating from around the 8th-12th century. They deal specifically with Wergild, and give a pretty damn complete list of crimes and rates of payment due, from grave robbing (80 shillings) to raping a free woman (40 shillings) or a servant (6 shillings). The price for killing a free man was 200 shillings (the same as in your question, luckily!), 300 for a deacon, 600 for a priest, etc, but only 40 for a shepherd, baker, blacksmith or other servant/indentured man. Kill a slave, and you only had to replace with property worth the same value as the slave, usually another slave. Interestingly, the price for killing a free *woman* was twice that of a free man, at 400 shillings. This separates the Alamanni from the Saxony and Islamic people of the time, who gave women half the value of men - Islam still does, by the way. To give an idea of how thorough these documents can be, they include prices for striking somebody (1 shilling), striking with blood drawn (1.5s), striking with baring skullbone (3s), striking which produces skull splinter (6s), striking which exposes brain matter to the touch (12s) and striking in which brain matter is separated from the victims head (40s): *"Wenn aber aus dieser Wunde das Gehirn heraustritt, wie es geschehen mag, so daß der Arzt es mit einem Heilmittel oder einem Seidentuch verbindet, und später heilt und bewiesen wird, daß es wahr ist, büße man mit 40 Schillingen."* *But when comes out of this wound the brain, as it may happen so that the doctor with a cure or with it combines a silk scarf, and later heals and it is proved that it is true to atone with 40 shillings* There are a lot of ways to wound somebody, and these documents go quite a way to list them and the various prices for wergild. As a man's physical health was his livelihood, this was quite important. Lost a toe? Have 3 shillings. Lost a foot? Have 40 shillings. Genitals? Also 40, but only 20 if you still have them, but they don't work. It even lists prices for stealing or killing geese, ducks, crows, pigeons and cukoos. I give these examples so you can get an idea of how detailed this document can be, and so you can understand how strange it is that **it does not give a price for a dead child.** A number of scholars assume that this means there was no price for a dead child, but there is some debate, due to this passage: *"Wenn ein Weib schwanger ist und durch die Tat eines andern das geborene Kind tot ist oder wenn es lebend geboren wird und nicht bis neun Nächte lebt, zahle der, dem es zur Last gelegt wird, 40 Schillinge"* *If a woman [Note: not a free woman] is pregnant and by the action of another, the child born is dead or if it is born alive and not living up to nine nights, pay of which it is accused, 40 shillings* This passage clearly gives a price for the unlawful killing of an unborn child (including killed during birth or dying not long after as a result of) as 40 shillings (the same as a non-free adult), so how can a *born* child be worth nothing? The common argument -and I believe the only logical one- is that, once the child is born, the price was set as it would be for an adult of the same social stature. **Edited to add:** It is worth noting that the Alamannorum texts do mention children in regards to inheriting goods and other things like that, and they give different wergild values for crimes committed *by* children, so it's not like the authors didn't think about children and how the law changed with regards to them. Also, older children were often the only source of income for aged parents, as there were no such thing as pension funds or retirement plans back then for most of society. Your child **was** your future income, and to lose a healthy one could easily be a death sentence, especially if the parents are too old to have more. This means that, contrary to popular opinion, the value of a live, healthy child could actually be seen as *greater* in a society where young children are plentiful but regulary died of illness, etc. If you lose your only son, to relace him you might need to have two or three more children to have a good chance of at least one of them reaching adulthood. A healthy child living to adulthood was quite rare in comparison to today, and therefor harder to achieve. This makes the death of a healthy child a much greater financial burden on a family back then than it does now, and wergild was concerned primarily with atoning for *financial* loss, not emotional one. [Answer] It is definitely realistic to base a part of your scale on age, but I think you need to bring other factors into play as well. Birth order and bloodline might both be important. By birth order, I mean that an oldest child, who has been trained from birth to assume leadership of their family, is far more valuable than a later born child, who has received no such training. By bloodline, I mean that the sole male child in a patriarchal society, or the sole female child in a matriarchy, would be extremely highly valued because their death would be seen as the death of an entire family line. Gender might also be a more general factor, again in alignment to the matriarchal/patriarchal nature of the society. Historically, female children have been undervalued compared to their male siblings, but in a female dominated culture that prejudice might be reversed. So in answer to your question, yes it is realistic to use age as part of your system of justice, but it might be more realistic if factors beyond just age were part of the renumeration calculation process. [Answer] If a pregnant women added 50% for the unborn child, then I'd expect that a born child would be worth at least as much. Indeed, given that the mother dying at birth was not a too rare event, the very fact that it was already born would likely increase the value. Given that especially at the beginning, the probability of the [child dying was about 25% in the first year,](http://www.thefinertimes.com/Middle-Ages/children-in-the-middle-ages.html1/4) I'd expect another value jump after a year or so. Children were [indeed valued in the medieval time:](http://www.thefinertimes.com/Middle-Ages/children-in-the-middle-ages.html1/4) > > Children were of course valued to some extent, and while they may have been seen as useless, they were not seen as worthless. > > > There is some record of Medieval families taking every measure possible to recover their sick children, even though it certainly cost them a great deal. > > > At an age of [ten to twelve you were considered adult.](http://www.thefinertimes.com/Middle-Ages/education-in-the-middle-ages.html) So adult value should apply. So my suggestion would be something like: * 3/5 of the adult value during the first year. * 4/5 of the adult value between one and ten to twelve years old. * Full adult value afterwards. [Answer] The life of an infant or young child would likely considered worth less than a life of an adult or adolescent heir (within the noble strata of the society), and a commoner's child would be be priced much less then an able to work adult provider. As it was mentioned in the comments, child death was very common in medieval times (when the Weregild system was in place), in some cultures they did not even name infants before they were at least a year old. > > ...an oldest child, who has been trained from birth to assume leadership of their family, is far more valuable than a later born child, who has received no such training... > > > @Henry Taylor--I have to respectfully disagree to some point. While the firstborn/heir would be definitely more valuable among siblings, I would rather imagine a system where no able scions are deprived of proper training just because they are second sons, for the situation can change at any moment if the society is violent enough, and anyone might have to step up as an heir. [Answer] Children and especially infants might be exempt by law however it would be good practice to pay the equivalent of a young adult (or however much the parents won't take offence to) this way unscrupulous people can't go kidnapping infants and dropping them under carriages or something like that because there’s no guarantee of being paid, it also makes the payment more significant if it isn’t mandatory. Paying a weregild isn’t something people would make a habit off, a common murderer would just be hung or slain when found, really it’s intended to let a noble or knight save face when they’ve been a little too rough with a peasant or to placate the parent of a horse trampled child. It’s not so much a matter of law as prudent self-preservation, if enough animosity builds up even nobles can find themselves hanging from the gallows or the branches of a tree, would you risk being lynched in the night just to keep the contents of your wallet? I can't imagine why anyone would play a weregild for a noble, only other nobles or better can afford it and they're more likely to say "you and what army?" to which a response might be "this one, now I'm going to kill you and take everything you own". [Answer] Everything I've managed to find on weregild suggests that the value is proportional to the social status of the victim. The more important the larger the figure. In some cases there is an extra multiplier if that person is engaged in a certain activity for the local lord at the time. At the other end slaves or thralls seemed to be worth nothing or maybe a token payment to foster goodwill or instead a replacement. As noted previously children are cited in terms of crimes committed by them but not in terms of crimes committed to them. From that I tend to deduce that up to a certain age a child would class more as a possession of the parent. After all if a child needs to pay a wereguild then the money is presumable coming from the family rather than child itself and that serves in a small way to ensure parental responsibility and the need to keep your offspring in check. For a fantasy setting I could believe that up to a certain age a parent might accept a nominal payment or recompense similar to the loss of a thrall if it was offered. It wouldn't be any more enforceable as the counter argument would be 'it was up to you to stop little Beowolf from running in front of the cart so his death is your fault not mine'. This would be more believable to me if the age where the child attains the status of an adult (in terms of this system rather than in terms of inheriting etc) was quite young and linked in perhaps to the child's ability to perform useful work for the family rather than being, in crude terms, an expense on them. Given that there would be a high infant mortality rate then if there was money to be made from the death of a young child I can foresee all sorts of unpleasant possibilities opening up to certain people that would render the whole system unworkable. EDIT: I see the 50% extra cited when a woman was pregnant not as a notional value for the loss of the child as well but rather a premium payed because the woman was demonstrably able to bear children. [Answer] If you want hard data on the price of a human life, there is plenty of it available...from the Antebellum South. [Here](https://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php) is an article that has a graph of the age-sex-price curve for slaves, as well as some notes about skills that increase or decrease value (+55% if a blacksmith, -60% if crippled, etc.) ]
[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/37578/edit). Closed 7 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/37578/edit) Assume there's a colonized or partially colonized galaxy. What are the features and requirements that can provide chance for various technological levels (from industrial age up to utopistic future) to coexist? How these various levels can appear instead of a constant and unified tech level? [Answer] A galaxy is a pretty big place. (citation needed) Even supposing widespread colonization, Without cheap, efficient FTL travel, every inhabited planet is going to be *very* isolated - we're talking *generations* of time just to visit another world. If relativistic travel exists, individuals can make it to other planets, but at the cost of leaving everyone they knew behind, knowing they will probably not see them again until they are old or dead. In that kind of galaxy, it would be harder to justify a unified tech level than a varied one - chances are good each planet's culture and civilization would develop more or less independently. If there *is* cheap, efficient FTL travel, you could justify it by saying that different civilizations are distrustful of each other, possibly due to vast separation. It is likely that some planets may develop technologies that others could not because of their different resources or circumstances, and they may be less than interested in sharing technologies for fear of that technology being used against them. [Answer] ## Generational ships and non-interference laws for colonies At the start of the space colonization age, the people decide they like freedom and also don't want to compete for resources. They pass a law stating that each generational ship can claim a destination solar system or cluster and no other ship is allowed to enter that system unbidden. Over hundreds of years technology at the origin planet(s) advances much faster than inside the generational ships. Every few years, faster ships are launched, containing more advanced tech. They have to travel farther, but will arrive roughly at the same time due to increased speed. This provides a tech gradient where the closer colonies are actually lower-tech and the farther colonies higher tech. To add more mixing, let's assume ships are only launched at destination considered viable (not too much of a stretch). Advancing astronomy tech at the origin will discover that some closer systems previously skipped because they were deemed nonviable may have become viable with the new tech level. Those colonies will actually be established the earliest, starting at a higher tech level and allowing more development compared to neighbors who launched earlier but will arrive later. Finally, Murphy's Law applies to space colonization, so not all destinations will actually be viable and not all ships will arrive unscathed. Conditions might be only barely survivable or a large part of the resources needed for colonization may be missing. * The Nth generation on a ship may go luddite or hippie and stop teaching their children the vital skills passed down for generations because "Big Brother" (the ships's AI) runs everything anyway and can teach generation N+20 in time for arrival... or so they think. * An unlucky ship might be hit by a radiation burst, losing their database or the seeds in their DNA banks. All that survived are... enhanced soy beans. * The colonized planet isn't quite as viable as thought with anything from poison atmosphere to predatory acid-for-blood natives. The colonists may survive but not until they've lost a good part of their people, leaving them in barely-getting by limbo. These scenarios will result in your lowest tech-level colonies, at any location you choose. ## Invention of FTL This is when all your colonies may get into contact, assuming they want to. There may also be another rush to claim solar systems now that it's feasible to fly there, check it out and go for the next one if it's not viable. The technology level of these ships and their colonies will be much, much higher than those of ships launched thousands of years ago, leading to your utopian future tech colonies... hopefully. [Answer] If you want to apply a Human/Earth touch, the multi-award winning book Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond cuts to the root of why earthly civilizations have risen and fallen or failed to rise at all. It has much to do with Tech and the variables needed to evolve tech. The rules for expansion are more insightful than one could imagine (with out a degree in that line of conversation). Seed/Animal packages, exposure to endemic germs, human need for sustenance all play a part in how much energy humans put in to tech innovations. The Native tribes of America had plenty of food that could be obtained with primitive weapons and little real competition and zero exposure to European germs. If they were a "planet" and we added 2000 years with out outside contact, their tech may still be considerably lower than high competition planets. [Answer] The factors promoting different rates (and limits) of technical progress in different civilizations of a galaxy are: **1- Different Levels Of Intellect** Different planets would undergo different courses of evolution, resulting in sentient species who/which would be vastly different in intellect and understanding of the world around them. **2- Different Sensory Potentials** This is related to point 1, but is not the same. Consider a species who has eyesight matching that of an eagle (20 times higher resolution than human eye). Their understanding of cosmological phenomena would be far more detailed and accurate than another species with equal IQ, but human (or lower) eyesight. **3- Collaboration And Social Bonds** Things such as complex language, writing, trade, complex society etc appear to be a direct result of higher IQ, but things are not so simple. What if we (humans) had slightly higher IQ but did not have a tongue and larynx system capable of complex sounds like we have now? Civilizations with stronger social bonds tend to progress technically ***much*** faster than those with equal level of intellect but lesser degree of social behavior (humans versus neanderthals, remember?) **4- Planetary Composition** Chemical composition of planets varies greatly. No two planets have more than 60% matching chemical composition even in our own solar system! Consider how vast the difference would be at the extent of a galaxy! If a planet does not contain iron, copper or titanium in its crust in vast quantities, how would it affect the pace of technological progress? How about a planet where the intelligent beings do not get any type of fossil fuel. Would they still be able to bring about an industrial revolution as we had on Earth? **5- Interests And Preferences** We, humans have progressed so far due to a combination of ecological challenges. We progressed so vastly in medical sciences because we have encountered diseases which were troublesome, horrific and lethal. We invented bows, arrows, knives and axes because we were physically weaker than both the predators (sabretooths, lions, tigers, wolves) and mega prey (wildebeests, cape buffaloes, deer, gazelles) in our ecosystem. Would we have made the same technological progress if we were the apex predators in our ecosystems? What if we had no pathogens and acquiring a bow and an arrow meant you had a perpetual supply of game meat to eat and hide to cover ourselves with? Would we still continue to invest our time and effort in alchemy and physics? **Final Word** There are a ***lot*** of factors affecting the technological progress and limit of an intelligent civilization. At the extent of a galaxy, you are likely to encounter civilizations stuck at, and progressing at ALL the stages of biological and technological evolution we have passed through so far. And with better senses, longer lifespans and higher intellect levels, some civilizations might be hundreds of thousands of years in advance than us. [Answer] ## **Cultural difference in priorities would be sufficient to explain technological diversity** Each human culture places emphasis on different attributes and will advance their local technology to meet that end, while ignoring other technological venues. Consider the Japanese. They have a strong aversion to importing lower wage workers but still need to perform those tasks, so the Japanese have gone all-in on robots. Robots of every shape, size, color, or task-fitness can be found in Japan. Consider the Egyptians. They had a strong cultural emphasis on preserving the dead, particularly, the rich dead. Their priests and embalmers develop highly sophisticated techniques for preserving the dead. To my knowledge, no other culture has pushed preservation as far as they did or over as long a time as they did. *Humans are tool makers. Any other species that makes it into space will also be toolmakers. Tools are always adapted to the needs of the moment. No planet will be exactly the same, nor will the cultures on those planets be the same. The tools will always adapt to the needs of the user.* ]
[Question] [ In a nutshell, what are the pre-requisites for having sailing ships fire nuclear cannonballs? The setting is entirely alternate-universe, so the available material can be a lot more naturally "primed" for military use, but not so much as to create a high likelihood of a nuclear natural disaster. Also, a running theme of the entire setting is that (conventional) explosive devices were invented very early (by cavepeople, essentially) and have ever since been culturally shrouded in occult/"alchemical" theories, so the preferable path for developing tactical nukes would be an accidental success amid a mass of pseudo-science. Eventually, nuclear weapons would be banned around the time steampower is common, so they never get as far as strategic nukes. [Answer] Uranium that got straight from supernova can have more than 50% of U-235, after several billion years it goes through half-decay many times and you get you ordinary 0.7% uranium. So if an asteroid formed from supernova matter and then came from interstellar space and fell on Earth you would have *natural* enriched uranium. Critical mass for 50% U-235 without reflector is 170 kg, so two 150 kg pieces thrown at each other would make the boom. They should move fast enough to join before chain reaction would start. 300 kg would emit a neutron on average about every 6 msec. Smoothbore gun with black powder propellant produced speeds up to 450 m/s, so insertion would take about 0.1 msec - fast enough to make it reliable. It efficiency can be determined by Serber Efficiency Equation - it would be 5-7 times worse than for Little Boy. But it has 5x amount of uranium so the yield would be the same or little less - 10-15 kilotons. You can make it much more effective with beryllium reflector, but I don't think 18th century science would guess it. So uranium would be mined for usage in paints. Then someone would notice that big blocks of it are always warm. Attempts to get bigger blocks would result in pulsed chain reaction(see Godiva device), death of experimenters and small boom. Eventually someone would fling uranium with a gun and get the big boom and that's when bomb making would start. The bomb would consist from several ton bronze mortar that would fling one 150 kg piece of uranium into other piece. Most likely it would be used in a kamikaze brander to blow up entire enemy fleet. [Answer] As AndyD273 pointed out, there were two early designs for nuclear explosives. [Fat Man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man) was an implosion weapon, [Little Boy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy) was a gun-type weapon. Both rely on relatively sophisticated technology to bring the nuclear material into a [supercritical mass](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass). * You need the math to calculate the necessary shapes and forces. An 18th century civilization would have to invent that, first. * Then the nuclear material has to be assembed into just the right shape. We're talking about radioactive and toxic materials, so handling it is a bad idea. The precision is probably beyond the capabilities of instrument makers, too. Historical cannonballs were a couple of percent smaller than the diameter of their gun, both to ease loading and *because a better fit was beyond the technology of the time*. * Then the nuclear pit has to be surrounded by explosives to *smash* it into the right shape. Those explosives have to be stable, burn in a highly predictable pattern, and powerful enough to do the job. They have to be triggered in just the right sequence by electronic switches, otherwise you might get a [fizzle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizzle_%28nuclear_test%29). Consider how long places like North Korea India had to work on their nuclear weapons, even after they had the fissile material. A dirty bomb would be lower tech, but it would be hard to use it with 18th century technology without danger to your own troops. [Answer] A riff on @AndyD273's answer: Pitchblende was only known in the middle ages from one place in what's now the Czech Republic. But 1% uranium Oxide yellow glass was found in Ancient Rome over 2000 years ago. Isolating Uranium from the ore is not simple. Some organisms can concentrate Uranium. [Citrobacker](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrobacter) can encrust themselves with uranyl phosphate crystals. Some lichens concentrate uranium, and some fungi cause plants to concentrate uranium. Precipitating the metal involves extreme alkali solutions, which makes me think of *dye making*. What if… [wode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isatis_tinctoria#Woad_and_indigo) dye craftsmen found another plant (or lichen) that produced a vivid yellow dye, and cultivated a source of uranyl phosphate. Their use of [extreme alkali solutions](http://www.jennydean.co.uk/index.php/anglo-saxon-dyes-woad/), and skill transfer with those also working with lye and nitrates for gunpowder manufacture leads to purposeful experimentation and careful note taking of anything odd, because of lucrative history in that area. So they stumble onto "dark gold", which is noticed as being as heavy as gold; heavier than lead and like nothing else except gold. Given the association with yellow colored dye, alchemists jump on it thinking they are close to making actual gold. The next problem is in recognizing what it can do. Before photography or real chemistry, how could they tell that Uranium was *doing* something? [Fluorescence was reported as far back as 1560](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescence#History). Many fluorescent materials exist in minerals and organics, and without a source of UV light nobody noticed the effect. Some fluorescent material, or a mixture of florescent emitter and a UV emitter, might give off visible light when subjected to ionizing radiation. What if dyers used [Umbrelliferon](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbelliferone) as a cloth whitener? Now that process uses alchohol not alkali, but treated cloth might glow in the dark when exposed to the dark gold. The underlying problem is that Uranium isn’t that spectacular without making an atomic pile or having some atomic theory that was discovered because of radioactivity. The build up of daughter elements makes it more radioactive and toxic as it ages. Once radioactivity is “seen” through fluorescence, the quest might be undertaken to isolate the radioactive part, and harvest what seems to be produced over time. Without chemistry, that seems like a haphazard endeavor. But in our fictional world, practical pre-chemistry might be more advanced as an art, with the rich dye-makers’ history and now culture of experimentation. This alternate history of early discovery of radioactivity doesn’t end up with practical weapons though. Although I like [Heinlein’s idea of using toxic radioactive dust](http://www.tor.com/2010/08/17/robert-a-heinleins-technological-prophecies/) (written when [it was thought that a chain reaction was not possible](https://books.google.com/books?id=_X1dAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA39&ots=5DWa0-G1Sr&dq=einstein%20in%20a%20country%20without%20any%20birds&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q=einstein%20in%20a%20country%20without%20any%20birds&f=false)), a toxic radioactive powder would be *very expensive* and impractical for this pre-technical society to use as a weapon. The same industry, on the other hand, would have produced explosives a lot better than gunpowder, and nitrates would be weaponized, rather than radium. Radio-isotopes would be used for instruments and maps that can be read below decks, but not bombs. --- **footnote:** For more on wode dye and alkali solutions, see Tony Robbins [*Worst Jobs in History*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Worst_Jobs_in_History). I suppose it would be the Anglo-Saxon episode. You might find it on Youtube. [Answer] Critical mass will be your worst enemy. You can't just scale a nuke down to any size you please, because you need enough material to build a high enough neutron density to start the reaction. Too small, and you just cant make it go boom, no matter how hard you try. There are some tricks, like neutron reflectors, that you can pull, but I really don't think those are going to show up in 18th century cannon balls, so we're stuck doing it by pure mass. The critical mass depends on the density of the fissile material. 20% enriched Uranium won't go critical until you hit around 400kg, which is a lot for a cannon. Fortunately, we're willing to handwave a little on the geology. Lets assume there's just slugs of uranium-235 lying around, unadulterated by all that pesky U-238 that the US spent so many millions figuring out how to separate out. From my leaked top secret nuclear test data (and by that, I mean Wikipedia's page on [Critical Mass](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass)...), we see that a pure slug of U-235 has a critical mass of 15kg. Given the density of uranium, that's about 4.5 inch ball (spheres are the most efficient form we'll get). That is reasonably on par with a cannonball. However, that's going to be troublesome once you finish putting it together. You're going to want a gun-style nuke (implosion style will be beyond the capabilities of the 18th century due to timing issues), so you're going to need two half-balls which are slammed together to cause the nuke. This will be an issue. A nuke, as it goes critical, obviously blows itself apart. If you don't shove the parts together hard enough, you end up blowing the two halves apart before they finish reacting, causing a "fizzle." Now you just have a pile of radioactive mess to clean up. Whatever mechanism you have for this, and its fuze, need to survive being shot out of a cannon. For some perspective on the explosives involved, Thin Man demanded the two halves approach eachother at 3000 feet-per-second or faster. Any less would cause a complete fizzle (no nuclear effects). This is going to call for your 18th century team to invent high explosives -- gunpowder isn't going to cut it. Finally, there's range to be concerned about. Remember, we can't make anything smaller than 15kg, so the only way to adjust the yield is by making it inefficient. From my other top secret source (okay, fine, Wikipedia's page on the [Little Boy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy) bomb), 15kg of material, perfectly detonated would yield about 40kilotons (twice that of the bomb dropped on Hirisohima). With some handwaving, that comes out to somewhere just around a 150m radius fireball (needless to say the lethal range for radiation is a lot larger). You're going to have a challenge firing this far enough to not irradiate your own crew into oblivion unless your bombs are markedly inefficient. The fine art of making a bomb explode at 1% yield but not fizzle would be quite a feat, so I would expect 18th century craftsmanship would not be up for the task. [Answer] You probably don't want nuclear bombs in the modern sense. 1. They are sensitive to isotopes, which seems a reach for the tech level. Refining the weapons grade materials is the big issue even now. 2. Making them explode predictably requires more precision than seems likely. It is not quite as difficult as some answers imply to simply get an explosion, but if you also want it to be safe when you do not want it to explode and not to be unnecessarily large and heavy and not to generate excessive nuclear contamination and... Well, you really want control and **that** requires precision. 3. It is hard to imagine anyone accidentally noticing the conditions needed for nuclear explosion in a way that gives anyone a chance to make notes of it. When a **successful** experiment implies instant death of all witnesses that tends to slow down progress. 4. As others have noted effective cannon range is too short for the ship firing the round to have a realistic chance of survival. This weapon would be **very** unpopular with the crews of your warships. Maybe something similar to fireships, sail towards the enemy and then kill them all, might be practical. But, if you skip the huge fireball requirement and scale down to something your own ship might survive, even if the crews have weird diseases afterwards, something might be practical. Basically, you want three or four different metals. 1. A neutron source. A highly radioactive material that generates a relatively steady source of neutrons. Doesn't need to absorb neutrons and be capable of chain reaction. Better if it isn't. 2. A fissile material. Absorbs the neutrons and produces radiation on fission, either neutrons or gamma rays. Better if this isn't capable of chain reaction either, so either gamma rays or neutrons of the wrong type. I'd guess most would produce both of the radiation types. 3. A neutron reflector (or moderator). Something that lets you control the exposure of the fissile material to the neutrons produced by the source. 4. A gamma reflector. Optional, but it is generally a good idea to make an effort to send more energy towards the enemy than your own ship. A projectile would be cylindrical, maybe fired from a rifled cannon. It would have some empty space inside with neutron reflector and the fissile material at front and moving part of neutron source and reflector and gamma reflector at back. Normally the neutrons would mostly escape (some fluid moderator might be good though), but on impact the neutron source would slam into the fissile material and be fully encased in reflector and the neutrons would be much more likely to hit it. This would result in large pulse of radiation mostly reflected forward before the warhead vaporizes. And covers the enemy in hot radioactive material, which would burn the ship and kill the crew. Except the radiation pulse already did it. [Answer] Ok, here's my brief history of the discovery of nuclear weapons. ## **[From the sealed archives of the Royal Alchemist][Secret]** Viewing of this document by unauthorized persons is prohibited. If you have started reading this in error, stop now and report to the King's Executioner immediately. --- It was discovered two hundred years ago, back in 1604, by the famous alchemist Baston, that certain elements had very strange properties. They were warm to the touch, and in pure enough concentrations would heat water or cause burns. It was also discovered that these elements were harmful to living tissue. Sadly this was only really discovered after Baston's death. With more caution other alchemists researched these elements. It was discovered that lead could somehow block these effects while other metals couldn't. Then one day, a researcher named Jeon who was trying to understand the element's ability to heat water stacked two large and fairly pure samples together. The lab had to be abandoned, but it did open up new avenues of research: How much material was needed to cause the reaction? Was just touching the elements together enough? Would putting them together forcefully make any difference? Luckily after Jeon's accident it was decided by the alchemy guild that copies of all research notes had to be kept off site in a secure location, since no records could be recovered from the crater. At this point the king stepped in to stop general research into the material. This was partly because several hundred acres of prime wilderness had been leveled, partly because he was wary of the alchemist guild having that kind of power and what it might mean for his rule, but mostly because the ongoing tension between himself and the king of Goan to the south, and the ability to dispose of Goan's troops the next time they marched on his kingdom. And so his most trusted state alchemists carefully continued the research into element weapons. [Answer] Say the approach outlined by AndyD273 in his answer works. The Royal Alchemists have, though careful experimentation and the judicious expenditure of expendable apprentices, build their bomb which really explodes instead of fizzling out. (A fizzle would be much more likely than a full yield explosion.) * Will the bomb survive being fired from 18th century cannon? The first nuclear weapons were bombs, not shells. Even ordinary [explosive shells](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_%28projectile%29#Early_shells) only really worked in the 19th century. * Does the range of the cannon make any practical difference? If it is mounted on a ship, friend and foe will be caught in the same fireball. * What about the fuse? Can it be made to explode on impact (or even better in the air)? * Just how big is the bomb, compared to typical 18th century cannon? Little Boy might have fitted into the [tsar cannon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Cannon), but not into a practical cannon. Instead of cannon, use black powder rockets. Much easier to simply abandon one of those expendable alchemists' apprentices on a raft to trigger the weapon by hand. *(I'm feeling sorry that I sound so negative about your story, but you'd better stick to "because it is magic, don't ask" instead of scientific explanations.)* [Answer] Since you seem to be open to messing with reality a bit I can think of two possible tweaks that would permit nuclear cannonballs: 1) Make U-238 capable of sustaining a bomb-type reaction. (Reality: The energy of the neutrons it releases during fission is too high to cause fission in the next atom struck. A moderator is needed to slow them down, this also slows it down below possible bomb use.) This permits a uranium gun design like Little Boy. While O.M.'s precision argument is very relevant to an implosion design it doesn't apply to a gun design. You can considerably over-engineer the masses so the weapon is well above critical mass when assembled--it need not be perfect. Likewise, the assembly isn't that critical--if you simply pick up the two halves in your hands and slam them together it's got roughly a 50% chance of functioning properly. 2) Substantially reduce the neutron emission rate of plutonium. This would mean you could use a gun type device to set off a Pu-239 bomb. You do have the Davy Crockett problem here, though. The Davy Crockett was basically a nuclear bazooka round that was the butt of jokes because the lethal range of the warhead exceeded the flight range. For the army this was acceptable--you dig a foxhole and everyone gets in it while the weapon is in flight. Since the threat is direct radiation (for baby nukes the radiation is the longest-ranged threat) it doesn't take much depth to provide a nearly perfect shield (remember, the radiation can't turn corners, the bomb is low in the sky meaning it has to go through a lot more dirt than the depth of the foxhole and every foot of soil cuts the dose tenfold.) However, you are talking a naval environment. Last I knew you couldn't dig a foxhole in water. Your nuclear cannon is basically 100% lethal to the crew of the ship that fires it. [Answer] I believe dirty bombs is the way: poison their cities. While purifying the uranium and building a gun-type bomb with it would be within reach of their technology (it's really not all that difficult), inventing it without knowing nuclear physics is completely impossible. The methods of purifying uranium are quite counter-intuitive; you won't find them through blind luck of random experimentation. The actual mechanism of the bomb, while not very complex, requires very high precision of the parts; you won't get it right if you don't know what you're doing. You can get the natural uranium relatively easily and you can poison people with it, but extracting the highly-radioactive isotopes would be out of reach of anyone, who doesn't already know what exactly needs to be done (e.g. expose a liquid uranium compound to increased gravity: put it in a container and spin it around in a centrifuge fast enough that the layers with heavier isotope separate; it's not a salad spinner scale of force. More of a continuous operation trebuchet!) Now if you still aren't satisfied with dirty bombs and need the nukes, you will need a bit of handwavium: a manual book falling through a hole in time. It should explain all the processes necessary (using modern technology), effects and caveats. The 18th century scientists would be then able to re-create the technology using their resources, of course at a drastically higher costs, both in money and in human lives. Of course getting a kiloton out of the constructed bomb would be a huge success, and considering the costs, its direct military advantage would be so small redirecting the money towards the classic army would be more profitable, still - the psychological effect of the detonation might win the war and repay the expenditures. [Answer] OK, back to first principles. You have a setting which has reached approximately 18th century technology overall, but it is advanced in the field of explosives. The explosives might be cloaked in alchemical gibberish, but let's avoid actual magic if we can. The goal is to develop a weapon with a effect, but difficult to build (so they're not found all over the place) and ultimately banned by common agreement between all civilized people. **Naval Combat** * How about [heated shot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heated_shot) or the later [Martin's shell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_%28projectile%29#Other_shell_types)? Iron armor of reasonable thickness and quality is probably beyond 18th century metalworkers, so all ships are wooden and quite flammable. * Alternatively, early explosive shells. **Ground Combat** * Some sort of [fuel air explosive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon) or [dust explosive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_explosion)? * Simply mortars firing HE? Should be hell on dense troop formations. Of course they're so useful that the ban is unlikely to stick, compare [crossbows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbow#Legal_issues). [Answer] This *might* work using a grab bag of technologies and a few handwaves. Starting with the device itself, a fission "gun" bomb is by far the easiest to construct. Many posters and commenters have discussed the difficulty of developing a nuclear theory so people know that nuclear reactions are possible at all, so I'm going to pass that part over and just assume that this was discovered by accident or serendipitously. In order for the "Gun" type bomb to be useful as a seagoing weapon, it needs to be as light and simple as possible, so a lot of devices we find on modern weapons will be missing. The most obvious one will be a neutron reflector, but fortunately, water can serve, so the warhead needs to be detonated underwater. For a weapon fired against other ships, or potentially into the harbour guarded by a fortress, a nuclear explosion in the water will provide pretty much all the mayhem you need. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KnDrL.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KnDrL.jpg) *Swordfish nuclear test* As noted, a conventional cannon isn't going to provide either the range you need, and potentially the shell will be either wreaked by the explosion or be detonated inside the barrel, both obviously bad for you. In the late 1800's, early high explosive shells filled with dynamite also had the same problem, so giant compressed air weapons called "[Dynamite guns](https://infogalactic.com/info/Dynamite_gun)" were developed. For a sailing ship, having a large steam powered air compressor may be problematic, so the smaller alternative Sims-Dudley dynamite gun would be preferable. Using a black powder charge to drive the compressor piston, this is somewhat possible using the technology of the day (after all, the [Girandoni air rifle](https://infogalactic.com/info/Girandoni_air_rifle) was fielded in 1779). Since nuclear weapons are area weapons, so long as the device falls in the water near the target, you should be able to ensure critical damage. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/h1FQK.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/h1FQK.jpg) *Sims-Dudley dynamite gun* Lastly it was noted that being too near a nuclear explosion isn't very good for the crew of your ship, either. Wooden hulls don't provide much radiation protection, and an airburst would also send a huge thermal and radiation pulse, most likely setting the rigging and the rest of the ship on fire as well. Once again, the Captain and crew might have a few reservations about this project. However, having a semi submersible ship is entirely possible in this time period (Leonardo da Vinci had drawn plans for workable submarines and paddlewheel boats as far back as the 1490's, so depending on the availability of genius inventors, you could move you timeline around considerably). [Robert Fulton](http://infogalactic.com/info/Robert_Fulton) was such a genius, and he built and demonstrated the first truly practical submarine, the [Nautilus](http://infogalactic.com/info/Nautilus_(1800_submarine)), between 1793 and 1800. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NdVBt.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NdVBt.jpg) *Robert Fulton's Nautilus* Fulton had drawn up plans for a much larger follow up boat, capable of carrying a crew of six and supplies for 20 days at sea. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uJPSK.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uJPSK.jpg) *Fulton's improved design* The combination of a hand cranked submarine, a compressed air cannon and using a nuclear device more like a mortar or howitzer than a cannon (and handwaving the nuclear weapon itself) seems to overcome many of the objections of this idea. It is still only on the very edge of practical, but given the immense power of nuclear reactions, it seems that using single weapons against very high value targets is going to be both more practical and more realistic than having a Line of Battleship unload a 70 gun broadside of nuclear shells. Even if using nuclear weapons is totally impractical or impossible, the combination of a submarine and an air cannon provides the means to carry out raids against high value targets. [Answer] **1. Weapon of mass destruction** Assumes radioactivity was discovered in 18th century and people have understood the relationship between mass and energy, they will definitely exploit the power locked inside the atoms. A single neutron can set off a chain reaction provided the density of neutrons in the region of space is high. I'm talking about highly enriched uranium which is made of at least 90% of uranium isotopes (U-235), natural uranium ore extracted from earth has less than 1% of these isotopes on average. A lengthy and tedious process is required to enrich the uranium, I personally favor gaseous diffusion technique, the process convert the uranium ore into vapor and introduce chemical for purification then spin it really fast so that the heavier particles will flung against the wall via uranium centrifuge. Repeats this multiple times so that we have a weapon grade uranium, didn't I told you it is not going to be easy. Once you have achieved this target of density of U-235, designing a reliable remote controlled firing mechanism to set of a series of chain reaction will look much easier. There you go the power of atom at your finger tip. **Verdict** * Difficulty: **High** * Destruction: **Devastatingly High** * Feasibility: **Low** **2. One shot one kill** You may ask what about the byproducts from the abovementioned diffusion technique, don't discard it you can recycle these into depleted uranium shell or bullet which is many folds denser than conventional projectiles. Now you can pieces your enemies from afar. **Verdict** * Difficulty: **Low** * Destruction: **1/1**(see sub title) * Feasibility: **Moderate** **3. Shields up** The byproducts can also be used to improve armor rating of military transportation and infrastructure due to it high density. No worry the radiation emitted is too little to pose a threat of human health. **Verdict** * Difficulty: **Low** * Destruction: **Negligible** * Feasibility: **High** **4. Health screening** On the battlefield things will look nasty and harsh especially when soldier suffered broken arms or legs. The doctor can apply radiography to peek into the affected body parts without the needs to cut it open and risk infection. They only need a X-Ray generator and a photographic films and a willing wounded. **5. Verdict** * Difficulty: **Low** * Destruction: **Very Low** * Feasibility: **High** **6. Note** The list can go on forever but for economical solution I pretty sure there are many alternatives available for the 18th century folks, unless your nation wants to build pressure on your enemy this is your chance. [Answer] I would say a small, fizzle-based dirty bomb could work, provided they realize that the nuclear reaction causes illness in everyone who happen to be near it. ]
[Question] [ So, using [the background of the main question here,](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10218/horses-for-absolutely-everybody-how-it-came-to-be) if a peasant could own a horse, possibly multiple, how would an army with access to that many horse be like? Would their army become entirely mounted? I would imagine that an entirely cavalry based army may not work out too well, considering how a braced spear is extremely effective against cavalry, and that spears are extremely cheap and effective. I would like to see answers talk about when an entirely cavalry army fights another entirely cavalry army, as well as when an entirely cavalry army fights a more standard army. As well as discuss about what a regular army might develop to counter an entirely cavalry army. [Answer] There's quite a few factors here...other people had mentioned the differences between work and riding horses, so I'll assume these peasants have access to riding horses. First thing of note is fighting horseback is not a simple task...it takes practice to ride and even more practice to effectively wield a weapon on horseback (like bracing yourself to avoid the force of your attack pushing you off your own mount). One of the biggest differences between knights and peasants is the number of hours each has available to practice mounted combat...peasants are in the fields and don't have much time to practice these skills. An unskilled man on horseback would make a better show of themselves unmounted and fighting from the ground. Next note is you don't make mention of tech level much here. Early riders were generally lightly equipped and on horse back mostly for the speed of it, not for the fighting advantage. Heavy Cavalry came along with advances in the stirrup, allowing for the rider to remain mounted despite the heavy armour and forces being put on him. There is also a big difference between a lance that can be effectively used in a charge vs wielding a spear on horse back (which is more like stabbing at things from horseback than it is a lance). Lances are exceedingly effective vs other cavalry and a force that lacks the lance is at a heavy disadvantage. And another note...people that are riding from birth tend to make good horse archers. (golden horde reference, it was said a mongol warrior was born on horseback...while not quite true, many children were riding horses by the ages of 3-4 apparently). Horses don't have much protection from arrows and depend on their speed to avoid them...if the archers are also mounted, then this speed can be countered. Horse archers can be quite destructive. And one more...one of the advantages to an all cavalry force is you are extremely fast moving and mobile. One of the more interesting portions of a cavalry vs cavalry battle gets down to the actual engagement. Infantry need time to form and are slower moving...it creates the giant standoffs with both sides lining up. In Cav vs Cav armies, this isn't quite true and it's quite possible for one force to attack the other before it's fully prepared and in it's formations. The actual engagement of 2 cav armies can be an important chess match that wins (or loses) the battle before it even starts. It's hard to make anything beyond pretty broad generalizations now as I'm unsure the tech level these men are fighting at. I assume peasants on horse back are simply wielding spears and not really able to effectively use them as lances...so as with most battles, any cavalry on cavalry fighting will come down to which side has the training. A 'knight', someone well trained for war both in a tactical sense such as using a lance and in a discipline sense such as riding in formation and not fleeing in panic at the first sight of blood, will always have a great advantage. In a battle like this, the morale and training of an army will win the battle. I think there are only 3 or 4 documented battles of forces with heavy cavalry losing to an infantry only enemy...properly trained and equipped cavalry have little difficulty plowing over people on foot. Spears, terrain, a little luck and a lot of discipline is the only real defense to it. Spears - You need a way of bracing them...a cavalry charge is at it's most dangerous from trampling...you have a heavy horse charging full speed at a not so heavy human. Even if the human has a spear, the most it's going to do is a slight stab before being pushed a side. The spear must be braced and have little room to move for it to be effective. Terrain - trees are effective horse stopper, open terrain usually ends up in a win for the cavalry. Infantry that have had time to fortify can dig out holes and have places for their spears to be braced. Discipline - There's a horde of 500 cavalry charging straight towards your position...there you are with a few hundred others holding a spear and watching the oncoming charge. Do you flee or do you hold your ground? add a comment: In a world like this, fortifications become exceedingly important and effective. Even wooden stockade like walls that a person could easily climb over but the horse can't jump, you are having the effect of dismounting a troop that is better off on horseback. Heh, even wooden posts close enough together that a person could squeeze through but their horse couldn't makes a semi effective wall. Gunpowder can be a heavy invention in this world...instead of training peasants to use spears and potentially lances which can take many hours of training to accomplish, a peasant can be given a musket like weapon with little training beyond how to point, fire, and reload...put them on horseback and they can quickly engage and disengage. Not a professional fighting force by any means, but the ability to fire the weapon then run off on their light horse to a place they can reload then repeat gives the peasant a weapon and tactic that can be used with little training. Guns themselves won't eliminate how effective cavalry are until the advent of rapid fire (machine guns and the sort). After machine guns come around, cavalry generally use their horses to travel, but dismount for actual battle...horses in a machine gun battle is messy. Edit: Late medieval tactics: I missed your tech range...a simple cheap spear is not a weapon in the late medieval times. Warfare in late medieval times had advanced to the point where if you weren't prepared for war, you weren't going to succeed...having a spear is not a valid defence. Cavalry are by no means the end all in a military campaign...though there was a time where they could be, the development of heavy armor and huge pikes and halberds began skewing the battle in favor of the infantry. It's one thing for a charging horse to meet a bunch of spears being held by the weight of a man and a completely different thing for a charging horse to meet a 10 foot long iron pike wall fully braced and designed to impale. You get a bit of a loop...cavalry > sword and shield infantry > pikemen/halberds > cavalry and so on. To give you an idea of what they were up against...Spanish lancers and Germanic knights became the tanks of the medieval world. The riders were so heavily armored that if they were knocked off their horse, they would be unable to stand back up without the help of a few aides. Cheap spears were pretty much ineffective against troops like this and you required specialized tools (mancatcher) to fight this. English, French, Italian (Venetian), Flemish, and a few others all followed these lines. That said...one of the key improvements you would see here is army mobility...not too different from the later cavalry...riding a horse on the campaign trail and dismounting for a fight is a completely legitimate tactic. [Answer] As Magic-Mouse mentioned, it depend what kind of horses they have. If farmer uses horses mainly as farm animal, they are not trained for war. And peasants are usually not trained to ride horses for warfare either. Nomad horses are always on the move either to hunt, protect from natural predators, protect form other tribes or simply to keep their herds in check. It is a light cavalry that is more suited for combat. The reason all their army is on horse is because that's how they live, they have no foot army. **Cavalry vs cavalry**: cavalry is best used against infantry. Against another cavalry, they lose their advantage: speed, higher position, greater force of impact. **Cavalry vs infantry**: TLDR: The effectiveness of the cavalry depend on the weapons available and the military tactics used by each side. Against the cavalry, a normal infantry doesn't stand a chance. As for spears, it depend what the cavalry is using. If both are using spears, the cavalry still has some advantages. To counter that, the cavalry might resort at using more ranged weapons, keeping a safe distance until the enemy rank are in disorder. But then the enemy would try to use longbow and crossbow in order to take down as many horseman as possible before they can charge. To counter this, the cavalry used heavy armor, triangle formation to minimize lost and increase the devastation of the charge. The idea is still the same: break the enemy ranks. Eventually, both will try to use mix tactics. Using ranged weapons to keep the enemy at bay while keeping spear units to discourage a direct charge. With gunpowder, the role of cavalry changes but stay important. Most early gun infantry were vulnerable because their weapons were slow and inaccurate. They needed to be defended. The formation name is ''Pike and shot'' gunmans protected by pikemens in a square formation. It's not necessary to have firearms to use this tactic, they can use any ranged weapon. crossbow are effective even against a heavy knight. Horsemen also used guns to counter this tactic. The advantage of using firearms is the increased range it gives. Mounted units can fire and move away to recharge safely. The increase in range and firepower and eventually the development of artillery meant that it became increasingly difficult to charge the enemy.Giving a decisive advantage at the infantry. Even if the cavalry was still used, it was for very specific maneuvers. A direct charge was a synonym of a suicide by the early 19th century. [Answer] Even if farmers have few horses, and ride them to war, it does not mean they are as effective warriors as nomads. Again, read about Genghis Khan and Golden Horde. Nomads have multiple horses per warrior, so they are able to move **much** faster (riding different horse every day, and let it rest other days, run run without load). Nomads are also much superior riders, able to run faster, farther, with more flexible maneuvers. Nomads train these maneuvers even in peace time all year - on big hunts, and when attacking nearly defenseless peasant villages during "autumn harvest". Also, because of extra horses, they are able to perform fake moves, when multiple groups of horses are attacking from different sides, but only one group has riders - others are just extra horses with few herders. So nomad's army looks 5 times bigger from distance than it's real man-power. And when your enemy flees in panic, is easier to destroy. Read about [Battle of Mohi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mohi) which would be a disaster for Europe and Europe was saved only [because Mongols have to return back after death of current Khan](http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/battleswars12011400/p/mohi.htm) to vote for next (so they were never defeated militarily). [Mongol Empire](http://asianhistory.about.com/od/Genghis_and_Mongols/ss/The-Mongol-Empire.htm) was the largest land empire in history (had bigger territory than Roman Empire). EDIT: * Peasants DO NOT have many horses: horses need a lot of food, so nomad has to move to fresh grass quite often, it will not work for a farmer. * Farmers are not nomads. They are NOT skilled riders. Heavy horses for field work are not good fit for long rides. * Nomads' horses were used to survive on harsh food: even small branches if needed. Farmers' horses are fed grains. Which is a problem in war - harder to live off what is available. Supply wagons are slow, especially if there are no roads. * Farmers do NOT spend hours riding and hunting - they are busy on fields. * Shooting bow while riding is hard to master - and requires special (shorter) recurved bow, instead of simple longbow used by peasants. More edits: Nomads were trained in complicated tactics: * "wheel attack": Instead of line charge, they run in a circle, shooting 1-2 arrows when close, and ride away, to make space for others to attack. So they were harder to hit (moving sideways) and spending most of time out of the range of defenders' arrows. This would occupy defender attention while different force attacks from flank or rear * groups of riderless horses makes fake moves to create more confusion. Far away so lack of riders is not noted, but close enough to make potential threat and to prevent defender's reserves to be deployed to fend of other real attacks * [Feigned retreat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feigned_retreat) - when small party attacked and retreated, luring opponent to pursue them into an ambush. [Answer] First you got 3 kinds of horses, Work horses (Coldblooded), Riding horses (Warmblooded) and warhorses, the last can be both, Coldblooded for heavy armored cavalry and warmblooded for light and fast cavalry. The difference is the training, since horses are "fleeing animals?", afraid of blood and reacts to loud noises along with the tendency to run in the same direction as other horses. The most likely scenario that will happen if a farmer rides his horse to war would be that the horse would be scared at the first sound or smell of blood and drag all the other farmhorses away from the battle in fear and panic. Most likely trample some of the farmers. [Answer] The big problem with an all cavalry army is that the supply line requirements would be huge. Instead of needing enough food and water to support 200 pounds of human per soldier, you would need enough food and water to support 2200 pounds of human and horse per soldier. For all practical purposes this would mean that the cavalry army would be limited to a couple dozen miles from abundant fresh water sources at all time, would pretty much be limited to fertile plains where there were abundant grazing resources, and would have to be constantly on the move as grazing resources were exhausted in any one place. Against such a force, one attractive tactic might be to ambush the army at attractive watering holes like African top predators go after herd animals in the savanna. Another defensive tactic might be to start a grass fire that engulfs thousands of acres which would deny food to the horses in the vicinity of your defensive position while making the land more fertile for farming in later years. And, with the grass burned away, if it rained, it would all turn to mud which would be very slow going for a large all cavalry army. Yet another defense tactic would be to sow weeds that are poisonous to horses, like Russian knap weed, far and wide in the vicinity of the position that you want to defend, killing the horses in a force that wants to meet its heavy logistics load through grazing. Someone engaging an all cavalry army would also be attracted to deploying any stimulus that could spook the horses, causing the entire lot of them to act like a panicked herd instead of individually managed cool headed war horses. Sudden noises, skunks, fire, or a pack of wolves, for example, could all fit that bill. [Answer] Having every peasant own a horse and be able to ride doesn't make them into a mounted warrior any more than normal peasants being able to walk allows them to be foot soldiers. They are still lacking training, weapons, and armor and the skill and desire to use them. This also applies to their horses. [Answer] Spears would really wipe out peasant cavalry. Long spears (aka pikes) are very cheap and easy to make if you have good deciduous forests and have properly disciplined infantry. Peasants could not afford heavy armor for their horses, nor could they afford the proper time to train their draft horses into warhorses. On the other hand, if they were a nomadic tribe that used composite bows for hunting, they would be capable of conquering the known world, so long as their khan does not die without a clear line of succession. [Answer] If they used a strong strategy and had skilled-enough horse archers, they could potentially take over the entire continent, or more. The [Mongol Empire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire) is a famous example of such. [Answer] As the [Battle of the Golden Spurs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Golden_Spurs) shows cavalry isn't always superior to infantry. A lot depends on the terrain and the morale of the troops involved. And the horsemanship skills are important, too. In eastern Europe there have been cases where invading heavy cavalry was successfully repelled by light cavalry using hit-and-run tactics.\* A fully mounted force with tactical strong leaders and good riding skills could be very successful. But on the other hand a leadership lacking in tactical understanding and/or poor riding ability can mean leading men and horses to a slaughter. As others have written an example for good tactics combined with strong riding skills were the Mongols. \*I can't find something about it at the moment but in summer the light cavalry made hit-and-run bow attacks throughout the hot day forcing the invading knights to wear their heavy armor all day. At sundown they stopped those attacks and the knights, sweaty and exhausted removed their armor. The temperatures dropped rapidly during the night and after several days most of the knights had pneumonia and the survivors had to retreat. Another attempt was made at a colder time. Again the light cavalry attacked and withdrew. When the knights gave chase the light riders fled across a frozen river where the ice was strong enough for their light horses but not for the heavy cavalry of the knights. Some drowned, the rest, again, had to retreat. ]
[Question] [ I recently came across a rather strange question. > > If you were given the chance to be a person of the opposite sex for two days every week, would you take it? > > > So I'm going to take this question one step further. **What if this trait was genetic and unavoidable?** Every weekend, every person in the world becomes a person of the opposite sex. Specifically, how would relationships work? I see two possibilities: * People could be polygamous. Every weekend, they would have a different partner to their usual week time partner. * People could stay with one partner as they would also change sex - but how would they recognise each other the first few times? [Answer] I think you might be approaching this idea too much from a western, heterosexual mindset. If this were something that has always existed in a society, two things can be said: one, it probably arose for an evolutionary reason, and two, it predated the establishment of culture. There are many species in which gender works differently. I am far from a biologist, but I am aware many aquatic life forms and insects either have unusual versions of the common male/female, are hermaphrodites, or can change gender on command. The main reason, to my understanding, that this does not occur in larger life forms is that they posses larger, more complex reproductive systems, making changes more difficult, and possessing both sexual traits more costly to physical resources. However, if a life form was developed with uncontrollable gender changes, its culture would develop around that. Within anthropology, it is often said that gender is a social construct. Many societies possess third genders or allow switching between them. Obviously, this is a cultural construct, and does not involve physical change in sex (although these days, it can mean that). While it is more politically contentious, based on that I would say it stands to reason sexuality is also a social construct. What that means for your question is that the idea of being a given gender in the first place would likely never arise if sex was not fixed, or if it did exist, would be based on some other phenomena (perhaps choice). Someone might identify as "female" despite actually being male half of the time. Similarly, it seems probable everyone would end up bisexual, due to physical necessity. As such, there would be no particular reason to believe marriage would work any differently on that premise alone. However, it may indeed impact the idea of marriage. It could lead to the idea never developing, for one. It could also lead to three-party marriages, or some other system. It is almost impossible for me to predict the impact it would have on marriage, though, because marriage is already defined very differently in some parts of the world. Throwing something as large as changing genders into the mix would confuse the situation beyond what I think a single, clear answer exists for. Of course, I just assumed this was always the case. It is also possible that those possessing this gender changing effect were created out of an already existing species, like humans. In that case, I would suspect that at least for some period of time, our cultural constructs would persist - polygamy or simply abolishing of marriage seems the more likely short-term result, as sexuality and gender are more deeply rooted in the cultural mindset. To address the matter of changing how people look; really, there is no reason to think people would look outwardly any different, let alone different enough it would be an issue. Especially if you're posing this as a genetic phenomena, there would not be a major physical change over that short a time, if there was even any at all. Perhaps if it was magical, and there was a total change in body structure, but even then I can't imagine it being more confusing than someone dying their hair. There would still be the same dress, mannerisms, etc.. [Answer] Just changing sex wouldn't drastically change your appearance, you would easily recognize each other (and could always tell each other who you were if not). This question is impossible to answer because there would be no single solution. Some people would pair up and just abstain for two days, some people would enjoy the variety of experiences as a couple, and other people would be polyamorous or swingers...just like in our world. People are people, I really don't see this making any big changes in terms of relationships - although it would most likely reduce sexism and homophobia. Of course there is one big problem...How would pregnancy work in this concept? [Answer] If every person's change occurs at the exact same time (every weekend), then I'd argue that polygamy would be no more or less likely than in our current world. If John and Mary are a couple, then the weekend happens and John becomes "female" and Mary becomes "male" at the same time, then from a biological perspective, they're still a fit couple. This, of course, raises an issue of sexuality: If John is attracted exclusively to women, and this weekend change occurs, is he still willing to have sex with Mary, who is now a male and therefore unattractive to him? Obviously, the couple can just abstain as someone previously mentioned. I'd be willing to argue, however, that although John isn't attracted to Mary's physical form, he would be attracted to his own body and have a natural interest in pleasuring it the same way he would be interested in pleasuring another woman. And what's the best way to do that? Get a man like Mary involved. If (as is far more likely) each person's change occurred at different times (Mary is a man Monday and Tuesday while John is a woman Friday and Saturday), then I believe that polygamy would be much more likely. Again assuming that John is exclusively attracted to women, on Monday, when both John and Mary are men, John can derive little pleasure from any sexual activity with Mary and therefore would most likely seek it elsewhere. In this world, where changes aren't simultaneous, I would predict very few couples, with most people opting to include at least a third person. Two-person couples would probably be limited to those who consider themselves bi- or asexual, or those for whom their "schedules" line up. Alternatively, couples are as likely to be polygamous as in our world and everyone is bisexual. To address the pregnancy issue: If this is a biological process, then we have to assume that this hypothetical species has been able to reproduce (which would be impossible if the fetus were aborted every time the change to male occurred). As that is the case, these particular humans would have to have most of the inner workings of a female even in both gender forms, the same way that both genders have a stomach or eyes. It would be optimum to have the "male" (the person who is male 5 days out of the week) impregnate the "female" still, since that means that the baby is far more likely to enjoy a natural birth instead of having to be born surgically. That being the case, I would assume pregnancy would still be something associated with the "female" gender. > > What that means for your question is that the idea of being a given gender in the first place would likely never arise if sex was not fixed > > > The problem with this is that although gender isn't *fixed*, a person is one gender five out of seven days of the week. So a person is still one more often than the other. I think that your predominant form would determine your cultural gender. ]
[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 9 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/7205/edit) Premise: An alien visits Earth for a short time during the middle ages, leaving behind a device which contains a vast body of scientific knowledge. The device is locked so that it can't be opened until we make certain discoveries on our own. Guidelines: The speed of light is absolute law; no hyperspace shortcuts, no faster-than-light travel. The best technology known to the aliens still requires lifetimes of travel time. They have cryogenics, so they don't age during flight, but in starting a journey, a traveler has to sever all ties with home. No one they leave behind will still be alive if they ever return. Trans-planetary commerce is impossible due to the distances and delays. Note that the aliens have not discovered any means of communicating across interstellar distances at any greater than light speed. If they had, interstellar commerce would still be possible, and I'm trying to avoid that. Questions: Given the danger of travel, the personal cost and the absence of commercial potential, why did the alien come to Earth? What knowledge is in the device and what is the key discovery we need to find in order to open it? [Answer] > > Given the danger of travel, the personal cost and the absence of commercial potential, why did the alien come to Earth > > > It's not like a single individual and a single ship would be a noticeable cost to a society capable of spaceflight. I'd imagine an alien society with some sort of self imposed duty to civilize the galaxy, akin to Victorian society and the "White Man's Burden", would find themselves with plenty of reason to try and enlighten other life forms even if it had a small cost attached. It can also be likened to a religious mission, where people left their homelands and built religious communities among natives when they could certainly expect a life harder than where they called home. Humans seem quite inclined throughout history to do things that aren't perfectly efficient or necessarily profitable out of ideology or altruism. > > what knowledge is in the device and what is the key discovery we need to find in order to open it > > > I can't think of anything that would objectively answer this, but perhaps the ability to download a human consciousness, maybe it's a computer that can run at a certain speed to break the code, or maybe it's just finding a constant or formula that is essential to near-lightspeed travel. It could have a history of the contacting race (to make them seem great or maybe just to show us what mistakes to avoid), advertisement of some ideology (think like the intergalactic version of a free bible or communist manifesto), and almost certainly some technological and scientific knowledge. The technology needed to become a trans-planetary species would likely be included. [Answer] I thought of a few possible reasons, all with the motivation of spreading some sort of enlightenment to other races, including: 1. an attempt to assist other races to form a certain 'standard' level of ethics throughout the galaxy, (possibly in an attempt to help everyone 'play nice' or for some other more specific reason, from self serving to more altruistic...) 2. an attempt to instill a certain amount & sense of technological responsibility in those receiving the knowledge, (if the race gained the scientific advancement on their own, not with the accompanying lessons on responsibility, they might be more prone to abuse their new capabilities) 3. an attempt to help other races not make the same terrible mistake(s) the originating race made, (maybe they caused an apocalyptic event which wiped out most of their race and devastated their planet etc... that might be pretty motivating) I think it's just as valuable to consider the methods the device might use to accomplish the above. I propose the following scenario: The scientific knowledge in the device is meted out in increments, much like a school class curriculum. In the case of the device, however, the new lesson would be available after the previous one was mastered. With each lesson there would be a moral aspect to it that would be part of the key to accessing the following lesson. Without some proof that the moral lesson was also learned no advancement would be made. In this way the device could be used to teach a set of ethics to whatever species it was given, along with the scientific knowledge. [Answer] In *Dragon's Egg*, an encyclopedia is given to the humans, with brief mention of the way you indicate: the key (to one section) is engraved on a pyramid on an extrasolar planet; the key is formed with the masses of certain fundamental particles to 5 significant digits; etc. For computer power, look at existing key-aplification techniques used for passwords, or brute-force finding of a key of a specific strength. For prerequisite understanding, use math problems that require the techniques that we need to have diacovered for ourselves before getting any "spoilers". For physical knowledge, can ask for results of a described experient that can't really be performed but calculated, like the neutrino flux of a particular stellar collapse situation. As for records that last so long, that's another problem. Maybe it's on the moon. [Answer] The lack of FTL does not mean trade is impossible, you just have to think in longer terms. Since there is no FTL, yet the aliens are travelers, it is safe to assume they are a patient species who think in the long term. Possibly beyond their own life spans. It is even possible they work as a linear hive mind where multiple individuals make up their consciousness. If one dies, it can be replaced by a new one giving a sort of immortality. Look into [A Fire Upon The Deep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep) for this sort of entity. Another possibility is from [Diaspora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28novel%29) where they are effectively immortal, can alter their sense of time, and change their sense of what they find fulfilling ("I'm going to reprogram myself so the endless tedium of interstellar travel is FUN!"). > > Why did the alien come to Earth? > > > There are two possibilities, it was on purpose or it was not. If it wasn't on purpose, it could have been... * a disaster such as a crash * a layover for fuel and supplies * they happened to be passing by and noticed signs of intelligent life Crashing on a primitive planet, they may choose to enter sleep until humanity reaches a level of technology capable of making the supplies necessary to fix and fuel their ship. The device would open when it felt their manufacturing and base scientific abilities were up to task. For example, a person crashing in 500 AD and needing a new laptop battery and screen, even if they knew how to make one, would have to wait for enormous advances in material science alone to accomplish it. If it was on purpose, it could have been... * to develop trading partners (like I said, they're patient and think very long term) * to develop military allies ("these Humans sure to reproduce fast, and they're good at fighting", this is the premise of the Yehat uplifting the [Shofixti](http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Shofixti) or the [Asgard](http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Asgard) attitude in Stargate) * to have somebody to talk to, a different point of view * to spread their religion to * to use as slaves or vassals * a sense of obligation to educate the savages * bring Humans around to their way of thinking before they become a threat * to avoid common disasters brought on by technology * to avoid polluting their neighboring systems (this is the premise of [Quarantine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_%28Greg_Egan_novel%29)) * [it was all a prank](http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Umgah#Umgah_pranks) * it was all a mistake > > > > > > What knowledge is in the device? What is the key discovery we need to find in order to open it? > > > > > > > > > The key is tied to what is in the device. The key would indicate Humanity is ready for the contents of the device, either to understand the content, or use it responsibly, or the conditions are so that they need it to save them. Since they're so intertwined, I'm going to mix together keys and discoveries a bit. * a benchmark indicating we have reached a certain level of technology (when the Monolith buried on the Moon is exposed to sunlight it knows Humanity has achieved space flight) * we have the destructive power to breech the device * a certain dangerous technology is discovered (atmospheric levels of industrial pollutants indicate we're on an arc to destroy our environment, fluctuations in the Sun's energy output indicates we've begun harvesting plasma which will eventually lead to a nova) and the device contains how to make the technology safe, or advice to avoid it, or a safer alternative, or a warning beacon for the aliens to come save the day * a puzzle which requires a level of linguistic and mathematical advances to solve indicating we're now worth talking to * an indicator that society has achieved a certain benchmark of responsibility (I'm not sure how the device would detect this) * instructions on how to join intergalactic society (a beacon pointing at the nearest outpost, instructions to build a communication device, rules for trade) * there are enough Humans and we're ready for harvesting * the knowledge to create a valuable material or item which the aliens will come to take or trade for * we've achieved a level of technology where we can manufacture spare parts and fuel, it contains instructions to do so, we're now a [colonial fueling station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuelling_station#Naval_fuelling_stations) * their religious texts * military technology and propaganda about how evil their enemy is (which could backfire due to cultural and moral differences, "they allow their enemies to surrender and don't kill their wounded, they have no honor!") * [we've developed to the point where we've become a threat](http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Eternal_Doctrine), it's a bomb * the instructions require special devices to read: it's emitting radio waves; it's just under the surface and visible in x-rays; it requires knowledge of higher dimensional physics * it's a special device and the aliens have hidden it on a backwater planet where nobody would think to look (a la [The Fifth Element](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Element)) [Answer] **Survival**. The alien species was under threat of possible extinction. The device contains detailed genetic engineering instructions that can be used to recreate the alien species, as well as a huge body of scientific, cultural, and historical information so that the newborns can learn about their 'family' and roots, and ensure that their accumulated knowledge survives as well. The device (or rather the data within it) is locked in such a way that it can only be accessed by a society with the biological capability to bring the alien species back to life. [Answer] Does the alien have to visit herself? Couldn't she just send a "device which contains a vast body of scientific knowledge" in an unmanned space probe? You know, like we did in the [Voyager probes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record)? [Answer] 1. Where do we know that the aliens has feelings? Maybe this travel does not have a personal cost to an alien. 2. Maybe aliens have an ultimate ideal, like religions point out heaven on Earth, to spread scientific knowledge or explore deep space to find footsteps of creators. (I assume they still did not understand 'beginning of time', like us.) ]
[Question] [ It's a typical trope in stories, but why don't the powerful good guys fight the powerful bad guys? Usually a group of nobodies need to grow in power to the point that they're able to face the powerful bad guys themselves. I'm making a setting and I need some good reasons for why this is the case. I need reasons for both why the gods don't just do whatever they need done themselves for the sake of the cosmology, and also why the godlike mortals don't do whatever needs being done as well. I have vague ideas for both. For the gods, them coming into direct conflict threatens the cosmology entirely. For the godlike mortals, they're in a cold war for similar, smaller scale reasons. I'm trying to flesh these things out though. In addition, for the sake of a story happening, some people are doing the type of things that would escalate the cold war. So yeah the question is many for the non-divinities, but once people start breaking the rules and causing plot worthy happenings to occur, why wouldn't the best of them step into stop it? Edit: After reading some answers, while they cleared up some issues I had, I felt I should add some additional information for leftovers: The main culprit for this question within my setting is a magocracy. The setting itself is high fantasy in general, the type of place where the heroes are literal one man armies. This magocracy is essentially the world superpower. They also highly exhibit [this](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RankScalesWithAsskicking) trope. I haven't come up with who/what the main antagonist/threat is at the moment but I do plan for it to be a world-shifting issue. Essentially though, when the world-shifting issue does come up why don't they attempt to solve it? The only easy answer I can think of is chosen one(s) type stuff but I'd like to avoid that. [Answer] Why don't the gods fight each-other? For pretty much the same reasons why nations don't fight: not for any agreement or lack thereof, but because they are too evenly matched. If there was a power imbalance, the weaker party would have been subjugated already. This means that the two sides are evenly matched. If they were to fight, the outcome would be in doubt... and people - and gods - like certainty. They're each trying to become more powerful, and if one side gains enough power over the other, the peace will collapse. But until then, it's a cold war, with each side subtly taking digs at the other, not so obviously or damagingly as to provoke open war. If one side or the other was to gain a major unexpected advantage, we can expect war to break out soon thereafter. But until then, it's a standoff. [Answer] Each individual or group will have a different answer to that question based on their personality and goals. Yes, they can go out and shake the world with their power, but there will be Consequences to those actions. ### The Divine As you have alluded to, when gods fight, worlds tremble. While that is very much true, another viewpoint is that deities don't think in the same frames as us mere mortals. These inscrutable beings from our perspective make their plans with centuries or longer in time frames and considering multiple worlds, or even universes. Even a deity of war, who may very much like the idea of a world plunged into a super-powered war and conflict may not want that because it may hamper the potential of future wars in the long distant future. Alternatively, those one man army types may not make a war sporting or bloody enough so it is in the deity's interest to make sure that they don't start making conflict. ### The Demigods In this case, I use the term as a general power level. How they come across their power may actually have an influence as to why they don't get involved. A high priest or even a demigod may be bound by the tenets of their deity, and their rules. Being so high in power, and likely favour, means that they are likely more privy to their deity's immediate plans and desires then anyone else. These people are not dispatched to solve the world's problems per say -- they are sent out by their deity to remind the world of their power or to fix a problem that the deity cannot fix themselves. To flex or to fix, but always to the deity's will. Archmages, both living and undead, may be more involved in their own experiments and pursuits then actually meddling in world affairs. Some have tried that, and it ended up that people started relying on them to solve their problems -- which took away too much research time. No, better to just sequester yourself and maybe claim dominion over a village so that they can tend to your immediate needs like food and clothing. Research is more important here -- and if it gets too crazy, retreat into your own demiplane. The greatest warriors might be in the best position to stop these things had they not been rewarded with land and titles for saving the kingdom/world from some dragon, demon, or non-euclidean horror. That drops them not only into politics, but into defence of their realm. So long as the problem is not in their lands, it is difficult for them to deal with it directly. Lastly, there are those that just do not want to get involved for their own reasons. So long as their little bubble of reality remains intact and unharmed, nothing else matters. Be it due to their powers, their past traumas, or a promise made, they are staying out of it for as long as possible. ### The Mortals Now we come to the mortals -- The powerful and the average. These are the people that will be the scouts and proxies for the powerful. They will be given the job to give things a nudge in the correct direction where they can to help matters. They will cut their teeth on the minions and the lesser challenges that are quite beneath the more powerful to deal with. Besides, back in their day they had to do that stuff -- it's how they got strong in the first place. The mortals are in fact the first line of attack by these living forces of nature in the world specifically because they are less likely to break something important, like a capital city or a mountain. They are also unlikely to know any actual plans outside of whatever issue they are hired/told to solve. ### Table Flip! Of course, there are people that want to meddle and have the power to do so. Perhaps they do get involved and Things Happen. Perhaps they actually fight in locales that aren't the material world in a sort of "Let's step outside" manner of action. After all a demiplane, or layer of an outer plane may be less susceptible to catastrophe than the material world. Conversely, they have fought in the world, it has suffered, and that is why there is a tenuous peace between those that have the power to break reality. Most don't recall that time, but for those that do it serves as a dire warning. ### The Magocracy The upper echelons of the Magocracy could be mired in politics. A world shattering event might be supported by some and opposed by others. The Magocracy is in a fragile balance only maintained by the foreknowledge of mutually assured destruction should that balance be shattered. Taking a side on an issue means not just trying to deal with the issue, but also with those that take umbrage with you taking a stance. Your leader has the unenviable position of being able to kick the most ass. As such, they are also needed to keep those under them in line. Imagine if they go out to stop the apocalypse, what kind of mayhem they'd return to? There might be a magocracy standing when they return. Likewise, those looking to advance would not only be trying to advance but would also have power and resources tied up in their own defences. They may not have the ready resources to go save the world, even if they want to. Too much power is tied up in not getting ... deposed ... while too much money is tied up in acquiring said defences and their own studies. [Answer] Power corrupts. There are no powerful 'good guys' - any 'good guy' who takes the path of power is no longer 'good'. You might make a nuke to end an evil war, but then you are a mass murderer once you use it. Once you have complete magical power, the only option is go live by yourself on Mars. So you need a supply of powerless innocents to become powerful for the conflict to be sustained. [Answer] ## Good guys are bound to a moral code that prohibits them from being the aggressor. What separates "good guys" from "bad guys" is that the "good guys" impose a moral code on themselves that prevents them from doing "bad guy" things. And starting a war of aggression is one of the most "bad guy" things there is. So it's in the very nature of "good guys" to want to maintain peace and avoid violence. They will only resort to violence if all other avenues to resolve the conflict are exhausted and the potential collateral damage from going to war is clearly much lower from the damage that would happen if they *don't* intervene. Until then they will try to solve the problem through talking out the conflicts and preparing for a possible defensive war. So even if the thread of the "bad guys" becomes more and more obvious, the "good guys" might refuse to act unless the "bad guys" attack first. It would require protagonists with a more pragmatic morality to perceive the bad guys as a threat and being willing to use violence to do something about it. [Answer] ## The Bad Guys Are Smart Any Bad Guy with brains knows: If they're going to attract Superman's attention, they need to be packing kryptonite. Otherwise Superman is going to defeat them trivially. But the Bad Guys can only plan so far. At some point, there are superheroes who are too weak and fall below their radar. There is no prepared counter for the "weaklings" so the low level heroes have a real opportunity to disrupt the Bad Guy's plans. ## Bad Guys Only Attack with Advantage Even if the starting situation is a Cold War with everyone evenly matched, this strategy still works. One side develops their counters in secret, and only attacks when they think they have an overwhelming advantage. This is why spy-craft was so important in the real life Cold War: Both sides needed to know what "counters" the other had developed so that they could build a "counter-counter" to make themselves safe again. You need one major **intelligence failure** where the Bad Guys are able to keep their new abilities secret long enough to take advantage of them. Then your unknown heroes are able to rise to the challenge and save the day! [Answer] * Powerful good guys will have ongoing responsibilities *because they are powerful.* A monarch, a noble, a knight is not just a warrior, he or she is a government official and an economic actor. While some of these duties may be delegated to a [seneschal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneschal), or to a spouse, they would fail in their primary responsibility to their own people if they go off on a quixotic quest. * Over the lifetime of a character, first they gain physical power as they become adult and train fighting, then they grow "old and fat" and gain more experience, wealth, and political power. The young knight is a better warrior than an older noble, but the older noble has more political power. [Answer] Options: 1: Fear of unintended consequences - think Neville Chamberlain before WW2, 'I have secured peace in our time' - the horror of WW1 was still a living memory for many people in 1939 and no one wanted a repeat - and so you had the policy of Appeasement. 2: As a Parent, there's many things I can do for my kids that I deliberately don't do, because it's important for them to learn how to do it themselves and to grow and become stronger and competent. One day (hopefully in the very distant future) I won't be there for them - and when that time comes I hope I've both directly and indirectly helped mould them into a resilient and up-standing member of society. This, but on a Cosmic Scale. 3: In the case of Gods - direct intervention violates some ancient peace accords. No God can directly interfere with the Mortal realm, doing so gives all the other gods carte blanche to intervene and stop said god. 4: Mutually Assured Destruction - AKA the Cold War - similar to points 1 and 3 - if hostility is started, it could lead to total annihilation. [Answer] ## The Gods ARE at War The Gods are at war... and they have been since the beginning of time. We mere mortals just take it all for granted. When a young man comes of age, the gods of love and war wage battle in the heavens over the man's fate to see if he will fall in love and settle down, or enlist in the army and go off seeking his fortune and adventure. When a surgeon operates on a patient, the gods of wisdom and death go head to head to see if medicine will prevail or fail the man. Every little crossroads in every single mortal's fate is tied to a vast but mostly unseen spiritual war that has been raging in the heavens since before man first drew breath. Yes, the Gods, Angels, and Demons are immensely powerful in thier physical forms, but taking on physical form to enter the world directly means abandoning thier spiritual duties. If a God were to come to Earth to fight a physical war, then the spiritual war that they care so much more about could be all be lost before they get back. After all, what good does it do for a god to come down and smite the Magocracy if it means leaving his whole kingdom vulnerable to invasion. Seeing an entire spiritual kingdom like Love or Law be destroyed would after all be even worse for the world than letting a couple of naughty Mages run amok for a few decades. ## How this Effects the Greater Heroes That said, the gods are not actually apathetic about the Magocracy like you may assume. Quite the opposite, all of the gods are so invested in the conflict already that they are all doing what they can to keep each other's paragons out of the way. There are no less than 20 heroes around the world strong enough end thing in a day, but each one is beset by twists of fate created by rival gods keeping them out of the conflict. One hero is busy mucking a out stable as penance for killing his own wife, one is hiding somewhere dressed as a woman because some prophet told him he'd die if he went to fight, one got smashed by his own boat in a freak scaffolding failure, one is off on some island getting high on lotus flowers... sure these all seem like random and unrelated life events, but when the gods care about a world event (like REALLY care), you don't notice because heroes show up to fix things, you notice because fate gets so twisted that none of them show up. ## This is where New Heroes come in Each god knows each other god's favored heroes, but a smart god knows to keep a few aces up thier sleave. Nobodies who they've created at birth for great things and hidden away in humble beginnings so that when the time comes, the other gods wont see this person coming until its too late. By the time the other gods realize that this humble farm boy is actually a powerful demigod, he's already too close to his goals, his fate too set in stone for them to change. This makes his fate much easier for his patron god to protect when all the other gods try to scramble to get him out of the way last minute. [Answer] The Gods are GODS. Lets say one doesn’t like the lizard creatures that God2 has made because they eat his trees and just lobs rocks at them until they go away. God2 then sets fire to trees nearby his lizards to keep the trees away instead. This causes more retaliations and before you know it one decides to hit the reset button and lob a giant asteroid at the planet. Fine, dinosaurs were getting old, lets agree not to go overboard again or we don’t have anything to God over ok? Your super powered good guys are basically (non-American) police officers for the superpowered. They are busy! We got a fake report of a super attack over at Tokayo city while Mister Dastardly managed to hack the Ouropan banking system! The League of Good Guys with Powers can’t be everywhere and notice everything at once! Also they aren’t the maid who cleans up, we are still in a legal dispute on the Omarikan side over damages caused and getting a salary, Superdoodads don’t come cheap you know! [Answer] Personally I don't like too much the "oh they are gods so we can't understand them escape". The "cold war" argument that certain use of powerful weapons would lead to mutual destruction could work but usually doesn't. Authors often don't think through all the implications of such a stalemate. Sure smaller proxy wars can be fought over small matters using lesser force because neither side wants to destroy the earth. But you have to keep in mind that when any side is truly threatened they will become desperate and use their weapons anyway as a last resort. I prefer the following. The war is ongoing because the sides are roughly evenly matched. The stronger forces are fighting stronger forces. The underdog heroes don't immediately win the war. They just win some minor battles, picking them carefully so that they are something that they can handle. As they do they grow stronger with each win until at some point they can take on the stronger forces tipping the scales of the war in favor of their side. [Answer] A few reasons come to mind, many of which are based on things I've seen at work. 1. Resource management. Assign workers suitable to the task. Of course the Senior Team could do it, but it doesn't *need* the Senior Team, the Junior Team can (or will be able to) handle it. This can be cheaper than paying the Senior Team, and leaves the Senior Team available for things only they can do. 2. Development/Growth. Senior Team already knows how, but we can afford to spend the time and effort to have the Junior Team use it as a learning opportunity, leading them to become an Intermediate Team. It might actually take more time and effort to coach them than it would do it myself. 3. Unwanted consequences. An even sporting event can be exciting to watch, but as others have mentioned, an 'even fight' is not a good time for anyone. 4. Suitability for work. Maybe the 'junior' here has exactly the right knowledge and skills. I have the knowledge and experience to figure it out, but they already know what to do, so leave them to it. Or even temperament: we have a junior analyst who finds things I'd overlook because she is so meticulous (and has time... see 'resource management' above). [Answer] Another concern is the precision they can manage their powers. Say you have a city densely packed with non-divinities, say your super power has an area of effect of 100 miles, now if you use it you kill 10,000's of thousands of innocent people and/or people on your side. They may need years of practice in a remote desert in order to control/fine tune their power into precision and controllable weapons. Even then some may never have full control of their powers. Let's say their is a villain in a city and your only weapon is a nuclear bomb, its not reasonable for you to use it to take out a single villain because of every one else you kill. [Answer] **Because the gods, and demi-gods are bound by treaties, and the mutually assured destruction that would come from a war.** All the Gods and powerful people have spent hundreds of years playing politics. What this really means is that if one god directly challenges another, every god and strong person will get pulled into a world war via alliances and treaties. Add some mutually assured destruction from a world war between gods, and you've go a recipe for every player to kick back and do nothing. We see this in the real world pretty often. The West can't get directly involved in the war in Ukraine. North Korea threatens nukes every few years. Any change to the status quo must come from within, because everyone else has there hands full not getting into a fight. ]
[Question] [ I am creating a sci-fi world for tabletop RPG and I have trouble with one thing and that is artificial gravity. What I need is to come up with some ideas for in-world reasonable explanation for the technology of artificial gravity used in ships or stations, which I can provide to my players, but I have a few limitations and restrictions on that technology so it won't break some other things: **1. It has to be believable.** I have curious players, so it cannot be just "it works" explanation. I know currently artificial gravity is only possible through centrifugal force or constant acceleration, but this is not what I am looking for. It does not have to be scientifically plausible (it is not hard sci-fi), but it should have some reasonable and interesting explanation (with only some handwavium elements like exotic matter or similar). **2. It cannot allow for FTL travel.** Many interesting artificial gravity explanations in sci-fi are able to manipulate space-time and this also allows for the means of FTL travel (warp drive, mass effect). This is not desirable in this world. FTL in this world is present, but it is very rare and not understood (not human) piece of technology (which should not be the case for artificial gravity). **3. Other, less obvious, uses of the technology should be addressed.** Sometimes technology for artificial gravity can create a lot of potential in other areas, which may create some gaps in the world (weapons, shields, industry, propulsion). I am not against some useful applications, but I would like them being acknowledged and it should not be something very ground-breaking. **4. The technology has to be reasonable available.** As I said before, the technology can use some exotic matter or elements, but it must reasonable available in the world, where spaceship is expensive, so not everyone can afford one, but it is not something unusual (maybe like private airplane/helicopter in our world). I already tried to go through this and similar forums, but I wasn't able to find something which would work for me, so I would like to kindly ask for your ideas and suggestions. [Answer] I suggest you read through the web comic [Schlock Mercenary](https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2000-06-12) and lift its technology. This works as follows: * "Annie-plants" convert neutronium directly into energy. Just how is not specified, but it has limits, based on plant size, and the plants require synthetic post-trans-uranic elements. The plants are also reasonably dangerous if damaged. "Annie-plant" is a short form of "Annihilation Power Plant", or something very similar. * A sizeable mass of neutronium naturally has a significant gravitational field. By manipulation of the neutronium, one can shape this field, to produce artificial gravity. This goes somewhat beyond plausible limits in the strip, but suspension of disbelief through familiarity is maintained. * Artificial gravity can also be used to accelerate ships, although relativity still applies, and this does not provide FTL. There is FTL in the strips, but it's done with different technology. * The technology is also used to provide weapons, defences, and help to industry. It's a good example of modern space-opera, worked out in a fair amount of detail. [Answer] > > Many interesting artificial gravity explanations in sci-fi are able to manipulate space-time and this also allows for the means of FTL travel > > > Space warping does not need to imply FTL. There have been various people looking at stuff like the famous [Alcubierre warp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive) and its descendants, and examining the ways in which it couldn't take you faster than light... being unable to control the warp at FTL speeds, needing a universe-mass worth of exotic matter, unpleasant radiation roasting everything inside the bubble, that sort of thing. Those things don't necessarily apply at merely subluminal speeds. Assuming you can conjure up a suitable warp in the first place (which isn't guaranteed, but your fictional universe does have non-centrifugal artificial gravity and FTL so certain areas of physics are clearly more amenable to technology there) then there are a number of clever tricks you can do with it. Moving around without having to expend propellant is the obvious trick, but there are other useful ways to twiddle with spacetime without moving around which include building regions of extreme time dilation (like the classic sciencefictional [stasis field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasis_(fiction))) and simply bending space locally enough to hold stuff down to a deck. Because humans like gravitational fields that appear locally uniform and flat, it probably presents as pairs of of "pushers" and "pullers" which have fairly uniform fields in between them. The field won't be totally uniform, but will instead have gradients and curves and things around the edges that will be confusing, unpleasant or even downright dangerous to move through, so you want to have lots of them side-by-side to form a broad area of uniform field with the awkward unitidy bits around the edges. You might need a sort of G-lock to get in and out of an artificial gravity zone without having to suffer wierd tidal effects, like an airlock that you step into and then turn the local artificial gravity on or off. The grav deck needn't be flat, though a short-radius curved surface is likely to be disorienting to people in it. It might not be very high, depending on the size of the regions of warped space that you're conjuring up... a series of flat layers (not necessarily adjoining, or simliarly oriented) might be more likely than huge open spaces or tall multistorey building-like things. [Answer] ## Paragravity One of the least physics-busting ways that I like to use for explaining gravity plating is "paragravity": an as of yet undiscovered fundamental force that acts like magnetism but for baryons. It doesn't break any physics. If you choose to mess with *actual* gravity generators instead, conservation laws go out the window pretty quickly. [Answer] There is a realistic way to do this, **if you have a vast amount of energy available, a lot of creativity, and a taste for Ig Nobel absurdity**. Every laysperson "knows" that magnets attract metal. People who have more than a high-school knowledge of physics know that magnets do not attract all metals, but they do attract ferromagnetic and paramagnetic materials. By the way, it has been suggested in similar questions that for artificial gravity you could wear metal armor while standing in a magnetic field. That is a cheat; the armor would be attracted by the magnetic source, but your body would not, so your guts would still be feeling like they are in free fall. Okay, back to my train of thought. Did you know that if you go even deeper into physics, **everything is awesome diamagnetic**? And diamagnetic things are usually **repelled** by magnetic fields. It's just that when they happen to be paramagnetic or ferromagnetic as well, they are attracted instead. I won't bore you woth the details, but this means that the electromagnetic force can be used to make diamagnet stuff such as living things fly. You just need a magnetic field that is obscenely powerful, but hey, it has been done! [Here is a Wikipedia article on it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_levitation#Direct_diamagnetic_levitation). Fun fact: the levitating frog in the picture there got Andre Geim the Ig Nobel prize, making him the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel and an Ig Nobel. Now let's finally get to my idea: if such a field coming from below will make you fly, then if it comes from above it will push you down. And since it is a force field it should be felt across and through your body. Suggestion: make it so that the source of the field is very distant from the bystanders, in order to have a low gradient. It could come from a companion ship if you don't want your main ship to be very long. Consider, though, that having anything metallic on you as the field is activated is orders of magnitude more likely to get you a Darwin award than carrying a loaded gun inside an MRI room. [Answer] ## Wave cancellation For a specific area, a handwavium wave is produced that shifts gravitational potential by a specific distance. You get an area of artificial gravity on one side, and an area of reverse artificial gravity on the other. Or, you get a zone of null gravity and another of double gravity. The sum of the two gravitational areas cancels out. Don't think about this one too hard. [Answer] **You've heard of glass that darkens with an applied electric field? Introducing *Toudwortium!*** In the year 2237, Dr. Ramkin Allistair Toudwort discovered an unusually heavy Lanthide with an atomic number of 1080 with a *remarkable* characteristic. When a minimum mass of 1080 Kg is subjected to a high voltage (at least 100 KV), the electron shell acts to stabilize the nucleus and the atomic number jumps to 3440, *but the number of protons and neutrons don't change!* When the electric field is applied, this atom acts like an atom with 3.185X the mass with appropriate gravity, but has a factual mass of only 1080. This effect became known as the "Toudwort Effect" and the atom, *Toudwortium.* [Answer] ## Try it without artificial gravity If you want artificial gravity, you get artificial gravity in your world. Use any of the technologies the others have suggested. In the end, you are designing a hard magic system with technical sounding words slapped onto it. Handle it as one handles such magic system. Incidentally, this is the dark secret of most sci-fi technology. But before you do this, watch [The Expanse](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series)). It is a sci-fi setting without artificial gravity. Downward acceleration is either provided by rotating space stations or by the thrust of the ship drives. Note, that this fulfills all your criteria. Ships could be equipped with telescope arms which are used to create spin gravity during orbit or cruise phases. See the Venture Star below. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pAsH6.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pAsH6.jpg) The other picture is the internal layout of a vessel using constant acceleration. Even low 0.1 or less g will do. This is in fact doable with reasonably realistic technology. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zU8k8.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zU8k8.jpg) Boots connecting to the decks are the final option, but they have [issues](https://medium.com/illumination/the-physics-of-magnetic-boots-from-the-expanse-b9d7a68e500f) as they are shown in the show. Our bodies won't be stable. The solution to the stability issue of the person is to give people light exosuits, which hold the body stable. And if an occasional freefall segment cones up, it is an interesting interval and you players will adopt to it quickly. I ran a game with lots of freefall once and the players understood it quickly. [Answer] 1. Since the discovery of the Higgs boson, we know that mass has an associated field like electric charge or magnetism. So, it is not difficult to imagine an atom nucleus made of protons and neutrons with negative mass. Negative mass objects would respond inversely in the presence of gravitational fields (e.g. fall upwards). A mundane mining exploration can result in the discovery of rocks with negative mass in Earth's own crust or using some particle accelerator to manufacture negative mass material, you name it. 2. It cannot allow for FTL travel. Negative mass objects would still have non-zero mass, thus staying an obstacle for FTL travel. 3. Other, less obvious, uses of the technology should be addressed. Negative mass objects can be used in any application where lifting large weights is a concern, particularly construction, mining, aerospace, etc. You can even think of making negative-mass dumbbells for wheight lowering... :) . Houses partly made of negative mass can stay in the sky just like a tehtered balloon (think of the Jetsons' house). Boats with negative mass ballasts could sail in the skies. 4. The technology has to be reasonable available. You could simply attach a basket, an engine and a propeller to a block of negative mass material and you have a vehicle that behaves like a blimp. Not difficult to craft. [Answer] The easiest option - one Newton could have suggested - concerns [the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass#Inertial_vs._gravitational_mass). It's not obvious these concepts absolutely have to be the same, and maybe in your world they're not. Imagine a suitable chemical reaction produces a special material, not naturally occurring, with far more gravitational mass than inertial mass. (If it *is* natural, the home planet gets weirder.) Then a spacecraft with its "lowest" floor made of such a material has artificial gravity. One interesting point that might affect your story: If that floor is flat, and very wide and long, [its gravity doesn't weaken with distance](https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/238453). It's as if the floor beams gravity infinitely up and down through the Universe, and thus acts like a tractor beam. ]
[Question] [ Hell is the bottomless realm that devils occupy, which exists alongside the material world of humans. This realm is further broken up into infinite mini-realms, each with their own type of devils, as well as souls of damned humans that have descended to that particular realm corresponding to their sins. Living humans can make pacts with devils by summoning them from their realm to the material world. This is done through an ancient ritual involving transmutation circles, which serve as a "landing pad" for the devil to enter into. The creature cannot pass the barrier of the circle, which exists as a temporal pocket dimension within its own mini-reality, keeping the human safe from the devil on the other side. There, a human can bargain with the creature, asking for their heart's desire in exchange for services. This system of dealmaking has survived for many millennia, with mages and devils working together to fulfill basic wants and needs. The purpose of this for the denizens of hell is to make deals with humans in order to gain as many souls as possible for their particular realm. A consistent stream of souls to torture provides fuel and power for their realm, allowing those denizens to become stronger. Souls can also be used to barter with other realms as a form of currency. Therefore, devils are incentivized to spread their services far and wide as quickly as they can. Lately however, the system has ironically begun to cause many deficiencies to take root, hurting business overall. This is mostly due to magic becoming more cosmopolitan in recent generations. In the old days, magic was localized and in the hands of relatively few mages, with only a handful willing to barter with devils. Thus, pacts were only made a few times a year. With the knowledge of magic being spread much more widely today, everyone and their mother wants to sell their soul to a devil in exchange for a luxurious lifestyle. Humans are covetous and greedy, desiring to gain money and power in the easiest and fastest way possible. Denizens of Wall Street, such as hedge fund managers and bankers, are frequent customers of pacts, making their souls some of the most prized among devils. This has led to an economic boom within hell, increasing output tenfold. However, the amount of business has led to a slowdown in response time, making it more difficult for devils to respond to a summoning. When the spell is activated, it can take years or even decades for a devil to cross the border into the material world to even take the request. By then, the original casters have long since died or have moved on, denying the devil the opportunity to make a pact and claim a soul. With Wi-Fi, everyone in the vicinity can get access to the internet, with service potentially slowing down depending on the amount of people on a particular network at one particular moment. However, this shouldn't be a factor because hell is an infinite place with an infinite amount of denizens eager to be at a human's beck and call. Summonings are happening all across the world in different timezones, calling on devils in various realms. Certainly there should be no lag in service such as what is occurring now. How can this be the case? [Answer] / A consistent stream of souls to torture provides fuel and power for their realm/ **Red tape** > > Red tape is an idiom referring to regulations or conformity to formal > rules or standards which are claimed to be excessive, rigid or > redundant, or to bureaucracy claimed to hinder or prevent action or > decision-making. It is usually applied to governments, corporations, > and other large organizations. Things often described as "red tape" > include filling out paperwork, obtaining licenses, having multiple > people or committees approve a decision and various low-level rules > that make conducting one's affairs slower, more difficult, or both > > > Administrative and legislative bodies charged with overseeing Hell have in recent decades become very interested in summoning because of the benefits this can bring to the various sections and subsections of Hell. Regulations have been made to ensure individual entities do not benefit without contributing an appropriate share to the plane and also to administrative bodies and service providers associated with the plane and whose actions putatively benefit the entity involved in the summoning. Licenses are issued regulating which entities can participate, with whom and how often / to what end. Forms must be filled out in advance laying out exactly what sort of transactions will take place, with copies of these forms filed with each applicable administrative body. These forms are updated as established deals proceed. One must take care not to use an old version of one of the forms and only the most recent update. Certain types of summoning must take place from certain areas in Hell and so demonic entities interested in participating in such summonings must formally establish residence or work permit in the correct areas; a percentage of the proceeds also is due to the demonic entity's area of origin and also lesser percentages to other areas in which this entity holds permits which includes permits for the general type of summoning performed but also lesser percentages if there are permits for other activities involving humans and / or other sentient beings. One might think that a multitiered and byzantine bureaucracy such as Hell maintains would be a setup for graft, paying a bribe to bypass the requirements and get on with it. Not at all. Probably in the Abyss they do it that way, or any slipshod ad hoc they can get away with. Hell has laws. The residents of Hell are expected to abide by them. They make things take longer. /A consistent stream of souls to torture/ Not all of these souls are human. Torture comes in many flavors. [Answer] **Bottlenecks / Bandwidth** Whilst the Material Plane is large, and the Hells are infinite, there are a limited number of places where the passage between the realms is possible. Previously this wasn't an issue, as only a few devils had to travel back and forth to serve the limited demands of mortal sorcerers. However, as demand has skyrocketed, more and more devils are trying to pass into the mortal realm, causing massing bottleneck issues at the few places where passage is possible. Perhaps there's even fighting/competition for the right to get through, either through other devils, or their angelic counterparts attempting to stem the tide. [Answer] # Mergers. When the market first came into existence, it was open, with lots of competation. Savvy customers could get away with murder, write up deals with escape clauses or tedious waits for somebody to say *"linger on, sweet moment, thou art so fair."* But like with social media or internet delivery, some firms got bigger than others. How one infinite firm can be bigger than another is something I should leave to the mathematicians, but at least their finite orders on Earth were different in size. And you know what that means... 1. The big firms buy up their smaller competitors, so that: 2. ...they can lay off most of the workers 3. ...and jack up the price! The remaining workers endure "hellish" conditions, and the customers have much longer waits to talk to a representative. You would think that would reduce business, but here's the thing: the number of souls they have to pay is hard to increase, so the customers have to make extra payment in kind by being enlisted for self-service. To even get to make a deal, they have to fill out the survey, update the company Wiki, perhaps strangle someone to fulfill someone else's deal, and of *course*, like the company on Facebook. So the customers still get their technical support from one another - it's just not from an official company source, so if something goes wrong, they have nobody to blame but themselves. [Answer] **Warping of time** Possibly space as well, but time is the major factor. The advent of demonic power on the mortal plane warps time so that it passes faster or slower or something. What the humans object to as lags are situations where it slows for them. [Answer] **Duplicate IP addresses** Humanity only knows a dozen distinct summoning spells. Nowadays chances are your spell will be identical with another spell on the other side of the Disc. Two identical spells means any devil who answers the summons will have their essence torn in two. This means permanent death for a devil and is a closely guarded secret. As we all know any devil killed the old fashioned way eventually reforms in the Hells. Perhaps the spell requires naming the Devil to be summoned and humanity knows only a dozen different names. Perhaps there are Words of Power on the edge of the summoning circle that assign an IP address to the circle. If two circles with the same address exist they correspond to the same pocket universe. Only the universe now has two separate components and the summoning spells render the Devil into two separate components. [Answer] **Resource Constraints are Real** No matter the system, there are always resource constraints in our world. As the resource utilization closes in on 100%, the ability to allocate resources for the next request gets more difficult. This often shows up as a slow-down/traffic jam. Computers do that all the time. Traffic jams are another example. **Shortages Drive Up Prices** When there's more demand than there is supply, prices go up. What's a little market manipulation to a demon? Those that have a lot of souls have every reason to slow down the supply of new ones. ]
[Question] [ I had a unique idea for an alien planet. The surface would be snow-capped mountains and glacial fields, it's cold and essentially devoid of most life. But just underneath the towering mountains would be this whole other world. A vast interconnected web of caves, tunnels, and hollows that essentially act as a planet-wide terrarium. There are even openings allowing sunlight to stream in allowing photosynthetic lichens to grow, forming the base of this world's food chain with creatures feeding on the lichens and creatures feeding on the creatures, feeding on the lichens. these openings also play a part in this planet's water cycle with water vapor evaporating through some of the openings like vents, only to freeze and fall back down as snow onto the mountains and glaciers, for the melted runoff to flow back into some of the openings starting the whole cycle over again. But while this is an exciting idea for a setting, I am struggling to answer the question that interstellar explorers will undoubtedly ask when they find this place. How the heck did all this happen? So once again I am calling on the wisdom of the crowd to answer this question. **What scientifically plausible explanation, explains how this vast nexus of hollows, caves, and a thriving underworld on this alien planet come to be?** [Answer] **The caverns grew.** [![coral caves](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XPNJe.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XPNJe.jpg) <https://www.globotreks.com/destinations/mexico/diving-in-cozumel-top-dive-spots/> Coral reefs form caves as they grow. On your world this was more extreme. Back when this world was warm and full of life, coralline land forests grew and ramified layer upon layer. The old was buried under the new over the ages as coral reefs are today. As the world cooled life adapted. There had always been life down in the caves - low light lampenflora at higher levels, chemotrophs farther down - and these life forms persisted as the upper world froze. The land coral trees are not dead but it is cold up top now and so they no longer grow. They bide their time. [Answer] ## Limestone The biggest cave networks om Earth by far are all limestone caves, created by karsts (basically, self perpetuating sinkholes). Wikipedia offers this: "Preferable conditions for karst cave formation are adequate precipitation, enough plants and animals to produce ample carbon dioxide, and a landscape of gentle hills" The following link has some starter diagrams about karsts: <https://www.nps.gov/subjects/caves/karst-landscapes.htm> If your planet has a ludicrous amount of limestone and/or dolomite, you have a good chance of getting great cave systems. If it's sci-fi, maybe you could have some sort of life-critical element or resource (iron? water?) that sustains creatures that dig out or expand tiny tunnels. [Answer] The planet could have a system of [lava tubes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_tube). They are known to occur on Earth, [the Moon](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/12497/what-conditions-could-produce-50-km-long-lava-tubes) and Mars. Some of the larges lava tubes are in [Undara Volcanic Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undara_Volcanic_National_Park) in Queensland, Australia. Some tubes [break through](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=undara%20lava%20tube&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images) to the surface to create an entrance and allow flora and fauna to reside in them. They have even been considered as initial residential locations for habitations on both the Moon and Mars. Depending on how close the tubes are to one another, it may be possible that some interconnect naturally, but in other situations, artificial tunnels can be established between tubes. There sizes can vary from small to very large: several meters in diameter and hundreds of kilometers long. [Answer] In addition to the other answers regarding cave formation. Ice-Ages: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GQHlE.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GQHlE.png) [CCASA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en), via Wikipedia 2022 Life developed in fits and starts on our Earth. For the longest time there was water and single celled life, then the ice came. From this sprang forth photosynthesis. After the Huronian glaciation, life spread and multiplied (literally, that's when sexual reproduction happened for the first time as far as we know). Then multicellular life, fungi, plants and the first animals. Another explosion of life occurred following a subsequent ice-age, then another resulting in tetrapods, then another - eventually life became complex enough to design websites like this one. Life had spread and colonised the lands and the seas, including cave-systems and nearby niches. Then the ice returned, big-time. No large photosynthesizing plants or animals comprising an ecosystem could survive on land in the open - many migrated, seeking shelter in the caves to become fertiliser for the life already there. **TLDR.** Life developed similarly to the Earth's, then retreated to the caves during a long ice-age. There'd still be ice-algae on the frozen surface and life beneath the almost-solid ocean sustained by deep-sea vents and chemosynthesis. The advanced lifeforms (who expanded the system) died out leaving the basics of life, and some traces..... perhaps. Maybe some made-it off planet too. **Reason:** The last part - a long glaciation period - perhaps a celestial object entered the solar-system and perturbed the orbits, just enough to perpetuate the lower temperatures. [Answer] ## Gas Bubbles When the planet was first forming, there was a greater proportion of gaseous materials relative to solid materials than Earth. When the Earth formed, the proportion of gaseous materials to solid materials was low, and hence you get a solid planet. When Jupiter or Saturn formed, there was much more gaseous materials than solid materials, so you get a gas giant planet. This your made up planet has a proportion of gaseous materials to solid materials in between that of the Earth and that of Jupiter. When the planet was forming, the gaseous materials intermixed with the solid materials. And when the planet was hardening, the gaseous materials got trapped in between the solid materials, creating gas pockets underground. The solid materials weren't able to fully coalesce into mountains of solid granite because of the gas bubbles. The gas pressured against the stone, and didn't allow it to fill up these empty spaces. So instead the continents became full of these pockets of empty space in the middle of stone. Because of these gas bubbles, your planet resembles a piece of swiss cheese, a rocky surface with lots of gas bubbles. There are lots of empty spherical hollow spaces in the planet, ranging in size from a living room to several miles in width. Those gas bubbles that were on the surface, or close to the surface, turned into caves, and in some places where two gas bubbles were closer together, the rock barriers collapsed under their own weights, connecting these empty spaces. Although there still remain a lot of unbroken gas bubbles buried deep into the crust of the planet, surrounded by rock on all sides. Over time, lava, water, ice, plants, and animals made tunnels connecting these empty spaces, perhaps if you have relatively large burrowing creatures. Then later in history these empty spherical caves were settled by people, who reused some of the naturally formed tunnels, and also created a proper tunnel system between the various empty pockets, like a subway or mine carts. [Answer] Geothermal vents first opened passages in the rocks, then when the heat was not sufficient to boil the water and form geysers it just left a flow of warm air, sufficient to contrast the freezing cld from the outside. Something similar happens in some thermal springs around the world, where while the surrounding is covered on snow enjoy mild conditions thanks to the pond of warm water. Just scale it up. [Answer] (10's of) thousands of years ago the planet was inhabited by an advanced (pre-warp) species; a cataclysmic event made the planet's surface uninhabitable, forcing the survivors underground; initially habitats were built within pre-existing caves and domes but with the development of 'underground' technologies (drilling, boring, structural designs, geothermal power, etc) an extensive network of caves, tunnels, and hollows was created; the development of crystalline building materials allowed for the construction of near-surface biodomes in which various species of surface life (plants, insects, small animals) could be maintained in the hopes of one day returning to the surface and reseeding nature; [you could add in here some technologies that were developed to route geothermal energy to the surface to facilitate the melting of snow and the subsequent collection of the water/runoff] Many generations passed and the surface conditions remained uninhabitable; with time the 'memory of the ancestors' was lost and with this loss came the degradation and eventual failure of the technologies on which the majority of the species depended; fast forward to 'today' and what's left are the remnants of the great underground structures, with the few remaining descendents of 'the ancestors' eeking out an existence in the few remaining and still functioning crystalline-topped biodomes. Yeah, basically a rehash of the civilization-dies-and-starts-over-from-scratch that's been used in an assortment of sci-fi series and movies (eg, the 100, bsg, stargate, see, etc); plenty of room to expand the backstory as well as flesh out the current inhabitants (pre-tech? barely getting by with spit-n-bailing-wire fixes to remaining tech? comfortably living in bunkers and raised on dangers of leaving the biodomes?); and of course there are plenty of options on what the interstellar explorers find when they arrive and how they proceed from there, eg, discovery of some super tech developed by the 'ancestors' (ala stargate), or perhaps a biological marvel that's allowed the inhabitants to survive this long, or, or, or ... or maybe the original inhabitants are long gone and the only thing still alive are the lichens, and creatures feeding of the lichens, that survive in the remaining biodomes, and the newcomers get to play archeologists ... ]
[Question] [ I need a weapon that is shoulder fired that can deal with heavy monsters such as a minotaur and the likes, but light enough so that the user can carry at least another small arm without to much hassle. Two of the weapons I am considering arming my explorers are either a rocket launcher the likes of the bazooka (60mm) and the second a recoilless rifle such as the m18 (57mm). I am trying to consider the pros and cons of each because in this setting they won't be facing heavy tanks like a tiger 2 or is3. Both are HE based, but the main difference is muzzle velocity (rocket vs bullet). How much of a factor would this really be when fighting monsters, and would the speed difference between the two really make much of a difference (from what I understand chemical weapons such as hesh/heat aren't velocity dependent). It seems for the extra speed, recoilless rifles have a far greater back blast from what I've seen as well. My main point of contention/question is what are the advantages/disadvantages of either in a setting like this, and if I were to scale the warhead size up and down would it tilt the balance in either way. Edit/Clarifications: The M18 is a 57mm recoilless rifle used by the US in WW2. It fires a bullet like projectile to hit its target, gas is vented out the back of the gun to counter act the recoil affect from shooting the gun. Bazooka- An anti tank rocket launcher that was man portable used in WW2. It had many iterations on it. Basically it was just a simple rocket launcher that could fire high explosive anti tank warheads. It was also recoilless because it was a hollow tube and rocket exhaust was directed rearward Both systems have deadly backblast, as in if you stand behind when either is fired, your going to get seriously injured. The minotaur in question will have some decent armor on them, think of like an interwar tank and some early WW2 tanks. (15-20mm on avg ends, and a max of 50mm on the higher ends (mm calcs are in reference to RHA or Rolled Homogenous Armor)). Height can vary for the avg sized to be 1.8m on the avg size to 4m on the max. The lighter they are the faster they are, the larger they are the slower they are. The largest ones are used more so in a support role than a classic in your face type of mob. Think like throwing large stones as artillery, or moving supplies etc. Minotaurs would be the equivalents of tanks, where in they can take damage and dish it out. As for speed they would be understandably slower than a combat capable soldier given their size and armor ratings. If they can close in on soldiers it will be devastating, however they are not above simply throwing large objects like rocks/small boulders or setting up ambushes/ using their strength to set up a large scale ambush. [Answer] If you have to choose between those two specifically, the Bazooka is better. It is much much faster to deploy. Recoilless rifles are almost impossible to use without a tripod, they are just too heavy. the m18 weighs nearly 45lbs while the bazooka weighs only 15. [Answer] **Rifle mounted grenade launcher.** [![scene from The Outpost](https://i.stack.imgur.com/omnLf.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/omnLf.jpg) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKm9Pa0kazQ&t=2s> This is a still from the movie The Outpost, set in 2012 Afghanistan. Youtube offered me clips from that movie which were very exciting. This character carries a rifle with attached M203 grenade launcher, and he wears a bandolier of grenades. The M203 clips under various rifle types. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M203_grenade_launcher> I think this would be perfect for your situation. If you decide to have me be one of the characters, I will have an additional M203 clipped under the first. Also instead of a bandolier I want all of my clothes to be made of grenades. [Answer] Another option would be the **M72 LAW** [LAW (specs)[1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fgg5K.png): <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M72_LAW> [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fgg5K.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fgg5K.png) Its a one shot, so not re-loadable but the thing is it's light so if necessary every soldier in a squad could carry one as part of their kit even if only one or two of them specialize in using the weapon. (Note the picture shows the weapon in its extended 'ready to fire mode'. When carried in 'stored' mode it's much shorter. More than enough hitting power. Between it and the grenade launchers, you would cover the entire specified size range of Minotaur's without having to rely on heavier 'crewed' weapons. [Answer] Unless the minotaur is armored in some way, what you probably want is an elephant gun (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_gun>), a large caliber rifle with extremely high stopping power against large, dangerous game animals. This satisfies both the low weight requirement (both a bazooka and recoilless rifle and their ammunition are very heavy) and is designed with the necessary ease of aim needed to track a large moving target, like a minotaur. [EDIT] The querent has clarified their question to indicate that the minotaurs have armor equivalent to 15-50 mm of RHA. This is still within the effective penetration of armor-piercing rounds fired from an anti-tank or anti-materiel rifle (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-materiel_rifle>) or (preferably) heavy machine gun at short range without the dangerous backblast from a bazooka or recoilless rifle or the risk of the warhead blast injuring friendly troops at close range and with the advantage of lighter ammunition. If you want to have fun with with the concept, there is even specialized AP ammunition such as the <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raufoss_Mk_211>, which is conveniently armor piercing, incendiary, and explosive at the same time. A combination of using AP ammunition for less armored minotaurs and with rounds from a HEAT firing weapon reserved for the most heavily armored minotaurs would probably be best to minimize the supply burden on the hypothetical explorers. [Answer] # Frame Challenge: You don't want any real-world weapon! Weapons are by and large designed around the enemy they're supposed to defeat. Since "minotaurs covered in WWII tank armor is not a thing that exists IRL, No IRL weapon is going to be perfectly suited to defeat them. So lets look at the properties of your minotaurs and see what we want. Minotaurs by nature are going to be deployed in a way that will let them get in close; e.g., in room-to-room combat or in densely forested environments. As you've described them, they're not sufficiently survivable to be out in the open. Their armor should protect them against most IRL antipersonnel weapons, up to and including .50 caliber BMG with standard ball ammo. (Look up Demolition Ranch to get an idea of what a .50 cal will and will not punch through. You'll be surprised about a lot of the "will nots.") Once you punch through their armor, however, you don't need anything special such as explosives or incendiary rounds to kill them. They will fill most of the armor, so anything that punches though the chest plate will be going through vital organs, and be pretty effective. First off, you want to avoid explosive-round weapons, except possibly anti-tank grenades. At range, both the bazooka and the recoilless rifle will require a direct hit to actually defeat the armor, and neither of them are really good at hitting small targets. They're both inaccurate, cumbersome, and have slow-moving projectiles that a minotaur might even be able to dodge at the supposed effective range of the weapons. Once the minotaur gets in close, explosives will kill your own soldiers, probably as well or better than they kill the minotaurs. When it comes to regular bullets piercing armor, the three things that work are hardness, velocity, and sectional density. If you have modern technology, all three can be achieved in a reasonable package with APFSDS rounds. You'd probably want a tungsten dart, 4-5 mm in diameter and 150-200 grains in mass, firing at or above 800mps. The sabot would expand the diameter to 7.62-8.5 mm bore, so that the pressure and barrel length would remain reasonable. With more 60s to 80s technology, you'll probably be forced to use magnum rifle rounds and .50 caliber rounds. Both of these would require armor-piercing ball to be effective, and would be a royal pain to fire. With WWII technology, your best bet would be a 20mm anti-vehicular rifle, preferably with some kind of hardened rounds (e.g., steel core with a copper washer.) For close quarters, and room-clearing, you'd have to retreat and use antitank grenades or artillery to demolish the structure. [Answer] The recoilless rifle is better. **We need a bigger gun.** Although you don't provide an exact speed, minotaurs are generally portrayed as being pretty fast. As a result, I'd go with the higher muzzle velocity of a recoilless rifle. Additionally, I don't see any reason why the recoilless rifle should have problems taking one down. Nevertheless, you might want to equip it with a shrapnel round as opposed to HE. EDIT: As @JanHudec mentioned, RPGs also aren't very accurate. While there are some semi-accurate spin-stabilized variants, they are few and far between. As a result, the recoilless rifle will also be your weapon of choice for longer ranges. **EDIT:** You have clarified that these minotaurs have roughly the same amount of armor as a Pz.Kpfw. III Ausf. E. As a result, recoilless rifles (which I originally suggested) aren't going to be effective unless you get a lucky shot. For that matter, even a bazooka will have issues. You're gonna need a bigger gun. Therefore, I present to you the only effective man-portable weapon for this usage case: **[The Panzerfaust.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerfaust)** Commonly used by the Germans during WWII, they are pretty much guaranteed to penetrate a minotaur's armor and kill it. However, this impressive killing power comes at a cost: their speed (and therefore range) sucks, and they aren't reloadable. If panzerfausts aren't an option, I guess you could go with a [Flak-Track?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.8_cm_Flak_18_(Sfl.)_auf_schwere_Zugkraftwagen_12t_(Sd.Kfz_8)) There really isn't much else you could effectively use against that combination of speed and armor. As @PcMan put it, > > You will **need** a tripod or wheelbase mounted anti-tank cannon. > > > [Answer] You might want to go with an RPG. Their HEAT warheads are very effective against WWII-era armor (provided you can get a hit), and the logistics of carrying and reloading them are relatively simple. However, most models of RPG have a minimum arming distance before their grenade can detonate. Additionally, they only fly in an arc regardless of model. As a result, a well moving target is pretty hard to hit, especially at the close ranges minotaurs would prefer. As a result, you might want to consider some other options in addition to recoilless rifles and RPGs. Claymore Mines shred anything and can be setup and let off from a distance, but at the cost of not having much armor penetration. Carl Gustave-style RPGs penetrate well and move at a decent clip, but are heavy and still have the minimum arming distance. Perhaps you could try some 20 millimeter machine guns? ]
[Question] [ The [related question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9642/what-would-be-favoured-weapons-and-weapon-styles-of-a-four-armed-human) about possible weapons for four-armed humans provoked me to ask one of my own. I have a technologically advanced (to somewhere of the Mass Effect levels of technology) alien species that have four arms, that are main characters in [my webcomic](https://leavingthecradle.com): [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFvNN.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFvNN.png) And that question about weapons had me thinking, what four arms could mean for things like tool design and such? Is there any unique inventions that can benefit from having one additional pair of limbs to operate, and\or would an additional pair of limb provoke some distinct design choices? There are some anatomical considerations and limitations: The upper pair of arms are basically the complete equivalent to human hands in both dexterity and range of motions. Lower part of hands are biomechanically equivalent to the upper part, except that they have no clavicles, cannot be raised sideways higher than 60° due to differences in the shoulder joint muscle attachments, and in general are weaker than the upper limbs. On the plus side, due to no clavicles they have wider available sliding motion range, being able to extend further to the back or closer to the chest of the alien (similarly to how real life people born with CCD can [make](https://www.jnsbm.org/articles/2013/4/1/images/JNatScBiolMed_2013_4_1_245_107318_f3.jpg) their shoulders almost touch). They can control different sets of arms to perform different tasks, but to a very limited degree (Somewhat better than the classic "rub your tummy while patting your head" challenge - it's doable but requires concentration on the task and some amount of effort). Like humans they have dominant hands, with the lower dominant hand always being on the opposite site of the upper dominant hand due to crosslinking in the nervous system. Ambidexterity (...or would it be "quadridexterity"?) is rarer than in humans but not unheard of. [Answer] **The lower arms are right brain arms - for expression and social functions.** Consider the cat. It is standing there and it looks the same as it always does. But its tail is moving in a way that the dog knows means trouble. The tail is the expressive organ of the unexpressive cat. Your aliens have strong and dextrous upper arms and they are for working and changing the world - lifting, making, breaking; changing. Those top arms are governed by the left brain and serve practicality and functionality. The lower arms serve the right brain. When your aliens speak, the lower arms move and they talk with their hands at the same time as they make words. They can (and often do!) use these lower hands to make music and the roles are reversed - the hands speak and the mouth moves along like a guitar player muttering something as his hands communicate. The lower hands are not very strong but they are more sensitive and dextrous. Your aliens seem stoic and impassive to humans who look them in the eye. But their reasoning brain is not under complete control of their lower arms, which give mood and intentions away to the other aliens. Among the aliens, upper arms are for fighting and lower arms are for making love. An alien who used the lower arms for fighting or even for holding a weapon would be considered an alarming pervert in a way that the humans would not immediately understand. An alien who uses upper arms for making love is not making love. [Answer] ### Extra arms would in most cases not give you more tools, but eliminate your need for a lot of the tools that we humans use when we do not have enough hands. **Less need for tool belts** When working with your hands, it is common to need to keep serval tools readily available to be switched between. For this, human contractors often wear tool belts full of hooks and pockets for the tools and hardware that they need to quickly switch between. The problem with tool belts is that they can become much more cumbersome in certain environments than carrying your tools. Your aliens however will have less need for this since they can simply carry their extra tools while working; so, an engraver can quickly alternate chizels, or a carpenter can hold his box of nails while hammering something in place, etc. **Less need for safety harnesses** Human contractors often find themselves running out of hands when working in high places. Many actions require the use of two hands at once which means you have no hands left for grasping your ladder or some other handhold. This forces humans to stop work frequently to fiddle with safety harnesses whereas your aliens can hang on and work at the same time. **They can stabilize the pieces that you are working with** One of the most frequent hurdles humans run into is needing to hold things in place while they work on them with both hands. This often translates to clamping, pinning, spot welding, stay stitching, or having to hire an assistant to do all sorts of tasks. Two extra hands would eliminate most cases where you need to preliminarily bind something before you can work on it saving loads of time and headache on all sorts of tasks. **Less need for baby carriers** This is perhaps the biggest advantage of 4 arms. They can carry a baby while still having two free arms to work with. One of the interesting things about your proposed arm structures is that your top arms generally describe how human male arms work and the bottom arms describe more closely how human female arms works. The greater ability to slide forward would mean that your aliens would experience less back and joint pain from holding a baby tight to its chest all day it its lower arms, and then it could do its day job using it stronger, more rigidly designed upper arms; so, during the infancy period, your aliens would remain highly functional while carrying its young much like a kangaroo. ## The main exception would be computer input devices Computer input devices can be made arbitrarily simple or complex. The more complex it is, the more options you have. Or, the more simple it is, the easier it is to manipulate with fewer appendages. For example, the aliens could make much better use of option keys on a keyboard (Things like Alt, Shift, Ctrl, Function keys, etc). So they could perform very complex macro functions as part of their normal workflow. Or thier PCs might use multiple mice instead of one allowing for such time savers as manipulating option controls with one hand and innerface controls with the other. Or thier game controllers could be designed such that you can use both analogues, the d-pad and the a-pad all at the same time. So, their limitations about how quickly they could interface with technology would become less restricted by their hands and more so by just how quickly they can think of everything they want to do. [Answer] From a biological perspective its likely the lower arms will be used almost always in tandem with the upper arms. They wont be doing something completely different (like your "rub tummy while patting head"). So if the right upper hand graps something the right lower arm will either try to support it or will help balance the movement in some way. I'm assuming the lower arms can be raised higher than 60° when pointing forwards. This means that you have extra palm surface area and fingers free to manipulate an object. For example imagine holding a large sword-hilt, and helping the swing by moving the lower hands in the opposite direction. Or since the lower arm offers less strength (which makes sense) you place control surfaces with buttons and switches on the lower end of tools and items. Or as best example this solves the conundrum of those strange snack events where you have to hold a drink, plate and cutlery simultaneously with just enough standing tables for 1/10th of the guests. So tools for your aliens would hold most of its manipulateable area's within reach of that lower arm. Its probably easiest for that arm to manipulate the lower lateral side of the item. So an item on the right hand would have its extra handholds, buttons, switches and whatever on the right hand side as well. This type of layout would be pervasive. Imagine a right-handed bolt-action hunting rifle: the Upper Left (UL) would hold the barrel steady, the UR would hold trigger area to absorb the recoil and fire the weapon. The Lower Right (LR) would manipulate the magazine and any rifle settings so all latches and buttons to release and insert magazines would be on the right as well, the LL would reach up over the UL and manipulate the bolt-action, assuming a handle connected to the slide isnt extending below the rifle for easier manipulation (and for those who managed to decipher that description and know how that would look, the handle would first extend forwards along the barrel before going down so that it wont smack the right hand every time the slide moves backwards). The main point I'm trying to get across: The upper arms are for lifting the weight, the lower and weaker arms are for manipulation primarily. [Answer] Secret handshakes would be *very* complicated! ;-) As would competitive table tennis. And think of what a drummer could achieve! With that sort of a layout, I can see the lower hands having much less strength, and this obviously more suited to fine, delicate precision work. I see them using the top, stronger arms to hold a workpiece in place, while the lower arms do detail work. However, there is one design aspect that will be a HUGE pain in the neck. **That face design obstructs vision to below.** The eyes may have full binocular vision ability, but there is a lot more nose in front of them, and a hugemongously larger amount of snout *below* the eyes. Add to that the fact that the lower set of hands, even with the elbows bent in a working posture, is fully half a bodylength away from the eyes, and below the snout as viewed! Remember that their range of movement has severely limited upwards range, they *cannot* hold something in the lower arms and raise it to their face. I suspect that layout as shown, will not be able to see what they are doing with their lower hands, unless they painfully hunch over their work. Is there any option for altering the eye position (they have enough of them!!) or narrowing the snout, or putting a set of eye lower in the face, or out on stalks, or.... something to improve their range of forward/down vision? **Hand shape:** I see their hands have three fingers only. One true thumb, that looks about Human agile, one long but less agile clasping digit, and a pointer. This suggests they would have *excellent* grip around thin or smaller round objects, but some weakness in one-handed grasping. Good thing they can usually spare a second hand to hold that slippery tool. So, expect much less true one-handed tools in the Human style, and a lot more two-handed toolage. For example: consider a handheld drill. Humans have enough fingers to wrap 3 1/2 fingers around the handle, *and* oppose them with a thumb for secure grip, *and* still have one finger available to actuate the trigger. With just one thumb, one clasper and one pointer finger, there is no way this creature will be able to operate a human hand drill with one hand. [Answer] In heavy machinery, there is a common safety feature that the machine must be activated with **both** hands - to avoid injury. In your creatures, I can see a necessity for such machinery to be activated with **four** hands. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KVBqU.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KVBqU.jpg) ]
[Question] [ Radio waves travel at the speed of light. Communication across vast interstellar distances is difficult due to weak signals and slow multi-year duration. I honestly imagine it to be like old times with message couriers travelling the empty void. Any ideas for a somewhat realistic concept for quick communication between stellar bodies? EDIT: I'm writing several short stories set in a sci-fi universe. I'd like to keep things in a fairly believable scope when compared to real life, yet boring ol' physics doesn't condone cool things like deep space e-mails. If anyone has a cool theory/idea in the realm of loose science fiction I'd love to start a discussion. [Answer] Yeah, no, radio is the fastest means of long-distance communication, and interstellar radio transmissions would require massive antennae and dishes or other types of transmitters and receivers. Look at the planetwide arrays of radio telescopes used to scan for extraterrestrial signals and you’ll get a sense of the scale. Most sci-fi authors, as far as I know, avoid that tricky detail entirely. I suppose the presumption is that if humans have colonized distant planets, then communication should be no problem. But you’re right that it is. Humans could eventually colonize the galaxy, even with current propulsion technology (given a few million years). But communications won’t move any faster than the speed of light...unless you wave your hands. Ursula LeGuin famously invented a fictional device called an “ansible” which allowed interplanetary ambassadors to communicate with the governments on their home worlds in real time, instantaneously, with no delay in communication, despite the staggering distances between planets. In his incredible Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, Chinese sci-fi author Liu Cixin describes alien technologies that use either neutrinos or gravitational waves for rapid long distance communication. These also involved massive arrays for detecting these nearly undetectable forces. I can’t remember his explanation for why they’re superior to radio, though. Maybe longer range? Radio waves rapidly fall off with distance. Speed is always limited by the speed of light, and I remember there still being some sort of delay involved. More importantly, it sounded cool, and it was an inventive idea. Liu also describes using the sun as a sort of radio transmitter—because in his story, ground-based arrays were not sufficiently powerful to broadcast an interstellar message, even to the nearest stars. Such a plot device can be used in many unexpected ways, given the huge time gaps between communications. Perhaps you’ll come up with your own. It all depends on how much you want to bend the laws of physics, and how much you care to either explain or omit details. There is an art to not spelling things out. Sometimes it’s best to let readers wonder. [Answer] **Nope.** As we understand physics, the speed of light is a hard limit on how fast information can travel (aka the speed of causality). This makes light waves (including radio) the fastest method of communication we know of. A lot of sci-fi uses quantum entanglement to transmit information faster than light due to popular misunderstandings about how quantum entangled particles act, but in reality two entangled particles can't transmit any information between them. Another option is to make up another field/dimension/particle that doesn't exist in reality and use that (e.g. subspace in Star Trek). [Answer] With a little handwavium, telepathy in real time across stellar distances can seem plausible. (A fair number of people believe in telepathy without any handwavium at all.) See Robert A Heinlein's novel *Time for the Star*s. Back cover of the 1978 Ballentine Books edition reproduced here: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dw3YE.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dw3YE.jpg) [Answer] **You need some [Powder of Sympathy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_of_sympathy) (Maybe)** From the Wikipedia article: > > The powder was also applied to solve the longitude problem in the > suggestion of an anonymous pamphlet of 1687 entitled "Curious > Enquiries." The pamphlet theorised that a wounded dog could be put > aboard a ship, with the animal's discarded bandage left in the trust > of a timekeeper on shore, who would then dip the bandage into the > powder at a predetermined time and cause the creature to yelp, thus > giving the captain of the ship an accurate knowledge of the time.[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_communication) > > > Admittedly, this is a speculative application since I am not certain that the Powder of Sympathy is actually FTL. Certainly more extensive testing will be necessary to resolve this question and possibly apply this historical medicine to the problem of interstellar communication. It is indeed fortunate that that's what government grants are for apparently. The dog barking could be coded in Morse or similar encoding the provide general purpose communication. The bit rate would be very slow, but much better than waiting 5 years for light-speed. It is possible that I have overstepped the bounds of "somewhat realistic" in this answer. Perhaps the [FTL Communication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_communication) article would be more in line with the original question. If so, consider this second possibility. The warp drive in the form of a [Alcubierre Drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive) has been considered at least remotely plausible (in the sense that it is not mathematically eliminated), has been conjectured to be a pre-built structure (a transport tube) that would span the long distance, supporting the warp-field. If such a structure is remotely plausible, certainly a similar of structure could be built with the purpose of communication instead of materials/passenger shipping. At worse case, tiny pellets could be sent through the Alcubierre Tube that contain the desired message. A message tube is almost certain to be simpler than one built for bulk materials. [Answer] The main problem with sending interstellar messages is that with the distance traveled, their power gradually decreases due to gradual scattering ( diffraction). Imagine that you threw a stone into the quiet surface of a lake: from the source stone, circles started to go in all directions, but the further they diverge, the less noticeable they become. The same thing happens with radio waves: if you calculate approximately, then twice the distance from the communication source will reduce the power of radio waves by four times. As you can see, detecting such radio waves at a distance of several hundred light-years from Earth will be a difficult task for space civilizations. In his 2011 article "Interstellar radio communications enhanced by using the Sun as a Gravitational Lens" (Interstellar radio links enhanced by exploiting the Sun as a Gravitational Lens) in the journal Acta Astronautica, Claudio Maccone provides calculations of the traditional radio channel between the Solar system and alpha Centauri A. They are disappointing: when transmitting a 40-watt signal from Earth using a giant 70-meter antenna of the NASA DSN (Deep Space Network) system, which has a gain of 84 dB (that is, amplifying the signal power in the main direction by more than 100 million times), at a frequency of 32 GHz (Ka-band, this is what the Cassini probe uses) and a transmission speed of 32 kbit/s (such as the European Rosetta space probe has) and receiving using a 12-meter antenna (with a gain of 69 dB, that is, a little less than 10 million times) of the space probe in the alpha Centauri system And the frequency of occurrence of erroneous bits (bit error rate) is 0.49. This means that almost 50% of the transmitted information is lost, which makes the specified communication channel almost useless. To solve this problem, according to Maccone, the mission's FOCAL (Fast Outgoing Cyclopean Astronomical Lens) probe, equipped with a radio transmitter and a 12-meter antenna, should be positioned on the "optical axis" of the lens (a straight line connecting the receiver and transmitter) in any place further than the nearest focus — 550 AU from the Sun. It is better to go further, because in this case the radio signal around the Sun will be less affected by interference from the solar corona. In a transmission channel that uses a transmitting antenna located at the point of focus, another component is added — the Sun as a gravitational lens. The gain of this lens for the same Ka range is 70 dB (10 million times). This can dramatically change the situation, especially if you consider that the gravitational lens is not only the Sun, but also any other star, in particular alpha Centauri A. However, since its mass and diameter differ from the sun, its closest focus is located 750 AU from the star. According to Maccone's calculations, using two FOCAL spacecraft with 12-meter antennas in the corresponding foci of the Sun and alpha Centauri A, you can achieve perfect success: by amplifying the two stars, you can reduce the frequency of erroneous bits to almost zero at a power of 0.1 mW (Yes, 0.1 milliwatts!). The above data is correct for a communication channel with a speed of 32 kbit/s, but this channel is more than modest by modern standards. Maccone does not stop there and in his new article "galactic Internet made possible by star gravitational lensing" (galactic Internet made possible by star gravitational lensing, Acta Astronautica, 2013) provides calculations of the possible speed of broadband interstellar communication channels. The results are impressive: for example, with an unlimited frequency band (and a power of less than 1 mW), the speed of information transmission over the radio bridge between the Sun and alpha Centauri A ( 4,.367 light — years ) is 210 Gbit/s, and between the Sun and Sirius A ( 8.,611 light-years) is 100 Gbit/s. Communication is also possible over longer distances: for example, between the Sun and a sun-like star in the center of our Galaxy ( located at a distance of 30 thousand light years), the data transfer rate will be, although small, but acceptable 5.4 kbit/s (although at a power of 1 kW). This is, of course, theoretical data, in practice it will not be so rosy, but it is still practically possible. [Answer] **Drop radio communication in favour of lasers!** Lasers are way better in long range communication thanks to inverse square law. Where your normal radio transmission will loose it's strength further the signals goes, laser is much better in that regard. Laser can has another advantage. Due its higher frequency then radio waves, it can carry much more energy, therefore can be used as power source or as an substitute for solar winds for solar sails. [Answer] [Birkerland currents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland_current) connect almost everything in the universe. They are a potential medium for high energy communications. Maybe some kind of quantum entanglement between two solar systems connect with Birkerland currents. ]
[Question] [ The Swarm are a species of semi-intelligent insectlike alien robot evolved from a self-upgrading machine designed to clean space junk. They are widely known in the galaxy and regarded as a threat, yet nobody can pinpoint the locations of their hives because of their advanced cloaking field. The anatomy and behavior of the Swarm has been studied well, and the results say these synthetic organisms are powered by the fifth fundamental force referred to as Flux and are divided into several castes: * The gnats are the smallest of the castes, measuring 1-2 m on average. Morphologically they resemble a wingless mosquito, with a Flux thruster on its back and a salvage beam in its mouth, which they use to harvest resources from shipwrecks before bringing them back to the Hive. They have little defenses and are easy to take down with a well-placed shot. * The soldier caste is specialized in attacking the starship from the inside, attempting to kill as many crewmen as possible. Their shape is something in between a saucer and a spider cephalothorax, measuring 2-4 m in diameter. They have a pair of Flux thrusters on each side, which allows for fast and agile maneuvering. Their exoskeleton is very durable and heavily shielded, and they can fire energy projectiles from their mandibles or taze the target with them. * The space worms are humongous centipede-shaped constructs equipped with one powerful charged beamer. They specialize in breaching the ship's external defenses, and are not suited for dealing with smaller targets. There are typically only one of two of them in each swarm. They have Flux thrusters on the sides of each segment, allowing them for moderately fast movement and are highly resistant to ballistic weapons. * The workers also have the shape of a centipede, but are much smaller, measuring 5-20 m in length. These are only lightly armored and have no weapons, they specialize in repairs, expanding the Hive, and constructing new members of the Swarm. They have no thrusters and never leave the Hive. * The Hive guards have the shape similar to a worker, but with much heavier armor and moderately powerful shielding they activate only during combat. They have a pair of rotable arms with blasters mounted on them, and a powerful short-range beamer inside the mouth. Like workers, they also never leave the Hive. From their numerous encounters with the Swarm, the Galactic Federation has also determined which strategies work poorly against them: * Detection: Due to the vastness of space and the cloaking system the hives have, any attempts to locate them have proved futile. Once the Swarm is out of the hive, however, it's already too late. * Retreat: Despite the recent advances in propulsion technology, Swarm soldiers are still too fast to outmeneuver and will always find a way to harass the ship. Larger ships, however, are unmaneuverable enough that retreat isn't an option for them. * EMP: While the Swarm are robotic, they are functioning on principle fundamentally different from electromagnetism, so an electromagnetic pulse has no effect on them. What would be the standard defense procedures on Galactic Federation starships in case of encountering the Swarm during space travel? [Answer] Step 1: design your ships right. The soldier caste is 2 to 4m. If you make the hallways 2m maximum, which should be plenty for most and is more economical in a space ship anyway, then you hamper the mobility of the soldier caste that is subsequently forced to tear their way through the hallways instead of the people. Against the space worms you add objects that look like external defenses and the space ships try to put these as close as possible to the worms. The worm will try to break through and waste time breaching parts that arent as important to the ship. These parts could even lure the worms into fields of fire that can then strike at the important bits. Step 2: they act animalistic, trick them. You can use their own tricks against them. For example the swarm has a method of recognizing their own. If you can copy that by shaping your ships right and copying their codes and signals you could infiltrate them, follow the swarm through their cloaking devices and perhaps send a nuke. You could perhaps also compromise members of the swarm. Say that you find out that damaged members return to the hive for repairs. You could damage one, capture it and sabotage it. Maybe insert a virus or a bomb could be used. Imagine if you can cause the damaged member to become passive and unaggressive towards the galaxy at large and allow it to reproduce more of its kind in the swarm. It would suck more and more resources from the hive as the amount of members grows. This causes the hive to end up handicapped or even destroy itself as it tries to sustain useless members. Another option is simple bait. They look for specific targets to devour and sustain their hive. When given the choice a predator will always pick a target that has the lowest risk to itself, so it'll prioritize a wreck over an active ship. From simple bombs that kill or incapacitate the target to letting it take hidden chemicals that will disrupt the hive refineries that will ineviteably process the scrap brought into the hive you can use it to harm or cripple the swarms. [Answer] The biggest weakness of the hive is that it's members are only semi-intelligent. So hunt them like big game animals. Set up some bait (abandoned retired ships) then when they arrive... fire an appropriate caliber weapon. Set up your bait in large open areas where the scale of the weapon will not cause too much collateral damage. Once the bait ship's computer recognizes the approaching hive, have it wait till they are as close as possible, then overheat the ship's main engines, causing an massive explosion, large enough to take out everything within a few light seconds. The nice thing about this trapper's approach to hunting is that you can set up these bait ships in all the big empty spaces and then just sit back and wait for them to go off. [Answer] **Natural enemies.** > > /The Hive guards have the shape similar to a worker, but with much > heavier armor and moderately powerful shielding they activate only > during combat. They have a pair of rotable arms with blasters mounted > on them, and a powerful short-range beamer inside the mouth. Like > workers, they also never leave the Hive./ > > > There is a caste of organisms dedicated to Hive defense. That means that there must be things that attack Hives. Maybe that is humans but probably not - we have not been around that long. These hive predators are (or historically were) successful enough that ad hoc defenses with soldiers and workers are not enough - an entire Hive guard caste was advantageous enough to the hives who had them that they persisted. The nature of these Hive predators might be deduced by study of the hives, just as the nature of termite nest predators could be deduced by examining the attack apparati of hive defense termites. Or possibly one might find a dead hive with dead attackers still within. Once you have identified the natural enemy of the hive, augment it, or ally with it, or steal its tricks, or sabotage the defenses of the hive specific to their ancient enemy. Or find these enemies and cultivate a critical mass and then turn them loose. Humans have only recently been taking on the hive because humans are recent. They would do well to learn from something that has been taking them on for millennia. --- The scene where the Federation protagonists investigate a dead hive and find a defunct Hive Predator and bring it back for study is also very much in accord with the Rule of Cool. [Answer] Flak cannons that fire special proximity-fuse rounds that spread an extremely sticky powder that forms a coating that blocks sensors. The Swarm will be fighting and flying blind. ]
[Question] [ Let's say that a civilization has access to FTL. Let's say it is instantaneous so travel time between solar systems isn't a factor. How long would it take for them to spread out from their home solar system? Like how long would it take for them to colonize 1000, 10000 or 100000 solar systems? Let's say we are talking about future humans. That when that technology was developed they have a population of around 10 billion. As for terraforming technology let's say it would take them a century to terraform Mars. How long it would then take to terraform other planets would be dependent on how different the planet is from earth. But colonizing a solar system doesn't necessarily mean terraforming a planet. It could be establishing space stations in that solar system for habitation or mining/research operations. Or they don't bother terraforming and live in dome habitats or underground cities. Or do that while terraforming. All these would count as colonizing a solar system. [Answer] **FTL isn't the issue** The problem is finding somewhere to live. The Milky Way has around four hundred billion stars alone so if you look at a star system every second, it will take you over 200 years to get through it all. Now on top of that, chances are your destination will require terraforming which won't be a quick process nor a cheap process. This means we're down to living in habitats and ships which comes down to how fast they can be built. The desire to move will be as fast as other constraints will let them and the speed of travel is only a small part. [Answer] Not long at all, depending on political and economic will. You have instantaneous FTL and the capacity to build (presumably pretty good) space stations. You can ‘colonise’ literally as fast as you can build cheap stations with a one-shot FTL Drive and pop them to another star. If the first country to colonise a system gets to claim it you can expect things to get hairy. Does a man and a woman in a tin can ‘space station’ count for political colonisation status? If so then the first thousand systems will be colonised in decades. If you’re a bit more stringent it depends on economic power to build the stations and the availability of willing colonists. Either way: you can expect humanity to colonise very quickly if nationalism gets to spread to space. [Answer] Since travel is instantaneous, the real question is economic. Basically it is the time and resources it takes to build FTL vehicles, and the time it takes to transport sufficient personnel, materiel and equipment to settle a solar system. Essentially assume a long-term economic growth of around one percent (1%) per annum. This is, from memory, the long-term economic growth rate for the human rate over human history. Effectively doubling every century. Therefore, the settle any number of solar systems will be derived from considering the two major settlement parameters, mentioned in paragraph one, against the amount of economic growth. For example, if it takes two centuries to settle one solar system, then economic growth will have quadrupled over that time span. Therefore, to settle another solar system should take less than one century or roughly fifty years. Economic factors aside, there is a matter of political will. if a civilization is less committed to settling other solar systems, the rate of colonization will decline proportionally. In conclusion, it is economic and political factors that will ultimately determine the settlement of solar systems. Adjust your suit, and the answers for different rates of settlement in different epochs will fall out out of the equations. This analysis isn't very sophisticated, but it doesn't need to be to give rule of thumb estimates. [Answer] Basically, with instantaneous FTL, there isn't a question. The only answer is that we will spread out as fast as possible in whatever system we lay our eyes on. we will travel from the milky way to 13 billion lightyears in months because there would be nothing stopping us. The question is how fast would we fill out the territory we take? basically forever, but it doesn't matter. But if FTL does have a certain speed, if it even has a sort of geography, the answer is much different and more interesting. **Warp Drive** I am currently going to define warp-drive as an FTL tech that has a speed limit but no need to travel along specific routes. In this scenario, humanity would travel as fast as the warp drive lets them. If the fuel of the warp drive is really expensive to create, we may not use it to expand, but rather to simply travel between pre-existent colonies light-years away. If we are able to produce warp-feul in reasonable quantities, we would likely travel and skip to stars we think might have habitable worlds and travel until we find one. As ages pass by, empires will form as spheres with the largest ones having their edges around the 2 week travel range. If it ever takes more than 2 weeks to travel from the center of the empire to its edge, it will generally be difficult to hold onto that territory, though those kinds of situations have happened throughout history. **Hyperspace** Basically, I am calling hyper-space, or hyper-lanes, any sort of region of space that you can travel through faster than light which lets you stop at any point along the route and get on at any point. Basically, we would stop at every star the lane happened to be near enough to let us colonize it, and if the lane had an end, we would quickly find it. if not, we would continue along with it forever. However, empires would still tend to have their borders at the 2 weeks from the capitol terminator. **Wormholes** Basically, if we could create the wormholes but their locations were random, we would simply open them until we found one that let us travel somewhere we wanted to go. Depending on how common the material is we can make them out of, and the amount that can usually be recycled from failed wormholes, you will have entirely we will go at different speeds. Commonplace materials and easy recyclability will cause fast expansion, rare materials and difficult recyclability will slow expansion. pretty simple ig. if all wormholes are naturally occurring that do exist, we will just travel where they take us and see if there is anything on the other side we want to colonize. FTL travel is pretty complicated and the system should be pretty stringent when you are trying to figure this stuff out. But generally, we just go where-ever our road lets us go and we always like to try and get to the very end of it if we can. The harder it is to get there, the more we will try, the longer it takes, the longer we will journey because one-day we think we can get there. That's really it. When is your story set? that would be really helpful. \*\* But for what you are doing right now\*\* the answer is really simple. on the extremes, if FTL is as cheap as spacecraft today, it will only take less than a century to expand to 100000 systems. If making on FTL jump is about as cheap as making on a kilogram of Oggannesson, it could easily take millennia to colonize 100 systems with FTL, it would almost be a faster expansion method not to use it! How expensive is it? But for your answer, I will say it's about a gram of Oggannesson just for the answer. It may take 3 millennia to reach 100000 and no less than that. Maybe, with a lot of money, some sort of connection between systems is also possible. I mean, even a gram of Oggannesson would be ridiculous as a price measure for this thing. I am just going to say that a single FTL jump cost 3.78 Quadrillion dollars just to make this measurable. I am going to say it may take 3 millennia to reach 100,000 systems, each fiercely independent with their own gene pool and identity, likely hidden from one another. The first faction that is able to make regular jumps between multiple systems (2 per 2 weeks per non-capitol system controlled) will be the first major empire. I think it may be reasonable for you to maybe have instantaneous travel, but put a limit on the amount of distance you can travel per jump and estimate the cost of each jump to roughly decide the cost of a given journey, but considering how many star systems can be in a relatively small volume of space, using this method, you don't need to expand to many million galaxies to reach this number. For this kind of instant-travel, you should maybe look at 2B2T teleportation exploits. 2B2T is a Minecraft server, but it's bed teleport exploit is where my idea comes from. I may edit this answer later, I am likely slightly unintelligible. [Answer] Assume exponential expansion. For a reasonable upper limit assume that 100 colonies will be founded in the first 10 years after FTL is discovered and then double every 30 years or so. Assume that habitable planets can easily be found and moving there is no harder than moving to a different country here on Earth. A lot depends on your culture, if it's very expansionist and encourages its citizens to get 15 children per woman and move to a new planet as soon as you're old enough it will be faster than a conservative culture. [Answer] I suspect the limiting factor here is going to be societal, not technological. People are social; they like to cluster together, and remain within easy distance of friends and families. We wouldn't have a problem *finding* planets to colonize — there are always individuals who are drawn to the solitary life of an explorer, wandering off to look for discoveries and opportunities — but people only choose to *emigrate* because of social pressures. The three most prominent types of emigrants are: * Refugees, who flee violence, deprivation, or oppression (e.g., modern Syrians dispersing into Europe) * Sectarians, who reject the rules and structures of a given society and want to establish their own independent community (e.g., the Mormons settling Utah) * Exiles or other forced deportations (e.g., the settlement of Australia with convicted criminals) Barring such conditions, people will prefer to stay where they are. I can imagine that at the very beginning of of FTL travel, there would be a wave of colonization efforts. Perhaps as many as a dozen of the most congenial planets discovered will be colonized as people push away from undesirable situations on earth (or perhaps as nations rid themselves of people they deem undesirable). But after that initial wave, social pressures will decrease. On earth, social and political tensions will drop, resources will be less strained, and in general the standard of living and the quality of life will increase; on colonies vast new challenges and resources will keep settlers happy and occupied. It would take generations before population sizes increase again, new social pressures develop, and new possibilities on colonies are exhausted. It's safe to anticipate 300 years or more between major colonization efforts. Of course, there will likely be small commercial colonies scattered out anywhere there is some unique resource to be tapped, often on planets that are farther out and less habitable — the nature of those would depend on the interstellar economic system — but those kinds of colonies are usually not *settlements*. They are more like the occupying force in the movie Avatar: a corporate/military enclave that is semi-permanent at best. They are likely to be abandoned when the unique resource is exhausted or loses its value. [Answer] To recap Douglas Adams: space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. It's all very well being able to get somewhere fast, but you want to have an idea of where you're going (literally where you're going - even if you pick a specific star in Andromeda, where you see that star isn't where it is now, it's where it was 2 million years ago). Now, for a given astronomical capability, that practically limits you to colonising no more than a certain distance from your current boundary. We have good knowledge about exoplanets up to about 50 pc from Earth (well, when I say good I really mean extremely scant, but possibly enough rudimentary knowledge about planet size and possible atmospheric composition then maybe enough data to start sending FTL probes). And once you have a colony established it will take some time before it grows and develops to the point where it's ready to start sending out colonists of its own. Let's be generous and assume every colony is benign and supports population doubling in a short human generation of 20 years, starting from an initial colony of 1000 (hopefully enough to support genetic diversity). It will take 10 generations to reach a million, or 20 generations to reach a billion, so around 400 years. Somewhere in that population range seems a likely timescale to become sufficiently well established to be ready to start colonisation activities of their own. Say 300 years on average. This limitation constrains the radius of the human sphere to grow linearly, and while the population of individual colonies will grow exponentially for a while before reaching an equilibrium, the overall growth of the human population will be proportional to $ r^2 $ (or equivalently, proportional to $ t^2 $ since the radius grows proportional to time. Now the Milky Way is 60 kpc across. It would therefore take roughly 1200 years to colonise the entire galaxy (slightly more, because we're not starting from the middle). Once the galaxy is filled there's the question of other galaxies. Even the Magellanic clouds are 50-60 kpc away: crossing that kind of gulf could well be much more difficult than just hopping a few tens of parsecs to a suitable colony star system. Andromeda is 780 kpc away. If the technology available in your universe allows for bridging those kinds of vast distance, then you start again but this time you're populating concentric shells of galaxies with a 1200 year "ready time" before looking to expand again rather than concentric shells of stars with a 300 year "ready time". All this is probably rather optimistic, it assumes optimal colonisation, no distractions from outward expansion and unlimited technology and resources. In reality, politics and war may act as a drag on expansion as star systems fight among themselves. [Answer] In my post number 8 in a discussion of colonizing other star systems with slower than light travel: <https://historum.com/threads/generation-or-sleeper-ships-which-would-be-the-better-more-realistic-option-for-space-travel.181701/>[1](https://historum.com/threads/generation-or-sleeper-ships-which-would-be-the-better-more-realistic-option-for-space-travel.181701/) I wrote: > > It is possible to build artificial space habitats with materials from small solar system objects like asteroids and comets. > > > So eventually there could be tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, etc. of such space habitats with populations of thousands of persons each. > > > And of course adding an engine and fuel supply, etc., to such a space habitat would turn it into a vast generation ship. > > > So I can imagine that a fleet of several such generation ships might be sent to colonize some region in the outer cometary halo of our solar system. At a speed of one percent of the speed of light, it would take such a fleet 100 years to reach a part of the cometary halo 1 light year from the Sun. At a speed of 2 percent of the speed of light it would take such a fleet 50 years to make the journey, at a speed of 3 percent it would take 33.333 years, at a speed of 4 percent it would take 25 years, at a speed of 5 percent it would take 20 years. > > > If a fleet of several such generation ships is sent to colonize some region in the outer cometary halo of our solar system. At a speed of two percent of the speed of light, it would take such a fleet 100 years to reach a part of the cometary halo 2 light years from the Sun. At a speed of 3 percent of the speed of light it would take such a fleet 66.666 years to make the journey, at a speed of 4 percent it would take 50 years, at a speed of 5 percent it would take 40 years, at a speed of 6 percent it would take 33.333 years. > > > So possibly several fleets would be sent from the inner solar system to colonize various regions in the cometary halo. And after expanding in the cometary halo for a period, perhaps centuries, each such colony there might send out one or more fleets of generation ships to colonize another, and farther, region of the cometary halo. > > > The average distance between a star and its nearest neighbor is about five light years in our part of the galaxy. At a speed of about 1 percent to 10 percent of the speed of light, it would take about 50 to 500 years for a generation ship to travel straight from the inner solar system of one star to the inner solar system of the other star, and about 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 years to go from side to sie of the disc of the Milky Way Galaxy.. But if generation ships make voyages of 1 light year each to colonize regions of the cometary halos, and take 100 to 300 years to each the stage to send out long distance colonizing expeditions of their own, the colonizers could reach the inner solar system of a star 5 light years away in about 450 to 1,700 years. > > > And travelling at about 100 to 300 years between jumps, and jumps of 1 light year each at a speed of 1 percent to 10 percent of the speed of light, a society could expand in all directions at an average speed of about 110 to 400 years per light year of distance. Thus such a society could eventually colonize the entire galactic disc of the Milky way Galaxy, 100,000 light years in diameter, in about 11,000,000 to 40,000,000 years, if they started from an outer rim of the galactic disc. > > > If the inhabitants of such space habitats expect that they and their descendants will live in space habitats forever, and have no desire to land on any habitable planets they might possibly find, Generation ships made of such space habitats could make much longer distances. > > > Possibly some generation ship fleets might travel 10 light years in a single voyage, taking 100 to 1,000 years. And if such voyages are successful, some generation ship fleets might later travel 100 light years in a single voyage taking 1,000 to 10,000 years. And eventually generation ship fleets might make voyages of 50,000 light years, taking 500,000 to 5,000,000 years, reaching and beginning to colonize distant regions of the galaxy. > > > With a faster than light (FTL) space drive the galaxy could theoretically be colonized much faster than with slower than light (STL) methods of propulsion. I stated that colonists with STL travel might take 100 to 300 years after colonizing a region to start sending out colonizing expeditions of their own, and that their ships might travel at 1 percent to 10 percent of the speed of light, thus traveling at about 10 to 100 years per light year, thus expanding at a rate of about 110 to 400 years of time per light year of distance. With a FTL drive capable of instantaneous travel to any distance, the travel time part of the equation would drop to zero, so it would all depend on the average time a colony planet would take to send out colonies of its own and how many colony planets each colony planet founds on the average. Assume that each and every planet, including Earth, sends out two and only two colony expeditions, 100 to 1,000 years after being founded by a colony expedition. If the average interval is only 100 years, the planets or solar systems inhabited by humans will number: 3 including Earth at first. 5 after 100 years. 9 after 200 years. 17 after 300 years. 33 after 400 years. 65 after 500 years. 129 after 600 years. 257 after 700 years. 513 after 800 years. 1,025 after 900 years. 2,049 after 1,000 years. 4,097 after 1,100 years. 8,193 after 1,200 years. 16,385 after 1,300 years. 32,769 after 1,400 years. 65,537 after 1,500 years. 131,073 after 1,600 years. 262,145 after 1,700 years. 524,289 after 1,800 years. 1,048,577 after 1,900 years. 2,097,153 after 2,000 years. And if the average colony world takes a multiple of 100 years to send out its colony expeditions, one can multiply that by the amounts of time in the list to get the necessary time. For example, if it takes 1,000 years for the average colony to send out it colony expeditions, the times to reach a specific number of colony worlds will be ten times longer. And of course the average colony world might send out three or four, or some other number, of colony expeditions instead of two. And the average colony world might send out one colony expedition every 127.5 years, for example, for as many centuries or millennia as that colony world exists, instead of sending out all its colony expeditions at once. But it seems simple to make reasonable assumptions about the average rate of colonization that will make it simple to calculate how long it will take for a specific number of worlds and solar systems to be colonized. [Answer] **I suspect a lot of it will depend on how small you can make your FTL engine, and how good your nanotech is. In which case, simply imagine an effectively infinite-sized earth and ask yourself how humanity would spread.** > > Imagine you've got a database in front of you with 100 billion rows of > data. In that data is a column called "Percentage" - with a value > between 0.000% and 100.0000%. You're looking for a value close to > 100% (the closer the better) but there's one catch: reading a row of > data, no matter where in the 100 billion rows, will always take 1 > second. > > > So, how long will it take you to find values extremely close to 100%? The answer is: you wouldn't. You'd program something to do it for you. Or some*things* - you'd have several cooperative processes (threads) looking through it for you, compiling an index of the closest values. Well, your FTL civilization is in the same boat. Travelling anywhere in the universe is trivially quick (just like looking up any one record will only take a second.) Finding someplace worth travelling is much slower, as is terraforming a less-than-ideal planet. So the immediate first answer is: send out a swarm of FTL bots to start indexing. Spend a year, going star to star to star, and cataloging the planets - and then report back the data. The problem is, there are 100,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy alone (there was a reason I choose 100 billion as the number of database records.) A thousand bots taking an hour per star would only chew through 0.01% of them. And then someone things: hey, we're not the only galaxy... in fact, there's an estimated 100,000,000,000 galaxies in our observable slice of the universe. Which brings a second facet of the answer: bots that can assemble copies of themselves. That way, you're not trying to solve this linearly. You're going to let the bots assemble all that information in a relatively small amount of time. Within a year of two, there are bots FTL'ing every which way before reporting back and spitting out the data. Which would be the values in that "Percentage of Complete Idealness For Colonization" that are as close to 100.0000% as possible. Which, with that huge of a database, you're going to get back a **LOT** of results very close to 100%. You're going to get near-earths, mega-earths, idyllic paradises, resource-laden meadowlands with frollicking fauna, etc. And since neither getting there or settling it will be difficult at all? You can imagine that humanity's going to spread awfully freaking fast. At least until we've got all the 99.999% planets colonized. [Answer] # Bottleneck Since you removed travel time as the bottleneck, the new bottleneck becomes population growth. You posited a starting population of about 10 billion souls. The Milky Way contains about 250 billion stars. So even if every last soul on earth claimed their own star system, that generation could only colonize about 4% of all stars. Given that your civilization has FTL capability, we are going to assume that they can either make the available planets livable, or are satisfied with living in artificial structures, merely using the star as the ultimate giant battery. Thus, we will assume that your civilization will attempt to populate every star system in the galaxy. # Growth Rate Currently, human females are capable of producing at least 10 children each, on average. The historical sustained high rate is about 6-7 children, but this is almost certainly limited by nutrition and medical advancement. Many women have been *recorded* to have more than 20 children, and they certainly have the eggs and reproductive longevity for such. One of the big downers in population growth is that half your children will be somewhat useless non-child-bearing males. You can mitigate this with sex-biased IVF, so that you produce, say, 80-90% females, assuming that they are ok with not all having (exclusive) male partners. Assuming slightly more than 10 children per woman, we can estimate that each woman has 10 *female* children, so that the generational growth rate is 10x. In one generation, you can go from 10 billion to 100 billion souls, and in two, you can top out at a trillion souls. That's more than 4 souls per star, but again, 4 is well below a robust "minimum viable population". If we assume a target closer to 4000 souls, then you just need to wait three more generations. If you assume each generation is about 30 years (on average, women start bearing children at 20, and have one every year or two until 40, uniformly distributed), then you have "colonized" the entire galaxy in just 5 x 30 = 150 years. Less than two centuries!!! Of course, this assumes along with the FTL tech that your civilization can either bring what they need to support such a colony, or can exploit whatever materials are available at their destination system. # Mining Obviously, you probably don't want to disassemble Earth to build 250 billion colony bases on alien worlds. But you don't need to. You said FTL was *instantaneous*, so you can steal asteroids, clean out the Kuiper belt, and strip-mine any new rocky planets you find around new stars, and move the raw materials to your new colony worlds. The only trick, of course, is *what powers your FTL drives*. You may, in fact, find that fuel is the bottleneck, depending on what kind of handwavium actually makes them go. If they use an Alcubierre-style warp drive, they may be able to traverse the galaxy in hours, but require the mass of Jupiter to do so, rendering your colonization program moot, because if you use an entire planet to jump between the stars, there will soon be no planets left to colonize. If, on the other hand, your FTL drive is fast, but travel time is still linear or even polynomial in the distance and/or mass, then resources become a much bigger factor. It may no longer be feasible to move an entire colony base with you to a new star, and if your destination star lacks suitable raw materials, you may need to send some from another star which does. ]
[Question] [ I have a species that is born with small wings, that grow to be able to carry them by the magic of handwavium, but they are human in all other respects. It’s the Middle Ages, and the inquisition has started. The church is hunting down my species for impersonating angels. The adults whose wings can carry them are fine, but many parents are opting to remove their children’s (not nessicaraly infants) wings whilst they are young, as the church is okay with those who renounce the so called heresy. The church is also performing the amputations on any of the angel creatures they find. How might I limit the deaths and trauma from this procedure? Note: this is not the church as we know it, but a church after a cult took them over. Hence this happening in the first place. [Answer] Amputations of limbs following battlefield injuries has been performed for centuries. It was thought better to have a relatively small wound than a wound that compromised a large amount of the limb. A skilled surgeon could remove a limb in around ten seconds, and after that, stitching up and bandaging the stump would take a minute or so. Yes, there are risks. Asepsis wasn't recognised until the eighteenth century, but amputation was still a better risk than leaving an extensively wounded limb attached. Now, removing wings may depend upon how they are attached. If they are attached to the ribcage by an independent scapula, it may be faster - and by extension, preferable - to remove them complete with the scapula, as the scapula is effectively floating, and can be removed in under a minute - I can attest to this personally, as in a University Zoology practical class, were asked to dissect a sheep, and were challenged to remove both a foreleg and a hind leg, and were timed while doing so. It took me well under a minute to remove the foreleg and scapula with a not-particularly-sharp 3" pocket knife. On the other hand, if the wings are attached more solidly, perhaps to the same scapula as the arms, or to an intermediate pelvis-like structure, with a ball-and-socket joint, then either the ball joint would have to be disarticulated, or the bone cut. Cutting a bone can be done in a matter of five to ten seconds with the right tools, but with only the aforementioned 3" folding pocket knife, it took me around a minute to disarticulate the aforementioned sheep's femoral joint and remove the hind leg, and was much more of a hack-job than removing the foreleg. Considering that the subjects of these amputations will not be anesthetised, the other point to amputating rapidly was to minimise pain. Pain may also be managed by exposing the subject to loud noises at the critical moment, as a matter of distraction. Alcohol is a good disinfectant when distilled, but it is a very poor anaesthetic, as the dose required to achieve anaesthesia is very close to the lethal dose, and given the lag between administering it and its taking effect, it is very easy to kill the subject. Opiates and cannabis can provide good pain relief even if they can't provide complete anaesthesia - if they are available. So, if your winged people want to engage in this barbaric practice, the best way to minimise deaths and trauma is to use the services of a person with much experience and skill in performing the procedure - that way, the time in unanaesthetised surgery will be minimised. Asepsis would be good, but they likely won't think of it, and a lot of lives will be lost unnecessarily, even though many more will be saved. However, to save the greatest number of innocent lives, the winged folk descending from the sky to run a spear through the bodies of the clergy and their assistants who would perform such barbarism, declaring as they do so that God does not approve - play up the Guardian/Avenging Angel aspect - would be the most effective course of action, though this is not exactly what the OP asked. [Answer] No idea about how to avoid trauma, but in the Middle Ages there was castration and punitive amputation of hands, none of those must have been pleasant. Amputation was done with a tourniquet (a double one if the doctor was good), a swift cut with a saw and then they started with vascular ligatures (tying off blood vessels), covering the stump with a flap of skin. Then, they bandaged the area with linen covered in vinegar to avoid infections. In the worst cases, they used cauterization (closing the blood vessels by burning them), but they knew it was dangerous for the recuperation of the patient. [Answer] Circumcision has been done for centuries, which could be an analog for wings removal. But there are some differences on the procedure to note. While in circumcision you basically cut skin, in wings you have bones. While some deaths are inevitable, the proper technique should avoid some of them. * Clean the area with clean water and some fortified wine. The more alcohol the better. * Use clean and sharp knife, make it red hot moments before the procedure. * DON'T, IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, CUT THE BONE. Osteomielites is a dangerous and deadly infection. * Cut the joint near the body and close the wound with stitches. Boiled stitches. * Every day change the dressings, you can clean it with fortified wine and antiseptic herbs to your liking. If you get an abscess, open the stitches and drain. Also, start praying, a lot. [Answer] Amputations are never safe, even with modern medicine. In the middle ages they were often the difference between a fast and painful death from an injury and a slow and painful death from infection, with few survivors. [Answer] **The safest amputation, in any era, is *no amputation at all!*** And the reasoning is simple: assuming by "church" you mean the Church (i.e., the Catholic Church), I find it next to utterly unbelievable that they would so bother with a subset of the population as to necessitate parents torturing and disfiguring their children for the sake of their safety. There are many issues I see with the premise: * First, it's not a "heresy" to be born with wings. Heresy means a willful choice to believe other than what is accepted as Truth. If you grow up Catholic and learn the basics of catechism and so forth and then decide at some point that you don't like Jesus being God and invent a new religion where Jesus isn't God, that's heresy. And at the time, that could certainly land you in trouble! * I really can't imagine any parent would let their child go through that torture! (My own world has winged folk, too -- they would be utterly repulsed by the very notion!). I think most parents would rather hide their children away, send them away to a safe country or leave and go to a different country or region first rather than cut their limbs off. * If this is supposed to be the Church (i.e., Catholicism) then I hardly find it convincing or credible that they'd run around trying to round up "counterfeit angels". I also hardly find it convincing that the Inquisition (which of the three varieties?) would be so interested in killing these winged people! This smacks more of Dan Brown sensationalism than anything rooted in history, theology or faith. * The Inquisitions (there were three over the course of a long millennium) were certainly an embarrassment to the Church, but it was hardly the bloodfest it's made out to be in the popular culture. Their targets were individuals accused of various theological & moral crimes (heresy being the principle one). Basically: there's really no need to worry about wing amputations (disarticulations, actually), because the notion is really quite silly in historical context. In any event, even if I could suspend disbelief without (intellectually) hurling, *all these people really have to do is pick up their kids and fly away from their tormentors!* ]
[Question] [ So, on the planet of Qualia, a tiny island of the coast of Da’Tora called Saluk has disobeyed Tora VII the Slaughterers rule, which is never a good idea, as you can guess from the name. He stationed his fleet around the island, and decided to sink it under the sea, to show his enemies that he means serious business. Saluk is 7 miles by 3 mile, or 11 kilometers to 4 kilometers. The Qualians have tech equivalent to 1960s earth. So, is there a way to sink an island under the sea? [Answer] Soil liquifaction. They use timed detonations on the sea floor, probably nuclear, to shake the island. This causes the island's sandy soil (heavily saturated by the annual monsoon season) to begin behaving as a liquid. As it settles and sloughs off it is reclaimed by the sea. [Answer] Excavating it with explosives is probably not a viable option. In 1965, the US Navy conducted a series of tests called Operation Sailor Hat. These were massive-scale conventional explosive detonations that were meant to mimic the blast effects of a nuclear warhead (only without all that pesky radiation). Each test consisted of 500 (short) tons of TNT, which for technical reasons was considered equivalent to a 1-kiloton nuclear bomb. You can see one of the resultant craters here: [![Sailor's Hat crater; image from Wikipedia](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TDihD.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TDihD.jpg) It's big, but it's hardly on the scale of obliterating an island. Of course, 1 kT is not all that big as nukes go, but you begin to see the problem. Physically destroying the island would require an immense amount of explosives, whether conventional or nuclear. Digging it out by hand or machinery runs into a similar problem. If your island is 11km x 4km and you need to remove an average of 5m of material, that's 220 *million* cubic meters of stuff (mostly sand and dirt, but it could have some bedrock if you're unlucky). Compare that to the Sailor Hat detonations, which dug out around 30,000 cubic meters each. If it's near shore and you want to reshape the map to demonstrate your power, there's always Alexander the Great's solution: make it a peninsula. Here's an aerial photo of the city of Tyre, ca. 1934: [![Tyre from the air; image also from Wikipedia](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1R8Qv.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1R8Qv.jpg) Prior to Alexander's siege in 332 BC, that sandy area on the right *didn't exist*; Tyre was an island. Alexander's forces built a land bridge out to reach it, and the rest of the peninsula was gradually built up by deposition. [Answer] He raises the sea level! The island in question is inside an inland sea! The level of the island is lower then that of the outside sea! When you make a hole in the land bridge you would sink it! As shown bellow! [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kTWTi.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kTWTi.jpg) [Answer] Depending on how fearsome of a reputation he wants and if the enemies of his people are downwind of the island, he *can* cause the island to disappear beneath the waves with 1960 era technology. Not those piddly little nuclear devices mentioned in other answers, but *this*: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mS1Yo.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mS1Yo.jpg) *Castle Bravo* Castle Bravo was a thermonuclear device which, due to a misunderstanding of how lithium reacted under the staggering conditions in the secondary, achieved a yield of 15Mt, the largest nuclear device ever created by the United States. The device destroyed almost all the surface vegetation and structures of the surrounding atoll, and excavated a crater 1.8km in diameter. Oh, wait. The island is 11km by 4km. Maybe the Russians can help: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/C79sA.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/C79sA.jpg) *Tsar Bomba "on the waaaaaay"* This little beauty achieved a yield of 50Mt, without its third stage (the tamper was made of lead rather than Uranium). The fireball alone was five *miles* in diameter, so an airburst will essentially vapourize anything on the surface of the island. I haven't found any reliable estimate as to the size crater a ground burst would create, but it would likely cover a fair fraction of the island. IF you were particularly bloody minded, use the Uranium tamper and bring the yield up to 100Mt. "But that's hardly elegant", you protest. Well, the ever inventive Americans may have discovered ways to reach even higher yields (gigaton) without the gargantuan "steampunk" like design of the Tsar Bomba: > > But given that high efficiency is tied to high yields — and relatively high weights — it’s clear that the innovations that allowed for the placing of warheads on MIRVed, submarine-launched platforms are still pretty impressive. The really magical range seems to be for weapons that in the hundred kiloton range (more than 100 kilotons but under a megaton), yet under 1,000 kilograms. Every one of those dates from after 1962, and probably involves the real breakthroughs in warhead design that were first used with the Operation Dominic test series (1962). This is the kind of strategic miniaturization that makes war planners happy. > > > Or, to take another tack, and returning to the initial impetus for me looking at this topic, we know that the famous “Tsar Bomba” of the Soviet Union weighed 27,000 kilograms and had a maximum yield of 100 Mt, giving it a yield-to-weight ratio of “only” 3.43 kilotons/kilograms. That’s pretty high, but not for a weapon that used so much fusion energy. It was clear to the Atomic Energy Commission that the Soviets had just scaled up a traditional H-bomb design and had not developed any new tricks. By contrast, the US was confident in 1961 that they could make a 100 Mt weapon that weighed around 13,600 kg (30,000 lb) — an impressive 7.35 kiloton/kilogram ratio, something well above the 6 kt/kg achieved maximum. By 1962, after the Dominic series, they thought they might be able to pull off 50 Mt in only a 4,500 kg (10,000 lb) package — **a kind of ridiculous 11 kt/kg ratio**. (In this estimate, they noted that the weapon might have an impractically large diameter as a result, perhaps because the secondary was spherical as opposed to cylindrical.) So we can see, without really knowing much about the US had in mind, that it was planning something very, very different from what the Soviets set off. > > > <http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php> *Still* not good enough? To eradicate any trace of the island (or indeed any nearby continents), the most powerful single "plausible" device was outlined by [Anthony Zuppero](http://www.neofuel.com), who was apparently asked to do the calculation for a device which would wipe out the Soviet rocket fields in Siberia in a two minute window. He evidently calculated a massive 5Gt weapon launched by an ORION nuclear pulse drive... [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VWlsG.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VWlsG.png) *Doomsday ORION weapon, artwork by [William Black](https://william-black.deviantart.com)* [Answer] > > Saluk is 7 miles by 3 mile, or 11 kilometers to 4 kilometers. The Qualians have tech equivalent to 1960s earth. > > > So, is there a way to sink an island under the sea? > > > Yes, but it all depends on what the island is made *of*. **Solid rock**: you'd need an impossibly large number of nuclear explosions. Much better at that point to simply blast the island's surface with three megaton-size explosions. **Silt and sand**: Saluk is not an "island" but rather a ["char"](https://www.britannica.com/science/char-landform-and-riverine-deposit). A sufficiently prolonged, sufficiently large series of explosions can cause [soil liquefaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_liquefaction). **Ancient volcanic caldera**: you would need the caldera to be already cracked obliquely, in such a way that a reasonably small (< 20) number of megaton-size blasts would trigger a [flank collapse](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377027399001109). If the "sea" is an inland sea and the conditions allow it, it might be possible to stage a spectacular apocalypse on the scale of the [Zanclean flood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood) (also on [xkcd](https://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/comment-page-1/)). [Answer] Couple of concepts to work with here... the Slaughterer would probably have gotten that name by being brutal, and drowning everyone would certainly work for that name, however does he want to sink the island or the people. or does the would sink need to be meant literally. If he were to "sink" the island, but the island be fine, it has the same end result and still has the same effect but means he can have the island as well. **Tidal Wave** A tidal wave would do it, the island could be washed away, the people drowned and infrastructure ruined, seems pretty close to sinking to me. Now these are not easy at all, but with the right geography around the island, its still possible even with 1960s tech, they could either cause a cliff face on a neighboring island to collapse, (research Lituya Bay Alaska mega tsunami) or if the was a fault line nearby, then maybe, i stress maybe a carefully placed nuke on this fault line would cause it to shift enough that it could generate a tidal wave. **Visit Saluk, and explore our miles of caves and tunnels** If the island was riddled with underground caverns and tunnel systems then a lot of the work would already be done for the bombs, a single nuke, or some well placed conventionally explosives in various points throughout the cave system would likely make the ground unstable and cause it to collapse, bringing it below sea level and then the water would just need to flood in. for example: Son Doong Cave, Vietnam is a cave passage, which means it is a single "room" of more than 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) long, 200 metres (660 ft) high and 150 metres (490 ft) wide. if the island had something like this, maybe it is already an underwater cave, but has other caves around the island all interconnected then maybe it would be enough, the entire island wouldn't disappear completely underwater, but enough that what was left could be nothing more then a bunch of rocky islets **How Much does the baddie want to destroy** The Final thing to think about is what does the Slaughterer want to actually sink? > > Saluk is 7 miles by 3 mile, or 11 kilometers to 4 kilometers. > > > Is Saluk like Manhatten? in that the entire island is built up and a city within itself, if so then he could destroy them through starvation before anything else, and it makes actually sinking it harder... but if that is not the case then, all he has to do is sink the main town, still digging or blowing up enough bedrock is going to be hard, but a lot easier then sinking the entire island. [Answer] Just use hydraulics. Drill into the "core" of the island and pump high pressure sea water in. The pressure will expand and extend any fractures in the rock until the water finds a way out. Just repeat this enough and there will not be enough solid stone to support the island and it will slide of into the sea in massive land slides. These land slides will cause tsunamis but same is true of all ways to sink an island. Just be careful to sell all of your nearby beach front properties before sinking islands, ok? If you want the island to vanish in a single cataclysm rather than a series of land slides, you are going to need good data on the geology of the island and precise modelling and planning of the process. You can combine this with soil liquefaction mentioned by other answers for simpler control of the collapse timing and extent. The drilling and hydraulics can be masked as oil exploration. So with enough planning this could be done discreetly. "Who claims I am not the Chosen of God? My enemies lie in the bottom of the sea with their very island shattered by Gods hand. Who claims I am not the Chosen of God?" [Answer] If the island does not happen to be situated above a geological feature that can be exploited (volcano, water reactive(but still dry) minerals, steep and deep cliff), they'll just have to start digging: The island is 44km², so at an average height of 100m, that's 4.4km³ that need to be removed to make the water just lap over the whole thing. That volume can be removed in about 5 years, if copious slave labor is available, which i bet is the case... <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sea>–Baltic\_Canal [Answer] Rather than raise the ocean to sink the island, you could employ some weather manipulation to hit the island with a series of large hurricanes to wash it away. In the 1950's scientists studied the use of nuclear weapons to steer or even destroy hurricanes. <http://atomic-skies.blogspot.com/2013/09/nuking-hurricanes.html> This would definitely be in line with 1960's era technology. In our world [the treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Nuclear_Test_Ban_Treaty) banning aboveground nuclear testing in 1963 ended this line of research, but it is still considered highly likely to work.; with possible unintended consequences including; making the hurricane stronger rather than weaker, stearing the storm in the wrong direction causing a worse landfall location, dissipating one storm only to have a larger follow up storm, and of course the addition of some radioavtive contamination to the area. A hurricane level storm can be already be devestating to an island. A series of them all steared to hit the island in succession could literally uproot all vegetation, knock down all the structures, and wash it all into the sea. ]
[Question] [ So, before a large nuclear war engulfed the earth, the USA government ordered two private contractors, Gene-Tek and Atlas Biotech, to create a disease called Hyper Necrosis. It is supposed to make a person decompose while they are still alive and conscious, at least until the early black putrefaction stage. It is transmitted by a modified bacteriophage. It can be transmitted by injection, or through the airborne version. It is also transmitted by contaminated water. So my question is, how could you make a disease that does this in real life? [Answer] You are basically looking for how to make [wet gangrene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangrene): (skip below description if your stomach is weak) > > Wet, or infected, gangrene is characterized by thriving bacteria and has a poor prognosis (compared to dry gangrene) due to sepsis resulting from the free communication between infected fluid and circulatory fluid. In wet gangrene, the tissue is infected by saprogenic microorganisms (Clostridium perfringens or Bacillus fusiformis, for example), which causes tissue to swell and emit a fetid smell. Wet gangrene usually develops rapidly due to blockage of venous (mainly) or arterial blood flow. The affected part is saturated with stagnant blood, which promotes the rapid growth of bacteria. The toxic products formed by bacteria are absorbed, causing systemic manifestation of sepsis and finally death. The affected part is edematous, soft, putrid, rotten, and dark. > > > Lucky you, in the quoted text it is already said it caused by infection of some type of bacteria. [Answer] Leprosy, flesh eating bacteria, gangrene, epidermolysis bullosa, necrosis and aptosis are all illnesses that are what you're talking about and exist IRL. Your evil scientists have found ways to weaponize them, making them far more contagious, incurable and airborne. [Answer] **Weaponized MRSA** MRSA is an antibiotic resistant form of staph infection. In extreme cases it becomes a flesh eating disease that causes hideous sores and necrosis in it's victims. It is transmitted via skin to skin contact, or contact with items recently in contact with an infected individual. I think you need to dial down your expectations for what a disease can do though. The idea that something is crazy virulent enough to be transmitted via water, air, touch and bodily fluid AND linger as a lethal strain outside of its host within the surrounding environment for decades is basically a planetary extinction level event. Its also not very possible due to some factors I will detail here. Diseases actually trend towards evolving to become less lethal rather than more lethal. The longer a disease can exist within a host while contagious without killing them the more it can reproduce, in addition organisms develop immunity to the disease over time. It is a dance between natural selection factors, every so often a new strain emerges from a mutation and causes periodic outbreaks that are less severe than the original but still dangerous. Decades after the war symptom-less carriers exist within the human and animal populations. People are by and large immune by this point but children, the elderly, and people with poor immune systems still occasionally catch it and die. Every once in a blue moon a more virulent strain might mutate and cause localized outbreaks within regions. The ultimate pinnacle of bacterial and viral evolution is not to kill as many hosts as quickly as possible, but to hit a point of equilibrium within its host population. You can brew up very virulent plagues, but keeping them that way long term is not possible, nor is it prudent to use such organisms as a weapon. [Answer] I initially thought that a bacteriophage did not make sense as they target bacteria, not humans. But there might be a way. Bacteriophages can code for toxins that increase the virulence of the bacteria they infect. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staphylococcus_aureus#Skin_infections> > > Staphylococcal toxins that act on cell membranes include alpha toxin, > beta toxin, delta toxin, and several bicomponent toxins. Strains of S. > aureus can host phages, such as the prophage Φ-PVL that produces > Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL), to increase virulence. The > bicomponent toxin PVL is associated with severe necrotizing pneumonia > in children.[49][50] The genes encoding the components of PVL are > encoded on a bacteriophage found in community-associated MRSA strains. > > > Your phage could infect normal skin bacteria and contain the gene for toxins that produce the effects you want in the skin. The normal bacteria begin to express this toxin and sicken the host. The infected bacteria might actually be crippled by the phage infection and so no longer be able to reproduce - thus infection with toxin-expressing skin bacteria would not be an issue. [Answer] That reminds me a lot of Necrotising fasciitis. Some kind of weaponized version of this could do what you need as mentioned below it kills the cells and muscle tissue around the affected area. Necrotising fasciitis is a rare but serious bacterial infection that affects the tissue beneath the skin, and surrounding muscles and organs (fascia). It's sometimes called the "flesh-eating disease", although the bacteria that cause it don't "eat" flesh – they release toxins that damage nearby tissue. Necrotising fasciitis can start from a relatively minor injury, such as a small cut, but gets worse very quickly and can be life threatening if it's not recognised and treated early on. ]
[Question] [ A spacefaring people buries their fallen heroes in space. The bodies are adorned in uniforms (fabric), equipped with the weapons they carried in life (mostly aluminium, steel or polymer, but containing no battery, chemical explosive, flammable or corrosive), and sealed in tough polymer coffins, which are airtight and filled with inert gas. They are then irradiated to kill any bacteria. The coffins are deposited upon a lifeless moon, or in one of the Lagrangian points around the planet where the hero fell. How well would the coffin's contents survive the test of time? How far into the future would it remain intact, and how well? [Answer] The coffin could survive almost indefinitely in human terms depending on where it was located. If it was in the shade on an airless moon then temperatures would be very low and temperature cycling would be minimal. Freezing would disrupt all of the cells in the body, but being frozen, it would remain intact almost indefinitely (millions of years). If the coffin was left in sun light then regular temperature cycling would repeatedly freeze and thaw the body. As all the cells would be disrupted by freezing the contents would leak out and the soft tissues would slowly disintegrate over time leaving the bones and artefacts laying in a body tissue mush (perhaps over tens of years but very much depending on the degree of heating). At the Lagrangian points the coffin would be in perpetual sunlight and if sufficiently close to the sun might warm, heat or roast the corpse depending on location. Unless the coffin was sufficiently robust it might explode due to steam pressure. Although protected from biological decomposition, under elevated temperatures chemical degradation would occur and the soft tissues would eventually end up as a degraded mush (perhaps over tens of years but very much depending on the degree of heating). [Answer] # Pretty much forever. Most decomposition of (human) bodies is done by organisms in the environment in which the body dies. It can also be slowed or eliminated by storing the body in a dry and cold environment, which space certainly fits the description of. One prime example of an extremely well-preserved body is the body of civil rights leader [Medgar Evers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medgar_Evers) who was assassinated in 1963. When his body was exhumed for a civil rights investigation in the 90's, they found that the body was almost perfectly preserved, which helped finally get a conviction against his assassins. This is likely attributed to the fact his coffin was lined with lead, which prevented bacteria and decomposing organisms from getting in. Obviously storing a body in space is even better, considering the lack of decomposers present in a vacuum. Another natural phenomenon that results in well-preserved bodies is [bog bodies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body). Due to the acidic water, lack of oxygen and low temperature preventing decomposition. Some bodies dating back as early as 8000 BCE have been found mummified in bogs. The 4th Century [Tollund Man](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollund_Man) found in 1950 was originally thought to be a recent murder victim due to how well they were preserved. I'm not sure how irradiating the body would affect its decomposition though. Although it would certainly kill bacteria, I would think it could also damage the body. You might be better off just cleaning the body before burial and sterilizing its uniform and coffin separately. I would also store the body in near vacuum as well as opposed to filling it with an inert gas as I would think your main problem would be it being hit by space junk. Keeping it in near vacuum would mean that if the coffin is punctured, you won't have explosive decompression that could damage the body. It would also minimize pressure fluctuations from temperature changes. Obviously, you would want to lower the pressure gradually instead of all at once in order to prevent damage to the body. Storage in a vacuum would also help insulate the body, as radiation through a vacuum is an extremely slow way of transferring heat. You may also want to insulate the coffin with a vacuum layer between an inner and outer shell. If you leave a coffin in orbit around a planet, you should be able to calculate roughly how large this layer would have to be to prevent the body from heating by calculating how long it would be in direct sunlight vs how long it would be on the dark side of the planet. Alternatively, you could place it far away from a star. Your main problem is probably going to be space junk and other unpredictable cosmic events such as solar flares and gamma-ray bursts. [Answer] **Indefinitely.** Or at least until the coffin is hit by space debris and punctured (though frankly I'm not sure that would change a lot, space is called that for a reason, it's basically empty vacuum). As A. C. A. C. mentioned in the comments your probably better off not putting any gas in at all, vacuum packing it to all intents and purposes. In which case you have used three methods normally used for (food) preservation; canning, vacuum packing and irradiating. Either one of those three methods could give your corpse a pretty long 'shelf' life, all three combined I would guess it could reasonably be presumed to last a very very long time without much in the way of deterioration (which I assume is what you mean by 'survive'). ]
[Question] [ Is there a realistic way that a [Charybdis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charybdis)-like creature could evolve? Starting with roughly earth-like biology, what is the closest plausible creature to the mythical Charybdis that could exist? Charybdis is typically depicted as a gigantic mouth or mouth-like structure, large enough to swallow entire ships, resting close to the surface of the water. What is under this mouth is usually not explained, and is left to the discretion of each answerer. The creature is typically not capable of motion, and most likely adheres to the seabed in areas of shallow water. [Answer] **Here is the massive physics problem with Charybdis** Where does the water go? and how can it move enough water to make a vortex? One thought would be it has a big stomach that its pumping water out of till it opens its mouth sucking in everything above. This has a ton of problems like how does it remain submerged with such a huge bubble, how can it resist the pressure of the ocean around it trying to collapse its bubble. The sheer forces here stretch thin the limits of biologic possibility. Not to mention the energy needed to pump all that water out and create a bubble. **My thought which sounds more plausible to me** is that its more **like a giant worm/snake/tube**. Instead of creating a bubble and resisting all those pressures perhaps it works more **like an intestine**. Using its muscles to constrict force water from one end to another. That way the pressure inside and out are relatively the same. It would need to be long, many times longer than it is wide. Its skin would be thick to house the muscles necessary to constrict and expand. It length would also be dependent on how its able to digest what its sucked in. Also, I don't think it would poop per se. I think its back end would be an open hole constantly excreting water similar in diameter to its mouth. As a fun thought, it could be that it doesn't intentionally pray upon ships and large fish. It could be a large filter feeder primarily trying to eat algae and plankton and just so happens to get other creatures by chance. The jagged rocks described at its mouth could be teeth and it could have teeth like structures lining the first part of its inner body to break up large debris entering it. Its lower body would probably have more mesh like structures to more easily extract nutrients. A [Pyrosome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrosome) is semi relevant in that they are big floating tubes that can suck in water filter it and push it out. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DLDWp.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DLDWp.jpg) [Answer] I note that the blind bard himself is a little chary about exactly describing Charybdis: > > But the other cliff, thou wilt note, Odysseus, is lower—they are close to each other; thou couldst even shoot an arrow across—and on it is a great fig tree with rich foliage, but beneath this divine Charybdis sucks down the black water. Thrice a day she belches it forth, and thrice she sucks it down terribly. Mayest thou not be there when she sucks it down, for no one could save thee from ruin, no, not the Earth-shaker. > > > and > > For on one side lay Scylla and on the other divine Charybdis terribly sucked down the salt water of the sea. Verily whenever she belched it forth, like a cauldron on a great fire she would seethe and bubble in utter turmoil, and high over head the spray would fall on the tops of both the cliffs. But as often as she sucked down the salt water of the sea, within she could all be seen in utter turmoil, and round about the rock roared terribly, while beneath the earth appeared black with sand; and pale fear seized my men. So we looked toward her and feared destruction > > > Note that there's a lot of talk about Charybdis' *actions* but she's mostly hidden by the roil of water. Why is this important enough for these huge quotes? Two reasons: * First, **it is never wrong to quote from the Odyssey.** * Second, there is no direct statement that she is sessile, just that she likes to hang around this narrow, shallow waterway. Now here's the deal. I can't justify that huge of a creature anchoring itself permanently to one spot. What I can see is a creature like this: **A cross between a giant squid and a humpback whale** The gulp/chomp/spit feeding cycle reminds me of how humpback whales feed. But those creatures like deep water. To navigate shallow areas, Charybdis can crawl around on the tentacles. She does this betimes in order to find the best feeding grounds. In ancient days, Charybdis fed on all those clouds of fish that hang around reefs and such. But once the Bronze Age began and those foolish Greeks started sailing around her haunts so ... *yummily*, she changed her dietary habits. Update: To clarify, Charybdis departs from a krill-eating whale feeding pattern, preferring larger fish, which travel in schools. She maneuvers to where conditions are favorable (shallow sunlit water and subtle factors beyond our ken) and settles until a school comes within range. Then snap! More recently, of course, divine Charybdis has learned that flimsy galley ships are also full of tasty snacks, and their travel patterns are quite predictable -- narrow waterways, approaches to ports, and anywhere Scylla isn't. ;D I hope this helps! Many Akaioi perished providing the research necessary for this answer. [Answer] **I'd go with a giant choanoflagellate:** [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6MveI.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6MveI.jpg) [Choanoflagellates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choanoflagellate) are microscopic organisms that eat bacteria. What's cool about them though is that they use their flagella to drive water across a collar of microvilli. This acts as a kind of filter for bacteria and any other objects that the choano comes across. The foodstuffs are engulfed into the cell body there via endocytosis. They also attach to surfaces with their flagella sticking outward to catch food. This sounds a lot like what you're asking for. Perhaps enormous choanoflagellates prowl the ocean depths, rarely moving but living off of fish or other creatures that get trapped in their massive feeding current. When they do move, they have been found near the surface and inspired the stories about the kraken. One of them, driven out of the deep sea and into the Mediterranean by one of your plot points, settles in the much shallower water of the [Strait of Messina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Messina), turns its flagella upward, and begins to feed. This feeding strategy draws in the surface waters as it's forced down and across the microvilli, and adds a terror aspect as the massive flagella occasionally breaks out of the sea, looking like an enormous tongue. Anything nearby is dragged into the feeding current and eventually taken beneath the surface, from which it never returns. As others have pointed out, there are a couple problems with this, the biggest being feeding. My argument would be that the choanoflagellate is accustomed to living off of very little organic material, given that it lives at the bottom of the ocean, and is actually overwhelmed by the amount of food it finds. I don't know how such a massive creature would survive on only a little bit of food, but biology has done stranger things and I don't think that it'd strain the suspension of disbelief too much. Anything that ends up in feeding current that isn't wanted by the choano will simply be broken up and discarded rather than being selected for endocytosis. Endocytosis is another problem, as I'm not sure it works at large scales, but if you add some kind of mouth then the gross wood and stuff will simply be filtered out by the microvilli, and something like cilia could transport the material to the mouth. [Answer] A gigantic, underwater Venus Flytrap springs to mind. If the flytrap were to usually grow in deeper water their accustomed prey might be dolphins and, on lucky days, whales. A seed gone astray might then result in a hapless flytrap growing in shallower water and perforce needing to entrap ships, as its accustomed prey is not easily available. This might not occur often, but does occur. If one can find some way for it to "sing" they might also account for sirens luring sailors to their doom. Mind you, whales sing, and a singing flytrap might conceivably trick whales closer (which would imply that whales were their desired meal, and easily explain their size). This is rough but perhaps you can build on that. [Answer] Building on akaioi's idea, something similar to [antlion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antlion) larvae (ant lions, yeah) might also work. Antlion larvae fashion funnel-like pits in loose sand and wait for ant-sized creatures to wander in and become trapped (as they try to climb out, the sand on the pit's edges keep collapsing, preventing them from fleeing and slowly but surely forcing them deeper to the center of the funnel, where the antlion larvae lied in wait. So a similar creature might tunnel or funnel into a shallowish (and yes, narrow) area. Theoretically this tunnel/funnel would then create a whirlpool which would draw unlucky ships into the center where the giant antlionfish would lie in wait. However, the logic of how that might evolve escapes me at the moment. [Answer] Charybdis could be a large filter feeder. The cycle of swallowing could happen like this: First, from a flattened state on the sea-floor, the Charybdis inflates itself with gas from some convenient source. Its flippers would contain dense bone to keep it in the water. After inflation, it would open its jaws fully, and fill up with water and, more importantly, food. After this, it would crawl under a large, loose rock, and, with its mouth half-closed and ready to filter, dislodge the rock and squeeze the water out of its body. It would then crawl out from under the rock, and repeat the cycle later. I'm not sure how this behaviour or form would develop, but I feel that it would work ]
[Question] [ How realistic is it that in the future someone invents plants that can live on top of the Antarctic ice sheet or are floating on ice like in the Arctic? [Answer] **Glacier mice.** [![glacier mice](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q35TD.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q35TD.jpg) <https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/69701/glacier-mice-are-scampering-balls-moss> These rootless,restless plants form around a pebble, then synchronously roll about on the bare ice. The above linked article describes the many other creatures that find refuge within. But it is not clear what is propelling the movement of the glacier mice. <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/herds-moss-balls-mysteriously-roam-arctic-together-180975019/> > > Together the team analyzed the data of the moss balls’ movement and > found that they roll about an inch each day. The moss balls seem to > insulate the ice below them, so as the glacier surface melts, each > ball is sitting on a small pedestal. Eventually, it tumbles off. > > > "The whole colony of moss balls, this whole grouping, moves at about > the same speeds and in the same directions," Bartholomaus tells NPR. > "Those speeds and directions can change over the course of weeks." > > > He explains that herd of 30 moss mice that they observed first moved > slowly southward before accelerating west, and then losing speed. > Previous research using accelerometers had shown that the balls roll, > and that the balls are green all over suggests that all sides get > sunlight at some point. The new data show that the moss balls don’t > move randomly—but the researchers couldn’t yet deduce what’s driving > them. > > > So no need for invention. These are plants, not algae, and they live on ice, fair and square. They must get nutrients from the air like epiphytes. Water is tricky too. Very cool "critters"! [Answer] Ice sheet as found in Arctic and in Antarctic is basically solid water with some dust particle. Not enough to sustain anything bigger than a monocellular organism (sometimes there are massive algae efflorescence like the one in this picture: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KdFHD.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KdFHD.jpg) resulting in colored ice on alpine glaciers, which can rely on more substantial dust deposition from closeby regions). If you have some rocks exposed to air and light you can at least support lichens or moss, like here: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TX4h5.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TX4h5.jpg) [Answer] The biggest problem to overcome would be water, ironically. Arctic and Antarctic plants do exist, but they have deep root systems that burrow down below the permafrost to where they can get liquid water. One way would be roots that were dark, even black to absorb enough heat to melt the ice just enough to extract water. Failing that, your plants would need to have some system where they could grab moisture from the air through the sublimation of the ice as opposed to the usual transpiration that an arctic plant would use. Your plants would also likely need to be carnivorous, as nutrients would be hard to come by on the ice, even if a root system could extract anything. I would imagine they'd need a good way to go dormant as well to allow for periods between feeding and/or periods without sunlight. [Answer] While I don't believe there would be any way that a plant could grow from ice, there may be some possibility for some sort of small harvester insect to live that shapes the ice around it in such a way that it is exposed to the sun (and algae can live on top), and the insect simply survives off the algae. We could elaborate further and say the ice is shaped into dome-like forms to intensify the sun's rays heating further the water. You can then imagine thousands of green ice balls scattered across the landscape. It would not have a natural predator, so assuming it could survive in the harsh environment, it would thrive as well. **Edited:** The algae would require minerals of course, but these are common in glaciers scraped off from rocks. [Answer] I'm going to preface this by saying that I am by no means a botanist, however, you said invent, not "would a plant naturally develop." Humans are very adaptable. If we were told there were the world's largest deposits of platinum, gold, oil, etc in the antarctic, and all that was needed was to grow plants there, the antarctic would look like a rain forest in a heartbeat. If all that's needed is nutrients, then couldn't the inventor also invent the nutrients or a method to get them to the plants? The ocean is full of nutrients, so maybe these plants live on the coastline. According to a quick wikipedia search there are many mosses and lichens. Could those be used? If you are writing a fiction story, I don't think it's too far out there, if you can also solve the nutrient issues stated above, but I think you would also need sufficient motivation. [Answer] Trees that remain green in temperate zones that freeze in winter, can do so because they have roots deep enough to reach unfrozen water, and they also have anti-freeze in their sap. Pine and cedar trees get their distinct smell from the turpentine that keeps their sap from freezing. Without that anti-freeze, the sap would freeze, expand, and crack the trunk and limbs of the tree apart. ]
[Question] [ In my Fantasy world I thought it would be interesting to have a creature whose eyes would be precious gemstones or crystals. I want to understand how that could be possible, and if any ramifications could come of this. The world is not highly magical, so a non-magical solution is desired. For instance, I know that there are clams which can produce pearls by slowly accumulating minerals and polishing them into a smooth pearl. I am thinking it could work in a way similar to that. The creature would be born with tiny eyes made of only a very little bit of some mineral. This creature would live in an area rich in this mineral, and it would be accumulating this mineral in its diet over a long time these minerals would deposit in the eyes to make them grow. Now the problem is how would the creature be able to see with these eyes? I thought maybe it could work like a lens or something similar, with some organ behind the gems that catches the light and the gems or crystals refract it. I am curious if this is something that is possible at all, and if so - how would it impact this creatures sight? [Answer] It could work very similarly to, but potentially even better than, modern land-based vertebrate eyes. Land-based vertebrate eyes have four to eight main parts. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m7HOD.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m7HOD.png) First, there is a thin tissue layer with liquid behind it (the cornea). This does most (about %70) of the focusing of the light (cornea). Second, there is another flexible tissue layer (the lens) which does some focus but more importantly can change the focus of the eye by having its shape changed by muscles. Fourth, between these two is a muscular ring (the iris) that can quickly change how much light comes in. Fifth, there is a layer of cells that (among other things) convert the light into cellular responses (the retina). Sixth, many animals (but not mammals) have small colored fluid-filled bubbles in front of some cells that improve color perception. Seventh, some animals have a reflective layer behind that improves the amount of light collected in dark at the expense of lowering the clarity of the image (tapetum lucidum). Finally, many animals (but not primates) have a transparent, retractable covering for the eye called the nictitating membrane. Crystal could replace the cornea, tapetum lucidum (if it is active a lot at night), and nictitating membrane without any changes at all. It couldn't replace the current flexible vertebrate lens, but other animals have a rigid lens that is focused by being moved forward and back. The crystal could work for this sort of lens as well. If the crystal has other minerals added to it to give it color it could also replace the fluid-filled bubbles in front of cells. It could also improve over the existing vertebrate eye. Our eyes have a problem called "spherical aberration", where the focusing of the eye is not exactly the same at all points, and "chromatic aberration", where the focusing is not exactly the same for all colors. Spherical aberration is why we squint to see better. In our precision optical instruments like telescopes and microscopes, these problems are addressed by making lenses with multiple layers of different materials with different optical properties. This allows us to much correct for spherical and chromatic aberration much better than living eyes. Crystalline eyes could use a similar mechanism, where layers of tissue, fluid, and crystal with different properties could be used in the cornea and lens to provide a much clearer image than any existing eye. This has the added benefit would require a much thicker cornea than land vertebrates, making both the cornea and lens suitable as gemstones. The multiple layers and optical properties could make for a much more beautiful gemstone than the pure crystal the organisms depend on, which would explain why people prefer it over. This isn't biologically implausible, lots of organisms use crystalline materials, or more often layers of crystal and tissue that is superior to the material on its own, including some in their eyes. [Answer] The Trilobite, an invertebrate from the Palaeozoic era had compound eyes that had lenses made of calcite crystal. <http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/03/looking-trilobite-eye> These are quite often found in the fossil, record as intact structures as they are hard parts unlike other types of eyes made of soft tissue. [Answer] Assuming you mean gemstones on top of the actual eye, like a protective layer: Normally, pearls grow like stalactites/stalagmites, in layers of crystal, rather than a single crystal. At the boundaries of each layer, the fit is not perfect, so light is reflected and refracted at those points. The result: a translucent structure through which the organism can make out light and shadow, but not SEE, as such. In order to get a working eye, the organism would need to have a layer of plasma in contact with the back of the gem, saturated with the mineral the gem is composed of. The back of the plasma layer would be a transparent organic sheath or cornea, allowing light to enter the eye proper. Ideally, the plasma would prevent crystal boundaries forming and the gem would grow uniformly, gradually getting pushed out as it grows. In practice, this is unlikely, so you'll end up with flaws in the gem, that inhibit sight. The other issue is that gems, like other inorganics, dissolve only in ionic solvents, not covalent ones. I.e., the gem may be water soluble, but definitely not soluble in any organic solvent. If it is water soluble, then it will dissolve in rain, sweat, high humidity or any other environmental water. While this may not melt the whole gem, it will cause it to run, which will bend the surface in unpredictable ways, distorting the light entering the eye. If it is highly insolvent in water, (everything dissolves in water, to some extent) then it will take forever to build up a large enough concentration for the gem to grow to a visible size: the minerals will have to be absorbed by the body, once consumed; then transferred in dissolved form to the circulatory system (let's say bloodstream); since it won't dissolve in water or any organic compound, neither of these processes occur at any significant rate. It will therefore take years of a very fast circulation to get sufficient mass into solution. On the plus side, deposition will be quick; on the minus side deposition can occur anywhere, not just the eyes. A possible alternate, would be a binary system: compound X is absorbed by the bloodstream, compound Y secreted by the cornea. When X comes in contact with Y, it precipitates compound Z and the rest remains in solution, to be excreted through the bloodstream. This process is the same as layering described above, with the additional problem of multiple crystals forming, making the gem useless as a lens. TL:DR, probably not going to work well [Answer] You want the eye to be something that (suitably cured and preserved) is a beautiful and durable artifact. Consider some type of compound eye. The surface can appear to be a diffraction grating, and might even show some kind of hologram effects, which could up the price if patterns appear that are considered auspicious. They might have a natural covering that is as hard as glass. They are somewhat convex shapes, but the eye itself is a thin shell. It would be applied to another object thanks to its thinness (like mother of pearl) or be prepared around a shaped solid form, perhaps a section of skull from the same creature. [Answer] This is probably not what you wanted but it could be useful for a different world building. Maybe these creatures latterly just have crystal material build up in their eyes. . It is not a beneficial trait, but a trait they learn to live with. As infants they have good vision to help protect them as they learn to walk and what food is good to eat. In adolescence their vision starts to fade as the crystals start to form in their eyes. (Rhino’s have poor vision but can still function) As full grown adults they are blind and now rely fully on their sense of smell and hearing. If someone were to harvest an eye they would notice that they resemble geodes Maybe these creatures constantly grow new eyes as they age. If this were the case you could get a rough idea of how old they were by the number of crystallized eyes they have. ]
[Question] [ Somehow you managed to knock out an elemental shape-shifter. Where do you put it? Elemental shape-shifter: A person who can change their body to the four classical elements: Earth (like the material), Fire (think Johnny Storm), Water and Air. Assume that you are a multi-billionaire, and that you have access to any tech up to our current level. Assume that you may have to visit the shape-shifter from time to time. More info: the shape shifter requires magical energy to shift and stay shifted form, if out of magical energy the shift we return to human form to recharge or if unable it will go into hybridization until it can return to human form or gain enough magical energy to remain mobile in shifted form. magical energey is spirtual in nature and nothing you can do to directly block her access to it even send her into the vacuum of space wouldn't do it. More info fire is the most powerful of the shape shifters form. It can generate theoretically generate the more magical energy. fire form requires the most amount of magical energy and the more hotter it gets the more energy she uses. She also can only recharge a very limited amount of energy outside of human form. So unless you imprision her right next to a magical super battery she is not going to go supper nova any time soon none the less you should probably make sure your prison is can withstand extreme temperatures, but should not have worry about her produce an more heat than a large forest fire. Water: staying in water form require the second most amount of magical energy. in water form she can dissembled her body and control it's disassembled parts. however she can not control any water that did not originate from her and she requires all of her disassembled parts to rejoin before she can. Air: less energy then water same rules apply earth/rock. use a very low amount of magical energy she could easily stay in this form for days with out having to recharge. She dose require food and drink while in human form. you also may have some questions for her to answer [Answer] Since you explicitly state that your shapeshifter requires food and water while in human form, presumably she requires oxygen as well. Just seal her in a steel box. Make sure the steel is thick enough so she won't be able to melt it. The limited amount of oxygen in her cell will force her to assume and maintain earthen form to avoid suffocation. You can break the seals for an occasional visit/interrogation, at which time you can change the air as well. To maintain security during these visits, you might need to put her cell inside a yet larger steel box and seal the outer box before unsealing the inner box, but as a billionaire you can afford to keep a few welders on staff. If you want to interrogate her personally, just get inside the outer box before they seal it. If you want to avoid physical contact entirely (I would), you could either set up a powerful speaker/microphone system, or simply etch a Morse code table on the inside of the inner box. [Answer] Use a Tungsten Vacuum Box, and keep it in space. Earth likely wont be able to break out of the box (Tungsten has ~1.7x the density of lead, and a really high tensile strength), Fire won't be able to melt it (and also will die out in a vacuum sealed box), water in 0G will just be forced into a sphere unable to do anything, and air, if he somehow escapes the box, will disperse into the vacuum, due to pressure difference, making it suicidal for him to try turning into air. If you really want to make it hard for him to get out, layer the box. This answer assumes that magic handles the living requirements of the target. Edit: Tungsten Vacuum Box with small magnets littered across the floor for communication. Use an airlock system in order to safely provide access to food and water. Don't forget to give her a space suit, and provide oxegyn refills once in a while (or spare suits via airlock). If she tries to get out, she'll likely destroy the only things keeping her alive. [Answer] ## A completely closed system is the safest while still being relatively cheap A *closed system* is a system in which energy can enter and leave, but matter cannot. If you allow matter in and out, there is more of a risk of escape (turning into air and flying into the ducts, etc), but energy should be safe (the lights, etc) ## Food and Water Design the facility with self-sustaining farms and water tanks. Water can be recycled from the air and from waste after it's been released; food waste can become fertilizer through automatic processes. It's not nice, but it's worth a try. Alternatively, have a lifetime-supply of fertilizer already in place, in a container; have machines do the farming for the elemental too. ## Electricity All electricity used to power devices within the complex should be passed as radiation through a 1-meter thick layer of the strongest possible glass, then converted back into electricity; this eliminates ducts that could be used for escape as a gas or liquid. ## Air circulation This can be moderated by a device inside the compound. Use reduced oxygen levels, to limit the elemental's fire ability; consider also lacing the air with rohypnol or another significantly active drug that can preserve consciousness in low doses while inhibiting memory and decision making. ## Walls, floors, and ceilings These should be airtight, watertight, fully sealed materials; additional layers of padding would be ideal to prevent self-harm, as it's hard to intervene with a closed system from the outside. Beneath these layers, place one meter of steel, one meter of lead, and five of concrete. For good measure. ## Location While space is theoretically the most secure location to use, the air elemental stage may be a significant problem. If the creature can keep itself together in a gaseous state, it can likely survive in space long enough to make it back into the atmosphere of Earth - combining this with its fire capabilities, heat provided by ionizing radiation will also be insigificant. Therefore, you can manage on Earth, where it's cheaper, and you can still view it. Perhaps underground. ## Additional Security Consider * Multiple layers - closed systems inside closed systems * Thorough video surveillance * Surrounding each layer of concrete with a mesh of live wires; these will stun the elemental, and, if they break, the resulting loss of electricity will alert security teams * Releasing an additional drug into the facility's air system if anything is amiss, inducing coma if possible * Lowering the temperature or even freezing the facility as fast as possible if anything is amiss (even the fire part will be put out) ## Viewing Can be done safetly through security cameras or thick glass. [Answer] # Keep her in separate boxes > > she requires all of her disassembled parts to rejoin before she can. > > > She also can only recharge a very limited amount of energy outside of > human form. > > > So keep her as an element, but divide her into two boxes. Because her element is not all together, she can't go back to human form. Being outside her human form, she can only get a "very limited amount of energy", and is no longer a threat. Any airtight box should do for air, earth, water. She probably wont take a fire state as she doesn't have the energy. If she does, fill the box with water—without oxygen the fire can't exist. If you want to interrogate her human form, she should be very weakened from being forced to remain in a energy-draining state, so won't be much of a problem. How to make her go back to element form? Put her in a box that slowly grows smaller until she's forced to change shape. [Answer] Simplest answer? Drugs. Keep your shape shifter heavily sedated (or in an induced coma) and fed through a tube. It's easy, cheap and doesn't take up much space. If you need to talk to them you can slowly wake them up while keeping them on a cocktail of drugs that keeps them happy and compliant, so much so that they won't even consider the need to shape shift. Another option is to create a proprietary drug that's hugely addictive and has a short lifespan. Soon they'll be your willing slave, as long as they can have one more hit. As long as you keep the supply limited and the shifter doesn't know how the drug is made they're your personal puppet. --- If you want a slightly more vicious option: A shock (or explosive, depending on how the 'magic' works) collar that has electrodes embedded in the person's throat and spring loaded pressure sensors pressed against the skin. If the resistivity changes it goes off. If the pressure changes it goes off. If they stray too far outside a pre prescribed area it goes off. As long as the transformation isn't completely instantaneous and the shape shifter is still vulnerable to being killed/paralysed while human (or even if they can be convinced that they are) they can't shape shift without dying or searing electrical agony. This has three big advantages: 1: You can put them in a silk prison. Give them a garden and a nice house, just make sure they know that going past the petunias means searing electrical agony and/or death. This makes extreme actions (like trying to escape) less likely. Heck, you can even organise day trips if you really want to. 2: They're easy to access. You want to talk? Ok. Talk. Oh, and if you don't answer my questions then there's always searing electrical agony. 3: They can't get away. The prison is pretty much built into them. And any disobedience means... you get the picture. The downside is that you'd need to keep the collar charged. That's easily doable with prison guards, or if you just want to keep them contained you can leash them to the wall with a power cord. --- So basically: Don't try to make a prison. Just make sure the shifter wont do anything you don't want them to, then tell them to stay still. [Answer] **Got an enchanter around?** I couldn't say how many jerk kings, rich folk, etc have captured a character and slapped some manacles of [Anti-magic Field](http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/antimagicField.htm) on me. Using DnD 3.5 item creation charts, it would only cost them 198,000 gold. If gold were at 1,800 per ounce, the price tag means a little over $114 million... assuming we can scale the economy in this way. $114 million for each person is expensive but works on ANY magical prisoner. You also don't have to user manacles per se since it works at a 10 ft distance. **How much do you care about their power?** Make them forget they have any powers or how to access them. Lobotomy may be a nice permanent fix. You also may use psychosis, drugs or a combination to affect their memory or suppress their powers. [Answer] Make a solid, water tight, fireproof box with an air tight lid. Balance the box in such a way that if the weight inside changes even a little the lid slams shut, sealing the air in. ]
[Question] [ I’m interested in realistic and practical fuel or power sources for vehicles (particularly military ones), where there are no fossil fuels available. The setting is 400 years in the future. The only hand-wavey bit is FTL travel to nearby star systems, to explore and colonise. Most of the planets discovered are lifeless rocks without liquid water, so they have no alien coalfields or alien oilfields to exploit. My question is [similar to this one](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/57477/zero-emission-tanks/57922#57922) but I’m interested in more than main battle tanks. The types of places in the setting are: * Mars. Colonised 350 years ago. Terraforming has begun, but you can’t get far in 350 years, so most of the settlements are domed cities, para-terraformed sections of canyon or burrowed into rock. * Exoplanet X. Venus sized but without the runaway greenhouse effect. No liquid water because it is outside the Goldilocks zone – an orbit a bit further out than Mars’. No terraforming even attempted. * Earth. All the fossil fuel sources worth exploiting have been found, extracted and used up. However, compared to other less hospitable planets, Earth folks can plant huge tracts of land with palm oil plantations for biodiesel, sugar cane for ethanol, etc. And they still have plenty fissionable & fusionable (is that a word?) material. Any planet can have vats of microbes churning out interesting hydrocarbons - if that is genetically and biochemically feasible? Ignore electricity generation UNLESS it relates to transport (e.g. charging batteries or electric trains). Just assume for everyday electricity needs there are both fission and fusion reactors all over the place, and green energy sources on planets which have the appropriate ingredients (such as oceans and moon for tidal power on Earth). But in a war situation powerlines may be down… the enemy may hold the power stations and be denying your bit of the national grid any power… or you might have to cross an empty area of the planet which wasn’t on the grid to start with… The types of vehicles to consider power needs for are: * Any and all planet-based military vehicles from infantry fighting vehicles to artillery to aircraft. * And not exactly vehicles, but also consider self-propelled weapons which thus require their own power, e.g. missiles. * Civilian city to city transport – by road, rail, air or sea. * Surface to orbit transport (military and civilian) What fuels or power sources are feasible and practical? Especially for the military. [Answer] Different power sources for different purposes. * [Biofuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel), including alcohol and oils. * Hydrogen, [cracked](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water) from water using some source of electrical power. * Batteries, again recharged from electrical power source. * Electrical contact power, like trains using overhead power, and also induction power for maglevs. Combat vehicles might run on biofuel, it is relatively easy to handle and store. Imagine big tanks of the stuff, possibly underground. Civilian vehicles might go for hydrogen. Again there will be tank farms to even out seasonal changes in demand, but those could be vulnerable. For missiles and artillery propellant, it would be highly refined propellants, possibly based on biofuel. Low amounts in absolute numbers, so it can be stored. Surface to orbit will be difficult, and the quality of your engines and fuels will greatly affect the setting. If it is hydrogen/oxygen or refined biofuel/oxygen, you will have giant spaceports to put a few tons into orbit. [Answer] # Oxygen Fuels Require oxygen (in the atmosphere or stored) to burn. ## Hydrogen Hydrogen is easy to produce - just crack water, but it has low density and needs heavy and expensive storage tanks. High efficiency when used as rocket fuel. ## Methane The Sabatier reaction (CO2 + 4 H2 → CH4 + 2 H2O + energy) can be used to generate methane from hydrogen and carbon dioxide (from the atmosphere), producing methane and water (which can be cracked into hydrogen and reused). Can be used as fuel on mars (95.9% of mars's atmosphere is carbon dioxide). Still needs pressurized/cryogenic tanks, although less so than hydrogen. ## Liquid Hydrocarbons The Reverse-water-gas-shift reaction (CO2 + H2 → CO + H2O) followed by the Fischer–Tropsch process ((2n + 1) H2 + n CO → C(n) H(2n+2) + n H2O) can be used to synthesize liquid hydrocarbons. Water can be recycled back into hydrogen. # Batteries ## Lithium-Air Lithium-air batteries have the highest possible specific energy of up to 12 kwh per kilogram (close to gasoline at 13 kwh/kg), and are rechargeable. They do require air to operate though, although it can be stored. # Beam-Powered Propulsion Beaming power (either using lasers or microwaves) could be used for surface to orbit craft. The advantage is that the craft does not need to carry it's own power source. However, it is limited by the need for line-of-sight with the transmitter. Probably anything large enough to carry a beam receiver can carry a fission or fusion reactor. ## Lightcraft A laser beam reflects off a parabolic reflector on the spacecraft, focusing it onto a small area, causing the air to suddenly expand with each pulse, propelling the craft. Could be used for surface to orbit launch or large civilian aircraft in range of a laser installation. ## Laser Thermal Rocket A laser beam is focused onto propellant, heating it, the propellant would probably be hydrogen. Would probably be combined with Lightcraft propulsion. ## Microwave Electrical Transmission Transmitting electricity using microwaves, could be used for powering large ships from an orbital transmitter, or for wireless electrical power transmission of small craft using a rectenna. # In Summary For small craft (drones, etc.), Batteries or Microwave Electrical Transmission would be used. For large craft, either beamed power or internal fission/fusion reactors. Bridging the gap would be liquid hydrocarbons (or maybe methane), with stored oxidizers (possibly using a fuel cell). And batteries with high energy densities or hydrogen for civilian crafts (as it would probably be more efficient to charge a battery or crack hydrogen than to synthesize hydrocarbons). [Answer] Probably you will have lots of CO2's in your atmosphere but it lacks materials to be turned into hydrogen. If this is the case, using electricity, it is possible to separate CO2 into C and O. Pure carbon can be used as [fuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_carbon_fuel_cell) in the presence of oxygen. This might be inefficient but can be done without the need of organisms. Probably in time, the necessity will interest scientists and engineers to build converters with better conversion efficiency. It will still not burn as good as petroleum products. [Answer] In a world with FTL ... Main battle tanks use atomic (fusion/fission) power of course, or superbatteries for green-minded states. Best rechargeable batteries today have an energy density of about 0.8 MJ/kg, compared with 48 MJ/kg (60× higher) for diesel fuel or 24 MJ/kg (30× higher) for ordinary coal; by the time we invent an FTL engine, batteries may well reach energy densities comparable with fossil fuels. Thirty years ago best rechargeable batteries had energy densities around 0.2 MJ/kg. [Answer] for small vehicles and rockets, biofuels including methane are very feasible, there is a fungi that manufacture diesel a engineered form of it could do it easily. A bacterial vat used to turn waste into fuel is possible. better yet you can tailor your production instead of using fractionation. on Mars the Sabatier reaction is what you want. for trains, transport infrastructure nuclear and solar are solid options. as for orbital transport space elevators or launching railgun will drastically reduce the need for fuel since they can use the electrical grid. few vehicles will work well on more than one planet, just due to the atmospheric and temperature differences. [Answer] # Frozen Methane You can mine it from Earth's oceans (in the form of methane clathrate) and transport them to Mars etc. Or you can simply collect frozen/molten methane from the outer reaches of our solar system (or other solar systems, beyond the freeze line). It is also highly likely that 500 years in the future, we would have devised a method to produce methane from an endothermic reaction between carbon and hydrogen. The reaction can be carried out quite slowly with current technology. With passing time, it would get easier and easier to speed the process up. In this case, you would have huge factories running on nuclear power, producing and freezing methane, which is then sold on their chilled outlets, where chunks would be directly inserted into the vehicles' fuel tank, where parts of them would be gradually sublimated into gas form and burned as fuel. # Frozen Acetylene Acetylene ($C\_2H\_2$) has an even higher energy yield than methane. Freezing acetylene and then using it, instead of methane, would be even better and energy-efficient choice. However, production of large quantities of acetylene is difficult unless exhaustible supplies (like Calcium Carbide) are used. [Answer] If you've got the energy budget to do FTL, then you've got the energy budget to crack and reform atoms (from rock, for example) into any other useful atoms, like carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Fuse the C & H and presto: hydrocarbons! ]
[Question] [ In a fictional world, I'm trying to create a sword progression that makes sense. My two options are: 1. wood $\rightarrow$ granite $\rightarrow$ bronze $\rightarrow$ iron $\rightarrow$ steel 2. wood $\rightarrow$ bronze $\rightarrow$ iron $\rightarrow$ steel $\rightarrow$ granite So my question is: would a granite sword be stronger than a steel sword, or vice versa? I know that granite is higher on the [Mohs scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness), but how would this translate to a sword? [Answer] Granite makes a nice counter top, but ***would not*** make a good weapon - not blunt, and most certainly not edged. Keep in mind that even granite counter tops chip. If you were to make a sword-like thing out of it: * it would be very heavy * it would break apart the first time you swung it into something hard such as an opponent's shield, armor, or weapon. As far as steel goes please keep in mind that manufacturing good quality steel is actually a tricky process which relies heavily on the amount of carbon and other trace chemicals in it. Not all types of iron can be used to make good steel either. There's a reason why Damascus Steel was so highly valued in the Middle Ages: it was incredibly high quality compared to *anything* else at the time. We actually don't even know what went into making it - the recipe has been lost for hundreds of years - however we *do* know that most of the other stuff was not very good by today's standards (although you could certainly kill someone with it). And so, you can give up on granite weapons altogether, but should also pause and consider the implications of steel weaponry (good blacksmithing, knowledge of chemistry, etc.) [Answer] Assuming you are looking for materials for *just* swords, you will want to avoid anything very brittle, and anything too soft. A blade must be strong but must not shatter. This will pretty much eliminate wood, granite, and iron from your lists, though iron is a fickle beast and deserves some more consideration, which I'll get to in a bit. **Pre-Metal** Let's look at Earth history for a minute and see how blades developed in real life. Early blades were mostly Flint or Bone or Glass, but relied primarily on razor edges or blunt chopping power to achieve anything, and would more easily be classified as axes or knives than as a sword. **Bronze** The first real swords were made from Bronze. The history of bronze itself could fill a book, but suffice to say that Bronze is hard and strong enough to be used in a sword, but is not really comparable to modern weapons in any way. Bronze is relatively soft, but it does have the potential to hold a wicked sharp edge, and it is easy to sharpen due to its softness. **Iron** Bronze quickly fell out of style once Iron weapons became feasible. Pure Iron is difficult to acquire, and in the process of purifying it yields a wide variety of end products suitable for use in tools and weapons. Most iron is quite brittle, but working the metal in a forge or using other techniques can soften it and harden it into a useful blade. **Steel** This is where Steel comes into the picture. Really, Steel is just Iron that has been worked to the point of becoming softer and stronger. The exact chemistry involved is super complex and there are a variety of steels available, but the technology involved developed as a result of iron working. Something to note about steel is that the iron used in the process can create varying results with the same process. Japanese Iron, for example, is basically the worst. This is ironically why Japanese swords tended to be so well made: in order to produce a weapon worth anything, the swordsmiths had to work the iron over and over and over to get a consistency they could use. **Beyond Steel** Beyond Steel, there are very few metals (or alloys) that seem to be suited to sword making. I have read that Iridium, when worked similarly to iron, might produce a similar, yet superior alloy to Steel, but I'm unfamiliar with the science involved and Iridium is super rare. A theoretical alloy of Iron and Aluminum may produce a blade-worthy alloy, but no such metal has yet been created. My only other suggestion might be some ceramic derivative. Ceramics are usually quite brittle, but there are some used in knives designed for non-detection that hold an edge well and resist shattering. There may be ceramics suited to full swords, but none of which I am aware. One exciting possibility is a material called Metal Glass, which is a metal structured amorphously like glass; this material has properties somewhere between typical metal and ceramic. [Answer] Others have explained why granite is a poor choice. No, what you want is [obsidian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian). [![Raw obsidian and obsidian blades from the Mayan site of Takalik Abaj](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UXKBP.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UXKBP.jpg) *Raw obsidian and obsidian blades from the Mayan site of Takalik Abaj.* [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian#/media/File:Takalik_Abaj_obsidian_1.jpg) Sharper than steel, [so sharp it's used today as a scalpel](http://www.finescience.com/Special-Pages/Products.aspx?ProductId=296&CategoryId=56&lang=en-US), obsidian was used by Central and South American pre-Columbian cultures who lacked metalworking and steel. Rather than making an entire weapon from it, it chips rather easily, flakes would be embedded in a wooden club to make a practical weapon known as a [Macuahuitl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl). [![16th Century depiction of Aztec warriors wielding Macuahuitl from the Florentine Codex](https://i.stack.imgur.com/M0KBX.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/M0KBX.jpg) *16th Century depiction of Aztec warriors wielding Macuahuitl from the [Florentine Codex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florentine_Codex)* --- It's difficult to put obsidian on a progression with metal swords. Metal swords have a clear progression from duller, heavier, softer, and brittle to sharper, lighter, harder, and more flexible. But they also progress from relatively simple to forge (bronze and iron) to highly complicated (good steel) with good steel swords requiring a large and broad mining and steel industry. In contrast, obsidian swords are fairly easy to make and don't require an industrial base. Obsidian and flint naturally flake into sharp edges. The process, called [knapping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapping), predates history. If you have the stone you can make the swords. It can do some horrible damage... > > They have swords of this kind — of wood made like a two-handed sword, but with the hilt not so long; about three fingers in breadth. The edges are grooved, and in the grooves they insert stone knives, that cut like a Toledo blade. I saw one day an Indian fighting with a mounted man, and the Indian gave the horse of his antagonist such a blow in the breast that he opened it to the entrails, and it fell dead on the spot. And the same day I saw another Indian give another horse a blow in the neck, that stretched it dead at his feet. > > > *From ["Narrative of Some Things of New Spain and of the Great City of Temestitan"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_of_Some_Things_of_New_Spain_and_of_the_Great_City_of_Temestitan)* But a Macuahuitl was quite heavy compared to a steel sword, and it did not lend itself to thrusting. It had to be swung like a club. It would require loose formations so each warrior had room to swing their weapon, in contrast to tight Eurasian formations like the [phalanx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx) which preferred a short, thrusting sword like a [Gladius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladius). Because of this lack of piercing ability, it would have great difficulty penetrating even a good [mail shirt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_%28armour%29). Rather than a progression, stone vs metal swords is more about the availability (or lack) of the materials, and the fighting techniques used by your warriors. And a wooden sword is just a club. ]
[Question] [ What would the world, and more specifically, productivity on modern computers, be like if Undo (a.k.a. Ctrl-Z) functionality has never been and will never be invented? To clarify: there is no functionality on a modern-day computer that lets you undo and/or redo your action, in no software whatsoever. You can still manually negate your actions, e.g. you can still delete something you just typed, but you'd have to do it all manually. Would it just be a minor dent in productivity? Or would there be places/tasks in which this would be a major problem? Are there particular tasks that could almost never be performed without Undo? P.S. This question, admittedly less inspiring questions than most around here, arises from the claim of a friend of mine that Ctrl-Z is the best invention in computing since the computer itself. [Answer] The original WordStar 1.0 (word processor) did not have undo. People still used them in offices. And they were still productive. It had delete and backspace. It's biggest draw in the office was that employees always produced perfect documents and they can proofread before printing (a big thing then) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS8RWGqUWPE> Book authors loved Wordstar no more messing around for liquid paper when you make mistakes with your typewriter. People found ways around the limitation of not having undo, like making multiple copies of a file. One of the biggest request was undo, so the next version I think had undo. So yes undo is important to people. extra note: Game of Thrones was written on WordStar 4 <http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/14/5716232/george-r-r-martin-uses-dos-wordstar-to-write> [Answer] IMHO, your friend is right. Civ V has no undo that I know, and thus the most common reason for a unit dying, challenged only by the automation AI being broken, is clicking the wrong hex. A game should not really be about making sure you do not click the wrong spot, and neither should any other application. That said, defining the effect is elusive, many games have no undo and instead use save games, operating systems use "trash cans", restore points and backups instead of multi-level undo. Databases use transactions and backups. And there is no convincing reason this makes any of these less "productive" or usable. By comparing applications that have undo to the ones that do not, the main benefit seems to be that you can do something without needing to know if it will work out or precisely how to do it by stepwise experimentation of the problem. This would be a major pain if you had to do the saves, versioning, and reverting of changes manually. Maybe this would qualify as something that could almost never be performed without Undo? Without undo the "granularity of experimentation" would be much coarser and consequently the common process of stepwise refinement would suffer, probably to the point of "major issue". Another "major issue" would be that learning to use complex interfaces would take much longer. As said the total effect is elusive, but anyone who does "fiddly" tasks that benefit from stepwise refinement such as design or editing or has to use "fiddly" interfaces such the aforementioned Civ V or, more relevant to your question, most Adobe applications will approve of the sentiment your friend expressed. Undo might not be the most useful invention, but it must be one of the most appreciated. I'd say the dent would be more creativity than productivity. Undo doesn't really allow doing more, but it is a big help with doing better. This probably does help productivity in the long run, but it is the indirect accumulated effect of things being just a little bit better and usable, not a direct effect you can see at any particular task. [Answer] > > P.S. This question, admittedly less inspiring questions than most around here, arises from the claim of a friend of mine that Ctrl-Z is the best invention in computing since the computer itself. > > > I'm tempted to point out that Ctrl-Z, while commonly used for an "undo" feature, is just a keyboard shortcut. Back in the CP/M and later the DOS days, Ctrl-Z (or more accurately character 0x1A, often displayed as the bigram `^Z`) was often use to indicate *end of file* in text files and input. Not quite the same thing! **That said,** there seems to be two aspects to your question: what could cause computer software to never gain "undo" features, and what would using that software be like? > > What could cause computer software to never gain "undo" features? > > > One possibility that I can see would be **if computer memory (and storage) was very expensive.** Keeping track of several states and allowing you to undo to work your way back through those states requires memory of some kind. The exact amount of memory required and the memory speed required depends on the type of data you are working with, how efficiently the changes themselves can be represented and how fast you need the undo feature to be to the user; all these are going to be different for different types of applications. A bitmap graphics editor is going to need a lot more and likely faster memory for a usable undo feature than a plain text editor, for example. A specialized financial application might be able to make do with storing only a few small pieces of information and recomputing everything else on undo/redo, if memory is scarce but computing resources are relatively plentiful. Or you could simply re-run any computations based on corrected input, discarding any previous results; this appears likely to have been the approach taken by early computers, which simply did not even have persistent storage (although they quickly followed, even paper tape readers for use with computers were a later invention). If computer memory is very expensive, then you are going to **want to conserve it as much as you possibly can,** because any memory used for "undo" state data is going to be memory you cannot use for useful *current state*. And the more memory your program requires to run, the less people are going to be willing to buy and run your program. Hence, memory-hungry features will be at a disadvantage. Since undo requires both code and data, and potentially lots of particularly data, such a feature would be at a disadvantage. **This doesn't necessarily mean "undo" features would never be invented** -- someone, somewhere, would almost certainly start thinking "man, I really wish I could get back what I had two minutes ago!" -- but their use and perhaps even availability would be restricted to niche use cases and applications. > > What would using software without "undo" features be like? > > > You would most likely focus on **fixing any mistakes in place,** rather than undoing back to a previous state and applying new changes from there. This is easier for some types of software than with others. For example, with some sort of text editor, fixing in place is relatively simple. (Yes, this includes programming, because most modern forms of programming at the core is about manipulating text representations of programs.) With advanced graphics or design, fixing in place is going to be more involved, but still certainly possible. (Lots of great art has been produced on media which does not allow any type of undo other than fixing in place.) Which leads us to that you would **think before you leap.** You would probably spend more time considering the impacts of any change, because you would be reluctant to have to fix any mistake you make. Saving regularly when you have something that you are happy with and keeping several revisions stored would likely be a common use pattern, although that also runs up against memory and storage requirements plus the problem of how long the fresh save itself takes. But it would give the user a limited form of undo functionality on computers that don't natively support it. **Using such a computer** would likely be similar to how one uses a typewriter or paint canvas: focus on making the initial revision as good as possible, then either live with mistakes being present, or correct them in place and perhaps make a new "corrected" copy for distribution. For a perhaps extreme example: **does your (computer-controlled) washing machine have an undo feature?** Mine doesn't. It does have an abort feature (so I can stop the washing program at an arbitrary point), but it doesn't have undo (no built-in way to make the laundry dirty again). [Answer] Undo is an incredible tool for software developers. It's not just for removing a couple words you didn't mean to write, it can easily bring you back to the last almost working point before you really started messing with it. Let's just say I would have to have a very different philosophy about how I perform my work if it was unavailable, largely making back-ups frequently before making changes and slowing me down having to always remember and think about that and then trying to find the right version to go back to. However, for Undo to never have been or will be invented, the only way I could see that as even a remote possibility is if the number of mistakes we want to correct are so few it is just as easy to fix them. Either we are near perfect in our use of computers or we just don't care about the mistakes. [Answer] Fun question! I am going to tackle it from [alternate-history](/questions/tagged/alternate-history "show questions tagged 'alternate-history'") point of view and offer several plausible scenarios from that: ## No Undo at all: **1) Computers did not make it to "personal":** Did the machine for cracking Enigma code had Undo? I doubt it. Did [ENIAC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC) had undo? Double doubt it. Correct me, if I am wrong, but I think that because we discovered transistor, it allowed computers to be smaller. Imagine a world where we did not discover transistor. As you can see, it would still allow computers to appear, but they would remain big, bulky and ... without undo functionality. ## Almost no Undo: **2) Ridiculous software patent owned by patent troll company:** The big names, as we know them now, started from garage. (Yes, both Microsoft and Apple). Imagine that PaTrollCo\* is buying the SW company which came with "Undo" first and patents it. Since then, the PaTrollCo sells this patent for *ridiculous* amount of money, actually causing that almost no one is using this functionality \* Not actual name, all resemblance with dead, living or other companies is purely fictional. Do not sue me, please **3) Bill Gates was right** > > 640K ought to be enough for anybody\* > > > Yes, I know, that Bill gates did not actually say it. But lets say he did say it, and actually he was right. If anything goes above 640K of RAM, it causes [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com) and crashes (pun in link intended). *And no one knows why* Obviously, this is then "engineering issue" and people would be hacking their systems to be able to work with such limitations. Great example of what can be done with known set of limitations, are consoles. If you compare first game for given gaming console, and the last one, you will be amazed what power can be "juiced out" from given console. So this could in theory provide Undo to computers, but it would be *pricy feature* \* Dear lawyers, this sentence was said by alternate Bill Gates in alternate Universe. If you want to sue me for this, please do it in alternate reality. Thank you **4) We never realised it can be done** "Oh shoot, I accidentally made the whole spreadsheet red" "Well, you will have to work overtime to fix it." "I wonder if there could be better way to..." "No, there is not." Obviously the least plausible explanation of the whole situation. We know people like to hack their machines, and since the whole [free software](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation) community is around, I would not recommend going this way ## Way around: **4-eye principle:** Even now, in our glorious\* current universe, there are processes which cannot be undone. One of ways around it is to require second person to confirm such action before that action goes live. \* Subjective feelings of "glorious" can vary. Please do not sue me. [Answer] **We still don't have undo.** Oh sure you can reverse a few trivial changes to a word doc. But consider. You are a sys admin. You have an urgent situation caused by a disk getting full. You find that a looping system has filled /var/log/blah with junk. You are typing rm -rf /var when the lights flicker. You look at your screen and realize with horror that the cursor is now on the next line. The mains spike caused your system to see an "enter" pressed. All of /var is gone. Pray you have good backups and that your story about the mains spike is believed. Or if that is too technical imagine that you have just composed an e-mail warning one of your new colleagues about a particularly obnoxious but important customer. He really p\*\*\*ed you off yesterday so you do not hold back. In fact you exaggerate somewhat. You press send. And then realize that somehow you have sent it to *everyone in your address book*. Career over? At least it's unlikely that either of these kill anybody. I'll leave the stories about radiotherapy machines and nuclear reactors to your imagination. But do Google the phrase "always mount a scratch monkey". [Answer] The forces that created undo would create undo sooner or later. Let's call it much later. You see, Undo didn't work well in the early days because it was constrained by memory. The forces that created source control have existed since programs existed. The source control tools have existed since they could reasonably exist in software. Big sprawling branching source trees would exist, and the lack of an undo would push their development harder and faster. Something rather like svn would appear in the 70s, and that's only the beginning. Programmers would learn to commit their work early and often, using source control as a proxy for the missing undo. But there's more. With this frequent commit rate, the forces that created git would be magnified so great that git becomes worthwhile to build about as soon as the internet exists. But its form is different; with all these local commits, history compression on push/merge becomes the normal operation. There is no reason to see the developers local commits, and bisect and other tools go smack running into them, so we don't keep them that long. (There's a huge philosophy thing along these lines but we need not go there.) Corporate document control would be bootstrapped along much similar lines pretty quickly because the overriding need is so great and process heavy document control just doesn't cut it. Let us say they just use source control with a dumber front end. With the explosion of disk space in the 2000s and the explosion of memory in the 2010s, undo becomes inevitable, but it takes on a stigma. It screams to those who know "I lack the ability to use source control." The primitiveness of the tool in comparison to the source control/document control tool would result in there always being the elite who switch to the more powerful/sharper programmer tools that never developed such a crutch. ]
[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/238965/edit). Closed 1 year ago. [Improve this question](/posts/238965/edit) In my world, some people are born with a condition called sensory blackout syndrome, in which they cannot see, hear, feel, smell, or taste. Is there a possible way for them to still have any experience? I don't mean that they can see, or hear, but I mean that they have some state of being. Is it possible for said people to have any experiences at all? [Answer] Without checking up I don't know if this is a real syndrome or if it is that you accurately described it. But .. With the symptoms you've described, namely that none of their senses work and that they experience no external stimuli of any sort, No, both by the literal definition and that of an internal existence within their own thoughts I presume you to mean, no, they can't experience anything. Pain and any type of 'motion', 'impact' or 'gravity' sense we might have are propagated off of our sense of touch (mostly by nerves at the base of 'hairs' translating the motion of fluid in the inner ear for any motion related sense) so presumably none of them work either. So (as you already stipulated anyway) no sensory input at all from birth, and likely before birth. Which only leaves their own inner thoughts. With no sensory input of any sort there can be no developmental progress of any sort either (let alone actual langauge acquisition) and without any of that there's no framework for any kind of internal monologue of any sort to exist within either. No input from birth means no development and once each developmental window is passed it becomes impossible to make up that development later, this we know from various tragic real world examples. > > And if it really does have no working senses at all it's brain can't receive the necessery stimulus to instinctively start breathing after birth and it will simply asphyxiate and die unless put on a ventilator .. will have no swallow reflex so won't swallow when fed, etc. > > > So imagine a PC with no operating software, that's what you'll have, even if you can hook it up to some sensors later and switch it on that's all you'll have (and all you'll ever have), a blank screen that does nothing and never will. > > Hmm .. Musk's Neurolink does present us with a potential workaround for the lack of all sensory input if it was employed early enough, before all of the developmental windows have closed .. but I'm presuming that you're assuming no artificial intervention in all this? > > > [Answer] This is a state that usually arises from brain damage and the medical term is [Persistent Vegetative State](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_vegetative_state): > > The vegetative state is a chronic or long-term condition. This condition differs from a coma: a coma is a state that lacks both awareness and wakefulness. Patients in a vegetative state may have awoken from a coma, but still have not regained awareness. In the vegetative state patients can open their eyelids occasionally and demonstrate sleep-wake cycles, but completely lack cognitive function. > > > If the person has no senses at all, then they cannot react to stimuli, so they will not demonstrate any cognitive ability. Fits the description above. Now if you google it a little bit further, some articles mention that one in ten people in vegetative state may actually be conscious, but that was discovered by [scanning their brains and asking them to picture things](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24232360-800-shocking-evidence-shows-people-in-vegetative-states-may-be-conscious/). A person who by design can never experience anything would neither hear the request nor picture anything, though, so whether they have a state of consciousness is up to philosophical debate. --- But let's get creepy now. [Human brains in a jar neurons in a petri dish can learn to play Pong](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03229-y). Those neurons don't have eyes nor ears connected to them, yet they are hard at work and making fast decisions based on what they've learned. You could say that someone without senses can have a conscious experience, provided their brain is primed in a way similar to the petri dish neurons. That could be done by uploading stuff to that brain *a la* The Matrix. Or we can jusy have a natural, hardwired consciousness - but given that we seem to have zero datapoints on this in the real world this is again up to philosophical debate. [Answer] **They're dead** I don't know of a Real World example of what you're looking for. Good! I like new things. We do have something similar, it's called [congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA)](https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/congenital-insensitivity-to-pain-with-anhidrosis/). In that case, the individual can't feel pain or temperature, but they can obviously see, hear, taste, smell, etc. Go read that article about CIPA. It's important, because it's part of the basis for my answer. I see two basic physiological conditions that could rationalize your syndrome. The first (based on CIPA) is that the nervous system is inoperable. The brain literally receives no stimuli. *This is important!* Because, basically, the nerves in your nose and the nerves in your fingers are just that, *nerves.* It's the brain that makes the distinction between smell and touch. If the nervous system is inoperable then the baby can't feel, taste, or smell the consumption of anything. The child might feel hunger, but won't feel/taste/smell available food. The [gag reflex won't work, either](https://www.healthline.com/health/dental-and-oral-health/gag-reflex), meaning the first time anyone tries to feed the baby it'll aspirate — if the baby chose to feed at all (there's nothing to tell the baby its mouth is open or closed...). And that assumes that the nerves that control heart, lungs, kidneys, etc. function to allow the body to live at all. So, what we know amongst humanity that behaves similarly to what you're looking for would result in death. Pretty quickly. **Or... maybe they're not dead.** But, let's assume the second physiological rationalization of the syndrome: *there's a problem with the brain.* Your autonomic functions (heart, lungs) work just fine, but the brain is unable to identify any other stimulus. Humans have a few things like this, too. Consider [aphasia](https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/5502-aphasia), where the brain can't get the body to speak or understand what other people are saying. Or things like [auditory processing disorder](https://www.healthyhearing.com/report/50491-Auditory-processing-disorders-in-children) where the ear works fine but the brain can't process the audio or [visual agnosia](https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23421-visual-agnosia) where the eyes work fine but the brain can't process the video. So, we have Real Life experience that supports your goal. But, frankly, I think they're still dead. Even if we assume they can feel hunger and thirst, and the gag reflex works, the child can't tell if it's eating something that will kill it. It can't smell something that warns of danger. It can't feel pain. Lots of things go wrong when the body can't tell it's in danger. But! Let's assume the parents know exactly what's going on and they selflessly sacrifice their own lives to ensure this child never stubs a toe or gets a cut (gangrene!), doesn't run into trees and avoids the oncoming honking cars. The parents quite literally become the child's guardian angels. What then? **You bet, if they live long enough to have an intellectual comprehension of what's happening around them, they'd experience plenty. Maybe...** Vacating the senses doesn't vacate emotions. The first time our teenager gets cheated, the child will feel anger and hate. Love, jealousy, joy... all that could be experienced, just not in exactly the way the rest of us can. We might feel happy feeling a warm breeze on our faces. The child would feel happy that it's not hungry. What constitutes "experience" would change quite a bit, but yes, it would happen. But what's the point? The child has no way to learn association beyond the most basic things. It might get angry when it's hungry. It might actually feel serene when it's not. But since the child can't feel a pencil to be taught how to write (much less use Braille) and it can't even feel it's head being led to shake "no" or nod "yes," what's the value of any experience? There's no way for the child to know it has a world to interact with other than when it feels hungry something happens that makes the hunger go away. What's the point of experience if there's no way to act on it or share it? So, I think I'd better stick with "they're dead." *By the way, now that I've written my answer, I believe this to be another form of "how can I defeat my godlike character?" questions. The answer to all such questions is, "you can't, your godlike character needs a weakness." You're in the same boat. What experience the child could have would be so little and the results of that experience so irrelevant that the child might as well have no experience at all. Methinks you need to re-analyze why you want such an all-encompassing (aka, "godlike") ailment that you can basically do nothing with.* [Answer] **Everyone goes through sensory deprivation after birth, some don't regain their senses.** The current scientific knowledge of how human brains develop after birth is not enough to answer this: it could be that they have some [innate model of the world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innatism), or they could be [a blank slate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa) until formed by external influences. However, in an alternate world evolution could certainly drive development to the direction that there is pre-existing "experience" built into every brain. Consider some external condition that causes *temporary* sensory deprivation after birth. This could be e.g. cryo-sleep or long sheltering inside life support machinery. Any babies with inherent model of the world from birth would have a head start once released to the real world, so there would be natural selection pressure for this. It would take thousands or millions of years for evolutionary changes to occur. Now, some children might never regain their senses, resulting in the syndrome you describe. They would know that there should be a world, and might even know enough to do basic bodily functions such as eating on schedule without feedback, but could never gain more information than they were born with. [Answer] Despite elementary school teaching, you have more than five senses. You have senses of balance, of temperature, of pain. You have a sense of proprioception (close your eyes and touch your nose. What sense told you where your finger was before you touched it?) You have a sense of your internal body, which is not the same as your sense of touch (feeling your heart beat, or your intestines move). You have a sense of time. So overall, yes. Your characters can still have many experiences. (That's without going into neuroprostheses and similar). [Answer] It depends on two axes: 1. How much of a materialist you want to be. If your world allows for spiritual activity to directly affect the mind, then such a person would only be able to sense spiritual phenomena. If not, then we have no externally-caused experiences. If yes, then this would be quite interesting indeed. Such a person might be aware only of nothing except all the angels and devils which likely as not surround us constantly without our knowing, and yet would be unable to communicate this reality with anyone. 2. How much of our consciousness is innate and how much is learned. A person with your disorder would only have the innate part, and would think without language and only in terms of either pure imagination or instinctual knowledge. Thus, assuming there is an innate consciousness, they would experience their own thoughts, but they would only be able to think or reason based on pieces of innate knowledge (and possibly spiritual perception, see point 1). In the real world, it is impossible to say exactly what this entails; even from before birth, our consciousness is constantly being informed by sensory stimuli, so it's impossible to filter out what may be innate. Instinctual knowledge is a controversial subject, but it's unlikely that we're born completely blank slates. It seems like, in addition to desires necessary for survival like food and water, we have innate social and sexual desires. We seem to have an innate knowledge of what human faces look like. There even is some evidence that we have an innate knowledge that snakes and spiders are dangerous. If we assume that your disorder allows a person to perceive his/her own body, then they would experience hunger and thirst. It's likely also that they would experience loneliness. [Answer] A person, although deprived of all sensory inputs, still has wants and needs based on their hardwired brain parts. Assuming those are still intact. For example: a person with zero input can still have a need to procreate. They still need shelter, or are perhaps, deprived of any sensory input, think that they are sheltered. And they probably still have some fear of the unknown. However, [as some sources suggest,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child) after a certain age, if their condition is not alleviated, it is likely that they will not be able to learn speech or form abstract thought. [Answer] ## Dreams and/or ESP One theory on dreams is that they are caused by random electrical impulses that your brain interprets through its learned experiences. Your child would have no learned experiences, but (provided you get around all of the physical reasons it would simply die) the brain does have electrical activity regardless. I would think that it is possible that the brain's neural net would begin training itself. We would have no idea of where that training would go. It wouldn't be a "dream" as we know it, it would have no point of reference, but it may cause feedback that would develop neural pathways in certain ways. It would be like the superstitious pigeons (<https://awesci.com/superstitious-pigeons/>); the brain may get *something* positive out of some electrical impulse that is generated by an outgoing impulse that moves an arm. So the body flops an arm around every once in a while simply to activate a neuron. The brain would be in a formative state, and would be training itself, but in a completely non-human way as far as we are concerned. If there's any possibility of electrical activity being detected by our brain, whether there's ESP and ghost's in your world or just radio noise from the x-ray machine being turned on, this is when it would be picked up. There's no external input to override whatever weak signal might be coming in, so the self-training neural net may amplify whatever it can get. The chances of it ever doing anything with that are purely fantasy, though. Maybe the brain ends up training itself to mimic the signal, so with ESP you get a thought coming out or an ekg reading that looks human, or maybe some electrical equipment starts acting up and it gets traced to some weird near-by feedback. [Answer] # No, this person would not have any experiences Some people believe the mind is a sense, but in truth it is the compiler of our senses; if it does not have any senses to receive input from, then the person is essentially dead. To change an analogy given in a previous answer, it would be like a PC with no keyboard or mouse, it might have some input already programmed into it, but it will never be able to do anything new. Why couldn't they do other intellectual tasks? Well lets name a few: * *Math*: How could you perform mathematical task if you have never seen the difference between two and three. They can't feel there fingers to count them either. * *Music*: How would you know chords? What even is sound? You've never heard it. * *Stories*: You've never seen, smelt, tasted, or felt anything. You would have no where to begin in constructing a story. * *Memory*: There is nothing to remember. If you were dropped from a two story building you wouldn't even know it. * *Dreaming*: Even the wildest of dreams still have people, places, and things. This person would have never seen any of those and therefore the only thing they might dream about is the same blackness they are used to. My point isn't to give an exhaustive list but hopefully you see my point that there would be nothing for them to experience without senses. [Answer] Let us consider a thing, rather than a person. The world telephone network may have as many circuits as the human brain, and the same mixture of long and short range connections. It is complex enough to think. The individual phone messages might double as neutrons firing to it. But what would it think about? Would it be like the creature in the abyss of no dimensions in 'Flatland', who knows no other world but itself. Ray Bradbury put it like this... Night Call, Collect. ``` Suppose and then suppose and then suppose That wires on the far-slung telephone black poles Sopped up the billion-flooded words they heard Each night all night and saved the sense And meaning of it all. Then, jigsaw in the night, Put all together and In philosophic phase Tried words like moron child. Thus mindless beast All treasuring of vowels and consonants Saves up a miracle of bad advice And lets it filter whisper, heartbeat out One lisping murmur at a time. So one night soon someone sits up Hears sharp bell ring, lifts phone And hears a voice like Holy Ghost Gone far in nebulae That beast upon the wire, Which with sibilance and savorings Down continental madnesses of time Says Hell and O And then Hell-o. To such Creation Such dumb brute lost Electric Beast, What is your wise reply? ``` ]
[Question] [ One unique way of making a reptilian humanoid is a rather fanciful joint in which human-like shoulders, including the extension of the shoulderblade, are seemingly stapled to the sides of the ventral face of the chest. Such an anatomy is seen, for example, in the lizalfos from LOZ:BOTW [![A botw Lizalfo](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WunUn.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WunUn.png) There is an issue with this design, that being the internal anatomy of this structure: Unlike the human form, a normal shoulderblade would intersect through the ribs, which is not possible. There also seems to be issues with the muscles. While we could reinvent everything, that is a bit of a cop-out here Could these shoulders be made to fit together within the set of bones and muscles in the tetrapods? [Answer] ## Second elbow The creature you refer to looks like a 90s alien with an easy skeleton to animate for games. Another issue that strikes me is the 360 degrees freedom of that shoulder! These beasts you only find in games.. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7gVml.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7gVml.png) <https://www.google.com/search?q=lizalfos&tbm=isch> Consider a second elbow, like in arthropods. The "upper upper" arm can be firmly attached to a narrower humanoid shoulder, which need not be too prominent. Together, the two elbows will provide angular freedom the lizalfos got used to. The upper elbow gives xz-freedom, the lower elbow handles yz-freedom. Less bone mass and muscle is required to support the shoulder, muscle is in the upper arms around the elbows. The shoulder can be less prominent, but still has to carry the mass.. this creature has huge arms, when the musculature would be complete ! [Answer] ## Your anatomy is fine There is nothing impossible about your creatures shoulder anatomy. The human shoulder joint is very unusual - using it a reference is just going to throw you off. Looking at most animals, the shoulder blade is vertical on the side of the body. Apes in general have derived shoulders evolved for a particular type of climbing. As apes we also have chest cavities that are wider than they are tall which is also weird - most animals have a narrow but deep chest. A few things your anatomy tells us 1. The shoulder joint of your creature is not very muscular meaning it is not very strong. Which kind of makes sense - if it had anymore mass in the front half of its body it would fall over. 2. It probably can't raise its hands far over its head, or if it can, its arms can go back further than vertical. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bXTxN.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bXTxN.png) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rz42o.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rz42o.png) [Answer] **The Spine is Not Where You Think** ~~If I understand correctly the problem is arms and legs are usually anchored to the spine.~~ But how can that be if the spine is located here? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LnZbI.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LnZbI.png) The solution is to have the spine here instead: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mgMeb.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mgMeb.png) [Answer] **Flamingo Knees** [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/An0Ec.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/An0Ec.png) What look like shoulders are actually elbows. The real shoulders are embedded inside the body. The *forearm* is made of extended and fused metacarpals. The *hand* is made of phalanges. [Answer] **Your lizard has a thoracic kyphosis.** [![kyphosis](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rXMFi.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rXMFi.png) [![kyphosis](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bctmx.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bctmx.jpg) <https://www.chortho.com/specialties/kyphosis> The shoulders are in the same place as normal. Because the spine curves back it seems like the shoulders are too far forward. Really the back is farther back. The spine is curved and so the front to back (anterior - posterior) excursion of the thorax is greater. ]
[Question] [ I'm working on a steampunk-inspired low-fantasy setting where combat is primarily conducted via WWI-style artillery. Airships are employed extensively in ship-to-ship and ship-to-ground warfare, and are countered by fixed ground batteries that are more powerful and longer range than those employed on airships. (Airship weight problems are not in scope here.) These ground batteries cannot move and must be connected to centralized power stations. Infantry are used to disable and capture ground positions, including disabling these batteries, which are usually some distance from the area that they are meant to defend. This means that if a city is under attack and its defensive batteries are destroyed or disabled, the attacking fleet has effectively won, since aerial bombardment could presumably flatten a city once the fleet is in range. I was originally going to introduce mages that work effectively as sci-fi bubble shield generators, but that solution feels a little too contrived and tailored to this specific situation. My current idea is to have cities defended by short-range [flak towers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flak_tower), which will attempt to detonate shells mid-air before they reach their target. Is this a feasible approach to countering high-altitude mobile artillery, and are there any other counters that could be possible with Industrial Revolution–WWI technology? [Answer] ## Interception of large high velocity artillery shells would require; 1. **The existence of exceptionally sensitive Radar or Ladar detection systems** In real life artillery fire can be detected by ground based radar units with enough accuracy that the trajectory of the shells can be calculated and then back tracked to the firing positions allowing an opponent to call in 'counter batter fire' on the guns which fired the shells. But what your requiring is at least 10 orders of magnitude more difficult. 2. **Advanced high speed calculating machines** capable of readings from the detectors, in real time and processing it (again in real time) to determine an interception point. These machines in turn would need accurate, real time data on local atmospheric conditions at the time of firing including e.g air pressure, temperature, wind velocity & direction etc. 3. **High speed/accurate clocks and precise maps** (to assist in making the relevant calculations) 4. **Automated gun systems** linked to and directly controlled by the calculating machines In short your looking for a super hyped up version of something like Israel's '**Iron Dome**' system or some kind of **Phalanx CIWS**. Which is, I suppose 'doable' in a Steam Punk setting but really? It's still veering more into conventional Hard SF. On the plus side, as is the case with the two systems named above your guns don't have to be long ranged. The idea is to hit incoming shells before they impact so rapid, accurate, short range fire is the key not hits at long range. (Lasers if you have them?) The issue you have though (if you insist on a WW1 setting) is that in real life there were no WW1 or even WW2 technological systems capable of identifying artillery shells on the fly and plotting intercept courses. Artillery fire control calculators were bulky electrical/mechanical devices and that initially relied on the Mark 1 eyeball for targeting information then later during WW2 on radar. No system then in existence was capable of plotting an intercept for an incoming artillery shell in real time. [Answer] **Frame Challenge -- Blimps are Squishy** [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3sVno.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3sVno.gif) You want to balance Blimp vs City combat. You are worried the blimps are too powerful. The solution is to realise that blimps are also hyper vulnerable bags of air. It is much easier to make a hole in a big bag of air than to make a hole in a ground-based gun emplacement. The blimp's only defense is being high above the ground. This protects it from smaller guns. On the other hand it can drop bombs from as high as it needs since they fall due to gravity. To balance the combat simply impose a flight ceiling to the blimps. If they fly too high they will be blown around by the weather or they cannot aim their bombs correctly. This is WW1-era so the bombs are unguided. The best thing about this solution is you do not need to decide the exact ceiling. Too high makes the blimp invincible. Too low gets the blimp snagged on radio antennae and goat horns. Somewhere in between lies the ideal height for your plot. Purposefully leave the details unexplained. With the blimps a safe 2000ft or so, it is much easier to shoot them down. You don't need big mortar emplacements. You just need something one stage up from a soldier's rifle. Think a Vickers but built as a big rifle rather than a big machine gun. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rWnS7.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rWnS7.jpg) Those things can easily be moved around by hand. Heck, even a team of riflemen can have reasonable success with sustained fire at a blimp. [Answer] Short answer: no. But there are a few other ways to spin this, especially if you look towards reality. Airships didn't play the role you envision them for a few reasons: * They are slow. A defender has lots of time to prepare. * Low service ceiling WW1 means no pressurised hulls, which imposes a pretty hard limit on the service ceiling. Also, the higher you get, the lower the lighter-than-air lift. All WW1 airships I could find, have a service ceiling <3000m, most <1000m. That makes them vulnerable to a lot of weapons that couldn't hit a plane. * They are huge and thus easy to hit * They are literally air balloons filled with explosive gas, so one hit can take them down. * They can't carry a lot of bomb weight (max I could find for WW1 was around 300kg) Initially, the airship was considered a very dangerous bombing weapon. But soon the men in charge noticed, that they were to easy and soft targets for frontline warfare. So how can you use this in your setting? First, how to make airships effective? * Use lots of (possibly leash-guided) decoy ships to draw fire away from the real ships. * airships should fly their combat missions as close to the service ceiling as possible (even if the crew might occasionally pass out). This will limit their payload, so if the skies are safe, they can fly lower and carry more. * Camouflage the airship. Maybe use dazzle paint? How to counter this? * FLAKs can easily shoot down airships. I randomly googled WW1 FLAKs and found some with a vertical range of almost 7km, which is more than double what the airships can fly to. * Counter balloons with balloons: the city people could "drop" small hydrogen balloons with proximity trigger shrapnel grenades, which would float up and try to explode when they get close to the airship. These would need to be brought out in carpet style, but that should be possible. ## Bonus: Why do lighter-than-air vehicles fly so low? The main issue is that a lighter-than-air vehicle needs to be actually lighter (meaning less dense) than the surrounding air to fly. Air density decreases the farther up you get. That means, if you want to fly higher, the aircraft needs to be less dense. Less dense means less weapons, lighter (less stable) structure and overall less payload. Combine that with the very limited choice of low-density-high-strength work materials available during WW1 and you end up with airships that can either fly low and actually carry something to make them worth being used, or fly high and empty. Also, if you fly higher, you also need a pressurized cabin for the crew. This adds a lot of weight and wasn't too feasible in WW1 era at all. ## Bonus: Why are armoured lighter-than-air vehicles not a thing? The oldest tank I could find used 6mm steel armor. 6mm is not a lot. It can stop regular gunfire, but it won't work wonders for bigger guns or even explosive/armour piercing rounds. Also, an airship has large, almost unsupported surfaces. A round hitting this armour will create shockwaves and all in all 6mm of steel armour will probably not help much. But, for argument's sake, let's say it's good enough. Also, let's say, our aircraft should be able to fly at 3000m height. That's about as high as the best lighter-than-air aircraft in WW1. Also, let's assume, the crew, payload, engines, fuel, internal structure and everything else weighs nothing. This means, our aircraft would have to have 15.7 million m³ of volume. If the ship has the same radius of the massive Hindenburg, it would have to be 11.7 km long. If it's supposed to fly at 7000m height, the volume would be 57.5 million m³ of volume, and the length would be 42.7 km. That's roughly the diameter of London. Edit: all the calculations are for the perfect shape to reduce surface area while increasing volume: a sphere. So if you actually want to build this in the shape of an airship, it's going to be much longer than the above mentioned numbers. [Answer] **Barrage balloons** [![barrage balloon](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WUZLP.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WUZLP.jpg) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrage_balloon> The problem with flak is that the area of denial is so fleeting - you have to catch the shell as it goes through the sphere of flak. Your world has airship tech. Use that. Barrage balloons were used to hang cables down and prevent aircraft from approaching. Nets of cables could intercept some shells. Between the cables that come with the ballons are a web of ad hoc planks and scrap wood (wood because it is light) tied along ropes (also light) in hopes of increasing the area of denial provided by the balloon. Some of the wood is unmodified - chairs, church pews, wagon wheels, tree limbs. For the hanging cables there could be very high balloons with long cables. If this is an anime there needs to be a scene where an enemy airship gets fouled in the cables. Defenders climb up the cables and commandeer the airship, turning its air artillery around and firing on other airships. Balloons themselves could be used as a flying shield. Surfaces facing the expected approach of incoming shells will be armored and shells will spend themselves against the aircraft. For armored balloons I like the idea of many small balloons rather than a few large airships. For one if a hit balloon is destroyed it is less of a loss. Possibly lightweight armored balloons will be thrown sideways but not ruptured by the shell. [Reactive armor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_armour) was not developed until after WW2 but I think the needed tech was available WW1 - it is essentially a counterexplosion triggered by the impact of a shell. One could have balloons with armor so light that the shell would pass through it, but the balloon provides a counterexplosion that diverts the shell (and destroys the balloon). Those would be fun for a fiction because maybe later in the story some of those reactive armor balloons are used for other purposes. [Answer] ## With WW1 tech, probably not. you would need highly sensitive detection equipment to detect incoming shells, like radar, then you would likely need a computer to calculate its speed and trajectory and all that good stuff, then you would need a very accurate weapon that is likely not controlled by a person but rather by that computer. And you would probably need proximity fuses for your shells which were not invented until ww2. Without them, you need an insane degree of accuracy. ## Hypothetically though, maybe? If the incoming artillery shells were extremely slow, like WW1 aircraft speed, and extremely bright, like from some kind of artillery shell tracer or the shells being highly reflective, and the flak dense enough, you could potentially spot and shoot down a shell. if the shells are moving at actual artillery speed, then there isn't any way you're going to shoot it down. Not only that, but you would likely need **proximity fuses** for your flak to shoot down the shells. Without them, you would need a direct hit on the shell, which a bullet hitting a larger bullet potentially hundreds of feet away while everything is moving at high speeds is very unlikely. But unfortunately for the defenders, proximity fuses were only really invented in WW2. # What could work So its unlikely we can just shoot down incoming artillery (even if we could they could always just keep firing shells at us). Well, bring down the airships. We probably have aircraft available to us, like biplanes. We could bring the fight to the airships. They can probably just send another at us, but we can buy ourselves some time if we keep downing them. We could bring mobile artillery/AA weapons. We sally out of our cities and fight them before theyre in range of the city. Even if large caliber artillery is needed to consistently kill them, we can at least harass them or disable unarmored pieces of their ship like propellers and lighter armored crew areas. **we could even board them**, which i think would make for great storytelling. We get our guys on their airship, either by having them drop from planes, or some ground based launch tech (its steampunk low-fantasy, im sure we can come up with something) with rifles, explosives, melee weapons, even flamethrowers (they would do very well in the close quarters of a ship). I doubt the enemy has any marines on their airships and even if they do, it would not take long for saboteurs to do plenty of damage. They would've either blasted huge chunks in your ship, set *everything* on fire, or just slaughtered tons of defenseless crewmen. [Answer] For such close-in interception of artillery I would also have to wonder at the usefulness even if you succeed. Your counter-fire isn't going to remove the danger of the incoming round, only lessen it somewhat, all that material is still going to hit your position (assuming the trajectory was accurate to begin with). [Answer] **What you ask directly is impossible, but also not needed for your scenario** You want a defense for your cities. You mention ground emplacements, which also more than suffice, because the ground-based guns can outsize and therefore outrange airships considerably. WW1 style airships have a very low service height, so the height-based height advantage is negligible when you consider what size of gun you can have on an airship in relevant numbers (plus ammunition) in regards to weight. **This means that airships simply cannot go near any city which had some time to prepare a defense** cities near any dangerous border would likely have permanent gun emplacements, and all others have rail-based prepared fortifications, with anti-airship guns on standby somewhere in the country, to be ready within the hour if an enemy approach is spotted (don't forget that airships are slow as well). Once in place these ground-defenses could force enemy airships to keep multiple kilometers away, because one hit on an airship is enough to bring it down, while ground based bunker systems can easily take a hit or two. **Tl:dr: there is no need to intercept airship shells because they won't dare to get into range** ]
[Question] [ In a future web-series I want to create, there is a species of massive humanoids named giants (*Homo maximus*) (technically, they are still humans, just not *Homo sapiens*). They are less social than anatomically modern humans, they are as solitary as orangutans. Giants are also omnivores with herbivorous tendencies like gorillas and squirrels, instead of being true omnivores like bonobos and brown rats. Finally, adult giants are as massive as adult polar bears. But, they still have a culture. Their main religion worships the following animals: great white sharks, ostriches, dogs, horses, pigs, cattle, murids, and nonhuman apes. Comsuming these animals (like eating the fat, drinking the blood, and smoking the hair or the feathers or the scales) equals sacrilege. Their religion is polytheistic with eight main deities (or gods and goddesses if you want) who look like hybrids between humans and their sacred animals, and they have twenty-four minor deities who look more like nonanimal organisms. So, I wonder how could great white sharks be sacred animals. [Answer] **Tapeworms.** [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Incmi.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Incmi.png) The meat of these animals often contains parasites. Homo Sapiens solved this problem using fire to cook meat and kill the parasites. They first invented fire to keep warm and later realized it is good for cooking. Homo Gigas never invented fire because their large bodies make them better at dealing with the cold. They soak up more heat during the day and retain it better at night due to their lower surface areas. Giants do not understand how parasites work but they know eating these animals is bad. The story of *never eat a shark* was passed down the generations until it took the most easily rememberable form. That form was *Sharks are sacred. Don't eat them.* [Answer] Sharks are already sacred animals in several real world religions. This was especially prevalent in Polynesia and Micronesia. In Hawaii the shark had associations with masculinity, warfare and successful fishing trips. Animals have sacred/totemic significance in cultures because the animal in some way represents traits that humans admire and want for themselves. A shark would be great for any oceangoing people who value fishing, seal hunting and combat prowess Who wouldn’t want to worship something that gave you good luck during fishing? [Answer] **Dangerous animals as gods** In many mythologies, snakes, lions, elephants, eagles and some other animals are considered gods and are worshiped. **Shark worship** Similarly, sharks are also found in different mythologies as gods or sacred animals, e.g., mythology of the Australian Aboriginal people or Hawaiian mythology. You can find more details [here](https://sharksinfo.com/sharks-in-mythology-html/). You can find sharks on banks note also. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/v5CdO.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/v5CdO.jpg) [Answer] ## Burial at sea feeds the sharks The culture practices [burial at sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_at_sea), and they know no matter what eats their loved ones, it ends up at the top of the food chain in the great white shark. Perhaps eating the Great White Shark is sacrilegious because then your ancestors, or at least the parts you excrete, are stranded on land. Or similar to [Sky Burial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial#Vultures), the culture may view this as generously giving back to the sea. Then taking back what was given to the sharks could be taboo: > > Jhator is considered an act of generosity on the part of the deceased, since the deceased and their surviving relatives are providing food to sustain living beings. Such generosity and compassion for all beings are important virtues in Buddhism. > > — [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial#Vultures) > > > I would strongly suggest that if you do draw inspiration from real world culture you do so respectfully, and also have some giants do not follow this practice so as to avoid representing them as a monolith (and by association the cultures you draw inspiration from). ]
[Question] [ Leaving dragons a little aside, a memory came to my mind when I researched about mythological/folk creatures that fly and remembered a very peculiar one: the Firebird. It's basically a glowing bird and it fascinated me! I want a bird like that for my world, a bird that many characters can have as a pet. But I don't want the creature to be magical and as realistic as possible. **Is it possible for a bird to glow?** Basically, what I have in mind is: the bird is carnivorous, it feeds on insects. It has feathers in shades of yellow, red and orange. The bird is able to emit light rays through its feathers. The bird is diurnal, but the mating ritual is at night, the ritual is to fly through the night sky and sparkle. The bird chooses when it will emit light. The bird is monogamous, so the feathers will gradually be replaced by normal feathers after the bird finds its partner(well, in some species it's like that, in others the feathers are permanent as some insects are attracted to light, so it's a good hunting tactic). Bioluminescence is autogenic, that is, the bird itself produces it and not a bacterium it eats. **Note: I used google to translate so maybe "shimmering" is wrong. In Portuguese, "cintilante" means something that emits light in short intervals of time. In other words, my bird can glow and go out whenever it wants to create a light show, it doesn't just glow, it fluctuates between glowing and going out.** [Answer] I think you could achieve what you want if your bird had bioluminescence skin cells — either generally bioluminescent across its body or specialized bioluminescent cells around feather follicles — and then had feathers that acted as [optical fibers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber). Feathers are already hollow structures, so the latter isn't an unreasonable evolute. This would provide a flexible system. The bioluminescent cells could be turned on or off individually or as a whole; the construction of a given feather could change the color of the light, as in [iridescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridescence#Chordates); and the fluffing or splaying of feathers could create static or moving patterns and displays. Think of a peacock, but where light was generated at the base of the feather and guided up the feather's hollow interior to burst out at the tip. Very cool image... [Answer] **"Is it possible?" Is this biology? :)** * Chemiluminescence is an appealing, biological approach, but as mentioned, there is an issue getting nutrients to the feathers. It would be *possible* to embed a very durable implementation of luciferase enzymes of various colors in the feather and then have the bird secrete a solution of luciferin and hydrogen peroxide, with which it proudly preens its nighttime plumage. Each feather would shine with its innate color pattern, giving the precise impression of a daytime coloration (though the colors produced could be very different) * Fluorescence could work also. The feathers absorb UV light and emit visible frequencies. Like with a black light, but by relying on natural fluorescent pigment embedded in feathers with a variable ultrastructure and blocking pigments, hopefully it doesn't look so garish. Where does the UV come from? Well, we give the bird a powerful UVA-emitting luciferase in its skin... (That and a lot of melanocytes!) * That leaves a huge variety of weirder options. The feather matrix (equivalent of the bottom of a hair follicle) generates light, and the shaft and barbs of the feather works as a fiber optic system. Or the barbs generate piezoelectricity during flight and discharge it abruptly in colorful sparks. Or the bird dusts its feathers in microbes left over after the evaporation of phosphorescent epiphytic pools in the trees. Or maybe they invented Christmas tree lights. :) You have *options* here. [Answer] I'll freely admit that I don't have too much of an idea how shimmering could be achieved. I know that many birds have a gland (preen gland) near the base of their tail that secrets oil. This oil is then gathered by its beak and rubbed all over to help their wings maintain a waterproof layer. If you just want a shiny bird you could just give it more reflective oil to go on its bright colored feathers. Tying into that, maybe the bird does only have highly reflective feathers and is smart enough to know how they interact with light sources. This is why mating displays, where the shiniest bird gets the prize, take place on a night with very bright moonlight. That also could be part of the reason they easily interact with humans. After all, humans are the species best at making light (campfires to stadium lights) and we like smart birds that eat insects. Of course we'd make them pets. The other idea I have is that the bird keeps bioluminescent bacteria in the base of its feathers. I don't really know about this symbiotic relationship developing outside of a marine environment except for a weird time in the civil war when soldiers' wounds got infected with bioluminescent bacteria because they had been laying in a cold swamp ("Angel's glow" at the battle of Shiloh) but it seems plausible enough. Not sure how the birds could turn off the glow once it starts except for maybe arranging their flight feathers to cover the glowing down feathers. Oh, this could have the benefit that the birds have a lower body temperature to keep the bacteria alive and this resulted in the cultural rumor that they are fire proof. They wouldn't actually be but it could be a superstition that translates to symbolism like flags or coats-of-arms. Actually, maybe their preen gland could could contain sets of chemicals that, when combined, create luminescence. Chemically induced bioluminescence is what fire flies use except they combine the chemicals in a internal organ while your birds could be applying the chemicals like self-made make up. Again, this doesn't provide for an easy on/off but its another idea that could be built on. [Answer] ## Fiber optic feather Bio luminosity is a well known feature that is often used in gene studies to have something cool to show off. Put the bio luminosity of jelly fish or the like into a rabbit or something. If you have that, you might be able to use this with fiber optics. I can’t find the right name, but there's some decorative lamps that are just a bundle of fiber optics. You might find what I mean if you search for 'fiber optic fountain light'. The idea is simple. The light travels along a fiber. The light bounces on the edge of the fiber, losing nearly no light. Upon reaching the end, the light can disperse 'normally' in all directions. Apply this to feathers. Some bio luminous material will fire light into the feather or feather strand. The colour can be changed by the bio luminous material or the shade of the feather strand. The use of this can be communication, confusion of enemies or threatening displays. This can evolve even further for mating and the like. This can make the edges of the feathers pulse and change shades for a more fire like display. This isn't without problems. I don't know how bright bio luminosity is, but I think it isn't very strong. You might have to handwave a much stronger bio luminous light. In addition, the bio luminosity can work ok if shining directly into the strands, but that might be difficult with how a feather is build. If you put the bio luminous material in the feathers they still need a direct connection to the body as well as a way to close this off and reject it if the feather needs to be removed. [Answer] The [uropyal/preening gland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uropygial_gland) is an absolute necessity of life-style for the water birds in particular (to waterproof their plumage) but is present in all birds. And in all flying birds, [preening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preening) is a necessity. It may just happens that, in the firebird case, the preening gland secretes not only pheromones but a chemiluminescent compound during courtship period. Flying high and all shimmering is the particular way of demonstrating a good health and fitness for the firebird - I mean, preening does have the [secondary function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preening#Secondary_functions) to > > send sexual signals to potential mates because plumage colouration (which can be altered by the act of preening) can reliably reflect the health or "quality" of its bearer... In some species, preen oil is used to cosmetically colour the plumage. During the breeding season, the preen oil of the great white pelican becomes red-orange, imparting a pink flush to the bird's plumage. The preen oil of several gull and tern species, including Ross's gull, contains a pink colourant which does the same. The heads of these birds typically show little pink, because of the difficulty of reaching those areas with preen oil. The yellow feathers of the great hornbill are also cosmetically coloured during preening. The preen oil of the Bohemian waxwing increases the UV reflectance of its feathers. Ritualised preening is used in courtship displays by several species, particularly ducks; such preening is typically designed to draw attention to a modified structure (such as the sail-shaped secondaries of the drake mandarin duck) or distinctive colour (such as the speculum) on the bird. Mallards of both sexes will lift a wing so that the brightly coloured speculum is showing, then will place their bill behind the speculum as if preening it. > > > --- The downsize of being "on fire while being high with love" during mating season - it makes the firebirds easy to spot by predators, this is probably why the firebird is all extinct in real world life. [Answer] As far as I can tell, mature feathers don't usually have blood vessels. It could be that the firebird's glowy feathers do in fact retain their blood vessels that let them deliver hormones and oxygen into the feather. The hormones would presumably be related to the desire to mate. These hormones in turn trigger the production and oxidation of the appropriate sort of [luciferases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciferase) in the feather's shaft, and the optical properties of the barbs make it seem the whole feather is glowing. This would work particularly well as a mating ritual because the extra oxygen consumption means that the bird with the best light show also has the best aerobic endurance. ]
[Question] [ **Is it possible for a land organism to break the sound barrier via running?** I may make an organism that can move faster than the speed of sound, however on this planet the main components of air is *Hydrogen Chloride* and the speed of sound in hydrogen chloride is **964 ft/s, 294 m/s, or 657.2 mph.** Something that could help you with this is the tiger beetle, it moves an astounding 120 body lengths per second. However a **Southern California mite** is much faster than the Australian tiger beetle and it is the current record-holder for running speed as measured in body lengths per second. [By this measure, the mite runs 20 times faster than a cheetah and the equivalent of a person running 1300 miles per hour.](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140427191124.htm) One last thing, make it plausible and I would also appreciate if you could tell me the **fuel requirements of such a beast.** [Answer] ### Not just by running The fastest wheel-driven vehicle was the [Bluebird CN7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebird-Proteus_CN7) which reached 403mph. It has been suggested that its theoretical top speed could be as high as 500mph. This is still a long way off the speed of sound in air (761mph) or the speed of sound in the OP's question (657mph). More recently, the [Spirit of Rett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Rett) achieved 414mph. The Bluebird CN7 his was limited partly by aerodynamics but also partly by its ability to lay down power at the wheels; and that power came from a gas turbine engine rather than internal combustion. The Spirit of Rett used an internal combustion engine. All vehicles exceeding this speed have been jet-powered. Even considering that a creature could replace the pistons of an internal combustion engine with muscles, it seems implausible that they could lay down greater power with muscles than an internal combustion engine can manage (in a similar mass/volume package). This means that even the Bluebird CN7's or Spirit of Rett's speed would not be achievable by a creature. ### Does your worldbuilding allow jet-powered creatures? There is no plausible way that a creature could evolve a jet turbine, as used by post-war aircraft and by land speed record vehicles from the Bluebird CN7 onwards. The mechanics of evolving the compressor stage just aren't possible. [Pulse jets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsejet) are simple enough though that a creature could conceivably evolve them. [V1 flying bombs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb) achieved 400mph and were primarily limited by the control technology, so we're getting towards the right kind of ballpark. Since jet turbines are a mature technology and superseded pulse jets, research on improving pulse jets has been relatively limited, so we can speculate that it could be possible to do better. ### But then they're more likely to be flying creatures If you've got jet power, there's no need to stay on the ground. And more than that, there are evolutionary pressures to *not* stay on the ground. Running at high speeds, even just on a horse, needs flat surfaces. Nature isn't like that, so if you want to go fast then you need to be in the air, otherwise you die just from hitting a pebble at high speed. [Answer] Simple answer: no. When a car or person is speeding up, their speed eventually stops increasing. This is why cars for example have a maximum speed even at maximum throttle: the combination of inefficiencies of the engine and air drag will increase the faster you go. Lets assume that you have a perfect engine with unlimited horsepower and only air-drag being a factor, then you are still limited. Even a car pushes off the ground with its wheels. So the contact of the wheels with the ground is what lets it move forwards. This contact is based on the normal force and the friction this can generate with the surface, as well as the materials of the contact surfaces. Normally a friction coefficient is something like 0.9 (rubber on dry asphalt). This coefficient goes down when the asphalt or rubber is wet, causing the wheels to slip sooner. So lets assume a perfectly ideal situation with a coefficient of 1. This means that you can get the maximum speed out of the friction, which uses the normal force, which uses gravity in its equation. In that idealized scenario your maximum speed will the equal to the maximum speed you can achieve by gravitational pull. This would be the same as terminal velocity. A human in belly position reaches around 200km/h. If your creature is more aerodynamic we can equate it to a human terminal velocity when facing straight down: around 290km/h. So you would not exceed that limit. Some notes: * biological beings push off from the ground more than a rotating wheel does, meaning you would essentially be jumping rather than running (not surprising, a jaguar or tiger is essentially making low jumps when running). This means the ideal speed would be lower. * you could improve by using reverse wings to push yourself against the ground and increase that maximum speed, this is what spoilers on cars do. * you could increase the speed by using and sticky surfaces to increase friction. That does mean the surface is not like sand or similar. * pushing off will also mean deforming the ground at higher speeds, reducing the maximum speed further. * keep in mind we eliminated things like efficiency and power generation per second. Unless you can burn enough biological fuel per second to push a +/-100+ kilogram being away this cant happen. [Answer] I foresee two main problems: 1. breathing: supersonic and subsonic flows in a tube behave in different ways, the creature's airways would need to be able to support both regimes and the shockwaves produced by supersonic flow. Kind of tricky, if you want to allow both resistance to shockwaves and gas exchanges. 2. propulsion: if the creature uses legs or something similar to move, the structure will continuously oscillate between supersonic (leg going forward) and infrasonic/subsonic (leg going backward) speeds. Once again, shockwaves will become an issue here. And you can't squander in protection, because that would mean additional mass to move. [Answer] Let's do it anyway **Giant Alien Ostriches** Let's minimize the speed requirement a bit. Say, your atmosphere would consist of Sulfur hexafluoride (11ºC) the speed of sound would be reduced to 133m/s, which is 479km/h. Now suppose your creature can breath that atmosphere and be as fast as an ostrich (70km/h), it would need to be at least 7x an ostrich height, which winds down to a running bird about 7x2.5 or ca. 17.5 meters tall. See below. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VEFDZ.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VEFDZ.png) On your planet, with a speed of sound more than 2x my example value, it would stand about 35-40 meters tall. As far as "fuel" is concerned (I prefer "food" for organisms) this is quite modest for ostriches. An earth ostrich needs about 3 pounds of food per day, mainly vegetables and some insects. NOTE: taking into account the Square-cube law, my giant ostrich would of course be ca 50x the weight. It needs more food, thicker legs, slowing it down. Maybe somewhere is an optimum to be found ? Or you could lower gravity of course.. Another, more secundary issue is: my Ostrich does not have any incentive to run that fast. You'd probably need a ca 40m cheetah to hunt them. [Answer] **Not on Earth.** But it might be possible on a planet with a thinner atmosphere. The speed of sound (unlike light) is not a constant - it depends on the medium the sound is moving through. On Earth, in air at sea level, that's about 340 meters/sec. But on Mars, it's only 240 meters/sec, much more likely to be achievable. Obviously you'd need to explain how a creature can breathe in such a thin atmosphere, and how it can breathe methane instead of oxygen - or your planet could still have have an oxygen atmosphere, just less dense than on Earth. The thinner you make the atmosphere, the slower the speed of sound. Obviously when you get as thin as "no atmosphere", e.g. on the Moon, the speed of sound is just *zero*, so astronauts walking on the Moon during the Apollo missions easily outpaced the speed of sound there. (Of course, with no atmosphere, the "sound barrier" isn't even a thing.) [Answer] ## A Very Interesting Question The speed of sound in salt water (which is what muscles and the body is mostly comprised of) is around [1,500](https://dosits.org/tutorials/science/tutorial-speed/) meters per second. The speed of sound in air is a much more leisurely [343](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound) meters per second. And, for your world, you are asking to beat an even more casual [294](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound) meters per second. On paper, then, it sounds very plausible. ### Some Limiting Factors * Nerve conduction speed for muscles is, on average, [80 to 120](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_conduction_velocity) meters per second. Humans make a round-trip to the brain when running, but a hypothetical animal might not require brain involvement. * Aerodynamic forces ($F = C\_D A {1\over2} \rho v^2$) increase with speed and peak at the formation of the normal shock wave at Mach 1. The density of air $\rho$ is 1.225 kg/m3. These [fine folks](https://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/aero/formulas.html) have calculated the $C\_D A$ for a subsonic bicyclist to be 0.39. I'm going to estimate A is 1 m2, to pull from this measurement a $C\_D$ of 0.39. And [this stack exchange question](https://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/aero/formulas.html) includes an image from Horner's 'Fluid Dynamic Drag' which shows several bodies and gives the shockwave + other drag for a body at around 0.4. Putting in the numbers for 294 m/s and 343 m/s, the drag force is 21 kN/m2 to 28 kN/m2. * Counteracting drag is our ultimate source of thrust : friction. The equation for friction is $F = \mu\_k F\_N$ where $\mu\_k$ is the friction coefficient, a number between 0.0 and 1.0, usually less than 1.0. And $F\_N$ is the part of the animal's weight that is normal to the ground, which is related to the animal's weight and the tug of gravity $m g$. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VU905s.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VU905s.png) ### What Would It Take For An Animal to Generate 21 kN of Thrust? To overcome supersonic drag, an animal would need to generate 21 kN/m2 of thrust (21,000 N). To do this using the ground as a power source, $\mu\_k m g >= 21,000$. Is that even possible? For a $\mu\_k$ of 1.0, a g of 9.8, and an A of 1 meter square, the animal would need to weigh almost two tons (2,100 kg). However, area scales as the square of cross-section. For an animal half this cross-section, the mass required drops by a factor of 4 to: 525 kg. Scaling one more time to an animal with a $1 \over 4$ meter cross-section : 131 kg. **This Answer Does Only Does the Rough Analysis of Biomechanics at the Top.** Speed of muscles could be in the regime of the speed of sound in seawater (1,500 m/s). Nerve conduction is much slower at 80 to 120 m/s. But, it appears possible that some animal design may exist that could conceivably go supersonic. ### How Much Does This Thing Eat? Energy is a function of force and distance. If this animal runs in 100 meter bursts, then, it would consume at least 21 kN x 100, or 2,100 kilojoules of energy. Converting to calories, that’d be around 500 kilocalories, or what we usually just call calories. A similar-mass animal (humans) consumes about a 2,000 kilocalorie per day diet. If this animal could do several bursts per day (maybe a dozen), it would only about triple the animal’s calorie needs compared to a human. ]
[Question] [ ### Scenario: **We woke up to find that the ocean starts to mystifyingly drain at warp speed, it drains in a speed that it will completely drain the ocean in a month**(The mysterious draining only happens to the ocean, other water sources will not drain) ### Goal: ### Survive to the utmost --- Illustration of the earth with completely drained oceans [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9PBSS.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9PBSS.png) The Ocean is extremely crucial for living because it: * Holds a voluminous 321 million cubic miles (1.38 billion cubic kilometres) of water * Produces over half of the world's oxygen and absorbs 50 times more carbon dioxide than our atmosphere. * Regulates our climate and weather patterns. * Provides foods and ingredients * Is important for the water cycle. * Provides protein to nearly 3 billion humans and every plant, vegetable and animal has grown through access to water produced through the water cycle driven by the Ocean. * Controls Global Climate, Plays an important role in the Earth's climate and in global warming. * etc **Question: Given the amount of time before the ocean completely drains (1 month), what can we prepare to survive this as long as possible? (Using our current technology)** **Water availability:** Citation from What-if: > > If the ocean suddenly drained, the small amount of liquid left in lakes and rivers wouldn’t be enough to sustain the water cycle. The pools of drinkable water would evaporate pretty fast. In a matter of days, people and most animals would die from dehydration. > > > What can we do to preserve the rest of the waters and survive as long as possible? One fact about earth's water: 2.5% of the earth's fresh water is not easily accessible, they are locked up in glaciers, polar ice caps, atmosphere, and soil. Some of them are highly polluted or lies too far under the earth's surface and will require loads of effort and money to extract. **More data about water distribution (excluding the ocean)** | Water Source | Volume (Cubic miles) | | --- | --- | | Ice caps, Glaciers, & Permanent Snow | 5,773,000 | | Groundwater | 5,614,000 | | Soil Moisture | 3,959 | | Ground Ice | 71,790 | | Lakes | 42,320 | | Atmosphere | 3,095 | | Swamp | 2,752 | | Rivers | 509 | | Biological Water | 269 | **Oxygen availability:** 50%-80% of the world's oxygen is produced by the ocean, well now its starting to disappear.... What can we do to preserve rest of the oxygen producers? How long can we survive with them? What about the other factors? What can we do to preserve the rest of our alternative resources to stay alive? **Effect on gravity** > > The ocean accounts for 0.022 percent of the total weight of earth, weighing an estimated 1,450,000,000,000,000,000 short tons (1 short ton = 2,000lbs). > > > Oceans draining will cause the earth to lost this amount of mass which could also affect the gravity as gravity is a force and `Force = Mass x Acceleration` Citation from Quora: > > Scenario: Mass of earth is decreased by 10% > > > 2. Mass is reduced and the volume is also reduced. In this case I think the gravitational force of earth will also reduce will make everything on earth lighter. Average height of trees and may be animals will increase. > > > Now in this case, the ocean's mass is only a tiny bit portion of the total earth's mass(5.972 × 10^24) Will the removal of this mass have any big effects on the earth's gravity or anything? **Extra question: If there is no way for us to survive this scenario, how much time do we have before everything completely dies?** [Answer] **Biospheres** (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2>) are probably our best hope. Problems with temperature/pressure are insightful and real, but can be overcome with sufficient engineering. The big challenge is the change in water and oxygen levels. Solution? Implement a closed-system water cycle of our own. Everything will need to be hermetically sealed, of course. Better draft all those scientists awaiting funds for their Martian bases, who will be overjoyed to help preserve humanity in this (comparatively forgiving) environment. You'll need a good balance of skill sets to rebuild civilization, but your plastic-wrapped arks and bases should be able to save a few people. Once the apocalypse ends and 99% of people are dead, it'll be trivial to go out in electric vehicles and scuba gear to forage for materials that could be used in base expansion. (Exercise left to the reader.) Your only real challenge will be getting it all done and sealed in a month, with mass hysteria everywhere. But you only really need to get a few of these working initially, before expanding out. Hint: Start with the biggest mostly-sealed structures we have, ships. We won't have much use for them soon, anyways. Some even have nuclear power built-in. Oxygen is conserved through hermetic seals, and recycled from carbon dioxide by plants (which also produce food). Gravity won't be much of an issue, as it will only decrease by the 0.022% you quoted. (Gravity and mass are directly proportional.) Oh, and once things quiet down a bit, I'd recommend trying to extract and store up any groundwater you can in sealed containers for later. It probably won't be long before the water tables start dropping, without rain to replenish it. And a final note - avoid coastlines and faultlines. The ground might be a bit shaky for a little bit here, as things settle.... (Cue landslide.) BUT, once things settle, maybe try the former seafloor for more forgiving ambient temperatures. P.S. - Before you say it in the comments, YES, this would be extremely challenging. But, if this apocalypse came, it's our best bet to preserve humanity, in my opinion. We already have most of the tech. It's just not much time to implement it. At least we'd have motivation on our side. [Answer] The poor die The rich die The grass dies The bacteria dies **everything** dies. For starters, the air pressure in current seaside cities will drop down to 30% of current levels. The same as if they were suddenly transported to 9000m altitude, just above the peak of mount Everest. The oceans may only average 3.7km deep, but they cover a surface area 2.5 times as big as the land, and will take a **lot** of air to fill in to the current sealevel. It would also become bitterly cold (due to altitude), and the air would be utterly dry. So, **every creature on dry land becomes a freeze-dried piece of jerky** In addition, every previously seagoing creature ends up at the very bottom of the ocean floor 12 km down, where it is exposed to some 1.5 bar of atmospheric pressure at about 50C, thus is created the universe's biggest Gumbo Stew. # So to repeat: EVERYTHING DIES, even bacteria. [Answer] ## Pump a lot of water out. T[here are 50000 fire departments in the USA.](https://apps.usfa.fema.gov/registry/summary) There are probably a bunch of other pumps around the place. [A fire engine can pump around 1000 gallons per minute.](https://www.garlandfire.com/Faq.aspx?QID=677) Let's say the total pumping capacity of the USA is 1 million pumps in total, pumping a billion gallons per minute. Other machines like oil pumps and such would fill in any gaps. That means in a day they can pump out about a trillion gallons of water. [That's enough to run the USA for three days.](https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/total-water-use-united-states?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects) ## Radically reduce water usage and conserve existing supplies. Water would become extremely expensive, and every possible method to recycle and maintain scarce water supplies would be needed. Existing water supplies like lakes and such would need to be covered to reduce water evaporation. Wars would start over large sources of water. [Low water crops](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj8_JSdltnyAhUKGewKHedwDQQQFnoECBEQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fextension.oregonstate.edu%2Fnews%2Fsome-vegetables-require-less-water-others&usg=AOvVaw0IANcSoBc9hKa2hd_vHjjh) would be grown to reduce water usage, and meat and other crops would be rare luxuries. ## Plug the hole. Desperate missions would be planned to try to stop the water leaking. Submarines, nukes, and all such things would get massive funding to stop the water leaking. If even a day out of the month of the water can be preserved, humanity can survive a lot better. Even if they couldn't do that, if they could seal off a few trillion tons of water they could survive a lot better. People would do desperate things to try and preserve whatever bits of the sea they could. Those who did preserve water would be the subject of fierce wars. Billions would die, as the scarce remnants of water ran out. ## Fix the oceans. There's a lot of comets and other sources of water out there. In the long run, we could get a bunch of them, and use them to restore the missing oceans, once we plugged the hole. [Answer] Let’s try this. The average person consumes 4 liters of water per day (<https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/water/art-20044256>) and there are 7 billion of us. You can distill wastewater daily at a cost of about 2,250 kilojoules per liter, or 9,000 kilojoules per person, per day. <https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-properties-d_1573.html> At a power price of 0.14 US cents per kilowatt hour, that will cost about 1,260 US dollars worth or power, per day, to recycle. There are 7 billion of us on planet Earth, so you’d need at least seven billion 4-liter tanks, or an equivalent. 4 liters is 0.004 cubic meters. Let’s say they use the minimum amount of material as spherical tanks : 4/3 pi r^3, you need tanks about 0.1 meter in radius (0.2 meters in diameter), and maybe only a few millimeters thick. You’d need 0.125 square meters of sheet metal per tank. About 880 million square meters of sheet metal will be required to make seven billion such tanks. A single ton of steel produces about a thousand square meters of 3 millimeter sheet. According to this, 2017 World Production of sheet steel is about 200 million tons. So, if you direct production towards personal tanks for everyone you would only redirect about 1 million tons, or one half of one percent of the sheet steel production not including other metals and forms. <https://www.worldsteel.org/en/dam/jcr:e5a8eda5-4b46-4892-856b-00908b5ab492/SSY_2018.pdf> Filling these containers may be easy. 66% of the world has indoor plumbing. Reservoirs and ground water will not drain much faster than normal. So, even those without plumbing might notice something amiss and begin storing water. **Crops** Most growers rely on rivers or groundwater, rather than fickle rain, to grow. Depending on when this happens, at the beginning of the season when reservoirs are full, or the end of season when reservoirs should begin replenishing from rain, there could be as much as a year of business as usual, knowing this is the last such year. According to this resource, the world has 1.2 million acres of greenhouse that will be able to hold onto humidity against the rapidly drying air. <https://www.producegrower.com/article/cuesta-roble-2019-global-greenhouse-statistics/> One acre of crops can grow enough food for between 1 and 4 people, meaning somewhere between 1.2 and 4.8 million people have a food supply. Good news, according to the same resource, about 13 million acres are “under cover”, which might be rapidly converted to greenhouse. Providing enough dryness-protected land to feed a total of 14.2 to 56.8 million people. Some regions, like Central America with its freshwater cenotes may take much longer than a year to drain, and may be able to hold out with crops exposed to the dry air for several years. According to this resource, an acre of crop needs 20 thousand to 40 thousand liters of water every three days. Or : between 2.4 and 4.8 million liters per year. There is a LOT of groundwater trapped in the Earth’s crust. According to this resource, each cubic mile of water is 4.1 trillion liters. <https://calculate.plus/en/categories/volume/convert/cubic-miles/to/liter> Based on that, a single cubic mile of water could feed one million acres of farmland each year, feeding about 1 to 4 million people. The amount of 5 million cubic miles of groundwater cited in the original question could, therefore, sustain 7 billion people for about 2,875 years (assuming all of the ground water could be exploited). So, a major shift in how the world operates - and probably still a extinction level long-term problem; but not an insurmountable short-term problem. [Answer] ### Longer where it's winter Anywhere where it's cold, you have large amounts of water lying around in the form of snow. In some places you may even have glaciers. These places are temporarily disconnected from the water cycle, so they're at a massive advantage. All available snow will be collected like it was gold dust. Anywhere with lakes also has an advantage, of course. However the liquid water is going to be trying to flow to the sea and will also be evaporating, so a lot will be lost. Frozen water buys you more time to collect and store it [Answer] ### Most of the ocean doesn't drain. As the water levels fall, the different oceans will become disconnected from each other and stop draining. This is what the Earth will look like after the oceans stop draining: <https://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/53/drain_ed.png> (Image linked rather than directly included because of copyright.) As a result, many of the apocalyptic predictions of all life on Earth (even the bacteria) going extinct are unlikely to occur. Instead, it's much more likely that, with shallower oceans and thin stretches of land where the mid-ocean ridges once were, there'd be a significant amount of livable space on the coast and the occasional super-continent with significant amounts of desert inland. [Answer] The rich survive....oh and also those freaks obsessed with the apocalypse living in self sustaining bunkers. Everything else dies. How long can rich people survive the apocalypse? If they prepared for it with at least 2 or 3 years in advance, then they could survive indefinitively. Some rich socialist/communist cities might thrive and survive like singapore, elsinki and beining. Other countries don't have the politics to prepare or care for the survival of its population, but revolts might change that. ]